The Bower Bird Read online

  ‘Gussie!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Brett for you.’

  Oh brill! Brett’s come to see me. I dry my tears, brush my hair and clean my glasses. Oh shit, I should never look in a mirror. I am always dismayed. What do I imagine I look like? Not this puny, pale-mauve shrimp with a red nose, that’s for sure.

  He comes up and has to bend down to miss the beams on the ceiling, he’s so tall.

  ‘How’s it goin?’

  I lurv his accent and he doesn’t seem to notice my nose, or he’s too polite to comment.

  He says hello to the cats and scratches Charlie behind her ears. He’s good with animals. He looks out the window and admires the view and we watch the young gull for a while. He says he and his dad have a herring gull’s nest on their roof too. Most people in St Ives are lucky enough to have gulls living close to them. Brett’s gull comes right into their house and walks around looking for titbits. Since I was ill in the summer, he and his dad have hand-raised a young raven they found under a bush. Brett’s mum gets very cross because Buddy the raven tears off wallpaper and picks up newspaper pages and tears them up. He follows Brett on his bicycle down the road, flying close to his head all the time even when a car goes by.

  ‘I’d love to meet Buddy.’

  ‘You will,’ he says, and then, ‘You aren’t really reading Roget’s Thesaurus for fun, are you?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s interesting. Listen: “Deceitful – false; fraudulent, sharp, guileful, insidious, slippery as an eel, shifty, tricky, cute, finagling, chiselling, underhand, underhanded, furtive, surreptitious, indirect, collusive, covinous, falsehearted.” Oh dear, falsehearted – that’s what I will be when I have my transplant.’

  He laughs loudly.

  ‘Gussie, you are so weird.’ He knocks off my England cricket cap with a brush of his hand and tousles my hair. No one’s ever done that, apart from Grandpop.

  ‘The rain’s stopped, Guss, let’s go birding.’

  He has his binoculars around his neck.

  ‘Okay’ I say, nonchalantly. ‘Cool. Rippa.’ I grab my bins, retrieve my cap and we go downstairs to tell Mum we’re off to the Island.

  ‘Are you sure you want to go? You look pale. Take your parka. Have you got your bleep?’

  ‘Mum, I’m not stupid.’

  Brett manages to walk slowly enough so I don’t get left behind. I’m not very good at talking as I walk, not enough breath for both activities, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He rambles on about what he’s been doing this term. I wish I was at school too.

  We walk around the harbour. Sparrows and starlings peck at the ground hopefully. The Island is just around the corner from the harbour, next to Porthgwidden Beach. It’s a peninsula really, not an island at all, but that’s what it’s called. In the old days locals used to spread their sheets out on the grass slopes to dry in the sun.

  It’s windy on the Island, but I don’t mind. My cap is firmly on my head and I am wrapped up well. I’ve got my ex-army parka that we bought at Laurence Corner. Quilted and warm. Mum took up the sleeves for me. I’m also wearing camouflage fatigue trousers with lots of pockets. It’s a good idea to wear natural colours when bird-watching. That way you merge into the background. We shelter by a large rock covered in green and yellow lichens, out of the wind and with a good view of the sea and sky out towards the northwest, under the coastguard lookout. The crashing of the waves is muffled here. There’s a smell of salt and grass. Huge orange and dark grey cumulus clouds lollop heavily across the silver sky. It’s like autumn already.

  There have been sunfish spotted from here in hot weather. I’ve never seen a sunfish.

  We watch the cormorants flying low over the waves; shearwaters and oystercatchers, each bird so beautiful in its individual flight pattern and behaviour. A flock of starlings swirling like mist over the fields and snaking the hedges; a V of airborne geese yapping like dogs; swans gliding effortlessly on a river, or in flight, the wind whistling through their great white wings.

  We love birds in spite of the fact that some eat each other’s babies; some kill better singers (robins) and are often barbaric in their behaviour, except to their own mates and young. I think it is because they are beautiful that we overlook their actions. Beauty can do anything and we still adore it. Our eyes, our hearts and souls need beauty.

  Brett says he’s going to the Hayle estuary next week in case some of the winter birds are arriving. They stop over here after flying across the Atlantic Ocean, and they rest up on this, the first bit of land they find, to gather strength and build up their body weight. He says I can go with him and his dad if I want. You bet I want.

  From our sheltered spot we see various gulls: skua, fulmar, great black-backed gull, gannet, herring gull of course, black headed gull, tern, cormorant, oyster catcher, shag, and some little diving ducks in a flotilla.

  ‘Gussie, you’re blue.’

  ‘I’m always blue.’

  ‘No, you’re darker blue than usual; your lips are purple. You look bushed. We better get you home.’

  ‘Okay, I am a bit cold.’ I’m so glad it’s his idea, not mine. I’m bloody freezing.

  We set off, Brett carrying my binoculars. We stop at the seat on the hill while I squat to catch my breath, pretending to do up my shoes.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could come to the Scillies in October, could you? A birding weekend.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mum would never let me go on my own. Oh, I really want to go. We’ve never been to the Scillies.

  ‘How are you getting there?’

  ‘Helicopter to St Mary’s, then a boat. An organised trip. Your Ma’s friend is going.’

  ‘Alistair?’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon. The doctor?’

  ‘Yes, our GP. He’s keen on my mum.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, she’s cool.’

  A cunning plan has occurred to me. Oh dear, I really am becoming scheming and wily.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WE ARE IN a field next to the secondary school.

  In the next field are three horses: a tall skewbald, much bigger than the others, a little fat Shetland pony and a cream palomino. The Shetland pony is tearing around the field, his mane and tail horizontal, and the other horses are following him, joining in the fun. When he stops they stop. They are all speaking to each other; neighing and snorting like Wild West ponies. They are having such a good time.

  Eleven men in cream trousers and white shirts and cream woolly jumpers with stripes around the v-neck are standing around while two batsmen stand at either end of the pitch. There are two umpires wearing what look like white laboratory coats. There’s a smell of grass and bonfires and the sea. Gulls chuckle overhead. We are two of about ten people watching – most of them are in the batting side. Alistair is one of the batsmen. He goes to hit the ball and misses. Mum groans. He misses again. Oh dear. The bowler bowls again and Alistair whacks the ball hard and a fielder tries to stop it but it goes to the boundary and it’s a four. We applaud loudly.

  I think of Grandpop and Grandma playing cricket together and I feel sad and happy at the same time. Mum isn’t the least bit sporty, though she did do a yoga class once but her back went so she didn’t go again. Alistair looks very dashing in his cricket whites.

  Mum is smart and pretty in navy linen baggy trousers, sleeveless white top and white linen hat. She’s got war-paint on too, glossy shiny lip stuff and mascara. I prefer her with no make-up.

  I wear my England cricket cap of course. I feel it’s really mine now, after wearing it every day for several weeks. It is getting nicely battered and comfortable.

  A very angry sounding gull is chasing a buzzard, who lazily lifts a wing when the gull gets close enough to peck at it and soars higher and higher, effortlessly. The gull is satisfied and goes home. Two crows squabble in a tall pine between the school and the field. There’s a far view of the bay and you can see as far as Carn Brea and right along the coast to Newquay.

  The ot
her batsmen waiting for their turn are chattering away all the time. When each one gets given ‘out’ by the umpire, he comes back very cross and blames the bat, the wind, and/or the other batsman – and especially the blind umpire.

  Suddenly the wind drops to nothing and the sun burns us. Swallows swoop low over the grass, flashing purple and blue wings. There’s a strange thick band of sea mist hovering over the horses’ field. It’s coming towards us, a white fog, like a low spiralling cloud, and suddenly the sun has gone and we are shivering. A phantom juvenile herring gull whistles. The horses have disappeared.

  We go inside the cricket pavilion, where it’s much warmer, and sit huddled together, looking out through the doorway. It’s hilarious: the players are hidden in mist. The occasional head appears, moving fast, or an arm and hand thrown up into the air. It’s a match between invisible men. A clunk, a shout, and the red ball runs out of the fog and over the boundary, hit by a ghost Alistair I think.

  ‘Four,’ shouts one of the spectators and throws the ball back into the whiteness.

  Inside the hut a woman is busy setting sandwiches and cakes on plates. A little girl, about six years old, is helping her. Oh strewth, it’s the woman who was in the same pew as me at the funeral. I hide under my cap and put up the collar of my parka. I don’t think she’s noticed me. That’s the trouble with a small town. You keep bumping into the same people.

  The local team is out, which means they’ve all been bowled or caught or run out, or were called out LBW – leg before wicket – and they all come inside. Time for tea. The little girl runs to her daddy, who is one of the local team, and he lifts her up and kisses her.

  The sea-mist has gone as quickly as it appeared so we go outside again, thank goodness. Alistair gets his plate of sandwiches and cakes and brings them out for us to share. He gets Mum and me cups of tea. He’s quite pleased with himself as he scored 55 runs. He says he should have got more: it’s a flat wicket, whatever that means.

  The team is a great mix of people: there’s the vicar, a policeman, a convicted burglar (just out of prison, Alistair says, and when he isn’t being a burglar he’s usually a night club bouncer) a schoolboy, a barman, an undertaker, a cabinet maker, a teacher, a double-glazing fitter, a window cleaner, and a doctor, Alistair. He plays for a cricket team of doctors in Cornwall too, and he says they are going to play on the Scillies soon. They’ll stay on St Mary’s, and hire a boat to play on St Agnes and Tresco over a long weekend.

  This is my cue. If I miss it now, I’ll never get another chance.

  ‘Mum, can we go too? I’ve always wanted to go to the Scillies. Oh, Mum, please.’

  ‘Yes, what a good idea, Gussie,’ says Alistair, ‘I could try and get you into my hotel.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. How much will it cost?’ Mum is looking for problems.

  It’s time for the other team to bat and Alistair has to field so we don’t get a chance to come to any decisions.

  We watch for a little, while the men’s green shadows get longer and longer in the low sun. The horses are standing quietly, dozing on their hooves.

  Mum drives me home and we pick up Indian take-away. Chicken chilli masala, pashwari nan, tarka dhall, rice and pappadoms. Yum.

  Charlie takes up a ringside seat so I can feed her spicy chicken. Flo only likes the pappadoms.

  We sit on the floor on cushions and eat from the low table, as we’re watching a movie, Local Hero. I’ve seen it three times. There’s a baby in a buggy that gets pushed around by various men throughout the story. I love the bit when the American asks who the baby’s father is, and the men look shifty and no one answers. It’s a car-free little village in Scotland, and every time the American goes onto the street he nearly gets run down by a moped. Also, the music is great. It reminds me of going to see movies with Daddy in London.

  Oh, why did he have to leave? Mum is much better looking than any of those anorexics he runs after. She might be crotchety sometimes, but she’s a good cook and hasn’t let herself go to pot just because she’s old.

  Charlie hangs around until I give her some chicken. She prefers spicy meat to ordinary cat food and if ever she smells coriander she’s sniffing the air and looking at me beseechingly. I clear away the dirty dishes and load the dishwasher in an attempt to keep Mum sweet.

  ‘Mum, can we go to the Scillies, ple-ease.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, darling.’

  Alistair rings the next day and says there’s no accommodation left in St Mary’s. It’s always difficult getting a room there, apparently, and you have to book up weeks in advance.

  ‘Brett is birdwatching in the Scillies in October, could we go then?’

  ‘Birdwatching? I don’t particularly like birdwatching. Anyway, there’s nothing for me to do in the Scillies.’

  ‘Mum, you are so selfish. I like birdwatching. I could go on my own. You don’t have to come.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘With Brett and his mum and dad.’

  ‘But we don’t know them. No, definitely not. Maybe another time, darling.’

  ‘What other time? I might not have another time,’ I shout.

  ‘Gussie, that’s emotional blackmail. I’m ashamed of you.’

  ‘Anyway, Alistair is going.’ I hurl that titbit at her, slam the door, climb up to my room, wishing I could run, and have a good cry. I haven’t even got the consolation of cats as I shut them in the sitting room.

  I hate feeling in the wrong or wronged. Somehow, everything has gone badly lately: not being able to start at the school, ruining the library books, crying at the funeral, not getting anywhere with the search for my Cornish family, and now this.

  I really want to go to the Scillies.

  I can’t go anywhere or do anything any more. I feel all knotted up and twisted inside my head and stomach.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I DON’T BELIEVE it. Mum is dressed in shorts and T-shirt and trainers and she’s going for a run with Alistair. She still has the full make-up, her hair is tied back and she has sweatbands on her wrists and forehead.

  ‘You aiming on perspiring, Mum?’

  ‘I might.’ She takes a long look at herself in the full-length mirror.

  ‘Is my bum saggy?’

  ‘Yes it is. You should be in purdah.’

  ‘Thanks, Gussie darling. See you later.’

  I’m sitting in the front garden in the sunshine under the sun-brolly, reading. The washing line next door is full of striped sheets flapping in the wind, though I didn’t see who put them there.

  Half an hour later Alistair brings Mum home. She’s done something to her back. They were running along Porthmeor Beach and she made the mistake of twisting her head round to enjoy the view of the sea and ‘Something Went.’ That’ll teach her to try and act younger than her age.

  She lies on the sofa and he gets her a painkiller and a whisky. He says scotch is a good analgesic, or was it anaesthetic? Why doesn’t he rub it on her back then?

  ‘Gussie, can you keep an eye on her tonight? I think she may have damaged a disc.’

  Oh great. I’m going to have to look after her now. I fill up a hot water bottle and put it on her back and get a blanket to cover her.

  ‘Mum, do you know you’ve got hairy toes?’ Cripes, I hope I don’t get hairy toes.

  ‘Oh shut up Gussie, just shut up.’

  She starts to cry. She looks awful. I fill up her whisky glass.

  ‘Oh that’s Far Too Much, darling,’ she says, but drinks it anyway.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MUM HAS MADE a friend: the physiotherapist who is sorting out her back. We go to visit her at her house in Horsetown – spelt Halsetown – a mile or so outside St Ives. It’s so quiet and peaceful here among the granite outcrops, hardly any topsoil on the hills, just gorse and heather and furze, the eerie cry of buzzards wheeling above us, buttercups and daisies in the little fields, an invisible skylark singing.

  There’s a little boy; he’s eight, calle
d Gabriel. There’s also Phaedra, sixteen, and Troy, fifteen, who aren’t there today as they are surfing. Gabriel shows me his floppy-eared rabbits, two of them, lolloping around on the grass, and three stand-up straight ducks, mother, father and daughter, who are worrying the grass with their beaks. One of them is lame but is still a good layer, he says. A large pond is fed by a little stream. The ducks don’t ever go in the pond; they prefer the grass. Gabriel says there are frogs and toads and newts, but we don’t see any. There’s a golden cockerel with a very fine tail and smart red comb, two brown hens and six chicks. The mother hen is in protective custody in a little triangular hut and pen with her babies. One is black and the others are yellow. The black one spends most of its time on its mother’s back. Gabriel saves the best until last. We go upstairs and he opens the airing cupboard door and there on the bottom shelf on a layer of blankets and towels is their tabby cat, Treasure, with four kittens, three tabby and one black. They are three weeks old. The kittens tumble over each other and wobble on shaky legs. Treasure, whose original name was Tricia, but they changed it, looks very proud of herself. She is less than a year old, and this is her first litter, but she is a good mother, very attentive to her babies. There’s a tomcat too, Spider, who is tabby and white, not the father, as he’s been neutered, but he nevertheless brings Treasure mice every day.

  Gabriel, having done his tour guide duty by me, races off and the next time I see him he is up a tree, wielding a full-sized saw and a hammer. He has made a whole system of platforms and roofs in the oak tree. His dad makes staircases and furniture and built their entire house. There’s a sign – James Darling and Son, Cabinet Makers – by the gate. There’s a painting of a staircase on the sign. Gabriel has obviously inherited a talent for building things.

  His mum, whose name is Claire, says Gabriel spends most of his time up the tree, only coming down to go to school or sleep or eat, though sometimes he takes his tea up there. He has fixed a rope and pulley to get himself up into the branches. There’s also a Tarzan rope for swinging on.