The China Bird Read online

  They were waiting to be seated for lunch. Edward had ordered Rachel a glass of white wine and she was holding it up to the light coming through the window behind her,

  ‘What is it, Edward?’ she’d asked.

  ‘What?’ He shook his head.

  She looked straight at him then, ‘You seem, well … dejected.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Is it this Tessa woman?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, surprised by his mother’s perception.

  ‘Don’t you love her?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t,’ he said, realising for the first time that he had never considered this.

  ‘Then why have you got engaged to her?’

  ‘It’s what she wanted.’

  ‘Does it make you happy?’

  ‘No, Mother, it doesn’t.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to tell her.’

  ‘But I can’t. I haven’t got the courage. I’ve tried several times to break it off, but it’s like my head thinks one thing, and then I hear myself saying something totally different.’

  ‘Write her a letter then.’

  ‘But that’s the coward’s way out.’

  ‘Maybe. But it is a way out.’

  Edward looked up at his mother who was still peering into her wine glass. He noticed the flap of putty coloured skin that hung from her underarm.

  ‘Write to her. Tell her you don’t love her. She’ll not bother you again. A woman has no defence against such honesty.’

  He had written. And then … silence. Wonderful, blissful, silence that filled all the voids in his life that she had tried so hard to fill.

  Edward is just climbing the library steps when the rain begins. He must write to his mother, he thinks, and arrange another lunchtime meeting. He stands in the doorway and watches the precipitation. He loves the rain. Sometimes he wishes it would always rain. Then he could just get on with his everyday life and never have to think whether he should be out in the fresh air or not. He could just sit reading. All day, every day.

  When he was a child, his father made him go out to play whenever it was fine. It irritated him to see his son reading a book. The worst days were those when it had been raining all day and then, at about four o’clock, just as he was really settling down with a book, out would come the sun and he would be thrown into the street to be savaged by Paul O’Grady and Andrew Winters. Edward felt it would have been better if he’d gone out to play when it was raining. At least then he would have enjoyed the rain coursing down his neck, splashing in the puddles and, best of all, the excitement of the thunderstorm and the strange, green, tension in the air. Andrew Winters use to call him a wimp, but Edward never saw him playing out when there was a thunderstorm.

  Edward sees him sometimes. He doesn’t think that Andrew recognises him, or at least he doesn’t acknowledge him if he does. He works for the council, digging holes in roads. Edward can’t begin to imagine the misery of such a job, the mind numbing noise of the drill, the cold in winter, the heat in summer, limping from one tea break to the next and that fusty taste of thermos tea. He’s felt like that himself sometimes, like a drone, especially when he was with Tessa. There had been no part of his life that he’d felt was his own.

  Edward often wondered why Tessa had chosen him. Did she think he would be grateful? That there would be no risk of him refusing her proposal? By now she’d probably latched on to someone else.

  One night she had come to his lodgings, determined, as he found out later, to have sex. It was the only time. She must have planned it earlier. He didn’t know how she knew Mrs Ingram would be out. She went to the toilet and when she came back she was stark naked.

  Edward was so shocked he just stared. He’d never seen a naked woman in the flesh before. Her breasts were quite beautiful; her nipples like the rubber ends of pencils; the area around them a darkened pink. But her skin was mottled and blotchy, and two rings of overlapping fat encircled her belly. He’d wondered why there were two rolls and not just one large one.

  She’d seated herself next to him on the sofa, taken his hand and then tried to kiss him on the mouth. It all felt very strange. He’d noticed that there were cat hairs on Mrs Ingram’s chair.

  ‘Shall we go upstairs?’ She’d said. ‘I’m getting cold down here. Don’t worry, I’ve brought some Durex.’

  He wanted to say, ‘But what if Mrs Ingram comes back?’ But he hadn’t. He’d just followed her upstairs and allowed her to remove his trousers like he was still a little boy. There had been a space, an absence of intimacy between them, which made it feel like he was at the doctors, especially when she tried to give him an erection.

  It hadn’t worked and they went back downstairs, thankfully before Mrs Ingram returned from bingo. He shuddered to think of the mileage she would have got out of that. Hanky-panky! That’s what she’d have called it. Little did she know.

  He shakes his head to clear the cobwebs, and makes his way back down into the archives.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Angela turns over in bed. She wishes now that she had not opened the window in the middle of the night. The noise of the traffic is disturbing her. It is raining and the water splashing off the tyres makes a low swishing noise. She is replaying in her head the conversation she had with Jenny, another waitress at the restaurant.

  When she’d come on duty that day, Jenny had handed her the sketch of Edward. Angela had been puzzled as to how Jenny should have come by it.

  ‘An ol’ bloke asked me to give it to you. He’d got sort of a hunched back and he walked with a stick.’

  ‘That’s a bit rude, calling him a hunchback.’ Angela had felt suddenly defensive of Edward. ‘He is a human being you know.’

  ‘Sor-ry. For Christ’s sake, I was only trying to help.’ She’d turned away. ‘Take your own messages in future.’

  Angela grabbed her arm. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Just tell me what happened, please. Was he angry?’

  ‘No.’ Jenny looked at her strangely. ‘Why should he be? He was fine, pleasant as pie. He came in, had a coffee and a sandwich, then he asked me to give you that.’

  She nodded at the sketch that Angela had refolded, ‘I told him you’d just arrived but he said he couldn’t wait.’

  Throughout her shift, Angela puzzled over the return of the sketch. She examined the paper to see if he’d written a note, nothing. Did it mean he wanted to carry on or not?

  She leans out of bed, eyes still closed, and picks up the clock from the floor. It is 12:30. She is supposed to meet him at 1 p.m.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit! I was going to be early today in case he turned up. Jesus!’ She sits on the edge of her bed and drags her hair to the top of her head, drawing it back from her forehead. She observes herself in the mirror. The black dye is fading. She’ll have to give it another rinse … when she’s got time.

  She picks up an ethnic-style skirt from the floor and steps into it. On the back of the chair is a woolly jumper, with a tee shirt still inside. She slips it over her head and quickly peruses herself in the mirror. The jumper, which she got from Oxfam, has become matted and all the colours have blurred together. The sleeves have also shrunk. She tugs at them but to no avail. She grabs her bag and slips her feet into her unlaced boots.

  Angela has just missed her bus. She knows what her gran would say if she could see her now. ‘If you’d done those laces up properly, you could have run for the bus.’

  She grits her teeth. Why do bus drivers have to be so nasty? He’d seen her, waited until the last minute and then driven off.

  A blind man at the bus stop moves forward. He can hear a bus and sure enough, around the corner comes a green one. When they reach the next set of traffic lights, one car has run into another. The car behind has only slightly dented the bumper of the car in front but the drivers are arguing in the middle of the road as if it’s a major incident. The bus driver leans his elbows on the steering wheel and watches the performance. Should she get off and walk? She is not g
oing to mess it up this time. She will do whatever he wants: be naked, bring him a box of chocolates every week, anything to keep him sweet.

  Angela can hear her gran’s voice again,

  ‘If you had water in your head, there’d be steam coming out your ears.’

  Why does everything go wrong when she’s in a hurry? She gets off the bus and runs as fast as she can in her unlaced boots, still gritting her teeth.

  Her watch says 1:10 p.m. ‘Please Edward, be there.’ She comes round the corner. He is not waiting outside the door. She slows down. Shit! What if she’s missed him, but what if he never intended to come? She leans against the door trying to get her breath. It’s then that she sees him, thank God. He is standing in the middle of the small curved footbridge that crosses the river and he is looking down into the water.

  She walks over and stands by his side. ‘I’m really sorry I’m late.’

  He looks up and, to her surprise, she sees his face soften.

  Angela groans and puts her head in her hands, ‘I’ve no excuse. I slept in. Woke up at 12.30. Jumped out of bed, threw some clothes on and came straight here. And of course, I had to miss a bus, and when I did get one, there was a traffic jam. So that’s why I’m so bloody late.’ She stops for breath.

  ‘Yes, you do look a little dishevelled.’ He looks her up and down. ‘Tell me, what are you late for?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t know we’d arranged to meet today.’

  He is looking down into the water, but she can see just the corner of his mouth twitching.

  ‘Good job I interpreted your weird message correctly then, eh?’

  He looks up and laughs, ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Angela bows her head and realises how at ease she feels with this man, ‘Thanks for waiting.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ She nudges his shoulder, and they stand looking down into the water. Under the road-bridge further up, some ducks are feeding on chunks of white bread.

  ‘Do you still want me to,’ Angela pauses, ‘I mean, get undressed too?’

  He searches her face and then shrugs, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she laughs. ‘Play it back into my court. Well if that’s what it takes, then I’ll go along with it.’

  He nods. ‘It really means that much, me modelling for you?’

  ‘Christ, how many times do I have to tell you? And besides,’ she bites the inside of her cheek. ‘Bastard-features said something to me the other day that got me thinking.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Alex. He said, or words to the effect, that if you really want to draw someone well, you also have to learn to be a model. Not that I don’t think he’s got ulterior motives,’ she mutters.

  ‘And me? Do you think I’ve got ulterior motives?’

  ‘No, of course not. Why should you?’

  He laughs, as though in disbelief, ‘I suppose it’s escaped your notice that I also happen to be a man.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she says crossly, ‘You’re not a creep like him.’

  ‘So, on that note, shall we go in and get started, or shall we see if we can get a coffee on the front and discuss the matter further?’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The house was quiet. Rachel’s aunt had gone to bed. Her uncle was still out rabbiting. Picking up the enamel candleholder, Rachel tiptoed along the polished floorboards of the landing and up the stairs to the attic. The moonlight shone in through the skylight. Under the eaves she could see the black form of the trunk, her treasure trunk. She put her fingertips on the edge of the lid and tried to lift it. It didn’t move. She placed the candleholder on the floor and used both hands to tug at the lid. Still it would not open. She picked up the candle. A padlock had been secured around the latch.

  She sat down on the floor, pulled her knees up to her chest and shivered, rocking gently back and forth. What was she to do? Her head said one thing, her heart another. For the necklace, she would go to meet her uncle in the barn, let him ‘service her’, as he called it. But it was not only for the necklace. She wanted again to feel the sensations she’d felt that afternoon, to see if the feelings became stronger, more intense; an unbearable electric current feeding through every nerve end.

  Rachel put her hands inside her nightdress and held her breasts in the same way her uncle had. They were surprisingly heavy, the flesh yielding to the shape of her hand. All these years, and she never once thought, until now at nineteen, to hold them that way. She moved her hands down and pressed hard with her knuckles into her belly, rocking back and forth. Opening her legs, she fondled for the first time in her life what her mother called her ‘secret place’. She tugged at the slippery flesh, trying to ease away the strange, aching sensation.

  Rachel took an old paisley dressing gown from the hook at the back of her bedroom door and blowing out her candle went quietly down the uncarpeted stairs. The slate of the kitchen floor was cold on her feet. The mother cat lay asleep on her aunt’s chair by the Rayburn. The moonlight caught the cutlery laid out on the table for breakfast. At the back door, she slipped her feet into her aunt’s Wellington boots. As she walked across the yard, the rims scratched against her bare calves.

  ‘You came, then.’ He didn’t lift his head. He was bent over a kerosene lamp, his dog sitting patiently by his feet.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  He held up a limp rabbit. Rachel watched as he laid it on the bench, its white belly slashed from head to toe. He peeled back the fur, paring with his sharp knife. The flesh was a pale pink, little blood, mostly just flesh sculpted around delicate bones.

  ‘Why no blood?’ she enquired.

  ‘I hang ‘em up to drain first. It’s just the carcass left now.’

  He picked up an old rag, wiped his hands and turned, catching at her hand as he did so. He nodded towards the straw in the corner. The collie bitch whimpered.

  ‘My! You’re a fine sight in your wellies and night-dress.’

  ‘Uncle?’

  ‘Shush, sit down.’

  He pulled off her Wellington boots, first one and then the other.

  Rachel’s aunt put her head round the bedroom door, ‘Come on Rachel, get up, what a sleepyhead you are this morning.’

  Rachel awoke with a start. ‘Coming,’ she mumbled.

  She stretched, clawing her toes round the metal bedstead. She placed her feet on the pink linoleum, stood up and lifted her nightdress over her head, stretching full length as she did so. She caught sight of her small, slightly rounded belly in the dressing table mirror and, breathing in, pressed her hands hard against it. She bent over and peeled herself apart; looked over her shoulder, staring, fascinated, for the first time at her raw pink flesh. The hair around it was encrusted with blood.

  ‘Rachel!’ Her aunt shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

  Her uncle was seated at the breakfast table; half a fried egg lifted to his lips.

  He put it into his mouth and nodded.

  ‘Morning, Uncle.’

  Her aunt was placing a bowl in the Rayburn. ‘Rachel, you are a slow coach this morning. Have you forgotten it’s washday? Now hurry up. I want you to set up the mangle.’

  ‘Let the girl eat her breakfast in peace, for God’s sake.’

  ‘There’s a letter for you,’ said her aunt, fishing into her apron pocket. ‘Think it’s from your mother.’

  Rachel used her clean knife to slit the pale blue envelope

  23 Green Mount St,

  Leeds,

  May 27th 1943

  Dear Rachel,

  Just a short note to say that we expect you home on Friday the 3rd. Catch the 10 o’clock train. I want you to help spring clean before you go back to work on the Monday. Your father is very busy making outfits in time for Whitsuntide.

  I hope you have been a good girl and helping your aunt, and not had your nose buried in a book at every op
portunity.

  Give my best wishes to your aunt and uncle. I hope they are in good health.

  Love,

  Mother

  Rachel waited for the train. The brightly coloured posters in the waiting room showed happy smiling families off to the coast, the children with bucket and spade. The colours were so bright they gave the scenes a strangely nostalgic feel. Like a mid-day August sun that gives little shadow.

  The door opened. It was her uncle. He took off his cap. ‘Here lass, I’ve brought you these. Take good care of them now and keep them from your mother’s prying eyes.’

  Rachel removed her hat and shook out her black hair. She took the pouch from her uncle’s hands and pulled open the drawstring neck.

  Inside, coiled like a snake, were the pewter pearls.

  He winked, and was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Edward goes behind the screen and hooks his stick over the frame. Angela begins to undo the pearlised buttons on her black cardigan. She swallows hard, and wonders why, last week, standing on the bridge over the river, she had agreed to this bizarre arrangement. She peels off her clingy trousers and hesitates, thinking for a moment to keep her knickers on, then slips them off and hides them under her trousers. She sits down quickly before Edward comes out from behind the screen. She’d thought the session with Felicity and Alex would have made her feel more relaxed, but this feels different. She waits, remembering what he had said last time about taking a long time to get undressed. He must be nearly finished. She tries to detect his shadow behind the screen. He seems to be seated, ‘Are you okay behind there?’

  She hears the chair scraping back, him standing up, his voice: ‘Are you ready?’

  She shakes her head in disbelief. He is checking to see if she has kept her part of the bargain. ‘Yes. I’ve been ready ages.’