Feather Boy (14 page)

“By chance,” I say. Which is true and not true. I fell here that day by chance. But I came that day from Chance House. Which was not chance.

“Edith is gravely ill,” he says.

“I know. But she’s going to get better. I’m going to make her better.”

Ernest laughs quietly. “You do make her better,” he says.

“No really,” I say. “I’m going to make her a coat of feathers. Firebird feathers. It’ll make her well.”

“Firebird – the Firebird story? Did she tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“It was my fault. I took away her coat of feathers.”

“What?”

“I took it away. The thing that made her fly. That’s what she said. I stopped her singing. And then, and then…” He falters, drops to his knees.

“And then?” I whisper.

But he doesn’t answer me, begins to clear the debris from David’s grave.

“It’ll be all right,” I tell him. “I’m going to make the coat. She asked me to. It’s what she wants. It’ll be all right. It’ll come right.”

“No,” Ernest says. “It’s too late.” He picks up the stripped ribs which are all that remain of the pigeon carcass. Puts aside the broken wing. “Years too late.”

“I need the feathers,” I say.

“What?”

“Those feathers, the ones in your hand. I need them.”

“Why?”

“Firebird feathers.” I’m sure now. David, Ernest, the feathers. All in the same place at the same time. It can’t be chance. David wants me to have these feathers. Mrs Sorrel wants me to have them. Out of death life. Life. Surely life. “Give them to me, please.”

He does as I ask without comment. Then he returns his attention to the grave, taking the dead daffodils from the vase and replacing them with the fresh narcissi.

“Will you be at the Sharing?” I ask.

“What’s that?”

“The presentation, a week tomorrow. Friday. The exchange of work between us and the Elders.”

He pulls himself stiffly to his feet. There are two damp patches on the front of his coat, where his knees have pressed on the earth.

“If Edith’s there,” he says, “I’ll be there.” He looks at me. “If.”

And I know what he’s trying to tell me. It’s the time limit.

I don’t just clean my hands, I clean the feathers. I wash each of them with soap; I rub the quill, the vane, gently easing apart the barbs of the flight and then smoothing them together again. I want each barb to lie as neatly and as perfectly as on the day it was made. I dispose of mud, of crushed bone and other sticky stuff I don’t want to inquire too closely into. Then I begin the drying. First with paper towels, just gentle pats, and then with Mum’s hairdryer. At first I turn it on full, but that blasts the barbs apart again, so I learn to keep it on low, blowing lightly from a distance, making the air follow the direction of the barbs. With patience I even manage to coax some fluffiness back into the downy part of each feather, the place where flight meets quill.

The hum of the hairdryer brings Mum.

“Robert…”

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“Blowdrying feathers.” Doesn’t she have a hospital to go to?

“For goodness sake.”

“Well, you did say you didn’t know how clean feathers were, so I’m cleaning them.”

She picks one up, smells it. “You never used my rose geranium soap!”

“Sorry, Mum.”

“Really, Robert.”

I’ve a feeling things are going to get worse and they do. When the feathers are clean and dry I begin sewing again. Up till supper, after supper and then when I’m supposed to be sleeping. She spots my light. Comes in.

“You’ll ruin your eyes,” she says. “Sewing when you’re tired is a very bad idea.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” she says, switching off the lamp.

But it’s not cheek. I’m really not tired. If I need to
stay awake for the next week, then that’s what I’ll do. If I need to sew by torchlight, then I’ll do that too. I’m on a mission. I got to the top of Chance House and I’ll get to the end of this coat.
A boy who’s been to the top of Chance House can do anything
. Mrs Sorrel made me fly and I shall make her fly. Whatever Mum says, whatever…

“Robert, switch out that light. Now!”

I switch it out.

But not before I’ve set my alarm for five-thirty. As it happens I wake before the alarm anyway. While night changes into day, I sew. It’s a strange sensation being awake when everyone else is asleep. It’s strange sewing in the silence and the half-dark. I feel like one of those mythical women at their looms, the Lady of Shalott, or Odysseus’ wife Penelope weaving to ward off the suitors while her husband is still away, sewing by day and unpicking at night. Only I sew by day and sew by night. Day and night. But it is still not going fast enough and there are not enough feathers. I have to have more feathers.

I have a quick breakfast and leave early for school. I don’t have to explain myself because Mum’s on earlies too, and she’s out of the house before me. Of course I go via the graveyard, I can’t help myself, even though
I picked the place clean yesterday. I expect nothing. So it’s a gift to see one pure white, perfectly clean and dry feather on the tomb of Charity Ann Slaughter. A breast feather definitely. Gratefully, I stow it in my inside jacket pocket. Then I make for the beach.

I’ve argued with myself about whether I’m allowed to mix pigeon and seagull feathers and decided that I am. My Firebird coat was never meant to be red or orange. It was meant to be grey and white, this is what Mrs Sorrel chose when she chose the Chance House feathers. So I’m just following her lead. I know she would approve. What matters is the coat, getting it finished in time, and there will never be enough pigeon feathers.

The wind carries the tang of seaweed to me a street before I reach the beach. When it’s very windy the seagulls come inland. Today they are wheeling above the water’s edge. Wheeling and screaming. I cross the prom and come down the steps near the breakwater.

A feather. Immediately a feather, an omen. Caught in the stones by the bottom step. Again white. Again perfect. As if it had just that moment descended from heaven. I pick it up. Three droplets of water sit proud on the flight, like dew on an early morning flower. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful feather. Thank you
God. Thank you seagull. I unzip my jacket pocket and slip it inside.

I spend an hour on the beach, until my fingers are wind-frozen. I find proud tail feathers and little puffs of fluff, so light you’d think the wind would have carried them away. But it has not, and there they are, waiting for me. I gather them all. Even the two feathers I find stuck together with tar.

I arrive at school as the bell goes for assembly. I dutifully follow the other children into the hall. But what I want to do is sew, to begin immediately. I have the cardigan lodged inside my schoolbag, neatly folded inside its own protective Sainsbury’s bag. My fingers itch with the wanting. But I have to be careful. The project is private. Something just between me and Mrs Sorrel. What I mean is I don’t want Niker to get wind of it. I don’t even want Kate to know. Where Niker might scoff, she would ask questions.

“Why are you doing it? What’s it for?”

If Kate asked that, I’d have to tell her. I’d have to say, “I’m making this coat because I believe it will save Mrs Sorrel’s life.”

Yes, now I’ve said it. What I’ve barely been admitting to myself. I think a coat of pigeon feathers
will save an old woman’s life. Even Catherine, the storyteller, wouldn’t believe a story like that. But I believe it. I believe it with all my heart.

So that’s why I lock myself in the toilet at break-time. Take out the coat and sew. There’s not a lot of light and the cistern is one of those old-fashioned ones with a chain. The rubber end keeps banging into my cheek. But at least it’s private.

Least it is until Niker spots my feet.

“What you doing in there?” he asks.

No answer.

“Delivering a baby?”

No answer. Surely other people have shoes like mine?

“Or have you got the runs?”

“I think he’s going for the Guinness Book of Records,” says Weasel’s voice. “Longest shit in history. Get your gas masks, boys.”

Niker laughs. Then I hear the door to the corridor open and close and I think they’ve gone. When the bell goes I come out, and there they are standing directly opposite me, arms folded.

Niker eyes my bag. “What’s the game, Norbie?”

“No game.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, let’s see this nothing, then.” He makes towards the bag. Weasel follows.

“Touch that bag and you’re dead.”

Wesley hesitates, but more from surprise than fear I think. Niker keeps on coming.

“Chance House,” I say then. Niker stops mid-step. “Come any closer and I’ll tell Wesley about Chance House.”

Wesley turns to look at Niker. Niker’s mouth twists furiously. “Talking of dead,” he says, “you just wait!” Then he’s gone. Wesley gives me a quizzical look and then trots after his leader.

For the rest of the day I make sure I am never alone and I never, once, take my hand from the strap of my bag. When the final bell goes, I’m out of that school faster than you would be if all the furies in hell were after you. I don’t even stop when Miss Raynham’s voice cuts through the air: “Robert Nobel, come back here at once and
walk
across the playground or else…”

I don’t hear the else, I’m halfway down the street by then. I don’t stop running till I get home. Mum lets
me in and says my tea’s on the table. But I want to sew so I let it go cold.

“Remind me,” says Mum, “not to bother to cook for you. If you want cold, you can look in the fridge.”

I don’t answer, I’m concentrating on a very difficult piece of over-sewing, placing the pure white feather exactly between two dark grey ones.

“You’re becoming like your father,” says Mum.

I don’t answer that either. She opens her mouth to speak again but the phone interrupts her.

“Hello,” she says irritably. “Oh, speak of the devil. Hello Nigel.” She listens a moment and then she holds out the phone to me. “Dad for you,” she says.

“Tell him I’ll call him back.”

“What!” shrieks my mother.

While she’s shrieking I have plenty of time to contemplate my error. It’s clearly a big one – saying I’d call him later. So why did I do it? One, because I am at a very delicate stage of sewing; two, because I didn’t want Mum to think I had time to talk to Dad but not time to eat her dinner; three, because Dad hasn’t bothered to call since he let me down that Saturday so I don’t see why I should do him any favours; and finally, and most importantly, I am fully and completely engaged in the
rather more important job of saving someone’s life.

“Robert,” shrieks my mother, “you have become obsessed! Put that sewing down! Now!”

“Sewing?” I hear the disembodied voice of my father say. “Sewing!”

I finish my loop and put down the sewing. I take the phone Mum’s handing me for fear she will have an epileptic seizure.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Robert.”

“Hello, Dad.” Another one of our startlingly intimate conversation begins.

“Whatcha been doing?”

“Things.”

“What’s this about sewing?”

“Nothing.”

He sighs. “How about a week today? Friday?”

“What for?”

“A visit, Robert. Me coming to see you.”

“Sorry, Dad, no can do.”

That’s when Mum starts pinching my elbow and mouthing wildly.

“No,” I repeat, mainly for her benefit. “I’m sorry. It’s the Sharing.”

“The what?” says Dad.

“It’s a project I’m involved in. With some old people. Everyone who’s been involved has to go. It’s a school thing, I can’t get out of it.”

“I’m not talking school time,” says Dad. “I couldn’t be with you before seven anyhow.”

“That’s when it is,” I say solidly. “Seven o’clock.”

“They won’t miss you,” hisses Mum. “Make an exception, Robert, please.”

“No, sorry,” I say into the phone. “Bye.” I hand the phone to my mother, whose mouth is hanging open as though she’s trying to catch flies. Then I collect my sewing and adjourn upstairs.

As I go up I hear snatches of the conversation. It’s about my sewing, about my obsession, about how I’m going completely bonkers and it’s all Dad’s fault. At least this seems to be the shrieked implication. If he paid me some more attention then I wouldn’t be turning out this way. How is she supposed to cope on her own, and hold down a job to make enough money for both of us to live, and keep me from going bonkers at the same time?

Of course, I can’t hear what Dad is replying but I expect it’s along the lines of, it’s a trifle difficult to
visit the little obsessive, if he won’t be visited. And in any case it’s not true about the money because he sends her some and what’s more doesn’t she realise he has responsibilities to a new family now? Yes, she jolly well does realise that! Bang, the phone goes down.

Then I hear her crying and of course I can’t bear that so I go downstairs and say sorry. Then I eat my cold supper and say how nice it is. But I have to tell you, stone-cold spaghetti bolognaise is not nice. Then I say I have some homework to do and I go back upstairs. Later she comes up and sits on my bed. I’m no fool so, when I hear her coming, I shove the cardigan under the duvet and get out my book. She obviously isn’t concentrating much better than I am because, when I look down, I find I’m holding the book upside down.

“They’ve just rung to ask if I can work the seven pm shift,” she says. “Will you be all right?”

“Of course.” Question is, will she be all right? An early shift. A late shift. And she can’t have had more than five hours’ sleep last night. No wonder she’s exhausted.

“I’m sorry to shout,” she says.

“It’s OK.”

“You know I love you?”

“Yes.”

“And Dad does too.”

I don’t reply.

“He does.”

“Yes,” I say.

She ruffles my hair, like she used to when I was a baby. “Promise me to turn your light off on time?”

“Promise.”

“OK, bye sweetheart.”

“Bye, Mum.”

Downstairs I hear the kettle whistling. She must be making a thermos of coffee. She only does that when she thinks they’re going to be really busy. A few minutes later there’s the bang of the front door.

This gives me an opportunity and, if I’m to honour my promise and turn my lights off on time, I have to go now. I have sewn both sleeves of the cardigan and completed the left breast. The right one still needs more of the white downy feathers and the back of the coat is still distinctly patchy. But it is coming on and Mrs Sorrel needs to know that.

I finish off the feather I was sewing before Mum came in and secure the thread. Then I fold the coat
carefully, lengthways, following the line of the feathers themselves. It can’t be folded breadthways now. It’s beginning to take on a life of its own. It’s no longer a pink cardigan, in fact you can barely see pink at all. What you can see is bird, fledgling bird.

I pack the coat in its plastic bag and slip out into the dusk. From school we go by bus to the Mayfield Rest Home, but it’s not a long walk. Especially if you know the short cuts. Which I do. It’s a beautiful evening, clear and already starlit. Not unlike the night I went to Chance House with Niker. I thread my way through the streets. The only danger at the Home is Matron. But I’m not afraid of her. Mayfield is not a prison. People are allowed to visit. Especially when they’re welcomed, wanted. The walk takes about half an hour. The flesh of my face is chill but inside I’m glowing. I feel alive, happy.