Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  He does not notice the pain that lands fleetingly in Elodie’s eyes. An embattled look crosses his face. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to her, perhaps,’ he continues as if he’s talking to himself. ‘But she always knows best. I mean, she’s trained in psychiatry, amongst everything else. Her quack friend Maria agreed it would be good for him to be sent away. I didn’t know what else to do but agree – he was completely out of hand by that point.’ He shrugs then, in a gesture now familiar to Elodie, a half despairing, half bewildered little movement. ‘She’s always told me I was weak. I hadn’t realised how right she was until I let her send our son away.’

  He sits up then and smiles gratefully at her. ‘You’re such a great listener, Elodie.’

  As she smiles back at him, her heart swells with pride. Just then, they hear Ingrid’s car pulling up at the bottom gate. ‘Well,’ he says, jumping up abruptly. ‘We’d better go in, hadn’t we?’

  She takes in the nervousness that flickers across his face, and as she follows him into the house and watches him disappear into his study, she feels a sharp tug of disappointment.

  As usual their rare, shared mealtimes are fraught with tension, the initial few minutes of cool politeness soon giving way to a steady stream of needling and bickering. She notices that the more wine Robert drinks, the louder and more aggressive he becomes. It shocks her, the strength and speed of the anger that will infuse his face, instantly transforming his handsome, good-natured features into something ugly. Try as she might she cannot reconcile this person with the man who is so sweet to her when they’re alone. And the more goading and belligerent he grows, the more icy and cutting becomes Ingrid. At these times Elodie will eat her meal as quickly as possibly and escape upstairs, trying to block out the voices that grow steadily louder and angrier.

  As Ingrid’s absences from High Barn become more frequent, Robert takes to visiting Elodie on the top floor, often sitting on one of the little chairs in the school room and talking to her over the sound of the television, filling the small, low-ceilinged room with his words. She notices that he rarely asks her about herself now, the way he once did. Never mentions his concern at her being cooped up too much alone. In fact, more and more these days it occurs to her that when Robert begins talking, it almost doesn’t matter if she’s sitting there or not. And sometimes it will strike her that he is rather like a fly, buzzing to and fro in a room, batting angrily against walls and glass, entirely ignoring the one, wide open window that would set it free. Almost as if it were enjoying itself. She thinks about how, when she’s given a particularly difficult exercise or project by Ingrid, she tries and tries until she gets it right. As she watches his endlessly moving lips, she realises that she couldn’t ever imagine Robert trying very hard at anything.

  And slowly, a new restlessness begins to flap its wings within Elodie. The rooms of High Barn seem to have grown much smaller recently. Often she’ll gaze out of the window to the world that lies beyond it. Questions begin to rise to the surface of her mind. Sometimes she’ll feel a tightness in her throat as if the still, trapped air she breathes is slowly choking her.

  One day at the end of summer she’s in the schoolroom with Ingrid. It’s very warm and the window has been left wide open. From where she sits, Elodie can see the lawn bathed in the mid-afternoon sun, and the edge of one of the apple trees, its lower branches bowing with the weight of its fruit; golden orbs hovering precariously above their fallen, rotting siblings.

  From Locust Valley the sound of a little league game floats up to them on the breeze, children’s voices riding the warm air. A seagull circling somewhere above lets out a long cry.

  ‘Pay attention, Elodie.’ She turns to see Ingrid’s eyes upon her. But instead of bowing her head to her books, she gets up and moves to the open window, breathing in the summer smells.

  ‘Sit down, Elodie. What on earth’s got into you this afternoon?’

  ‘Where is my mother, Ingrid?’ she asks.

  In the silence that follows, a wasp flies into the windowpane with a tiny thump. She turns and looks over to where Ingrid stands, a piece of chalk held frozen in mid air, her mouth a little ‘O’ of shock.

  ‘I said: where is my mother, Ingrid? Who is she?’

  Somewhere, down the hill, a dog barks. Elodie turns back to the window.

  When Ingrid speaks her voice is quick and flustered. ‘Your mother doesn’t want to see you, Elodie. I’m very sorry, but there it is. I’ve tried my best to persuade her but she has a new life now.’

  She does not see Ingrid’s face when she speaks these words, and in fact, cannot bear to look at her while they float around and around the room. Instead she continues to stand, silently looking out at the perfect, blue sky.

  ‘The truth is, Elodie, your mother is an alcoholic,’ Ingrid continues in the strange, brisk voice. ‘Her life is not really suited to taking care of a child and we don’t even have a fixed address for her anymore …’ her voice trails off, but still her words remain, embedded like shards of glass.

  Moments later, Ingrid is beside her. ‘Oh darling. I’m so sorry.’

  But still Elodie does not look at her. She continues to stand, quite still, at the window. She can feel Ingrid’s fingers clasping her arm, the faintly musty smell of her breath, so close to her. ‘Don’t cry, Elodie, please don’t cry. You have me, now, darling. We have each other. You’ll always have me. I love you so much.’

  At last Elodie turns to her and smiles. ‘I love you too,’ she says.

  It’s a few weeks later that Elodie begins her secret flights from High Barn. The first time she escapes is early one evening at the end of summer. Ingrid is out, and Claire has just left for the day. She’s standing at the foot of the stairs, one ear cocked towards Robert’s study, when suddenly she finds herself staring at the front door. As soon as the idea enters her head she feels her heart begin to thump with excitement, her palms start to sweat. She listens again for Robert, but hearing nothing, creeps closer to the door and very quietly, tries the latch. It opens noiselessly, easily. The sweet, dewy smell of grass beyond it fills her nostrils. Deftly, she slips out, closing the door behind her.

  That first time, she doesn’t venture very far. Just to the edge of the garden, where she stands in the gathering shadows, breathing the smell of the trees in the copse below. The pleasure she feels at being out of the house and in the world alone is so great that she lingers in the last moments of the day, luxuriating in the fresh, warm air, staring up at the vast sky. Soon though, fear of being discovered drives her back towards the house. Reluctantly she opens the door and slips back in and up to her room. That evening she notices that the tight feeling in her chest and lungs has loosened, just a little.

  At first she’s content to keep to the boundaries of the garden, but over time she grows bolder, and the more often she manages to slip away from the house, the further she ventures. Keeping to the shadows she moves along the edge of the garden to the path that leads into the trees. Sometimes she remains there, breathing in the scents and listening to the furtive scurrying of animals; other times she follows the path right down the hill, until it reaches the road. And there she stops, not quite daring to go any further, not yet. But each time she returns to the house she feels a quiet elation, a sense of power and control that’s entirely new to her.

  And then, one night, she lingers too long beneath the stars. She emerges from the edges of the lawn with a sinking heart to find the familiar car in the drive and Ingrid herself standing on the step, panic in her eyes.

  ‘Elodie,’ she cries, as soon as she sees her. ‘Oh thank God. Thank God! I was about to call the police.’ Rushing forward she pulls Elodie to her and for a moment she thinks that it’s going to be OK, that Ingrid will somehow understand. But then Ingrid pulls away and in a voice that chills her says, ‘Go up to your room now, Elodie.’

  On the front step she meets Robert, his wounded expression echoing his wife’s. Wordlessly she passes him and climbs the stairs to the top flo
or.

  ‘Anything could have happened to you,’ Ingrid tells her later, when she comes to her room. Her voice is tight with anger and she shakes her head in exasperation. ‘Do you understand, Elodie? You have no idea, no concept of how to take care of yourself out there.’

  Elodie doesn’t reply but her fists are clenched so tightly that she feels the nails cutting into her palms.

  Ingrid crosses the room in quick strides. Reaching for Elodie’s arm she says in a pleading tone, ‘Where were you going, Elodie? Why did you do it?’

  But she shakes herself free and turns away to stare out of the window.

  When next Ingrid speaks her voice is icy. ‘Until you can be trusted I will keep the door to your floor locked,’ she tells her. And without turning or replying Elodie hears her leave, her footsteps receding down the hall, and then, finally, the key turning once again in its lock.

  From then on, the door not only remains locked throughout the night, but also whenever Ingrid leaves High Barn, regardless of whether Robert’s there or not. The world outside recedes, she measures out each day by its predictable landmarks: breakfast, lessons, lunch, lessons, dinner, TV, sleep. Languor grips her, and a kind of listless acceptance. Slowly, she grows accustomed to the whittled down nature of her new life, the predictable, focussed existence in the confines of the top floor. Sometimes, only very occasionally, she will allow her mind to drift to the little girl who used to roam so freely between the forest’s trees, but it’s the life of a stranger, insubstantial as air, bearing little relation to the person she has become.

  From her window she sometimes spies Robert leaving High Barn, his car disappearing off down the hill. At first she believes that he will come for her, will unlock her door and set her free, if only for a few hours. Whenever Ingrid is called away from home she waits for him hopefully, but still he doesn’t come. At last a cold, bitter understanding settles upon her: he will not come; he wouldn’t dare.

  It’s a few months after her sixteenth birthday that Anton returns to High Barn. Just as before, she only catches brief, shadowy glimpses of him from her window, but she waits impatiently for a sighting nevertheless, her curiosity roused by his parents’ stories of past crimes and outrages. She notices that he has grown taller, but still has the same clenched gait. He wears his hair even longer than before and it falls like a curtain across his features, but still she catches a brief glimpse, once or twice, of the beginnings of a moustache.

  Now, when Ingrid comes to the top floor for her lessons, she notices that the old sadness in Ingrid has returned, and that her scratching fingers are busier than ever. She’s aware too that the long rumbling arguments have resumed, can smell the resentment and tension in the air and nearly every night is awoken by the sound of her and Robert fighting.

  Then, one evening at the end of April, everything changes. Ingrid leaves the schoolroom to return downstairs as usual, but instead of the key turning in its lock as it usually does, Elodie realises with a flicker or excitement that Ingrid has forgotten to lock her in. For the next hour she sits alone in her room and listens to the three of them eat their supper below, biding her time. From the open kitchen window the sounds of knives scraping upon plates and fragments of conversation drifts up to her on a light spring breeze and even from where she sits she can detect the careful, forced edge to their voices.

  Soon she hears Anton’s low tones steadily rising above Ingrid’s and Robert’s, and at last she hears the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and minutes later the front door slamming so hard that the walls of her room tremble in response. She stands at the window and watches him disappear through the darkness to the end of the drive, and feels a stab of envy.

  A short silence follows, and then she hears Ingrid and Robert begin to shout at each other with a renewed ferocity. The aggression in their voices shocks her and she jumps when she hears a plate smashing against a wall, and then the sound of a chair crashing to the ground. She creeps to her door, her fingers clenching and unclenching nervously. The fight crashes on. Another almighty thump, the sound of glass and crockery falling to the floor and then … silence. At that moment she hears the front door opening again, footsteps running down the drive, the screech of tires as a car pulls away at speed.

  Still she waits. The silence has returned, deeper and more sinister than before. At last she goes to the window, and is surprised to find that the drive is entirely empty. She waits, scarcely breathing, trying to remember the order of the noises she had heard from below. Surely there should still be one car remaining? Either Robert’s or Ingrid’s? Or had Anton returned during all the fighting and taken one himself?

  She goes back to her bedroom door and then out onto the landing. She listens. Nothing. She moves out to the top stair, stops and listens again. How long does she have, she wonders, trembling with excitement at the chance to escape even for a little while. Quickly, she goes to her bedroom and puts on shoes and socks, and then a coat over the sweatshirt and pyjama pants she’s wearing. Silently, she creeps downstairs.

  Ahead of her, the front door has been left wide open. The black night lies beyond it, thick and silent. She edges closer. Just ten minutes, she tells herself. Just ten minutes alone in the garden, maybe as far as the copse, and then she’ll return before anyone even notices. She passes the kitchen. Almost makes it to the front door.

  ‘Elodie.’

  At the sound of her name she whips around and gazes into the kitchen. There Ingrid stands. A thin and ghostly figure amidst the wreckage of broken crockery, upturned chairs and scattered cutlery.

  They stare at each other.

  ‘Come here,’ Ingrid tells her.

  Her heart sinks. But with one last glance towards the open front door, she does as she’s told. By Ingrid’s feet, next to a broken bottle, the eagle lies on its back, red wine dripping from its silver wings.

  ‘Where were you going?’ Ingrid asks her in a strange, dull voice.

  ‘I … Just. Nowhere. For a walk.’ There is a long, tense silence and then her voice rises with a sudden despair. ‘Ingrid, please, you can’t lock me in here forever.’

  But instead of the fury she’d been expecting, Ingrid takes a step towards her and in a small beseeching tone begs her, ‘Elodie. Please don’t leave. You’re all I have.’

  Elodie sees again the hunger there, that void she had sensed in Ingrid once before. Hopelessness fills her. ‘Ingrid,’ she says slowly, backing away. ‘Where’s Robert? And Anton?’

  ‘I don’t know. Gone. There was a terrible argument. I don’t know.’ She shakes her head and in a sad, plaintive voice tells her, ‘You’re all I care about.’

  They stand there for a moment, surveying each other across the sea of smashed and broken things and then, in one quick movement, Ingrid crosses the room and wraps Elodie in her arms. ‘Please,’ is all she says as she rocks her.

  And in that second, all the pressure and resentment and frustration of the past months engulf Elodie. ‘No!’ she shouts and, struggling free from Ingrid’s grasp, with one, quick shove, sends her reeling from her.

  The moment stretches silently, slowly. As Ingrid falls, Elodie reaches for her, snatching futilely at empty air, in an effort to keep her from falling. But fall she does, slipping on the spilt wine and landing with a heavy thump upon the floor.

  ‘Ingrid!’ Elodie cries, rushing to where she lies, slumped and motionless on her side. ‘Oh Ingrid, I’m sorry!’ But it’s only when she’s knelt besides her that she sees the blood, the silent grimace of agony on her face. Putting her hand on Ingrid’s shoulder Elodie gently rolls her onto her back and then she sees it: the silver eagle, its enormous wing embedded between Ingrid’s ribs, blood pouring from the wound.

  ‘No,’ she whispers. She kneels there, staring dumbly from her own, blood-soaked hands to Ingrid’s ashen face, her parted, bloodless lips.

  ‘Ingrid, I’m so sorry,’ she screams. ‘I didn’t mean it!’ Gingerly she touches the eagle, forcing herself to attempt to pull it out
, but Ingrid’s cry of pain is so horrifying that she springs to her feet. ‘I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do!’ she wails.

  In a fog of confusion and panic she backs away towards the door, then gives a sudden scream when she stumbles blindly into someone standing behind her.

  ‘Robert!’ she cries when she turns. Relief floods her and she throws her arms around him. ‘Oh thank god! Thank God.’

  Wiping her tears she watches as he takes a step towards his motionless wife. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she tells him. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her! We have to help her, we have to call an ambulance.’

  But it’s as if Robert cannot hear her. Instead he just stands absolutely still, gazing down at Ingrid, his face a white wall of shock as he takes in the pool of blood seeping from her wound, the silver eagle’s wing protruding from her body. From the door, Elodie hears a thin moan escape from Ingrid’s lips.

  ‘Robert!’ she cries again, the panic rising in her chest. And at last her words spur him into action and she sees him fumbling for something in his pocket. Finally he pulls out his cell phone.

  As she watches him stare dumbly down at it, her panic seems to fall away for a moment, and a sudden understanding hits Elodie. She sees the future unfold before her with absolute clarity. The paramedics crowding into the kitchen, fighting to save Ingrid’s life like on E.R. She sees the ambulance taking Ingrid to hospital, where the doctors make her better. Ingrid recovering in a white hospital room, surrounded by flowers, each day growing stronger and stronger. And then, fully recovered, returning to High Barn. And everything continuing exactly as it had before.

  ‘Robert,’ she says, and watches as he turns to her, his face dazed and startled.

  ‘Yes?’ he says.

  ‘Robert, call an ambulance,’ she tells him. ‘Call an ambulance now.’