by Julie Cohen
My studio is actually the back bedroom of Hope Cottage, the house Quinn and I bought when we married. It has better natural light than the front bedroom where we sleep, and looks out over the garden – a jumble of flowers and weeds, a lawn that needs mowing, gnarled fruit trees. Petals from the cherry and the apple have drifted over the grass like pink and white snow. On warm days, sometimes I take a cushion out to the metal bench, painted with flakes of peeling blue, and read in the shade. I fell in love with the garden as soon as we saw this cottage: overgrown, wild – the sort of garden that harbours fairies in foxgloves. I love the cottage too, with its crooked floors and bulging walls, the suspicion of damp in the dining room, and a thatched roof that really should be replaced soon, this summer or next. But the garden is my favourite place.
A blackbird hops across the grass. I make a mark on the page, a black curve of head and wing, then fill in sharp beak, gleaming eye. I sketch in the dandelions behind him. This is all very well, but it’s not Igor the Owl.
I’ve drawn and written six Igor the Owl books in the past four years, all of them before meeting Quinn. They’re not complicated things: Igor is a tiny, fluffy owl, much smaller than all of his owl family and owl mates. To make up for being so tiny and fluffy, not much bigger than a chick, he solves puzzles.
For example, in the first book, Igor the Owl Takes to the Air, Igor has a problem because his wings are too little. He can fly in a fluttery way, but he can’t soar on silent wings like the rest of his family, and he’s feeling quite down about it. He’s worried he’ll never be a proper owl. Meanwhile, he makes friends with a family of squirrels who are living in a hole in a dead tree by the river. When the river floods, Igor tries to help his friends but he’s too small to carry them to safety, so he quickly invents a sort of hang-glider thing with wings made out of discarded feathers and a framework made out of twigs, and the squirrels use it to fly to safety. And then Igor uses it to soar with his family, on silent wings. He’s the only hang-gliding owl in children’s literature, apparently, and the book sold much more than I expected it to, so I created more of the stories for publication, though I would have continued doing so anyway.
Igor has also solved crimes, in Igor the Owl and the Monkey Puzzle (nobody else noticed the ants stealing the nuts), and saved lives, in Igor the Owl and the Good Eggs (he was so small he could crawl right into a broken eggshell). In his last book, the one I wrote and illustrated nearly two years ago now, before I knew my mother was ill, Igor the Owl had started his own Owl School; here he taught other woodland creatures to solve puzzles, but he was sabotaged by a jealous magpie. In the end, Igor worked out who the culprit was, and they became friends.
I press my lips together and draw Igor next to the blackbird I’ve sketched. Big eyes, smiling beak, stubby wings. I never have a problem drawing Igor; I’ve been drawing Igor for years, ever since I was a teenager and invented him to amuse my mother and me during long train journeys, or on candlelit nights when the power would go out because Esther had forgotten to pay the bill. My mother, a proper artist, worked best on big canvases; I liked scraps of paper and ballpoint pens. I would breathe on a window and draw in the mist. I could tell a story anywhere with a few lines and shapes, as long as it was a little story.
I’ve been on plenty of trains since my mother got cancer, and I’ve even been in a power cut. But I haven’t found any new stories that I want to tell, any puzzles that a tiny owl could possibly solve.
Sighing, I rest my elbows on the sketch pad and stare out at the garden. The old glass is uneven, and when I move slightly to either side, the grass appears to swell and subside. Madelyne was pleasant and kind, charming as always, but she wasn’t pleased with me. Perhaps I should do something else for a job. But this is the first thing I’ve done which I’ve really liked. Before I stumbled into it, I was waiting tables, working in bars or shops, earning enough money to travel and then spending it all. People said they were interested in my art, but that was just because of who my mother was. Drawing Igor, writing out his story, being paid for it, holding the book in my hands – all these made me feel as if I were finally taking root somewhere. Finding the sort of life I was meant to have.
What will happen if I can’t think of any more stories? I’ll be dropped by my publisher. I’ll have to pay back my advance, probably, which wouldn’t be a huge problem, but it would be humiliating. I’ll have to find something else to do, something that the other wives in the village do to use up their time if they haven’t got a job. Coffee mornings. Charity events. Book clubs.
I think back to the rising sense of panic I had yesterday on my way to the restaurant. Was it fear, because somewhere down deep I knew that Igor was finished for me, that I’d used up all the stories I made up to amuse my mother because I loved her, and I would have to decide to do something else with my life? Because I can’t fall back on what I used to do now. I can’t get a job in a bar somewhere and flit off to India when I’ve saved enough money. I’m married, I’ve chosen to live here in Tillingford with Quinn, and all the possibilities of my past life have faded into air.
What was the perfume that woman was wearing who passed me on the street? It smelled so familiar. It made me think of the past, some unspecified moment, something I’ve forgotten.
The phone rings and I sit up. Outside, it’s started to rain and the blackbird has flown away; inside, my computer screen has gone to its screensaver of random moving lights, each one leaving a coloured meteor trail behind it. My sketch pad is empty aside from two birds, one real, one imaginary. I make my way through the dark cottage to the kitchen, where the phone is.
‘Hello, love,’ says Quinn. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘Slowly.’
‘Can I help?’
‘Oh, thank you, no, I don’t think so. I’m just having an off day.’
‘Envelopes keep on disappearing from the stationery cupboard here. You could have Igor solve that.’
I pick at an unravelling hem on the flowered tablecloth. People who aren’t creative, people who spend their lives structuring real-life stories and checking facts, rarely have any idea of the energy that’s generated by a really good idea. They think you can choose any old thing and make it work. My mother never used to make suggestions for the Igor stories; she would wait for them to happen, and then she would listen.
‘I was joking,’ Quinn says.
‘I thought you were in meetings all this morning.’
‘It’s lunchtime,’ he says, and when I look at the clock over the sink, it is. ‘Anyway, I just thought I’d ring to see how you were getting on. You seemed …’
‘I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’
‘… preoccupied.’
On the draining board are Quinn’s mug and his bowl from breakfast which he has washed up and left to dry. He has, I see, left a mug out for me by the kettle, my favourite one with the leaves painted on it. I know without looking that he’ll have put a tea bag inside it, so I wouldn’t lose vital seconds when I could be drawing. It’s sat here while I’ve been in my dressing gown, staring out at the garden, accomplishing nothing. I should thank him, I should say something warm and loving to make his lunchtime special after a morning of meetings, but I’m irritated by this as well because it reminds me of a future time when I may have nothing better to do but Quinn’s washing up, nothing better to do but make tea.
I close my eyes. This is another thing about marriage: second thoughts. Doing what’s best, saying what’s best, instead of what you feel.
‘Sea of Tranquillity,’ I say. ‘Wasn’t the moon amazing last night?’
Quinn
THE CHRISTENING HAD gone well. Baby Jacob Edward Isaac Harrington, swaddled in antique white, slept through the water dousing, and the rain had confined itself to a tiny shower while they were all in Tillingford’s twelfth-century stone church. Now most of the village was crammed into the Harringtons’ back garden. The new family stood in the centre; the baby, now awake, bounced from one person to t
he next, emitting tiny gurgles. Quinn stood with his back to the yew hedge, holding a glass of prosecco and trading opinions about sheds with Patrick, his sub-editor, who lived in one of the new builds just outside of town.
‘I’m telling you, it’s the only five minutes’ peace I get at home these days, when I go out to sort through the spanners,’ said Patrick. ‘You’ve got your nappies and your baby food for a start. Then you’ve got the Weetabix. Have you ever tried to get dried Weetabix off a wall?’
‘Like cement, is it?’
‘I’m thinking about using it to replaster the house. And the questions from the older one. “Why are snails, Daddy?” she asked me yesterday. Not why are snails slimy, or why do they have shells, no. Why are snails? Had me stumped. And then there are the toys everywhere. I stepped on a piece of Lego this morning in my bare feet. You probably heard the swearing all the way over in your house.’
‘I wondered what that noise was,’ said Quinn. He didn’t take Patrick’s complaints seriously; the man had three photos of his two daughters on his desk, and more in his wallet. Quinn was a great believer in the power of words – he used them for his living, after all – but sometimes, actions spoke more loudly.
‘It’ll be your turn next,’ said Patrick. He drank his fizz with great satisfaction. ‘Where is your missus, anyway?’
‘She’s underneath the apple tree.’ Quinn gazed across the garden to where Felicity was chatting with Emma and Gurinder, all of them with glasses in hand. It was a sixth sense, almost, this awareness of Felicity, something he’d never experienced with any other woman or girl he’d known. Though it could also be because she looked different from anyone else in the garden. All of the other women were wearing pastel dresses, flowers and pashminas and pale shoes, with their hair carefully curled, straightened or combed. Felicity wore a bright green dress covered with a concentric-circle pattern, a lace underskirt, bare legs and red ballerina flats. Her hair was shoved up into a messy bun, tendrils escaping. Her eyes were lined with kohl, her lipstick the same colour as her shoes.
Before he met Felicity, Quinn had never known a woman who could make untidiness seem deliberate.
Before he met Felicity, Quinn had never known a lot of things. For example, how you could feel as if you understood your wife better when you were watching her across the garden, than when you were talking with her in the home you shared.
‘She’s got a style, hasn’t she?’ said Patrick.
‘She’s an artist. She has an artistic background.’ Quinn finished his drink. ‘She’s wonderful.’
He had plenty of friends who were married; plenty of friends who claimed they loved each other. Yet they complained about each other when they were apart. They seemed to have petty difficulties rubbing like grit between them. He’d sworn he’d never do that, never let that happen.
‘Newlyweds,’ said Patrick. ‘Do you want another drink?’
‘Yes, please.’
Patrick went off and Quinn put his hands in his pockets and allowed himself to watch his wife. Even after being married for nearly a year, it was the purest pleasure he knew. The two other girls were still talking, but Felicity’s attention had wandered. She stood with them, but her eyes gazed into the distance at nothing, and the smile had melted from her face, replaced with a more intent expression, as if she were listening hard to something just out of hearing range.
What did she think when she looked like that? What was she hearing and feeling?
At first, before they’d been married, he’d asked her. He’d wanted to know everything about her. But she’d been so startled, her answers so vague, that he had stopped asking. Even in a marriage, it seemed, even when everything else was shared, his wife needed privacy. If only within the space of her mind, during the short blank spaces where her body was with him but her attention was not.
Quinn, himself, would open his whole mind to Felicity. He couldn’t imagine a single thought, a single feeling, that he would not be willing to share with her, if she cared to hear it. His past was an open book; they lived in the village where he’d grown up, among people whom he’d known all his life, so even if he’d had any dark secrets to hide, there wouldn’t be much of a chance of it.
He thought of last weekend, in the empty field with the full moon overhead, holding her hand and reciting the names of the seas. All those hours as a teenager with the telescope his father had bought him for Christmas: unknowing, he had learned about the moon for the sole purpose of holding Felicity’s hand and saying those names to her in the silver-lit darkness.
Quinn began to walk across the crowded garden towards his wife, intending to take her hand again under the apple tree, to call her back to the reality of the two of them.
‘Here, now, Quinn Wickham. I’m glad I caught you.’ Irene Miller stepped into Quinn’s path.
Mrs Miller was the town gossip, and fancied herself as a sort of investigative journalist, using mostly tea and eavesdropping as tools. He resigned himself to several minutes of being told third-hand information he had no intention of printing. Lately, Mrs Miller had been angling to be given her own column, a gossip column or possibly an agony aunt feature. Patrick thought this was a hilarious idea and that it would increase their circulation considerably. Quinn was more of the opinion that it would cause all-out warfare on the common.
‘Hello, Mrs Miller,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re well.’
‘I’ve got a word to the wise for you.’ She sidled closer. ‘I think you should go and have a word with that Bel Andrews.’
‘Is that so?’
‘She’s over there near the cucumber sandwiches. You can catch her if you hurry. Word at the Tillingford Tea Pot is that there have been some unofficial council meetings lately.’ Mrs Miller tapped her nose. ‘Secret dealings. About the budget.’
Councillor Bel Andrews was, indeed, by the sandwich table, looking as stolid and unconspiratorial as ever. Out of the corner of his eye, Quinn saw Felicity turn and slip through a nearby hedge.
‘Thanks for the tip, Mrs Miller. I will certainly talk to Bel as soon as I can. If you’ll excuse me …’ He began to edge away.
Mrs Miller followed Quinn’s gaze. Felicity’s glass and her handbag sat on the grass, abandoned. ‘Why are you and your wife so mad keen to get into that hedge?’
‘Damsons,’ he said quickly. ‘We’re looking for a cutting for our garden. Thanks again, Mrs Miller.’
‘Your father never crept through hedges!’ she called after him. He waved acknowledgement, and felt her watching him.
Emma and Gurinder were chatting to each other when he approached. ‘Hi, Quinn,’ Gurinder greeted him. ‘We were just talking to—oh, she was here a minute ago. She’s really interesting, your wife. Different.’
‘What were you talking about?’ he asked, unable to resist the temptation.
‘How Emma had a crush on you in primary school,’ said Gurinder.
Emma blushed. ‘I had a crush on everyone in primary school. Anyway, you fancied David Enright, and look what happened to him.’
‘I didn’t steal David Enright’s pencil and keep it under my pillow, like you stole Quinn’s.’
‘Gosh,’ said Quinn. ‘I hope I didn’t chew on the end. Listen, did Felicity say where she was going?’
Emma looked around. ‘For another drink maybe?’
‘It was all just a laugh,’ said Gurinder. ‘Ancient history. Felicity didn’t seem to mind.’
Quinn didn’t think that Felicity would mind about a primary-school crush. But why had she disappeared through a bush? He thanked Gurinder and Emma and went to examine the hedge. There was a small gap in it and he pushed himself through. A twig caught his jacket and he had to detach it, hearing the women laughing behind him.
The hedge separated the Harringtons’ garden from the Thompsons’ next door. The Thompsons were at the christening; the climbing frame and swing stood abandoned on the grass. Felicity was kneeling on the lawn by the patio, cradling something in her hands.
/> ‘Felicity?’ he said, going to her. ‘What’s happening?’
He ignored the relief that washed over him. If he felt relieved, it would mean that he’d been worried that his wife actually would slip away. That in one of her blank, private moments, in one of those moments where he couldn’t reach her or know her, she’d forget about him.
It was a side effect of loving her so much. Of not quite believing he was lucky enough to have her.
Some more of her hair had come loose from her bun and there was a long red scrape at the top of one of her bare arms. ‘It’s a bird,’ she told him.
He knelt beside her. Moisture from the ground soaked into his trousers. The bird was a house sparrow, dun and black. It lay in the hollow of her hands, wings folded, eyes closed into near-invisible slits. Its feet were tiny commas.
‘I heard a thump,’ Felicity said. ‘I think it flew into the glass doors. At first I thought its neck was broken, but I can feel it breathing.’
‘Should you have picked it up?’
‘Well, I thought that if its neck were broken it could hardly make things worse. What should we do if it’s hurt its wings?’
‘Anil’s at the christening,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if he treats wild animals, but we can ask him to have a quick look.’
‘I can feel its heartbeat,’ she whispered. She touched the dun feathers on its breast with the tip of her thumb. ‘It’s like a vibration. The pauses are too small. Do they live faster than we do, do you think? Not just shorter, but faster? More intensely?’
He opened his mouth to answer, he didn’t know what – possibly something about hummingbirds and how fast they lived – when the sparrow opened its eyes. It looked at him and Quinn just had time to wonder how it saw him, a monster or a giant, before the bird hopped to its feet and with a papery flutter, launched itself from Felicity’s hands into the air. She laughed, surprised, holding her hands open and empty.
