by Lynn Watson
‘Judi, do you remember that time we went for a picnic by the river and we were swimming naked and Jambo bolted, careering off with the pony trap clattering behind him? You said he’d be happy grazing, but he just took off like the grass was on fire. You scrambled out of the water and raced after him, no thought of putting on any clothes.’
The scene was exceptionally vivid in her mind. The bumpy field of rough, spiky grasses and little Judi like a gazelle racing for its life, darting from side to side and leaping high in the air to avoid the thistles, while Fran watched shivering in her scratchy towel, bewitched by her wild and fearless friend. It was Fran who always did well in class, captained the sports teams and generally managed school life with ease, but underneath all that, she knew she would rather have what Judi had so effortlessly – her daring, her natural grace, her dark eyes and her devil-may-care attitude.
Judi frowned with deep concentration, but only momentarily. Her eyes were noticeably dimmer now, less vibrant.
‘No, I don’t remember. Or maybe I do, vaguely; I’m not sure but it sounds right. He was one crazy little horse, that Jambo, temperamental as they come. It was only me that could handle him and even then, he broke away from me a few times. I always thought he should have been a wild pony.’
Judi had drifted off to sleep by the time Andy came back and began to prepare dinner. The small kitchen was cluttered and friendly, with a rustic feel heightened by large baskets of vegetables, a battered pine table dating back to the ’70s and an unravelling wicker rocking chair. Fran attempted various lines of conversation but Andy was notably subdued, responding only minimally and not picking up any thread until she moved towards him, patted his wrist and asked him how he was really coping. He was at the sink and turned to face her, holding the potato peeler in mid-air.
‘It’s a funny thing but it’s easier in a way, now she’s weaker and unable to go into battle every time I make a tiny suggestion or the nurses want to do something different. Mentally, she’s very up and down, depending on the drug dosage and the pain. Today’s a good day because you’re here.’ He paused and turned back to the sink to pick up the next potato. ‘We both wanted you here, this weekend. It’s not going to be long. She knows that… we all know that.’
Fran put her arm loosely around his shoulders. He turned the peeler in his hand so it faced downwards like a dagger and slammed it with full force into the potato, splitting it jaggedly in half and jabbing repeatedly until it lay in small, uneven pieces across the bottom of the plastic bowl.
Later in the evening, Judi was sitting up again and they played a game of cards and passed round a couple of joints. Fran only smoked occasionally and she inhaled so lightly that the cannabis had little effect, but she was beginning to feel the high now; that mix of animation and blissed-out calm. Andy selected a compilation of country, blues and late-night jazz, including the long-time favourite tracks that were always going to remind her of Judi. The music took over and the talk became sporadic and more zany, spurred on by the fact that Andy and Judi also shared an ecstasy tablet. For once, Fran was tempted to try it, but she had always instructed her children not to dabble in synthetic drugs and she felt duty-bound not to take them herself, for fear of letting them down or, perhaps more to the point, being found out by them. Not that Max and Chaddy were kids any more, being twenty-six and twenty-four, or even living in the UK right now, but the self-prohibition persisted.
Around midnight, Judi wanted to dance. They supported her to climb painfully out of bed and Andy lifted her slight body as the two of them began to waltz and whirl across the rugs and wood floor. Judi’s peals of laughter spread to Fran and Andy as she spun round and insisted that Fran take photos and then video clips, until the manic outburst of energy was suddenly over and she had to lie flat and completely still to recover. Andy turned the music down low to signify the change of mood and Fran was acutely aware of her need to treasure the moment, to hold on to this precious intimacy with them.
It was Judi who broke the silence, her eyes closed and her voice dreamy and faraway. ‘I hope you two will go on holiday together.’
The words hung between them, slowly expanding like droplets of water about to fall.
‘And I don’t want to be a ghost. I want to be a spirit.’
Fran took her hand and brushed it with a kiss. ‘You will be, Judi. You’ll always be our dancing spirit. That’s a promise.’
She slept fitfully in the spare room that night, disturbed by the squawking and squabbling seagulls on the roof and Andy’s constant padding up and down the stairs. The whole point about Judi was her readiness and desire to cross boundaries, take a risk and let others think what they liked. It was there in the picnic episode, which Judi didn’t even remember, and in their imaginary games among the sloping stack of hay bales in the barn, the dead-rat-throwing contests, the scary dares and the store of squirrelled-away goodies under the big double bed in the draughty spare room of the old farmhouse.
At age fifteen or so, when Judi was at boarding school and Fran was involved with her own circle of school friends, she heard and was inclined to believe the whispered rumours about Judi and her younger brother Jeremy, who must have been thirteen by then. She was also well aware that her own parents regarded Judi’s pretty, indulgent mother and handsome, gentleman-farmer father as scandalous people to be avoided, although they never said why this was and naturally she couldn’t ask. It was only years later that the two girls, now young women, reignited their friendship, after Fran was married and Judi had separated from her first husband and was a single parent looking after Zoe.
The nurse came and went before eight the next morning. When Fran came downstairs, Judi was in an agitated state.
‘Did my present arrive, Frankie? I sent it by special delivery. I rode Jambo to the post office and tied him up so he wouldn’t run off again.’
Fran played along. ‘What kind of present is it?’
‘It’s a housewarming present and I think you’ll love it.’ Then, barely missing a beat: ‘Am I talking rubbish? You will tell me, won’t you? I’m relying on you and Andy not to let me go crazy.’
‘It’s the medication. It’s not a problem, don’t worry.’
‘Tell you something, Frankie, just between us. I’ve got the heebie-jeebies.’
Her confusion increased over the next hour, the odd ramblings punctuated by short lucid interludes when she made a big effort to get back in control. Fran sat close to the bed and watched out the window as Andy walked home across the near field, stooping every now and then to throw a stick for the dog. He was wearing shorts, sandals and the light, tight T-shirt despite the fresh feel of the morning, the calves of his legs brown and muscled and his curly dark hair tousled in the breeze.
Judi was asleep again by the time Fran had to go and meet her taxi at the end of the lane. She kissed her lightly on the forehead and, as she had hoped, her friend didn’t stir or make a sound. Outside the front door, she and Andy said goodbye with another tight hug which took her beyond where she wanted to be. He spoke quietly into her ear.
‘What did you think of that, last night, what she said to us?’
She leant back to look into his eyes, which were glistening with tears.
‘It was amazing. I’m not sure what to think, how to respond. It’s too…’
He was still standing on the path when she reached the bend in the lane and swung round to give a final wave. The small grey pony was waiting beside the fence, her wide nostrils twitching with expectation.
***
The pigeons often perched on her chimney pots and she could hear them now, their excited cooing carried down the chimney and into the room. She looked up from her Sunday paper and listened as it got louder and more frenzied. Then there was a thump and frantically beating wings, accompanied by a volley of squawking. Immobilised by an irrational fear, she raised the newspaper to hide behind it while she waited to find out if the bird was going to land on the hearth and whether it would be alive
or dead. She went through the various scenarios in her mind, not knowing which would be the least awful – a crazed pigeon flying round her living room, an injured bird requiring veterinary attention, or a sad pile of feathers and broken wings lying on the cracked stone. Her dreadful conclusion was that she hoped it would be unambiguously dead, so she could simply shovel it up and put it in the bin after dark.
None of this speculation was helping her decide what to do right now, how to deal with the situation. The flapping continued but with less urgency, and the squawking, presumably from a second bird on the roof, had died down. Maybe the fallen bird had found refuge on a ledge. This presented yet another scenario – a doomed pigeon slowly starving to death in her chimney while she waited in trepidation for it to drop.
She decided to go into the street and assess what was going on from there. The trapped bird might be up on the roof again and she could watch the pair of them fly off, one a little sooty and humiliated perhaps, but happily free. If not, she needed a board or other barrier to cover the hearth opening and stop it from getting into the room.
Standing on the opposite pavement, she saw a single forlorn bird on the edge of her largest chimney pot, its head cocked to catch any sounds from below. They had probably been copulating in a precarious position and the other one had lost its balance and toppled in. Focused as she was on the rooftop drama and her racy thoughts on what had caused it, she didn’t notice a young girl who was speeding along the pavement on a scooter until she had to stop abruptly to avoid a collision, jolting over the handlebars but recovering quickly. She followed Fran’s upward gaze and then looked directly at her, wanting an explanation.
‘Excuse me, what are you looking at?’
She was about ten or eleven, skinny and wearing a pair of baggy, faded blue cotton shorts. She put one foot back on the red scooter, ready to whizz off again if this turned out to be nothing interesting.
‘Hello, are you okay, not hurt?’ The girl shook her head. ‘It’s just the pigeons. You see that one on top there? Well, its friend has fallen down my chimney and it’s stuck. I’m trying to decide what to do.’
The girl looked thoughtful. ‘I’m Lily. What’s your name?’
‘I’m Fran. I live in that house there, with the bird on the chimney pot.’
‘That’s near to mine. My house is Number 32, the one with the green door.’
Fran looked across the street, not wanting to dismiss the child but preoccupied with her immediate concern. It was three doors down the terrace, the other end of her row of four. A flowering purple wisteria trailed untidily around the door and the front bay window.
Lily, meanwhile, seemed to be engaging with the issue as a shared problem.
‘Why don’t we light a fire so it smells the smoke and flies away? Or I can climb out of your window and go up on the roof and reach in for it. I’m not scared of heights; ask my mum.’
At this point, Fran’s next-door neighbour emerged from his house and nodded across to her as he stopped by his wall to rearrange the contents of his rucksack. They had not yet had a proper conversation, but he had briefly introduced himself as Marcus Trim on the day she moved in. Dr Trim, she knew from a letter mistakenly posted through her door.
‘Marcus, Dr Trim, do you have a moment? We’ve got a bit of a problem; a bird’s got stuck down my chimney.’
She walked across the road, Lily scooting at her heels, and explained what was going on.
‘So we need some kind of board to block off its escape route into the room.’
‘And I can climb out the window and up the roof, it’s easy,’ said Lily, clearly trying to gather support for a heroic exploit.
Marcus seemed disconcerted, although Fran couldn’t see his eyes behind his shades. He was a slim black guy with fairly short, uneven dreadlocks, prominent cheekbones and a narrow face with the shadow of a beard.
‘Okay, I’ve got a few minutes.’
He glanced down the street and pointed out an overflowing skip with a piece of what looked like chipboard jutting out of the top. The three of them went to investigate and managed to pull the board away from the tangled debris and carry it back into Fran’s house, Lily parking her scooter decisively in the space under the stairs as if she were a regular visitor. Fran was relieved to see there was no sign of the pigeon, dead or alive.
They stood in a silent triangle round the fireplace, listening intently for any movement. After a minute or two, there was a light flutter and then another, followed by an ominous bump that suggested the bird was continuing its inexorable fall to earth. The board covered the chimney opening nicely and they secured it in place with the large Greek vase and her grandmother’s tapestry-covered oak footstool. Marcus stepped back to check its position.
‘You mustn’t look behind it, whatever you do, and don’t move it when the bird drops, if it does. They’ll fly instantly towards the smallest chink of light.’
‘Thank you so much, both of you. It was starting to freak me out,’ said Fran.
Lily pulled herself up straight and beamed as if she had won a prize, while Marcus walked over to the back fireplace.
‘It can’t get through this way, the grate’s firmly shut. It’s a shame we can’t solve it now, but I think it’s a job for a professional.’
‘Yes, I’ll get someone out to deal with it, poor creature.’
She hoped he didn’t feel she had imposed on him, drawing him into this mad situation. His next words reassured her, however.
‘At least it wasn’t a spider. I won’t go anywhere near spiders and if I find one in my bath, I’ll probably call you in far more of a panic. Any kind of creepy-crawly gets to me. I can’t cope with them. That’s why you won’t catch me visiting the Caribbean very often.’
Lily’s eyes widened at this frank admission. ‘I like all kinds of spiders, especially big ones. I’m good at catching them and I know how to let them go safely. I’ve held a poisonous furry one and had a whole snake coiled round me. You can ask me, both of you. I can come over any time, except I have to be home at five on school days.’
This reminded Fran that Lily was a child and, if she was going to start coming round, she ought to meet her parents. She picked up the scooter from under the stairs and saw them out the door, promising Lily she would let her know how it turned out.
She spent the rest of the day on the internet, exploring bird rescue options. Having quickly established that local councils, pest control companies and the RSPCA had zero interest in the welfare of a solitary stranded pigeon, she appealed to the world at large, going onto various website forums and tapping in the words: Help, please! There’s a bird stuck in my chimney! This produced a barrage of individual stories and similar questions, plus the inevitable raunchy and obscene responses. Eventually, in amongst all the dross, she hit on the answer. The person for the job was a traditional chimney sweep. She would call the local sweeps tomorrow.
At 2.30 in the morning, she was sitting up in bed with a mug of tea, staring at the chimney breast where the bedroom fireplace had been bricked up decades ago. Every now and then, tilting her head like the pigeon on the roof, she detected faint scraping and scrabbling sounds that indicated the trapped bird was still alive. She pictured it shivering in its confinement, incapable of vertical take-off and trying to maintain an insecure perch on a tiny ledge.
Her dawn sleep, when it came, was taken over by a frightening dream. She was driving a car, battling to keep it on the road while swerving crazily to avoid spiders, red crabs and other beasts that were crossing in front of her. Then something flew up and hit the windscreen, a pheasant, and she braked hard and pulled to a stop, surrounded by floating red feathers. Her front-seat passenger, a child, was unhurt and still asleep. On the other side of the road, Judi and her little brother Jeremy played with a ball, ignoring her or oblivious to her presence. Fran called to Judi, but her view was obscured by a convoy of menacing nannies, each pushing a gigantic, old-style pram with its hood up, and all in silhouette like
cardboard cut-outs.
Rooted with terror, she realised it was a dream and that she had to wake up quickly before she attracted the hostile attention of the nannies. She dashed up some steps into a derelict house and up a central staircase to the attic, where she flung open a window and looked down. The procession of nannies was in the garden now, moving silently along the gravel path that bordered the square lawn. The prams didn’t carry babies but birds, millions of them, flying out from under the black hoods and filling the expanse of the sky. She inhaled deeply and tried to scream.
It worked. She was back in her bedroom but her relief was short-lived, as she heard insistent tapping and loud bumping at the window and knew they were still coming for her. It was that nasty trick, the false awakening. Then, in a nanosecond, she really was awake, her breathing shallow and her whole body shaking like jelly. Lucid dreams were not uncommon for her and they could go either way, into a blissful paradise or a vicious hellhole, depending on whether her supposed control of the dream was real or illusory.
As she relaxed and slowed her breathing, she became aware that the tapping and bumping sounds were real. The invisible pigeon was dropping in front of her and she could track its descent down the chimney from bedroom ceiling to floor. Then it went quiet. She checked the time, got up and crept downstairs, fearful of what she would find. In the living room, there was an eerie silence and she noted with relief that the barrier board was still in place. She made herself tea and toast and perched on the end of the sofa, her hands clasped childishly around her bent knees. There was still no sound, but she could feel the presence of the live bird behind the board, poised for flight and waiting for its chance.
The moment didn’t come until late afternoon, when the sweep arrived at the door. He was dressed in the regalia of a Victorian chimney sweep, complete with traditional spiky brush and his cheeks cheerfully blacked with mock soot. Apparently, he always wore this uniform ‘to bring people good luck’, and he and his wife were in the habit of adopting injured victims of chimney accidents. Fran stood in the far corner of the room to follow his method of capture, which was simple and effective. He made a soft, five-note cooing sound, then tipped the chipboard out a few inches and instantaneously grabbed the bird in his cupped hands as it made its streaking bid for freedom. When Fran came close, the pigeon stared sideways at her with its marble black eye, definitely more resentful than grateful. She stepped back quickly, afraid of its malevolent gaze.
