The China Bird Read online

  Rachel beckons the waiter.

  ‘Madam?’

  ‘We need your advice on what to choose. This is our first time in your restaurant.’

  ‘Madam, then we are indeed honoured. Now let me see how can I make it simple for you? We have pasta dishes such as spaghetti and lasagne, or we have meat dishes such as chicken or steak, or fish. We have fresh tuna, or of course we have pizza. There is also calzone, which is like a pizza but folded over like, how do you say, a pasty.’

  Rachel scratches her neck, ‘Well, they all sound delicious. I think I’ll be adventurous and try the last one, the pasty.’

  ‘A wise choice, Madam.’

  ‘Yes.’ Edward says, running his eye up and down the menu, ‘I think I’ll have the same. And can we have a glass of medium white wine and a tonic water with ice and lemon, please.’

  Edward looks under the table, ‘Mother, did you bring the books back? You didn’t, did you?’

  Rachel shakes her head, ‘I’m sorry. I put them in a bag by the door and then the cat distracted me. Do you want me to bring them to the Library?’

  ‘No.’ Edward shakes his head. ‘It’s all right. I’ll just have to remember to renew them. Mind you, I think we have had a request in for the Egon Schiele book.’

  ‘They’re welcome to it,’ Rachel mutters.

  ‘You didn’t like it then?’

  ‘You knew I wouldn’t. I told that girl. Grotesque I call it.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Oh, I was looking at it on the bus on my way home. I told her, this girl sitting next to me, why can’t he draw beautiful people instead of these grotesque creatures.’

  Always, he thinks, she has to have her secrets. Why is he here with her, being lied to as usual, when all he wants to do is sit somewhere quiet and calm his thoughts?

  ‘Sometimes, Mother,’ he pauses, ‘We have to confront our prejudices.’

  As usual, she does not rise to the bait. Instead she picks up a tiny glass vase from the centre of the table and inhales the scent of the flowers – Lily of the Valley.

  He gives up, follows her train of thought. ‘Do you remember those large round soaps and the foil-wrapped bath cubes I used to buy you for your birthday? Sandalwood? I often wondered how they got a scent from a wood – and French Fern, that was another one.’

  ‘And Lily of the Valley,’ she smiles, putting the vase back. ‘Don’t forget Lily of the Valley. Soap like that was treasured back then.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. Father and I, we were never allowed to use your special soap.’

  Edward sees the waiter making his way towards them with their drinks.

  ‘I see Madam is admiring our flowers. My mother grows them in our garden in Italy. She sends me a whole box of them to remind me and my customers of spring.’

  ‘I hope she keeps them in check. They can take over your whole garden.’

  ‘But, Madame,’ the waiter bows, ‘should you check a thing of such beauty?’

  She picks up the vase again, sniffing at the tiny bell-like flowers, ‘You know,’ she says, smiling at him, ‘I think maybe you’re right.’

  Rachel saws her calzone into bite size pieces but, as she lifts it to her mouth, the cheese stretches like chewing gum and she has to put her fork back on the plate and saw again until, she hopes, it is all untangled.

  ‘This tastes very nice but it’s difficult to eat.’

  Edward fishes in his jacket pocket, brings out a small brown book. He places it in front of his mother. She puts her knife and fork down at either side of her plate.

  ‘The Observer Book of Birds Eggs.’ She studies him over her glasses, flicks through the pages, ‘What a strange choice.’

  ‘I picked it up in a charity shop,’ he says. ‘Thought it might be better than getting you another book from the Library. I was looking through it and I thought how exquisite some of the egg markings were.’ He shrugs, ‘I don’t know, I just thought you might like it.’

  She looks up, frowning, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You know what struck me?’ He smiles. ‘The markings and colours of the eggs don’t have any logic.’

  ‘Why?’ she laughs, ‘Would you expect a Robin’s egg to be brown and red?’

  ‘Well, yes, something like that. I wonder how a cuckoo changes its egg so that it suits the foster nest?’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m curious.’

  Rachel takes a sip of her wine, tipping back her head as she savours it. Edward stares at her throat and the shadow under her chin. It is dusted with a bright yellow powder. He wants to lean over and with his napkin gently brush it away. But the gesture would be too intimate. He can’t ever remember being that intimate with his mother. It has also marked the neck of her white blouse. He leans forward. ‘Mother, you’ve got a yellow neck.’

  She puts down her knife and fork and, picking up her handbag, takes out her compact and snaps it open. Lifting her chin she surveys her neck. ‘You’re right, I have.’ She rubs at it with her serviette. ‘However did I do that? I know. It was those lilies.’ She laughs. ‘The florist getting her revenge.’

  ‘And serve you right.’

  Rachel snaps her compact shut, ‘Well, how strange!’ She looks perplexed.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks.

  ‘The very same thing happened at Claudette’s funeral. The solicitor gave me some lilies to take home, do you remember? Said they were going to waste and when I got home my neck and blouse, the same one,’ she says looking down, ‘were stained with yellow. How very strange.’

  Rachel clutches her new book in one hand and with the other holds the seat rail as the bus hurtles around the roundabout. She does wish the drivers would go slower. The bus comes to an abrupt stop outside the park and sits waiting, engine growling. If he had just gone at a steady pace, she thinks to herself, he wouldn’t now have to wait here.

  Down in the park the boats have all gone from the lake. A solitary duck disturbs the glass surface of the water, an arrow-like ripple following behind as it makes its way across the lake. She looks closer; a Mallard drake. She could look in her book, see what colour egg the female laid, if only she dare let go of the rail, or she could get off the bus and go and sit on a bench next to the lake. She pings the bell just as the driver has decided to lurch off again. He waits impatiently as she totters down the bus.

  Pale green or olive white, what an earth is olive white? Between eight and fourteen eggs in a nest of grass, vegetation or down, the duck usually covers the eggs with down before leaving the nest. The original eiderdown.

  She smiles to herself and, closing her eyes against the sun, listens to the sounds of traffic on the road above and the children screeching in the play-area. When she opens her eyes, she considers a blackbird in the tree, and wonders what colour egg it has. She consults the book: greenish-blue, finely speckled with warm brown. First olive white and now warm brown. She turns the page – Ringed Ousel eggs; blue-green blotched with rufous. What a man of strange and fancy words the author must be. And yet, for the Robin he has put … she flicks back through the pages … white speckled with red, not: white blotched with rufous. She flicks again. Now fascinated, she chuckles at the thought that Edward has got her going. She hadn’t told him about the girl visiting. She hadn’t wanted to. A white wagtail: eggs four to seven white or bluish-white thickly freckled with grey or grey-brown. ‘Grey freckles?’ When did anyone have grey freckles? And yet for the pied wagtail he has put whitish covered all over with grey speckles, the same egg, but a different description.

  Pied wagtails. How long is it since she saw a pied wagtail dancing, flicking through the dust and the puddles on the road that led up to her uncle’s farm; the dainty little speed run and then the hop and away out of danger from the farm cats. They were always there, even when she had gone to her uncle’s funeral they were still there, dancing, waiting, and would they be there now?

  She remembers the barn next to the generator, where her uncle kept his guns. He would come back there to skin his rab
bits, as deft as any fishmonger. She would watch him by the light from the kerosene lamp. Their secrets. Would they still be hidden there? Or would the walls have been plastered and scrubbed, the past hidden away?

  She flicks the pages again. Chaffinch: eggs: grey tinged with pink and brown blotches. That’s better, more logical. She must tell Edward when next she writes.

  Rachel watches a blackbird in the lilac tree. She holds the little brown book in her hand. Thank you, Edward, she thinks. Sometimes I realise you are my son, and not the cuckoo I often supposed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It had felt so good being asked to go to the studio, to become a part of something rather than always being on the periphery. How stupid of him. How naïve not to realise that she would expect more than he had ever considered.

  He props the wardrobe door open with a chair. The door has always swung closed for as long as he can remember, but it has never bothered him before. He undoes the belt of his dressing gown, a present from his Uncle Ruben; paisley silk in mauves and blues, the paisley teardrop etched in gold, a spattering in the centre. It catches the light from the window, highlighting the many hues and shades like the smooth cut of an opal.

  He studies himself in the mirror. His contorted chest, his thin legs, his genitals. He cups them in his hand, lifting them upwards. Redundant, except for that one dismal attempt and yet, as he lets them drop and surveys his reflection, if he were a normal man he would be proud of his manhood. He wouldn’t mind anyone seeing him naked. He could strut, shoulders back, his whole body on display like a cock bird. He stands feet apart, watching in the mirror as his genitals swing free.

  Why should he be embarrassed about showing them? They are no different from any other mans. He tries to study his back in the mirror but he cannot turn his neck far enough to see. He’d been surprised by Angela asking him to model but, well, maybe he should take it as a compliment. Maybe it had never entered her head that he would be so outraged; that he wouldn’t just assume that she would expect him to model naked. For how many years had he longed to be a part of life and now, here was this strange girl – he thinks of her snow dome analogy and smiles – wanting to include him.

  How different his life could have been. He could have explored the side of life that he had purposely shut down. He could have followed his dreams, with Uncle Ruben’s help, and become an archaeologist. He could have spent his days with like-minded people, delving into the secrets of past generations. He could have bought his own house, instead of ending up lodging in this one room. He sees now how his life has become dusty, hollow; a life fit to mirror his job in the library. He pulls his robe around him and goes to stand by the window. A bus, its engine running, is standing at the bus stop. The driver is reading a paper, a hot drink steaming the window in front of where he sits. A cup of tea, one sugar, he decides. He hates Sunday afternoons.

  He couldn’t do it, not in a million years. He bangs his clenched fists on the windowsill, not in a million years. But an old echo still resonates: ‘You should always face up to your fears. You cannot realise who you are unless you do.’ Oh, how glibly Uncle Ruben had given his advice. How could he know what Edward had to endure? What his fears were? Life, that was Edward’s fear. But that was not strictly true. He had tried to face up to life, but it had always hit back. If he had been a bird he would have been pushed out of the nest, a scrawny fledgling eaten by a cat. Sometimes nature made sense, but could a mother bird push her chick from the nest if it were her fault that his bones were twisted and crooked?

  She couldn’t even bring herself to tell him that Angela had been to visit. That she now had the portrait. Why in God’s name did she have to hoard secrets like a squirrel hoards nuts?

  He shudders. How had Angela the gall to ask him? Always, in life, just as he thought he saw a door of opportunity opening, it slammed shut in his face.

  ‘If I wanted to draw a tree I wouldn’t find the straightest tallest one would I?’ It was a good analogy, or so he had thought at the time. But what did it mean, how did she see him. What was a normal tree, an uninteresting tree? Did she see him as interesting, or a freak of nature? Anyway, whatever she thought, it was irrelevant. How could she possibly expect him to model naked? She had no comprehension of what she was asking. None! He had looked into her eyes. No fear, just a frankness, an honesty that he had never encountered before. She was very puzzling. He grasps the lapels of his dressing gown and pulls them together, imagining himself standing there before her naked in the studio, her with a drawing board in her hand. Would she look, then recoil and turn away? Is that why he is so afraid of standing naked in front of this girl?

  ‘After the initial shyness, you’ll find it really natural.’

  He shakes his head; she was so young, so thoughtless, so lovely. Could he do it? Let her hold all that power? Stand there in all his vulnerability, her noting his every intimacy? Though week by week, as she built her portfolio, she would become more and more dependent upon him. It could take weeks, months, several months, she’d said. Sitting with her in the sunlit studio every Saturday afternoon for months was so tempting, and yet he couldn’t, he didn’t have that kind of courage. He so wished he had, but he just didn’t, and what would his mother say? But then, he would have his own secret. One that his mother, even in her wildest dreams, could not imagine. He smiles suddenly, in spite of himself. She would be furious.

  ‘You young people, why do you revere the grotesque?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The yellow of the wild primrose and the trumpet of the daffodil were just showing. Rachel, aged eleven, was staying with her uncle and aunt on their farm. Her mother was nearing her confinement and had wanted Rachel out of the way.

  Her aunt had needed to go shopping to the local town, six miles away, and Rachel thought she would be left behind to take charge of Robert, her four-year old cousin and their only child. But her aunt, who had never shown that much interest in her before, decided to take Rachel with her. ‘She has a good eye for clothes, even at her age. It must be the Jewish blood that flows in her veins. She can help me select some cloth for my new summer frock.’ They hurried off to catch the train.

  Chapman’s Drapers was a shop as grand as a country house. Rachel was mesmerised by a gilt-framed picture of cherubs floating on clouds that hung on the wall above the stairs.

  ‘Choose some fabrics that take your fancy and I’ll roll them out for you so you can get a better look,’ the woman with the tape around her neck suggested.

  Her aunt chose a cloth patterned with large bunches of poppies. Rachel chose one with a white background, speckled with little sprays of cornflowers. The woman thumped the rolls out onto the counter.

  ‘Which one do you think?’ Rachel’s aunt asked the assistant.

  ‘I think you should go for the cornflowers – a bit classier.’

  ‘There, I said you had a good eye,’ her aunt exclaimed, patting Rachel on the shoulder. ‘Jewish blood, shame the family won’t accept my Robert has Jewish blood.’

  Years later, when they were clearing the house after her uncle’s funeral, Rachel found that cloth, still wrapped in the same white paper bag.

  When they’d returned from shopping, Uncle Jack was milking the cows. Robert was nowhere to be found. Uncle Jack told them not to fuss, that he would be around somewhere, probably poking a stick into the drain to torment the wild cats.

  As evening began to draw in and Robert had still not appeared, Uncle Jack sought the help of his neighbours. They searched until dark and then went out again with Tilley lamps. From her bedroom window Rachel saw them bobbing up and down in the field, filtering the orchard, until finally gathering around the pond.

  The edge of the pond was one of Rachel’s favourite places. She’d loved to perch on the bank, hidden from the farm. She could still hear all the farmyard noises from there, the smell of diesel that leaked from the fuel tank and the lemon mint that grew around it. Built into the wall from where the water flowed into the pond, was a
secret well. Rachel liked to think that she was the only one who knew of its existence. The water was icy cold, clear to the bottom and contained by a single slab of slate. Around the upper arch, moss and pennywort grew.

  Rachel heard her aunt let out a scream, and knew that Robert was found.

  Next morning, the postman cycled up with a letter from Rachel’s father. She had a baby brother – Ruben. Her uncle was in the cowshed milking, his face buried into the haunch of a cow, his shoulders heaving. Rachel went upstairs and packed her bag. She could hear her aunt’s sobs coming from the parlour.

  She left a note and asked a neighbour to take her to the station. She caught the next train back to Leeds, returning to the back-to-back terrace that was her home, and her new brother.

  On her next visit to the farm she’d found the pond turned into a waterlogged ditch. They had drained it whilst looking for Robert’s body. Uncle Jack had broken the wall that contained it. The water had swollen the stream that ran through the pig field. The rush of water must have disturbed the layers of mud because Rachel could now see the stones at the bottom.

  The ditch remained, becoming overgrown with bulrushes and irises, flowering in clumps of yellow and purple. Rachel would pick some for her aunt, waggling the tough stems back and forth until they broke. The picked irises didn’t last long. They would crisp, curl and fade to grey. The timbers of the dinghy which her uncle used to row lay rotting, its paint peeled away. The oars still perched ready for the rower.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the sculpture room, a young girl is chipping away at the head of a stone bust. She looks up and smiles as Edward enters. He hesitates, was this such a good idea? He could still leave. He glances over at the girl, she has returned to her task, her face inscrutable. All these artists, he thinks, they’re all the same. Totally oblivious of others, totally involved in their work, but, wasn’t he glad of this? Angela would never have had the courage to ask him otherwise. She would have seen how inappropriate it was. She would have seen him as other people did, treated him with kid gloves.