The Bower Bird Read online

  When I was three I can remember sitting at the window on Christmas Eve and I saw Father Christmas’s sleigh pulled by reindeer in the sky. I really believed I saw it.

  It must be wonderful to grow old like Mrs Lorn and know so much and have experienced a lot of life. It must make you wise if you can remember all those things you have heard and seen and read.

  There’s a old man who has three retriever dogs on leads accompanying him as he braves the roads at Carbis Bay in his electric wheelchair. He looks very heroic, as if he’s in a horse-drawn chariot or on a dog sledge. I haven’t seen him for a while, not since we left the cottage. We used to wave to him from the car but he didn’t wave back. Probably he isn’t able to. I wonder what he knows, and what he used to be before he became lopsided? And another very old man, always dressed immaculately in tweed suit and pork pie hat, straw hat in summer (Mr Dapper we call him), walks with the help of a stick all the way from Carbis Bay to St Ives and back each morning along the main road. He looks sad. Lonely. He’s a guest at an old people’s home.

  Why do they put old people’s homes in out of the way places? If I were old I would want to be in the middle of things, not on the outside ready to be shoved out of life when the time came. I suppose that’s what I felt like when I was in the wilderness out at the cottage on the cliff. Apart from society. An outcast, cast away. Here in St Ives there’s human life all around me.

  Mum and Alistair have come back and he’s off again, giving Mrs Lorn a lift home. She was delighted.

  Mum looks flushed and smells of cigarettes and whisky and other people’s beer. Her hair looks good. Her skirt’s a bit short though. She must like him a lot.

  Alistair’s not half as handsome as Daddy. Daddy looks like a cross between Keanu Reeves and Bob Geldof, but not as scruffy as Bob Geldof. Alistair looks like a Dobbin horse, with his big ears and long face and nose. But he has kind eyes and a nice smile and always wears interesting ties. It must be difficult being a man and having to wear boring suits to work. I suppose a tie is one item you can decorate yourself with.

  Like the bower bird. I think they attract females by making their nests, or bowers, look interesting.

  ‘Bed, Gussie, Bed. Off You Go, Late. Late. Late.’

  ‘Where did you go, Mum? Did you have a good time?’

  ‘Sloop Inn. Fun, it was fun.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone?’

  ‘Alistair knows everyone.’

  ‘Might he know Dad’s relations, do you think?’

  ‘Gussie. It’s not the sort of thing you ask a man the first time he takes you out. You ask him. I’m going to bed, and You Should Too. Tired. You Look Tired.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m going.’

  I take my time getting upstairs, stop halfway to stroke Flo, who is on guard on the landing. She is such a school prefect, always keeping the other two cats in order, on their toes. I would be too, in their shoes. On their toes, in their shoes… interesting, these foot metaphors or whatever. Standing up for your beliefs. Filling his shoes. Knocking the socks off… Language is interesting.

  I’d like to go to a school where they teach Latin, so I could study the roots of words. The local school is good apparently, but doesn’t have Latin. I’ll have to teach myself if I really want to learn. There was a Winnie the Pooh in Latin at our last house. Winnie ille Pu.

  Lucus Lucubris Joris is Eeyore’s Gloomy Place, which is tristis et palustris, rather boggy and sad.

  Locus inondatus – floody place.

  Domus mea – my house.

  What about this one! Fovea insidiosa ad heffalumpus catandos idonea (Pooh trap for heffalumps).

  I wrote those down so I could remember them. They were on the maps at both ends of the book. I like maps. There are lovely maps on the end pages of the Swallows and Amazons books too.

  Mum said she entered her O-level German oral exam only knowing two phrases. One of them was – Ich erkannte ihn an seinem Bart – I recognised him by his beard. And the other phrase was – Ich muss nach Hause gehen – I must go home now. She managed to incorporate both into her conversation, and charmed the examiner with her knowledge of art – there was a Pieter Brueghel print to talk about. She spoke in English for most of the time and still passed.

  I don’t believe everything she tells me. She’s a dreadful exaggerator.

  Mum potters about downstairs, filling the dishwasher and putting the washing in the drier. Then she comes up too, carrying her hot water bottle. She feels the cold almost as much as me.

  It’s comforting having her in the room below, moving about, snoring in her sleep.

  Our gulls are settled on the roof, hunkered down for the night, their heads tucked under their wings. There’s no moon tonight and it’s very cloudy. The wind is coming from the back of the house, the west, so I can open the front window without it rattling.

  Tomorrow I’ll go to the library and look for poetry books. There were loads at our last place.

  I wonder if I’ll ever meet Mr Writer – that’s my name for the man who owns Peregrine Cottage. Maybe he’s a murderer doing time. Or a famous poet on a world tour. He could be a bank manager, or a drug dealer, or a gunrunner. So many possibilities. Does anyone ever want to grow up to be a gunrunner or a car park attendant or a dinner lady?

  I always wanted to be a cowboy until I realised, because I was a girl I could never ever be a cowboy. I was devastated that God had done this to me. It wasn’t fair.

  It didn’t stop me dressing as a boy for quite a while afterwards though. I felt I had to gradually dissolve my boyhood and think myself slowly into being a girl. It wasn’t easy.

  I find it hard to go to sleep sometimes. I feel it’s a waste of time, sleeping, when I could be reading or living. But then, dreaming is a sort of living, I suppose. I often have an exciting time in my dreams, more so than in my ordinary life. Sometimes in the middle of a dream one of the cats wakes me (chasing and killing something usually) and I get frustrated by the interruption. I usually forget an interrupted dream. Why is it so difficult to remember dreams? I feel cheated if I can’t remember what happened.

  Last night there were two birds. One was a little white owl sitting quietly on top of the book shelf in my room. The other was a miniature rail, buff and apricot coloured with black sharp beak, black legs and wide spread long black toes. It became scarlet and emerald, and stepped carefully across my books, as if they were water lily leaves. I think there is a bird called a Jesus bird – because it looks like it’s walking on water. It might have been one of those.

  My own room: I do like it. All my babyhood is on the top shelf of the large book case: faded and worn Teddy, who has never had another name; Panda, from a trip Daddy made to Germany; Nightie Dog, that used to be Mum’s and has a zip in its tummy for pyjamas; several knitted toys, including Noddy, that Grandma made for me. He’s very old and his colours have faded but his bell still rings on the end of his night cap. And Rena Wooflie, my favourite, a soft stuffed girl dog with checked dress and apron. Mum bought her for me in Mombasa the very first time we went to Africa, because I had lost my cuddly comfort blanket on the journey.

  I love Rena Wooflie and she has to come with me to hospital. It’s for her sake, not mine. She gets lonely, as she doesn’t talk the same language as Panda or Teddy or Nightie Dog. Rena Wooflie and I speak Swahili together.

  jambo – hello

  abari? – how are you?

  msuri – good

  paka – cat

  malaika – angel

  kuku – fowl

  simba – lion

  nyuki – bee

  kidege – a little bird

  kufa tutakufa wote – as for dying, we shall all die.

  That’s all I know really but I do still have a phrase book so I could in theory learn some more.

  That first winter in Africa there was a family with a little boy about my age – three – and he was desperate for my Rena Wooflie. No matter that he had hundreds of teddies and soft toys, he wante
d my one and only. My mum bought another one and gave it to him. Its head wasn’t at quite the same angle as my Rena Wooflie’s and he started to moan and grizzle, and he threw it and yelled, and his mother picked it up and yanked its head around and said – Is that better? And I could tell she was pretending it was her little boy’s head she was twisting, not the toy’s.

  I would never abuse my Rena Wooflie.

  On top of my wardrobe, looking down at me is Horsey.He was my baby walker, a horse on wheels. Mum tried to throw him away once because the metal neck pole had pushed through the straw and fur and his head was in danger of coming off. She placed Horsey by the dustbins the day before dustbin day, and then it started to rain so she brought him in again. That was years ago. He’s still here, mended of course with a new patch of different coloured fake fur. He’s part of the family now.

  Noah’s Ark completes childhood on the high shelf. It was Mum’s when she was little. There are pairs of little wooden hand-painted lions and elephants, sheep and cows, hippos and zebra, and I’ve added other tiny animals found over the years – a lead crocodile, a glass cat, a wooden cat, and my favourite, a giraffe made of bone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MORNINGS IN MID September smell fresher than August, and there’s lots of swirling white mist over the water, hiding the dunes and estuary. But the air is still and somehow you know it’s going to be sunny later. The heavy band of mist is chrome and silver; the clouds are the colour of lavender leaves and steamed up mirrors. The sea is hammered pewter and the low waves are mercury creeping up the beach. Where the sun breaks through, it explodes on the water in a firework burst of sparkling stars. On the other side of the bay, battleship clouds float above the dunes and hills of Gwithian and Godrevy.

  September is like a wonderful monochrome photograph or the opening credits of an obscure French movie. Like the ones Daddy used to take me to.

  Yesterday evening we went to Porthmeor Beach to see the really high tide. Waves clapped like thunder on the walls of the studios and apartments on the beach and rolled up and over in a constant tumult. We hung over the wall with lots of other people and watched boys and girls run along the top of the sand racing the waves and getting soaked. Most of the tourists had gone home to get ready for dinner.

  It was as if the holidaymakers had been swept away and the sand wiped clean of summer. The Island (which isn’t really an island but that’s what it’s called) turned from green to orange in the setting sun. It has a little chapel on the top and reminds me of the Paula Rega painting – The Dance. Maybe it isn’t a painting. She did huge pastel drawings. Mum has loads of books on painters and we’ve unpacked some already.

  Our new house in St Ives is not new new, it’s Victorian – a terraced house on three floors. I love having the attic room – I know it’s crazy for me to want to climb all these stairs, but it’s worth it for the view: right over the grey and orange roofs down to the harbour and across the bay to the lighthouse and beyond.

  I have a white painted cast iron bed and a new quilt, pink and blue cotton stripes and roses. I chose it from a catalogue. It’s very girlie. Not my usual style at all.

  The ceiling slopes to the roof and I have a real watercolour painting on the wall, which shows almost the same scene I see from the window but from a slightly different angle. The walls and ceiling are white and I have white cotton curtains. When the light changes, as it does all the time, the room turns blue or pink or pale green or mauve. A small roof window sheds a square of light on my bed.

  On my chest of drawers there’s a photograph of Grandpop and Grandma made by Daddy. There’s also a photograph of Daddy and Mum getting married that Mum won’t have in her room, so I’ve got it. I think it’s because she doesn’t want to be reminded of how happy they were together. And there’s a photograph of our three cats lying on a sofa together – a rare event.

  We are just far enough away from the main streets not to hear the holidaymakers, though we do hear the fishing trip boatman calling out over his loud speaker. ‘Seal Island. Boat leaving in ten minutes for Seal Island.’

  We are close enough to get to the shops and beaches very easily. Getting back up again is another story. But I can see people coming up the hill from my window. People! It’s wonderful to be near people again. I had begun to talk to myself at Peregrine Cottage, or anyway, to the cats. There were no people to talk to out on the cliff.

  I don’t count Mum of course. She’s not terribly good at talking to me, except to tell me what not to do – Don’t Overdo it, Don’t go for Walks along the Cliff, Don’t Wear that Hat – that sort of thing. I was quite ill before we left, and she was really worried about me. I think she’s happier too, now we are in the town.

  I miss the badgers coming to the kitchen door for peanuts at night, and the sight of gannets folding back their wings and plunging like arrows into the sea just off the point. I miss the crickets climbing up the wooden walls, and the slowworms, which would appear mysteriously on the sitting room floor or on the doormat.

  I expect the cats will soon forget all those dear little harvest mice and voles they used to kill. At least the wildlife population will increase, now the cats have left.

  I hope the robins and blue-tits and greenfinches will survive the coming winter without us feeding them sunflower seeds. Maybe the owner will return from wherever he has been all these months.

  Up on the cliffs we could hear oystercatchers and curlews calling to each other.

  Herring gulls nest on the roof here. Or rather, they were nesting earlier in the year, and their one chick is making the most mournful noise imaginable. He hunches his shoulders so his neck disappears and he makes this awful rasping noise. I want to give him an inhaler. He keeps nearly sliding off the roof, and it’s a long drop to the garden or to the little lane behind the house. He’s flapping his speckled wings and jumping up and down, trying to copy all the other gulls that are circling the town, screaming and chuckling and murmuring to each other. They are very sociable creatures. It’s wonderful to see and hear so many of them. There’s even a pair of Great Black-backed gulls on a roof nearby.

  Every roof of the little town has its own gull family who tuck themselves into valley-gutters or next to chimneys, out of the wind. They are good parents, feeding their young even when they are as big as they are and making this horrible racket. The mother or father bird lands on the roof and the chick immediately goes up to it and starts pecking at the scarlet spot on the beak. The parent eventually throws up – that’s what it looks like – regurgitates the food for the young bird to eat.

  It’s wonderful to be on the same level as the nesting birds and to watch their everyday life. The male is larger and more powerful looking than the female herring gull, but they both have a vast vocabulary. They seem to communicate in all sorts of ways. They have a companionable chuckling call, a loud angry screech, a mewing, sad, lonely call and sometimes you hear them grumbling to themselves while flying. Our parent gulls get really angry and throw their heads back and scream a warning if others try to land on the same roof.

  Most of them have left the summer nests on the roofs now, but our gulls have to hang around a while longer until their offspring has learned to fly. He must have been a late summer baby.

  Like me.

  Mum is unpacking our stuff from London that never got unpacked at our rented place. She insists I rest every afternoon, so that’s why I am up here and she is downstairs. I can hear her singing. She must be feeling happy. I hope so.

  Mrs Lorn is helping out with washing the crockery. There are newspaper words over every plate and cup. I think we should leave them like that to make mealtimes more interesting but Mum insists they are washed. Mrs Lorn is whistling loudly, like she does. We sort of inherited her from Peregrine Cottage. She’s Mr Lorn’s wife: he was the gardener there. We don’t need a gardener here. The garden is Not Big Enough to Swing a Cat in, but there’s a washing line and a little square of grass, and a pretty fence that looks like it should be
metal but it’s wooden. The wooden gate (which also looks like it’s made of metal) opens onto a path, which goes along the front of this terrace and reaches a dead end after number nine. We look down over a steep little hill over the harbour and town. I think it’s perfect.

  Mum bought the house while I was being ill. She had been looking for months for the right property in St Ives. I was desperate to get into the town so I could make friends and get about more. I am quite recovered now. Or rather, I’m feeling much better than I was a few weeks ago.

  Actually, I am waiting for a heart and lung transplant. I can still get around, more or less, but I get very out of breath and go rather bluer than normal. Not that it’s normal to be blue, just normal for me. The hill is a challenge, but there’s an old bench halfway up, and I can always sit on the steps when I need to.

  I now have a special bleeper thingy too, in case the hospital finds a donor for me. Someone is going to have to die for me to get a chance at living longer, but I try not to think too much about the stranger whose organs will be inside me, pumping my blood and my breath around my body.

  One Step at a Time.

  When you think about it, there’s no such thing as the future. We only assume there is. There is now, this second, and the remembered past.

  The past is important to me. I have done many interesting things in my life, so I have some good memories. But the future? There’s no such thing. There’s only today. Live for Today is my motto. Mine and Mum’s. Every moment I have now is precious.

  To get back to my room – Flo, Charlie and Rambo have already sussed out that this is where I spend most of my time and they’ve made it their base. Flo is curled up on a cushion on a wicker chair, Rambo is trying to look like a Trafalgar Square lion on the floor in a patch of sun and succeeding rather well and Charlie is of course, on my lap as per usual. They didn’t approve of being moved in small cramped baskets from Peregrine Cottage to here, but it was only ten minutes at the most in the car. Rambo shat himself though. Poor cat. He is always car sick and terrified of anything and everything. Mum had to wash his bottom.