Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘I made some of them myself,’ said Jane, squirming at Anne’s praises. She didn’t want compliments for her raspberry pavlova, but a straight answer to the question she didn’t dare to ask: Are you having it off with Adrian?

  ‘I’d no idea you could make meringues as well as stained-glass windows!’ Anne put her empty bowl down, as if to make it clear that she’d finished with the subject of both puddings and gold chains, and had switched to more important things. ‘You must be delighted with your window, Rose.’

  ‘It’s hardly mine, but yes, I’m thrilled.’Jane removed her fingers from the clasp of her small bag. Why make trouble on such a special day? The elation she had felt in church was slowly seeping back. It was her window, in a way, and just because she disliked big noisy parties, or was suspicious of the artist’s wife, it was stupid to upset herself – or Anne. The window was still there, would be there for the next hundred years, acting like a force-field, drawing people to it. Even now, she felt its power, beckoning her back, insisting she admire it – on her own this time, without the distraction of a fizzy congregation.

  She excused herself, pretended she needed the loo, but went to fetch her coat instead, then dived through the front door, hoping nobody was watching. She froze as she saw Anne again, coatless in the drive. Adrian had just roared up, and she was leaning down to greet him through the window of his car. They didn’t touch or kiss, yet the pair seemed bonded, intimate. Why should Anne go out to meet him, if he were just a casual friend; why even notice he’d arrived? If only she could shrug them off, instead of getting so worked up about their every move. But she had never quite accepted the stubborn and unwelcome fact that the artist had a wife, and everything about that wife both tormented and enthralled her. That’s why she had kept the cross – to possess a precious object which was Mrs Harville-Shaw’s by right, and so give herself the name. Yet why the hell did she want the name when Mr Harville-Shaw had forgotten her existence, and was groping a third female in the attic or the glory-hole? She buttoned up her coat, fished in both the pockets for her gloves. She’d steal off to the church, as she’d decided, give herself a respite, away from crowds and crises.

  She concealed herself in the bushes until Adrian and Anne had drifted back indoors, then grabbed her bike and pedalled furiously, wheeling left at the crossroads; hardly drawing breath till she dismounted at the church. She stood a moment, panting, revelling in the peace; the only sound the shrill song of a blackbird determined to upstage a rival thrush. The sky was busy, wisps of damasked cloud swelling and expanding, then dissolving into shreds again. Clumps of yellow daffodils trumpeted from graves, reproaching the bare trees which overhung them. Yellow everywhere – in primroses and catkins, the first brash and glossy dandelions. She walked slowly up the path, relieved to find the door unlocked; breathed in the scents of candlewax and freesias as she stepped into the church. She went straight to the new window, which was marked out from the others because the sun was right behind it now, lasering through its blues, making them ethereal, while the lush greens of the landscape seemed to shimmer as she watched.

  ‘May all who see it be enriched,’ the bishop had implored. She had already been enriched. Whatever his deficiencies as far as women were concerned, Christopher had initiated her into the world of the artist, changed the way she looked at things. The whole universe was richer now, and she no longer went around half-philistine, half-blind. He had also taught her the importance of ambition – not Adrian’s kind, which stockpiled swimming pools and sports cars he was too busy to enjoy – but the higher sort which centred on a vision.

  She moved a little closer, so that the colours of the window spilled across her dress – blue for spirituality, green for new life. Easter had never meant so much before, had been just a day for chocolate eggs and simnel cake, outings to the wildlife park, cream teas in stately homes. She leaned against the wall, feeling faint and hollow suddenly, as scones and pastries trembled in her head. She had eaten nothing since supper yesterday; been too on edge to face a bite of breakfast; too uptight at the party to do anything but drink. She regretted the champagne now, which was making the church spin; the patterns of the windows rotating on the floor. She closed her eyes, tried to fight the darkness which was threatening to engulf her. She could feel the chill of Chartres again, when the sky outside had blackened and she had fallen on her knees at the entrance to the labyrinth. She groped out with her hands, touched the cold uneven stone, saw the spirals of the maze spread out all around her, no longer disappearing beneath rows and rows of chairs. Last time, she had cheated, simply jumped the gaps, failed to walk the blockaded outer circles, reached the centre far too soon.

  She took her first uncertain step, her feet leaden, heavy, as if she were walking in a dream. The path was straight, to start with, but then branched left, began its first switchback loop, on and back, on and back; skirting right close to the centre, only to double slyly back again. She stumbled on, trying to drown her fear, remind herself of the reassuring structure of the labyrinth. There were no dead ends, no cul-de-sacs, only one way she could go, however long and serpentine. She would reach her goal if she persevered, concentrated only on the snakings of the path, the rhythm of her feet. She could hear another rhythm, a slow and steady beating she seemed to recognise, which was part of her and joined to her, though faint and far away.

  She trudged another loop, then on again and round again, weary from the constant twists and turnings. Yet there was no way she could stop. Some force was driving her, a force she couldn’t comprehend, yet could also neither question nor defy. Every time she flagged, she could feel it urging, goading, insisting she went on – a series of determined thrusts pulsing her along, each followed by a lull. The walls of the labyrinth were closing in around her. She was being squeezed and pummelled now, the pressure gradually increasing in brief but violent bursts, then tailing off again. Each time, she kicked and struggled, but her feeble limbs were powerless; her body taken over by some impetus outside her, with a relentless will of iron. She had completely lost her bearings, her sense of any path; seemed to have skewed round at an angle, her head pressing against some soft but stubborn barrier.

  The squeezing stopped abruptly, and she hung paralysed, suspended, in a blank and timeless void. She focused on the rhythmic beat, which was growing more insistent, desperate to tune in to it, so that she could cut out all the other sounds – the vague but threatening booms and thuds resounding in the distance from some wild world far beyond her. But a sudden savage thrust propelled her through the barrier and into a dark passage. She could see the long black tunnel stretching out in front of her, its walls so tight, constricting, that her still-soft bones were corseted and crushed. She tried to force her way along it, struggling to grope forward, inch by painful inch, but continually slipping back. She was now so starved of oxygen, her spark of life was guttering like a candle, flickering and failing, about to be snuffed out. Yet someone else’s breathing was shocking the whole tunnel, great laboured panting sobbing heaves, interspersed with cries of fear, cries so crazed and jagged they seemed to rip right through her skin. She couldn’t cry herself. Neither her eyes nor mouth were working, and she needed her last gleam of strength to keep groping, butting down.

  She stalled a moment, jammed against the tunnel-walls, her head too huge to clear them. She was close to suffocation, tempted to give up, stifled by the airlessness, deafened by the screams. Then a different voice cut through them, a voice urgent, but compelling. ‘Push!’ it shouted. ‘Push, yes push. Push harder!’

  Nothing happened – nothing – only blind and gagging panic. ‘Push!’ the voice insisted, a voice so loud and resolute, it seemed to create a new and stronger force from weakness and despair, a force which was releasing her. Sudden shuddering spasms began to shock through her whole body, sweeping her along. She had no choice but to submit, despite the pain and terror, the loss of all control, the juddering and jarring as she was banged against the tunnel walls. She heard a rus
h of water, was plunged into the cataract, shooting, jolting, over it, plummeting from darkness into life.

  ‘It’s a girl!’ cried a triumphant voice, and she lost all sense of up or down, as she was slapped and jounced and swung, and a new booming, glaring, hurting world assaulted all her senses. A cruel steel blade sliced against her stomach; ruthless lights bombarded her weak eyes; gigantic rubber hands clamped her, top and bottom. Her mouth was gagged with tubing, a second tube stuck right up her nose; her flailing hands padlocked at the wrists. Then suddenly, miraculously, her fetters were removed, and someone swooped her down to a white expanse of bed. She felt her naked skin touch naked skin, closed her eyes in bliss. She was lying on a body whose taste and shape she trusted, and two strong arms enfolded her, protecting her from danger, cutting out the glare, and she could smell milk and warmth and safety, and knew that she’d reached home.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jane was lying on the cold floor of the church, her arms curled round her head, her legs bent up and cramped. Her eyes blinked slowly open, troubled by the light. The sun was flickering through the inscription in the window, highlighting the letters – flowing gilded letters, now blazoned and aflame: ‘Awake Thou That Sleepest’.

  She struggled to her feet. She had been asleep too long – five months, in all – running in the wrong direction, making wrong decisions. She stood, still weak and shaky, leaning against a pew. The new-born were always weak. She must treat herself with care, take the journey slowly, dismount and wheel her bike up the steepest of the hills; buy some food when she reached the station buffet, allow herself to rest once she’d caught the train and was safely on her way.

  The Resurrection symbols were shining from the window – the phoenix and the pomegranate, the ivy and the rose. She had helped to cut those symbols, done it well enough. She had a certain knack for cutting – a dexterity, a speed – but she would never be an artist. That was a delusion, one she’d wanted to believe. She was only an assistant, who had been hired for the wrong reasons – for her gender, not her skills. She stepped slowly forward, reached up on her toes, trying to touch the tiny thorns on the lowest of the roses. She must leave the name behind – it wasn’t hers to use. She had let herself be trapped like the bird in ‘Bird Inside’, another dumb and passive creature subject to the artist’s whim, ordered into cages or cajoled into bed. But she was more than just a panicked bird slamming into walls of glass. He had made her into an Angel, given her great powerful wings, so she could fly high, fly away.

  She checked her purse, made sure she had the money for her fare – single, not return – rummaged for the matchbox which held Anne’s cross and chain. She unwrapped it from its tissue, hung it from one finger, her naked wedding-finger. She could never be his wife – that, too, was a sham. She must return the cross to Anne, wrap a note around it, saying she had found it in the church. She had no proof of anything, would never know the truth about Adrian and Anne, so let it be her farewell gift, to make them innocent.

  She tore a leaf out of her diary, scribbled a few words, sat frowning at her pen. She could write a hundred pages – to Christopher and Hadley, Isobel and Anne – trying to explain. Except that they wouldn’t understand. And if she stopped to say goodbye, or called in to fetch her things, she would be lured back and distracted, lose her sense of purpose, her sudden total certainty of what she had to do.

  She glanced up at the window next to Christopher’s, a Saint Joseph window which had recently been restored – deceitfully, the artist claimed. New pieces of glass had been inserted, then deliberately pitted, painted, and begrimed, to make them blend and harmonise, look genuine fifteenth-century. A necessary deception, Christopher had called it. She was tired of all deception, necessary or no; must struggle for her own truth, however frail and ragged.

  Saint Joseph was holding the Christchild, a plump and sallow infant, clutching at his robe – Mary’s child, not his. He’d never fathered a child – too old, perhaps, or barren like the artist. She had to have her own child, prove that power Christopher had praised: the power of creating life itself, which made even an artist’s talents look puny in comparison. Once she’d given birth, she would have a blood-relation, the only one she’d ever known – unless she found her mother, which she was determined now to do, at least try her dogged best. The two were bound together. If she had a baby, then she’d be passing on that mother: her nose, or mouth, or temperament, her ancestry and genes.

  She crossed over to the north side, the shadow-side, the side of cold and darkness. The journey might be long and even gruelling, though she was travelling very light. She had no luggage and no certainties, no identity, no name. Her parents might refuse to help, even though she’d beg them, suggest they search together as a way of healing the rift. They might stall, or storm, or argue, warn her of the dangers – the rejection, disappointment, which Trish herself had suffered. But she still had to make the effort, had to take the risk; had to find that woman she’d known nine months already. She had listened to her heartbeat, shared her food-supply, been held by her, acknowledged, knew her voice and smell. She had received the gift of life from her, and must at least say thank you, even if they never met again.

  She buttoned her thick coat across her flimsy dress. Strange to return in party clothes and frivolous blue shoes, when she had left in an old tracksuit and a grubby pair of trainers. She took a last, long, hungry look at the Resurrection window. The light was calm, subdued; no more frisking sunshine, but a serene and steady glow. The greens were already muted, even the blood-red of the roses beginning to recede. Only the blues were still insistent, smouldering and thrumming, and they too would fade at dusk; Christopher’s bright window extinguished and obscured. ‘May those in darkness and confusion find the light.’

  She let the heavy door bang shut behind her, flinching as the bitter wind met her head-on in the porch. She unlocked her bike, wheeled it down the path, then along the steep and narrow road which meandered to the station. The trees were mostly bare – those that hadn’t fallen in the storm. She paused a moment, to watch the setting sun – a sunset so extreme it looked as if Christopher had painted it in the most tempestuous of his moods, flung it on his canvas in a squall of orange-reds. The rags of cloud were all on fire, and showering their bright embers on the fields. Every tree was burning, whorls of gold and scarlet devouring their dark limbs. The anvil of West Woodbury Hill seemed blistered by the blaze, the smoking sky snagging on its surface. She took in the whole scene, swallowed it and relished it, like her first taste of solid food after forty days of fasting in the wilderness. Whatever else she chose to do, whatever job she found, she would never lose her artist’s eyes. They were Christopher’s own gift to her – more important than the trinkets she had craved.

  The light was dwindling, a flock of noisy rooks suddenly flapping overhead, their scruffy tattered bodies littering the sky. She jumped on to her bike, as if spurred by their example, free-wheeled down the hill, panted up the other side. They were winging north, and so was she; had no time to waste if she wanted to reach Shrepton before her parents damped the fire down, retired upstairs to bed. It was Sunday – Easter Sunday – so there might well be fewer trains, and she had to get to London first; maybe wait an hour or more on the dingy local station. She could see Amy in her night-clothes, switching all the lights off, bolting the front door.

  ‘No!’ she shouted urgently, trying to make her parents hear; stop them drawing the thick curtains which would shut her out, muffle her small voice.

  The birds were only specks now, buffeted by the wind, their hoarse cries blown away with hers, like wisps of fading smoke, but following their instincts, flying to their roost.

  ‘Wait!’ she called more frantically, feet spinning on the pedals, hair streaming out behind her like the Angel’s in the wind. ‘Wait, I’m coming home.’

  Copyright

  First published in 1992 by HarperCollins

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of P
an Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  www.curtisbrown.co.uk

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2329-0 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2328-3 POD

  Copyright © Wendy Perriam, 1992

  The right of Wendy Perriam to be identified as the

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