The Cuckoo's Child

by Margaret Thompson

  My only escape was homework. She respected that and observed silence while I was doing it. Soon I learned to pretend I had more than I really did, and discovered that if I spread papers and writing equipment around, I could simply read a book with the same result. There was a double benefit: I had some peace to myself, and I actually learned a lot and fell in love with books too.

  But you can see why I was so happy when you arrived and took the searchlight of Mum’s attention away from me. She was completely wrapped up in you. Some kids might have resented that, but I adored you for setting me free. At about the same time, I encountered a teacher who was very keen on Nature Study. Mr. Blackwell was an unlikely medium, with his sagging suspenders and Coke-bottle glasses, but through him I stumbled for the first time upon the great cycles of life, its intricate patterns and subtle beat. He took us out to the river and the fields, told us the names of flowers and trees, and showed us animal tracks, wasp nests, ant colonies, spawning trout, kindling in me an abiding passion. I tell you, I would have done anything for the baby who distracted Mum so I could spend all my time with insects and amphibians, sloshing about in creeks and lying in reeds to watch the migrating waterfowl on the Nechako!

  Even when you were older, I still doted on you. Elsie thought I was weird. She loathed her little brother, who spied on her and rifled through her things, then wailed for his mother when she smacked him. Most of the people I knew fought with their siblings at least some of the time. It just never occurred to me. Right from the beginning, you seemed to know I would protect you, and in return, you did your best to look out for me, showing an almost inhuman restraint, if my friends were to be believed, in passing up every opportunity to land me in trouble.

  Remember when I saved you from drowning? We were larking about on the bank, against all the rules. I can still see the look on your face as your feet slid from under you. You slipped down into the river with barely a sound, just a wail, but the current snatched you away instantly. I hurled myself after you, grabbing an arm as it surfaced in front of my face, desperately clinging on and scrabbling my way to the edge, mercifully ending up by a flatter bit near the bridge, or I don’t know how I’d have managed to get you out. I crawled out and hauled you from the green water, then leaned on your chest, calling your name and pressing, pressing on your rib cage until you suddenly choked and a stream of dirty water ran from your mouth. You sat up, and we clung to each other, both of us crying with relief and shock. And when we made our way home and Mum shrieked at our wet clothes and my carelessness, allowing my little brother to play by the river and letting him drown, what was I thinking of, I had no more sense than a fly, you intervened. Your teeth were chattering like castanets, but you said, “Don’t be cross, Mum. She told me not to go. She always looks after me, don’t you, Livvy?”

  Mum was disarmed. “Well, I suppose we have to be thankful you were there,” she said grudgingly, “and it’s no use crying over spilt milk. Hot baths and get out of those wet clothes, the pair of you, before I have you both down with pneumonia.”

  That was the incident that welded us together. Our common front saw us through countless problems later with spilt paint and glue, broken windows, dried grass set ablaze with a magnifying glass, a broken arm, bent bicycle wheels, all the disasters inherent to a child’s life.

  That was the bond that made you my only supporter when I decided to study biology at UBC, and later when I announced my intention to marry an artist. Mum and Dad thought artists were just a shade higher than child molesters in the son-in-law stakes, but you said, “Neat-o!” and “Would he give me a painting for my room?” and somehow that seemed to reassure them.

  Looking back, I can see my love for you was the main reason I was so ecstatic when Daniel was born. What more could I possibly want than another little boy, all my own, to look after?

  And when I didn’t, and Daniel disappeared, and I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t follow him, it was you who held me fast and wouldn’t let me go.

  SIX

  Still so painful, even now. The memory lives in my mind, flourishing like an ugly cactus covered with spines. No matter how I approach it, I am pierced and stabbed, the spines break off in my flesh, there to fester and work their agonizing way to my heart. But I can’t ignore it, any more than the tip of one’s tongue can stay away from the broken tooth, for of all things it defined me, and Neil, and shaped the way we see ourselves and each other. From the moment it happened, we became the ones whose child had vanished.

  That whole week, I remember, began with loss.

  At the time, we were living in Sechelt. I had a job at Elphinstone Secondary School in Gibsons teaching junior science, and Neil was happy, painting, filling the spare bedroom in our house overlooking Davis Bay with his large canvases. His paintings had just been shown in a North Vancouver gallery, and he was glowing with success. Three of the paintings had sold immediately, and the show had generated the kind of talk that leads to commissions and a following. His excitement was contagious. Our house was full of sunlight and laughter, it seemed; we had a four-year-old son we adored, friends we valued, our lives were fun, we were on our way.

  But we were losing one of those friends. Jerry lived on a forty-foot sailboat moored at a marina just down the coast. We had met him several years before in the emergency room at the hospital. Neil, mud-plastered and still wearing his filthy rugby kit, was waiting for someone to see if he had broken his collarbone when a stocky young man walked in, nursing one hand in the other. I was struck immediately by his high colour. He had a round face, with bright red wind-whipped cheeks, snapping blue eyes, and black, black curly hair. He sat down near us after checking with the nurse and, after a pause, turned to us with a rueful smile.

  “Been waiting long?”

  Half an hour, we told him.

  “Guess I deserve to wait,” he said, “doing such a stupid thing.”

  “What happened?” asked Neil.

  “Grabbed a bunch of old line and net, set a triple hook in the palm of my hand. Smart, eh?”

  He held out his hand as if he were begging. It was filthy. Two of the hooks had burrowed out of sight in the middle of the palm; the third curved up, a scorpion tail ready to attack. A length of old leader trailed over his wrist.

  “Need more than one hand to deal with that one,” he said. “Hurts like a son of a bitch. What did you do?”

  Neil looked sheepish. “Took a dive, playing rugby.”

  “Got a death wish, have you? Rough game, that. Not as bad as Australian football, though—now they’re crazy.”

  “Ever seen a game of hurling?” asked Neil, warming to this topic. “Sort of a cross between rugby and field hockey—they can throw the ball and carry it or clobber it with whacking great sticks through the air. Fantastic! Irish, of course.”

  “Ah well, they’re all mad buggers, aren’t they? Oops, I hope you’re not Irish, no offence. My name’s Jerry Murtry, by the way. That’s Irish enough, right? I live on a boat down at the government wharf. You ever want to go out fishing, I’m your man.”

  And that was that.

  Has anyone done studies on why we take to some people and not to others? Why some strangers immediately inspire confidence and liking, and some never get beyond our defensive barriers? It has to be an instinctive reaction to smell and body language, buried so deeply in us we don’t notice the mechanism at all. All I can say is that Neil and I, discussing it afterward, both commented on the same thing; we felt immediately comfortable with this little red-faced man, as if the period between acquaintance and friendship had been skipped as a waste of time. By the time both men had been patched up, we were friends. I drove Jerry back to his boat. Before going home, we had inspected his cramped quarters aboard and arranged to meet at our house the next week.

  So began months of casual, easy companionship. He would drop in for a beer, we would press him to stay for a meal, not that he ever needed persuasion, and the evenings would fly past. He returned the favour
with trips to small islands inaccessible to everything but a boat, weekends of floating at anchor in small bays, watching the stars come out and the bats flick silently overhead. He would play his saxophone while Mizzen, his cat, sat on a hatch in the moonlight and lashed her tail, and the melancholy notes would linger and tremble in the soft air until they were almost beyond bearing.

  Jerry’s casual lifestyle was a blessing when Daniel was born. We’d had to wait a long time for a baby; I was thirty when he arrived and had almost given up hope. I took maternity leave but eventually had to go back to work—we needed the money and, besides, I liked my job. Mum tutted, of course. “What that baby needs is a full-time mummy,” she said. “That’s your job now.” But even she had to admit it was nice to eat regularly.

  I found a decent babysitter nearby, but Jerry was the saviour on the days she couldn’t take Daniel because her own kids were ill, or on the weekends, or when Neil and I were both tied up or simply wanted a night out together. He was wonderful with the baby, amazingly gentle despite his fisherman’s hands, holding him in the crook of his arm as he went on with mending his nets or polishing the brass fittings on his boat, talking to him man to man, as if Daniel understood every word.

  When Daniel got older, it was Jerry who made him a wooden train, Jerry who showed him how to jig for herring, Jerry who constructed the big wooden hutches for the guinea pigs, George and Emily and their large family, and supplied the sawdust for their bedding.

  And then, the day Daniel was four years old, Jerry announced he was leaving and trying his luck farther south.

  “Why?” I asked stupidly.

  “Ah, itchy feet,” said Jerry, “nothing particular, just time for me to move on. Never rest too long in one place, you know—no moss on me, that’s for sure!”

  “But what will you do?”

  “What do I ever do? I’ll find something, fishing, handiman, all I need’s a place for the boat. Plenty of those up and down the coast.”

  “But how will we keep in touch? You’re not just going off and never getting in touch again, are you? Say you’ll write, or phone at least.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m not much for writing. I’ll phone, though. You won’t be rid of me.”

  “When are you leaving?” Neil asked.

  “I’ll be off on Saturday.”

  “Ah, jeez,” said Neil. “I’ve got a game in Stanley Park. We’re all going over on Friday night. We can’t even see you off.”

  “Probably better that way. I’m not one for goodbyes. No, you come down to see me when I get settled, how’s that?”

  He turned to Daniel, who was solemnly listening, folded his arms round him, and tickled him. “You’ll come and see me, won’t you? We’ll go to Disneyland, what d’you say, eh? Is that a plan?”

  And Daniel squirmed and shrieked, and we all smiled, for that did, indeed, sound like a plan, and looking forward to a visit to the United States, seeing Jerry in a new environment, was much better than dwelling on departure and goodbyes.

  But we felt the loss. It was a hole in our lives, and as far as I could see, it had to be a wrench for Jerry too. Despite his cheerfulness, there was a streak of Celtic melancholy a mile deep in the man that oozed out with a few beers inside him. He was always friendly, yet he always seemed lonely. There was no woman in his life—“Tried that once,” he’d told me, darkly. “Never again. Some guys are just meant to be old bachelors, I guess. I do just fine by myself.” He looked wistful, though, when he said it, a little boy shut out and longing to be let in. So I worried about him going off into the blue like that, with so little purpose, but life goes on, you know, and takes turns you never expect, and suddenly those things that seem most important one minute are forgotten the next. At least, that’s my experience.

  We rang Jerry to say goodbye on the Friday afternoon, just before we left for the ferry, but the phone was already disconnected.

  So that was that.

  We were all subdued on the ferry. Daniel couldn’t understand why Jerry had gone.

  “Didn’t he like us, Mummy?” he asked. “Won’t he take me to Disneyland now?”

  Neil and I looked at each other over Daniel’s head. We were sitting on a locker on the ferry deck, huddled out of the wind behind a peeling bulkhead. The wind tore at our hair, lashing it into our eyes. Neil’s long, bony nose looked faintly pink at the tip, the only vestige of colour in a face leached white by the chill. My own nose, I knew, would be a scarlet blob at odds with my hair. In that moment our eyes locked, I knew exactly what he was thinking. We can say of course he likes us, of course he’ll take you to Disneyland, the little internal voice was saying, but do I believe it? Was he a real, no-matter-what kind of friend, or just a ship passing in the night, just another person we promise to keep in touch with, come what may? Then the weeks go by, and months, and somehow we haven’t managed to do anything about it, and then the first Christmas has been and gone, and you feel guilty but not guilty enough, and soon it’s years and you say one day, I wonder what became of so-and-so? And there’s a spasm of nostalgia, pleasantly melancholy for a minute, before you tuck the memory away again and forget a little more, and forgive yourself the forgetting.

  “It’s all up to him,” I reminded Neil. “He’s the one who’ll have to let us know where he is when he gets settled.”

  Neil nodded. “You’ll get to Disneyland,” he said to Daniel.

  Friday night we spent at the Sylvia Hotel on English Bay. It was a wild night, I remember. I felt a childlike contentment listening to the wind tugging at the long strings of the creeper covering the hotel walls, rattling the windows, heaving the lights of the freighters lying at anchor in the bay up and down. We speculated about Jerry’s whereabouts; surely not even he, reckless though he could be, would risk the open water in those conditions?

  “He’ll be tucked up in the lee of an island somewhere, never fear,” said Neil. “He probably set off early because he knew there was dirty weather coming. He’s not a fool.”

  The morning sky was a raw, cheerful blue as if a brand-new one had been installed to replace the one tattered beyond repair the night before. It was still windy, but playful now, the sort of wind that makes dead leaves hop and hats leap off heads.

  “Grand day for a game,” Neil said approvingly.

  It gets hard, now.

  Neil left Daniel and me at the aquarium and went off well before the game to meet the rest of the Gibsons team at Brockton Oval. I promised we would be there to watch. He liked to know we were there among the onlookers, cheering him on, not that he ever seemed to do anything very heroic, apart from hurling himself at opponents’ legs and breaking his collarbone. I was never like some of the wives and girlfriends, avid groupies forever cutting sandwiches in the clubhouse while their menfolk sang dirty songs at the tops of their lungs in the showers. I put in an appearance and cheered when Gibsons scored, but I always carried a book in my pocket. I did that day. Oliver Twist. I never have finished it.

  Daniel and I worked our way through the aquarium galleries, enchanted by the eerie beauty of the lives behind the glass. We watched, hypnotized, as transparent jellyfish pulsed across a tank, impelled by a stream of bubbles from a hidden aerator. Daniel found the tube worms edging out to wave their plumes, then darting back out of sight in sudden panic, hysterically funny. Neither of us much cared for the moray eel, sliding as if oiled from his hole, launching his mouthful of needle teeth at any movement, but we loved the octopus, obligingly showing us the suction cups on his tentacles in action as he glided down the glass, and marvelled at the diversity of the reef fish.

  I never wanted to spend too much time with the orcas, but Daniel insisted. It made me sad, watching the black-and-white shapes swimming round and round their pool, heaving themselves up and thundering back into the water, to screams of delight from the audience. Even Daniel looked thoughtful.

  “They don’t have much room, do they, Mum? Couldn’t they make them a bigger tank?”

  “I
don’t think they could ever make one big enough,” I said. “They had the whole ocean, once.”

  Daniel looked uncertainly at me, checking my mood. “Is it time to go?” he asked. “Let’s go.”

  By the time we had walked over to Brockton Oval and made our way to the familiar navy-and-white uniforms, both teams were warming up. Neil saw us and waved, but someone passed him the ball at that moment, and he was off running. Others spread out across the field, yelling at him to pass.

  The game started. Daniel soon tired of standing still and watching. From the pockets of his jacket he dragged out Tigger, his stripey black-and-brown stuffed dog, the little yellow bulldozer, and the old Hot Wheels car minus a wheel that always accompanied him. He settled to road construction on a patch of bare earth some distance from the sideline under a small stand of trees. I sat on the grass near him and opened my book.

  The sun was warm, lulling. It muted the shouts and grunts of the players, the whistle blowing intermittently, the sparrow chatter of children clambering on a picnic table nearby, the sound of Daniel revving up and crashing his vehicles among the tree roots, made them seem distant, yet infinitely comforting in their familiarity. I basked in well-being. Odd how the end of happiness can be defined so precisely, so sensually.

  I was reading—the irony!—the scene in which Oliver is claimed by Nancy as her lost brother, browbeaten by the crowd that believes her, terrified by Bill Sykes and Bull’s-eye, and haled off into a maze of little courts and alleys—“what could one poor child do?”

  My eyes were torn from the page by a wail of fear and pain. Another child, in trouble.