The Bower Bird Read online

  I go back to the desk and ask for information on Amos H Stevens, photographer.

  ‘Oh yes, there’s a book somewhere. Try over there.’

  I eventually find the right book – The Good Old Days – photographs and paintings of the town in years gone by. I look in the index and there he is, his name: Amos Hartley Stevens.

  I go to the page and find what I am looking for: Amos Hartley Stevens, born 1880, Street an Garrow, St Ives. Proprietor, St Ives Photographic Studio, Fore Street, St Ives. My grandfather Hartley was born in 1900, so this must have been his father – my great-grandfather. A real professional photographer! Photography must be in my genes.

  No news from Brett about the Scillies. I haven’t seen him for ages.

  I have never felt so much hatred for another person – SS I mean, obviously.

  VERBS Hate, detest, loath, abhor, execrate, abominate, hold in abomination, take an aversion to, shudder at, utterly detest, not stand the sight of, not stand, not stomach, scorn, despise, dislike.

  Yes, all of those.

  It isn’t fair that some girls are pretty and some aren’t ever going to be, no matter what they do to themselves. I still like my new haircut of course, but underneath it I am still the same ugly geek. No amount of piercing or short skirts will change the way I feel about myself or other people feel about me. Life is not fair. My teeth aren’t white or straight. My legs are weedy, my fingers are clubbed – because of my heart. My skin is blue, my tits and hips nonexistent. At least I haven’t got hairy toes or nostrils.

  My jealousy is a poisonous acid green. It must show, surely? Jealousy is a terrible curse.

  ‘Gussie, what is wrong with you?’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘You look so grumpy, Guss.’

  ‘I’m nearly a teenager, I’m supposed to be grumpy.’

  Even the cats are discriminating against me. They have taken to exploration. Having once taken the plunge to do a recce of the garden, they spend all their time outside, fraternising with the neighbourhood cats.

  I sit in the window and try to take my mind off my problems by immersing myself in watching the birds and making notes, drawing sketches of the gulls.

  I am also becoming more literate – learning a new word every day. I simply open the dictionary at any page and pick a word I haven’t heard of before. I’ll try and use the word on the day I learn it, to make sure I remember it. Today’s word is ‘immiseration – a progressive impoverishment or degradation.’ Huh, that’s where I’m headed.

  It reminds me of The Dice Man – a book Daddy was once keen on. Every day you make a list of things to do, give each a number, throw the dice and whatever number comes up, you do that thing – it could be rob a bank or move to Australia, become a gun runner or take up karate. Maybe that’s how he came to run off with TLE. He threw a dice and her number came up.

  List of things I could do about SS:

  1. Ignore her.

  2. Tell her what I think of her.

  3. Get her little sister Bridget to give her a note ostensibly from Brett, but written by me, telling her he doesn’t fancy her. (Last time I tried forging a signature it was a total failure. I went off Religious Education when I was eight and wrote a note to the teacher saying, ‘Please may Augusta be excused lessons as she is not relijus.’)

  4. Become a nun.

  5. Be really really nice to her so she feels guilty.

  6. Wear an even shorter skirt than hers, get a long dark

  wig, false eyelashes and stuff oranges up my T-shirt.

  Where’s the dice?

  Also, my family problem. Do I:

  1. Tell Mum about my famous antecedent?

  2. Tell Daddy?

  3. Keep quiet about what I have found out?

  4. Go on with the search for living relations?

  5. Forget all about family?

  6. Ask Brett’s advice?

  Still can’t find a dice – or is it die? Why is life so complicated? And language. It’s so easy to seem a complete dork by saying the wrong thing. Can’t think how to bring immiseration into the conversation either.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MUM AND I are revisiting Paradise Park. She might not enjoy birding, but for some reason she likes coming here. It is peaceful and relaxing, which must be good, and one of the falconers is Rather a Hunk, she says.

  The group of flamingos are as usual standing on one leg, trying to tie their necks in knots. I always imagined them to be taller than they are, and pinker. More pink, that should be.

  We stroke Houdini, an elderly female penguin, named after the famous escape artist because she kept getting out when she was first rescued. Her back feathers feel like the pelt of a warm-blooded animal. She was hand reared and really enjoys being touched. She pushes against your hand, like a cat.

  I really want to see the keas, but they’ve been moved away from the Australian section, where you could get up to the wire and almost touch them, and look into their eyes, and put into a huge aviary with lots of different sorts of parrots, where we can’t get close. I want to talk to them and watch their reactions. They are particularly intelligent and clever at solving problems – like getting through all sorts of obstacles to reach food. They are notorious at working together to peck and peel off rubber seals on tourist car windows to get at food inside. I’d like to find a good book about keas. Their bronze feathers look like scales or coats of armour, with red underneath the wings. Instead of walking they hop along the ground. In the wild they live on mountaintops on the South Island, of New Zealand. That’s somewhere I would love to go, but I don’t suppose I’ll have time.

  Knowing you are probably going to die in a year or two is like waiting for a train with people you really like seeing you off, and you know you aren’t going to see them ever again. You have so much you want to say to them and the train is due in any moment. There’s so little time. You try to find the right words but your loved ones are left on the platform not knowing what it is you really needed to say. And I suppose it’s the same for them. What can they possibly say?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I HAD A terrible dream last night: I had had my heart and lung transplant and the surgeon had forgotten to stitch up the incision so my chest was open, and blood glued the sheet to the edges of the wound. I woke in a sweat, my heart pounding like mad.

  I have had an awful feeling all day, as if I have taken out the plug in the bath and my body is being sucked down with the disappearing water, dragged down.

  I watch a red-headed fly wash its hands and arms very thoroughly like a surgeon scrubbing up. It does the same thing to its back legs.

  Mum says I don’t look too good: bags under the eyes and mauve lips, and she takes my temperature, makes me Horlicks and biscuits as a treat before Rena Wooflie and I have an early night – 8pm! With a hot water bottle.

  ‘Do you want a story?’

  ‘Please. Winnie the Pooh.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You choose.’

  She reads me ‘A Pooh Party’, where Pooh gets pencils marked HB for Helpful Bear, and pencils marked BB for Brave Bear. I forget how to say goodnight to Rena Wooflie in Swahili. I’m vaguely aware of a cool hand on my forehead. Mum opens the window and switches off the lamp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  IN THE SECOND-HAND book shop there’s a very good Natural History section. I have managed to buy a battered copy of The Natural History of Selborne and a 1937 copy of The Charm of Birds by Grey of Fallodon, owned in 1937 by a Marjorie Phyllis Crighton. I might give the second one to Brett. This is a lesson on taming robins:

  First throw breadcrumbs on the ground. Then a meal-worm. Robins love them. Then place an open metal box, like a sweetie tin, on the ground, with meal-worms in it. When the bird is accustomed to this, kneel down and place the tin in an open hand, flat to the ground, with fingers sticking out in front of the tin. The robin will eventually stand on your fingers and feed from the tin. This might take time. Th
en do away with the tin and place some meal-worms on the hand. A robin will risk his life for a meal-worm. The final stage is to stand up with meal-worms on the open palm. In hard weather the whole process will take only two or three days. Once the robin is confident that you won’t harm him, he’ll come in fair weather when other food is plentiful.

  I think Brett could tame any wild creature.

  I’ve also found this old book for 50p in the second-hand bookshop. Secrets of Bird Life, by HA Gilbert and Arthur Brook, published by Arrowsmith in 1924. It was once owned by GT Pettit, aged thirteen. He had very beautiful neat hand- writing. My handwriting is crap. Perhaps I should be a doctor. There is an interesting description of raven babies:

  The hen raven sits close by and croons to her very ugly babies, who have huge stomachs and enormous maws, which they open whenever they hear a noise or when a shadow passes over them. When they all open their beaks together it looks like a nest full of violets has suddenly bloomed as their throats and mouths are a brilliant mauve.

  What a lovely idea! Baby birds gaping like a bunch of violets. Perhaps I could put that in a poem.

  Brett and Siobhan. Are they ‘going out’? Well, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

  Charlie, Flo and Rambo are due for their flu booster jabs so Mum is going to get the vet to visit and give them anti flea injections at the same time. We do groom the cats every day. When the flea comb is sharply tapped on the garden table the cats come running. Charlie is always the first and most demanding. Fleas seem to go for her white throat, like miniature vampires. Flo wants to be combed but then as you go to do it she changes her mind and runs away. She knows it’s good for her but feels it is beneath her dignity for someone else to do her scratching for her. Rambo will take any amount of combing, can’t get enough of it. He always has most fleas on his thighs or haunches. He’s a big cat and has much thicker, coarser fur than the other two, so has more fleas. It’s easy to catch them in the fine teeth of the comb but more difficult to actually squash them, especially the small black ones. I find it very satisfying to pop the large pale juicy ones. Afterward you have to really scrub your fingernails though.

  I wonder why cats’ fur smells so woody and leafy and clean? Surely they should smell fishy or meaty, because they clean themselves with saliva from mouths that have eaten flesh.

  Brett is here. His mum and mine are meeting for coffee later this morning. No doubt for Mum to give her the low-down on my condition and what to do in a crisis etc. I’ll have the hospital bleeper on me anyway. And it’s good that Alistair will be on the Scillies at the same time as me.

  I show Brett Secrets of Bird Life and give him the robin book. He lends me a book about Australian birds.

  I would love to see an Australian bower bird. They all collect objects to decorate their nests, a bit like Mum collecting old lace tablecloths and linen pillowcases, to make the house look beautiful. Bower birds do it to attract a mate.

  I collect feathers and shells and old nests and driftwood – natural objects to decorate my room. Am I doing it to attract a mate? I found out about bower birds from a book on Australian birds in the library.

  Satin Bower Bird – the adult male is a glossy blue-black with lilac blue eyes. The female and the immatures are a dull green, banded below. Its bower is made of twigs arranged into a short avenue 30 cm high on a platform of knitted twigs. He paints it with saliva and chewed plants, sometimes using a twig as paint brush. He decorates the platform with yellow and blue things like leaves and straw. He might even steal his neighbour’s ornaments and wreck his bower. He is a good mimic too. One Great Bower Bird, whose nest was near a construction site, was heard displaying by mimicking construction noises. Other bower birds decorate their bowers with shells and feathers and anything blue and white.

  Mum gets all sorts of lovely things at car boot sales. She loves other people’s junk. Most of our furniture and china is second-hand. She found a crystal chandelier once, and we have odd chairs from the fifties and sixties and nothing matches, but it all looks good together. She enjoys making a house look interesting. I suppose it’s like playing with a dolls’ house only bigger and more expensive.

  Brett says he’s really looking forward to going to the Scillies. His mum booked two rooms in a hotel on St Mary’s ages ago, and as they are twin rooms, they can fit me in. We are getting there by helicopter from Penzance. Mum isn’t going. I think she regrets saying she didn’t want to go but someone has to stay and look after the cats. Brett and I mooch in the attic all morning, reading and watching the gulls, and talking.

  He makes the observation that some flies – not fruit flies or bluebottles, but medium-sized silent flies – know how to make a right angle turn. They travel in squares up to the ceiling, they really do. He’s so clever. I’d never noticed that before.

  Bluebottles, when they are trapped, travel in straight lines from one end of their prison, a room, say, to the other. If you time it right, when they are about to turn back you can open a window or door in their path and they get out without you having to resort to a fly swat.

  Flies, mosquitoes and cat fleas are the only creatures I ever try to kill.

  ‘How’s Buddy?’

  ‘Beaut. Yeah, he’s beaut, thanks. Finds food for himself mostly, just comes to see us for a stroke and a chat. Dad’s working and I’m at school, so it’s just as well he’s learned to be independent. Mum’s a bit scared of that powerful beak.’

  ‘Seen any good meteors lately?’

  ‘Na, it’s been too cloudy.’

  ‘I really like your mum.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s cool, for a mother. So’s yours.’

  ‘Is she? She’s old of course, but yeah, she’s not so bad, I suppose. How’s Siobhan?’ Shit, I didn’t mean to mention her.

  ‘Yeah, she’s cool.’ He is blushing.

  Shit shit shit.

  And he didn’t notice my bower decorations – so he isn’t attracted to me. I’ll have to get more. More blue things and white things. Or give up.

  I don’t believe it – I’m mooching along the wharf, looking for things to photograph when I see SS in the amusement arcade. She’s hanging on the arm of Hugo, who is all over her. What a slag!

  I wonder if Brett knows about his so called best friend and his girlfriend? He’d be so upset. They are so intent on mauling each other and blowing smoke in each other’s faces they don’t notice me. In future I shall refer to her as SSS.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT’S HALF TERM, and a family has arrived next door. Through the wall we hear them shouting at each other and running up and down the stairs. We meet in the garden. There are two girls called Daisy and Grace, who are fourteen and eleven. Grace wants to see my room and she likes cats.

  Daisy is miserable because she wanted to be in London this Christmas to go to parties. She says she hates St Ives. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go. They live in Dulwich and this is their holiday home.

  I am getting ready to go to the Scillies and only have time to say hello. But they will be here at Christmas.

  A slow mist covers the bay like a gauzy chiffon scarf. Will it be too foggy for the helicopter to fly? Mum drives me to the heliport. Brett and his mum and dad are there already, so is Alistair. There are a couple of other birdwatchers I recognise from Hayle, who are also going on the trip. I have my lightweight backpack of clothes, toothbrush etc and binoculars. I’m so excited.

  In a separate room, like a mini departure lounge, we watch a safety video of people calmly putting on lifebelts while smiling inanely at their children. As if! Why don’t we all wear our lifebelts before we get on the helicopter so if there’s a crash into the sea, we’ll be prepared. I’ll never be able to get it out from under the seat and remember how to tie the thing on before we crash.

  Anyway, I’d die of hypothermia in the first ten minutes of being in the sea, even if I floated, so I think I’d rather not bother with trying to find the thing, tying ribbons, pulling red tags, and blowing
whistles and all that crap. Forget it. If I die on a journey, so be it. Better to be travelling than sitting still. That sounds like the sort of thing my Grandpop would have said, but I don’t think he did. Perhaps it’s a Zen thing.

  We show our boarding cards and walk out to the helicopter. I hold on to my hat, fearful of the whirling blades, warm air from the engines blowing into our faces. My imagination has the blades flying off and decapitating all of us. Brett sits next to his dad and his mum sits next to me behind them in the back seat.

  I wave to Mum out the window. Goodbye little Mum, you look so small and sad.

  It’s so noisy we can’t hear ourselves speak. Penzance a miniature town below, the blue swimming pool on the seafront, the tiny harbour of Mousehole. We fly through wispy cloud and into blueness, 500 feet above the sea. A lighthouse on a rock, lonely in the big sea. Our first sight of the islands, low, rusty with bracken, white sand edges, islets and black rocks. Turquoise shallow water you can see through to the pebbles and sand below. Little jigsaw fields and greenhouses, farm buildings and granite cottages. A full washing line in the middle of a field. White doves like breadcrumbs on a roof. Lighthouses, cows, empty white beaches. A smooth landing on a perfect desert island.

  We drop off our luggage at the hotel and go out for lunch of crab sandwiches in a café with a view of the working harbour. We learn that there haven’t been any rare birds seen on the islands yet this year. It’s a bit early for migrant stragglers lost in the Atlantic.

  I don’t care if we don’t see any birds at all: I am on a beautiful desert island with Brett. I’m in Paradise.

  We’re on a red boat named Seahorse. The boatman is a high-cheeked youth of about twenty with curly yellow hair tied back on the nape of his tanned neck. His dog, yellow and sleek with a long kind face and gentle eyes, hangs around on the pier until the boat sails then jumps on board and wanders around on deck gazing lovingly at his master whenever he sees him. We spot lots of shag and cormorants, standing on a big rock hanging out their wings to dry. A pair of sandwich terns with their little forked tails spread fly overhead – Squeak, squeak, squeak.