Bird Cottage

by Eva Meijer

  “I think I love him,” I say.

  “You’re in love, and that’s a completely different matter.” She looks at me sternly. “You mustn’t confuse one feeling with another, you know.” According to her it would be better not to act on feelings at all.

  I heave a deep sigh.

  “Stop acting all romantic.” She follows me into my room, sits on the bed and starts eating. She hardly eats at all during dinner and then afterwards she’s always hungry. “You really did play beautifully though.”

  “I want to be a violin player. To play every evening. To build a new life, in London or somewhere else. I want to earn my own living.” I must find out what’s involved in taking the entrance examination for the College of Music, when I can do it, what my standard has to be.

  “You don’t need to earn a living, surely? We’re rich enough.”

  “I want to lead my own life.”

  “You can do that here too, can’t you?”

  I shake my head.

  She puts the plate with its half-eaten sandwich on my bedside table and says good night.

  I walk to the window. My parents are outside still, sitting on the bench. There is a little table in front of them with two glasses, an ashtray and my father’s book of poems. I can’t hear the Blackbird any more. I shut the curtains and undress myself. When I take off my dress, I can smell myself in the fabric. Myself and this evening. The imprint of the waistband remains on my skin. I fetch my diary and sit down.

  Charles visited the garden this morning and came again in the evening. After everyone had left, though, I didn’t see him any more. He has probably gone to his roosting place at the edge of the wood. The Blackbird I heard must have been Mike, who has been living in our garden this past week. For a number of years now I have kept a record of all the birds who visit our garden, and sometimes I write stories about them. Papa is the only one who thinks they’re any good. Last year I sent a few of them to a magazine, but they didn’t give me an answer. So it’s better for me to focus on music. But birds are important for composers too. Paul told me, not so long ago, that Mozart was inspired by his pet Starlings. Paul. I write his name down, then scribble it out again.

  Longing is—

  Understanding that you are fathomless.

  Understanding that you are flux.

  Understanding that you are water and that water cannot be grasped.

  * * *

  The light in the old school seems tangible. Dust lends substance to the sunbeams. My nose is itching.

  “Just a few more moments,” Margie says, impatiently holding her hand up. “I’ve almost got you.”

  I give my nose a scratch.

  “Come on, Gwen. Lie still a moment, won’t you?”

  I gaze at the tear in the wallpaper behind her. The school closed a few years back and the building is no longer in use. Three weeks ago Margaret found out that the back door, half overgrown with ivy, is not actually locked.

  “We can go in,” she announced yesterday evening. “Otherwise they’d have made sure the door was properly closed.”

  She has placed me on a table and draped a sheet around my body. Charles came with us, but after a quarter of an hour he flew out again. Not enough action. And nothing to eat.

  “Yes. That’s good now. I’m sorry, darling, I really do appreciate your posing for me. I know it’s hot.” She takes a step back, squeezes her eyes half-shut.

  The tear in the wallpaper becomes a person, an animal, a patch.

  “Ladies.” His voice.

  “Paul!” Margaret says. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your uncle asked me to come and fetch you. Hallo, Gwen. You’re looking quite, um, extraordinary.”

  “I’m not allowed to move,” I reply. “Talking counts as moving.”

  Paul says they’re going sailing and we have to come along.

  “Art First,” Margaret says. “I need a little longer. When are you setting off?”

  Has he come here because of me? I keep still, watch how they’re talking to each other. He clearly isn’t seeing me any more, yet now he’s looking at the painting and then for an instant, probingly, at me.

  “We set off in fifteen minutes,” he answers.

  “Then you must leave at once,” Margaret tells him. She straightens her checked skirt.

  He looks at me again before he leaves the room, as if there’s something in me to be discovered. I can sense the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet, my skin in places that are otherwise silent.

  Margaret lays a few more brushstrokes, but the visit has distracted her, it seems. “We should go really, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t particularly want to go sailing.”

  “Well, I believe I’m ready.” With the little finger of her right hand she wipes away some of the paint. I sit up. My feet have gone to sleep. I pull my dress on again, over my head.

  “What do you think?” She turns the painting towards me.

  I see a kind of goddess, or someone from another era, someone who has my face but is more beautiful, someone with a longer and more elegant body. There’s a Crow in the corner of the painting, sitting on a pillar.

  “You’ve invented that bosom,” I say. I understand now why Paul was looking at me like that.

  She smiles. “Your spitting image, right?”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Oh, exhibit it, of course. Perhaps here, at the end of the season. It’s perfect here.” She leaves the room ahead of me, letting the canvas stay where it is. From a distance I can see that she has painted a window behind me, looking out on the sea.

  * * *

  “Lennie! Margie!” My father waves at us from the front of the boat.

  I take his outstretched hand and step onto the deck. I walk to the stern, wood on water. I tug the fabric of my dress forward, then let it fall back against my skin. And again. Coolness.

  Dudley is smoking, his long limbs stretched out on the bench. He rolls his eyes as I get closer: “Kingsley didn’t want to join us. Playing tennis.” Kingsley has played tennis every day this summer. Not once has he gone bird-watching with me.

  Margaret shifts Dudley aside and sits down next to him. “Wonderful! Sailing in this weather.” She stretches out her long legs and closes her eyes against the sun.

  “Good to see you, ladies. And now we’re just waiting for Paul and Dimitri.” Mother is wearing her large tinted sunglasses and the dress everyone says makes her look so young. A sister to her daughters, not their mother. “Cook has made sandwiches for us,” she says.

  I walk to the boat rail, towards the hills in the distance.

  “Ship ahoy!” Paul is standing on the quayside, bathed in light. Dimitri appears behind him. He’s a poet too and one of Paul’s friends. He sports a little moustache, twisted up at the ends with brilliantine. He is the son of Mr McWest, and McWest is a millionaire who spends the summer on his estate just outside Aberdovey. He’s had his eye on Olive for a while now, but in her opinion he’s a mere ne’er-do-well. “We’ve brought apples. And guitars!”

  They dash down the stone steps and leap from the jetty onto the boat. My father pushes the boat off with an exaggerated flourish. We sail towards the hills, past banks of silt, near the castellated folly on the rock with the pine trees. The flag in front of the building is drooping. I go and sit on the foredeck with Father. When we were here last week we saw Peewits.

  “When can we go to Ynys-hir again?” Father and I have gone bird-watching together these past few summers, on day trips to the salt marshes further up the coast.

  “Darling, you’re too old for that now. It’s high time you started to behave like a young lady,” my mother says, pulling my skirt straight.

  “I didn’t ask you,” I say, shaking her hand off, shifting away from her.

  “Hallo, Gwen.” Dimitri sits down beside me and gives me a hand damp with perspiration. “Beautiful performance last week.” He laughs a little. He has a high-pitched giggle with wh
ich he often ends his sentences. His milk-white legs are going to turn bright red in an instant.

  “Thank you.”

  The rocks change from grey to white, yellowish on top.

  “Paul said you were modelling. For Margaret. Are you an artist too?” His eyes blink against the light. His nervousness makes me nervous.

  “I think I’ll go and sit under the awning. I’m about to get sunburned.” I stand up. “And no. I’m not an artist. No time for that lark.”

  “All right. So, now I know.” He giggles again.

  My father is talking to Paul, claps him on the shoulder. Dudley hangs over the rail, touching the water with his fingertips. Olive is reading. My mother is looking for a glass in the picnic basket. My eyes meet Margaret’s. The water swishes.

  “Who’d like some lunch?” Mother is handing out the packed sandwiches.

  Dimitri sits down beside Margaret. She starts to sketch him. He finds a pen and a notebook, shouts that he’s going to write a poem about her, that she’s a woman like a poem.

  The bread is warm and soft, soggy, and the pieces of cucumber slide onto the napkin. I fish them up and wolf them down. I sense that Paul is looking at me.

  “Delicious,” my father says. “Delicious bread. I needed that.” He pats his belly, which has greatly increased in size since he stopped work.

  My mother gives him a disapproving look.

  Paul comes and sits beside me. “How are your birds?” He tells me about a composer who works Blackbird song into his music.

  “Olive, you must have a sandwich too.” My mother tries to push it into Olive’s hands, but my sister keeps them tightly closed.

  “No, Mama. I’m dieting.”

  Mother isn’t eating either. “Do you think it’s time for a toast?” she asks.

  Papa nods. “It’s always time for a toast.” He nods again. “And it’s certainly the right time now.”

  Everyone stands up. Margaret and Dimitri put their things down and stand next to Dudley.

  My father declaims his piece about the Trojan War and then says, “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” everyone replies, and then Dudley pushes Margaret over the boat rail, immediately leaping in after her. Dimitri and Paul shed their garments and dive in too.

  “I think perhaps they shouldn’t swim here,” my father says, as he heaves the boat to. “The currents are treacherous.”

  My mother nods her head in agreement, because he has made a pronouncement. I very much doubt she could repeat what he said.

  * * *

  The tall grass tickles my legs. I walk on till I can no longer hear the others, squat behind a rhododendron bush and pull down my cotton knickers. I relieve myself, letting the stream flow between my feet. Too fiercely, it splashes against my calves. I hear something and swiftly pull up my knickers. Perhaps it was a rabbit in the distance, or a squirrel, perhaps only the wind rattling the twigs. I wipe my left calf against the calf of my right leg. The last drops have evaporated before I’ve even taken four steps.

  Dimitri, Dudley and Olive are swimming. My parents are sitting on the picnic blanket.

  I paddle into the water. I’d like to swim too, but I didn’t bring a bathing costume with me.

  “Where’s Margaret?”

  My father turns towards me. “No idea,” he says, speaking slowly. His legs stand out, white against the sand.

  “Papa, you’re drunk.”

  “We’re simply enjoying the summer, sweetheart.” He doesn’t see my irritation, picks up a guitar and bursts into song. No one joins in.

  I walk up the hill, looking for Margaret. It seems to be getting hotter and hotter. My body feels heavier. Sand on sand.

  I walk along a little path that leads to the wood, its shade drawing me towards it. After a short climb, I see a meadow on my left. Swallows are circling above, swooping down almost to grass level, tumbling over each other, downwards, upwards. I follow the blue flowers. A hare bolts off.

  I hear them before I can see them. “Ow, ow. Something’s stinging me.”

  “Yes, darling. You did want to be beside the pond. Water means midges.”

  I take another step, still hidden by the hill. I see them lying there, entwined, one body made from two, and then a leg moves, an arm. He’s tickling her. She pretends she wants to break free.

  I recoil, stumble, out of sight already. They must have heard me, but so what? I was looking for Margaret. They shouldn’t have been so secretive. I refuse to walk quietly. There’s a crack between my breasts, spreading down through my whole body: first a line, then an opening, then a gaping hole. The path blurs. I angrily wipe the tears away. Why didn’t I know about this? Does everyone else know? Why couldn’t I see it? Why does he look at me like that then? And Margaret—she knows what I feel. They must have been laughing at me.

  I run past my parents at a brisk trot, so they won’t notice my tears, pull my dress off when I reach the water, and jump in, clad only in my chemise, swimming underwater to the others. Dimitri whistles. Olive laughs. Dudley splashes water at me. I swim round the boat and imagine that the hole in my breast is filling with water. When I follow the others out of the river I feel as if I’ve turned to liquid. My mother looks at my chemise with distaste. My father’s eyes are sleepy. Drops of water run down my legs, making little streams that flow back to the estuary.

  “We should go back soon,” my father says. “They’re forecasting bad weather at the end of the day.”

  “Margie!” Dudley shouts at the top of his voice. “Paul!”

  “Have they gone somewhere together then?” Olive says, frowning.

  “Gwen, did you catch sight of them just now?” My mother takes off her sunglasses and throws a shawl round her shoulders.

  I shake my head. A fist clenches in my stomach.

  There comes Margaret, the filly, frisking back through the meadow, sketchbook in hand. “Are we leaving already? I was by a little pool. There were such beautiful butterflies there.” She shows my mother her drawings, traces the butterflies with her fingers.

  “So it’s just Paul now.”

  At that moment Paul comes towards us from the other direction. His shirt is rumpled and there is sand in his hair. “Am I late? Sorry. I went to the woods to write something and fell asleep there.”

  Paul winks as he walks past me. I pretend not to notice and follow Olive to the fore-bench. She tells me about a book she was reading, where everything happens in a single day. Margaret joins my mother in the centre of the boat. “Are there any sandwiches left? I suddenly feel so hungry.”

  My mother slowly opens the picnic basket, lengthening the scene. This is her moment. Dudley suddenly also feels hungry, and Paul as well.

  My father holds out his hand. “I’d like another one too.”

  “You’ve had enough already.” My mother closes the picnic basket, smiling.

  My father pulls it towards him. My mother keeps a tight grip on the handle. My father tugs harder. My mother presses her lips together. She grasps the handle more tightly still and it breaks away from the basket at one side. She loses her balance and falls backwards. The sandwiches slide out, landing in a neat row one behind the other.

  “For the fishes,” Margaret says, helping my mother to her feet again, and then she throws the sandwiches one by one into the water. Slices of cucumber are left on the bottom of the boat. My father sits down and stares intently at the horizon. Dudley and Paul steer the boat into the channel.

  In the distance the clouds are piling higher, a dark-grey castle, and the only thing I long for is rain.

  * * *

  A rosy sun, rosy sky, blue sky, yellow sun. I’m lying in bed listening to Olive knock on the door, then my mother, then Olive again.

  “Gwen?” she says, peeping her head round. “Are you all right?”

  I sit up, my eyes feeling swollen. “I’m just a little unwell.”

  “Cook will make you some porridge. Shall I ask her to bring it to your bedroom?”

  I s
hake my head. “I’ll get up. Perhaps I ought to go out and get some fresh air.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right? It’s eleven o’clock already.”

  “Yes. Of course.” I get out of bed, wash my face with water from the jug on the tall table in the corner. In the corridor I peer at my face in the looking glass. Dark spiky hair, a sharp nose, long cheeks, questioning eyes—I understand. I can’t find anything attractive in my face either.

  Dudley is lying like a beached seal, stretched out on the sofa. He’s reading a book, Jane Eyre. My book.

  “Good morning.”

  He turns a page with his fat fingers. His nails are rimmed with black. He does absolutely nothing at all. At least Kingsley works, at the factory owned by Dimitri’s father.

  “I said, good morning!” A door slams upstairs. “That’s my book, by the way.”

  “Crikey, Gwen. Are you picking a quarrel?” He doesn’t even look up as he says this.

  I snatch the book from him, as if I’m eight instead of eighteen, as if he’s ten instead of twenty.

  “You’re all so frightfully annoying.” Limb by limb he begins to shift his body. “Mama?” he calls upstairs. “I’m going swimming.”

  Cook brings me the porridge. I eat it slowly, in small mouthfuls. When the plate is half empty, I take it to the kitchen. “Sorry,” I say to Cook. “I don’t feel very well.”

  I feel calmer once I’m outside. The heat makes me feel much better. “Charles, wait a minute.” I could already see him from my window—he probably wants to go exploring with me. He waits in front of the house until I reach him, perched on the lowest branch of the oak tree. Then he darts up, flies off, flies back, far too frisky for this weather. The white rocks along the path feel warmer than usual and leave a chalkiness on my hand. My heart is beating much too fast. I slow down. The earth hums with heat. As I reach the first oak trees, I lose sight of Charles. He flew off down a side path and was flying too low for me to still see him. I choose the right path through sheer good luck. Something is rustling behind the fir trees—there’s not a hint of a breeze, so it must be an animal, a rabbit probably. The path leads to a clearing. We’ve been here before, in the winter, when the woods were icy and sealed, the tree branches black and hard, the creatures hungry. In the shadow of a pool I see Charles. He solemnly wades into the water, left foot, right foot, his feathers puffed out against the heat. As he sinks down, the water ripples slowly away from him in circles. I take off my shoes. “Good idea, little one,” I tell him.