A Thousand Paper Birds

by Tor Udall

  ‘The only problem was, they were both screwing other people.’

  Audrey’s memories were of secrets and strained silences, the chatter of strangers, the chink of glasses at a dinner party. When her parents eventually split, she immersed herself in her studies. She didn’t lose her virginity until her last night at uni. What she remembered most was the damp on the ceiling, and the absurdity of the human body.

  Jonah suspected it was her grand rebellion to date a scruffy musician. He tried to romanticise his middle-class upbringing by describing his early childhood in Devon. He painted a picture of a boy trailing a stick, scrambling over rock pools, spending Sundays crabbing. He told her about family evenings in the pub when someone would take out a harmonica or a fiddle, the room swelling with song. The smell of scrumpy and open fires, damp woollen jumpers, wet dogs.

  When Jonah was thirteen, his family moved to Surbiton. Quick to lose his West Country accent, he still looked out of place, hemmed in, yet no one dared to bully him. A foot taller than his peers, he was the only one who looked old enough to buy beer. Despite his opportunist new friends, he still spent evenings alone, picking his guitar, trying to conjure up the cliffs or the taste of salt on his skin, his legs wobbly from chasing seagulls. As he attempted to capture the sound of a sunset, the music rushed towards him, then pulled back temptingly. When his sister was given piano lessons, it was he who showed the natural talent. He often skulked away from the dinner table to make racket and rhythm.

  His musical skill won him a place at Bristol, where finally he escaped suburbia and mixed with the cool kids who listened to Patti Smith and Bowie. For his dissertation, he researched Celtic folk music – then compared it to the work of Cohen and Dylan. After graduation, he sent demos to A&R men, played covers at weddings and performed his own songs in beer-sticky venues. He mastered the seventies look that was popular then: brown leather jacket, flared jeans, all accessorised with unkempt hair and beard. But he didn’t fit into the trip-hop scene in Bristol, and by 1995 it was the heyday of Britpop. He didn’t have the compulsory swagger, just an acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by a cello. But eventually, at the age of twenty-eight, he was signed by a label.

  On their third date, Audrey encouraged him to talk about his future, about whom, one day, he would become. In response, he shared one of his songs. It was about his mother who had died two years previously. It was full of grazed gratitude and yearning. As he sang to Audrey, he realised that the timing was exquisitely ripe to meet this woman. But her class and intelligence felt beyond him.

  Afterwards, he was embarrassed. Keeping his gaze on the strings, he tried to impress her with talk of pentatonic scales and interrupted cadences. She teased him.

  ‘Music? If you can’t dance to it, make love to it, or cry to it, what’s its reason?’

  When he dared to look up, her eyes were glistening. He couldn’t tell if they were tears; she glanced down and buttoned up her sleeve.

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said.

  ‘Always,’ she grinned.

  When they made love, her immaculate façade began to crack, and underneath was a nakedness more bare than Jonah had known. She was inexperienced, but each touch was awkwardly sincere, each kiss loyal. That was the surprise, the pleasure, and he knew that she was the one to teach him. From her he could learn how to laugh gently, and to love fiercely.

  In the summer of 1996 they met on the lawn in front of Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, a rustic, picturesque building within the conservation area of Kew Gardens. Audrey was waiting under a birch tree when Jonah arrived, ten minutes late, carrying two large suitcases. He sat down, opened the first case and took out the Beatles’ White Album.

  ‘This is for you.’

  While Audrey grasped the vinyl, Jonah took out the next item: a toy lightsaber.

  ‘And this is for you too.’

  Following that was a book of Yeats’s poetry and several albums by David Bowie. There were photographs of Jonah’s family on a windy beach, a pebble with a stone in it, then his mum’s ruby-studded ring. Next came his first plectrum, a Blue Peter badge, and a Mozart concerto. Half an hour later, the presents were piled high on the picnic blanket: teetering towers of fishing rods, underlined passages in paperbacks, cassettes of his first compositions.

  ‘What is all this?’

  His smile was a shrug.

  ‘Everything that means something to me.’

  They looked down at his lopsided proposal.

  ‘It might take a lifetime to share all this. Is that OK?’

  She tilted her head, as if to ask a question. Then it happened: the glory of her gap-toothed grin.

  ‘I’d like that very much.’

  The sunlight, her tears, his fumbling for his mother’s ring.

  He grasped her finger. ‘Promise me. Don’t let go of my hand.’

  Click. A shutter opens and closes. Jonah looks up to see a thin woman taking photographs of the lake. When she puts down the camera, she searches the water, her shoulders as forlorn as her shaved head and flimsy dress. Jonah is unsure if she will find what she is looking for before the wind blows her away. A few feet along, a toddler and his mum are feeding bread to the ducks. Two women walk past, chatting about a problem at work.

  ‘I told him to jump off a cliff!’

  Later, Jonah realises that one of them has dropped her tasselled shawl. He wonders where the lost-property office is. Then he thinks that there should be a place in every town where people could put rescued or found things. Not just objects, but snippets of forgotten languages, or misused time – an hour that can never be lived again. It would be a place where lost faiths could be collected, as well as keys, gloves and love letters never sent. Here you could find extinct animals and old wives’ tales vanished in history; a whole shelf of unfinished songs, discontinued books, deleted texts. It would be a safe for fleeting emotions – the first flush of love, or a particular scent on a sunny day that is never savoured again. Among the dog leads, phones and hats, there would be babies hoped for and lost. All this would be remembered: missed opportunities, mislaid friends, the smile of a wife. It would be a place for lost things.

  The Gardener’s Bible

  Harry is always in the Gardens before the gates open. Stand in nature before anyone else has woken and most people find something to believe in. He holds no truck with traditional gods; if they exist, they’re bastards. But still, right here, is the everyday miracle of petals opening, a sparrow turning towards the sun. He sees it all the time: the impulse to create at the core of the universe. It’s in every sapling whose only ambition is to bear apples. He devoutly believes in the urge to flourish that is in every living thing. But more than that, if he is quiet, he notices the animals share certain rituals – like that squirrel over there, pausing at the rise of the sun. It’s as if it is taking part in the whole, knowing something Harry doesn’t. Whatever it is, it calls forth his humility, and he sees it in the people who come. They remember wonder.

  These three hundred acres are buzzing with natural laws. But exactly a year ago, Harry broke them. He visits a little potting shed in the Redwood Grove and changes out of his charcoal-grey suit. In the mustiness of the shed, he takes off his waistcoat and hangs it up with his beloved scarf. On a hook is his old green jumper, the wool vanishing into ever-increasing holes. On this September day he imagines that if he pulls the right thread, all of him will unravel.

  Once, this jumper looked smart, professional – as if Harry knew what he was doing, a man who understood his botanical craft. When he was younger, the female staff argued whether his blue eyes reminded them of Paul Newman or Lawrence of Arabia. They studied him tending to a new batch of seedlings: precise, attentive love seeping from his fingers. It seemed as though he were colouring in the tones of a tree, dabbing in the speckles of an orchid. The girls gossiped about the way he clocked-in at night for the giant waterlily to open. Some gathered in the temporary glasshouse under the pretence of learning. By nine fifteen
they had waited two hours.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not ready?’ a girl fretted. ‘It looks open.’

  ‘You can’t rush her,’ said Harry. ‘You need to observe the final petals.’

  At 10.56 p.m. the women held their breath as Harry waded into the inky-black pond. His cap placed at a jaunty angle, he looked like a matinée idol; but his hands held the delicacy of a calligrapher. Probing the anthers, Harry coated his paintbrush with pollen then went deeper inside the flower’s hollow to complete the self-pollination. It was horticulture as an art form.

  Raised annually from seed, the Victoria became Harry’s obsession. There was no room for romance because he was already in love with these gardens. The volunteer girls yearned to unfold in his arms and stretch towards the sunlight, but he never noticed the subtle pigments in a woman’s lips, or the curve of her cheekbones. He was too focused on the swelling fertility of a stem, or the first sign of heart rot.

  The girls soon discovered that Harry had been a soldier, but his love life remained a source of speculation. They didn’t know about his childhood girlfriend, the scribbled notes in class, the cautious touching; or that when Harry went to boot camp, he had several one-night stands. But when Harry returned from fighting, he shunned the female species, too shocked by where his hands had been, and what they had done.

  As time went on, he refused promotions, including Keeper of the Palm House. He didn’t want to push paper or tell people what to do; he had a distrust of men in suits. But that didn’t stop the foremen coming for advice – from the Tropical Pits, the Arboretum, the Herbaceous Department – and as the years went on, Harry moved between specialisms. He was civil enough with his colleagues, enjoying banter with the tree gang, but at the end of the day all he wanted was to go home and scrub the dirt from his fingers. Behind terrace walls, he read novels recommended by friends who had died in the desert. The sound of the turning page was a comfort. The paper was even familiar – that scent of pulped trees – and it was easier to trust these books over people; they didn’t disappear.

  On stormy nights, he lay awake, counting the hours. As soon as it was light he would go to the Gardens, to check on his friends: the chestnut-leaved oak, the Chinese tulip tree, the Caucasian elm. Keeping things alive was his grand passion. Each morning he returned to the mess room to be part of an army that planted and pruned, and sometimes he did the most important thing in the world: he saved species from extinction.

  In the passing years, the weather has dug lines into his face, flecked his hair silver, but Milly says the cragginess suits him. With her, he has found his apprentice. Together, they visit his favourite trees. He has pointed out the families – the great-great-grandchildren, the 200-year-old elders – and he has also told her about the great storm of ’87.

  ‘Seven hundred mature trees, luv. Never thought those great broadleaves would come down, but the wind plain pushed them over. We started the clean-up in the north end, working systematically through the Gardens, then in 1990 it happened again. It was a different kind of wind, a swirling wind, that got under the conifers, twisted them right out of the soil.’

  ‘Are you ready yet?’

  Milly has popped her head around the door of the potting shed, her face masked by a cobweb. Harry wears a navy synthetic jumper displaying the Gardens’ logo.

  ‘Where are you working today?’

  ‘Arboretum. Have you got your maths book?’

  ‘Stop nagging.’

  After tucking his notebook into his belt, Harry and Milly walk hand-in-hand to the Victoria entrance.

  It is mid-September, but the early morning still promises summer. There are many tourists this time of year, all the continents of the earth converging. As the gates open, Harry remembers what Audrey wore a year ago when she walked through this same entrance. There is a cacophony of languages as the visitors decipher directions, or try to explain to their companions what it feels like to be them in that particular moment. But once they are through these gates, the talk slows down, then stops. Everything is in the silence.

  After his shift, Harry visits the library in Kew Green. He still whiles away his time off with reading. Before going to the poetry section, he sits down at a desk and takes out his journal. For the last few years he has dabbled with descriptive writing, surprised by what he can create with only lead and paper. He is slightly embarrassed by how much he enjoys weeding words, or pruning back an ellipsis; a poet trapped inside a gardener’s body. Plant one word, watch it grow – but first, turn over the soil, start with the basics.

  HB. 13.09.04. Richmond Library

  Hardy cyclamen in bloom.

  In Temperate House, the chillies are fruiting.

  Harry gazes at his bookmark. The first time he saw this picture he was in the corner by the white pillar, leafing through an archive of LIFE magazines, dating back to the forties. When he came across the black-and-white photo, he stared at it for an hour. He tried to make a mental snapshot, but in the end he couldn’t bear to leave it. The only member of staff was in the toilet and he quickly tore the page, a violent gash of sound. Even now, he wonders if he should tape it back in, perhaps leave an anonymous note of apology . . . I’m not normally a vandal . . . but what the camera captured in 1942 still transfixes him.

  As he stares at the stolen image, he curses a God he keeps telling himself he doesn’t believe in. The librarian passes, but Harry has no need to worry: the glossy page is now soft and dog-eared. Folded into quarters, there’s only a glimpse of a woman’s bare legs, a pair of black court shoes. That reader, two chairs down, might see the illuminated letters of the vertical word ‘HOTEL’. But only Harry feels the lurch of the tall building. It stands on 530 Main Street, New York.

  Harry tucks the photo into his pocket then returns to his journal. Milly is excited about the mass planting of bulbs that happens each autumn. He has drawn intricate maps of where they will be laying the Crocus tommasinianus, the Fritillaria meleagris. But he is struggling with the child’s enthusiasm. Since Audrey’s death, he can’t look Milly in the eye. Trouble is, he’s the only thing left she has to believe in. As his pencil touches the page, he thinks about Audrey’s longing to be a mother. Was it this ache that brought the two of them together? He remembers that sleepy morning by the Ruined Arch.

  Her kiss was the perfect trespass.

  Bird Life

  On rainy days the locals buckle down. Florists bring in flowers from the pavement, cafés pack up tables, and Jonah stands outside Kew Gardens station, his damp skin sticking to his collar. He misses the intimacy of being touched on the back of his neck, of talking so close to someone that he can feel breath on his face. He misses that complexity of sense.

  His solitary footsteps chime out against the Surrey pavement. Once home, he orders a takeaway and remembers the nights when he cooked Italian. What do others do when they eat alone; use the TV as a companion? The freezer is full of Audrey’s homemade stew, neatly packed in Tupperware, but he hasn’t been able to swallow the onions she chopped, to let her nourish him. He can’t even open the freezer door. He gazes at the pile of dirty plates, a thread of dental floss strewn across the sofa, then sits down in front of twenty-seven essays on the Romanticism of Brahms and Liszt. Like him, many of his students are struggling to focus. He looks up, wondering how to instil their passion, but becomes distracted by the colours on the shelves, books lined up like a rainbow.

  There’s a shaft of yellow on the third shelf and below that a wave of blue, becoming steadily darker until it reaches the black spine of The Story of O. Audrey found books easily, remembering the feeling of the cover, the font’s curl. García Márquez in the Penguin oranges, Murakami and Winterson in the white. A book about contemporary dance. They had seen the Nederlands Dans Theater at Sadler’s Wells. In the interval, drinking wine on Rosebery Avenue, someone said, ‘His extension was magnificent.’ Catching each other’s eye, Audrey and Jonah had started to giggle.

  The clock taunts. Jonah pats out a rhythm agains
t his thigh then moves to the piano. The maple wood is faded from sunlight, the varnish bare in places, the upright top covered in unopened post. He plays a middle C, then remembers when his fingers doodled for hours, the patterns revealing themselves: a lyric, an arpeggio. But now there is only a yellowing key, played over and over.

  Time trickles through him: all those seemingly innocent decisions, like deciding to have a cellist play on his second album. Between Your Smile became a cult success, receiving rave reviews from NME and Time Out; but the indie kids made bootlegs. Touring was the only way to make decent money. Audrey hated him being away, surrounded by groupies. He explained that they were flimsy in comparison to her – that he would never behave like her father – but when Audrey fell pregnant a second time he decided to be there.

  He refused a tour to break the album in the States. He pacified the label by saying he had the itch to write something new, but each time he sat with an instrument, his fingers were idle. He tried once again to write about Audrey, but her arms were constantly crossed over her belly. While she focused on her changing body, he lumbered around the flat, getting in the way, trying to help.

  He’s not sure exactly when his ambitions became flabby, but slowly he began to accept that he wasn’t destined to become the next Jeff Buckley. During the PGCE, he put on weight, lost his style and self-belief; then, when he started work, he was shocked by the paperwork, the frustratingly poor budgets. Audrey blamed herself.

  ‘Look at the sacrifices you made. For what? For non-existent children?’

  ‘Let’s be honest, I never had the showmanship.’

  ‘You were different. Perhaps if you’d toured America, or managed to write the next album—’

  ‘Au, darling, it was my decision.’