A Little Bird Told Me

by Marianne Holmes

  This is the side of him that is so mysterious and precious to me. Matthew says Kit is more ‘champion of lost souls’ than Maths teacher. Kit’s shoulders softened as he was able to turn away from our squabbling and towards a pain he might be able to heal.

  ‘I’ve been to visit my dad. He’s coming to live with us soon.’ Her dad said she can finally give her mum the good news. ‘Like a proper family, at last.’

  Careful what you wish for, I thought as I noticed the girl’s hands plucking at the seam of her T-shirt, twisting the fabric out of shape.

  As Kit’s charm worked on the girl, I spent the last part of the journey trying not to think about what could be waiting for us. I leant my head against the grimy window and focused on the numbing motion of the train, letting it thrum rhythmically through my ears.

  The memories have faded now, only loosely tucked into my dreams, like tissue paper caught in the folds of a dress. But the dreams survive, vivid and relentless. A woman sitting by my bed, stroking the hair from my forehead. A twisted band of silver on her ring finger cool as it passes across my skin but, when I look, I can’t make out her face through the curtain of hair. Then she’s gone, but I hold the thought of her tight in my heart like hope, a tiny light that pulses in the darkness.

  I woke with my hand tugging at my hair, the outlines of the trees and pylons flashing past like the flickering images of an old black and white movie. My own reflection flickered unconvincingly in the glass like the fading image from my dream. I balled up my hands until I could feel my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palms to make sure I was properly awake.

  I must have been crying out in my sleep because Kit was close beside me again as he always is when I need him. He leant forward to shield me from the girl and the rest of the carriage, but his shoulder was forgiving against mine and I leant into his warmth.

  At the station, no one is waiting for this girl, Michelle. She is tiny, a wraith, in the shadows of the empty car park. Across the road, a group of lads sit on the bonnet of a car in the dark, the tips of their cigarettes glowing and the sound of their voices harsh in the quiet. I look at Michelle as she notices them. Even though she thrusts her chin out, her anxiety is palpable.

  Don’t cry, I think, watching as she swallows hard. Crying is for bigger things than this. I turn to Kit.

  ‘We can’t leave her alone.’ He nods. I know Kit wouldn’t leave me alone either; he’s like that. The three of us walk away from the road that rises through the town, the road that leads to the house I haunt in my dreams.

  We follow Michelle down into The Avenues where the limes branch across the road, their leaves trembling above us as we stir the warm air, and I pull my bag closer to me. At the edges of the light from the streetlamps, the faces of houses reel past flat on both sides. The girl slips along between us, insubstantial alongside the robust figure of my brother.

  A woman appears out of the darkness ahead of us, loose cardigan pulled tight around her and permed hair in a yellow tangle from her high ponytail. Michelle shouts out and starts to run. As she reaches the woman she leans into her and makes a gesture towards us that could be a wave. The pair stand watching us for a moment, their faces hard to make out at that distance, and then the woman puts her arm around the girl and turns her away and they step completely out of our sight. We’re alone again.

  ‘Well, ta very much for walking her back.’ I pull a face at Kit. I’m tired and we’ve gone out of our way to walk with her.

  ‘Shall we?’ he asks, turning our cases round. Yes. We must.

  We retrace our steps back along the High Street and up away from the station until we reach our own front door.

  ‘We could do this from somewhere else, you know, Robyn.’ He means from somewhere safer.

  But I’ve got a bone to pick with this town and while it may not be directly responsible for what happened, it most certainly was complicit.

  Inside the house, we set our cases down by the meter cupboard. It feels strange and familiar at the same time and I charge around, forgetful of my tiredness, switching on all the lights. The bare bulbs leave the rooms raw and overexposed and throw stark shadows from the packing boxes that have been abandoned by the doors, labels still attached.

  I pause in the lounge where Matthew stored all his business archives after he closed his offices in town and let my toes drop into the indents in the carpet where his filing cabinets stood. Nothing is quite how it was.

  ‘I couldn’t let it go,’ Matthew’d said. ‘And I couldn’t leave it completely empty.’

  Last time we lived in this house, there were four of us. When there were only three, we couldn’t stay. Matthew couldn’t stay. And now Matthew is on his way again, to live the life he put aside to care for us. We didn’t know him until we arrived in this town, but he’s been our real father in every way since we literally crashed into his life.

  I push the sofas that have been left in the middle of the room back so that they’re facing each other as they used to and sit down on the floor. Where my feet are, there was a sheepskin rug. Kit would hide his toy soldiers in it for ambushes and they’d get tangled and caught in the fur. Often, one of them would get left behind and forgotten until Mum or Matthew screamed when they stepped on it barefoot.

  ‘Do you remember?’ I ask Kit. I know he does.

  I close my eyes and see the house as it was back then, alive with noise and colour and the smell of the cigarettes Mum hid from Matthew. The floorboards tick softly under me, and I get up, not ready to hear all the stories the house can tell tonight.

  Kit sees my face and gives me a quick hug. ‘Come on.’

  We take our suitcases upstairs and pull out some linen to make the beds as though our return is nothing remarkable. Then I patrol the rooms to look in all the cupboards, undecided whether to leave the doors wide, exposing their dark recesses, or to shut it all away. It’s just bricks and mortar, I tell myself, it can’t hurt us.

  Kit follows me without comment as I go back downstairs, testing locks and turning lights off and on again until I’m satisfied that we’re safe. My head is buzzing from the journey and full of plans. I know I won’t sleep tonight but Kit looks beat.

  ‘No one can get in, Little Bird,’ he says finally, although he waits with me awhile, pale and silent. When he goes to his own room, he leaves his door wide open so I can hear his breathing, deep and steady, as I sit on the window seat in mine.

  I look at the glass and a face stares back at me. My heart fills my throat so that I can’t shout for help. I blink and recognise my own reflection pale in the night, eyes wide and my expression blank in the hard light.

  I wrap the musty curtains tight around me so no one can see me, from inside or out.

  I find myself curled up and damp with condensation in the morning. The sound of Kit leaving the house wakes me and, in that moment, I think it’s Matthew leaving for work and that I might hear the swish and jangle of Mum’s jewellery as she heads downstairs to organise breakfast. When I remember the truth, it’s like losing them all over again.

  After I’ve washed the remains of the night from my eyes, I consider where to start. The clear morning light has exposed the bones of the house with its thinning carpets and walls weary with old paint. The dark corners I couldn’t make out last night are now just empty and, as I wander around, I open the windows wide, releasing the old air. Packing boxes wait for me among the furniture, sealed tight and labelled, some in Matthew’s tidy writing but most in Mum’s looping hand. When I see it, I have to stop and trace over her words with my finger.

  The emptiness in each room cries out to be filled up with the sounds we used to make, and the memories drive me out into the garden. It’s heavy with overblown flowers and the fullness of branches damp with still-green leaves. I take a lungful of air, stretching the aches from the journey out of my back. Now that I can see over the fences and along the back gardens without climbing up, I feel like a giant. Around me are new conservatories, the dew-shiny tops of
swings and slides and the uneven slopes of felted shed roofs.

  In time, my stomach groans and I go back inside to the kitchen where I pull out some biscuits from the bag of groceries we bought on the way home. There’s an opened packing box on the floor labelled ‘Crockery and Cutlery’ and I run the tap to fill the sink. I force myself to get busy and start pulling out the contents. I unwrap the newspaper and watch as the plates slide under the surface of the water, the bubbles releasing the ink and washing away any lingering evidence of the words they were wrapped in.

  Kit has already unpacked a kettle and I flick it on as I work, pausing to make tea in a brown flowered mug still dripping from the rack. We used to have a set of four, but Kit buried one in the garden for a dare, and we never found it again. I make myself concentrate on the task in front of me. When I reach the bottom of a box, I strip the tape off, collapse it, and place it at the end of the table to wait for the rest. I slip into an easy rhythm until the mug is drained and all the boxes are empty.

  At last, I pick the pieces of newspaper up from the floor and smooth them out, making a pile next to the flattened cardboard. I straighten up for a moment as I consider where to put them. My breath catches when I notice the picture on the top sheet of paper. I feel a rush of guilt and shame.

  It’s a photograph of a man holding a boy in his arms. The man is smiling, his chin and chest stuck out, but the boy is not. He reaches towards someone out of the picture, his feet braced against the man’s stomach, tendrils of his long hair stuck to his wet cheeks. The memory of his face floods into my mind. I can’t help ducking to look under the table in case there’s a little boy with a flyaway fringe still hiding there.

  I hadn’t thought about Mum wrapping up our lives in news stories. She hadn’t asked us to help, just sat at the table with an open box on the floor between her feet and the pile of newspapers beside the crockery. One sheet for one mug, corners tucked in, then roll and stuff and into the box, her hands streaked with print, her hair pulled back and tightly pinned away from her eyes. I wipe away the tears that have crept down my face.

  I feel the loss of her, new and raw again, among her things. I let the paper slip from my fingers and take a break. I return to my room and dress. In the bathroom, I pull my hair back and up too and search for signs of her in the mirror.

  When I’m able to continue, I stack the newspapers and put them away carefully and deliberately without looking. If I look too closely, I’ll be sucked in, smothered, unable to do what I came for. I know there’s only so much time before Kit wants us to leave.

  I put to one side the things I don’t think we’ll use, and then change my mind about a postcard of Millais’ Ophelia that used to be pinned to a cupboard alongside school notices and bills. I prop it up on the windowsill so she can float above the sink.

  I’ve put off going into town for too long, and the house itself is suffocating me. I pick up my bag from the hall, free my hair to fall across my face and head down to the High Street. The ribs and arteries of the town feel familiar, but it has sloughed off the old skin I remember, and the shop fronts are shinier somehow, more uniform.

  I retrace my steps because the old library, with its stucco façade, is now a wine bar. There are empty bottles streaked with wax drips, standing in lines where the books used to be displayed. The garden where I would sit waiting for Kit, flicking through my haul of freshly stamped books, is now full of tables and chairs.

  The new library building is sleek with glazing and the reference section is clearly marked. I pull out the telephone directory and flip halfway and then run my finger up past the Mannings and Mahers and on until I get to Mace, William and an address in The Coppice. So many households listed. What if Danny Mace and his mother hadn’t come into our lives that summer? What if Bill Mace had never known who we were?

  I take out my sketchpad to write the address down and find a note from Kit.

  Go on, Little Bird, I’m okay. Just work fast.

  The Bunch of Grapes, with its hanging baskets and wooden tables on the pavement, is just as I remember it. The door opens as I pass by and the sweet smell of beer and crisps escapes on to the street. My stomach growls reminding me that I’ve only eaten biscuits. There’s a blackboard advertising sandwiches, and I’m tempted to go in, but I think of that man in the paper, his triumphant smile, his hand raised. This was his pub, his territory.

  There is nothing unusual about William Mace’s house. It stands in false innocence among its peers. Although they all have the same skeletons, the same straight paths to their front doors and regular features, some are now dressed with tubs of flowers while others are prickled with bikes and buggies.

  As closely as I look, there is nothing to say that a boy of Danny’s age lives at Mace’s house. Just as I am about to walk on to my real destination the front door opens and a man, shorter than me now but still thickset, steps out as if looking for someone. He sees me and shouts, ‘Hey, you’re not —’

  I run. My heart bashes into my ribs, but I keep going until I’m out of sight. Then I lean against a lamp gasping with effort as though I’m just a kid playing Knock, Knock, Ginger, and my mates are about to come wheeling around the corner laughing and shrieking with adrenaline. Except I’m not having fun.

  Kit might be right about not coming back here. Nothing feels safe. It’s no more our real home now than it ever was. We just stayed here in the eye of the storm until the peace fell in all around and blew us away again.

  The next time I go out, I have a plan. White clouds scud across the rooftops and a light breeze sets the leaves of the cherry tree dancing in the last bursts of summer sun. I cross from one side of the road to the other chasing the shade, like we did as kids.

  Kit is refusing to unpack any more boxes than we need, so we’ve been walking around the house like trespassers. When he leaves for work, the silence creeps up on me. It’s not the careful peace of the house we shared with Matthew, but more like a home with the volume muted. I can almost hear Mum humming as she makes tea, not quite hear her bangles clinking as she pads around the kitchen.

  He might be right not to pull everything out. There’s no way we could make this our home again, even if we wanted to.

  One of the boxes I found was smaller than the others and unlabelled. When I opened it and pulled out the crumpled paper at the top the clatter of wood falling on the floorboards made me jump. My stomach lurched at the sight of them, but I couldn’t resist picking them up to feel them. I never could. The contours of their little faces felt smooth and worn as I turned them over in my hand like dice.

  The warm feel of them on my skin made me spin around expecting to see the angry face of Mum watching me. When I noticed the other contents of the box, such a wave of nausea hit me that the wooden babies slipped through my fingers back into it. I knelt down heavily and resealed it with trembling hands. It took me ages to shove it all the way to the back of the little cupboard under the stairs with the discarded sheets of newspaper.

  There’s a queue at the counter for The Gazette, but I wait anyway. The room is stuffy and the woman behind the counter calls out for someone in the queue to prop the door open with the rack for the free issues.

  ‘Archives are at the library, love, no space here,’ the woman says when I eventually get to the front. Behind her, I can see into a small office where someone’s scuffed trainers, feet still in them, are resting on top of a stack of telephone directories on an ancient desk. There’s a plastic bag full of paper leaning against the door frame.

  ‘Okay, well, I’d like to place an advert anyway.’ I pass over the piece of paper where I’ve written out what I want to say. I screw up my fists willing her not to recognise my name and say it out loud in this small room. She starts counting the number of words, her tongue sticking out slightly, and then something she reads makes her stop.

  Please, don’t say it, I think, but she does.

  ‘This was ever such a long time ago, wasn’t it, love?’ She considers my face as th
ough trying to decide if she should take me seriously or not. Someone in the queue behind me coughs. ‘I mean, if she wanted to come home, you’d have heard from her by now, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’d like it in all the editions, please,’ I tell her with as much force as I can muster. ‘How much is that?’

  After paying, I rush out into the sunshine and almost straight into a man in a white T-shirt. I’m so close to him that the smoke from his cigarette stings my eyes. I freeze, but he barely glances at me, and he’s across the road before I can move. He flicks his lit cigarette at the newsagent’s door, and I realise I’ve been holding my breath.

  Escaping the bustle of the High Street, I cut up towards the old part of town with the church and the primary school where I know it’s cooler under the trees.

  At the graveyard, I pause and lean over the old stone wall, looking across the uneven rows of headstones and crosses. The light falls through the trees in bursts as the clouds pass in front of the sun. I should stop and pay my respects here, but until I’ve done what I came for, I can’t.

  I turn around. The red brick of the school on the other side of the war memorial is almost a reflection of the church. Debbie would wait for me every morning so we could walk through that Victorian entrance together, passing the doors to the headmistress’s office on one side and the assembly hall on the other. We sang hymns before class and did gym and put on a Christmas show for the parents in that hall. The adults sat awkwardly on our little chairs while pillow-case sheep and tea-towel shepherds pointed at a tinsel star hung from the beams. When Debbie sang ‘While Shepherds Washed Their Socks by Night’ I nearly choked trying so hard not to laugh.