The Burying Beetle (14 page)

I take Mum a cup of peppermint tea and she has stripped off, but no one can see from the path, so she’s safe. She’s rather uninhibited, my Mum. Her body is still good even though she’s fifty-two, but she Hates the
ageing process. Her eyes don’t work properly, and her knees are Giving Up on her, and her Skin Sags. Her bent leg – the skin at the knee bit is stretched and taut, but the skin sort of slips down and gathers at the lowest part of her leg near her thigh. The skin is puckered like beach sand when the tide has left it and little waves are echoed in it. I rather like it. But Mum says, ‘Gravity is a Bummer.’

I think having young flesh gives you a false sense of immortality. I don’t have that, of course – a false sense of my own immortality. Facing facts, I have probably got another ten or twelve years, maybe a few more if I get a transplant. It seems like a long time to me. Twice the age I am now. Ancient. Actually, the only thing that really bothers me is not being able to breathe very well. Anyway, I suppose I do believe in my own immortality, in a way. I know that I won’t be aware of being dead, so I’ll only know about being alive. No one remembers before they were born, do they.

This badger book, which was published in 1958, says that there are loads of badgers in Cornwall, and they have sets that go for maybe a mile underground, and that the badgers often make use of deserted mine shafts. Tin was mined in Cornwall in the nineteenth century.

The male badger is called a boar and the female a sow, but they don’t have piglets –
the babies are called cubs.

There is an account of someone witnessing the funeral of a badger.

A sow had lost her mate. She came to the set entrance and let out a weird unearthly cry; then she departed for a rabbit warren not far distant. There she excavated a large hole in preparation for the body of her mate. She worked at this over a long period, the time being broken up at intervals by journeyings between warren and set. After some hours a second badger appeared, a male. The sow stood still with head lowered and back ruffling agitatedly, and the male slowly approached with head also lowered. Then the female, moving her head quickly up and down, uttered a whistling sound, as though the wind had been expelled through the nostrils; at the same time she moved forward with two tiny jerky steps. When she stopped the male went through a similar motion, his nose to the ground like the sow’s. This was repeated. The ritual over, they both retired down the set. After some time they reappeared, the male dragging the dead badger by a hind leg and the sow somehow helping from behind. They reached the warren, interred the body, and covered it with earth. Then the male departed and the sow returned to her set and disappeared.

We look out always onto a watercolour. Each time it’s a different painting of the same scene. Now it’s a robin’s-egg-blue sea with two small scratches
– red boats – to the left of the left trunk of the main tree. Now they’ve met – the boats –
merged. And below them, a blue tit on the tip of a hazel branch looks bigger than they do. Every moment the scene changes itself in an effort to produce the perfect painting, yet each moment is, in its own way, perfect and unrepeatable.

There is absolutely no wind, not even the hint of a breeze on the water’s surface. It’s as if time is standing still.

If only.

You can almost hear the snails sliding up the trunks of the palms to shelter for the night under the dead spears. Tiny goldcrests with their neon orange caps are feeding upside
-down on the main tree trunk of the Monterey. I wonder what insects they are eating?

I walk around the garden with the magnifier and look at the lichens on the trees. It’s like snorkelling. Lichens have fruits and flowers and look like miniature coral heads. Brilliant.

I find our large toad – a fine yellow warty toad, cool to the touch. He’s always to be found in the same place, under a porcelain sink on bricks. It’s cool and damp there and he likes it. But if it rains he goes out hunting. There’s a tiny pond, very overgrown with weed and water lilies and full of old leaves.

‘We must Clean It Out,’ Mum says, but I like it just the way it is, all covered over and mysterious. The toad’s eyes are tiny golden oranges. If I kiss him, perhaps he’ll turn into a prince, or is it only frogs that do that?

Grandpop and Grandma took turn to read me stories, not only when I went to bed but daytime stories too. I loved sitting on Grandpop’s lap on his dull green rocking chair, just rocking away gently with his scratchy chin on my face, his cranky old voice in my ear. I can’t remember what he read me, really, just the smell of his tobaccoey clothes and the yellow nicotine-stained fingers. Come to think of it, he had clubbed fingers like mine. I never thought of that before. I wonder if he had heart problems too? He died of lung cancer though, I think. All that smoking, I suppose.

Their little bungalow was packed with furniture. A solid and immoveable dining table and heavy armchairs, and rugs over carpets, and a funny old leather cloth on the table before the tablecloth went on. Layer upon layer of stuff. I used to climb onto a stool and then up onto the top of the door to search in the cupboard for treasures – jam-jars of buttons, photos, old clothes for me to dress up in. I was good at climbing when I was six or seven.

‘Mum, what’s happened to Grandma and Grandpop’s stuff?’

‘It’s in store with our things, Gussie, in London. We’ll send for it one day, when I’ve found a house.’

I went shopping with Mum to a sort of pet supermarket in Truro to buy cat food and litter. It’s only Rambo that uses a litter tray as a loo. We call it Rambo’s dunny. (That’s Australian for lavatory, loo, bog, whatever. We never say toilet. I don’t know why. Most of the girls at school said toilet or loo. Mum corrects me immediately if she hears me say toilet.) It sits outside near the back door. He’s scared to go too far into the garden in case a tree frightens him or a blue tit attacks him.

He’s such a wuss. All the cats follow me around the garden when I go for a walk. The females fight each other and Rambo follows very slowly, as he has to stop every two steps to look round and make sure the bogey man isn’t going to get him.

In the store there was a huge section of aquariums with fresh water fish – not marine tropicals, unfortunately, which are much more colourful and interesting.

There was a bird section too. In one cage, a cherry finch kept trying to escape, flying to the top of the cage, banging its beak or head on the wire mesh and falling back. It was terrible. I told the girl at the checkout desk but she didn’t seem to care. Probably working in a pet store makes you callous about animals’ suffering. They become merchandise, not living creatures. I keep thinking about it, can’t get it out of my head, the poor little bird desperate for freedom.

Also, I can’t help thinking about Grandma dying of a broken heart. She and Grandpop had known each other since she was fourteen. All her life. He was her only love. And I was her only grandchild and I told her I hated her.

I have been miserable all day.

Note: I have decided it isn’t like a zoo here
–
more like a circus! Something exciting happens every day. This morning a racing pigeon with red bands around its ankles walked in the dining room door and made itself at home. The three cats slept on, totally unaware of a bird in their territory
–
meals on wheels, whatever. Mum was also totally amazed to see it under the table. She put it outside on the deck but it showed no signs of wanting to fly away. She gave it sunflower seeds and peanuts but they were too chunky for it to manage. Eventually she got me out of bed to lend a hand. I suggested putting it in a cat basket with a bowl of water and a saucer of crushed seeds, and then put a towel over the basket so the bird would go to sleep. I remember that’s what Grandpop did with their parrot when it made too much noise. Birds go quiet when it’s dark
–
like the gulls did at the eclipse.

Then, after breakfast
– porridge and honey – another weird thing happened. I saw what I thought was a seal, quite a long way out. But it was swimming along with its head out of the water, and seals don’t do that. So I got the bins and saw that it was a dog swimming – much too far out for a dog – then an actual seal appeared just in front of it, popped his head out, and I saw that the dog was following the seal. The dog’s tail was wagging in the water like a rudder. The seal dived and the dog swam in circles looking for it, then it emerged and the dog followed it again. It looked like the seal was leading the dog to a watery grave. I was very worried. There was no sign of an owner. Mum suggested we phone someone – get the lifeboat or something to rescue the dog. I thought of Ginnie and Mum said, ‘Yes, a good idea, though the dog isn’t exactly wild-
life, but never mind.’

So I phoned the police station and spoke to Ginnie. She laughed and said that the inshore lifeboat had been out the day before and rescued the same dog but that it had jumped straight back into the water. It’s a
Water Spaniel and has a thing about seals.

‘Its owner has given up worrying about it,’ Ginnie said, ‘so you mustn’t worry.’

OK. Cool. A dog that thinks it’s a seal.

She asked me if I had been watching the peregrine and I said yes and I hadn’t seen any hang-gliders or anyone disturbing it. She said she would pop out here sometime and see how the young one was getting on. Cool. I like Ginnie.

The dog eventually gave up on the seal and swam ashore. His man appeared out of the dunes and put him on a lead. The dog looked very pleased with himself – kept shaking himself and wagging his tail.

Life is fascinating here at Peregrine Point. A slow-worm suddenly appeared in the bathroom next to the lavatory. Did it get there under its own steam or did a cat bring it in? It had an old tail-tip amputation scar. I picked it up and put it out. It was much smaller than the last slow-worm victim. It didn’t squirm and fight to be set free. It just sat quietly between my fingers. I wonder if it hurts them to be held. Like when you touch a butterfly wing and take off the protective dust. I do hope not.

There was the usual decapitated mouse head on the carpet in the sitting room. I am becoming totally unsqueamish, and pick it up and chuck it out into the garden. Mum can’t cope with blood and stuff.

Buggering poodle bums! Should have noted where the head went so I could see if the elusive burying beetles did their thing.

But the most amazing thing that happened was – in the night, a badger stole one of Mum’s shoes! For the second time! She had left her very best favourite thick-soled white leather and suede thong sandals, which she bought in a surf shop in St Ives, on the kitchen doorstep – they were muddy. This morning, there was only one sandal. We searched the house, then the entire garden, followed the badger trail as best we could, but found nothing.

Our badger is a shoe fetishist. What does it do with the shoes? The first one was a Hush Puppy backless suede clog – black, soon after we arrived. Mum thought she must have mislaid it somehow. It too was left outside the kitchen door because it was muddy and wet, and she forgot to retrieve it.

Does Brock invite his mates round to look at his designer shoe collection – shoe sculptures, installations, whatever? Does he like the smell or the taste of leather? Are the shoes child substitutes and has he/she lost his/her babies? Does he cuddle up to Mum’s two odd shoes? Has he given them names – Hush and Shush, Blackie and Snowy, Black Beauty and White Fang? Maybe he worships them, like gods or goddesses. Brings them offerings –
flowers and bits of bread, like they do in Thailand or somewhere.

Grandpop’s parrot was called Viv, after Sir Vivien Richards, the West Indian batsman. He started to call the bird Sir after Viv Richards was knighted. Viv was a green and red parrot, very loving towards Grandpop, but jealous
. He was known to give a nasty nip to anyone Grandpop talked to kindly, so I had to watch him when I was there. Grandpop usually shut him in the cage when I was around. Viv and I were in competition. I think Grandpop quite enjoyed that –
these two birds loving him.

I never knew if Viv was male or female. He didn’t say much apart from Hello, and that stupid whistle that means I fancy you. He died a couple of years before Grandpop and Grandma. Old age, I think. But they live to be very, very old.

How strange to die of old age. To be so old you just wear out and fade away.

I think I’m lucky
, in a way, to know I’ll die young, untarnished and unwrinkled. Whatever I achieve, people will admire me for it, because I was young and I died before I could make all those mistakes ordinary people make. I’ll be a hero, sort of. Not like Beth in
Little Women,
though. You could see she was a victim, the sickly one with the mark of doom over the door, the sweet, never did anything wrong, yukky angel. Why does the one who dies young in novels have to be so bloody goody-goody?

I won’t have time to be unfaithful to my husband, or to be a bad mother, or a failed anything. I have the perfect excuse for failure – an early death. So I can try anything, do anything I want, no worries. What do I care about exams? I am the luckiest person I know. It’s just that I have to get in all the stuff I want to learn now. Now. Before it’s too late.

I wonder what happens to all the stuff people know, when they die. Obviously, if you’re a great scientist, or a famous actor, or a great cricketer, or a great piano playing genius, there would be a record of your achievements and inventions or discoveries. Film, video, recordings, books. But what happens to all the little people’s knowledge and discoveries? How do we pass it on? How will anyone else know what we did? Does it matter? I suppose writers have found the best way to preserve their learning. If the book gets published, of course. Perhaps everyone should write a book about their life. That way, their grandchildren and great grandchildren will know what they thought about life, and they would pass on their understanding and imagination. I expect we all have at least one insight about something or other that other people might find interesting.