He began to move closer. Slowly, one step at a time. How near could he get before it took off? Near enough so it could see he was friendly? Near enough to touch it, even?
It was one of the small gulls. Grey feathers on its wings, a few black-tipped ones on its tail. He took another pace closer. The red beak ended in a little hook at the tip, where the top half fitted over. He’d never noticed that before. Another step. The eye was like little rubber rings, red on the outside, then white, red again, and black into the centre. Another step and another. The sun behind him.
The seagull was hurt. Along its breast and side, just above the water, exposed pinky-grey flesh glistened in the sunlight. It’s torn its guts open on a rock or something, the boy told himself. He edged forward with one hand outstretched, making little noises of reassurance.
Then he was lurching backwards, away from the pool. The wound of pink-grey flesh had crawled and twisted along the seagull’s side. The bird’s body dipped in the water, then rose again. The beak opened, but made no sound. The eye stared. He saw the line of white suckers along the edge of the tentacle, where it gripped the bird.
One of his heels was dripping blood where he’d jarred it against the rock rim. He made himself go forward again, staring. Once more, as his shadow touched the water, the tentacle tightened and gleamed. Down under the big rock in the middle of the pool, the octopus braced itself against a new presence. The gull dipped with the movement. It might have been floating on a carefree swell. The dazzle of sun made it impossible to see down into the pool.
He knew straightaway that there was one thing he couldn’t do. He couldn’t put his hands on the tentacle, and try to pull it free. What if he touched the clinging limb? If the pink-grey flesh shifted sideways and came sliding over his fingers and wrists? His lips drew back at the thought.
A picture caught at him, and he was off across the rims of the pools, to the high-tide line of driftwood where the stick poked from its tangle of fishing-net. This time he didn’t tug at the stick. He wrenched and tore till it came splintering away into his hands. He panted back towards the pool.
The bird was motionless again on the water. He knelt on the rock and stretched the stick’s broken end out slowly till it touched the flesh of the tentacle. The white suckers wrinkled.
Next moment, he was lunging into the water beneath the bird. Jabbing and threshing and hauling the stick from side to side in the pool. His own body and head were turned away, his eyes closed against what might come writhing up the stick at him.
The water frothed and slapped over the rock rim, and the gull lurched on sudden waves. Sand and mud rose from the bottom. The stick met a resistance like a wet sack. He snatched his hand away, and clutched it to him. Bird and stick floated side by side on the surface of the pool. A second tentacle had joined the first, glistening along the gull’s white side.
He turned his back on the pool and ran for his father. Across the pebbles and up the bank of kikuyu grass to the bach. When he flung in through the back door, his mother and father were sitting silent at opposite ends of the kitchen table. In the darkness after the sun outside, he couldn’t tell them apart at first.
His mother’s voice began to say something about dirty feet, but he went straight over the top of her. It was like the picture he’d been making for himself earlier.
“Dad! Dad! There’s a seagull down in the rock pools, and it’s caught by an octopus! You’ve got to get it out. The octopus is gonna drown it! Please, Dad, you’ve got to come now!” Then he was off again, running before demands for explanation could snare and delay him.
When his father joined him at the pool, he was crouched again on the rim, trying to look down into the water. The man, who’d come striding jerkily down from the bach, said nothing to his son. Instead, he picked up the stick that was floating at the pool’s edge and pointed uncertainly at the gull. And Darrin had another picture.
This one was from a month ago. Their cat had started choking on a fishbone. His father, who was nearest, had grabbed the animal and tried to pat its back. The cat twisted and squalled. His mother had said, “Give it here! God, you’re useless!” With the animal tucked under her arm, she’d reached deftly with finger and thumb for the fishbone. His father had walked out of the room.
Now his father was jabbing with the stick in the water, just as the boy had done, only harder with his man’s strength. The boy saw the same thing happen: the water lash and slop, the bird toss from side to side, the tentacles contract around it. But this time it was pulled deeper into the water, till its sides and folded wings were half-submerged. “Don’t!” yelled the boy. “Don’t! It’s drowning!”
He knew instantly that they were the wrong words. His father’s face went red and helpless. He slung the stick away so that it clattered and somersaulted across the rocks. Then he stooped and wrenched with both hands at a stone the boy couldn’t even have moved. He rose, straddled above the pool, and lifted the stone high over his head.
“No, Dad! Don’t kill it! No!”
The man stared at his son. He opened his mouth and his eyes as the seagull had done. Then he dropped the stone back on to the pool rim, and was striding, running back up towards the bach.
The boy stared after him, hands pressed against his ears where they’d jerked when his father scooped the stone high. He was heaving to breathe. His eyes felt tight and bulgy.
Then – “Dad! Dad! I know!” He too was off towards the bach once more. Blundering up through the kikuyu, reaching the top of the bank just in time to glimpse his father vanish inside the door.
He didn’t go for the bach. Instead he snatched open the door of the shed where the lawnmower was stored. His hands scrabbled along the shelf for what he’d seen there yesterday – the pruning saw with its curve of rusty teeth.
He held the saw in front of him as he slid and stumbled back down to the pools. Both his feet were bleeding now from the pitted rocks. The seagull still floated silent on the surface of the water. The black centre of its eye stared at him.
Darrin stopped at the pool’s edge. Then he drew back his lips again and stepped in.
The winter water gripped him up to his thighs. But it was only two steps into the middle of the pool. He did what he’d known he could never do, and seized the seagull with one hand. He reached beneath it with the pruning saw, and began hacking backwards and forwards with the hooked blade. He yelled as he sawed, and he felt the rusty teeth jag and tear. The tentacles gripping the bird contorted, then whipped away. The seagull was free in his hands.
He still whimpered and shrieked till he was out of the pool and headed towards the bach, the pruning saw dropped somewhere in the water. The gull held against his body with both hands. But he was silent except for the heave of his breathing by the time he reached the lawn at the top of the bank.
The seagull had lain unmoving against him all the way up from the rock pool. He would get it bread and a dish of water from the kitchen. Maybe there would be a tin of sardines his mother would let him open. But first the bird could rest where it was safe. He knelt down, and placed it gently on the soft grass of the lawn.
For a second, it sat as it had on the surface of the rock pool, body and eyes still. Then its beak opened for the second time, and stayed open. It shivered once along its length. A white membrane slid down over the eye nearest to him.
When Darrin finally stood up, his knees and thighs were stiff with cramp, the way they’d been yesterday after he’d knelt and stared into the life of the pools. He reached out with one foot, and gave the seagull a push. The bird sagged over on to its side. For the first time he could see its breast where the tentacles had gripped and crushed. The white feathers there looked just as unruffled as they did everywhere else.
He moved towards the bach in the glittering sunlight. His feet were covered with sand and blood. His jeans were soaked, and he’d ripped one of the cuffs of his jersey. He supposed he should wash his hands and feet under the outside tap, but he couldn’t be bot
hered.
This time when he opened the back door, it seemed even darker inside than it had before. Once more his parents were sitting at opposite ends of the table, and he still couldn’t make out at first who was which. They weren’t looking at anything, and they weren’t saying anything. As he looked at their faces staring past each other, he saw again the eyes of the seagull.
Photo Credit: Robert Cross,
Victoria University of Wellington
‘Free as a Bird’ was most recently published in Hillsides - the best of David Hill (Mallinson Rendel Publishers Limited, 2006).
David Hill lives in Taranaki, and has been a fulltime author for 40 years. He writes fiction and non-fiction for most age groups. His novels and stories for YA and younger readers have won various awards, and are published in some 15 countries and almost as many languages. His latest books are Coast Watcher (Penguin Random House NZ, 2021) and Three Scoops (One Tree House, 2021).
The Doll’s House
Katherine Mansfield
When dear old Mrs Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells she sent the children a doll’s house. It was so big that the carter and Pat carried it into the courtyard, and there it stayed, propped up on two wooden boxes beside the feed-room door. No harm could come to it; it was summer. And perhaps the smell of paint would have gone off by the time it had to be taken in. For, really, the smell of paint coming from that doll’s house (“Sweet of old Mrs Hay, of course; most sweet and generous!”) – but the smell of paint was quite enough to make anyone seriously ill, in Aunt Beryl’s opinion. Even before the sacking was taken off. And when it was . . .
There stood the doll’s house, a dark, oily, spinach green, picked out with bright yellow. Its two solid little chimneys, glued on to the roof, were painted red and white, and the door, gleaming with yellow varnish, was like a slab of toffee. Four windows, real windows, were divided into panes by a broad streak of green. There was actually a tiny porch, too, painted yellow, with big lumps of congealed paint hanging along the edge.
But perfect, perfect little house! Pat prised it open with his penknife, and the whole house front swung back, and – there you were, gazing at one and the same moment into the drawing-room and dining-room, the kitchen and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open! Why don’t all houses open like that? How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hat-stand and two umbrellas! That is – isn’t it? – what you long to know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at the dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel . . .
“Oh-oh!” The Burnell children sounded as though they were in despair. It was too marvellous; it was too much for them. They had never seen anything like it in their lives. All the rooms were papered. There were pictures on the walls, painted on the paper, with gold frames complete. Red carpet covered all the floors except the kitchen; red plush chairs in the drawing-room, green in the dining-room; tables, beds with real bedclothes, a cradle, a stove, a dresser with tiny plates and one big jug. But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was even filled all ready for lighting, though of course, you couldn’t light it. But there was something inside that looked like oil and moved when you shook it.
The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll’s house. They didn’t look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say, “I live here.” The lamp was real.
The Burnell children could hardly walk to school fast enough the next morning. They burned to tell everybody, to describe to – well – to boast about their doll’s house before the school-bell rang.
“I’m to tell,” said Isabel, “because I’m the eldest. And you two can join in after. But I’m to tell first.”
There was nothing to answer. Isabel was bossy, but she was always right, and Lottie and Kezia knew too well the powers that went with being the eldest. They brushed through the thick buttercups at the road edge and said nothing.
“And I’m to choose who’s to come and see it first. Mother said I might.”
For it had been arranged that while the doll’s house stood in the courtyard they might ask the girls at school, two at a time, to come and look. Not to stay for tea, of course, or to come traipsing through the house. But just to stand quietly in the courtyard while Isabel pointed out the beauties, and Lottie and Kezia looked pleased . . .
***
But hurry as they might, by the time they had reached the tarred palings of the boys’ playground the bell had begun to jangle. They only just had time to whip off their hats and fall into line before the roll was called. Never mind. Isabel tried to make up for it by looking very important and mysterious and by whispering behind her hand to the girls near her, “Got something to tell you at playtime.”
Playtime came and Isabel was surrounded. The girls of her class nearly fought to put their arms round her, to walk away with her, to beam flatteringly, to be her special friend. She held quite a court under the huge pine trees at the side of the playground. Nudging, giggling together, the little girls pressed up close. And the only two who stayed outside the ring were the two who were always outside, the little Kelveys. They knew better than to come anywhere near the Burnells.
For the fact was, the school the Burnell children went to was not at all the kind of place their parents would have chosen if there had been any choice. But there was none. It was the only school for miles. And the consequence was all the children of the neighbourhood, the Judge’s little girls, the doctor’s daughters, the storekeeper’s children, the milkman’s, were forced to mix together. Not to speak of there being an equal number of rude, rough little boys as well. But the line had to be drawn somewhere. It was drawn at the Kelveys. Many of the children, including the Burnells, were not allowed even to speak to them. They walked past the Kelveys with their heads in the air, and as they set the fashion in all matters of behaviour, the Kelveys were shunned by everybody. Even the teacher had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers.
They were the daughters of a spry, hard-working little washerwoman, who went about from house to house by the day. This was awful enough. But where was Mr Kelvey? Nobody knew for certain. But everybody said he was in prison. So they were the daughters of a washerwoman and a jailbird. Very nice company for other people’s children! And they looked it. Why Mrs Kelvey made them so conspicuous was hard to understand. The truth was they were dressed in “bits” given to her by the people for whom she worked. Lil, for instance, who was a stout, plain child, with big freckles, came to school in a dress made from a green art-serge tablecloth of the Burnells’, with red plush sleeves from the Logans’ curtains. Her hat, perched on top of her high forehead, was a grown-up woman’s hat, once the property of Miss Lecky, the postmistress. It was turned up at the back and trimmed with a large scarlet quill. What a little guy she looked! It was impossible not to laugh. And her little sister, our Else, wore a long white dress, rather like a nightgown, and a pair of little boy’s boots. But whatever our Else wore she would have looked strange. She was a tiny wishbone of a child, with cropped hair and enormous solemn eyes - a little white owl. Nobody had ever seen her smile; she scarcely ever spoke. She went through life holding on to Lil, with a piece of Lil’s skirt screwed up in her hand. Where Lil went, our Else followed. In the playground, on the road going to and from school, there was Lil marching in front and our Else holding on behind. Only when she wanted anything, or when she was out of breath, our Else gave Lil a tug, a twitch, and Lil stopped and turned round. The Kelveys never failed to understand each other.
Now they hovered at the edge
; you couldn’t stop them listening. When the little girls turned round and sneered, Lil, as usual, gave her silly, shamefaced smile, but our Else only looked.
And Isabel’s voice, so very proud, went on telling. The carpet made a great sensation, but so did the beds with real bedclothes, and the stove with an oven door.
When she finished Kezia broke in. “You’ve forgotten the lamp, Isabel.”
“Oh yes,” said Isabel, “and there’s a teeny little lamp, all made of yellow glass, with a white globe that stands on the dining-room table. You couldn’t tell it from a real one.”
“The lamp’s best of all,” cried Kezia. She thought Isabel wasn’t making half enough of the little lamp. But nobody paid any attention. Isabel was choosing the two who were to come back with them that afternoon and see it. She chose Emmie Cole and Lena Logan. But when the others knew they were all to have a chance, they couldn’t be nice enough to Isabel. One by one they put their arms round Isabel’s waist and walked her off. They had something to whisper to her, a secret. “Isabel’s my friend.”
Only the little Kelveys moved away forgotten; there was nothing more for them to hear.
Days passed, and as more children saw the doll’s house, the fame of it spread. It became the one subject, the rage. The one question was, “Have you seen Burnells’ doll’s house? Oh, ain’t it lovely!” “Haven’t you seen it? Oh, I say!”
Even the dinner hour was given up to talking about it. The little girls sat under the pines eating their thick mutton sandwiches and big slabs of johnny cake spread with butter. While always, as near as they could get, sat the Kelveys, our Else holding on to Lil, listening too, while they chewed their jam sandwiches out of a newspaper soaked with large red blobs.
“Mother,” said Kezia, “can’t I ask the Kelveys just once?”
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