The Burying Beetle

by Ann Kelley

  Mum doesn’t know he taught me that.

  He kept boiled sweets – pear drops, usually, in paper bags in the boiler cupboard. They were always stuck together, and very difficult to pull apart. He thought I didn’t know about them but I did. I have a very sweet tooth and can smell out a Smartie at fifty metres.

  Mum’s nail varnish remover smells just like his pear drops. Whenever I smell it it’s as if Grandpop is here in the room, with a bit of Rizla paper stuck to his chin where he cut himself shaving.

  He kept his tobacco on the mantelpiece in a tin shaped like a ship’s capstan. And there was a clock shaped like a ship’s wheel, and three black elephants, and two brass pagodas.

  In a high cupboard there were piles of old photographs in a basket with a lid, and I’d go through them with him. I couldn’t recognise Grandma, who used to be this rather pretty young woman, slim and smiling, with flimsy stuff dresses. (What a pretty word – flimsy). He was a slender young man in the photographs – which were all black and white, and some of them had faded into a pale brown. He wore a white naval uniform and was very handsome. The brown hat he gave me was his first hat after he left the navy – his civvies hat, he called it. It was a bit big for me of course, but he sewed ribbons on it so I could tie it under my chin. That looked OK when I was a cowboy, cowboys do have strings for tying their hats on and sometimes they wear them on the back of their necks.

  After he died, (actually, they died at about the same time) I took off the ribbons and wore it properly, in his memory. Mum thought it was morbid. I still have the pencil case Grandpop sewed for me too. It’s made of strong white canvas with a zip. He sewed it all by himself. Sailors are good at making things and looking after themselves. He used to do all the sewing and ironing. He couldn’t cook very well, though. Mind you, Grandma wasn’t such a hot cook either. Unless you like pigs’ trotters – yuk! And rabbit stew. She had a pressure cooker that was always exploding. Well, I thought it was exploding. I realise, now I’m older, that it was probably just the valve that kept blowing off the top and all the steam came out in a rush and a horrid whistle. I was terrified to go in the kitchen.

  They kept chickens in the garden, and I was allowed to collect the eggs from the shed where they slept. Grandma raised them herself, buying one-day old chicks and keeping them all warm in a big box with a light bulb in the middle. They used to huddle around it – a mass of yellow feathers, all chirping together. Once, one of the chicks had a broken leg and Grandma put it in a splint with a bandage round it. But a fox got in and ate it. Only the bandage was left. I don’t understand how the fox didn’t eat any of the other chicks, but it didn’t.

  ‘It’s survival of the fittest, that’s what it is.’ That’s what Grandma said, anyway.

  I pretended that one of the adult chickens was mine – a beautiful pure white cockerel that I called King. I used to carry him around the garden as if he was a kitten. He was so soft and light, and pure white with a red floppy crown – his comb, it’s called. He crooned to me, chook, chook, chook, very softly, like he was purring. I loved him. He was my only pet.

  Grandma was a great gardener. Grew all her own fruit and vegetables – potatoes, peas, runner beans on tepee frames, carrots, strawberries, loganberries, gooseberries. You name it, she grew it. It was my job to gather the glowing potatoes when she dug up the droopy old plant. The earth filled with the pearly treasure.

  I used to walk around the garden with King in my arms crooning to me, and show him the ripe soft fruit and the neat rows of beans. The chickens were allowed to run around pecking at anything they wanted, they were only shut up inside their shed at night. I was sent out to pick a bowl of gooseberries, or a bowl of loganberries, or black currants or red currants, and I could eat as many as I wanted.

  One day last summer, after Daddy left, we went to Grandma and Grandpop’s for Sunday lunch, and it was chicken. At Christmas-time Grandpop used to wring the neck of whichever chicken was ready to eat and hang it upside down, still with the feathers on. I didn’t like to go in his shed then. A pool of blood, black on the floor; a horrid smell like rusty metal that got in my throat. But this was summer. So, anyway, this roast chicken was tasty and tender and I had lots of roast potatoes – my favourite vegetable, and peas fresh from the pod. I had uncooked peas, I preferred them to cooked. Grandma wasn’t any good at cooked veg – half an hour for cabbage, that sort of thing.

  So, I was half way through my chicken wing – my favourite part, if it’s got crispy skin, and I suddenly had this dreadful thought.

  ‘Grandma? Which chicken is this?’

  Everyone went quiet and all the grown-ups looked at each other.

  ‘Grandma? Grandpop? It isn’t… it can’t be…’

  I pushed my nearly empty plate away and stood up and started hitting Grandma as hard as I could around her arms, and she had her hands up trying to hold me off, and I was screaming, ‘I hate you, I hate you!’ and I ran off into the garden screaming, ‘No, no! Not King!

  I had eaten my pet. I couldn’t believe they could have done that to me.

  It was soon after that that I had to go into hospital for my operation, and that’s when Grandpop died, and then Grandma died too, and I never had time to say I was sorry. And now I feel awful that the last thing they probably remembered of me was my hitting Grandma and screaming ‘I hate you’.

  I don’t think I broke their hearts. Or did I?

  I think they were sorry, but to them the life of a chicken was neither here nor there.

  They didn’t apologise to me, if it comes to that – if it comes to that? How on earth does a foreign person make sense of these silly phrases and expressions? How on earth? I think they are called clichés.

  Grandma’s kitchen was very small, a kitchenette, she called it, and when she was cleaning rabbits or chickens I used to keep out of the way. The stench of rabbit innards and chicken innards made me retch. I remember the first time I saw the unformed eggs inside a chicken. Like a bunch of pink grapes, strung together. I think I would be interested now in the insides of animals, if I could wear a face mask, but then I was just too young for the experience.

  Her dresser – that’s a wooden set of shelves above a chest of drawers and cupboards – was full of different sorts of china – nothing seemed to match, maybe a plate or two, but never more than that. I think she dropped a lot, or chipped them on the taps and then they became chicken plates, for the chicken food. She cooked the chicken-food specially – they seemed to have lots of potato skins and oats or something, cooked in the pressure cooker again. That kitchenette was more like a ship’s engine room – the steam, the noise, the activity.

  She was always busy, was Grandma. When she wasn’t gardening or looking after the chickens she was making things – sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, even smocking. She used to make these tiny dresses with smocking on for babies. I had several, apparently. I don’t really remember them. I never saw her with her hands still. She made stuff for her local fetes and the Women’s Institute. And she was a great joiner. She was a member of everything going – the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Salvation Army – maybe not the Salvation Army, but she made gooseberry and strawberry jams and things for their bazaars – anyone who had dances or parties, she would be there. I don’t think Grandpa would have anything to do with her friends. She used to dance with other women, all these fat old women in flowery dresses and white curls, dancing together – weird or what? But she always said the same thing when she came back – ‘I thoroughly enjoyed myself.’

  Grandpop sat at home and watched telly and did the pools. He never won anything, but you had to be very quiet for ages on a Saturday afternoon when they read out the results on the radio or TV. He did win something once – ten pounds – ‘Better than a slap on the belly with a wet fish!’ He was always saying that. (He said that when the only rent he got for Whitechapel Road was £2.) And ‘East, west, home’s best.’ I suppose if you have been a sailor and sailed the Seven Seas, yo
u get to love your home very much.

  I wish I had known them when they played cricket together.

  I wish I had said I was sorry.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Note: There are loads of gannets out there in the sea this morning, diving into the waves as if they’ve been shot out of the sky. So there must be a large shoal of fish they are feeding on. Actually, I realise I can sometimes see shoals of fish below the house, directly underneath and shifting across the beach to the Hayle estuary at the other end. The shoal looks like a large blue blot. An amoeba I think it’s called. It shifts and changes shape rapidly, moving and growing or shrinking like a cloud of starlings when they are going to roost in the evening.

  Pop must have come very early for his breakfast. I put out a plate of old cat food last night in the dark and it was gone first thing. But he’s outside now waiting for more, or perhaps he’s just looking at us, maybe he’s studying us. He is so funny when he eats stale bread. He swallows it whole and it gets stuck halfway across his throat. You can see the shape of it inside his gullet.

  IT’S VERY STRANGE that people who write in the sand on our beach always write their message in the same place – just where we can see it clearly from the deck and with the letters so we can see them the right way up. I suppose it’s just far enough away from the steps and rocks down to the beach so they feel they’ve gone for a walk, or maybe they want us to read their messages. They don’t usually write anything exciting or interesting, though. Only stuff like Tracy loves Jason or Fuck off. One small fat boy, wearing a red cap and on his own, wrote Fatty, which was sad, I think. Someone wrote Happy Birthday but it wasn’t to me.

  I had a very plump friend once when I was little. She was called Beverley and she had a little sister called Denise, who was just as chubby, and they both wore their hair in plaits. Beverley was a terrible giggler and I once threw a game of Monopoly over her because she wouldn’t play properly and kept giggling. I hope she doesn’t grow up remembering me as the bad tempered girl with no sense of humour. If I’m famous before I die and she gets interviewed about me she’ll say how horrible I was and everyone will hate me. Thinking about it now, she was probably more of a Noughts and Crosses person than a Monopoly person.

  There’s a little plane that flies across the beach towards St Ives, sometimes, with a banner flying behind advertising various events and holiday entertainments – like Come to Flambards and Visit Paradise Park. It’s a complete waste of time trailing the ads across our beach – there are never more than a dozen people on it, if that. It’s the nearest thing you can get to wilderness, I should think, the view from our house. Just sand and cliffs and sky with the estuary and sand dunes and the lighthouse and bay and of course, the sea.

  It’s about as far as you can get from Camden Town. Not one crusty in sight, no sound even of traffic, no smell of joss sticks and no rubbish floating around in the air. Paradise, some people would think. If you like that sort of thing.

  I’d like to go to Paradise Park. They have lots of different species of birds there including eagles and parrots, and they have a breeding programme for rare birds, like the Cornish chough, which is like a crow with a red beak. I wonder, why did they nearly die out? And if they died out, where did people get the eggs to start off their reintroduction programme? And why is it pronounced chuff, and not chow? The English language is a very strange bird.

  The gulls here still call at night. As it gets dark – which is very late at the moment, about ten o’clock – they seem to fly towards St Ives, dozens of them, around the point towards the town, to roost on the roofs with their babies, I suppose. Maybe they call to each other so they don’t get lost. Here I am, stay close to me. Follow me, I know the way home.

  When we first arrived here in the spring, there were more bird sounds at night from the waders and estuary birds. I definitely heard curlews calling in the middle of the night.

  A mournful sound. No owls though.

  Mum is at work today so I have the house to myself. She looked very smart this morning, in a black linen skirt and a stretchy bright pink top. I thought the neckline was rather low, but she said, ‘If you’ve Got it, Flaunt it.’ She enjoys meeting people and seeing houses, but she hasn’t seen anything suitable for us yet.

  I don’t even know if I want to stay here, though Mum says it’s a good place to grow up in. I don’t even know if I am going to be able to start school here in the autumn. It depends.

  Summer asked me once if I was frightened to die. She is. But then she’s frightened of lots of things – the dark, kidnappers, viruses, eating meat, the Big Wheel, the IRA, Dobermans, hospitals, maths. That’s not counting the usual things like spiders, beetles, moths and bats, and snakes too, I expect, but we didn’t get the opportunity to meet up with many snakes in Camden Town.

  I don’t know if I am or am not frightened to die. I think I might have been quite close once or twice – to dying. I don’t remember feeling scared then, just very, very tired. And when I had my operation last year to try and help my heart condition, I didn’t feel scared, really, just nervous. I didn’t enjoy the pain, obviously. But I did enjoy the attention I got from everyone – Daddy especially, and Mum and the doctors. It was as if suddenly I had become special – a celebrity – because of my heart, and people listened to me, as if what I had to say was suddenly important. Of course, they stopped listening once I was out of danger.

  The worst thing about the operation was the nightmare I had under the anaesthetic. I was in a huge ball of pain made up of all the people in the world who had ever lived, were alive, or were going to live in the future. I was all the pain in the world and in all time. I gradually flattened out the pain and spread it out to invented people in invented time – as if I was God and had made people in order to share my pain, so I could cope with my small share. It was a horrid dream, and I kept going back into it every time I fell asleep, for about a month. Weird. But it sort of stopped me thinking about Daddy leaving, and Grandpop and Grandma dying.

  I think I’m quite philosophical, really. If it happens, it happens. Nothing I can do, so why worry? Just make the most of now. Enjoy life to the full.

  I reckon dying will be like falling asleep and not dreaming. Like it was before I was born. Nothing. At least, I hope that’s what it will be like. I don’t fancy being in a nightmare all the time. I sometimes dream I’m being chased and I have heavy feet and legs, so I can’t run; or I’m driving a car and I don’t know how to drive.

  I dreamt once I was blind. That must be worse than being dead, I think. I would hate to be blind. Though I suppose I would still be able to hear the sea, and stroke Charlie’s soft fur and hear her purr.

  And I could listen to great music and perhaps I could become an expert on recognising birdsongs. Miss Kezia Stevens, the world-famous birdsong expert. They could take me to a rainforest and I could tell them which birds were there in the high canopy where no one could see them.

  Perhaps I could be a famous detective who always gets her man because she can hear things that seeing detectives can’t hear. I remember when I was little I used to walk along with my eyes closed pretending I was blind and seeing how long I could go without falling over something.

  When I was staying with Grandma and Grandpop I was allowed to go to the seafront shelter near their bungalow and sit with the blind man who always sat there in the mornings. They knew him, so it was all right to talk to him. I used to tell him all about what was going on around him. I never used the verb to see though, in case it upset him. It was very difficult sometimes, knowing what to say and what not to say. For example, there was this very beautiful dog – a Dalmatian – and I described it to him: a tall dog with short hair, white with black spots. But did he know white? He knew black. Or when you’re blind is everything a white mist? Sometimes, when I concentrate, and close my eyes, I can see amoeba-like blotches of colour pass over my eyeball, red usually. Maybe blind people get patterns and things they can sort of see.

  Ramb
o just had a sniff of something disgusting on my shoe. Cats open their mouths as if to say Ugh when they smell something they don’t like – I read that and then I noticed it’s absolutely true. He’s so funny – he started sneezing violently.

  I can’t see or smell anything on the shoe.

  Rambo has eyes like gold marbles – you can see the round ball-ness of them, the pupils thin vertical pillars of unfathomable black. His eyes remind me of lava lamps. He’s a very beautiful short-haired tabby with longer fur in his ears and long spurs on his front paws and he stretches out like a lion. He has black paw-pads unlike the other two cats, who’re black and white and who have pink paw-pads, except they’re rather soiled and grubby. I remember Charlie’s kitten paw-pads before she ever went outside and dirtied them – like unripe raspberries.

  I do love cats. I’m so glad we have sullen, stealthy, silent, elegant pussy-cats whose only sound is a deep purring, and not stupid dogs who want adoration all the time and go love me, love me, love me, yap yap woof with their eyes and tongues, and fall over themselves, and thump their tails on the furniture, and you have to clean up after them when they poo. Cats bury their shit.

  Mum always says lavatory, not toilet. But once when we were in Spain with friends of theirs they had a discussion about the word for going to the loo, and she insisted she only used the word lavatory, and then Daddy called out to her later and she shouted back, ‘I’m on the bog!’ We all fell about laughing. She was furious.

  There’s a big book here called Roget’s Thesaurus. I thought it might be about prehistoric animals. But it’s better than that. All about words. Cool.

  I hear a new bird song – not a song, an anxious shout – dit dit, da da, dit dit dit – like an urgent Morse Code message. SOS. Find bins, take off glasses, look in direction of sound of bird. Poodlebums and buggering Nora – can’t see a thing. It’s more difficult than it looks, this bird-watching, bird-identification lark (not a deliberate pun). Grandpop used to make the most awful puns. He thought he was being very amusing and we had to laugh each time he did it. Grandma said we shouldn’t encourage him. She never did.