The Bower Bird Read online

  Her little sister is great fun. She wants to know all about me, where do I go to school and why don’t I go to school, what is wrong with my heart, and will I have an operation? She never stops asking questions, like me when I was little. She tells me that she thinks in colours.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, pleasure is pink.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Scarlet is a scolding.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Pain is purple. I felt purple pain when I was stung by a weaver fish last year.’

  ‘Stung by a weaver fish?’

  ‘Yes, then the pain turned dark blue – that was agony.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘A lifesaver on the beach carried me to their hut and put my foot in a bowl of hot water and the blue went away.’

  ‘Ignore her, she’s stupid,’ says Siobhan.

  Siobhan asks if I like Brett, and I say of course I do, he’s cool. But she means, is he my boyfriend?

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘No way. We go birding together.’

  ‘Birding?’ She smiles in a sneering way and says he and the other boys are too young for her. I have decided I don’t really like her much. She’s in another universe. Alien. I prefer Bridget.

  ‘Do you know a boy called Gabriel?’ I ask Bridget.

  ‘He’s in my class. We’re having one of his kittens. The black one. We’re going to call him Spike.’

  We lie down at the edge of the pond and I tell her about pond insect life.

  Siobhan is hanging out with the adults, flirting with Brett’s dad, flicking her hair back from her face and giggling.

  Mum says she hates flirts. They steal other women’s men. She says they have No Conception of Sisterhood. I think I understand what she means now.

  The boys have joined Bridget and me by the pond and are listening to my account of the life cycle of a mosquito. Siobhan sidles over and lies next to Brett, her hip against his. I do believe he’s blushing. Strewth! What does she think she is doing? Ohmygod!

  Siobhan asks Brett to show her the tent, and he says Okay. They are going to the bottom of the garden, Siobhan in front, swaying her stupid hips in the short skirt, Brett following and I simply lie here, dumb-struck.

  ‘Go on, Gussie, what happens next?’ Bridget nudges me.

  ‘The adult female mosquito finds a juicy fat victim like your sister, sucks her blood, injects her with malaria, yellow fever, elephantiasis or dengue fever, and she dies a long and painful death.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I CAN’T HONESTLY say I enjoyed the party. Mum did though and she likes Brett’s parents and I think they have persuaded her to let me go with them to the Scillies. However, I don’t know if Brett still wants me to go. He might be under the spell of the SS – Shit-face Siobhan.

  Mum has heard about this new trick to make her look younger. The girl who dyes her eyelashes told her about it. You put haemorrhoid cream under your eyes and it’s supposed to reduce the bags. I am taking note of her beauty hints so I can be armed against the SS.

  Mum says I don’t need to worry just yet. Little does she know.

  I do seriously need help with my appearance. My hair for a start. I can’t do a thing with it. It’s shapeless and lank.

  ‘Mu-um.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I want my hair cut.’

  ‘I’ll trim it if you like.’

  ‘No, I mean cut by a proper hairdresser.’

  She stops dabbing at her eyes with the ointment and looks at me hard.

  The hairdresser’s is in a cobbled lane, tucked away. Sherie and Eve are the stylists and there is a beautician called Lulu. I am nervous.

  Mum is having her roots done. She sits in one chair with gooey stuff all over her head, and I am in the next seat. This is worse than the dentist.

  Sherie is talking about her horses. She lives in the country and has two.

  She has just finished styling the white curly hair of an elderly lady and she asks her if she would like Eve to walk up the hill with her to make sure she gets home.

  ‘So,’ says Sherie, ‘how would you like it?’ She shows me some hairstyle books. I would really like to look like Ginnie. Her hair is short and spiky, sort of punkish.

  Sherie pulls my hair this way and that. She looks as though she would rather be grooming one of her horses. I look in the mirror. I look as though I would rather be fighting a bull. I find a photo of someone who looks similar to Ginnie and say this is how I want it to look.

  Mum is deep into a crummy magazine about minor celebrities so I don’t disturb her. Another elderly lady comes in and Mum starts talking to her. It’s very busy here. The phone never stops ringing and people keep coming in and asking for appointments. Everyone knows everyone.

  Eve’s mum comes in and smokes a cigarette in the back part of the shop, which is separated from the front bit by flapping doors, like in a western. Mum flaps her arms and coughs extravagantly.

  Here in the heart of town, the gulls are calling from the roofs; cars squeeze through the narrow street and negotiate the sharp corner; Radio Cornwall blares out pop music; hairdryers snarl; the telephone rings; there’s constant laughter and chatter; people walk by and stare in past a huge glazed china Dalmation dog lying in the window among hairspray and shampoo bottles. Notices on the wall: STRESS BUSTER – BANG YOUR HEAD HERE. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE, BUT IT HELPS. Lulu runs up and down stairs with women who’ve come to have hair removed from various parts of their bodies or have their nails sharpened or something. All the staff are dedicated to make us feel better about ourselves. A lone man has his thin hair shaved off. It looks so much better, perhaps I should have mine shaved.

  Snip snip snip. My hair on the floor all around me. Eve shampoos me and massages my head. That is so good. I would like someone to massage my head every day. Then Sherie dries it with a hairdryer. She rubs some gel into my scalp and shapes my hair with her fingers, and cuts it some more.

  Mum is still having her hair shampooed. When she emerges from the washbasin she notices me.

  ‘Gussie? What have they done to you? You look great.’

  In the mirror there is this small, thin person with a long neck and shining sticking-up hair, more like Dennis the Menace than Ginnie, but it’s cool. Sherie is pleased with the result and Lulu and Eve admire it too.

  I’m not sure I can get my England cap over my hair without flattening it.

  I could cope with this hairstyle on a desert island. Use gull’s egg-white to glue it into place.

  The elderly lady has had her white curls curled tighter. They look like white Brussels sprouts. As Eve shows her out the door she says, ‘Goodbye Mrs Stevens. See you next week.’

  Not another Stevens! They’re everywhere. But which ones are my Stevenses?

  I’ve given up reading Robinson Crusoe. I know he meets Man Friday, but when for goodness sake? I’m on page 150 and he hasn’t appeared yet. And he’s never short of food or water, and he has fire, weapons, shelter, cats, dogs, a parrot that talks, and goats. If he suddenly discovered a McDonalds or an Indian take-away on the far beach, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  There’s a very good Indian take-away next to the hairdressers. It’s called Ruby Murries. It’s rhyming slang – Ruby Murry – Curry. They deliver. We usually have something from them once a week. Would they deliver on my desert island?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BRETT LIKES MY hair. We meet by chance in the library.

  ‘Strewth! You look rippa, Guss,’ is what he says.

  Luckily the chatty woman isn’t at the desk today to enquire about home improvements.

  ‘Gussie, what are you singing?’ Mum shouts from the bathroom.

  ‘Waltzing Mathilda.’ I sing it again for her benefit – ‘Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, who’ll go a waltzing…?’

  ‘Okay, okay I thought it sounded familiar.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE CONTACT SH
EETS of the photographs I made in Shamrock Lodge arrived today. I like the ones with the stripes of light and shade, the men concentrating on their domino game. I will definitely do some more at the other lodges. Ages ago Dad gave me a load of out of date black and white film, which he says is still absolutely okay. I am suddenly filled with enthusiasm. The pictures of the washing line aren’t bad either.

  In the Times and Echo there’s a piece about an arts festival in St Ives. There will be poetry readings, novelists reading, writing workshops, and the artists’ studios will be open to the public.

  Cool, I mean, rippa, I’ll get lots of good photographs.

  At the moment I’m trying to capture the image of a huge yellow moth that is beating against the glass roof-light in my room. It sounds like an overflow pipe discharging a fast trickle of water. I feel so sorry for it I switch off the light. It works: I have stopped the moth’s running water imitation.

  Mum has found an odd job man to do things in the house. She found him in the newsagent’s window. He’s overweight and smells of butter and cigarettes and is called Arnold. Apart from that he’s very nice. He’s fixed the cat-flap in the front door, built some bookshelves in the sitting room and is having a cup of tea with Mum and me. He says he does gardening too. He and his wife came here from Birmingham four years ago and they both do several jobs – waiting and bar work in the summer season and anything that comes along in the winter months. He worked for British Telecom before and can put his hand to most things around a house.

  He has very long ear lobes with large holes in as if he’s worn earrings that damaged his ears or someone caught hold of the earrings and yanked them hard (perhaps I could do that to SS?). He reminds me of Babar the Elephant. It’s that placid expression.

  I had all the Babar books when I was little, some in French or Spanish, depending on where we were when they were bought for me. I think Mum probably made up the stories when she read to me at bedtime because I don’t think she speaks Spanish or French. But Babar wasn’t my favourite bedtime read. I always needed Winnie the Pooh when I was really ill or miserable or couldn’t get to sleep. My favourite story was ‘Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water’, because it’s a long story told from various points of view – Piglet’s, Pooh’s and Christopher Robin’s, and Mum enjoyed reading it. Come to think of it, Piglet sends off a message in the bottle. I could do that on my desert island. I could also write a message in the sand. SOS. What does that stand for, apart from Save Our Sausages?

  ‘Not at school?’ Arnold says.

  ‘She’s getting over an operation,’ explains Mum, and thankfully doesn’t go into the sordid details of my medical history. I always get embarrassed when she tells people about my heart. I would rather no one knew, and treated me like a normal person, not a disabled one. I hate that sad dreamy look of understanding and sympathy that people put on when I am talked about. My mind is normal, for goodness sake; my brain is no different from any other twelve-year old’s.

  I desperately want to ask about the damage to his ears. Perhaps he was in deepest darkest Brazil, involved in some strange tribal ritual just to be friendly. Weird things do happen to people who are only trying to be polite or to fit in. I can’t think of any at the moment, but I’m sure I will.

  I suppose it’s like those metal neck rings that stretch your neck that some women in Africa have to wear, because it’s the local custom.

  Or female circumcision. Yuk. Don’t even want to think about that.

  Why are girls suddenly getting tattoos? You can’t go back on ‘I love Kevin’, can you, when you fall out of love with him and love Fred? You can’t cross out Kevin and write Fred. You’d have to fall in love with some boy with a name of equal length, like Brian, or Jason, or the scar would show. No way could you tattoo Joe or Bill or Brett. It would be more sensible to have a shortened version like Kev tattooed, then you could add to it later, when necessary, when you had a boyfriend with a long name, then there’d be no visible scar tissue.

  Speaking of which – my own scar is itching like mad.

  Must find out to say that in Strine – like billy-o, possibly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SHORE SHELTER. SEVERAL old men. I first make a photo of the wall where no men are sitting. NO SWEARING ALLOWED is written large on a notice board. Old paintings and faded photographs of men and boys fishing in boats and unloading fish in the harbour line the walls.

  ‘Are women allowed to join the lodge?’

  ‘If they want. But they all be ’ome making pasties for us’ dinners.’

  ‘How do you make a pasty?’ I ask Mr Perkin.

  ‘You’ll ’ave to ask the wife.’

  ‘I do the cooking in our house,’ says a thin man, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe and lighting it with a match.

  ‘So do you know the recipe for pasties?’ I ask, all the time shooting pictures as they laugh and chat.

  ‘I buy short pastry from Co-op like, roll it out, cut into rounds with a plate. Then you get the filling ready.’ He fiddles with the pipe and clears his throat. ‘Chop up potato and a bit of steak and onion; mix it in a bowl with a little bit of water and with a bit of salt and pepper – I like lots of pepper.

  ‘Put the mix on half the circle and fold it over like. Then you press the edges together and crimp them, like that.’

  He shows me how to crimp, pressing his blunt fingers on the edge of the table.

  ‘Bake in the oven for about an hour.’

  ‘You forgot to prick ’oles to let the steam out,’ says another man.

  ‘Oh ’es, proper job,’ says the cook, and lights his pipe yet again.

  ‘My ’oman puts in turnip as well as potato,’ says a man with a stick.

  ‘You’m spoilt rotten, you are.’ They all laugh and the turnip man looks amused and pleased.

  Another man says they used to eat sheep’s heads when he was a boy. Yuk.

  ‘I was brought up on spuds and bread. If you had a meal, even if it was a sheep’s head boiled in broth: “Have a maw” the old people didn’t call it a slice of bread then – “that’ll help fill up the crevices.” Even if you had a salt herring and potatoes boiled in their jackets: Have a maw to fill up the holes.’

  I shoot some more film in Rose Shelter too. There the men are playing euchre, a card game. But the light has gone flat and dull and the pictures I see through the viewfinder are not very exciting. It’s smoky in here so I don’t last long. But as I go to leave one of the men says, ‘Local maid, are you, my flower?’

  ‘I’m a Stevens.’

  ‘News gets around.’

  ‘I’m Augusta. My dad is Jackson Stevens.’

  The men all look at each other.

  ‘Oh ah, Jackson Stevens, eh?

  ‘That be Hartley’s boy.’

  ‘Yes, Hartley Stevens was my grandfather.’

  ‘Never mind cheel’, never mind.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh nothing, only ’e were a bit wild, ’e were.’ The old men laugh loud.

  ‘’Es, ’e paid for it though. Never mind them, my flower.’ A bent over man, who looks about a hundred, winks at me.

  I feel a sort of reflected guilt and shame, even though I don’t know what my father’s father did that was wild.

  ‘What did he do exactly?’

  ‘Oh, some sort of skulduggery. What was ’e accused of, Tom?’

  ‘Fiddled with car milometers, I heard.’

  ‘No, it were something about property. Always buying and selling land, ’Artley were.’

  ‘’Es, fingers in many pies, ’es.’

  ‘’E left town after. Took wife and boy away.’

  Oh dear, I am taking after my Grandfather Hartley, lies and skulduggery. I feel myself go hot around the neck and face.

  ‘There’s only Dad left now, anyway. His parents both died years ago.’

  ‘Never mind, my flower. Plenty of ’onest Stevenses left here, any’ow,’ says the friendly one.

 
‘’Artley’s sister – what was her name?’ said the bent-over one.

  ‘Fay. ’Es, Fay, ’andsome she were. Red hair. ’Es, I courted she, but she wouldn’t ’ave I. Din’ want no fisherman.’

  ‘Din’ want a scrawny fool you mean.’ The old men are chuckling and coughing.

  ‘Married a big man, Fay did, not from ’ere, foreigner.’

  ‘Get on with the game, will you,’ says the thin one as he shuffles the cards.

  I have to get out into the fresh air. The smoke is too much for me. Anyway, it’s getting late. Mum will be wondering where I am.

  I wish I could have stayed and found out more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  BAD NEWS. I bump into Bridget with her mum in Woolies. Her mum is in the sheets and towels aisle. Bridget and I shovel sweets into little paper bags – I go for the large flat toffees and she likes the cola sweets – and she tells me Brett has been to their house after school every day this week.

  To see Liam? I don’t think so.

  Bridget says her sister has had her belly-button pierced. Not only that, she has started to wear a padded uplift bra. She hangs around with Liam and Brett all the time and ignores Bridget or is horrible to her.

  ‘She’s a total pain in the neck.’

  ‘Purple or blue?’

  ‘Blue, midnight blue.’

  I totally agree.

  I am back at the archive with my new information. When I recover my breath I say, ‘I want to find out more about my father’s family. My grandfather was Hartley Stevens, born 1900. He died though. But he had a sister, Fay.’

  The woman shows me a box file full of Stevenses. No sign of any Hartleys or Fays but I find a long list of family nicknames including some lovely ones and some rather rude ones: Halibut Dick; Edwin Gull; Joe Powerful; Dick Salt; George Tealeaves; Georgie Pupteen; Georgie Happy; Willy Sailor; Polly Wassey; Captain Starve Guts; Tilly Toots; Bessie Wet Tits (seriously, I’m not joking).

  As I give up and go to leave my eye is drawn by one of the framed photographs on the stairs. It’s a close up of two men mending a fishing net on Smeaton’s Pier, their backs to the camera. There is a signature – Amos H Stevens, and a date – 1927.