The Burying Beetle

by Ann Kelley

  I saw the funniest thing the other day in the porch. I saw a mouse eating from the cat plate. Not with the cats there – that would be pushing his luck – but he was helping himself to their leftover wet food. He looked so sweet. When he saw me he ran behind the chest. We also get other people’s cats coming in through the cat flap to have midnight feasts. I never see these cats in daylight – only in the dead of night. (The dead of night. Who thought of that expression, I wonder? It’s beautiful.)

  A ginger tom often comes in. Ginger cats are always toms, apparently.

  Grandpop and Grandma’s ginger tom was called Tiddles, and Grandpop rescued him from a watery grave – he was a ship’s cat’s kitten, about to be thrown overboard in a sack with his brothers and sisters. I wonder if the rest drowned? Tiddles was older than Mum, and when he died he was twenty and she was eighteen. She was his pet rather than the other way round, except that he ignored her mostly, she said, and wouldn’t let anyone pick him up or stroke him. A loner. I never met him.

  What’s the point of a cat like that?

  ‘They’re allowed to live with people because they let us get comfort from stroking and grooming them.’ So Daddy said.

  I don’t know if I agree. If they are freethinking creatures they should be able to do what they want, like me.

  When we first came to this house there were mice everywhere. We didn’t know that until this happened: Mum and I had gathered a load of hazelnuts and put them in a lovely big wooden bowl she had brought back from East Africa. She put the bowl under the bed for some strange reason – she was moving stuff around. About a month later she remembered the bowl was under the bed and found it was empty. There were hazelnut shells all over the house – in a wellington boot and in other places but I can’t remember where else. And the mice had made a lovely nest inside a duvet – or rather, an eiderdown – in the feathers. They had eaten their way into it, through the pretty flower design. Mum threw it away and bought another. (Car boot, natch.) She’ll leave a note for Mr Writer to explain where his eiderdown has gone.

  Our cats had a wonderful first couple of weeks hunting. Cat heaven.

  The porch-mouse has been here every day, eating the leftovers. Every time he sees me he runs to hide behind the chest. There’s a nasty smell coming from the porch, even with the door open. We pull out the chest and find a nest made of bits of chewed up newspaper – well-read mice, anyway – and there’s a little hole in the floorboards. Mum throws out the nest, vacuums and scrubs the floor and blocks the hole with a piece of tile. Mr Mouse will find his way out to the garden, I hope. You’d think, with three cats in the house, mice would stay away. But no… cat food is too good to miss. And maybe they like the excitement and danger. Who knows?

  I’m sitting on the deck with the cats. They all sit around in quite their own fashion. Flo sits in the smallest possible space. She takes up no room, just her four paws and bottom, tail curled; she sits up straight, watching, always watching.

  Rambo is a sloucher. He sprawls with his front legs out straight like a lion and he’s getting that square-jawed look that lions have. He has sort of spurs growing on his legs, just above and behind his sooty paws. He’s the only one of the cats that positively enjoys having his tummy brushed and stroked. He has got the most beautiful pinky-brown-spotted tummy.

  Charlie barely tolerates it and Flo just won’t have a hand anywhere near her underneath bits. Her head and back, fine, but no tummy rubs, thank you. Charlie is the most uninhibited of the cats. She lies everywhere, any old how, on her back, on her tummy, on her side. Her coat is particularly thick and soft. I think she would love to peel it off in this hot weather, take it off like a wetsuit. She practically got into the bath with me this morning, lapping at the warm water, tapping my head when I washed my hair. I think she thinks I’ve taken off my fur (my cowboy hat) when I’m in the bath. Usually, she gets her head between my glasses and the brim of the hat and knocks both off in an ecstasy of love.

  My scar is improving. It’s very itchy still but it has healed very well. It does look like a shark attack scar.

  There are basking sharks here. We haven’t seen one yet. They are very big but don’t hurt people – they might give you a nasty suck, if you made them cross. They are plankton eaters.

  This morning Eugene rang the bell, even though the door was open. Mum thought it might be a recorded delivery letter or an early Jehovah’s Witness.

  Eugene said, ‘There’s a parrot in one of your trees.’

  He was right. A huge green macaw in a pine tree, looking down at the top deck where we sit and have breakfast. The cats hadn’t noticed – I think they must be colour-blind. The pigeons were nowhere to be seen, or the peregrine or the crows.

  ‘He must be from Paradise Park,’ said Mum.

  Eugene had to finish his round, so couldn’t stay to help. Mum phoned Paradise Park and told them about the bird. They had lost a pair of green macaws who had been free-flying the day before. We waited for them to come and get the bird, who was perfectly happy peering down at the banana trees, the tree ferns and bamboos. He must have been flying over the beach, seen the exotic trees and thought he was at home in the tropics.

  I talked to him, making a chittering noise with my tongue curled to the roof of my mouth, like Grandpop taught me to do to talk to Viv. The macaw cocked his head and listened to me intently. I wonder what I was saying to him? It must have been interesting, because he kept on listening. I took lots of photographs of him too and phoned the Times and Echo and told them about the macaw. The reporter is coming straight away. I told him not to bother coming out as I had already shot some pictures he could have, and the Paradise Park people were going to be here in a minute. He said he would come and pick up the film, anyway.

  Two men arrived with a large cage and a bag of sunflower seeds and called to the macaw, but it couldn’t fly straight down to the deck, it was too steep a flight path or something, so one of them went into another part of the garden higher up next to the house and called again. The macaw eventually flew across to the hand that held the sunflower seeds and the Paradise man had him. They were delighted to have found him – he was called Harry. Mavis, his mate, was still out there somewhere. Not in our garden, though.

  The reporter arrived as they were leaving. He took my film to get it processed and said I would hear from the paper if they used the bird pictures. Later, I was walking round the garden with the cats and I found a tiny perfect bright green feather on the ground under the pine. I have put it in a glass in my room, with other feathers I have found. One of Pop’s pure white feathers, a brown female blackbird’s, a crow’s blue-black feather and a yellowy greenfinch feather.

  I had a dizzy spell this afternoon. I’m not good at heights, and when we first came here I couldn’t even go out on the deck and look down over the edge at the beach, because it’s about forty metres down. But I’ve got used to it now. I don’t know why I felt dizzy. Probably because of looking up for a long time.

  When I see Brett I’ll tell him about the macaw. He’ll be dead impressed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Note: Two badgers last night – a young one and another. They ate our takeaway fish and chips leftovers. They are coming later every night. Perhaps they’ve found another good café.

  GRANDPOP TOLD ME once about when Grandma fed a hedgehog on their back step, put down a saucer of bread and milk, and in the morning it was still there, and the hedgehog was a scrubbing brush.

  A Young Folks Natural History has this bit about hedgehogs:

  Everyone knows that the hedgehog is a sworn enemy of reptiles in general and of the viper in particular; but few, perhaps, are aware in what way he contrives to overcome so recalcitrant and dangerous an enemy and make a meal of it. My keeper was going his round – Ferdinand Coste tells the story – this summer in a wood which is unfortunately infested with vipers, when he espied an enormous one asleep in the sun. He was on the point of killing it with a charge of shot when he perceived a hed
gehog coming cautiously over the moss and noiselessly approaching the reptile. He then witnessed a curious sight. As soon as the hedgehog was within reach of his prey, he seized it by the tail with his teeth, and as quick as thought rolled himself into a ball. The viper, awakened by the pain, at once turned, and, perceiving his enemy, made a terrific dart at him. The hedgehog did not wince. The viper, infuriated, extends itself, hisses and twists with fearful contortions. In five minutes it is covered in blood, its mouth one huge wound, and it lies exhausted on the ground. A few more starts, then a last convulsive agony, and it expires. When the hedgehog perceived that it was quite dead he let go his hold and quietly unrolled himself. He was just about to begin his meal and devour the reptile when the sight of my keeper, who had approached during the struggle, alarmed him, and he rolled himself up again until the man had retreated into the wood.

  That’s from A Young Folks Natural History. Reading these old-fashioned books written by amateur naturalists is as exciting as watching a good wild-life programme on the telly.

  I’m not allowed to say I’m bored. Mum hates it when anyone says they’re bored.

  Only unintelligent people are bored, she says, and I’m so ignorant I have no excuse to be bored. ‘There is So Much More for me to learn.’ But nothing interesting or exciting has happened since our bird-watching outing. Can people die from boredom?

  There is a thick impenetrable white mist surrounding us. You’d never know where the house is in relation to anywhere else. It’s like being in the middle of a pearl. There’s no sea or sky or cliff or even garden. We are floating in nothingness, and although it’s rather disconcerting, I like it. It’s like we’re invisible – not of the world, and we can do exactly what we want. It’s like being blind. The mist takes away our hearing and sight. But instead of being handicapped, diminished, disabled by our lack of vision, we are somehow more aware of what life is. It’s inside our heads, our hearts. All there is, is what’s inside of us.

  The beautiful terrible world full of earthquakes and murders and miracles out there is obliterated but we remember it vaguely. The mist is a like a wedding veil through which we see whatever we want to see. Our future and our past.

  Mum wore a wedding veil. Her hair was long and straight and she wore a sort of tiara of real rosebuds and a long cream silk dress, dreamy and floaty. She looked gorgeous.

  I expect she saw her future through the veil and the future was heavenly – life with Daddy. Being loved forever.

  And then I arrived on the scene. Mum had some sort of well-paid job in a graphics company, designing book jackets and stuff, but she gave it up before I was born. And since I was born she’s not had a job. She’s had to look after me. She is doing something now though – Saturdays at the estate agents.

  I’m usually perfectly happy to stay on my own for a few hours. I mostly enjoy my own company and if I need her in a hurry I know I can always phone the estate agents’ office.

  This sea-mist is full of light. I don’t know how that is. It’s not a grim dark gloomy mist like it was on my birthday, the day of the total eclipse. This is a much more cheerful sort of mist. You can see the water particles, tiny dewdrops, and all the cobwebs on the pines are suddenly visible, glowing diamonds strung on the lacy snares.

  I remember a brooch of silver and diamonds that Grandma wore sometimes that looked just like those cobwebs.

  There are two pigeons huddled damp on a horizontal branch, not cooing or moaning. The branches are heavy with moisture, bent low over the deck.

  The house is still full of light. Every window has the sea in it. Except today. Instead, it is as if we are afloat in the sea or sky, lost in space and time. Cloudland, where everything is dimly seen. Hazy and filmy, yet dazzling.

  It’s like being under a mosquito net.

  Mum and Daddy and I under a mosquito net together in their bed, laughing as thunder crashes and lightning draws closer all around us, and the flood sweeping red crabs past our wooden house on stilts, and the vervet monkeys screeching on the metal roof.

  We have no horizon. Yet the mist is bright. And we are concealed in its blur.

  Lost.

  I have dreams of being lost. I can’t get home. Wherever home might be. There are mountains to climb or broken stairs and ladders, boulders, obstacles on all sides. I miss the last bus/train/plane/boat. The waves are mountainous, the wind furious, the rain torrential. I have lost my clothes, my glasses, my mother and father and grandparents and friends. My cats. Everything. I’ve lost my way.

  Mum and I were on a small tropical island somewhere at night. No lights, not even the moon. We sat on the beach in absolute dark listening to the sound of sand being shovelled until our eyes became accustomed to the night and we began to make out the shape of a huge turtle sweeping away the sand with its flippers and gradually forming a deep hollow. The turtle’s eggs were soft white ping-pong balls – a hundred of them dropped into the sand. We were there for hours, it seemed, and I nearly fell asleep in Mum’s arms. And when we walked back along the beach to our room, there was phosphorescence washed in on the beach and I gathered the little balls of strange stuff and wrapped them around my wrist and my fingers like neon jewels – glowing blue opals born in the sea. And then a huge shooting star fell into the sea.

  It might sound as if I’ve made it up, or as if it’s a dream, but it was true. It happened. I have a colourful past.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  PARADISE PARK. THERE are aviaries with parrots and other exotic birds screeching and climbing and flying around among foreign looking trees with large leaves. They’ve all got loads of room and privacy and look very healthy and well cared for. We watch the penguins being fed. Little children throw fresh mackerel to them and the penguins swim and dive for the fish. There’s one old man of a penguin, very ruffled and fat, who totters around on the rocks in the middle, and doesn’t get anything to eat. Someone throws fish to him, but a herring gull pretending to be a penguin gets there first. I’m sure he’ll get fed properly later – the elderly penguin.

  We watch the free-flying exhibition. A golden eagle, a snowy white owl, an eagle owl and a bald eagle all fly around and land on various posts or on the handlers gloved hands. It’s brilliant. When the birds fly high they are bombed by herring gulls.

  There are goats and pigs and ponies and other domestic animals. The goats are from another planet. They have these weird eyes with horizontal rectangular slits as irises. They sort of look at you but they don’t have any earthly intelligence. Also, they eat anything, absolutely anything – the paper bag with their food in, and my sleeve, for example. I love the way they kneel on their front knees when they are eating something on the ground.

  There’s this little girl near me watching the goats.

  She turns to me and says, ‘Its bottom hole got bigger and bigger and then it did a plop.’

  And I say to her, ‘That’s what your bottom does when you do a plop.’ And her eyes get rounder and rounder.

  And her mum drags her away to look at the miniature ponies.

  My favourite bird in Paradise is a kea. It looks like it’s wearing armour. Its beak is long, curved and very sharp. It has an almost human walk, a kind of swagger. The kea stops suddenly and looks over its shoulder at me through the wire. It has a raucous and hilarious cry. I could watch it for hours but we move on as it’s lunchtime and Mum’s hungry.

  ‘Come on, Gussie, I’m dying for a beer.’

  After she’s had a beer we go back into the park and have a picnic of egg sandwiches and I feel guilty that we are eating eggs. Stupid, I know. They are organic, free-range, so it’s OK.

  There’s an adventure playground with Tarzan ropes and stuff, which I don’t bother with, but it does look fun.

  There are even flamingos. It would be great to work here. I love it.

  One of the men who had come to our garden actually took us to see the macaws and went inside another aviary to pick up a deep blue feather for me. The macaws look perfectly hap
py in their leafy home and Harry shows no signs of recognising us. I expect they are pleased to have found each other again, though, Harry and Mavis.

  And we feed nectar to the rainbow birds. They perch on your sleeve and sip the nectar from a little yoghurt pot.

  A lovely day but tiring.

  We watched Bringing Up Baby last night. It’s another of my favourite films of all time. Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. She is positively anorexic but wears lovely clothes and never stops talking. George, the dog, is a very good actor. He runs off with a precious prehistoric bone and hides it. The best line in the film is spoken by Cary Grant. He says: ‘When a man is in the middle of a pond wrestling with a swan he’s in no position to run.’

  For some reason I thought this was hilariously funny and couldn’t stop giggling, and that started Mum off and we nearly wet ourselves, we laughed so much.

  ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.’ That’s the song they have to keep on singing to Baby – that’s the leopard. Except there’s another leopard – an escaped-from-the-circus man-eater, and things get complicated after that.

  We sat in front of the telly eating our supper – fish soup – which was so delicious I’ve got the recipe from Mum. I think I ought to get all her interesting recipes. She’s ace with leftovers. I’ll write them for posterity.

  CURRIED GURNARD SOUP

  Ingredients:

  Sliced raw potatoes

  Sliced raw carrots

  Rocket

  Coriander

  3 large tomatoes, quartered

  A handful of crabmeat

  Leftover curried gurnard from last night (cooked in green curry paste and coconut milk).

  Gurnard is a very cheap local fish, which Mum bought, filleted, in St Ives. She says it is Underrated, Luckily.