Feather Boy

by Nicky Singer

  He puts his arm under her neck and around her bird-like shoulders, then very gently he lifts her to an upright. Her head lolls and she still doesn’t open her eyes. But I work to get the coat on. I hold her hand and guide it through the sleeve, I pass the back of the coat around her thin nightdressed shoulders. Ernest manoeuvres his hands, never once letting her slip from his embrace. Then I go around to Ernest’s side of the bed and help with the second sleeve. Edith sighs as Ernest lowers her down on to the bed again. But it is a more contented sigh. I do up the buttons then, my fingers fumbling. I touch the skin of her neck.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Love…” she replies.

  Ernest gasps. “Edith? Edith we’re here. Robert and I are here. You’re all right.”

  “Yes…” she says and opens faraway eyes. “Yes.”

  For a moment she stares at the ceiling and then, painfully slowly, she moves her head first towards Ernest and then towards me. “Hold me,” she says. I take her left hand and Ernest her right. Her skin is dry and paper thin but oh – so warm.

  “I’m going…” she begins then.

  “No,” says Ernest. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  “I’m going…” she repeats and then smiles a sweet, surprised, angelic smile, “to sing.”

  Ernest looks stunned. Terrified even. She opens her mouth, clears her dry throat. Then she begins. Makes a painful, rasping noise, the hoarse cough of an instrument on which dust has lain for decades. She shuts her mouth, licks her lips and begins again. A gasp, a croak and then a warble, tremorous, sad and old. She grits her teeth and begins again. And again.

  Ernest listens, his face contorted with grief. Even I want to stop her, because she seems to be straining for something so impossibly long gone. And I fear she will burst with the pain of it. But we both just sit and hold her hand as asked until a different sound comes.

  And I do not know, even now, where that sound came from. The forlorn stuttering of an old woman giving way to a single note – and then a run of notes – so beautiful it would make you cry to hear them. Pure, clear notes coming not from a dry throat but from a soul in joyous flight. And Ernest is crying. There are tears pouring down his cheek but he looks, for the first time I’ve known him, happy.

  Then the notes stop. Edith takes a breath and Ernest holds his, and then she begins one final note. Holding her one-note song in a smile which she bestows on Ernest so that they seem, hand-joined there on the other side of the bed, a couple. On my side of the bed, on my hand, I feel the faintest of touches. I can’t call it a squeeze, though I want it to be a squeeze, I want it to be her holding me. But she hasn’t the energy now. I don’t think she can turn her head even. And yet still the note sustains, though fainter now. And fainter. Until it ceases. A last outbreath, and we both wait for her to breathe in again. But she does not.

  “Edith!” Ernest’s head drops on to his wife’s breast. He buries his face in the feathers. “Edith.”

  And I know that the bird is dead.

  My Firebird is dead.

  I let go her hand, feeling each of her fingers fall away from mine. Then I stand up. The bedroom door is open though I never heard the catch. Niker is in the doorway. If he opens his mouth, if he says a single word, I will kill him. But he says nothing. Just swallows, and I know he’s heard. He must have come because of the song. Niker.

  I walk past him into the hall. He doesn’t follow me, for which I’m glad. I don’t know where I’m going. There doesn’t seem any place for me to be now. I’m just walking, wandering. I wander to the open mouth of the resident lounge. Pausing there only because it’s somewhere to lean. To rest my body. Catherine is speaking. She’s telling a story. The words float towards me.

  “And what happened to the little boy?” asked the Silent Prince.

  “Some say,” replied the adventurer, “that he cried so long and so hard for his Firebird mother that he lost his voice and became silent. Others say, when he awoke the following morning he found two golden feathers shining on his pillow, and these feathers brought him courage and love and luck for all of his life.”

  Someone is walking through the words. A man appearing from the edge of the room. His height and gait look familiar. He stops in front of me. It is my father.

  “Hello, son,” he says.

  My head is at the level of his chest. Arms come about me. He holds me warm and tight. Someone begins to sob. It’s me.

  17

  Two days later, Sunday, I’m standing outside Chance House. It was Kate who tipped me off, saw the notice. Re-development work is due to start, apparently, in a week’s time. Chance House is going to be a Youth and Unemployment Centre. There will be offices, computer facilities, a games room with snooker, table football and ping-pong, a canteen selling cheap food. I look up at the Top Floor Flat. What, I wonder, will they put in David Sorrel’s room?

  “So,” says a voice. “Another goodbye.”

  I don’t have to turn to know who it is. But I turn anyway.

  “Hello Mr Sorrel.” It’s the first time I have seen Ernest since the Sharing. I expect him to be bowed but he is not.

  “Are you going in?” he asks.

  I hadn’t been thinking of doing anything of the sort, but one look at his face and I say: “Yes.”

  We walk around the back together. He’s brought a cane, an ebony one with a silver knob. He uses it to steady himself on the tussocky ground. He skirts the bottles and the beer cans and the microwave with barely a glance. Nothing seems to surprise him in fact and I realise, as he passes into the kitchen, that the territory is quite familiar to him. He crosses the kitchen floor and bends to move the brick.

  “It was you,” I exclaim. “You all the time. Moving the brick!”

  “And you,” he replies. “You moved it too.”

  He straightens up, holds the door for me. “After you.”

  I go into the corridor. A faint drip, drip, drip.

  “Where does the water come from?” I ask.

  “That,” he says, “I never managed to understand.”

  There is morning light in the house and, with Ernest beside me, it seems impossible to imagine that one could be frightened here. He moves with care across the smashed-tile hallway and he pokes the wallpaper on the stairs with the stick, just to be sure where the treads begin and end.

  “I always expected squatters to move in,” he said. “But they never did.”

  “How long have you been coming here?” I ask.

  “Only since the mesh got pulled off the kitchen, about a year I suppose. On and off.”

  I look at him and he knows what I’m thinking.

  “No, of course I didn’t pull it off,” he laughs. “That’s why I expected squatters.”

  We ascend the final stairs, passing through the fire door and on, up to the landing. He pauses there, but only for a moment and then he goes into the room with the million ducks. I follow, keeping behind him as he makes his way to the window. He looks out.

  “This is the room it happened in,” I say. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he says with his back to me.

  Then I can’t not know for any longer. “Why did he do it, Mr Sorrel? Why did he jump?”

  “Jump?” Ernest turns around. “David never jumped.”

  I stand stupefied. Underneath me the floorboard creaks.

  “That’s just an old story,” he adds, not without kindness. “Houses like this attract stories. Especially houses where there has been tragedy.” He pauses. “David died of an asthma attack. He couldn’t catch his breath.”

  “Asthma!”

  “Yes. Asthma. Just asthma.” My face must be registering disbelief because he continues: “It was different in those days. Preventative drugs were not as they are today. He had an attack, a very severe attack…” he trails off. “There was nothing to be done.” Ernest taps the floor with his cane. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Nothing and no-one could have saved him.”

  There’s a hint of aggression here, the gli
tter of the crow. He thinks I’m going to contradict him. When I don’t, he says into the silence: “But Edith couldn’t accept that. Edith thought if she’d been with him, he wouldn’t have died. She thought she could have – should have – saved him.”

  “She wasn’t with him?”

  “No. He died here. In this room. Alone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This flat belonged to Marigold Linley. A friend of Edith’s. She left David with Marigold when she went for her singing lessons.”

  “I thought you said you stopped her singing,” I whisper.

  “I did. Or tried to. More fool me. That’s why it was a secret. Why the tutor couldn’t come to our house. Why Edith had to go out to his house and David – be left here.”

  “You bullied her!”

  “Bullied?” he repeats. “No… no, I don’t think so. Well… oh, it’s difficult to understand now. But women didn’t have careers in those days. They were wives and mothers. That’s what I wanted her to be. I couldn’t see that her sights were – set somewhere else. That she had a star. She had to follow her star.” He’s leaning on the stick now, his thin body looking suddenly as if it needs support. “Afterwards, when I met the tutor, he said she was very good. He said she had a great talent. A great future.”

  “But she gave it all up!”

  “Yes. After David died, she swore she would never, ever sing again. Not a note. And there was to be no music in our house. Even the sound of other people singing, whistling in the street drove her into a frenzy. She was quite mad,” he says meditatively, “for a while.”

  Sunshine comes in at the broken window and behind Ernest’s head, dust motes dance.

  “And then?”

  “She pushed it all away. Pushed us away. The singing, David, me – we didn’t exist any more. She lived on some other plane, inhabited a different part of her mind. And she wasn’t unhappy. She was all right. So I went along with it. I thought it was her way of healing. So I played along.”

  “You divorced her,” I say harshly, although it’s none of my business, although it’s not my parents’ divorce.

  “Yes. Because she asked me for that. She wanted it. The final break with the past. I had to go.” He smiles wearily. “But I never left her in my heart. And some deep part of her I think, I hope, understood that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say then.

  “Why?”

  “I thought the coat would cure her. I really believed it.”

  “I know.”

  “And it would have done. But I got involved in a fight. One of the feathers got broken. One I got from this room. A Chance House feather. I broke it. And then I couldn’t find it and that’s why she died.”

  “No,” cries Ernest, “don’t you dare say that! You must never say, never even think such a thing again.” He shakes the stick at me as if it were a fist. “It was not your fault. Edith died of cancer. It happens. People die and it’s nobody’s fault. That’s what Edith refused to accept. For thirty years she blamed herself. Because she wasn’t there. Hadn’t saved David. But that was rubbish. All the doctors told her so. Nothing and no-one could have saved him. But she let her guilt dominate her life. Her music, her talent, her energy, the love we shared, all of it got buried with David.

  “And David himself. The son we had both adored. She couldn’t even say his name. Until she met you, Robert. All those years and I wanted so much to talk of him. My boy. My son. If it was anyone’s fault it was mine. Not that she didn’t blame me. And rightly so. That’s why I took everything, the silence, the pushing away, the divorce. I deserved it all. But don’t you dare blame yourself, Robert Nobel. You gave Edith everything.”

  “That night at the Sharing then,” I say slowly, “it was the first time…”

  “Yes. The first time she’d sung. For thirty years. That’s what you gave her, Robert. You gave her back her singing. Her song. Returned it to her. Returned her to herself.” He draws a deep breath. “And you returned her to me.” Then he adds, stiffly, “For which I will never be able to re-pay you.”

  “It wasn’t all one way,” I say then.

  “What?”

  “She gave me stuff too.”

  “Yes?”

  “She is – was – the first person who ever made me think if I wanted something, I could go for it.”

  “I wish she could hear you say that. I think that would make her the proudest woman on earth. That opportunity is all she ever really wanted for herself, for David.”

  “You’re the sort of boy who can fly,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “She was always saying that to David. You can do it. You can fly. Whatever you want, David, you can make it happen.” He sighs. “And I should have let her fly. That’s what love is. Letting your loved ones fly.”

  He moves away from the window. “Will you come to the funeral?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Thank you. She would have liked that.” He pauses. “I wish I could give you something… something of hers…”

  “Why?” I say. “When she’s given me so much?”

  “Thank you,” he says, all choked up for a moment. “Thank you.” Then he recovers himself, tap, tap, taps with the stick. “Well, perhaps we could meet sometimes. Have tea maybe? Or hot chocolate. What would you say to a hot chocolate, Robert?”

  “Good morning, hot chocolate.”

  “I’m sorry?” says Ernest.

  “It’s one of my dad’s jokes. Not brilliant, I admit. But he does have other qualities. Oh,” I look at my watch. “I almost forgot. I should be leaving. I’m meeting him for lunch today.”

  “Another time then.”

  “Yes.”

  We leave Chance House together. I say a silent goodbye to the million mother ducks and the three million ducklings. Ernest taps his way downstairs and out into the spring. As we come round the side of the house, a man with a clipboard shouts: “Oi – this is private! Private property!”

  18

  And so. The end of my story. I’d like to tell you that my parents got back together again and we all lived happily ever after. That didn’t happen. At least the bit about my parents getting back together again didn’t happen. Mainly on account of Dad being married to Jo. But I do see him more often now. We go fishing. You can laugh if you like. Plenty of other people have. But I’m good at fishing. Dad says I have “nimble fingers”. We go to Shoreham beach and fish from the rocks. Depending on the time of year, we might catch flounders, plaice, dabs, codling or whiting. If we need a hook on the line, or a new lure, Dad gives them to me to tie. I can do them faster than he can. All that experience with needles and knots and feathers, you see. The first time he saw me moistening the nylon to get the knot secure he said: “Who taught you that trick?”

  I just shrugged. He never asked me about the sewing. Never really asked why I was crying that night at the Sharing. That’s also why fishing is so good for us, we can be together, be companionable, without really having to say much.

  “Can you do me a tucked half-blood knot?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “Thanks, son.”

  “What would you say to a sandwich, Robert?”

  “Hello, sandwich.”

  Previously it would have made me furious. I would have thought we were drifting by. But there are some things that don’t have to be spoken. Maybe can’t be spoken. His love for me. It’s quite clear. As clear as Ernest’s love for Mrs Sorrel. And I’m not in the business of pushing Dad away, burying him, blaming him. I want him close by. As much of him as he can give. And he gives what he can, when he can, I know that. And I make it enough. One day, when I know how, I’ll tell him how much I love him. But then again, maybe I won’t. Maybe he knows already.

  As for Ernest, I’d like to say that we keep in touch. More than that, that we’ve become close, a grandfather, grandson relationship. But that hasn’t happened either. I think Ernest has spent so long inside his own stern prison he finds it difficult to walk f
ree. We meet occasionally, at the graveyard, him with flowers, me with my thoughts, and we nod and smile and he asks how I am and I say “I’m fine.” There’s a new stone by David’s. It has Edith’s name on it and her dates and one word “Reunited”. The pigeons sit on this stone and I don’t shoo them away. Edith wore the coat of feathers in her coffin, was buried in it. That was Ernest’s choice. So I reckon the pigeons have a right. As for the hot chocolate, Ernest never repeated his offer and I’ve never mentioned it. I’m not at all sure what we’d say to each other over hot chocolate. All I know is that he’s glad of me and I’m glad of him.

  The papers got hold of the story. There was a journalist there that night at the Sharing, as well as the photographer. Dick Miller. He claimed to have heard Mrs Sorrel singing. I always wonder whether it wasn’t actually Niker who told him about it. Niker who needed to download, to talk about the song because it was so extraordinary and so raw and didn’t make any sense. At least to him. In any case, when Miller found out who Mrs Sorrel was, he dredged up the “tragic boy” story of thirty years ago, then added in Chance House and the new developments there and then he had a story. His story. A newspaper story. He missed the Firebird connection completely and I didn’t tell him, though he asked for an interview.

  “Did she think you were her son? Did she think you were David, is that why she sang, after all these years?”

  I told him nothing. The paper ran the story anyway. They got David’s age wrong and also Ernest’s name. They called him “Eric”. I was glad about that. It made the story what it was – nothing to do with anything. But they did mention how David died of asthma and how he had, all those years ago, attended the school that became my school. Which I didn’t know, and maybe it wasn’t true, but it gave me an idea. Maybe our school should honour David, the memory of him, what he stood for. I mentioned it first to Mum.

  “What a good idea,” she said. “You could link it to asthma awareness. Maybe even link it to the National campaign. The David Sorrel Asthma Awareness Day.”