Bird Cottage

by Eva Meijer

  He tells me that his wife has been ill all week. The doctor is coming tomorrow.

  “Do you have enough food?”

  “Food isn’t the problem.” He takes me to the cowshed. “Sit down, won’t you?” The breathing of the cows helps me relax, their warmth briefly embraces me. “We simply don’t earn enough. I can’t pay the doctor with coupons.”

  Little Michael comes into the shed with a drawing. “It’s a Great Tit!”

  “Very good!” A triangle protrudes from a circle—that must be the beak—and there’s a pair of little twigs for the legs.

  As I begin to return the drawing, he tells me I can keep it.

  “He’s always watching the birds,” his father says. “And he’s very keen on the Swallows.” They nest in the byre here each summer. Alford is planning to sell his cows, so how much longer will the Swallows come?

  He fetches a piece of butter, wraps it in brown paper. “This is all I have.”

  I thank him profusely and tuck it into my bag with the drawing. Little Michael comes out with me. When I stretch my arms, the Great Tits fly from the hedge and perch on my arms and head. Michael imitates me and looks very crestfallen when they don’t come to him. Then he pretends to be a bird, flying in front of me to the field with the sheep, over the gate, running ahead with widespread arms till we reach the cemetery. Then he circles a few times. “And now fly away home,” I say.

  * * *

  Night-time, his breath against my cheek, then the brush of his lips. I don’t stop him, but don’t turn my face to him either.

  “Len.” He takes my arm.

  I step aside, shake his arm off.

  “Come on.” He takes my hand, opens the door to the bedroom.

  I shake my head and give a light smile. I squeeze his hand a moment, release it, then enter my bedroom.

  The birds are already sleeping. The sheets are damp. I really ought to have a fire in the bedroom too. I hear Paul enter the guest room. It’s windy outside, branches lashing. The guest-room door opens again. He goes to the lavatory, urinates. I pull up the blanket that lies at the foot of the bed. His footsteps sound in the passage, then go silent, but the door doesn’t open. It starts to rain. Drops tap softly against the windowpane, then louder. Then I hear the door after all, slow steps, the creaking bed.

  The shadow of the tree by the window crosses the curtain, sends an echo across the ceiling, over the blanket. Over me under the blanket. I pinch the sheet. Shadows roam the room. I don’t know how long it takes before I fall asleep.

  Poppy wakes me by pulling a hair out of my head. I shake her off, then swing my legs out of the bed. There is more light than there has been these past few days; the rain has moved on. The sun shines behind wispy grey clouds. It’s almost December. Perhaps there is no friend in Scotland. I put food on the table for the birds, smell winter in the morning air. They’re all here: Hop, Skip, Dodie, the other Great Tits, the Blackbirds.

  Paul is wearing the clothes I’ve washed for him. “Can I hang on to this pair of socks?”

  “Of course. Take another pair too. And will you write, when you get there?”

  He smiles and avoids my gaze. “I will.” Words don’t mind what they’re used for.

  Hop lands on the kitchen cupboard, takes a quick look, and then flies off. Dodie replaces him. She makes eye contact with me, then looks at Paul, and flies away. “They’re not used to it,” I say.

  Paul turns his head. “Who?”

  “The birds. They’re not used to other people.”

  “They sing beautifully.”

  “Some are more gifted than others. Peetur invents his own songs, often entirely new ones, though his favourite call is ‘Pee-tur. Pee-tur.’ Patch only sings the simplest phrases.”

  He makes breakfast. We eat together in silence. The soft bread sticks to the roof of my mouth—the roof, the canopy. I tell him to eat an extra slice of bread, force him to do so by buttering it for him. It would be a shame to waste it now. The Great Tits fly back and forth; they’re always restless when winter is on the way. They only settle down when it’s really cold. Before that they’re busy with their preparations, storing food for the winter.

  I slice bread for him, put some apples on the table, and a piece of cheese. He silently packs his knapsack. He could stay; we could stay together.

  His back in front of the window, a silhouette against the light.

  I give him the food, tell him at which farm he can get milk and hand him my coupons.

  “I haven’t chopped wood for you yet.”

  “I’ll do that myself.” My voice is light. Light as deal wood, suitable for making a light table.

  I embrace him, not too long, then open the door. As he walks down the pathway, the sun breaks through. The wind is blowing from the south. I can smell the sea.

  He turns one more time and waves. I call his name, tell him to wait, his face lights up, I run towards him, stop a moment when I reach him, gently touch his arm, his cheek, then snuggle into his arms, into his kiss, ask him to stay. Here. He walks back to the house with me. I kiss him again as we’re walking and it’s not quite right yet, but it will be fine—

  No. He turns one more time and waves. I raise my hand, turn round and go into the cottage, to the kitchen, where I put the kettle on and have to wipe the tears from my eyes to see the mug I want to get from the cupboard. Patch flies into the cupboard. I don’t laugh, but drive him out with my hand, not hard, but it gives him a shock. “Sorry,” I say. “Sorry, little one.”

  STAR 11

  When spring came, Star again built a nest with Peetur. But when the nestlings were three weeks old fate struck: Peetur disappeared. I never saw him again. I think the neighbour’s ginger cat must have caught him: it would lurk in the lavender bush near the nest, hungrily eyeing the little ones. After that Star took care of her brood alone and did so marvellously.

  After Peetur vanished, a stranger came into Star’s territory. She already had her work cut out with finding food for her young, and his presence made her nervous. I helped her as much as I could but I could not keep watch for her all the time. The stranger drove all the other male Great Tits from the garden and then tried to court Star. He would perch outside her nest box, always singing the same three notes. Star pretended not to notice him. He tried all kinds of tricks to attract her attention, even mimicking her call note, a distinctive double-noted call, with the consequence that she never used that call again. The most annoying thing was that he ate so much food, most of the insects and seeds that the garden provided. I made sure she had extra provisions and every time she came to me I gave her a peanut, but Star preferred to give natural food to her young.

  On 30th May the first four fledglings flew the nest; the next day the other three followed. But these were really too young to fly and remained in the grass under the old oak. Star fiercely defended them: there was a Sparrow she wanted to drive off, and she struck so much fear into him that he flew off in utter panic. Serve him right! Those wretched Sparrows think they rule the roost. The smallest fledglings did not survive, however, and two days after their death Star took the remaining youngsters to the garden on the other side of the lane, where there was sufficient cover, out of the range of the Stranger Great Tit, in whom she was clearly not interested at all. She did continue to return to me for food, however.

  That spring our bond grew closer and she became very fond of me, perhaps because she had lost her mate. Baldhead had died the previous year, and now Monocle was the only one of the old guard remaining, and Star had never been very friendly with her. The moulting season started in July. Star still did not roost inside the house, but often sought my company during the day. In mid-August she began to behave a little strangely: she would ruffle up her feathers, as if she wanted to drive me off. Because we had never started our counting earlier than September, I did not realise that this had something to do with our experiment, until one morning she clearly adopted the posture that she always employed to tell me that s
he wanted to tap. I tapped twice on the wood, and, lo and behold, she immediately tapped back, very excited, because I had finally grasped what she meant.

  1944

  “Gwennie!” My sister is standing on the platform, waving as if she’s about to drown.

  “How good to see you.” I give her a hug. The skin of her face is as baggy as an old lady’s and she has a different smell. Her blonde hair is almost white. “Aren’t you well?”

  She frowns. “Why do you ask?” Her fingers close around my wrist.

  “You’re so thin.”

  “There’s a war on, Gwen. Lucky for you that there’s still food where you live.”

  “We’ll soon be home.” It’s a good half-hour walk from Hassocks Station.

  The sky is ash grey, the world is so vast. There’s a thin layer of ice on the path beside the railway line. The grass crunches beneath our feet. The sole of Olive’s left shoe is loose. “Would you like to wear my shoes?”

  “No.” Her voice is faint; she’s out of breath, though we’re not walking all that fast. “Nice, these hills here.”

  “If we have the time, we could go for a walk, to Ditchling Beacon”—the old lookout post—I’m not sure she’ll manage it.

  She links her arm in mine and tells me that Dudley caught pneumonia when it was so rainy last autumn. And Mother doesn’t know where she is sometimes and who Olive is. “She doesn’t drink any more, though. That’s one good thing about the war. There still was more than enough gin in the first year, but thrift was never her strongest point. She’s been in a rotten mood for three years now.”

  I laugh. “And what about you? How did things turn out with Timothy?”

  “After we left Wales, we wrote to each other for a while. But in 1940 he moved to Manchester with his wife. That’s where she’s from, and her parents had wanted her there for a long time already. We haven’t been in touch since.” Her eyes are clouded, misted glass.

  “Do you miss him?” A Blackbird flies from the hazel tree, a stranger.

  She shakes her head. “We have two little girls living with us now, six and eight years old. Evacuees, from London. They’re sweet kids, but very poor. Their cardies were in absolute tatters when they came to us. But we got them new outfits, of course. They adore the garden, with the hens and all the birds. And when there’s no school, which is often, I take them for little walks. When they first came they couldn’t tell the difference between a Sparrow and a Great Tit! And they love the beach. They can spend hours looking for clams and cockles and razor shells.”

  We’re walking past the meadow where the White-fronted Geese graze. They fly up when we come too near. They’re growing increasingly timid because each year more of them are shot.

  When we reach the church she wishes to climb up to it—it’s on a hill, and there’s an old graveyard with a view over Lewes Road and South Street, all the way to the Downs.

  “Swallows nest here in the summer. Baby Swallows are my favourite birds—they’re so playful!” Knowing the world through flight, mapping the land below, being light enough for that.

  “Oh, you can see so far from up here.” She’s gasping for breath.

  I point to the Anne of Cleves House on the other side of the street, which Henry VIII granted her when they divorced. We go down the steep steps back to the road and then walk across it. I take the suitcase from her. Her hand is cold, bony. She really is very thin. She holds herself like an old woman. I’m old too. Since Paul left, I haven’t had my monthly period. We walk the last section in silence. The air smells of fire—perhaps they’re burning rubbish somewhere. In the pine tree opposite the cottage something or someone is rustling. Last week I spotted a Buzzard here.

  When we’re inside I make up the fire—it’s evening now, and winter. I give her the slice of cake that Mary gave me. She wolfs it down. “There’ll be bread and soup later. I know it’s not much.”

  “It’s more than we have.” She takes a last large bite. “All these bird boxes in your bedroom. Papa would have liked that.” In the past Olive would have called them filthy. She closes her eyes, turns her face to the warmth of the fire.

  “Paul was here, you know. For a few days. At the end of last year. He’d had problems in the Air Force. He went north, afterwards, to a friend. He was going to let me know when he arrived. But I never heard anything else from him at all.”

  Olive opens her eyes, a little wider than usual, sweeping her gaze like a searchlight across my face. “Haven’t you heard, then?”

  “Heard what?”

  “He was a traitor. They caught him in January, put him in prison in London, then executed him.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “It was in all the papers.”

  Everyone knows that innocence is hard to prove. My face is burning. All sensation has left the rest of my body. Olive touches my arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise that you two were still in touch. Otherwise I’d have let you know.” Hop swoops in and then immediately out again when he sees that the lamp is lit. They don’t like artificial light.

  He could have chopped wood. No one needed to know anything about it. I shake my head. The light is still crumbling in fragments in front of me; in the fire a piece of wood breaks apart.

  * * *

  The Alfords had no milk, or butter, or cheese. We walk silently along Spatham Road to the next farmhouse. The trees at the side of the road are bare, hard lines against the grey sky. No birds in sight.

  Olive walks with her shoulders hunched forward, head down, a weary donkey. Trees become bushes, then fields, then trees again. The clouds in the distance are almost black.

  “It’s not going to rain, is it?” Her voice sounds croaky.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “You knew I was coming to visit, didn’t you? Why couldn’t you sort this out before?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She gestures towards the farms in the distance. “There’s enough to eat here, surely?”

  I tell her there’s barely enough, and that I’m always having to hunt out food for the birds too. She gives me a fierce look, like the vixen whom I accidentally disturbed in her den last summer.

  “Olive, are you happy, living with Mother and Dudley?”

  “What kind of a question is that?” She stands still. “It’s easy enough for you, apparently, to abandon people. That’s not how I am.”

  I start walking again and she follows. “It’s normal for children to lead their own lives.”

  “Easily said, for you.”

  “I haven’t abandoned anyone.”

  That look again. “You never visit. It was really difficult for Mother, that you went away. And someone has to look after Dudley.”

  The sky grows darker. I quicken my pace. Olive lags behind. I take her arm. “We have to hurry now. The next farm is still quite far away.”

  * * *

  The morning has made the grass wet. Dewdrops slide across my toecaps. I wave at the train until it’s out of sight. Olive has taken two bags of food away with her. We spent all yesterday trekking to farms and orchards. She’s wearing my best shoes. I do hope that Olive’s visit hasn’t disturbed the birds too much. The coming months won’t be easy for them. A truck drives past, soldiers, hooting. I raise my hand and wave them away.

  A traitor. I raise my coat collar. He lied, about that friend in Scotland, and I knew he was lying and that’s why I didn’t want him to stay. Because he’d lied to me before. If he’d been straight with me, he could have stayed. Perhaps I should go and visit the girl he was talking about, work out what really happened. And I should write to Patricia too.

  There are two boys by the pond—schoolboys, no older than ten. They’re hurling stones.

  “Stop that at once!” I stride firmly towards them.

  The smaller one pulls his cap over his forehead. “Why, miss?”

  “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Throwing stones at the Moorhens.”

  “We’re just skimming stones,�
�� the bigger one stammers.

  “If you two don’t stop, and quickly, I’ll let your parents know and then you’ll be for it!”

  “But we’re not throwing stones at the birds.”

  The Moorhens are on the other side of the pond, hiding among the reeds, keeping a careful eye on us.

  At the end of the street I turn around to check. The boys are still by the pond. It does indeed look as if they’re skimming stones.

  I tap at the shop window and give a wave. Theo beckons me to come in. “Cup of tea, Gwen? It’s so cold. Has your sister gone home now?” He listens to the radio a little longer before switching it off.

  “I’ve just brought her to the train.”

  “Sit down.” The shop feels empty. Theo’s stock has dwindled by at least half. He gave Olive soap, tea and flour to take home with her. Too much, really. She’d have protested if she hadn’t needed it so badly.

  I pick at a hangnail. Old skin by an old fingernail, dead matter.

  “They’re saying that the Germans have lost half their troops already. That it’s just a question of time.”

  “That would be good. I can hardly get enough butter for the birds. And without that, my research can go to blazes.” I’m writing an article about bird intelligence for Out of Doors and Countrygoer.

  “Gwen, millions have died on the Continent. Ordinary people. Children. I don’t want to deny the importance of your research, but what’s happening there is of an entirely different order.” He pours the tea, adds sugar, and a drop of milk. He looks up at me. “And birds have survived cold winters before now. They’ll cope.”

  I lift the cup from the saucer, blow on the tea.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Olive told me that a friend of mine has been executed. A good friend. From long ago. A poet. He was a traitor, or so they say. I just can’t imagine it.”

  “The war does strange things to people.” He shrugs. A fact of life. These things happen. Even to the best of us.