The Bower Bird (16 page)

I give Mum her presents – the Paper Whites bulbs and a bar of chocolate that says on the label
THA
NK YOU FOR LOOKING AFTER MY CAT
that I bought in Tresco Abbey shop. I put the shells in a clear glass bowl with water in to bring the colour alive.

The young gull on the roof is still looking pissed off, so’s his mum. He’s like a lazy teenager who won’t get off the sofa and go outside for exercise. A couch potato, grumpy, peevish, sulky. His dad has dark rings around his eyes – that’s what it looks like, and his head is covered in brown-grey freckles. I think all adult herring gulls change their plumage slightly in the winter. His mouth turns down at the corners, which makes him look cross. Actually, they all look cross.

I tell Mum all about the lovely islands and how kind Hayley is and how it was okay sharing a room with her, and all about the rescued herring gull, and the boat rides and Tresco Abbey garden.

‘Oh, if I’d known about the garden I might have come.’

‘You’d love it, Mum.’

That night I think about the marvellous weekend and I feel so alive. Being alive is a bit like speed-reading. I have to experience everything, pack it in while there is still time.

The Poem for the Day today is ‘The Embankment’ (The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night) by TE Hulme.

Once, in a finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,

In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.

Now see I

That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.

Oh, God, make small

The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,

That I may fold it around me and in comfort lie.

I know exactly what he means. Being cold is the worst thing. My hands and feet go completely blue and numb if I get slightly chilled and I need a hot water bottle even in summer. ‘He was killed in World War
I
, serving with the Royal Marine Artillery. He was expelled from St John’s College, Cambridge, possibly for brawling (he is said to have carried a knuckle-duster around with him).’ A poet with knuckle-dusters – strewth!

NOTE: MY NEW
word for today is
eviscerate: to tear out the viscera or bowels of: to gut. n. evisceration – from viscera, the bowels
. That’s an easy word for me to use straight away. It’s exactly what I want to do to
SSS
, eviscerate her, preferably through the hole in her navel.

Arnold is installing a bidet in the bathroom. Mum has a real thing about being clean and says a bidet is a necessity not a luxury. She says when you think about it most English people must walk around with less than clean bums. What a dreadful thought. Also, if you don’t wash your bum before you get in the bath you are floating in your own filth. Yuk. And if you only have a shower how do you get at your privates or the underneath of your feet? It’s different for boys of course. They are lucky, except for their feet.

I want to talk to Mum, but Arnold is having a cup of tea with her. I’ll wait until he’s gone.

‘Has he gone?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Oh nothing. What’s for dinner?’

I can’t face telling her what my research has come up with. Perhaps next time I’m in the car with her I’ll say something. It’s much easier to talk when I can’t see her expressions. I can just imagine the shock on her face, the open mouth, the disbelief, the wide eyes. No, I’ll wait for the right moment.

‘Pasta and something easy with anchovies and olives. Tomatoes, we’ve got loads of tomatoes.’

‘Goodie.’ I flop on the sofa and go back to my book.

‘Grate the cheese if you like.’

‘When you say “if you like” do you really mean “if you like” or do you mean…?’

‘Just grate it, you precocious little beast.’

Later, before we cook the pasta, Arnold comes by with two ungutted mackerel for us.

‘Caught twenty minutes ago,’ he said. ‘All right like that?’

‘Oh, thank you Arnold. That’s kind of you, yes I’ll deal with them.’ Mum sounds confident.

I look at them when he’s gone. One is definitely dead, but the other one – I can still see life quivering in its tail part – rainbows and a flickering pulsing of blood. Oh God, is there still time to take it back to the sea? Can it still be alive twenty minutes after it was caught? That’s awful.

‘Mum! Mu-um! Come and see.’

I watch while she dispatches the poor fish by cutting off its head with a carving knife. It must be inherited. Her mother was ruthless with their chickens when it was time for them to go to the Free-Range Chicken Run in the Sky.

NOTE: WORD FOR
the day:
Mullein – a tall, stiff, yellow-flowered woolly plant (Verbascum) of the Scrophulariaceae – popularly known as hag-taper, Adam’s flannel, Aaron’s rod, shepherd’s club
.

I think I remember seeing those in the garden at Peregrine Point and on our little front path. They’re flowering now. I’ll impress Mum with my extensive floral knowledge.

(Does scrofulous come from the same route? Yes it does. The plants were thought to be a cure for Scrofula, or
TB
.)

It’s raining and quite cold, but she’s planting the bulbs. I hope they survive. Our garden is quite well sheltered and a suntrap when the sun shines. The blue hydrangeas have faded to muted pinks and mauves and remind me of Grandma’s aprons.

I am making lists – I like making lists. Today’s list is an alphabet of sayings. It’s quite difficult.

A is for the Apple of my eye (Brett).

B is for his Beautiful mind. (I think that counts as metaphor

because we can’t actually see a mind, can we.)

C is for Clouds on my horizon (Mum’s library books, my family research.)

D is for Dirty tricks – you know who goes in for those.

E is for Eat your heart out.

F is for False-faced. (Guess who.)

G is for Good Grief.

H is for Hang in there – meaning – don’t give up.

I is for Ill-tempered – me at the moment.

J is for Jack of all trades – Arnold.

K is for Kettle of fish – a fine kettle of fish (my problems with library books).

L is for Light at the end of the tunnel (my transplant).

M is for Mother of all storms.

N is for No way!

O is for Odd man out – me.

P is for Panic attack.

Q is for Queue jumping.

R is for Ray of sunshine (what Grandpop called me).

S is for Safe as houses.

T is for Tearjerker – like
A Wonderful Life
.

U is for Upper crust.

V is for Vital spark.

W is for Walls have ears.

X is for X factor.

Y is for Young at heart – Mum.

Z is for Zero in.

I do like rainy days. It’s a wonderful excuse to mooch and read. I have just read RD Laing’s
Conversations with Children
, which is all about his conversations with his own children:

Jutta [his wife] and I haven’t been getting on very well recently. Natasha has become interested in glue and sellotape, in cutting things up and sticking them together.

Just now she is dashing from one wall of my room to the other, thudding against them.

Ronnie: what are you doing?

Natasha: the heart.

Ronnie: the heart?

N: yes. (She continues thudding against the walls.)

R: and what does the heart do?

N: the heart loves (she stops dashing and thudding.)

R: the heart loves?

N: yes.

R: who? what?

N: the one heart loves many people.

R: the one heart loves many?

N: the one heart loves many many.

I THINK I
may have done something rather stupid.

I haven’t told Mum but I phoned Daddy to tell him about his grandfather being a famous photographer. He had no idea, he said, having cut himself off from his Cornish roots when he was young. He obviously did know about his father going to jail. That’s why he and his mother left town, after all, and his parents eventually divorced. But he had no idea about his father’s father. And thinking about it, it was his
father
who was the black sheep of the family, not Daddy. I phoned him when Mum was out shopping. He sounded pleased to hear my voice. I do love him so very much.

I wish he were here.

Sometimes you
do
get what you wish for.

I wish I could go to university, uni, I mean. Brett wants to go. I know it’s a stupid thing to even think about. I probably won’t even make secondary school at this rate.

If I had three wishes, no matter how impossible, they would be:

1. Mum and Daddy being happy together.

2. My heart being healthy.

3. Grandpop and Grandma being alive. All those wishes are useless so if by any chance a fairy asks me what I wish for, I better think up some more feasible requests:

1. Finding some live family.

2. Going to school.

3. A successful heart and lung transplant.

Bad night. My steam train heart wakes me… eyes sore so can’t read for very long. Why are our problems so much worse in the dark? Anxieties well up when we’re not able to keep watch, they break the dam and flood our dreams or wake us so we can worry in the drowning dark. Bad dreams when I did sleep: entire town flooded up to top of Barnoon Hill. We survived but everyone else dead.

Mum is in her bedroom window drawing what she sees from the window. She is concentrating hard, and looks happier than I have seen her for ages. I wish I could draw. It has never been my strong point. She now goes to the School of Painting twice a week.

‘Mum…’

‘Gussie, I’m working.’

‘Can I talk to you, please? It’s important.’

‘Aren’t you feeling well?”

‘No, I’m fine. It’s not that.’

‘Later then, okay?’

I go back to my book and Rena Wooflie and Charlie.

Later is too late. I lose my nerve and say nothing.

I am going to be a writer. I’ve decided that’s the only thing I can attempt to do without a decent education. My waste paper bin is already full of rubbish writing. Scribbled words lie strangled in twisted paper like squashed ants. I’m not going to get very far at this rate.

WE HAVE SEEN
all the art in the Tate, St Ives, where I had a crab sandwich in the café on the top floor and Mum had a glass of wine, and now Mum and I are looking round the open artists’ studios all over Downlong. This particular studio is rather dilapidated with rain coming in through the roof, but I think it adds to the character. There’s a working pot-belly stove, with a long black pipe going out through the roof. A huge window looks out onto the rain-pitted beach, where a man throws a stick for a Jack Russell. (Do all Jack Russells suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Syndrome?)

Maybe my Grandma had that. She never stopped talking, working, hurrying. And she was good at all sorts of things, which is part of the condition, apparently, so there are compensations.

Here are strange sculptures made of rusty metal and wood hung on the wooden walls and a large abstract painting in browns, greys and blacks on a huge easel. It smells of turpentine and oil paint and dust, new and old wood and raw canvas. Delicious.

There’s a group of people talking to the artist – a square-shaped woman in a blue fisherman’s smock and Doc Marten boots. I’d like some
DM
s.

I take a few photographs of the light patterns shed on the paint-splashed wooden floor, and the black stove and the old wooden plan chests that line one wall.

The next studio we visit is small and tidy and clean, with geometric paintings all on the theme of brown squares on black squares, so we don’t stay long and I don’t bother to record it on film. The next place we go to is where Mum has her lessons. I am very breathless going up the stairs to the entrance and there are impatient people behind us. I have to squat at the top and I’m in the way. Shit.

Shit shit shit.

Mum tells them, ‘Sorry, my little girl’s unwell, you’ll have to wait a moment.’

My heart is racing, my head pounds, I’m faint and feel nauseous. When I have recovered my breath, someone finds me a chair and Mum phones for a taxi to take us home. Someone suggests an ambulance but Mum says no thanks, she’ll be fine.

It is so old and beautiful in here, a wooden building with north facing windows, chairs and wooden easels stacked up in the corner, old oil paintings and recent drawings on the walls. Someone gets me water.

Home. I hate feeling ill when I’m not at home. Once I became ill when we were in Thailand and there was no doctor. We were moving that day to a house on a beach. Mum drove to there with me lying on the back seat looking very cyanosed, put me in bed under a ceiling fan, gave me Aspirin, cooled my pulse points with wet cloths and hoped I’d be okay.