White Crow (2 page)

I might have been normal but if I was I cannot remember that time.

Once, for my birthday, my mother gave me a book of poetry. It was a book of poems that she had written, because she was a poet, and she had written a whole cycle of poems about me. The first ones she had written before I was born, when she was pregnant with me, and the others when I was small.

‘This is your gift,’ she said to me. ‘Your gift from me. It’s better than chocolate, or a toy, because no one else has these poems, and they will last forever.’

I was eight years old.

I remember that I nodded solemnly.

‘Mother,’ I said, ‘you are a genius; you are a poet just like Shakespeare. Like him, you have suns, planets, ants, frightening skeletons. I prefer things which are frightening.’

I was eight years old when I said that.

Mother smiled but even as she did I could see sadder things in her eyes behind her smile.

T
he weekend drags by for Rebecca as she realises just how little there is to do in Winterfold. Her father, though he has nothing to do, spends the time finding ways of being busy, of being away, of being absent. He goes for long walks, presumably to try and clear his head.

She hardly sees him.

She lies on her bed for hour after hour, killing three books from cover to cover and as she ends each one drops them broken-spined onto the rough old floorboards.

 

They collide briefly during mealtimes, until on Tuesday her father’s early return to the house forces her out into the heat.

She explores Winterfold. It takes about twenty minutes. She tells herself off for being a silly city girl, and explores it again properly. This time it takes twenty-five.

There’s The Street, where their rented cottage is. It nestles halfway along the row, with its back to the sea, a late medieval cottage with two and a half rooms down and two rooms up. No two houses are alike; there are some older cottages, some more recent ones, probably Victorian. It’s like a short lesson in the architecture of English villages. The Street runs parallel to the shore, but the sea is almost entirely hidden behind the houses.

At its northern end is the village shop and a junction. A road leads across the marshes to Crowburgh, while The Street dog-legs sharply back inland, with one or two expensive old houses dotted down either side. She can hear a garden party in full swing behind a high brick wall, the raucous music at odds with the Englishness of it all.

She turns and walks back along The Street, past The Mansion.

At the southern end is the pub, from where a small unmade road bumbles down to the beach car park, where a notice warns that it can get flooded at times of exceptional tide. The sign brings a smile to her face: a solemn diagram of a car half under water, a stick-man driver standing on its roof waving for help.

Here the road turns back sharply inland, running past the entrance to the ruins of the Priory, once thriving, now just ghosts and stones. Further on are more big houses behind high walls and hedges, until this road meets the one coming from the other end of The Street, and the triangle that is Winterfold is completed.

Rebecca finds herself at the entrance to the path into the woods again, and again she is drawn in.

She notices another, easier path, straighter, running along the back of the woods, but it looks well used, the sort of path dog walkers take to make sure they have a chat with someone. So she chooses the smaller, steeply twisting path into the thin sliver of woods that stands between her and the sea.

She waits a moment as her eyes adjust to the gloom after the bright sunshine of the village, enjoying the sudden cool of the greenness. She retraces her steps from Saturday, but sees a glimpse of blue through the thick undergrowth, and impulsively she pushes off the track and through elder bushes and nettles.

She finds herself in a new universe, just a few paces wide.

What she has found is a clearing in the woods, once probably well inland, but now eaten in half by the cliffs. Behind her, she’s hemmed in by a semicircle of densely packed branches and leaves, a wall. She stands on a patch of neatly cropped grass, right up to the point where the land falls away, and beyond that is the infinity of the sea.

It’s like a little room, without a roof, and with natural walls and floor, and the best view of the sea anyone could have. There ought to be a bench, but there isn’t, and somehow that pleases her. She wonders who keeps the grass short, then notices the rabbit droppings everywhere.

The temptation to jump comes on her suddenly. There is the cliff in front of her, only steps away, and timidly, like a frightened cat, she creeps towards the drop.

She’s very close to the edge before she sees just how high the cliff is. She can see the beach below, and she knows it would be enough to kill her if she fell.

She pictures herself stepping off, and it makes her head swim, so she creeps back and gazes out at the sea.

It’s a unique place, and though she can hear sounds from the village over the rush of the waves on the beach, it feels a million miles from anywhere or anyone.

It’s the need for the comfort of childhood that starts her daydreaming. It’s a safe thing to do, something which does not rely on her father, or Adam, or anyone else. Happy memories are invincible, protected and protecting, no one can destroy them.

Words drift into her head, images from books. For some reason she’s thinking of Treasure Island, but she knows why; she’s found the best pirate’s look-out point that ever was. Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson. Then music. She’s thinking about the cliffs and a song about bluebirds, but not even realising she’s got two different songs mixed up, the song in her head is Dorothy’s from The Wizard of Oz.

She remembers the production at little school, smiling, remembering the blue gingham dress that she wore, and wonders if she can still hit those first two notes, a whole octave apart.

‘Some-where.’

She falters, stops, and tries again, louder this time, and hits it perfectly.

‘Some - Where.’

And before she can utter another note, the line is finished by a voice behind her.

‘Over the rainbow, bluebirds fly . . .’

Her heart racing, Rebecca spins round, catching her heel on a rabbit hole.

She falls, and knowing the cliff is at her back, her hands flail wildly, grasping for the ground.

She ends up on her side, winded, her head hanging into thin clear space.

She looks up into the eyes of the strangest-looking girl she’s ever seen.

The strange girl says a strange word.

‘Ferelith.’

Rebecca faints.

I left school when I was fourteen.

I left because there was nothing else that anyone could teach me. I know this sounds like I’m boasting, but it’s just the truth. It was on the day that I found myself explaining Game Theory to my maths teacher that I knew there was no point being there any longer.

I got up from my seat, ignoring all the names and the insults from the others.

‘Ferelith!’ my teacher yelled. ‘Sit down!’

I didn’t.

I walked out of the classroom, straight out of the school gates, and down to the bypass, and I put my thumb out until a truck stopped and I hitch-hiked all the way home.

When I got home I expected a lecture about how dangerous it was to hitch-hike, but my father had other things on his mind.

That was the day I realised that if there is a God in the sky then he’s vindictive and cruel, because I arrived home to find my mother being taken away in an ambulance. There actually were men in white coats. It’s really funny if you think about it.

But I tried not to.

I visited Mother a few weeks later, but the trip to the home that she had been sent to upset me so much that my father never took me again. Anyway, he lost interest after a couple of months, not just in her but in me too, so that was that and when he went away I was left on my own.

So instead I made Winterfold my own, my own place, and I continued my education, in two ways. First, I used the internet, because I couldn’t afford the bus into town to go to the library, and anyway the library is really old and the books on the shelves there are dying.

Secondly, I continued my education in a more important way, through the observation of everyone around me, because nothing is more important to learn in life than the interaction of a human being with another human being.

And that’s what I did for a few years, and it suited me fine. Winterfold was the perfect place for my strange life. Claustrophobic. I lived a life of confinement while I bided my time. Maybe it’s not how everyone lives, but I don’t mind about that.

I think I was waiting, though I didn’t know what I was waiting for. I think, though, that I knew I was waiting not for something, but for someone.

So when I heard there was a new girl in the village, I went to find her and I found her in the Lover’s Seat.

I watched her for a few moments, and decided she was as beautiful as they’d said in the pub. She had her back to me, so I hadn’t seen her face yet, just her winding red hair. I tried to think of what colour it was; burnt caramel, sunset corn, honey beer, and then I thought I sounded like the dumb names they give paint in the big DIY place in town. So I stopped that.

She was singing! From my favourite film. I only needed two notes to recognise it, and so I joined in, but I think I scared her, which was stupid of me.

She turned as she fell, and I rushed to her.

I leaned over her and I think she must have thought that she’d fallen right over the cliff, because her eyes rolled back in her head and closed.

I couldn’t pick her up, but I managed to pull her back away from the edge, and then I sat with her, as she lay on the grass.

I didn’t look at her straightaway, I’m not sure why. Maybe she was too beautiful, too dazzling? No, that’s dumb. Maybe I just wanted to draw it out, discovering her face, I mean. So I looked and saw the softness of her skin, which as far as I could see was utterly perfect.

That was enough for now, and so I sat with her till she woke up, my hand resting on her hair as she breathed lightly, watching the sunlight on the sea.