The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  ‘Felicity told me she was private.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps that is the word.’ He sorted through a handful of pencils for the right one. ‘A private soul holds the story close. But I always preferred sharing. When your mother was born, I was the one to send word to your grandfather. Mind, I didn’t tell her that it was me, so maybe we’re alike, too. I only thought that, war or no, there is a time for family to be close if they can be. And Stanley was grateful for the chance to hold his brand-new daughter in his arms.’ He selected a pencil, nodding to himself and started shading. ‘But you weren’t here for Jane’s funeral, were you? Did word not reach you in time?’

  ‘No. But I came as soon as I could.’

  ‘It was a dreich day of it when Jane was buried. But there it is. She is at rest now. And here you are. You won’t be here for long, will you? Settling affairs and then heading home, I imagine.’

  ‘Something like that. I’ll need to decide what to do about the house.’

  ‘I think the market is good these days. Seem to be a lot of new people around the village anyway. But your mother doesn’t want it?’

  ‘I don’t know. She offered to move back once already. After my granddad died.’

  ‘Well, I might imagine Jane said no to that, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. Felicity said that she was surprised. I used to wonder what it would have been like if I’d grown up here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have your beautiful Canadian accent, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Maybe the geese would leave me alone then.’

  He laughed, closed his sketchbook and pulled a package of tobacco from his jacket pocket. ‘Do you mind? I feel I should always ask these days. So many people …’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine.’ I shook my head. ‘Really.’

  ‘Thank you. Old age proves dreadful enough even with small pleasures.’ He put the package on his knee, slipped out a paper to roll a cigarette with thin fingers. ‘Outside, I don’t think it matters much. Still, I like to ask if I’m with someone.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  Izaak puffed on his cigarette, his eyes watery in the wind. ‘There is, I think, some story about geese and God, isn’t there? A saintly connection, perhaps? I cannot remember. Some story there, though. I think I remember your grandmother talking about God and geese. And there’s a story, too, about your mother and the saints. I think I heard you were born in a convent?’

  ‘No,’ I said, smiling at the thought of Rika wimpled. ‘It was just a community. A commune, really. Some of the people there were believers, but not everyone. It was an open kind of place.’

  ‘And you? You are a believer?’ he spoke kindly, but the words stung, and I felt far from home.

  After a moment, I said I wasn’t sure. ‘It’s hard to put into words.’

  ‘Yes. I might know what you mean. It is private.’

  * * *

  Felicity was a believer. There were many things she believed in. Cleanliness. Cheerfulness. Women’s strength. That protest was a virtue but so was building sanctuary. That tree roots stretched as wide as their branches and the same was true for ideas. I thought she’d learned all these things at the camp with Rika and Bas, but they were all in the bungalow, too. In Gran’s dusting and patience. In the careful boxes and the saved letters. History came in porous layers, with folds, cracks and creases, and stories broke into each other. Felicity’s into mine, mine into Gran’s and everything was in the same place and nothing was believably linear.

  Just like the Roman roads and plastic sandwiches all over again and now God and Mother Goose, too. All these layering stories washed in with the tide, and what was I to believe?

  I said goodbye to Izaak and left him to his cigarette and the wind on the water.

  Closer to the house, the trees’ branches stirred above my head, and I noticed a scrap of a bag held out like a banner as if to signal to sailors still out at sea.

  10

  FELICITY: 1968

  A GRIMET DAY IN MONTREAL, AND THE FACE OF THE mountain was patched with snow. The day before, the wind had been warm and I thought that spring was coming but in the night, the temperature dropped again, and I woke with cold feet. My shift at the hospital started dark and early and when the sky finally brightened, it was a hard day to read. It could go either way.

  Matron was likewise grimet – one moment smiling encouragement and rough as thunder the next, bustling us through too many tasks in just a splinter of time. A far cry from Dr Ballater’s quiet afternoon tea. But wasn’t that the point? I’d wanted a change, and now I was here, feeling fickle as the weather.

  Grimet was Dr Ballater’s word. I imagined he thought it sounded rural, but where he dug it up from, I hadn’t a clue. Some old book, maybe. I never heard it from anyone else in East Lothian. Still, it was a good word. Mum might like it. I’d include it in my next letter, I thought, and she’d also like the mountain and the snow. This cusp-of-the-season feeling. The strange sky.

  I kept my eye out the window as I made up the empty beds along the ward. It was the last job before the end of my shift so possibly Matron was being kind. She usually assigned me occupied bed-making which was tricky and required two nurses. Empty beds could be managed alone, and, without a partner, I could take a moment to watch the sky. It would be a cold walk after my shift – a full half-hour to the Oratory to meet Asher. I’d imagined a stroll through a new spring afternoon with my hat folded away, my coat open and a warm evening ahead. It had been like that the day before. We’d walked in the sunshine together, right through the downtown, looking for a restaurant. It felt like spring had begun and we’d laughed about how much the weather had changed in the past month. It had only been a month since he’d followed me off the bus and already we were constant.

  I’d been looking down at a folded street map, wondering if I might find the way into Summit Park. There were supposed to be pheasants there, up near the old radio tower, and I thought I might find them if I went looking.

  ‘Is it the Oratory you’re after?’

  I looked up and saw a young man walking quickly to catch up with me. He looked pale and northern, I thought, with his dark hair and his strong jaw. I could imagine him chopping wood a thousand years ago in some Viking settlement. Or not a settlement, but a monastery. Remote. Celtic. Scanning the horizon, thinking of God. Yes, there was definitely something monastic about him.

  ‘You got off a stop too early, really,’ he said. ‘For the Oratory. It isn’t far, just up there. I’m … I’m going there myself.’ He pointed, and that’s when I saw the dome on the hill.

  ‘Yes? You are?’ It was hard not to smile at his earnest expression.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If you are.’

  Now we met as often as we could, for meals or coffee, whatever my shifts would allow. I teased him that I’d soon lose my overseas novelty. He teased me that I’d get lost in the city without him.

  We’d wandered through the skyscraper valleys, certain no one else in the crowds was half as lucky, half as alive. We walked miles and we never found the restaurant, settling instead for a counter with smoked meat sandwiches and French fries.

  ‘Next time, I’ll take you for pizza,’ he said. ‘Have you been to Pizzeria Napoletana?’

  ‘Is it new?’

  ‘Hardly,’ he laughed. ‘Been the cornerstone of Little Italy since the end of the war. My uncle used to take me there when I was a kid. Slumming it, my folks said, but it is a venerable Montreal establishment.’

  ‘Just like you.’

  He laughed again and held my hand, so I kissed him and taxis drove past, red rear lights blurring as they turned fast corners and disappeared. Above us, the lights were on in every window and Asher stopped in front of a plush skyscraper hotel. It towered above us, all elegant, arched windows and modern concrete, like a space-age campanile.

  ‘How about this one? You tried this?’ he asked.

  ‘A little rich for my blood, I think.’

  ‘This old cheese-grater
? It’s already been open over a year. I hear the Expo guests wore the place right out. The chandeliers are half dulled with all their gawping. But I wonder if you’d like a night in it.’

  ‘I’m not that luxe a girl.’

  ‘Aren’t you? But think of it – the finest views of Dorchester Square in the city and Mount Royal in the distance. And room service. Plush hotel towels. A gorgeous big double bed. I wonder if there’s a swimming pool?’

  ‘Do you mean it? It must cost the earth.’

  ‘It’s not the Ritz. I could probably manage.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I could wait.’

  Asher was at the bottom of the Oratory steps when I arrived. Still waiting, I thought, but I didn’t say it. He smiled and then I thought he looked handsome.

  ‘There you are! Are you up for a climb? I wondered if you would be, after your shift. Are you tired out?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘The view will do me good.’

  Snow clung to the corners of the steps, hiding in the shadows and shining white. At first, my knees felt cold and stiff, but they soon loosened, and we climbed quickly, side by side, step after step after step. Asher said some people climbed on their knees, every step prayerful. There was even a set of wooden steps kept for that purpose and roped off with a sign – réservé aux pèlerins qui montent à genoux – but I kept my Presbyterian feet on the stone steps and held Asher’s hand.

  We didn’t go inside the church, not that day. We were pilgrims for the view. The city stretched out before us, the straight streets and the first lights coming on, then beyond, the old city and a river sunset. The Oratory lawns were white with snow, which stood out now, whiter from above. Asher turned to me, his eyes shining.

  ‘Come, let’s go,’ he said. ‘Snow-viewing till we’re buried.’

  When I smiled, he told me it was just a poem. A haiku by Basho. He’d spent the morning in the library and now his head was full of Japanese verse. He said he was struggling with kireji and that there was no real equivalent in English.

  ‘They’re cutting words – or letters, maybe – that slice a haiku in two. I think it’s about breath as much as about revelation.’

  ‘Come, let’s go,’ I said, and he laughed.

  ‘I suppose he meant buried in snow, but I like the fatality of it. Very Montreal, don’t you think?’ He took out his cigarettes and offered me one.

  ‘My mum read poetry at university. I wonder if she read any haikus.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as a poet’s daughter.’ We breathed smoke in the cold air.

  ‘No? Well, she’s more reader than writer. She has reams of it in her head.’

  ‘And your dad? Let me guess … bagpipes craftsman?’

  I swatted him, and he put his arms right around me, pulling me close and warm. He smelled of fabric softener, tobacco and skin.

  ‘Okay, so not that,’ he said. ‘Shepherd? Politician?’

  ‘Geologist,’ I said. ‘Well, sort of. Yes.’ I knew this sounded wobbly. ‘Yes, a geology professor. But he might not be my father.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  So I ended up telling Asher about the war and all the men away from the village. About the date of my birth and how I couldn’t sort it out with counting. Then about the looks I sometimes saw in the street when I was small and the scraps of rumour I finally heard at the high school. Sometimes I thought my parents were hiding the truth from me and sometimes I was angry but I wasn’t really sure about any of this and I told him that, too, and how both Jane and Stanley were so loving and such rocks for me and he chuckled a little, thinking I was making a geology joke. I told him my half-story badly because I’d never told it before. I wasn’t sure if you needed to understand a story to tell it. Asher listened and said it didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t, I thought. Of course.

  After that, it wasn’t hard for him to climb into my bed. And, with him, Basho seeped into everything. Montreal’s warming spring. My memories of Edinburgh’s cherry blossom. Everything.

  In my new robe

  This morning –

  Someone else

  11

  PIDGE: 2006

  AT THE HOUSE, THE DOORSTEP WAS COVERED IN BIRD shit. Guano. Ordure. Droppings. But that made it sound solid and this wasn’t. It was slimy, liquid muck. As green and rank as goose shit comes.

  But the good news was the stump was empty and the goose nowhere to be seen. There’d be a hose in the garden. Or a bucket, at least. Maybe all this muck was a parting gift. I could clean it up. No problem. But first, a cup of coffee.

  I’d been glad to find whole beans in the village shop. One bag amongst a whole row of jars of instant coffee. That felt lucky and then it occurred to me that there might be beans only because Gran usually bought them. The shop might stop carrying them now that she was gone. That was all I was thinking about – the beans, the shop and Gran – as I came into the kitchen and saw the back door was wide open. The paintwork around the handle was scuffed and scraped, and the back doorstep as mucky as the front. And then there it was. Standing in front of the sink, right in the middle of the black-and-white kitchen floor tiles – a fat, white goose egg. Perfect.

  I was really going to need to do something about the goose.

  The next morning, I checked all the locks. I must have left the back door open a little, I thought. I would have to be careful. I put the cold egg in the living room in the willow-pattern bowl with the marble ones. It seemed to balance all right on top but it looked immense. Then I spent the morning being serious: linens and lamps to donate, books and clothes and shoes.

  In the afternoon, I drove Gran’s car down to the next village. The locals on the hill called it Gillan, and perhaps they were right, but Gran always said Gullane. There were more shops there – a bakery, a butcher, an antique shop on the corner and a library where I hoped to find a computer.

  I didn’t know if Mateo would be worried that we hadn’t spoken since I’d arrived. He never sent me notes or called to check in when he went away for work, though I suspected that he would like me to make the effort. And as for Felicity – who was probably waiting to hear from me – well, I really should make up my mind what to let her know.

  The librarian wore her hair in short, dyed Nordic spikes and looked glad for the interruption when I approached the desk. Maybe it was just the surprise of a new face. By the window, a long wooden table was spread with newspapers, and a few old men sat there, turning pages, wearing tweed. I explained about wanting to use the computer to check email and I held Gran’s library card, playing with it between my fingers as I spoke.

  ‘None of that should be a problem,’ she said in a soft German accent, her gaze direct and kind. ‘I knew Jane well. She was in every week without fail. Not the kind of lady to use the computer system, still her account number will be registered all the same. I will find you a password.’

  Over by the window, one of the old men let out a cough and another muttered under his breath, looked over at me and muttered again. The clock on the wall ticked loudly.

  The cougher raised his voice. ‘You her family, then? Come to dig her out of the dunes?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m her granddaughter.’

  Another mutter but between the coughing and the accent, I couldn’t understand the words.

  The librarian copied a series of numbers onto a bit of paper and passed it across to me.

  ‘I was also wondering if I could borrow books?’

  ‘Sure. Not a problem. Those shelves by the wall are fiction, and biography is at the end. Non-fiction is over there,’ and she waved towards where the old men sat.

  ‘Do you have anything about birds?’

  ‘Birds? Absolutely. You like bird-watching?’

  Bird-watching or being watched by birds? I thought. ‘Um, more care and maintenance, I think.’

  ‘Did Jane keep birds, then? I did not know.’

  There was more coughing from the table, and muttering. ‘D
aft old bird herself,’ one said and the man next to him jabbed out his elbow and the muttering stopped.

  ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘She didn’t. But I found one. Or rather it found me. It … she … well, a goose has been hanging about in the yard at the house.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘I found an egg. On the kitchen floor. I don’t know how she got in the house. Is there a bird rescue centre or something like that nearby? Somewhere that could help?’

  ‘I do not know. There is a bird-watching club that meets once a month, though not bird keepers, you understand. But they might know someone. A farmer with a flock, perhaps.’

  ‘She isn’t domestic. At least I don’t think so. People don’t keep Canada geese, do they?’

  ‘Shoot them, more like it,’ said the cougher. ‘Best to wring its neck and pop it in the oven. Nice thing, roast goose. Haven’t had one in years.’

  ‘There’s a lot hasn’t happened to you in years,’ said another man, adjusting his flat cap and turning the pages of a newspaper. The librarian pushed her keyboard over to me.

  ‘You use this to search. There will be lots of information, I’m sure. Many birds come through here every year. Seabirds and water fowl, all sorts of things. You will find information about invasive geese, too, I am sure of it.’

  I took my notebook out of my back pocket and turned to the computer screen. It soon became clear she was right: half the world seemed to be rescuing wild birds. My goose didn’t seem to need rescuing; I did. Most of the stories involved something small – crows, magpies or garden birds like thrushes or wrens. Some were babies and others stuck somewhere – a chimney, a drainpipe, the mouth of a dog. Boxes and pet carriers were mentioned, the right way to catch an injured bird in a towel. And so many grocery lists and recipes too – egg yolks cooked and cooled and mashed with Coca-Cola. Dog food. Cat food. Baby food. Insects. Chicken. Wheatgerm. None of this helped, though I did find out that unlike ducks, geese are vegetarians. Comforting, that.

  Under ‘East Lothian bird rescue’, I found numbers for national helplines but nobody local. Nobody who might come with a large net and a van.