The Bower Bird (5 page)

IT HAS TAKEN
four days for the little birds to get used to our metal tree. I got Mum to move it further into the flowerbed so the trunk is more hidden in the middle of a bush and the birds have cover. They like to hide quickly after they have fed and when they are queuing for their turn to stand on the feeder. Greenfinches are the most numerous and greedy. They love peanuts and sunflower seeds. But there’s a pair of stunningly colourful goldfinches too, and starlings.

I like starlings. They aren’t beautiful; they have large gawky heads and an awkward way of walking and they look like they have been knitted with black and white wool. When the sun hits them they have an oily, blue-green tinge, like fresh mackerel. They are extremely talkative and I like the clicketty click noise they make followed by a long falling whistle. Their language is more interesting and complicated than most birds’.

One stands on the telegraph line outside my window and whistles and clicks non-stop to the sky. I wonder what he’s saying? Perhaps he’s communing with his ancestors or giving thanks to the Sky-God for giving him life. Starlings walk around in Fore Street finding crumbs, totally ignored by the people ambling along, though I think the birds are just as interesting, if not more, than what’s in the shop windows – surf boards, bikinis, framed pictures made of clock and watch parts.

I’m glad to say we have a resident robin. He grazes (can robins graze?) on the droppings from the feeders. Blue-tits and great-tits come too and even sparrows. (We had no sparrows or starlings at Peregrine Point.)

The cats have started to go outside. We still haven’t got a cat flap fitted, but we leave the front door open so they can go in and out when they want. It’s amazing being able to leave the door open. You couldn’t do that in Camden Town. You’d have North London dropouts squatting in half an hour and turning it into a den of iniquity with drug dealers queuing up outside and junkies shooting up and/or throwing up in the bushes.

Rambo doesn’t go out. He sits on the doormat and watches the other two. He is such a wuss. Mum has to bring in his litter box at night because he’s scared of the dark. He is sleeping on a cushion in the front window.

I think cats sleep so much because they are bored. They aren’t the least bit creative so the ones that aren’t fantasists like Flo sleep a lot. If you are creative you have a life of the imagination and you are forever occupied. But cats don’t have that stuff. They are our pets; we feed them and keep them warm. They don’t need to hunt for survival. Even sex has been removed from their lives as they’ve all been neutered or whatever. No wonder they’re bored. No wonder they sleep so much.

It has rained all day, but the sun has made a brief appearance low in the sky and has turned the flying gulls’ bellies pink and gold.

I am still making lists of the books I like best.
To Kill a Mockingbird
is good. The hero is the father, a lawyer. It is a story about a rape and he defends the accused black man. It is also the story of children growing up and facing their fears. Another good adventure is
High Wind in Jamaica
by Richard Hughes. It’s got a murder in it and kidnapped children on a pirate ship. It starts with a terrifying hurricane and the terrible death of their pet, Tabby, torn apart by wild cats. I realise now on a second reading that I only imagined the actual death of Tabby. The writer of the story leaves the reader to fill in the untold horrors.

I’m having second thoughts on having
Lord of the Flies
on my island. It’s about a large group of small boys on a desert island in war-time with no grown-ups. The boys soon become savages and start murdering each other. It’s really scary. I think it might give me nightmares, so I’ll leave it behind.

I’m lucky to have a vivid imagination – Mum would say it was a bad thing to have lots of – but it does mean that although I am sort of imprisoned in my less than perfect body, I am free to wander wherever I want to go in my mind.

HERE ARE SOME
of the names of the little streets in the old town that Mum and I have just walked through: Court Cocking; Love Lane; Mount Zion; Salubrious Place; Teetotal Street; Virgin Street; Fish Street.

We’re having lunch at a small beach café, sitting in the sunshine overlooking the dear little beach, which sits between the Island and the harbour.

Sparrows hop around under our feet looking for crumbs and even come on the table. The young ones fluff up their feathers and look pitiful so their parents will feed them. Two very handsome young starlings are less brave but are also enjoying our generosity. They already have black and white chests but their faces and heads and shoulders are still a pretty light brown colour. I can’t see their parents anywhere so I suppose they are independent now. The adults have found an ideal place to leave their young – a restaurant where they can have free food three times a day. In winter, when the café closes, they’ll join their friends in Fore Street and hang around outside the bakers.

Shopping in St Ives is much more interesting than going to a supermarket. We get really tasty bread and pasties in Fore Street or Tregenna Place, and the fresh fish shop in Back Road East is called Stevens – so we might be related. They have hake, haddock, mackerel, wild sea bass, mullet, megrim sole, gurnard, crabmeat, lobster, mussels, sardines, salmon, ling, scallops, prawns, any fish in season, all displayed beautifully on marble slabs with ice packed around them and chunks of lemon. As good as Harrods any day – better, as the fish is fresh from the sea, and Stevens is nearer to the sea than Harrods so the fish have the same postcode as the customers.

I used not to eat fish or meat or cheese or eggs or anything, Mum says, I only ate chips and nuts and ice cream. But I don’t remember. She says it was because I was force-fed through a tube up my nose and down my throat for the first few months of my life and didn’t associate food with love or enjoyment.

I do now. My favourite food is soup – the sort of soup that Mum cooks, with home-made stock and fresh vegetables.

This is Mum’s recipe for French Onion Soup:

Make a stock from left over chicken and its carcase, onion and carrot, celery and any fresh herbs.
(She also uses vegetable stock from when she cooks spinach, greens and potatoes or whatever.)

Cook several large sliced onions in butter until they have melted into a sticky goo.

Add the strained stock and cook for about 20 minutes.

Arrange sliced rounds of oven-toasted French bread in the bottom of a heavy casserole.

Sprinkle plenty of Gruyère cheese on top.

Pour some soup over the bread.

Add another layer of bread.

Sprinkle more cheese.

Add rest of soup.

Place in oven, uncovered, and cook for about 45 minutes or until the top is crusty and brown.

It isn’t very liquid; it’s a thick gluey soup and it’s better the next day and even better if you pour a little red wine over the soup in the bowl. I am allowed to drink red wine if it’s in the soup. French children do it all the time, Daddy says. He is a Francophile – which means he loves anything French.

Oh why is he so vague about his rellies? (Australian for relations.) He did say he would send me a list of names of his second cousins twice removed or whatever, but he hasn’t yet. He is always very busy; he works for a film archive in London and travels all over the place to film festivals. He used to be a photographer and filmmaker, but he hasn’t had any films shown in cinemas. He gave me one of his old cameras – a Nikkormat. It’s silver metal and black, rather heavy, but I like the weight of it. You can hold it steady and it doesn’t shake when you press the button to take a picture.

I might start taking pictures of St Ives. I like all the old cottages and their little gardens. I could make a record of the way things are now. For posterity. Like the way people without gardens hang out their washing on the front of the house. The cats. I could photograph all the cats.

Daddy gave me a load of
35
mm black and white
400
ASA
slow film, which means I can take pictures in fairly dark situations, like indoors, without using a flash. I don’t have a flash. I only use the
50
ml lens. It’s too complicated to keep changing lenses, and anyway I can’t carry a heavy bagful of stuff. Dad said to keep things simple. He says that most amateur photographers have too much equipment and don’t care about the end product, only the hardware – boys’ toys. He says you can make perfectly good images with a standard
50
ml lens. It’s almost like the way you see things with your ordinary eyes.

Daddy made some lovely portraits of Grandpop and Grandma on their wedding anniversary the year before they died. I’m glad he did that. Daddy was good at getting people to relax and look natural in photographs.

Mum and Daddy took me to several photo exhibitions in London and I remember one in particular. It was an exhibition of work by a famous photographer called Kertesz, a Hungarian who lived in America. He used a 35 mm SLR camera and made lots of pictures taken from up high, looking down on street scenes or gardens. You
make
photographs, Daddy told me, you don’t
take
them. Taking them sounds like stealing. He said, ‘You must always try to ask people’s permission before you make a picture of them, otherwise it is like theft.’

Life is interesting looking down on people and objects. They become foreshortened, and shadows are very important. Black and white photos accentuate the light and dark really well, much better than if you use colour.

I could do that looking onto the garden, except that not much happens down there and the birds would be almost invisible.

I lean out of my attic window and expose a few frames (take a few pictures) of our washing line. Sheets flap and soar as if they are dancing and make a slapping clapping sound. Actually, I’m not too good at heights, but looking through the viewfinder of a camera turns the experience into something quite different. It is a framed image, my own, not a vertigo episode. I can choose what goes into the picture and what stays out of it. I won’t allow the telegraph pole and wire to become part of this picture, I crop them out as I focus. Then I make a picture of the starling on the wire, his throat exposed as he talks to the sky.

Oops! I nearly lost my cap out the window. Alistair gave it to me. It’s a navy blue cotton cap with a crown and three lions on the front – an England cricket cap. I used to wear a battered trilby hat that Grandpop gave me. At first I wore it because I was little and being a cowboy and then I wore it because Grandpop died. Also it made me feel like Indiana Jones. He never lost his hat even when he was swimming. I lost mine in a gale. It flew into the sea and was never seen again. I do like hats.

Charlie is curled on the blue striped cushion. I do a close up of her. She has the advantage of being already black and white. She has one eye open, suspicious of my intent. The trouble with cats is, when you try to photograph them they walk straight towards you, so all you get is the narrow chest and head and the straight up tail. They are desperate for attention. Charlie yawns and stretches white paws towards me. Oh dear, I’ll have to stroke her now. I can’t resist her pretty paws.

Flo went through a strange patch a while ago, when I  first had Charlie. She would stare through narrowed eyes at me stroking Charlie and when I went to stroke her she would run away. Then she started to scratch me when I walked past her, attacking with a sudden fury. It was very odd. I soon realised that she was missing my loving attention and showing her misery in the only way she knew. So from then on I’ve made a point of always making a big fuss of her before I stroke Charlie. Flo comes first, she must: she is the alpha female and knows her place. I had forgotten it for a while, but now I know better.

Seen from a distance, the roofs of St Ives look like they are covered in buttercup petals. I lean out the window again to study the mustard coloured lichens. Like miniature atolls, they grow into a circle, but the middle bits die and leave a ring, like orange rind. Some of them are flowering. If you look at them closely through a lens it’s like snorkelling over coral.

I did so love that: snorkelling in Africa. It was the best time ever. I’ll never forget it. Everything about being there was interesting. There were huge millipedes like miniature tube trains. I’d place them on my arms and watch them move slowly up to my shoulder. Mum shuddered when I did that. And the pretty blue and yellow spotted lizards that ate the mosquitoes. They lived on the outside walls and inside the house – Pelican Cottage.

It’s funny how we’ve lived in places with bird names. Maybe we could give this house a bird name? Starling’s Nest; Seagull House; Gull’s Nest; Gull Rock; Goldfinch Gulch; Robin’s Rest; Finch’s Folly. Number
5
sounds so boring.

We had cockroaches in Africa. Mum wasn’t at all keen on those. A pair lived under my bed and I wouldn’t let her throw them out. After all, they were there before we were. It’s their country. I fed them breadcrumbs. They made friendly scuttling sounds all night. Outside there were enormous butterflies and praying mantises and beetles so big they sounded like flying mopeds. My favourite thing was exploring the reef at low tide, discovering all the sea margin life; shellfish, starfish, anemones, sea cucumbers, crabs.