A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  “Door!” she commanded.

  In the musty gloom, Jim could just make out his mother’s shadowy outline, prostrate on the bed.

  “Jean, love, it’s Deirdre.” Mrs O’Keefe slid the tray onto the bedside table. “Why don’t we sit you up? I’ve brought you some nice soup.”

  The shadow shrank.

  “I know, I know,” Mrs O’Keefe mewed, then in sharp contrast: “Jim, help me out!”

  As Mrs O’Keefe hauled his mother into a sitting position and he wedged two pillows behind her, Jean’s peering eyes accused him of betrayal. “I was worried, Mum,” he mumbled.

  “I expect those trains have got to you again,” Mrs O’Keefe said with conviction, feeling Jean’s forehead with the back of her hand. “One went off the top of the Richter Scale earlier. Honest to God, I’m amazed this place is still standing. Now let’s put this tray on your lap, shall we?” Then, accustomed to dealing with cats, Mrs O’Keefe shooed Jim out.

  Jim didn’t know what miracle his neighbour performed, but half an hour later there was an empty bowl in the kitchen sink and she pronounced her verdict: “Leave her be this evening. She’ll be up and about tomorrow.”

  The following day, Jim was woken by the sound of running water. He urgently needed to pee but, padding down the hall, found the bathroom door locked. His mother was singing along loudly to Take That. Crossing his ankles, he rattled the handle. “Are you going to be long?”

  “I’m having a soak!” came the cheerful reply.

  “I need the loo.” Jim pressed the bones of his knees together. “Can’t I come in?”

  “Sorry, love! Can’t hear you!”

  Jim found himself torn between exasperation and marvelling that Mrs O’Keefe’s unlikely-sounding prediction had been accurate. Brought back from the verge of despair by soup. As he pissed into the empty can (secreted away until he could dispose of its jaundiced contents), he considered that Campbell’s could add that to their slogans: ‘Life-saving Soup’.

  When Jean finally emerged, wrapped in her lilac towelling dressing gown, Jim elbowed past into the steam carrying the concealed can. He made a pretence of unzipping his flies and then poured his orange-tinted sample slowly in the bowl. The stained towels used by his mother for the monthly ritual of dying her hair were half-hidden behind the shower curtain: a sign she was preparing to face the world.

  But not everything was back to normal. Competing draughts running through the hallway hit him from all angles.

  “What are you doing, Mum? It’s freezing.” He climbed onto the sofa to close the living room window.

  “I’m letting the church bells in. Listen!” As she stood, apparently transfixed by their off-key other-worldliness, Jim knew that Jean was thinking of village fetes and tea with cucumber sandwiches. Things that didn’t concern them.

  He made it his job to trail his mother around the flat, watching her every move. Was she drinking enough? Had she eaten? Had she lost the knack of cleaning?

  “Give me some space, will you!” she snapped at him eventually.

  Fine. The best test of whether she was herself was to do something wrong and see how quickly she jumped down his throat. He lay on the sofa, positioning his shoes on her favourite cushion, a revolting concoction of fake satin and embroidered roses.

  “Right!” Her voice boomed from the kitchen doorway. “That’s it! Get out from under my feet!”

  When Jim grinned she grabbed the cushion, swiping at him playfully. “I show a moment’s weakness and you think you can take advantage!”

  “Leave it out, Mum!” He wrapped his arms around his head as the cushion rained down. “You had me scared.”

  The blows stopped and she sat down next to him. “I’m not going anywhere.” He grimaced, but allowed her to tousle his hair. “We’ve got to stick together, you and me.”

  “Why aren’t you back at work?”

  “I needed a couple of days, Jim.” He could see the exhaustion in her eyes. “Time to myself. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I’ve got to think of answers to all those awkward questions I’ll be asked, for starters. You’re the world’s leading authority on excuses. What would you say?”

  “Who am I talking to?” Jim asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know… Her at the Post Office asking when your dad’s coming to pick up his benefit.”

  Jim didn’t feel any obligation to protect his father, but his mum didn’t like him repeating the truth: that, she labelled ‘gossip’. Experience had taught him that an obvious lie can be good to make the point that it’s nobody’s business but your own.

  “Where’s your dad, Jimmy?” A lad would sneer, tackling him on the football pitch.

  “On his annual vacation in the Bahamas,” Jim would reply, kicking his tormentor’s ankle. “Sorry, didn’t see you there. I hope that didn’t hurt.”

  On the other hand, the genius of a good lie could be completely wasted if no one ever found him out. The truth should be covered up for just long enough.

  “Hey, Jimmy! Where’s your old man?”

  “Don’t say anything, but my mum’s kicked him out.”

  “What did he do this time?”

  “The usual.”

  “Think she’ll let him back?”

  “She’d be mad to.”

  The idea of telling a lie - or a series of lies believable enough to fool everyone in the longer run - wasn’t one of Jim’s specialties. He shrugged and she sighed.

  “Well, if you’ve got no advice, you can nip down to the shop for me.”

  The boy’s thoughts turned to escape. Cooped up for three long days, Jim was in need of a friendly face.

  “We’ve got nothing for our tea.” As he opened the door, she shouted after him, “Get a Viennetta! We deserve a treat.”

  With pockets weighed down by pound coins, he by-passed the Happy Shopper and made his way to the tracks. She was there: a skinny girl staring blankly at the tracks, an open book lying cover up beside her, unread. As soon as she saw him, Aimee jumped up.

  “Where have you been?” She ran at Jim, all hair, spit and angry fists.

  “Whoa there!” He warded off her attack. “Give us a minute and I’ll tell you.”

  To his embarrassment, Jim realised Aimee was sobbing. “Why didn’t you come?”

  “I’ll tell you.” He tried to look into her red-rimmed eyes through her nest of hair. “Could we just sit down first?” Jim steered her to a flat piece of grass and, since he was holding her wrists, they dropped to the ground as one.

  “You can’t just not turn up like that!” she started again, before he had the chance to speak. “We had an arrangement -”

  Anger brewing, Jim replied, “D’you want me to tell you or don’t you?”

  “Five minutes!” she mouthed through a membrane of sticky saliva. “That’s all it would have taken!”

  “That’s it, I can do without this!” Jim stood, furious at the realisation that, now Aimee had moved in on his turf, he would have to find somewhere else to watch his birds.

  “You haven’t even told me what happened!” Back on her feet, Aimee was running to keep pace with him.

  “That’s because you haven’t shut up!” He kept moving, elbows pumping.

  “So where were you, then?”

  “I couldn’t get out.” Jim turned to face her. “It’s my dad.”

  Something in his tone must have warned Aimee to stop her tirade. “Is he ill?”

  “I wish!”

  “What, then?”

  Jim knew that his next sentence would spell the end of whatever it was between them. “He was arrested.”

  Her immediate reaction was to laugh.

  “Accessory to armed robbery. Glad you think my life’s a joke!”

  “You’re serious,” she recoiled. They both sank to the bottom of the concrete steps, mirror images: chins in hands, elbows on knees.

  Jim addressed Aimee’s scratched feet, pointing inwards in their yellow flip-flops. “I tried telling you. It’s
what he does.”

  “But I went on,” she said, “and on…”

  “You weren’t to know. My mum went into meltdown. I fetched a neighbour in the end.”

  “Is she alright?”

  “She must be: she’s got me running errands. First chance I had, I thought I’d sneak down here to see you.” He allowed himself a small laugh. “Christ knows why!”

  “I’m sorry.” Aimee hung her head. “It’s just that I waited and waited. I thought something really bad had happened.”

  “Something bad did happen!”

  “You know what I mean. You could be lying in a ditch somewhere and I wouldn’t have a clue. You’re my best friend, but all I know is your first name, that you like bird-watching and that you live in a block of flats.” She nodded in the vague direction of Ralegh Grove. “Somewhere up the hill.”

  Jim couldn’t help feeling touched. He had never had a best friend. They were a girl thing. “That’s all you need. You go to Ralegh Grove and ask for Jim.”

  “It’s as simple as that.” Aimee folded her arms.

  He shrugged. “Don’t see why not but, if you can’t find me there, you could always go to the park and ask about Jim who plays left back.”

  “Yeah, right.” She scoffed. “Like I’m going to go down the park and ask a bunch of guys I don’t know!”

  “You forget: I’ve seen you handle yourself. So where would I go if you went missing?”

  “Well, you know the back way to my house. And you’ve met my cat.”

  “Alright then,” he said, levering himself up; matter closed.

  She looked up at him in panicked surprise. “Where are you going?”

  “I was only supposed to be gone a quarter of an hour. Mum’ll have the tracker dogs out if I don’t get back soon.”

  Girls! he thought as he trudged up the steps, shaking his head in disbelief. It took a while to digest what had just happened: Aimee liked him enough to worry. Plus, she knew all his bad stuff, and STILL wanted to know him. It was what his mum would have pronounced a Singing in the Rain moment. Jim was no Gene Kelly - fact was, he was tone deaf with two left feet - but he walked to the shops with a swagger, too pleased to ponder what had caused Aimee to promote him in the pecking order of her friends.

  “A penny for them.”

  Jolted awake, Jim heard his own intake of breath, the slightest of snores.

  “You alright? Want me to fetch someone?” a pale orderly with dyed red hair offered. She was standing between his hospital bed and the tea trolley, with its four unlabelled flasks, allegedly tea, coffee, hot chocolate and Bovril.

  “I’m fine,” he said, rubbing his eyes, trying to adjust.

  “Drink?”

  “Tea, please. Milk, no sugar.” For all the difference it made.

  “Coming right up.” She poured extravagantly, lifting the flask away from the cup and then bringing it back down. “Got to keep your fluids up.”

  ‘Fluid’ was a more accurate description of the couple of inches of uninviting luke-warm liquid that he lifted to his lips and smiled his appreciation of: Bovril with milk.

  CHAPTER 16: AYISHA - JULY 2010 - JIM’S FLAT

  Ordinarily, Ayisha would have been pleasantly surprised by Jim’s tree-lined neighbourhood - a conservation area - but annoyance at having had to pay for parking, to estimate how many quarter hours she might need, added weight to her put-upon feeling. Despite the confidence she tried to convey while walking up the path, she was consumed by the fear of the guilty, convinced something about her appearance would suggest she was up to no good. It was on attempt number three that she identified the correct front door key, only to find herself fumbling again in the lobby.

  Tellingly, save for a Chinese takeaway leaflet, there was no scattering of post on the varnished pine. Her eyes didn’t have to flit far before they settled on the neat stack of envelopes on top of the narrow cabinet in the hall. Someone had been here.

  “Shamayal?” Her footsteps echoed.

  Ayisha shuffled the post, unable to shake the feeling that she was prying. But no: she had been asked to come. Specifically for this purpose, in fact. The majority of envelopes were junk, but there was a white envelope she suspected was a bank statement and a square one with a handwritten address that had the appearance of a get-well-soon card.

  “Shamayal?” she called out again, stowing them inside her handbag. Nothing. She hesitated, listening. “It’s me, Miss Emmanuel.” Idly pulling on one of the handles, Ayisha saw that the cabinet was designed for shoe storage. Clever! A glance over her shoulder to check she’d closed the door revealed two tidy shelves above, crammed with paperbacks. And then she saw precisely the same coat hooks she had been trying to source on the internet. Where had Jim managed to find them?

  Hesitating in the doorway to the living room, drawn curtains filtering soft light, she gasped at the sight of the owl. Then she laughed at her own foolishness: what she was looking at wasn’t a live bird, but a photograph. A very good one, but a photograph just the same. Even now, Ayisha found she was holding her breath: it was literally breathtaking. With no backdrop to detract from its outstretched wings, individual feathers splayed, the bird glowed in the half-dark as it would when hunting. Deciding to draw the curtains, she subconsciously gave the owl a wide berth. Its eyes appeared to follow her. Suspended, hovering, the position of the talons made its intention clear: Ayisha was its prey.

  The recesses on either side of the fireplace were shelved: CDs and DVDs to her right, the books Jim had asked for to her left. A row of greeting cards had been placed in front of the paperbacks. In the process of moving them aside, a photograph slipped through her fingers. She gave chase as it drifted like a paper aeroplane. A blond-haired boy dressed for Halloween grinned up at her, gap-toothed. Kneeling on the leather armchair, she located the card it had fallen from and found herself smiling as she read the words: ‘Dear Uncle Jim, I won first prize for best dressed ghoul. You can help me make costumes any day.’ The card and these simple sentences, heading crookedly downhill from carefully ruled lines, were joyful things. A footnote was written in an adult hand: ‘Uncle Jim! Callum has forgotten to thank you for his Build Your Own Volcano kit. It erupted quite spectacularly. How many times must I tell you? Nothing that needs more than four batteries and nothing that explodes. Next time you visit, you will be painting the kitchen ceiling.’

  “What you doin’?”

  One of Ayisha’s hands leapt to her chest as she twisted round: “Shamayal!” She exhaled loudly, blood pounding in her ears. “You made me jump!”

  He nodded at her, arms folded. His low-slung jeans were pushed down over his hip bones. Ayisha noticed that he was barefoot, accounting for his stealth-like approach.

  “Why didn’t you reply when I called you?” She bent down to retrieve the photograph, reuniting it with the card.

  “I was busy, wasn’t I?” Adopting a protective air, he took it from her. “I don’t fink you should be goin’ through Jim’s private stuff.”

  “I was moving it out of the way -”

  “Looked like you was readin’ it to me.”

  “I was trying to get to the books. Jim - Mr Stevens - asked me to pick up a few things for him.”

  The boy’s eyes widened greedily. “They let you in to see him? How’s he doin’?”

  “The surgery went well, but it’s going to be a slow recovery.”

  “You fink they’ll let me visit?”

  The next leap was the big one as far as Ayisha was concerned. But Jim would want to thank Shamayal. Surely the boy deserved that much? And it wouldn’t be so extraordinary for a boy to visit his teacher in hospital, the teacher whose life he had helped save. So she allowed herself one ordinary human reaction. “Why don’t you come with me? But first we need to get a few things straight.”

  Shamayal raised his eyebrows, shrugged. Suddenly, it seemed, he could take it or leave it.

  “Mr Stevens could get in trouble for having a relationship with a pupil outside sc
hool.” What am I saying? she thought. It’s me who’s here on my own with a pupil. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  “A relationship?”

  Not in the mood for attitude, Ayisha sighed impatiently. “You know exactly what I’m talking about! Anything that doesn’t fall within the strict definition of teacher and pupil.”

  The boy folded his arms sulkily. “Whoever made them rules is stupid.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion, but unfortunately they’re necessary. I need to know, did you say anything to the police about Jim being a friend?”

  He made a face like a tortoise. “Why would I go tellin’ the police anythink?”

  “You told the officer you knew about his family!” she snapped back.

  “Yeah, an’ I know the name of Mrs Small’s budgie. That don’t mean nuffin.”

  Ayisha put one hand to her temple. “OK.” Pain was building up behind her eyes, an accumulation of sleeplessness and worry. By the time she looked at the boy again, something in his expression had changed. “What is it?” she asked, unnerved.

  “I was wrong about you,” he said, nodding, as if he knew something about her that she hadn’t yet grasped. “You came lookin’ for me, din’t you?”

  “Jim thought I might find you here.”

  “I bin keepin’ an eye on the place, you know? These days, you only have to go off on a week’s holiday and squatters move in. And you can’t just kick ‘em out. I saw it on the news.”

  The boy clearly had his own key. Ayisha dismissed the thought: didn’t want to make it any more of her business than it already was. She made a decision to be as professional as was possible, given the circumstances. “Maybe you can help me find a bag to put some things in.”

  Shamayal headed straight for the under-stairs cupboard. He knew his way around.

  “He wants his books, right?” Shamayal by-passed Ayisha and put the kitbag on the seat of the armchair. His fingers moved over the tops of the books as if he were practising a piano scale. Ignoring the novels, he tipped three spines forwards. She read the title of the one he slotted back into place: RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds. “Nah, not that one. He keeps his favourite on the kitchen table. He’s got the best view from there.”