The Bower Bird

by Ann Kelley

  At least I have Rena Wooflie, my soft toy dog, to keep me company. She has been everywhere with me since I was three. Mummy bought her for me in Mombasa, when we were on our first winter away. She used to take me away from English winters because if I stay I get chest infections, which turn into bronchitis or pneumonia, so I miss school anyway. Being away each winter has probably been the only good thing about having a rare congenital heart disease. I have met people from Kenya, Thailand, the Canary Islands and the Seychelles.

  I love Kenya best, because of the wild-life; I hope I will be able to go again one day soon. Once we saw a family of baboons crossing the road – the biggest holding the hand of a little one, just like humans, watching the traffic to see when it was safe. And I saw a huge monitor lizard in the bushes close to our house, and thought it was a dragon. I hid the cast off skin of a large cicada in Daddy’s shoe as an April Fool trick, and it really fooled him. That was the only time he came out to be with us for a short time. He had to go back to work. Anyway, they didn’t get on when he was with us. There were raised voices and clenched teeth – Mum’s.

  *

  Precious hasn’t been in to see me. Hope he’s okay. Wish he was here – we could play chess. Mum hates chess. She’s bored, I can tell. She’s standing at the window and gazing out.

  ‘What can you see, Mum?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Tell me what you see, I can’t see anything from here.’

  I’m feeling low and blue today and have come back to bed after the physio session.

  ‘There’s a gold carriage and four white horses with white plumes on their heads and they are stopping outside. I think they’ve come to take you to meet your prince.’

  ‘What can you really see?’

  ‘Not a lot. Sparrows pecking at something. Rain on the window pane.’

  ‘Is the crow there?’

  ‘Crow? No, no crow. Cars in the car park. It’s like a Sunday afternoon when I was a child.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Dull. Dull and grey and gloomy. No one having any fun. Fun is banned on Sundays, or it was then.’

  ‘Tell me what you did when you were little.’

  ‘I was a lucky child. In the holidays I played outside all day until teatime. I’d take jam sandwiches onto the beach for my lunch. When I was about ten I had a racing bike, second-hand, of course, I helped pay for it with my pocket money. I went everywhere on it, miles from home, into the countryside.’

  ‘Weren’t you ever attacked by paedophiles or perverts?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘So, why didn’t you let me do that when I was ten?’

  ‘Life isn’t that simple any more, Gussie. Too many cars for a start.’

  ‘Did you have animals?’

  ‘We had lots of chickens, some rabbits, a cat and a dog.’

  ‘Oh yes, Tiddles. I remember. What sort of dog was it?’

  ‘Lion Pekinese – Foo. My Mother did a Terrible Thing. Foo was ill. Lost the use of his back legs, dragged himself around. She took him to the vet and left him there, she said, for the vet to make him better. But of course, the vet put him down… put him to sleep. I kept expecting him to come home and I worried about him. She should have told me. I can’t remember how I found out.’

  ‘Poor Mum.’

  I suddenly start to worry about my cats. What if Charlie is ill and Claire takes her to the vet and has her put down? I’m not there to look after her. I bet she misses me. She always sleeps on my bed. Will Claire let her sleep on Gabriel’s bed? Or Phaedra’s or Troy’s? Betya Rambo runs away: he’s scared of everything.

  ‘Tell me more about when you were little.’

  ‘I’m Too Old, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Oh, go on, Mum. Tell me about the Veet.’

  ‘The hair-remover? Oh, dear me, yes. It was my mother’s. I was very young, about seven or eight. I thought it was face cream and I rubbed it all over my face and wiped it off after a little while. Then my mother caught sight of me. I had managed to remove both my eyebrows. She Was Furious.’

  We laugh. We always laugh at that story. I love hearing the same stories over and over again, I don’t know why. When I was little I loved Mum reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff. It was very scary but I loved it. There’s a monster that lives under the bridge they have to cross to get to a green meadow. It’s called a…? I must have slept a little. Mum has gone back to her hospital flat. I hope the crow has gone. I close my eyes and now I can’t sleep. I keep thinking I might die if I fall asleep. This new heart will decide it doesn’t want to beat inside my chest. My new lungs will let go my breath and forget to breathe in again. Will it hurt, dying? I will be… where, what? Not here anymore. Where will I be? Will my spirit or soul survive somewhere? Will I be simply a memory, a pain my mother and father have to bear for the rest of their lives? I think I might be having a panic attack. Or a heart attack. Maybe I’m rejecting again. My heart is racing and I can’t stop moving my legs. There’s a loud tapping at the windowpane, like the sharp beak of the crow. I press the button to call the nurse on night duty, Cynthia. She takes my temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate, etc; goes away and comes back with a pill and a drink of water with something in it and gives me an injection in my arm. I can hear her tights rubbing on her thighs. I wonder where nurses get those little watches they pin on their chests?

  I’m a pincushion. I remember Grandma had one with a china lady on top – the velvet pincushion was her crinoline skirt. It’s strange how some memories only last for that brief second you need to know them then disappear again into the dark recesses of the mind. At least my brain is okay – so far.

  ‘You’ll be fine, girlie, you’ll be fine. Shall I call your Mummy?’

  Cynthia is a large-bottomed, large-bosomed, woman with a skin like black satin and a voice like warm honey. I want her to hold me tight so I can feel safe. I imagine she would feel like a giant hot water bottle covered in satin.

  ‘No, she’ll be in bed now. I’ll be okay, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get you a hot milky drink, shall I, girlie?’

  I cuddle Rena Wooflie and nod.

  ‘Cynthia, is there anything at the window?’

  ‘What’ya mean, girlie? Not’in’ is at the window.’ She draws back the curtain to look. ‘Only the wind and the rain – your awful winter.’

  It’s called a troll – the monster under the bridge. My brain seems to process information or memories during the night when I sleep and comes up with answers in the morning. Very clever.

  Precious is here. My mum and his have gone for a coffee. Precious shows me a letter he has had from his sister, Grace, who is eleven. His other sister, Blessed, is eight.

  Dear Precious,

  I am well and so is Blessed, but we miss you very much. Daddy takes us to school and our maid collects us at the end of the day. We have electricity for two hours a day most days and it is difficult to do homework by candlelight, so teacher has stopped giving it to us! My friend’s father died last week and we went to his funeral. It was very sad. Now my friend cannot come to school any more because her mother cannot pay her fees. On the roadside people are selling coffins. I hope you come home soon.

  With all my love and prayers,

  Your loving sister, Grace

  Eeensy Weensy is still weaving her webs and living on my ceiling. I understand now how some English king or other took comfort in the company of a spider, and learned to be patient as she was, waiting for that one insect to land on her carefully woven web. Was it the same king that burnt the cakes? My knowledge of history is rubbish.

  I wonder what age they are doing at school? I better ask Brett.

  There’s a schoolroom here, with paper and crayons and paints, a small library and a computer – yay – hopefully someone will show me how to use it soon. Precious wants to learn too.

  Katy says it’s not unusual for PT patients to feel nauseated. It’s the drugs. It’s boring, though, because feeling si
ck stops me from reading, or doing anything else. My head is spinning and my stomach feels as if it will empty itself any moment. Being hospitalised is mostly boring – there is so much hanging around, waiting for treatment – punctuated with fear and pain. Like being a soldier or sailor at war, I suppose. There they are hanging around in a bunker or whatever, cleaning their boots and painting coal white, or scrubbing decks if they are at sea, and then suddenly they are having bombs lobbed at them or they are shooting and being shot at.

  I feel a bit better today. Not so jumpy and twitchy, or nauseated, but I can still see the raven or whatever it is. Perhaps I should feed it and then it wouldn’t be so menacing. It might as well be carrying a scythe. I’ve never been any good at telling big, black birds apart. Maybe it’s a carrion crow. It’s not a jackdaw. Jackdaws are quite small and cocky and talk a lot. I like jackdaws. I remember one in Fore Street at the end of the summer. It stood on a lamp attached to a cottage and was chattering away to itself very loudly, with lots of different sounds. A monologue. It was so unusual that visitors were actually stopping to look up and watch it. I wish I could understand bird languages. Is it easy for robins to understand what starlings or rooks are saying or do they only understand other robins? And do robins in foreign countries understand what our robins say? Someone on the radio said that human beings are the only creatures with language but I don’t agree. It’s odd that we can translate foreign human languages but not animals’ methods of communication. Herring gulls have the most interesting and varied calls I have heard in a bird. They seem to laugh, cry, scream with anger, chuckle, chat, talk to themselves, grumble, grieve, threaten, canoodle. I do miss them. In London there are black-headed gulls and terns, who screech and shriek rather bad-temperedly, but they don’t chat to each other like herring gulls do.

  I go to have X-rays and cardiographs and other tests and meet three children who are waiting for transplants with their parents. They all have the same look – the parents – anxious, tense. I think the parents worry more than the patients.

  I am up and about and feeling great. A walk around the hospital garden with Mum and… no crow. Well, there are yellow-beaked rooks in a big tree near the road building nests like witch’s brooms, but the night-crow is not on the tree outside my window. I spot lots of sparrows and starlings, one robin and a wren. Oh, and I heard a broody chicken. Must be from a garden somewhere nearby. Grandma had chickens and I recognise a broody chicken when I hear one. Corr, cocococor. Cococococorrr. Or maybe it has just laid an egg and is proud of it.

  The sun is shining, big white clouds rush across a blue sky and all’s well with my world. Not Precious’s world, though. His blood sugar is out of control, his kidneys are packing up and he is back in hospital for them to sort out his treatment. He’s having dialysis. It’s not an unusual problem for post heart transplant patients. I’m lucky I haven’t had any kidney problems – yet.

  I am allowed to go outside the hospital grounds with Mum, who pushes me in the wheelchair as it’s quite a trek. I feel like a fraud, but Mum and Katy insist I am transported this way. We go to the river. There’s a grey heron, tall and still, on the other bank. Reeds swaying. Coots and moorhens bustle along, black feathers fluffed out by the wind, and mallards fly low past us. The world is so beautiful! I want to do what Mary Oliver says – ‘kneel down and give thanks’… or was it Raymond Carver? Some American writer. I get out of the wheelchair and walk a little way along the bank.

  I feel full of life, oozing with life, bursting with life, exploding with life, fainting with life. ‘My cup of life brimmeth over.’ Bliss – like that story by Katherine Mansfield. Such perfect happiness simply in being alive. I can’t imagine ever being happier than I am now. Except I suppose I shouldn’t be feeling this way as my friend Precious is very ill.

  I mooch, doing nothing for the rest of the day, reading and dozing and watching the telly. I felt that I was totally recovered this morning, but now I’m exhausted. Beat Mum at Scrabble, though. She now owes me £216.

  Inchworm

  Gussie is a twelve year old girl from St. Ives in Cornwall. She is passionate about learning, wildlife, poetry, literature, and she wants to be a photographer when she grows up. But her dreams were put on hold as she struggled with a serious heart condition. Now she has got what she needed: a heart and lung transplant. But it isn't working out quite the way she thought. Firstly she has to leave her beloved Cornwall to live in London and in the months following her operation she is unable to do very much except read and adopt a stray kitten, but she could do that when she was sick. She craves adventure and experience beyond her four walls, until, that is, she hits upon a plan - she is going to get her divorced parents to fall in love again. It's not going to be easy, her mum is still dating her doctor boyfriend and despises Gussie's father, who happens to be living with his new girlfriend - the Snow Queen. But Gussie is a determined girl and there is only one thing that could stop her now.

  REVIEWS

  'Not many books around that you can give to anyone of any age and be sure of an appreciative audience, but Kelley does it beautifully in this, the third in the Gussie series, following the well-deserved Costa Category award for The Bower Bird.' SUE BAKER's Personal Choice, PUBLISHING NEWS

  'A great book.' THE INDEPENDENT

  'You have to read it, and it will stay with you forever!' TEEN TITLES

  Inchworm is available from Luath Press, as an eBook, and from all good bookshops. Visit http://www.luath.co.uk/inchworm.html for more information.

  Other Books from Ann Kelley & Luath Press

  The Burying Beetle

  The first book in The Gussie Series, The Burying Beetle was shorlisted for the Brandford Boase Award and was selected for the WHSmith New Talent Initiative.

  It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live.

  The Burying Beetle is available from Luath Press, as an eBook, and from all good bookshops. Visit http://www.luath.co.uk/the-burying-beetle.html for more information.

  A Snail’s Broken Shell

  For the first time in years Gussie can run, climb and jump. Every breath she takes is easier now, and every step more confident, but Gussie can't help wondering about her donor. Was she young? Had she been very sick or was there an accident? And with her new life comes a whole new set of problems. She is going back to school at last - but she doesn't know anyone her own age, with the exception of Siobhan, the girl she hates most in the world. With school not meeting up to her expectations, Gussie turns to her old pastimes of birdwatching and photography, but troubling news awaits her there too. And then lightning strikes and Gussie must act at once...

  A Snail’s Broken Shell is available from Luath Press, as an eBook, and from all good bookshops. Visit http://www.luath.co.uk/a-snail-s-broken-shell.html for more information.

  Runners

  As mankind strives to rebuild society in the wake of climate change, over-population and global food shortages, every day is a struggle for people like Sid and his younger sister Lo. They are ‘runners’- people whose very survival the government has outlawed. As they move west, trying to find family or somewhere they can call home, they must work out which of the people they meet on the way can be trusted, and which want to cut their adventure short. Encountering people on both sides of the law, as well as those who seem to exist outside it, Sid and Lo make
and lose friends as they fight for their lives and each other.

  Runners is available from Luath Press, as an eBook, and from all good bookshops. Visit http://www.luath.co.uk/runners.html for more information.

  The Light at St Ives

  France has Montmartre, Prague has Mala Strana and England has St Ives, an enclave where artists can create freely and showcase their works to the world. Costa winner award Ann Kelley has already proved to be an excellent photographer with her previous books Sea Front: A Cornish Souvenir and Paper Whites: Photographs and Poems. Ann Kelley expresses herself in photographs as if they were words. Her style is simple but special, careful and delicate and her photographs genuinely capture the atmosphere of this beautiful Cornish town.

  The Light at St Ives is available from Luath Press and from all good bookshops. Visit http://www.luath.co.uk/the-light-at-st-ives.html for more information.

  Luath Press Limited

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  LUATH PRESS takes its name from Robert Burns, whose little collie Luath (Gael., swift or nimble) tripped up Jean Armour at a wedding and gave him the chance to speak to the woman who was to be his wife and the abiding love of his life. Burns called one of ‘The Twa Dogs’ Luath after Cuchullin’s hunting dog in Ossian’s Fingal. Luath Press was established in 1981 in the heart of Burns country, and is now based a few steps up the road from Burns’ first lodgings on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

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