Feather Boy (12 page)

“Why? Because of David Sorrel?”

“Maybe.”

“What are you afraid of, Niker?”

“Me? I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Well, push off then.” I begin to remove my donkey jacket. “Nightie, night, Niker. Oh – and shut the door, will you?”

Grudgingly, he retreats. “I’ll be listening,” he says. “If you go anywhere near that window…”

“Yes. Yes.”

He doesn’t shut the door, but the configuration of the rooms is such that, I know, even with both doors wide open, he will not be able to see the star hole window.

I have plenty of time so I wait. Take a sip of water and open one of the bags of crisps. They are crushed,
as expected, and I crush them some more, so Niker will think I’m eating. I even wait after I hear the zip of his sleeping bag. Then, just as I think he may be drifting off, he suddenly shouts across the landing: “Did you bring a good book?”

“No, I got the telly,” I call back.

“This mattress is disgusting. It’s got bird shit on it.”

“Well, don’t go on. Everyone will want it.”

“Fancy a chat? You know, person to person? This long-distance stuff can get expensive.”

“No thanks.” I yawn. “I’m on the way out. Just going to tidy up my three-course dinner, then it’s bed byes for me. Curtains.”

“Curtains?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Norbert?”

“Yeah?”

He leaves the sort of pause that my mum leaves before she says “I love you”.

Niker says: “There’s a piece of piping in my sleeping bag.”

“Rusty piping?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I’ve got the same. I think it must be a free sample.”

“Norbert?”

“Yes?”

“Why aren’t you funny at school?”

“Why aren’t you nice at school?”

“Sure you don’t need me to join you in the master bedroom?”

“Sure. Night, Niker.”

He shuts up after that. I think about waiting until I can hear him snore. But if he doesn’t snore that could be a long time. So I give it about five minutes and then I pick a stealthy way across the bare floorboards. Of course one of them creaks, but Niker either doesn’t hear or doesn’t react. Perhaps he’s getting used to the noises the house makes. Perhaps he really is asleep. Please let him be asleep.

And please let there be no clouds. I need the sky to be clear. I need… Yes! I arrive at the window and there it is again. My perfect, magnetic moon. You can see why tides follow the moon. I feel the pull myself, the power of that huge planet hanging there, just beyond the broken glass. The latch of the window is old-fashioned, an arm of metal, heavy, pierced like a belt and painted cream. I lift it and know at once that the window is quite free. It will open with the gentlest of pushes.

I push.

And that’s when the heavens come into the room, or I go out of it. The moon, the stars, the night wind, the vault of the sky. I inhabit it all and it inhabits me. The freedom, the vastness, the power. And also the beauty. And of course I’m not going to jump. I know that I cannot fly. Not with wings anyway. But I can fly, yes. Can stand bold at the top of Chance House because I have walked up each step of my fear and arrived here. Twice. And that gives the power. Power over myself and power over Niker. Who is still afraid. I breathe deep, inhaling and exhaling the possibilities of this night and, just for a moment, I feel gigantic. I feel capable of anything.

“No!” Niker screams from the door. “Don’t do it!” He sprints across the room and rugby-tackles me to the ground.

“Oh no, no – I don’t believe it!” His hands are on the back of my sweatshirt. “What have you done! What is this!” he yells.

“Tomato sauce,” I say, or rather I mumble as my face is squashed to the floor.

“It’s blood,” he says. “It’s the shape of a star!”

“Trust me,” I say, spitting. “It’s tomato sauce.
Courtesy of one Mr Deep-Fat, Vinney’s Chip Shop. I’ll tell you about it some other time. Now, do you think I could get up, please?”

He lets me go and then jumps up himself, pulls shut the window and stands guard, blocking the sky.

“What do you think you were doing?” he demands.

I can’t tell him I was feeling gigantic, so I just say: “None of your business.”

“If you fall out,” he says, “they’ll blame me. They’ll think I pushed you.”

“Oh,” I say, “is that what’s bothering you? Mind you, who’d know? From my position on the concrete, I wouldn’t be doing a lot of talking.”

“This is not a joking matter.”

“Isn’t it? I thought everything was a joke with you. Shane Perkiss, Jon Pinkman…”

“What have they got to do with anything?”

“They have to do with – grapes.” And, for the first time, when I say the word “grapes”, I do not feel sick.

“I don’t trust you,” says Niker.

“You don’t trust me!” Very slowly I get up and cross to where my backpack is. I get out an apple. I also get out a penknife.

“Either you sleep in my room,” he says, “or I sleep here.”

I cut the apple in half. “I’m not shifting.”

“Right then, I’ll get my gear. And you don’t move. You stay right where you are.” He’s out of the room for less than a minute, but I still have time to prepare eight perfect crescents of apple.

He lays his sleeping bag so close to mine they are almost touching. He must be lonely as well as frightened.

“Apple?”

“No thanks.”

“Oh – go on.”

He takes a piece. Looks at me. Bites. “Yeuch.”

“It doesn’t taste good?”

“It’s revolting.”

“Oh – perhaps that was the bit I wiped my bum with.”

He gags and spits.

Now, I know it’s not a very pleasant thing to say and it also isn’t true. But I say it because of the Grape Incident. This is what happened. Niker took me and Pinky and Perky into The Dog Leg. They were both new boys, Jon Pinkman and Shane Perkiss, and they
wanted to belong, and that meant being on Niker’s team. So they did what he asked. And I did it too. Although for me the reason was fear.

“It’s only a game,” he said. “A dare. This is how you play…”

Each of us was given a grape, a fat green grape. He told us to put it between the cheeks of our bum. And we did. Then there was to be a crawling race. From the first bend in The Dog Leg to the second. Niker had a whistle. He blew it. The person who came last in the race had to eat the grapes. I came last.

Pinky said then, “Surely it’s a joke?”

And Niker said, “No.” It was a test, an initiation. We’d agreed to take part so we had to abide by the rules. He pushed those grapes into my mouth himself.

“Water?” I offer him now. He didn’t offer me any water in The Dog Leg.

He takes the water and swills out his mouth.

“Do you want me to say ‘sorry’?” he asks.

“What for?”

“Sorry,” he says and then he says, “Robert.”

And of course I should be glad. Because I have dreamed of this moment, rehearsed it a thousand impossible times in my mind: Jonathan Niker
apologising. Jonathan Niker saying sorry to me. But my victory is hollow, sad even. There’s something obscene about Niker with his sleeping bag so pathetically close to mine and his head bowed. He looks crushed. Small.

“Forget it,” I say. And then, after a moment, “No, don’t forget it. Because I won’t. I’ll never forget what you did, Niker.” He still looks small. “But don’t worry about the apple. It was just one of a really weird bunch Mum got cheap at the market. Want a crisp?”

“No thanks.”

He gets into his sleeping bag and turns away from me. I imagine it will be a long time before he sleeps. But it isn’t. Almost immediately he falls into a profound slumber. When the rhythms of his body turn him towards me once again, he looks like a baby. Curled up and peaceful and utterly innocent.

I’m tired now myself. At least my body is tired, exhausted even. But my brain will not let me rest. There is still the matter of David Sorrel. It was David who brought me here, who allowed me, for probably the first time in my life, to feel powerful. And David who I need to repay. I need to know what really happened to him and I need to give something back
to Mrs Sorrel, for she has kept her part of the bargain. She said there was wisdom in this room and there is. But there is obviously something else. Something that she still seeks and I must find. But what? What am I supposed to return to her? I get up and begin to pace. The floor creaks but it neither worries me nor wakes Niker. In fact, after a while, I find it comforting, something predictable, something known.

I don’t know how many circuits of the room I make. Maybe fifteen. Maybe twenty. I look in and between things. I push my nails in the dirt cracks of floorboards. I peel off pieces of wallpaper to reveal nothing but dusty plaster. The ducks observe me, unimpressed. There is nothing here. Nothing physical anyhow. Except a couple of feathers. Three feathers to be precise: small, greyish, unremarkable. Pigeon feathers probably, dropped by some bird who came to through the hole in the glass to shelter here a night. Perhaps the same bird, or birds, who shat on Niker’s mattress. Not objects likely to radically alter a person’s life. But I slip them in my pocket anyway. Then I return to my pacing. When I can walk no more I climb into my sleeping bag. I toss, I turn. I listen to the measured sound of Niker’s breathing. Typical. I cannot imagine how, with his bruised body, he is sleeping on this hard, hard floor. But he is sleeping and I am awake. It’s because I can’t stop thinking and this is what it all comes down to: I wanted the Top Floor Flat, Chance House to be the end of things, but now I have to accept it’s only the beginning.

I’d like to tell you that, after spending the night in Chance House, I was never frightened of anything – or anyone – again. Especially not Niker. But that wouldn’t be true. I think fear can become a habit. And I’d been afraid of Niker for so long, it had become as natural to me as breathing.

So when, the following morning, Niker and I stand on the concrete outside the kitchen of Chance House and he says, with his face very close to mine: “What happened in there was private. Just between the two of us. Understand?” I do understand. It isn’t a threat of the old sort – the one where the tile shard would have been in my throat. But it is, nevertheless, a threat, a statement about the fragility of our new relationship. The tile
shard will remain in his pocket, but only if I play the game by his rules.

The first test of the new status quo comes at school on Monday morning.

“Well,” says Kate, “are there ducks or aren’t there ducks?”

Niker says: “There are ducks.”

And I add, without so much as a blink: “Mrs Sorrel mentioned the duck paper, when we were talking about home furnishings. The sort of things that were fashionable in her day compared with what we have now.” Then I smile a goofy smile.

Kate raises an eyebrow. She swings suspicious eyes from Niker’s face to mine.

Niker grins. Not a goofy grin. A huge, triumphant grin.

“Norbert!” Kate exclaims, exasperated.

And OK – it makes me miserable. But not that miserable. You see, deep down, I’m not sure that this is Norbert lying on the floor and allowing himself to be tramped on all over again. It occurs to me that maybe this is Robert speaking. Robert saying what he’s saying to protect the weaker party. And that weaker party is Niker.

Wesley overhears the conversation.

“You stayed in dat spooky, spooky place?” he says, incredulous.

“Got it in one, Weasel,” says Niker.

“And you didn’t go no stir-crazy scaredy-cat?”

“No,” Niker says, “I did not go no stir-crazy scaredy-cat. Generally speaking, I’m not the scaredy-cat type. Am I Norbert?”

“No,” I say.

Letting him get away with this is less forgivable. Because he was scared that night. Scared of the dark, scared of sleeping by himself, just plain scared. But if I challenge him, who would believe me? Certainly not Wesley. After a while, I barely believe myself. No matter how many times I go over it in my mind, I can’t identify the one moment where I can point the finger and say: “It was then, there, that’s when Niker freaked, lost it completely.” Because you see, when the batteries died, he could just have been angry with me, just as he could have been genuinely concerned about me sleeping alone. But if things shift in my mind, they don’t in Niker’s. He was right about the ducks. He was not scared. If you say things loud enough and long enough they take on a life of their own. Or that’s
what I find, listening to Niker, hero of Chance House.

But none of this matters when it comes to Wednesday. On Wednesday we return to the Mayfield Rest Home. All the Elders are gathered in the lounge. All that is, except Edith Sorrel. Catherine begins by saying how delighted she is with the work that everyone is making. I who have made no work, hide behind a plastic palm tree. Catherine smiles, she expects to begin assembling some of the pieces on to the triptych boards next week. In the meanwhile she wants to tell a story. A story told to the Prince, to try and make him throw off his curse of silence.

“There was once a man…” she begins.

It is time for me to slip out. I turn as if I was heading for the toilet and then double back on myself and make for Mrs Sorrel’s room. I feel a strange elation. At last I have something to report. And even if I’m not bearing the treasure Mrs Sorrel might have hoped for, I have fulfilled my promise. I have been to the Top Floor Flat, Chance House.

As I put my hand on her door handle I hear the pad of feet behind me. Matron’s hand closes over mine.

“You can’t go in there,” she says.

“I’m Robert,” I say, “I’m on the project.”

“Even so,” says Matron.

“But Mrs Sorrel’s my Elder. I’m making work with her. We’re working together.”

“Not today you’re not,” says Matron. “I’m sorry.”

This seems, for Matron, to be the end of the discussion. She smiles. I think quickly: choice one, slink away and creep back when she’s not looking; choice two, face it out right now.

“Why?” I say, drawing myself up to my full height, which is somewhere near her shoulder. “Why can’t I go in?”

Matron tsks. “Mrs Sorrel is resting.”

“She was resting last week. I was very quiet. I didn’t wake her. But when she woke up herself, she was glad I was there. She likes me being there.”

“This week’s different,” says Matron. “Mrs Sorrel is ill.”

I haven’t taken my hand from the door handle. I tighten my grip. The twist is involuntary, just my wrist twitching, but she hears the click of the catch.

“Come with me this minute,” she says and she almost pushes me down the corridor into her office. She shuts the door.

“Now young man,” she says. “You are going to be off this project if you don’t respect the rights of my patients. I repeat, Mrs Sorrel is ill. She needs to rest. She cannot make any work. I’m sorry.”

“She was ill last week,” I counter. “Her husband told me she’s been ill for ages.”

“Not this ill,” says Matron emphatically.

“What ill?” I ask.

Matron pauses. When a person is talking about illness and they don’t look you in the eye, my mum says it’s always cancer. “Is it cancer?” I ask.

“You’re a very bold boy,” says Matron.

“It’s important,” I say.

“To whom?”

“To me.” And when I say it I realise it’s true. Edith Sorrel is not some batty old woman in an old people’s home. Edith Sorrel is part of my life. “Is she going to die?” I ask.

Matron looks at me. “Yes,” she says. And then she smiles. “But we’re all going to die someday, aren’t we, Robert?”

“Thanks. Can I go now?”

“Yes, but not to Mrs Sorrel’s room.”

“Understood,” I say. I go out, close the door and go
straight to Mrs Sorrel’s room. One silent twist and I’m in.

They have moved Mrs Sorrel’s bed into the middle of the room. Later Ernest tells me it’s so the staff can lift her more easily, turn her. She looks marooned in the bed, pale and drawn and in the wrong place. As though she were some tiny bird who should be out flying round a summer garden but got caught short by winter.

“Mrs Sorrel,” I call softly. “It’s me. Robert.”

“Robert,” she says, but her eyes don’t open. “Robert.”

“Matron says I can’t talk to you. Can I talk to you, Mrs Sorrel?”

“I don’t like Matron,” says Edith.

“I don’t like her either.”

“Well, that’s that then.” Edith Sorrel opens her eyes. She peers. “Lift me up,” she commands.

I dither. I feel strong enough to lift her, but I don’t dare because she looks so fragile. I fear to break her.

“Come on,” she says, “pillows!” She begins struggling. So I put my arm behind her and try to get her into a more upright position. With her own efforts, and a cushion from the chair, we manage some sort of sitting. As she moves pain passes over her face, but she says nothing.

“Come nearer.”

I obey.

She scrutinises my face. “You’re different,” she says.

“No, no, it’s just me. Robert.”

“You’ve got bigger.”

“Maybe you’ve got smaller,” I joke.

“No,” she says. “Not your height. You’re bigger inside. You’ve been, haven’t you? I can see it in your eyes. You’ve been there. Top Floor Flat, Chance House. You’ve done it!”

“Yes.”

“You’re such an amazing boy. You’re a brave, brave boy. I knew you could do it. I knew it.”

“But there’s nothing there,” I say quickly. “I looked and looked. I spent the night there. But there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Unless you count a broken window, some duck wallpaper and a bunch of feathers.”

“Feathers?” she says.

“Only pigeon feathers. Nothing special.”

“Show me.”

I take the three feathers from my trouser pocket. As well as being grey and scrubby, they are now squashed. She takes them in her bony fingers, begins a rhythmic smoothing of the flights.

“Once,” she begins out of nowhere, “there was a man who dreamed of Firebirds. One midsummer day, as he rested from his labours in the forest, a beautiful creature came down from the sky. It was hot and, needing to bathe, she slipped off her coat of golden feathers and dived, naked, into the forest pool. The man thought he had never seen a more beautiful woman in all his life. And, as she swam, he took her coat of golden feathers and hid it. When she emerged from the pool she was distraught at the loss. But the man said, ‘Come with me. I will give you shelter.’

“Knowing she could not fly away, the woman went with him. He was a good man. Gentle. In time they had a child together. A son, whom the woman loved with all her Firebird heart. When the child was about twelve, he called to his mother; ‘Mother, mother, come quickly. Look what I have found while playing in the forest.’ And she followed the sound of her beloved’s voice and discovered him holding the coat of golden feathers.”

She tells this story, not as Catherine would have done, with eyes open and alert, but as if she’s in a trance, telling the story from inside out, as if it were something she knows only because she’s lived inside it all of her life.

“Get me my pink jumper,” she commands then.

“What?”

“My pink jumper,” she repeats irritably. “Second drawer down.”

And I remember how she called for her pink dressing-gown after she told me how Ernest had stopped her singing, and how angry she seemed then too.

“Quickly!” she says.

There is only one pink item in the drawer. It’s not really a jumper, more a short sleeved cardigan buttoned, with tiny pearls, to the neck. The colour is pale, delicate, flesh-toned.

“Bring it here.”

I take it to her.

“Make me a coat of feathers,” she says.

“What!”

“Make it,” she says. “Sew it. Sew the feathers on.”

“I can’t do that!”

“What do you mean ‘can’t’?” she says. And, all of a sudden, she doesn’t look quite so frail.

“Can’t sew,” I say, helplessly. “I can’t sew!”

“A boy who can go to the top of Chance House can do anything,” she says.

“Except sew,” I say solidly.

“Get a needle,” she says. “Bedside cabinet.”

I don’t know who’s pulling my strings but I go to the bedside cabinet. On the bottom shelf is a small blond straw basket decorated with bright red raffia strawberries. It contains scissors, needles, thread.

“Use white,” she says.

“What?”

“White cotton.”

Then I say it: “This is mad,” I say.

She gives me the witchy see-right-through-you look. “It’s work,” she replies. “Our work. We’re supposed to be making work, aren’t we?”

“Yes… but…”

“But what?”

“But that work is supposed to be something that makes a connection between the past and the present, between your life and mine. A wisdom.”

“Exactly,” she says, triumphantly. “Now thread the needle.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it, David!”

“David?”

“Just do it.”

“David, you called me David. My name’s Robert.”

“Is it?”

“You know it is! David is the name of your son. Your dead son.”

“Dead? David’s dead? Who says David’s dead?” She looks utterly stricken. A little bird with an arrow in her heart.

“No,” I cry. “I mean – not now. Not recently. Years ago. Thirty years. He died when he was twelve. Yes?”

“No,” she says. “Oh no. No, no, no, no. Don’t let David be dead. Don’t let my baby be dead.”

And this is how Matron, coming in bearing a small plastic pot of pills, finds us. Me, sitting mute and horrified on the bed. Edith Sorrel in it, howling like an animal. I look at Matron and Matron looks at me. I have never been more grateful to see anyone in all of my life.

“You!” splutters Matron. “How dare you! Get out of here, you lying little…”

Mrs Sorrel rises. She towers. She stops crying. “Don’t you ever speak to him like that,” she says. “Do you hear me?”

But I’m not waiting for a second chance. I’m right off that bed, I’m going wherever Matron tells me.

“Sorry,” I mumble at Mrs Sorrel.

Mrs Sorrel makes a Herculean grab. She has my hand. Her grip is bone to bone.

“Don’t go,” she says. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

“What exactly is going on here?” asks Matron.

“Robert is making work,” says Mrs Sorrel. “He’s making me a coat of feathers.”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” says Matron.