Starboard Home

by Cressida McLaughlin

  He held a hand up. ‘No “or somethings”. It’s very important that we know exactly what the man said. Can you remember?’

  ‘Uhm.’ Summer closed her eyes, thinking back. ‘He said that Mason said he was “going after a woman” but that he wasn’t sure what bird would be waiting that early in the morning.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Santa ran his hands over his lips, staring at the note and then peering out of the window.

  Claire and Summer exchanged a glance, Claire’s lips twitching with amusement.

  ‘Your fella,’ he continued, ‘he said something to me, that first day you were here.’

  ‘Oh?’ Summer tried to remember. ‘What was that?’

  He sighed, shook his head. ‘Are you sure it’s “fighting”? His handwriting’s pretty appalling, and if he was rushing, in the dark …’

  ‘What else, though?’ Claire asked.

  ‘And the man you talked to definitely said that Mason used the word “woman”, not another word he just interpreted as meaning woman?’

  ‘Such as?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Bird,’ Summer blurted. ‘Bird – he used the word bird. What if Mason had said bird, not woman? And – and the fighting could be sighting. Sighting! Bird sighting!’ The revelation hit her like lightning. She whooped, and Archie and Latte added their own barking voices. Santa Claus laughed, a big belly laugh, and Claire raised her fists in triumph, so that when Jas walked into the café clutching his tablet aloft, Summer wasn’t surprised that he froze mid-sentence, his eyes widening in alarm.

  ‘Sorry, Jas,’ she said, ‘we’ve just figured something out about Mason. We think we know why he went, even if we don’t know where.’

  ‘Ah, I think I can help you with that part,’ Jas said. ‘If you promise not to scream at me?’

  ‘No screaming, Brownie’s honour. What have you found?’

  Jas put his iPad on the counter and waited for them all to peer in. ‘I looked at Twitter this morning. I had to do a couple of searches, for the London area and also hashtags, different nature organizations – not everyone gets as excited about this stuff as your man, Summer, but a hen harrier sighting in Battersea Park is definitely not an everyday occurrence. I reckon that’s what Mason’s gone after, polar bear hat and all.’

  Summer stared at Claire. ‘You told them he was wearing my polar bear hat?’

  Claire shrugged. ‘That’s how we knew it was Mason the council guy had seen, it’s an integral part of the story.’

  ‘Besides,’ Jas said, slightly apologetically, ‘if he was wearing it, then he can’t be that embarrassed about it.’

  ‘Is the harrier still in the park – it’s a bird of prey, isn’t it?’ Summer asked, changing the subject.

  Jas glanced at his screen. ‘Yup, as of four minutes ago. It’s kind of like a buzzard, but much less common. It’s been travelling up the line of the Thames since yesterday afternoon, and Battersea’s where it’s at now. Why? Aren’t you going to wait for him to come back?’

  ‘Yeah, Sum,’ Claire added. ‘Surely now you know he’s OK, that he’s not gone after … something else, you can wait here.’

  ‘No I can’t,’ Summer said, shrugging off her apron. ‘I thought he’d gone to see Tania. The fact that I believed, even for a second, that he might have done that, means I need to talk to him, to apologize. I’ve been letting Tania get to me, letting her intimidate me ever since we arrived, and I need to be honest with him about that – about everything. I need to go now.’

  ‘And if he’s more focused on the bird of prey than you?’

  ‘Then I’ll wait it out, but I have to find him.’

  Claire nodded decisively. ‘Do it. And don’t close the café. We’ll take over the reins until you’re back. Me and Jas.’

  ‘You will?’ Summer asked.

  ‘We will?’ Jas echoed.

  ‘Yup. Water Music was jam packed yesterday, and I really need to sort it out before I open again, put everything back in its rightful place. Besides, coffee and bacon sandwiches will be in much higher demand than LPs on a day like today. You can leave it in our safe hands.’

  ‘Archie and Latte too?’ Summer asked, knowing she was pushing her luck. ‘I’m not sure how popular I’ll be if I turn up to a rare bird sighting with a couple of dogs that could easily scare it away.’

  ‘We’ll get them to help,’ Claire said, grinning.

  Summer laughed. ‘Good luck with that!’

  She collected her coat, gloves and scarf from the cabin, and picked up Mason’s beanie hat at the last moment. It was freezing outside.

  ‘Go and find your mad, bird-watching boyfriend, Summer.’

  ‘I will. Thanks so much, Claire, Jas, thank you for all your help, San—’ she stopped herself just in time, though from his knowing grin, the cheerful, semi-regular customer must have known what she was about to say. He had, after all, solved their puzzle for them.

  She pushed open the doors of the café and stood on the bow deck, inhaling air that felt like pure ice. As she went to shut the door behind her, she heard Jas say:

  ‘She’s only going because she wants to get that hat off him, right? What grown man races about London after birds of prey, wearing a fluffy, polar bear hat with ears?’

  My man, Summer thought, grinning widely as she stepped carefully off the deck and onto the towpath, feeling the roughness of the salt beneath her boots.

  Chapter Six

  At first Summer thought she could walk to Battersea Park, find her way through the London streets, but checking the route on her phone told her it would take over an hour, and that wasn’t taking the ice-covered pavements into account. She memorized the journey – tube first, then bus, then a short walk, and, with her phone tucked inside her bag and her hands inside gloves, she made her way to the Underground station. The tube was full of shoppers and revellers, the mood more jubilant than she would have expected, perhaps because it was actually warm in the packed carriages, the ice and biting December wind only a memory for those few, brief stops.

  When Summer emerged back outside, she was assaulted with it once more. The sky was blue, the clouds had dispersed to allow the sun in, but its warmth couldn’t cut through the chill of the wind, the feeling that, as she stood and waited for the bus, her skin was being covered in tiny ice-crystals, slowly freezing her anxious expression into place.

  The bus was a double-decker, and Summer climbed to the top, drinking in the sights as they drove through Chelsea, towards the river. It had been several years since she’d been to London, and while lots of things had changed, shiny new buildings bursting up towards the sky, so much was familiar and, at this particular moment, comforting.

  The journey would take her close to an hour – she’d been going thirty-five minutes already – and she had no idea if Mason would still be there when she arrived. She tried his phone again, but it had been going straight to voicemail ever since she’d discovered him gone. If he had been sitting there for hours, waiting for the movement – or return – of a harrier, then he was likely to be frozen as solid as the statue of the Buddha that, she had seen from the pictures on her phone, looked out over the river from its seat in the park.

  Finally, the bus drove across Battersea Bridge, the Thames stretching out below them, wide and churning. It was blue-brown beneath the winter sun, dotted with tour boats and the occasional industrial barge. It was, of course, far too big to be frozen, unlike their little canal, but Summer remembered dress-down Santa telling them that it had frozen over as recently as the 1960s. She wondered how much of London would come to a standstill if that happened again. Above them, aeroplanes left puffy trails in the blue sky, and even those seemed to wink with an extra layer of sparkle.

  The bus’s electronic announcer told her they had arrived at the Battersea Park stop and, walking the last part of her journey, Summer stepped into the park, suddenly with no idea where to go. She studied the signs for the boating lake, the children’s zoo, the mini golf course, but she wasn’t going to f
ind one announcing the arrival of a large bird of prey. She went onto Twitter, scanning her timeline, searching for ‘hen harrier’ and ‘Battersea’ and coming up blank. It wasn’t her favourite social media platform; she kept her Facebook page for the café much more up to date, and so was nowhere near as expert as Jas, or even Mason, who posted infrequently but used it to search for wildlife news.

  ‘Can I help at all? Only you seem rather perplexed.’ She started at the voice, and looked up from her phone.

  An elderly gentleman wearing a bottle-green anorak, his tall frame leaning on a walking stick, gave her a warm smile. His face was thin, his gaze direct behind large, gold-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Uhm, thank you. I heard there was a hen harrier spotted here? I don’t know if – maybe it’s moved on … but—’

  ‘Oh it’s here all right,’ he said. ‘Or at least its admirers are. A whole cluster of them, down towards the peace pagoda. Do you know where that is?’

  Her smile was pure relief. ‘No, could you tell me?’

  ‘That way, dear. Follow the main path, and the signs will soon point you right. I hope you don’t mind me remarking, but you don’t exactly fit the twitcher stereotype. But maybe you’re from a newspaper? Some might say that a hen harrier sighting in such an unlikely place was some sort of Christmas gift, a sign of something.’ He narrowed his eyes, his smile brief but not unfriendly.

  ‘A sign of what?’ she asked.

  ‘Who knows? It’s a strange occurrence, that’s all, and something reporters will no doubt make the most of.’

  ‘My boyfriend’s a nature journalist,’ Summer said. ‘That’s why I’m here – I’m looking for him.’

  ‘He’ll be in the throng then, I’m sure. Good luck to you.’ He held out his hand and she took it, clasping his bony fingers.

  ‘And to you!’ She started walking in the direction he’d told her, and soon came across the signs for the pagoda.

  The park was beautiful, and full of interest. There were so many different areas; some formal, some fun, activities for children and families, quiet spaces for walking and thinking. Summer tried not to get distracted as she made her way to the pagoda. As she got nearer, she saw what she was looking for. Not a large, brown bird with owl-like markings round its eyes (she had looked it up on the bus), but a group of bodies, indistinguishable with their backs to her in black, navy and green jackets, lenses angled up towards the mature trees fringing the park, looking over the Thames. She scanned them for a white hat with ears, and then, failing that, looked for Mason’s dark curls.

  It didn’t take her long to find them; he was one of the few who didn’t have something to keep the heat from escaping out of the top of his head.

  She paused for a moment, chewing her lip.

  She wasn’t worried about the harrier – if it hadn’t been disturbed by a whole crowd of gawping people, then it was unlikely to be disturbed by her approach – but about what Mason would say when she revealed her fears to him. She tiptoed slowly towards them, noticing a few people lingering on the path, clearly wondering what was going on. The watchers were being watched. The idea, along with the relief at finding her boyfriend, made her smile.

  She walked quietly up, crouched down behind him and placed a hand gently on his back. She felt him flinch, his head whipping round. His eyes widened when he saw her, and a grin spread slowly across his face. The end of his nose was red with cold and his lips were pale, worryingly close to blue, but he looked happy.

  ‘Summer,’ he whispered, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her against him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to find you,’ she said, matching her volume to his. ‘You’re like a block of ice. How long have you been sitting here?’

  ‘A few hours. The hen harrier is in a tree up there,’ he pointed. ‘Brian, from the London Ornithological Society, says it’s likely to leave any time now, and then that’ll be it.’

  ‘What do you mean “it”? Haven’t you seen it yet?’

  ‘Nope. Brian thinks it’s a visitor from Europe, that it would usually stay in the farmland or heathland close to the Kent coast over the winter, and has somehow gone off course – you’d never ordinarily see one anywhere close to here – and headed further down the Thames in confusion. It’s stayed in the trees overnight, but is likely to be off any moment, back along the river and out on its original route. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, Summer. Here, at least. I’m glad you’ll get to see it.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘Oh, and – here.’ She took his beanie hat out of her pocket and pulled it down over his head. ‘I’d rather you didn’t get hypothermia. Rumour has it you left wearing the polar bear.’

  He gave her a sheepish look, and took the white fluffy hat out of his pocket. ‘It’s more suited to you. And a few of the guys here thought it might scare the harrier off prematurely if I kept wearing it.’

  Summer sucked in her laughter. ‘Seriously? They thought you looked like a real polar bear?’

  Mason held her gaze, his expression solemn. ‘Some of them are very particular,’ he said, his whisper dropping down so she could barely hear him.

  She nodded and tapped the side of her nose, trying desperately not to laugh.

  ‘Ooop, what’s that?’ a voice said. ‘That her?’ There was an excited rustling, all the heads craned upwards and Summer found herself doing the same. Despite the lack of leaves, the tangle of branches still made it hard to see what was up there. They stared for a few moments, until a wood pigeon came flapping out of the tree, squawking.

  ‘Is she really up there?’ Summer whispered.

  ‘Supposedly,’ Mason said. ‘You need a lot of patience for this sort of thing.’

  ‘I have very little patience when it’s below zero.’ Summer bounced up and down, wondering how long it would take her knees to freeze into position.

  ‘There’s a café in the park if you want a hot drink?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t moan.’

  ‘You can moan all you want,’ Mason said, ‘but do it quietly to me or the particular people will start to grumble.’ He flashed her a grin, and they went back to looking up at a tangle of branches, the blue sky peeping through beyond.

  Summer didn’t know how long they stayed there, in relative quiet, while the day ticked forward and people went about their lives. She dared not look at her watch, tried not to think about Claire and Jas running her café, Latte and Archie causing as much havoc as possible with neither of their masters to be seen. The cold was working its way into her bones, so she had no idea what Mason must be feeling like – if he could feel anything at all.

  Eventually, when Summer had decided that becoming a statue in one of the prettiest parks in London wouldn’t be such a bad existence, someone shouted ‘There!’ and there was a flurry of movement, of lenses angling and cameras snapping.

  ‘Where?’ Summer asked, suddenly frantic that she might miss it.

  Mason put his arm around her waist and pointed, and Summer watched as a huge bird – a dog-sized, brown bird – seemed to drop out of the sky, floating on a wingspan that looked impossibly wide, its breast pale, its tail and the underside of its wings bands of brown and cream, like the icing on a French Napoleon cake. There were gasps and coos, a multitude of photos taken. Mason snapped several with his Leica, but his face was transfixed, his eyes not leaving the bird as it swooped down towards the river and then rose, up and up, beyond the trees and into the blue, soaring along the line of the Thames, out towards the estuary and the Kent countryside.

  Everyone watched it go, watched long after it had become a dot, and then nothing, just the blue, cloudless sky.

  ‘Wow,’ Summer said, slightly breathless.

  ‘Could you believe her wingspan?’ Mason asked, his voice fast with excitement. ‘She was incredible.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ Summer agreed. ‘Have you ever seen one before?’

  ‘Never. Never.’ He kissed her full on the lip
s. ‘I’m so pleased you were here to see her too. I’m sorry I left so early. I brought my phone, but when I tried to text you I realized it had run out of battery. How did you know where to come?’

  ‘Long story,’ Summer said. ‘Could we go and find somewhere, to talk?’

  He frowned, his pale lips pursing in confusion. ‘Sure. Give me a second to say goodbye to Brian.’

  Summer pushed herself creakily up to standing, and held out her hands for Mason to grab. He rose slowly to his feet, wincing as he unfolded himself from the position he had been in for hours. He stamped his feet a few times, and then approached a man with red cheeks and flyaway brown hair, wearing a North Face jacket. She turned away, drinking in the beauty of the Buddha in the peace pagoda, its golden body glowing in the sun. She felt cold to her core, and wondered how long it would take them both to warm up.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Mason asked, rubbing his hands together. ‘I could do with a hot drink.’

  ‘A hot bath might be more useful.’

  ‘True,’ he laughed. ‘Don’t know where we’re going to find one of those, though. Shall we settle for the bus?’

  He took her hand and they strolled through the park, then found the bus that took them halfway back to Little Venice. Summer was reluctant to open up to him in such a public place, so she kept the chatter light, focusing on the hen harrier, asking Mason questions about its usual habitat, why it had ended up somewhere so unlikely. He didn’t have the answers to everything, but he spoke with such animation and excitement that Summer found herself being infected by it.

  ‘So you won’t struggle with your article now, then?’

  Mason grinned. ‘I’ll struggle to stick to the word limit. And look.’ He showed her his photos. One was blurry, the first focusing on the tree branch in front instead of the hen harrier behind, but the other four were stunning, capturing the bird mid-flight, its tail towards the lens as it rose higher in the sky.