A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  Jean had optimistically left the washing up water in the sink. He watched the milky brew engulf his bowl, then addressed the empty sofa from the doorway: “I’ll get out your way, Dad. You’ll have no one to stop you having a few beers before lunch, or lazing in front of the telly all day.”

  “You off out? You don’t see your old man for the best part of three years and now you can’t wait to escape.”

  “Hey!” His index finger was braver than it would have been had his dad actually been there. “You weren’t around when we needed you. I’m not hanging around and waiting on you now.”

  “Come here and say that, tough guy!” The voice was Robert de Niro’s, circa Goodfellas.

  Jim slung his rucksack over one shoulder and greeted the bulging bin liner his mother had left blocking the door. “Aw! Not again!” Manhandling it over the threshold, he stooped to turn the key in the lock.

  Standing at her kitchen window, Mrs O’Keefe rapped on the pane. Jim realised he had completely forgotten to call round and say thanks. Displacing her cat, she nudged the window open and spoke from above a display of cleaning products, arranged in height order. “I’ve just seen your mam. She seems to be doing well.”

  He shifted the bin liner from one shoulder to the other. “She’s back at work. I was gonna tell you.”

  “She’s up and about, that’s the main thing.” She frowned. “You alright, are you?”

  He shrugged. “S’pose.”

  “Good lad. Keep me posted.” The metal frame of the window closed. The stubborn cat reclaimed its rightful post. Mrs O’Keefe retreated behind locks and bolts, out of sight and out of mind.

  Crouching near the bin sheds, Bins was happily rummaging through other people’s leftovers. “Jim Stevens,” he acknowledged, accepting the black sack as if it were an expensively wrapped present. “What have we here?”

  “Nothing you’d be interested in,” Jim shrugged. “My mum never chucks food out.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” Bins beamed, untying the careful knot. Tipping the bag upside down, the older man used a magician’s hand to spread the haul over tarmac. “Oh, yes!” His eyes gleamed. Delicately, using only thumbs and index fingers, he extracted curves and shards of eggshell, picking them clean and laying them in a neat row on the edge of a raised kerb.

  Jim hovered between fascination and disgust. “I’ll be off then.”

  “Righto.” One hand rippled and, as Jim turned away, he heard the opening lines of an old nursery rhyme: “You shall have a fishy, on a little dishy, you shall have a fishy, when the boat comes in.”

  Dawdling in the direction of the tracks, Jim’s feet dragged under the weight of his thoughts. He knew what he had to do - wanted it over and done with - but who would sit still long enough to let him sketch her? Who would care if he knew the Latin for house martin? Who would say he was a good teacher? He kicked an empty Coke can and tripped after it ricocheted off a wall, back into his path.

  “Watch where you’re going, son,” the postman said as he sailed through the concrete bollards, both feet on one pedal of his bike.

  “Watch where you’re going yourself!” the boy muttered, feeling brazen. Jean believed in him, Jim knew that, but that was what she saw him as, tops - a postie doing his rounds. He recognised where he’d come from and what that made him, and a newfound desire to break loose. One path meant getting dragged into the family business, the other meant leaving everything he knew behind. Both were terrifying.

  Arriving at the main road, he waited for a break in the traffic. As a bus approached, its driver locked eyes with him, mouthing, “Just you dare,” pointing repeatedly to the zebra crossing, not twenty feet away. Giving him the one-fingered salute Jim watched the bus roll by, empty but for pensioners and teenage mums whose snotty-nosed offspring were carted round shopping centres for entertainment.

  Big ideas had no business taking up the attention of an eleven-year-old. He needed to get back to the important business of playing footie, plastering posters of Pamela Anderson on his bedroom wall and giving his mother cheek. As the traffic lights turned red, a Ford Fiesta slowed to let him limp across. Perhaps Aimee wouldn’t show up. That would be best for both of them. Yesterday’s tantrum had probably just been for show. But as he reached the top of the concrete steps his heart lifted and fell.

  “Jim!” she yelled from where she was sitting on the grass bank. Nothing more.

  Her hands were linked under her knees and she rocked a little. He forced a smile. Her lips were stained guiltily with blackberry juice. There was no hint of yesterday’s madness, no questions, no demands. A white plastic bag caught in a branch above her head stirred. The snapping of a twig revealed something rat-like in the dense weave of brambles. Sniffing the air, Jim threw his rucksack down in the long grass and dived closely behind it.

  “Been keeping my place warm?” Note: my place.

  Aimee failed to heed the flatness of his tone. “Come and see.” She handed over her notebook, opened at the latest entry. Tucking her hair behind one ear, she smiled, revealing the gap in her front teeth. “It was the best I could do without binoculars or your book.”

  She sat, leaning on one arm that was placed just behind him. The breath that brushed Jim’s cheek was sweetened by fruit. He concentrated on her pencil sketch. “Looks like a wren.”

  “It was tiny.” She formed a C with one hand. “Much smaller than the others.”

  Before Jim could protest, she posted two blackberries into his mouth. “Sounds about right.” He gulped back the tart juice.

  She sucked the ends of her fingers, one after the other, then used them to turn the page. “I wasn’t so sure about him.”

  Her chin nearly touching his shoulder, Jim was relieved there were words demanding to be read. “Medium-sized, brown upperparts, white chest with brown arrowheads.”

  “He spent a good ten minutes pulling this worm out of the ground. It was stretched out like an elastic band.”

  “Must be some sort of thrush.” Flicking through the book, Jim found the entry for the Mistle Thrush.

  “No.” Her nose wrinkled, her hands reaching for the page. “It wasn’t as white as that.”

  He thumbed through to a picture of the Song Thrush. “What about him? They go for worms. Nestlings eat over ten foot a day.”

  “That’s gross!” Hearing her protest, a scrawny old fox hesitated on the opposite side of the tracks. One ear rotated, radar-like.

  The pretence at normality proved too much for Jim. He had to get what needed to be said over with. “I saw my brother yesterday.”

  “Where?” she asked, sitting upright.

  The fox tensed, neck straining, muscles taut: watching.

  “He came looking for me.”

  Jim saw the realignment of Aimee’s mouth, heard saliva move to her throat. “Not at your place?”

  “My mum would never let him in.” Jim shook his head. “He was asking after my dad. And I just knew.”

  “What did you know?” She knelt up. The fox bolted.

  Aimee was supposed to be the clever one. She shouldn’t need him to spell it out: “They were in on it together.”

  She created a breeze, forcing breath out through her mouth. “Shit.”

  They both stared across the short scrubby grass at the tracks.

  “I think you should find somewhere else to go,” Jim blurted. Aimee’s once pale feet were tanned save for the white arrows left by the thongs of her flip-flops.

  “I can handle myself.” She seemed determined to make this difficult for him.

  “Sooner or later something bad’s going to happen to you - and it will be because you know me.”

  “How d’you work that one out, Einstein?”

  “Yesterday,” he watched a bumble bee making its strenuous up-and-down journey through the grass, “someone was sent to find me. I thought I was in for a kicking. Turns out I was wrong, but anyone could follow me down here. I can’t take that chance.”

  “You thin
k you’re the only one with problems!” She rammed her feet back into her plastic shoes, her softness becoming sharp angles.

  Jim took refuge in brotherly concern. “Look, I just think you’d be safer -”

  “Safer?” She made a small huffing noise. “You know: fine. Have it your way! We’ll go somewhere else. Meet me on the bridge. Half eight.” And, displacing a pair of nervous blackbirds, she took off before Jim had the chance to open his mouth to argue.

  CHAPTER 20: AYISHA - AUGUST 2010 - ST HELIER HOSPITAL

  Ayisha returned her gaze from the view outside the hospital window to Jim. “The answer’s no.” She uncrossed her legs and pushed herself out of the visitor’s chair. “I can’t believe you’re even asking!” Having told him that she had decided she couldn’t report Shamayal’s disclosure without implicating herself, Jim’s response was immediately - unbelievably - to ask her to keep an eye on the boy!

  Jim sighed. “I understand.”

  The fact that his tone was completely reasonable grated. She was used to her mother’s accusations and complaints. Those, she could handle. Ayisha hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder and supported its soft underbelly with one hand. “It’s really unfair of you to try and involve me any more than I already am.”

  “I know. And, if I wasn’t lying here, I wouldn’t dream of it.” Amid the bleeping equipment and the drips Jim was tucked in tightly with only his arms free.

  Because raising her voice wasn’t an option, Ayisha felt the need to state the obvious: “I can’t tell you how angry I am with you!” There was a lot more she would like to have said, but part of her rage was directed inwards. She had misjudged the situation when she chose to give Jim the benefit of the doubt, and now Ayisha had seemingly set a chain of events in motion.

  Somewhere on the other side of the corridor, a woman was crying out for help: “Why doesn’t anyone answer? Why does no one come?” Jim had explained that the voice’s owner was senile; that her cries often went unheeded, but the tone of voice suggested pain. If this was confusion, surely reassurance wouldn’t go amiss? The hospital wasn’t the quiet place of healing Ayisha had imagined. How Jim could stand it, she didn’t know. After only an hour she was feeling desperate to extract herself.

  “I don’t blame you.” His eyes appealed to her earnestly. “But I’m stuck in here and I have no one else to turn to.”

  A needle was lodged in Jim’s hand, the entry-wound covered by sticking plaster. Ayisha followed the thin plastic tubing to a liquid-filled pouch. When he stood - which he was encouraged to do - he must wheel a drip with him. He certainly looked trapped. How had she managed to get into the situation where it all came down to her? “It still might not be too late,” she back-tracked, thinking out loud.

  “Ayisha, believe me, I’m not asking for myself. Don’t call Social Services. Please.”

  A glance at her watch provided a much-needed excuse. “I said I’d meet Shamayal by the car ten minutes ago.” It was a lie. The boy had insisted on getting the bus.

  “Promise me you won’t. He trusts me.”

  “Fine,” she said impatiently. “Then I’ll speak to his father.”

  “I wouldn’t -”

  “Then what? You know, I could -” A sound like fury erupted deep in her throat. Conscious of having attracted unwanted attention, Ayisha rounded the end of the bed and turned her back on the elderly man in the bed opposite. To her right, the door was beckoning. “Tell me! What exactly would you have me do?”

  “Look out for Shamayal, that’s all.”

  Ayisha gaped at him. “Keep an eye out for a fourteen-year-old boy, who may or may not be staying in your flat? How do you suggest I do that? Babysit? Or perhaps you want me to ask him to stay with me!”

  Jim’s pleading eyes suggested she had struck upon a solution.

  “Oh, no!” She took a step back. “No way.” Her feet appeared to be performing a small circular dance. “I have plans! There are things I should be doing right now.”

  “But -”

  “You know something?” The hand that she had raised in protest delved into her handbag and extracted Jim’s keys. She set them down onto the wheeled table. “I’m done with buts.”

  Waiting impatiently for the lift, watching the numbers stall - come on, come on! - a cold patch on her forehead alerted Ayisha to the fact that she had clasped a hand to it. Why should I feel guilty? she asked herself. This isn’t my problem. A ringing sound signalled the arrival of the lift. She shook her hair out. Doors opened lazily to reveal a gum-chewing, boiler-suited cleaner and his floor-polishing machine crammed into the tight space. The man’s face was unapologetic. Mid-turn towards the staircase, Ayisha’s feet made a decision on her behalf. She found that she was storming - as effectively as heels permitted - back to the ward, sidling past the tea trolley, rounding a huddle of gossiping nurses. The elderly man opposite appeared delighted. She gripped the metal frame at the foot of Jim’s bed. “I’ll pay him to help me decorate. That way I can’t be accused of taking advantage. If I can track him down.”

  Jim frowned up at her. “Isn’t he waiting for you in the car park?”

  Ayisha was surprised she had made such an obvious slip. “He’s making his own way home,” she admitted. “And I’m going to have to get better at lying!”

  The keys were still there on the table. Understanding there was no option, Ayisha reached out and took them, furious that she had allowed herself to be blackmailed. She could already hear her mother’s complaints: But I was expecting you… “If he says no, there’s nothing more I can do.”

  “Thank you,” Jim said with obvious relief. “You’re a good person.”

  “Good?” Ayisha emitted a single syllable of frustrated laughter, then hissed, “I’m in breach of our professional code of conduct, that’s what I am!”

  “But it’s the holidays.”

  This was too much; too much. “Don’t you dare joke about it.”

  “Seriously, then.” Lying there, Jim looked suitably chastened. “Will you let me know what he says?”

  She shook her head, glaring at the lecherous old man in the bed opposite. “You know something? You are really pushing your luck.”

  CHAPTER 21: JIM - AUGUST 1992 - CARSHALTON

  Aimee had perched on the wall, her knees drawn up, feet flat against the brickwork. Jim noticed she was wearing his denim jacket. Colours blurred, his view of her obscured then revealed through glass and in the gaps between cars. It was impossible to avoid her, but he could make her wait.

  “Thinking of doing a runner?” she asked when at last he ambled across.

  “Fat chance.”

  “I thought as much!” A shake of her head revealed gold gypsy earrings. “I know you too well.”

  It seemed strange now that he’d mistaken her for a gypsy. “And I can’t work you out.”

  “Does it matter?” She thrust her duffel bag at him then sprang, landing lightly. A series of complicated adjustments followed. She hoisted her leggings up from the waist, stretched them down over her knees, pulled the back of her baggy top down. The bag beginning to weigh heavily, he coughed impatiently. Aimee grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and let it slip through her hand. Applied cherry lip gloss. This, it seemed, was revenge. Finally, she took the bag without a word of thanks and set a military pace, glancing back to demand, “Coming?”

  After satisfying himself that no one was following, Jim set off at a sluggish trudge.

  Down Pound Street, Aimee’s eyes lit up, gleaming. She pressed her nose against the plate glass of an old-fashioned shop to admire a display of antique clocks. Despite the early morning sun that bounced off the pavement, standing on tiptoes, hands blinkering her eyes, she reminded Jim of Christmas. Not Christmas at Ralegh Grove, but the Christmas of The Muppet Christmas Carol.

  “See the grandfather clock, third from the left?” She tapped on the glass, pointing to an ivory face decorated with a sun and a moon. The open door of the walnut case revealed a brass pendulum,
swinging hypnotically. When Jim made no attempt to match her enthusiasm, she frowned. “I thought boys were supposed to be interested in the way things work.”

  “All I want a clock to do is tell me the time.”

  She made a playful grab for his arm. “Show me your wrist!”

  “Get off!” Jim snatched it away. Too late: she had danced around his back and pulled up his sleeve.

  “I thought as much!” she said judiciously. “It’s digital.”

  Self-conscious, Jim covered his garage purchase protectively. “Does what it’s supposed to.”

  “I thought your problem was that you had no poetry in your soul, but it turns out you’ve got no soul at all!”

  The sum total of his body heat migrated to his ears. “Can’t afford one.”

  Vehicles had achieved the usual rush-hour stalemate where the road narrowed to the width of a cart in front of the ponds. They picked their way between mud-splattered bumpers and purring engines. The trees and sky were reflected Monet-style in the water.

  “What are we doing here?” Jim asked as they walked under an overhanging canopy, stepping in and out of shade as if making their way over an elongated zebra crossing.

  “A bit of local history for you.”

  He groaned, dragging his feet. “His-to-ry!”

  Aimee’s method of converting non-believers was low key. “You’ll like it,” she grinned, her confidence grating. “Money-back guarantee. So, where are we?”

  “Duh! Beddington Park.”

  “And what can you see?”

  It seemed there was to be a quiz. Looking about him, Jim saw a sausage-shaped bulge in a grounded plastic bag next to a receptacle for dog turds. “Nothing much.”

  “Try harder.”

  His view was restricted by horse chestnuts in full leaf. Heavy loads of conkers would be ripe for the taking in a couple of weeks’ time. He blew at a cloud of midges. “Can’t see a sodding thing!”

  She grinned. “Can’t see the wood for them?”