The Little Death

by Sarah Till

  The RSPB has selected 15 bird species to provide focus for its work, which are integral to the RSPB corporate strategy. The Hen Harrier, Lapwing, Skylark and Black Grouse are all on this list. In addition, 11 of these birds are also important at a European level and are listed under Annex 1 of the European Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds. (EC Directive 79/409/EEC). The birds include Red Grouse, Black Grouse, Ring Ousel, Wheatear, Lapwing, Golden Plover, Curlew and Meadow Pipits. Birds of prey include Buzzard, Merlin, Hen Harrier or Short-eared Owl.

  Birds are an essential part of moorland life, and the work carried out to protect them matches only the importance of allowing them to carry out their annual cycles and routines globally. The migration of birds often signifies the end of the cycle of seasons - the finish of it.

  Chapter Five

  I can’t believe what I am reading. I’d known for a while that Vera was searching for someone, but it had all seemed so anonymous, so disconnected from me. So disconnected, that I’m still calling her by a made-up name. Vera. Polly. They become interchangeable to me now as I make a tenuous connection. It was almost like the moment she hopped over the wall and went onto the moor, she became a different person; the part of her story that I saw daily merged into something deep from her past that I could only imagine. Until now.

  I see it all the time on this road. A trail of desperate people dealing with desperate situations. If it isn’t someone walking the moor rubbernecking death, or the police on yet another investigation, it’s an accident. As if this place were some kind of central focus point for fatality, it’s also a motor bike accident black spot. The first sign is the police car and ambulance racing each other up the bendy A road. Then a queue of traffic stretching past my house in both directions. Often, hours later, the ambulance returns at a slower speed, indicating the loss of urgency concerned with life. Later, people stand by the sand-scattered patch of skid marks, crying and laying flowers. I can always tell when there’s been an accident anywhere along the road, because the bees get excited. The fresh flowers attract them, and it’s as if someone has put out a selection of sweets and cakes, they all flood out at once to make the most of the variety. Worse, the birds swarm, waiting to see if there are any remnants to pick on, the smell of death working them up into a frenzy. I know this story so well by heart, but I can never know the relationships, the stretching back across the years of happy times shared. Christmas and new Year, then suddenly gone.

  I know now from Vera’s story that although he disappeared, her Jimmy is still very much alive in her today. Is this how we endure? I wonder if this is where our souls are, in the unexplained workings of the mind, shared out amongst the people who loved us. I catch a glimpse of a filthy room, lined with bottles and nicotine stained wallpaper, and think about my mother and father for a moment, and where they are within me. In a place that’s far too painful to revisit, so I put Vera’s story back into the envelope, seal it, and leave it on the kitchen table for Gabriel.

  I can feel the tears bite the back of my throat, and I feel a little bit silly for my crush. I’d often wondered what people meant when they said ‘she’s got feelings for him’. Now I knew. I wonder for a second what it would have been like to kiss him, but it’s too late now, he’s with Sarah. I wonder what I’m going to say when I see him, the embarrassed looks, the bread scenario, my continual staring at him.

  I need to keep busy, so I go upstairs and start to tidy my things up, ready to start work, the best retreat from my emotions. The moor is so straightforward, so cause and effect, there’s no room for wondering what will happen. I pass Gabriel’s room and stop. I turn the handle slowly and push. It’s twilight in here as the sun peeps through the thin material of the yellow curtains, and everything looks warm. His bed is neatly made and his clothes are hanging in the open wardrobe, all denim and leather. The walking clothes he bought yesterday lie in a heap on the bedroom floor, his enthusiasm for Vera’s story overtaken for his desire to fuck Sarah. I smile now; maybe that was his weakness? Like she’s a not-very-good psychic, maybe he’s a not-very-good writer, both of them obsessed with sex? I snigger and open the bottom drawer of the dresser.

  I’d tried my best to avoid coming here, to this place where my deepest disappointments lie. In fact, this was why I’d put Gabriel in this room, so I would have an excuse not to spend time with my sorrow. It always acted as a levelling influence on whatever I was thinking, my greatest wish in life, but also touched the depths of my sadness, the end game for mine and David’s relationship, and the reason why I stayed. If I got a chance to pull the wishbone at a family dinner, or blow out candles on my birthday, or saw a shooting star, the wish was always the same. I’d wish for a baby.

  I take out the tiny clothes one by one and lay them on the bed. They are soft and pastel next to Gabriel’s rough fabrics, and I run my fingers over the tiny socks and teddy bear sleepsuits that no child of mine had ever had a chance to wear. Over the years I had been pregnant four times and lost four children. We’d had tests, but there was no explanation for it. It was always around four months. More than enough time to get used to the idea. To gain weight. To feel a slight movement, and to recognise the stillness of a real baby on the screen of the scan monitor, sans heartbeat. David had gripped my hand a little too hard the last time as the cold jelly was spread over my stomach, and the nurse turned the screen away quickly. That had been four years ago, and I hadn’t caught since despite our half-hearted monthly efforts.

  Each time I had held new hope and bought first size baby clothes. I’d kept them all in the bottom drawer, white and lemon, because we never got to the stage where we knew if our baby was a boy or a girl. There were so many clothes now that the drawer would hardly shut, and they had long ago assumed the smell of the pine dresser that housed them. I pulled out the scan photographs, seven perfect images of a baby at three months, gone in the weeks after. It was like my hidden family album, my inability to carry a pregnancy full-term forcing me to hide my babies from the world. Of course, David had capitalised on this, using every opportunity to blame me and my body. Drawing up ‘my family have always been fertile, their fecundity never in question’. I had no family left, only Aunty Jean and Uncle Trevor, and Leanne, my cousin, and they had disowned me. He could produce a family line, fully genealogically researched back eight generations, the branches of the family tree stretching off into the distance, as if to prove it was all my fault.

  That’s how it felt. Every month as the cramps and the warm rush of blood came I would feel like I had failed. I’d felt it yesterday and broken down. I’d throw myself into my stalking David and his lover, my work on the moor and my aetiology. It would all start again mid-month, the hope, the longing, the standing in Boots the Chemist casually browsing baby clothes, only to be thwarted again in fourteen days. Like a cruel clock, timing my failure. It was exhausting, and, on top of all my other problems, it was completely distracting me from my work.

  I pull out all the garments, and the tiny soft shoes. The hats and coats. Even a small cot cover I had embroidered at the beginning of my first pregnancy, before I knew what dread and fear could accompany the joy and hope. Placing them in a slightly different order so the air could circulate over the tiny stitches and buttons, I reluctantly put them back. Pushing it to, it felt like I had left my heart in that drawer as I realise that this isn’t going to happen for me. If I end it with David for good, which I know I must do, we’ll never have the child I had craved for so long. I turn around, imagining I would see my baby in a cot behind me gurgling and touching their feet, but Gabriel was standing in the doorway. I bend down quickly and pick up the bin.

  ‘Just making sure everything’s OK. I’ll be back later to hoover up.’ He stares at me. His eyes look heavy with sleep and he smells of the outside. ‘That woman came over, she said to give you an envelope. I left it on the table.’

  He turns and walks away and I meet him at the bottom of the stairs as he returns with Vera’s story.

 
‘Have you read these, Patti?’

  I smile.

  ‘Why, are they private?’

  ‘Not really. Just asking. You just seemed a little bit upset last night when I talked about my book, that’s all.’

  I snort.

  ‘Your book? It was my idea. I was going to write that book. You stole my idea after I told you about it. Anyway, why are you here?’

  He leans on the stairwell now, his breath deep and long.

  ‘Don’t you want me here?’

  ‘No.’ My voice is small, because I’m not used to making demands. ‘Well, yes. I don’t mind. It’s just that, after yesterday and then last night...’

  ‘Well, I’ll be here for a little while longer. Just for a little while. I’ll try not to get under your feet.’

  ‘And what about the book? Will you stop writing about Vera?’

  He smirks.

  ‘So you have read these.’ He’s hugging the envelope close to his chest. ‘No. I’m writing it. The thing is, Patti, there’s no reason why we can’t write it together. It seems like we’ve got a lot in common. You know, our research interests. We’d make a good team.’

  It’s too much for me and I bite my lips into a thin strip to stop the tears coming. I look for somewhere to hide but I’m just standing there in front of him. He comes closer to me.

  ‘What’s wrong, Patti? Whatever’s the matter?’ His face changes, from the hard, sexy Gabriel to someone much softer, someone who cares. ‘You can tell me, you know.’

  I think for a moment. I want to tell him, spill out everything about David, the hurt, the badness, how awful it really is, but I don’t. I hardly know him.

  ‘Well, I feel a bit silly after yesterday. You know, the bread and...’

  He wipes my face with his hand and I smell cigarettes and wine. A life I left behind, so different to mine now.

  ‘I’m sorry too. I didn’t realise how bad things were between you two. I was just trying to have some fun, you know? Like I said, you’re an attractive woman. I’m sorry.’

  I laugh a little through my sobs.

  ‘It’s just so long since I had any attention from a man, it took me by surprise.’

  He smiles.

  ‘Yeah, I guess I misjudged the situation. I thought you were like...’ his gaze turns to the window and Sarah’s house. ‘But I guess you’re not. Sorry. I really am. I hope it won’t spoil things between us. I think we could get on well while I’m here.’

  I stare at him, misty through my tears like a frosted lens. He really was gorgeous. I snigger now and wipe my eyes.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I promise I won’t try anything on, you know?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Shame. Somewhere in my past, somewhere I wasn’t being held captive by fear, I would have jumped at the chance. But he was gone. Up the stairs and into his sun-bathed room. When I was little my mother would tell me that angels would visit you when you most needed them. I find that hard to believe now, and my anger turns to tears as he slips through my fingers. All I have to do is reach out for him, but somehow I can’t. Like the moor, the research, the book, all within my reach, if only I could focus. I have no firm ideas but I’m hurtling along the road to having enough knowledge about the moors and the crash to write about them. I know this, and the only thing stopping me is a sense of foreboding. A sense that it might be gratuitous to write about it because, inevitably, I would have to face the real issues. The taboo issues covered up with the words of decades, the families hidden behind it. Even just the thought of the loss turns my stomach, leaves me reeling from the horror. Something people had to come to terms with all those years ago, when the tabloid press wasn’t reporting it every day and none of us were desensitised.

  I’d searched my mind for a way to tell this story without soiling the memories of the people who died, without upsetting their relatives and those who loved them. I was still in the midst of this process when Gabriel arrived. I suddenly realise that it’s not so much that he wants to tell this story, Vera’s story, it’s more that I am afraid of how he will tell it. I’m afraid that he will have the courage that I have never had to break through the forbidden barrier and write about what I can’t. Tell a better story than I can.

  I sit at the table now, wracked with frustration. On one hand I’m too far down the road to abandon my own project; my research about the moor and what happened is extensive, and Vera’s story will add to it, give it another dimension that will make it successful. On the other hand, if I carry on I’m going to have to be sensationalist and disregard the feelings of those left behind. I’m starting to think about how I’ve ended up at this junction, how I have got mixed up in the business of the moor. After all, wasn’t this what sent the previous occupants of this house mad, the preoccupation with death?

  I’m an aetiologist. My work is important to me, the heather is where my heart is. I know the cycle so well, and you know where you are with plants and creatures, they work so well together. My whole academic life has centred on this research, starting with the Honeybee and its behaviour. I love it, and I want to complete it, but I can’t drag myself away from the moor; worse, I can’t physically go onto the moor. It’s as if the people who died in the crash are embossed on it and those who are still missing are somewhere waiting to be found. And I am afraid to find them, like I am afraid of so many other things. It’s hypnotic, but inaccessible to me, as if there’s an invisible wire holding me behind its knowledge.

  I often think about my mother at times like this, times when I have to make a decision. Like now. Now I’ve decided to end it with David, finally, not just in my head while we carry on as normal in real life for fear of what he will do to me. She probably would have told me to have faith, to trust and see that all works out for the best. We were so similar in so many ways, but this difference has underpinned my whole life. I have no faith. Not religious faith, although I remain agnostic so as to edge my bets both ways. What I mean is I’m a wysiwig. What you see is what you get. I need evidence, firm proof of everything. Some would say that this takes the beauty out of life, but I disagree. I studied physics and I see the world in particles, in interactive, swirling, interconnected pieces, and apply this to my work. Take a diamond, for example. I see it as a piece of refined carbon, the same carbon that I, or a lead of a pencil is made up from. The atoms in each are the same, a hexagon, but the situation, or how these atoms are made into a particular lattice, are different. The environmental aspects include temperature and pressure at the time of formation, deep in the ground, to form the diamond lattice, a tight cluster of uniform bonds, and these are not available to our technology. However, the same atom can be made into graphite easily, layers and layers of atoms that can easily slide over each other, so we have an abundance of pencils. These hard facts may seem lacklustre and boring, until you look into the stars and see the same carbon molecules winking back at you and realise that we are all made of starlight. That’s my beauty and certainty.

  It’s with this in mind that I started the study of the moor. Not the individual birds and creatures, but the situation and environment that creates this landscape, and what it means to human life. I already know that we are all made of the same constituents, but what I don’t know is the environment that produces the heath and its lore. Centuries of mythology have centred on the heath and its life, and, at times, this has merged with un-evidenced myth and legend. My natural curiosity has led me to detail this in my research, and now I am becoming part of it, as the moor sucks me in. My resistance is in the lack of proof, lack of solid connection. I can feel that I’m becoming part of it, belonging to it, but I can’t measure this molecule. Just like I know that I’m giving up on my relationship with David. But I need proof. To justify it to myself that this particular arrangement of atoms isn’t producing the good shape I want it to, rather a malformed bunch of half-baked feelings. My relationship might look like a diamond on the outside, but it’s entirely aesthetic, and more like cubic zircon
ia, easily manufactured with all the atoms playing the part of a diamond. David and I are pretending, and, like some people, have lived like this unhappily for years. Because the evidence shows that others continue to live like this for years, I must find more evidence, some flaw to expose the makeup of it, before I can move on to another atomic dance.

  This time I choose graphite. The kind of rough and ready dullness that I see in Gabriel, not so beautiful on the surface, but acting out a grace that shines in his eyes, uncertain and wild yet accessible. I know the graphite lattice by heart. After all, it’s inside me, but I’m amazed by the marks made on paper by someone guiding the atoms along, The beautiful outcome of the carbon’s dance with starlight – to me this is the real miracle. Some call it art, other’s take it for granted, but for me, it mirrors a beautiful life, the product of two compatible atoms creating something so easily. Something extra in the world, that wasn’t there before. This is my hope now; I can’t have Gabriel, I never could, but the hope that there is another life out there, someone like Gabriel; I need to find the evidence to break up my dance with David and it’s not going to be easy. I have a deep notion that David is hiding something – the workshop is always locked and he’s often out, or away. But what could it be? He’s a music teacher, for Christ’s sake; yet I know him, and his cruel streak, where his temper, mostly hidden by his tweed jacket and elbow patches and a goofy smile, boils over to something that crosses the line. I decide that, for the sake of my own sanity, I’m going to find out what it is and end this for good. I know that asking him to leave won’t work, he’ll just ignore me, or worse. I have to prove it, find his lover, find his secret life and hold it up, breaking the diamond sparkle. I’ve been too afraid before, too scared of him to face him, but Gabriel’s spurred me on. I don’t have faith – after all, anything can happen - but I do have beauty; I already have the deep excitement of falling back in love with life.