Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘It seemed so out of character. I mean, a surgeon’s really skilful with his hands, needs split-second timing, yet there was Dad, a wizard in the operating theatre, but bungling his small chore.’ He checked his own toast, still pale and barely warm. ‘It’s funny, I always think of Dad in terms of breakfast, slicing the top off his boiled egg, like it was a cancerous growth or something, and complaining to my mother that the knives weren’t sharp enough, as if he was so used to his scalpels nothing else would do, not even for just cutting up his bacon. Mind you, we hardly ever saw him at any other time. He was rarely in for dinner – always some emergency, or meeting – and even Sunday lunch-times, the phone kept ringing all the time. It was almost a red-letter day if we still had him there for the apple pie and coffee.’

  Jane sliced cheese, cracked eggs. Her own punctilious father had never missed a meal, had always had the time to mend her broken toys, help her with her homework, chauffeur her to swimming baths, or tennis courts, or parties. She had seen it as her natural right, not a rare and special privilege. She glanced at the red phone sitting on the table between the teapot and a cat. She ought to ring him now, today, not dither any longer.

  ‘Mum’s been gone for ages.’ Hadley checked his watch. ‘If she doesn’t get a move on, I’ll probably miss her altogether. I’m sorry to seem rude, Rose, but I’ll have to grab my nosh and run. It’s six o’clock already, and I’ve got a rehearsal at half eight. I’m playing Alonso in The Tempest. Just a student thing, but it’s quite a lot of fun. Hey, why don’t you come down for it? We’re putting it on the first week of December, and it’d be really great to have you in the audience. It finishes by ten, so we could go out for a meal, and you could meet the cast and everything. The man playing Caliban’s fantastic, should have gone to drama school instead of grafting away at dreary Economics.’ He struck a pose, screwed up his face, imitating Caliban. ‘Or, if you come on the last night, we always have a party – just an informal sort of knees-up in the Green Room, but if you don’t mind Spanish plonk in paper cups … Well, what d’you say? Could you manage it, do you think?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’m sure I can.’ Jane tried to focus her attention on stirring soup, poaching eggs, finding knives and forks. She felt extremely flattered to be asked, yet also rather thrown. She hardly knew this man, yet here he was inviting her to a play, a meal, a party. And what about the problem of getting there and back, catching the last train – or maybe missing the last train, then having to explain why she wasn’t in the studio for nine o’clock next morning? It felt disloyal to Christopher to agree to go at all, which was totally irrational, yet …

  ‘Soup’s ready,’ she announced, trying to cut across her worries by tipping steaming liquid into bowls.

  ‘Just a jiff. I’ve got to wash my hands. They’re all over Byron’s slobber.’ Hadley crashed out of the kitchen, walloped up the stairs.

  Jane turned the grill to low, checked the bubbling cheese, then walked slowly to the table, reached out for the phone. Her parents would be in now, always were at six o’clock on Sunday. She missed that order in her life, that safe predictability, which she’d criticised, disparaged. She suddenly longed to hear her father’s voice; the special way he said her name, briskly and yet fondly, with a slight upbeat at the end, as if giving it an extra loving syllable. She picked up the receiver, dialled the code for Shrepton, then put it down again. She ought to think it out first, plan exactly what she’d say. They might be deeply shocked, or wildly angry; might even have the call traced, and come storming down to find her. No. That was quite impossible. She had checked on it already, been told that calls could not be traced unless you made them through the operator. She dialled the code again, paused for three long seconds before continuing with the number; heard its soft burr-burr, then immediately rang off. Sweat was sliding down her back, her hands clammy, almost shaking. This was quite ridiculous. Was she frightened of her parents, or reluctant to do anything which might cause still more friction? She was making far too much of it. All she had to do was simply report that she was safe, admit she wasn’t ready yet to discuss things any further, but promise them she’d be in touch again. ‘Okay,’ she told herself. ‘Here goes. And this time you’re forbidden to ring off.’

  She dialled the number as slowly as she could, listened to it ring and ring, crazily relieved when she assumed they must be out. Suddenly, the ringing stopped, and her father’s deep but measured voice was spelling out their number. She stood paralysed with fear – longing, shock, confusion, fighting in her head. She only had to say her name. Her mouth opened like a fish. ‘Jane,’ she tried to say. ‘It’s Jane. I’m safe and well.’ No sound came out at all. ‘Jane,’ she mouthed again, heard her father, anxious now, his fretful voice repeating ‘Yes, hallo, hallo? Who is it?’

  ‘It’s … Jane,’ she said, at last, her voice hoarse and almost gagging on the name, a name she hadn’t used for weeks. ‘I just wanted you to know that …’

  ‘Rose!’ hallooed a louder voice, resounding from the hall, and clinched by Byron’s barking. ‘I’m back.’

  Jane slammed the phone down instantly, rushed over to the grill, tried to look totally absorbed in easing well-poached eggs on cheese on toast.

  ‘Oh, clever girl!’ said Isobel, breezing through the door. ‘To have supper cooked and ready the minute I walk in.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Jane snapped the piece of glass between her fingers. The scored edges fell away, leaving a perfect shape behind – a shape she’d cut miraculously herself. She fixed a blob of plasticine to each of its four corners, stuck it on the glass-screen, which blocked the tall north window. She had now cut twenty-seven pieces, in several different shades of streaky green, which formed part of the lush landscape beneath the angel’s feet; bars of rippled emerald suggesting hills and fields. She stood back to scrutinise them, still hardly able to believe that she was working on a real live stained-glass window, actually creating it with Christopher; his assistant, now, in fact as well as name.

  She glanced swiftly round the studio – glass lying on the cutting-bench, propped against the walls; sheets and scraps of every shape and colour. She no longer regarded it as dangerous and alien, but as highly-strung and spirited; all the different kinds of glass possessing their own character, like lively personalities she had come to know, respect. Some glass was tough and obstinate, fought you when you cut it – seedy-ruby, for example, with its gritty pitted texture; or selenium, which was so extremely hard Christopher had refused to let her touch it, claiming that someone of her limited experience would find it near-impossible to cut. Other types were smooth and acquiescent, submitting to the cutter, not making any fuss. Still others seemed exuberant and springy, almost leapt out of your hand; or were moody, inconsistent; breaking on a bad day, docile on a good one. You needed to accommodate their moods, treat each separate sheet of glass as a distinctive individual which you understood, placated.

  Christopher was cutting a sheet of reamy blue, working on the right-hand light, while she worked on the left; sharing the same cutting-bench, though up the other end. They were even dressed alike, both in denim jeans, she wearing an old shirt of his, the twin to his own chequered one in squares of blue and grey; their almost matching clothes seeming to symbolise their new professional bond. He joined her by the window, sticking up an oval-shape on the second, right-hand screen – the angel’s face – blank as yet, unpainted. ‘That’s good,’ he said, glancing from his own screen to her slowly-growing landscape. ‘Bloody good, in fact. Funny – I always felt you’d have the knack. I’ve watched you doing other jobs, and you’ve got a basic confidence, a certain deftness with your hands. Some people make a real pig’s ear even of washing up the breakfast things.’

  She flushed with pleasure and surprise, had always assumed she was something of a bungler; not just basically untidy, which she’d heard a thousand times, but also rather slapdash and cack-handed. Mind you, she had never put more effort into anything, more passion, dedi
cation, than in learning to cut glass, which she had practised all the week. The artist had been busy returning Adrian’s panels to the glass-screens, sticking up each individual glass-shape, to ensure no piece was over-fired and would therefore need repainting; then taking them all down again and packing them in boxes, to be sent back to the glaziers for leading. She had used the time obsessionally – cutting, cutting, cutting – attempting every shape from simple squares and oblongs to tricky curves and circles; so determined to succeed, she had ignored her reddened knuckles, her stiff and aching hand, the Band-Aids on four fingers, bloodstains on her shirt. She had started with just scrap glass, the larger bits and pieces from the cullet-box, so that it hardly mattered really if she wasted it or spoilt it; then practised on some offcuts of white Cathedral Roll, and finally Christopher had given her a largish sheet of pale green tinted pot-metal; watched her like a hawk while she tried to cut the demanding shapes he’d drawn for her.

  All her nerves had flooded back, so many admonitions resounding in her head, it seemed impossible to remember even half of them. She must hold the cutter firmly, at an angle; keep the pressure even, keep her whole hand steady, cut just within the black lines of the cutline, to allow room for the heart of the lead; mustn’t press too hard, but hard enough for the cutting-wheel to bite; use her pliers to nibble away any jagged edges; always blunt the edges of each and every piece of glass the instant that she’d cut it, so it wouldn’t be too dangerously sharp; and, finally, cut very economically, like a thrifty tailor determined not to waste his precious cloth.

  She had hardly dared to start – the cutter sitting awkwardly between her first and second fingers, her neck tense from the strain, face creased in concentration. She had heard a gentle hiss as the cutter scored the glass, watched the sparkling silvery line biting through the surface; made sure she kept the pressure even, avoiding any jerks or skids; then doggedly continued scoring, tapping, grozing, until she finally passed Christopher an almost perfect diamond-shape.

  ‘Not bad,’ he’d muttered grudgingly, lighting up a cigarette, as if the tension had affected him as well. She’d had to cut another dozen pieces before he’d judged her ‘Better’, then even ‘Pretty good’. Today she’d graduated. ‘Bloody good’ was praise indeed, but she mustn’t slacken off, become careless or offhand. She was aware that he was watching her, even now, when he’d returned to the cutting-bench and was continuing with his own work. He could watch her without looking, part of his attention somehow always focused on her, ready to swoop down.

  Yet she was also watching him, fascinated by the speed with which he cut, the way he made a ticklish process look absolutely simple; his obvious relish in the job; the way he kept things tidy, despite the mess and clutter, continually sweeping up the glass fragments, and always laying down his tools in exactly the same spot. She hadn’t been allowed to touch his pliers. Her own were new and serviceable, whereas his pair dated right back to the forties, and more than looked their age – the first pair he’d ever had, as a student of nineteen. He had shouted when she tried to pick them up. ‘Never touch those – never!’

  She couldn’t understand the note of almost-panic in his voice, as if she were threatening not the pliers, but his very past itself. He’d saved other sacred relics from his youth – many of his brushes, which were too ancient to be used now; a pair of battered marching boots from his days of National Service, and a Victorian reducing-glass which he’d been given as a present when he’d graduated from art school. He had also kept every single sketchbook – every drawing, doodle, daub, he‘d ever done; the first few dating from his childhood when he was still in single figures, and that and every subsequent book stored in drawers, and indexed. His studio was something of a sanctuary, not just a simple workplace, but a museum for his exhibits, a memorial to his past.

  He finished cutting a section of the halo, an awkward curve, which had needed patient grozing. She watched him blunt its sharp and jagged edges, using a second piece of glass to dull it down, scraping the two cut sides together, one against the other. Then he placed it in position on the screen, dithered for a moment, took it down again. ‘I think I’ll have to recut this piece – use a lighter blue. Though I never like recutting. It’s a bit of a bore, apart from wasting glass.’ He started sorting through the racks, all the ones marked blue, scanning sheets, returning them. ‘There’s an old Russian proverb which says ‘‘Measure thrice, cut once.’’ And very good sense, too. I remember some poor sod who was making a memorial window for a local church in Lewes, and didn’t bother to recheck his initial measurements. He produced this pretty fearsome-looking Saint Ignatius, which was just a shade too big to fit the space. He wasn’t actually there when it was fixed, so the glaziers simply sliced off seven inches, removed the saint’s two feet, so he was standing on his stumps. The artist shot himself.’

  Jane stopped her cutting, stared up at the screens. She could understand the suicide. After all that work and effort, to have your window wrecked, your precious angel’s wings clipped … Their Angel’s wings weren’t cut yet, but its head and half its halo were in place; still looked rather strange without the painted features, just blank transparent shapes in the palest of pale blues. The only likeness she could see was in the long straight streaming hair – her hair – traced out on the glass-screen in black lines. She suddenly laid her cutter down, slumped back on her stool. Isobel’s emotive voice was sounding in her head. ‘Angela,’ it murmured, lingering on the name. ‘I called her that deliberately to undo all the stigma, turn her into an angel.’ Could this window be a memorial not to Isobel’s late husband, but to her first abandoned child? Was the resurrection Angela’s, not Tom’s? And had Christopher been chosen as the artist because he was the father of that baby, himself in debt to it?

  ‘Need a rest?’ asked Christopher, who was still comparing blues, holding up each one against the light.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My back aches.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll break for coffee, if you’d like to put the kettle on.’

  She was back in minutes, set two mugs on the bench. ‘Christopher?’ she said.

  ‘Mm?’ He was hardly listening, his whole attention concentrated on one small piece of glass, a fragile-looking turquoise, swirled and veined with white.

  ‘How long have you known Isobel?’

  ‘Oh, ages.’

  ‘Since she was seventeen or so?’

  ‘No, not quite as long as that.’

  ‘Well, how long then?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know – twenty years, maybe. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Just curious.’ She gulped her coffee, burnt her tongue. The artist could be lying. If everybody lied, things would simply crumble. You could never build relationships, or any firm foundations to your life. Yet it was part of being human, the ability to lie – a sophisticated skill which raised man above the animals, like art. She had learnt the skill herself; was a hypocrite on top of it – castigating Isobel for hiding things from Tom, while she deceived the artist by pretending to be Rose, deliberately concealing the fact of her adoption, the details of her life.

  ‘Just look at this blue, Rose. Heaven itself!’

  She didn’t look, was focusing on ‘Rose’ rather than on turquoise. ‘I’m Jane,’ she murmured silently. ‘And maybe illegitimate. Which is pretty hellish, actually.’ She rolled her drooping sleeves back. His shirt was much too big for her, though she liked its faintish smell – a mix of oil-paint, cigarette smoke and musky aftershave.

  The artist was checking his sketch against the glass-shapes on the screen; still seemed uncertain about the exact shade of the halo. But there was nothing indecisive about his voice. He always sounded forceful and assertive, even when he talked to her about perplexity and doubt, though this time he was still concerned with colour. ‘I’ve always gone for blue, you know. My favourite teacher used to wear it almost every day, though actually she was the one who more or less destroyed it for me. I was about eleven at the time, and she was givin
g us an elementary science lesson, telling us that colour is only a reflection of the light – that tomatoes, for example, aren’t really red themselves, but just reflect red light. I was absolutely dumbstruck, could hardly bear to listen when she claimed there was no colour in peacocks’ tails or pillar boxes, and that no colour would exist at all if there wasn’t any light. Then she pointed to her dress and said that without the light it, too, would be a nothing, and so would kingfishers and sapphires, and the sky and sea and all the blues I loved. I was so upset I told her she was fibbing, and she stood me in the corner as a punishment, face turned to the wall. The wall was primrose-yellow and I just stared at it and stared at it, almost feeding on that yellow, and knowing she was wrong.’

  He laughed, put down his glass-sheet, so he could stir and sip his coffee, light a cigarette. ‘I suppose we always long for everything to be as simple as it looks. Once I’d studied light, at a rather later stage, I realised it was quite devilishly complicated. In fact, what we actually call light is merely just one octave of vibrations out of at least fifty others known to us, which reach us from the sun and stars. Our eyes are only open to that one single octave out of fifty, or still more. So our picture of the world is limited, distorted – ‘‘real’’, maybe, in one sense, but certainly not reality.’ He reached out for a ginger nut, snapped it in his fingers, like a piece of just-scored glass. ‘There’s a whole vast range of things totally invisible, and therefore closed to us. It’s funny in a way – we rely on our senses for the appearances of things, but our solid truthful senses are probably deceiving us.’

  Jane cupped both hands around her mug, as if trying to cling on to something, find support and comfort. There was enough distortion in the ordinary world of families, relationships, without adding all these cosmic ambiguities. Yet even cheery Isobel had said something much the same, had cast doubt on reality, unpicked facts and certainties, as if they were little more than a paltry piece of knitting.