Feather Boy (17 page)

I get the number from the phonebook. I call and the phone is picked up straight away. It’s Matron. I’d recognise her voice anywhere. Heart pounding I slam the phone down. I should have thought of that. I should have had a plan. So I do some thinking, try my luck again. This time it isn’t Matron.

“Good morning,” I say. “Is it possible to speak to Edith Sorrel.”

There’s a pause.

“Who’s calling?”

“Her nephew. Ian.”

“Ian?” the voice queries.

“Ian Wright,” I say quickly. Ian Wright! The retired footballer ex of Arsenal and West Ham? Where did he come from? I hold my breath but the care assistant seems oblivious.

“Could you hang on a minute,” she says, “I’ll get Matron for you.”

Pound, pound, pound. That’s the heart again. Should I put the phone down? Ian Wright wouldn’t do that. A courageous boy wouldn’t do that. I hang on, as instructed.

“Mr Wright?” Matron’s voice.

“Yes,” I say gruffly.

“I take it you are aware of Mrs Sorrel’s condition?”

“Yes,” same gruff stuff. “I thought, as, um, I’m unable to visit right now, I might be able to speak to her by phone?”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The news is not good, Mr Wright.”

My heart skips a beat.

“Yesterday lunchtime, your aunt slipped… into a coma. Of course, things could change, but at the moment I have to tell you her doctor believes the prognosis is not good.” There is a pause which I am unable to fill. “Would you care to leave a message for Mr Sorrel?”

“No. Yes. Tell him… tell him… the boy who can fly keeps his promises.”

“I beg your pardon?” says Matron.

Kate is as good as her word. She brings me a pocketful of feathers, grey, white, clean, downy, dry. Dry! They can all be sewn immediately.

“Are there enough?” she asks.

“No, I don’t think so. But I’m really grateful anyhow.”

“I’ll bring you more. I’ll go again tomorrow.”

“What about the Chance House feather, did you get that?”

“No. I tried. Scoured the Art Room. The bin hadn’t been emptied so if it had been chucked I would have found it. But it wasn’t there. Nor on the floor. I did every inch of it. And I asked Catherine. She denied all knowledge.”

“And Niker?”

“‘What would I want with some filthy feather’,” she mimics.

“Did you believe him?”

She hesitates. “I don’t know. But I can’t see any reason why he would keep it.”

“Trophy. Like Indians keep scalps.”

“He was flat on his back, Robert. Probably wasn’t the first thing on his mind.”

“And because it must have been obvious to him how important the feather is to me.”

“But is it important to the coat? I mean, if you finish the coat, isn’t that good enough?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

“What’s the ‘but’?”

She’s acute, that Kate. Because, of course, there is a “but”. The one I’ve been trying to keep secret even from myself.

“Come on,” she says.

Things that exist only in your head can be kept vague, pushed away, but once something is spoken aloud…

“Tell me,” she says and takes my hand. Kate takes my hand.

“I called the Home. Spoke to Matron.”

“Yes?”

“Mrs Sorrel’s gone into a coma.”

“Oh, my goodness.”

“And… and guess when she took this dive?”

“Oh, I don’t know Robert. Don’t give me a quiz on this.”

“Yesterday lunchtime. Not the morning. Not the evening. Not the day before. But yesterday lunchtime. When Niker and I were fighting. When the feather was broken.”

I see a shiver travel down Kate’s spine. “Could be a coincidence,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “Could be.”

Out in the hall, a key turns in the lock. Kate jumps up and her hand goes with her. I shove the feathers behind a cushion.

“Oh – hello Kate!” says Mum.

“Hello, Mrs Nobel.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Miss Raynham,” flusters Kate. “She asked me to drop something by for Robert. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Work?” inquires Mum.

“Work. Yes,” says Kate.

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Kate was just leaving,” I say.

“Well, don’t hurry on my account.”

Kate hurries. She’s out of the door in a flash. “I’ll bring Miss Raynham’s… erm… other stuff tomorrow,” she calls over her shoulder.

Mum regards me but says nothing. She kicks off her shoes.

“Good day?” she inquires at last.

“OK,” I reply.

“Get your maths done?”

“Some.”

“Well, there’s good news on the work front.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got tomorrow off.”

“What?”

“And the day after.”

“Why!”

“I do get days off, Robert. Code of working practice in the NHS. Good behaviour. Whatever.”

She’s taken holiday! I stay in, good as gold all day, and she takes time off. It’s not fair!

“So I’ll be able to keep you company.”

“Nice,” I say.

“The less good news is I’ll have to work Friday
evening. But I think time alone with your dad will be no bad thing, don’t you?” I say nothing. “Good,” she says. “That’s settled then.”

Well, it certainly settles what I’m going to have to do about Niker.

“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I could borrow the phone? Take it up to my room?”

“Can I ask why?”

“I want to call Niker. Apologise.”

“Oh, Robert.”

“But… I sort of want to do it in private. You know… because…”

“You’re a good boy really.” She kisses the top of my head.

I take the phone and, when she’s not looking, the feathers from under the cushion, and go to my room. Of course I’d rather go to Niker’s house, look him in the eye when I ask the question, but obviously with Mum at home that’s not going to be possible. And some things won’t wait.

I dial the number.

“Hello?”

“Hello Mrs Niker, it’s Robert Nobel here.”

“Oh.”

“May I speak to Johnny?”

“I’m not entirely sure he will wish to speak with you.”

“Please, Mrs Niker.”

A pause.

“Could you just ask him? I want to apologise. Say sorry.”

“Oh.” Her tone softens. “All right then. I’ll ask.” She puts her hand over the receiver and I hear some mumbling. Then Niker comes on the line.

“Hiya, Dog-Brain.”

“Hello, Niker.”

Silence.

“I gather you’ve got something to say to me?”

“Sorry,” I say.

“You will be,” he replies. “Trust me.”

“Niker?” I have to keep my temper.

“Yes, Norbert?”

“Niker – do you remember when we were in Chance House?”

“I have some vague recollection.”

“And you liked me?”

“What!”

“You liked me. Niker. Just a little bit? Maybe?”

“No. That doesn’t compute.”

“You thought I was funny.”

“That computes.”

“And I thought you were nice. I liked you, Niker.”

Another silence, but a more interested one.

“Well,” I forge on, “I am really sorry about what happened in the Art Room. I shouldn’t have hit you. It was all wrong. Hitting people is wrong.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“But…”

“Oh, here we go.”

“But it was about Mrs Sorrel.”

“It was?”

“Now I don’t expect you to understand this, because it barely makes any sense to me, but you have to trust me, because I’m going to trust you. OK?”

“Which planet are we on now, Norbert?”

“The coat of feathers isn’t just a coat of feathers.”

“Right you are, Norbe.”

“It’s connected to Mrs Sorrel’s life. You know she’s been ill?”

“I know she’s been ill.”

“Well when we fought, when that feather, the grey one I found at Chance House, when that got broken, Mrs Sorrel got worse. Much worse, Niker. Dyingly worse, Niker.”

“Oh – that planet.”

“So I need the feather back. And the white one if you’ve got it. I have to have them. Sew them on the coat.”

“And what if I haven’t got them?”

“Have you got them, Niker?”

A pause.

“Niker!”

“No. Sorry. Not at home. Goodbye.” He puts the phone down.

“Niker!” I scream. All niceness, ail cooperation, all apology vanishes. I want to kill him. I’m going to go round to his house and kill him. Now.

“He didn’t accept the apology?” Mum, hearing me scream, has come upstairs.

“Yes. No!”

Mum sits on my bed. “Sometimes it’s as difficult to accept an apology,” she says, “as it is to offer one. But well done for trying.”

“Right.”

“Do you want to play cards?”

“What?”

“Cards. Cribbage. Sevens.”

“Where have cards come from?” I look at her face. “Is this some brainwave from Mr Jolly Kind Counselling, Head of Pastoral Care?”

She havers. “No.”

Me lying to Mum, I’ve tried not to think too much about that recently. But her lying to me – that’s painful.

“I just thought,” Mum continues, “perhaps we don’t play as much as we used to.”

“Mum,” I say in as grown-up a voice as I can manage, “none of this is your fault.”

“I wish your dad was here,” she says.

“I know.”

And so begins the dance we do around each other for the next few days. I try really hard at being normal. Norbert Normal. I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like. I eat with Mum, talk with her, even play cards. I’m quite good at cribbage actually. Then I live my secret life. I spend a lot of it hating Niker. I believe he has the Chance House feather, and probably the white one too. I imagine climbing out of my bedroom
window when Mum’s asleep, going round to his house, shinning up a drainpipe and (as I’ve never been to his house and therefore don’t know which room is his) dropping into his parents’ bedroom by mistake. “Oh – hi Mrs Niker, didn’t wake you did I?” Because this scenario doesn’t seem to “compute”, to use Niker’s word, I manufacture a second one. In this one Niker invites me round for a face-to-face reconciliation. I tell Mum I have to be there at a certain time and no matter what time I make it, Mum always says: “Fine. I’ll come with you.” So that just leaves me making a break for it in broad daylight and taking a machine-gun with me. But I still might not be able to find the feather. Where would a guy like Niker hide it anyway?

“What you thinking, Robert?”

“I’m thinking about having a bath.”

I’m taking lots of baths. About four times as many as usual. Mum has remarked upon my cleanliness. She’s worried that washing might be becoming my new obsession. I can’t tell her that actually it’s the old obsession. Sewing. I conceal the coat and Kate’s feathers inside my dressing-gown, run a bath and sew behind the locked bathroom door. After an hour or so I actually
get into the bath, which by then, of course, is cold. They say that cold water sharpens your brain. It doesn’t seem to sharpen mine. My plans still go in circles and nothing stops me worrying about Mrs Sorrel.

During the two days Mum only leaves the house once – to get eggs. That’s when Ian Wright rings the Home again to enquire about Edith Sorrel’s condition. The care assistant tells him that his aunt’s condition is no better but no worse either. I take this as good news, what I would expect. No more broken feathers, so not worse. No completed coat, so not better. On the pretext of “science homework”, Kate arrives with more feathers. She even manages to get some of the very tiny, downy white ones I wanted for the breast. I sew. And I sew.

On Friday the coat is finished.

“Don’t forget,” Mum says, “Dad will be here at seven. Look through the spyhole. Don’t let anyone else in.”

“Yes, Mum.”

But at seven, of course, I’m not there to let anyone in. I leave the house at 6.20pm. Five minutes after Mum. It is the first time I have been outside for four days. The air smells different. Springlike. The trees are green-budded and even the apple tree in The Dog Leg
is covered with pink blossom. And although it’s dusky, it’s still light. All good omens.

I begin my journey full of purpose and hope. The coat, folded in its plastic bag, is heavy. I carry it close to my breast, one hand outside, around the bag, and the other inside, buried deep among the feathers. Its warmth is palpable. My living, breathing coat. Once I imagine I even feel a heart beating there. But of course it is only my heart I feel through the feathers. The beat, beat, beat of my brisk walk towards Mrs Sorrel.

I arrive at Mayfield at five to seven and slip around the back of the Home. There is a little crack of light coming from the fire door. Kate’s doing. Kate’s promise to me. “Of course I’ll get there early, open the door for you.” I am quickly through into the hallway. It’s now the shortest of walks along the corridor to Edith’s room. But I have forgotten to take account of the residents’ lounge opposite. Tonight its double doors are flung wide and there is a buzz of activity inside. I flatten myself against the wall, as though keeping still will render me invisible. What if Matron is there?

Immobilised, I stare. The room has been rearranged. The chairs which normally line the walls have been moved into graceful audience half-moons. Some of the
residents, unable to identify their normal place, haver and mill. At the stage end of the room, Catherine throws a sheet over the paradise-garden triptych. The Firebird screen stands unveiled to her left. Even from this distance, Niker’s fabulous coat of golden feathers draws the eye. Standing either side of the coat are Niker and Mavis the chicken. Niker, at twelve, the taller of the two. On his knees before them, shooting upwards, is a photographer.

“Heads a bit closer,” he calls. “Mavis, is her name Mavis? Bit closer in, Mavis love.”

Mavis doesn’t move.

“Is she deaf?” asks the photographer.

“Yes,” says Niker.

“Mavis love,” the photographer screams, “could you move in a little, love?”

“It’ll all come to no good,” says Mavis solemnly. “Mark my words.”

“Mavis,” says Niker and lifts an arm, motioning her towards him, as if he would embrace her.