The Burying Beetle Read online

  I don’t only like old or dead film stars. I like Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves but I don’t like the one who looks like a baby doll – the one with the Italian name… ?

  I love the music in the Indiana Jones movies – Da da, da di da di da di da!

  I don’t have friends here yet. My best friend in London is Summer Strong. (One of River Phoenix’s sisters is called Summer. How’s that for a coincidence?) We got to be friends because we sat next to each other at school, and stayed together all through, and she’s going to come and stay sometime during these hols. I’m so looking forward to it. I can’t wait.

  It’s such a cool house this. It’s all made of wood, even the roof, and it’s painted black on the outside and white inside. There are two bedrooms upstairs and a sitting room with a tiny kitchen – like on a yacht – and then there’s a trapdoor and a stepladder to another long room downstairs. The garden is practically vertical down to the beach. There are bamboos and palms and when the sun shines the sea is a beautiful pale turquoise colour in shallow water, like it was in Kenya, and deep blue where it gets deep. It’s quite exotic really. A bit of a change from Camden Town.

  I forgot to mention the big trees – pines or something, absolutely huge, a line of them like an overgrown hedge on the edge of the cliff. We can’t see much of the beach through the branches, but they are Good Windbreaks, Mum says. From downstairs you can see beach and sea between the huge trunks. It’s like peeping through the legs of an elephant, massive, dark grey wrinkled hulks. There’s a wooden deck, too, with a high rail around, but I haven’t had the courage to go out there yet. I’m no good at heights.

  I don’t know who the owner of the house is, but whoever it is, is a great reader. There are books everywhere. They are very old and dusty, not like mine, but our books are all in store. Mum hasn’t enough room for her clothes because of all the books. She is threatening to stuff them in the shed, so she can hang up her huge collection of clothes. Not that she’s ever going to wear any of that stuff here. I can’t imagine why she bothers. There’s not exactly a flourishing social scene of the sort that she had in London. But she’s OK really, apart from her intense vanity and the way she has of turning into Cruella de Vil every time she speaks to Daddy. I suppose she’s had lots to put up with – not being able to go to work because of looking after me.

  I don’t know why she and Daddy split – it was last year, before Grandpop and Grandma died. I was in hospital some of the time anyway but when I was at home there were lots of muffled angry voices and Mum cried a lot. I suppose he was having an affair.

  He lives with a woman called Eloise, which is a lovely name. I think I might change my name by deed pole… or is it poll? You can do that to make it legal. Augusta is so ugly and I get called Custard sometimes. Summer calls me Org. Daddy calls me Gussie, which is OK. Grandpop called me Princess Augusta for a while. I thought I was a real princess until I was about seven or eight. I was quite relieved when I found out I wasn’t. I thought I’d have to leave home and go and live in the palace with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

  I want to be known as Kezia – I’m not sure how that’s pronounced. I read it in a short story by Katherine Mansfield. There’s this family in a house on a bay and the women all just about tolerate the father but can’t wait to get him off to work, so they can relax and enjoy themselves. There’s a wonderful granny in the story who cooks and looks after the little children. I think the mother is sickly, or she’s just had a baby or something. She’s a wuss; the father is stuffy and demanding and the women all run round looking after him. It doesn’t sound much but it’s a lovely story. It makes me feel warm and safe for some reason. A bit like how I feel when I watch It’s a Wonderful Life. I found it here, the book.

  This house is called Peregrine, which I thought was a posh boy’s name from out of a PG Wodehouse story, but which is in fact a bird of prey, but we haven’t seen any yet. Not that I’d know one if I fell over it, or it hit me in the belly with a wet fish. There are loads of bird books here but I haven’t got round to them yet.

  Some Like it Hot! That’s the name of the Marilyn Monroe film. That makes me feel warm in a different way. I love it that Mum and I laugh out loud at the same bits each time, like at the very end when Tony Curtis gets a proposal of marriage from the millionaire, and tells him he’s really a man, and the millionaire says – ‘Nobody’s perfect!’

  My favourite bit in Born Yesterday is when the bully shouts to the woman, ‘Billie!’ and she shouts back ‘Whaddyawaan?’ And the bit where he says, ‘All this trouble just ’cos a broad reads a book!’ I so love her voice. It’s all small and squeaky except when she’s yelling ‘Whaddyawaan?’ And the card-playing scene, I love that.

  I haven’t started my periods yet. I don’t suppose I will for a couple of years. I’m small for my age and skinny – that’s because of my heart. I have to stay skinny so my heart can cope with my growth. Mum says it’s a Protective Mechanism.

  Summer has breasts and everything. I don’t care really. Except that then she sort of began to be bitchy and whispered behind my back – said I had anorexia not a heart disease – and before we moved she had started to see lots of Janine and Rosa. But I expect that was a sort of protective mechanism too – getting ready for when I left.

  My heart has to work really hard just to keep me sitting still. I’ve heard it through a stethoscope – it sounds like an express train going through a tunnel. Scary, really. I’ll have another operation, one day, I expect – when they’ve found a suitable donor. Which means that someone has to die first, someone whose blood type, tissue type, etc matches mine. It’s an amazing thought, someone else’s heart and lungs being used by me.

  Will I have their feelings? Will I have their heartbreak, their heartache, their heartstrings? What are heartstrings and what does warm the cockles of your heart mean? (A Grandpop expression. Maybe because he lived in Shoeburyness, and that’s where they get fresh cockles from the mud.) Will I feel heartless? If the donor is – was – older than me, will I be suddenly wiser or more stupid? Like when cannibals eat the brain and heart of an enemy. Do they do it in order to have the benefit of the dead person’s experiences? Will I be aware of having part of someone else in me? Maybe it’s a sort of rebirth for the donor. Like being born again.

  I wonder if the dead person’s parents will be happy, or rather, less unhappy, that their child’s heart will still be pumping for someone else. I would be.

  I think if I died and some of my organs could be used to benefit some very ill person, they should be used. I don’t suppose any of my organs are good enough. Apparently, I have an enlarged liver etc. Perhaps they could learn something though – the doctors – from my problem. I would be sort of living on then, wouldn’t I, my organs examined by medical students time and time again. Why not? Sounds a good idea to me. If I die.

  I was once used as a model patient at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. I had to go with Mum when I was about six and sit on a chair in my vest and knickers, and the paediatrician described my symptoms and asked me and Mum questions, and all the young doctors had a listen to my chest and back and had to guess what I had. I think because what I have is a rare condition they take a special interest in me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THIS HOUSE HAS got really ancient Ladybird books with learn-to-read stories for kids where boys do butch activities with their fathers, like camping and building things, and girls get to help the mother in the kitchen or knit a tea cosy. Can you believe it? It must have been terrible in the olden days, having to wear a skirt all the time and remembering to keep your knees together so you don’t show your knickers. Mum says they’re a piece of Valuable Social History of life since the Second World War.

  (Ladybird books, not knickers. Though I expect they are too.)

  ‘Get the door, Gussie, I’m in the bath.’

  She’s always in the bath. Don’t know what she does to herself in there. She always looks just the same as she did bef
ore she went in, except that her hair is wetter when she gets out and her face is shiny.

  ‘Hello, Postie.’

  ‘The name’s Eugene.’

  ‘Eugene? I thought that was a girl’s name.’

  ‘What sort of name ’ave you got then? Gussie? What’s that short for – Angus?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, actually. It’s short for Augusta.’

  ‘Augusta! Huh!’

  ‘Gussie, what are you doing being rude to the postman? He’s come all this way to deliver our letters and you’re rude to him. He’ll throw our mail over the cliff if we aren’t careful.’

  ‘Nah, she’s all right, she’s all right. We’re just getting to know each other.’

  Mum is standing there in her dressing-gown with a towel on her head. She has no shame.

  ‘You must keep very fit running up and down this hill every day,’ says Mum, eyeing him up and down.

  ‘Training for the London Marathon,’ says Eugene and runs back up the steps. He delivered a birthday card from Daddy – Sorry this is late, Babe, hope you liked the flowers – buy yourself a pretty dress. A dress? No way! Fifty pounds! Riches beyond my wildest dreams! Mum says she’ll take me to Dorothy Perkins in Truro tomorrow.

  Today I’m wearing the cool jeans and the sky-blue T-shirt Mum bought me for my birthday.

  Summer sent me a card too, from Italy. At least she remembered. Mum says the Postal Service here is Lousy. Summer says she won’t be coming to stay before the autumn term starts. And she promised me, the cow. She’d probably hate it anyway. No designer shops, no stars to bump into in the streets of St Ives. She’d hate this house, I know, it’s not sophisticated enough for her taste. It’s got odd dining chairs and odd crockery and holes in the wooden walls where draughts come through. She’d probably refuse to sleep on the sofa bed too. She can be a bit Princess and the Pea sometimes, Summer.

  Still, I’m very pissed off that she’s not coming. I cried when I read her card, but I didn’t let Mum know. She gets rather emotional at times, and I try to keep her happy. Life’s easier that way.

  The floor boards are painted black and there’s white or cream curtains or blinds on all the windows. None of them match, some are in heavy fabric and some in thin cotton, but it doesn’t matter, the sunlight gets through them and wakes me in the morning. The house faces east so we get good sunrises. I do find the climb up the hill to the car hard. We have to cross the railway track to get here, which I think is cool. There’s this little train – well, it’s full size but only one carriage – that trundles by once an hour or something and goes toot toot when it gets near the crossing. It’s like being in The Railway Children.

  Mum is making a herb garden outside the kitchen door. I don’t see the point of it if we’re moving, but she says she likes to plant things wherever she is. And she likes to use fresh herbs, and she doesn’t like the prices they charge in Tesco’s. And when you get the pots of coriander or basil home they immediately wilt and you have to throw them away.

  ‘I’m just going for a little walk.’

  ‘Oh, are you sure, darling? Shall I come with you?’

  ‘No, thanks, I vant to be alone.’ I say this with a heavy German accent, but Mum doesn’t notice.

  ‘Be careful, darling. Must you wear that hat? Where did you find the binoculars?’

  ‘In a cupboard. I don’t think Mr Writer would mind me using them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Writer. I think the man who owns this house is a writer.’

  ‘Don’t fall over the cliff.’

  ‘Of course not, silly.’

  ‘Take the little backpack.’

  ‘Mum, stop fussing. I’m not a child.’

  This is the first walk I’ve had here on my own. Mum showed me the short circular route and we’ve done that a few times, including when we watched the non-eclipse.

  She’s a bit overprotective, my mother. Whenever anyone came to the house in London with a cold or cough, even if it was a plumber or decorator, she wouldn’t let them in, in case I caught it. She says I won’t catch colds here. Bloody right, I won’t, there’s no one within a mile to catch anything from.

  I clamber through the tangle of branches – hawthorn, I think – and go out the gate at the far end of the garden. Flo and Charlie have followed me but they’re scaredy cats and stay there, gazing after me, looking insulted. They really love it here after London. It must be like being in a small cage and suddenly set free into a lovely jungle full of delicious four-legged and two-legged delicacies, just waiting to be caught and eaten. And they can climb trees and things, after only having had brick walls.

  There are palm trees in the garden and tree ferns and even banana trees – in England! One of the banana trees has tiny fruit on it. First there was a huge stalk with a red sort of closed flower on it, then, just behind it, a tiny cluster of bananas appeared, like a baby’s hand. Little green curled up fingers.

  The coast path runs behind the house and goes all the way round Cornwall, apparently. I don’t suppose I’ll ever do that walk, even if I wanted to. Mum keeps saying we’ll walk it one day. I did used to be able to run and stuff when I was about six or seven, when I was little, but my heart won’t let me now.

  I’ve forgotten my sunglasses, but I’m wearing my distance glasses. There’s a screeching overhead. It’s a very fast moving bird. By the time I’ve got the bins to my eyes it’s gone. There’s a smell of saltiness or sea or seaweed, or ozone or something. God, I miss diesel fumes! There’s a light breeze blowing, and the sound of sea. Today it’s hushing me all the time, shush, shush, shush. There’s some chittering and a sort of scritch-scratch noise of little birds, but I don’t know what they are.

  There’s pink campions – I know that, and a very bright blue little flower that I don’t know the name of but it’s the same colour as Eloise’s eyes. Mum says it’s about as real as her tits. I’ll have to look it up in one of Mr Writer’s books – the name of the flower. I think it might be squirrel or squirl, or something.

  There’s also lots of nearly dead clumps of little pink papery flowers everywhere and some dark pink, mauve flowers in small pagoda shapes.

  I wonder what he writes – Mr Writer? Is he a thriller writer, or a poet, or maybe he writes travel books? There is a big locked cupboard of his personal belongings that he doesn’t want touched by strangers, but he’s left out loads of stuff, like these binoculars, for us to use. They’re small but heavy and made of brass and leather but the case is on a strap, which makes them easy to carry. I can walk as slowly as I like without being a nuisance and a liability, which I’m sure I must be when Mum really would like to stride out and have a good energetic walk.

  The coast path is still muddy from yesterday’s rain but all the people have gone. You can see St Ives from the point but it looks a long way away. The tide is right up and it’s a clear sunny day, not too warm, just right. The path runs along the top of the cliff and I can look down into the water. There’s a high grassy bank between the path and the cliff, so I don’t feel dizzy. I wonder if the water’s cold? It looks clean and inviting. There’s a load of big white seabirds far out, diving straight into the waves like arrows. They fly across the waves then suddenly go head first, wings folded tight, like a folded-up ship going into a bottle, go splash into the sea, and come up a little while later still swallowing a fish. I could see the splashes the birds made before I could see the birds. I’ll look them up when I get back. I should have brought a bird book with me. Next time I will.

  This part of the coast path is quiet, but St Ives is very busy at this time of the year.

  On our holiday in St Ives before Daddy left we had homemade ice cream, which tastes a billion times better than Wall’s, and went on the beach every day. We stayed in a self-catering cottage in the old town – all low beams and dinky little windows. We dried our clothes on a washing line in the tiny front garden, which was about one square metre, and Mum thought they would get stolen but they didn’t. There we
re window-boxes with geraniums in and lots of cats wandering around and even walking in our door as if they owned the place. At least, one ginger cat came in once and made itself comfortable on the doormat in the sun.

  I didn’t go swimming much, but I did love splashing about just where the surf broke on the white beach. If you lie down and put your ear to the beach, you can hear the surf booming through the sand. There were lots of coloured windbreaks and umbrellas and people lit barbecues in the evenings and watched the sun go down. Teenagers and little children all playing cricket, and grannies and parents, all together, and friends. And bigger children looking after the little ones and the babies. And everyone happy. It was so cool. I’d like to live there forever.

  Our cats would love to live there too. Much safer for them than London, and lots of other cats to make friends with or yowl at. But now they’ve had a taste of nature red in tooth and claw out here on the cliffs, I don’t suppose they’ll be happy settling for less. Daddy says they’ve got brains the size of a pea, so maybe they forget where they’ve lived once they’ve moved house.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Note: Blaring. It’s called blaring – the noise cows make when they’ve had their calves taken from them. I just found it in this old book called The Care of Farm Animals. Blaring. And the name of the little blue flower growing on the cliff is squill. I was nearly right.

  I’M HAVING A lie-in today. Mum says I overdid the walking yesterday. I like my bedroom, which is all white-painted wood, and I like the way the sea reflects on the ceiling in little shifting stripes. I could get hypnotised just concentrating on the flickering light.

  You can tell where the tide is by the waves on the ceiling. It must be right in up against the cliffs. It’s strange how the sound of the sea is loudest when the tide is a long way out. Now there’s just a hushing sound, which is really soothing actually. If I sit up I can see right down to the shore, but I feel a bit breathless and woozy today, so I’ll probably doze some more.