A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  Two squirrels ran helter-skelter down a knotted trunk, a frantic cork-screw chase.

  You want me to say trees. He resisted.

  “They’re hundreds of years old. This was once a royal deer park.”

  Jim snorted a stray gnat out of one nostril. “I still don’t get why we’re here.”

  “Come on, sulky boy. You’re going to learn how Ralegh Grove got its name.” She pointed beyond the foliage to a low flint wall. “There!”

  “What?” Jim focused on the blue and yellow livery of the twin towers. “Ikea?”

  “Why do you always have to be such a smart arse?” Jim followed the direction of her index finger to a squat flint tower and flinched. “St Mary’s.”

  He had a healthy horror of churches born of the few occasions he had actually set foot inside one, the last time being his grandfather’s funeral.

  Aimee did little to disguise her disappointment. “You’ve got absolutely no idea who Sir Walter Ralegh was, have you?”

  Jim shrugged. “I’ve heard of him.” He vaguely recalled an episode of Blackadder. He had only been six, but a six-year-old can find men wearing tights and a queen with a squeaky voice amusing.

  Aimee shook her head and exaggerated a sigh, capable of ignoring the couple on the bench: the girl straddling her boyfriend, sucking on his face. “He was only one of the greatest explorers ever! He was the one who introduced potatoes and tobacco to Britain.”

  So that was the joke: someone had tried to smoke a potato.

  “I know that! He was at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, wasn’t he?”

  “I take it back.” Aimee turned, apparently stunned. “So you must have heard he’s the only man in history to have been sentenced to death for treason twice.”

  “Twice?” Having been separated from her by a floppy-eared Labrador who had circled him playfully, Jim jogged a couple of paces to catch up.

  “He bought his way out the first time. Come on. There’s something I really want you to see.”

  She dragged him under the lych gate, past the most recently dug graves, topped with flowers and photographs that had yet to fade; up the overgrown path to the heavy oak door. Lifting the knocker using both hands and turning, Aimee produced a metal-on-metal grinding sound. “Help me out.”

  Jim strained, producing slight movement. “Our luck’s in.” She smiled, showing him the gap in her teeth. “This is one of my favourite places in the whole world.” She held the door open for him. “Top five, anyway.”

  Inside, with the door closing on the world outside, everything was gloomy, scented with centuries of damp, dust and decay.

  “Don’t tell me: it’s haunted.”

  “It might be.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Some people say that Sir Walter’s body is buried in the vault underneath us. Others say it’s only his head. After he was executed, his widow carried it around with her in a little velvet sack.”

  Despite his lack of soul, goose-bumps rose against Jim’s collar. Perhaps it was the sudden drop in temperature, but the place had an undeniable presence. Claiming ownership of all she surveyed, Aimee strode up the aisle, leaving Jim shy of an imaginary threshold between stone porch and terracotta tile. As his eyes became accustomed to the half-light, they were drawn upwards: stars in gold leaf and coats of arms in greens and cobalt blue, all against a ceiling of ruby-red; gilded angels hovering horizontally, the tips of each pair of golden wings almost touching those of its opposite. He flinched at the clunk of a bench, its echo ricocheting off the walls.

  “Over here!” Ahead - somehow always one step ahead - Aimee was walking backwards, then with a skip she disappeared somewhere to the right of the aisle. Her voice rang out: “The Carew family chapel!”

  Jim skirted round a cleaning lady who was on her hands and knees, cringing an apology on behalf of his wet footprints.

  Standing by a stone knight with stone arms folded across his chest, Aimee read respectfully, “Here resteth Sir Francis Carew, knight, sonne and heire of Sir Nicholas Carew, knight of the honourable Order of the Garter…”

  The cramped space forced them close together. Jim stood, arms tight at his sides, knowing the electric fence to be something only she was allowed to breach. “What’s that?”

  “Basically,” her coconut-scented hair brushed his cheek, “it was the gang you wanted to be in if you were anyone. The King and the Prince of Wales were both members.” She traced each letter with a stubby index finger, its nail bitten painfully short. “…Master of the Horse… He was in charge of everything to do with the royal horses and hounds. The equivalent would be - I don’t know.” Her mouth was so close that he felt the warmth of her breath. “Minister for Transport, the Armed Forces and Sport… and Private Councellor to King Henry VIII. Sadly, being a friend of Henry VIII and a famous jousting star wasn’t enough to stop the King having his head cut off.” Admit it, the light in her eyes challenged, you’re excited. “His whole history is right here in front of you.”

  Keen to prolong this whispered sharing of secrets, Jim asked, “What did he do to deserve that?”

  She shrugged. “Being connected with the royals was dangerous.”

  “And then what?”

  “After -” Aimee drew one hand across her throat and made a strangled sound - “Henry VIII confiscated Carew Manor. That was when he turned the grounds into a deer park.”

  “You haven’t explained where Walter Ralegh comes into it.”

  “Patience, I’m getting to that. His wife, Bess, grew up here before she was called to court by Queen Elizabeth to be one of her ladies-in-waiting. Remember how Sir Walter was the Queen’s favourite?” Jim recalled Rowan Atkinson making ridiculous promises. At that moment, without too much torture, Aimee might have been able to extract similar promises.

  “Well, Bess and Walter started a secret affair.” He was so close that he could hear her swallow. “Everything was fine until Bess fell pregnant.” She put one hand against her stomach, to demonstrate, he presumed.

  “I know what pregnant is!”

  “They married, of course, and when Elizabeth found out…”

  “All hell broke loose.”

  “Officially, it was more serious than jealousy. Bess should have asked the Queen’s permission to marry.”

  “They were related?”

  “Nothing like that. She had a distant claim to the throne. Walter and Bess were thrown into the Tower.”

  Seeing that Aimee’s lip was quivering, Jim thought she seemed rather too involved in the story. “Want to go?” he asked, embarrassed.

  They walked outside, blinking back daylight as if they’d been to a matinée at the cinema and expected to find it dark. As his goose-bumps smoothed, Jim experienced a sense of betrayal. Something had changed - he wasn’t sure what - but everything was just as it had been: the overgrown path; the tombstones; the lych gate. “How come you know all this?”

  Aimee glanced back over her shoulder, wearing a wan smile. “This is where we go to church. It bugs me how no one else notices what’s in front of them.”

  As she was talking, a flash of green and yellow dissected the sky. Jim raised his binoculars to see a pair of ring-necked parakeets land in a sweet chestnut tree. “I’ve heard about them!” he enthused. “That one’s a good sixteen inches.” Charitably, he handed Aimee the binoculars.

  “The story goes,” she panned in on a single bird, “that they escaped when The African Queen was being filmed.”

  “Never heard of it.” The persistent squawk filled his ears.

  A fat lady panted past on the pavement at walking pace, elbows pumping furiously, feet scraping the ground, her lycra-encased bottom rippling on the off-beat.

  “One of the greatest films ever made and he’s never heard of it! Doesn’t matter. Turns out that they were breeding in the wild even before the nineteen hundreds.”

  “So,” he said, scratching the side of his face. “Where to tomorrow?”

  “Caught this history bug, have you?”
She said smugly, her recovery complete.

  In the days that followed, they went walking in the woods at Woodmansterne which were alive with life - midges mostly - and they caught the bus to Cheam to see the site of Nonsuch Palace. One day they took the train all the way to Box Hill. Serenaded by the roar of Harleys, lying in the long grass with sunburn on his face, Jim felt as if he were really on holiday. He rolled onto his belly and grinned. “Don’t tell me: this is your favourite place.”

  “Top five.” Aimee’s eyes were closed as if she already knew what she would see if she looked. “People go halfway round the world, ignoring what’s under their noses.”

  Each time Jim returned home, the estate looked greyer and greyer, and the people emptier and emptier. Heads down, hoods up, bodies disguised in baggy clothes, their problem appeared to be what Aimee would diagnose as a lack of soul. Avoiding bad influences to please his mother had meant cutting himself off. He no longer belonged. Perhaps he never had. Kneeling on the sofa, Jim turned his binoculars towards the houses he intended to live in, seeing nothing to erode his rose-tinted view that life on the other side of the tracks was sweeter.

  Aimee only thought she had problems. Her battle wounds weren’t real. Even she said she bruised easily, and it sounded true enough. The one with a doctor for a father, she should know.

  Jim thought that Aimee was taking him on a tour of her world, showing him what he’d been missing out on. He didn’t realise she was doing the rounds to say her goodbyes. Just as surely as you do the rounds before leaving a party.

  CHAPTER 22 - AYISHA - 2010 - JIM’S FLAT

  “Shamayal?” Ayisha called out as she closed Jim’s front door. A muffled blur was coming from the living room. “Don’t tell me you came straight here without going home!” She heard her momentary intake of breath as the owl confronted her, talons extended.

  “Heard the news?” His voice was lifeless.

  “No. I had a CD on in -” He was sitting on the sofa, trainers off, knees tucked tightly under his chin, eyes fixed on a 24-hour news channel. Something about his stance made a ripple of anxiety course through her even before she recognised the quad. “That’s -” she stalled.

  “They found Christian, din’t they.” The boy’s meaning was plain.

  “My God,” Ayisha said in a whisper, goose-bumps prickling her scalp. She perched on the arm of the sofa, remembering Christian Knoll’s mother, whose appeal had been aired on BBC London last week, moments after an interview with Mr Peel who had described how Jim Stevens was heroically fighting for his life. Broken, hunched under the weight of grief, Mrs Knoll had pleaded into the microphone, “I just need my son home. I need someone to tell me he’s OK,” before clutching a tissue to her mouth. And the District Commissioner had encouraged members of the public to check their sheds and outbuildings as if Christian were a stray cat. While stock footage of tracker dogs was played, the Missing Persons Helpline number rolled across the bottom of the screen and the District Commissioner’s voice said gravely, “It’s our belief that Christian is intent on not being found.”

  Little wonder!

  “How?” she asked Shamayal, knowing at the same time that the details were irrelevant. A boy was dead.

  “They’re cleanin’ up after themselves.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “Wait up.” He pointed the remote control at the television as an old school photo of Christian appeared on the screen. A child! Bars increased in number, and the volume edged up: “…The Surrey teenager was pursued across a suburban park before he was stabbed through the heart and collapsed in the doorway of a house, where he was found by its owners. Victim, Christian Knoll, was thought to have been the intended target when schoolteacher Jim Stevens received a stab wound to the chest at Ashfield Comprehensive on the last day of the school term. As the gang fled, witnesses say they waved their knives in the air.”

  Ayisha felt numb. No. Beyond numb. Empty. Jim’s prediction had been right. She had spent the past week selfishly thinking it could have been her lying on the tarmac, but she had underestimated whoever had carried the knife. Now she saw that Jim might easily have been killed. Arms empty, she hugged herself in an attempt to contain the void that had opened up inside her. Unthinkingly, she was mirroring the boy’s stance.

  Because the Knoll family had asked for time to come to terms with their loss, Sky was playing the reel of Mrs Knoll begging for the return of her son, her voice breaking under the strain, Anyone, anyone. It had torn Ayisha apart when she watched it the first time. Now its poignancy increased further. Hunted down. What a dreadful way for a young life to end!

  Yet Ayisha felt strangely disconnected. Did Christian’s murder - the fact of it - feel more or less real because she was seeing a news report? Sometimes, on waking, Ayisha succeeded in convincing herself that she’d dreamt up that horrific bloodied version of the last day of term, so she kept newspaper clippings as evidence that it had been true.

  It was some time before either of them spoke, and then it was Ayisha who murmured, “Poor woman.”

  “What was he thinkin’ of?”

  She turned to Shamayal, surprised that anger was his reaction.

  “Din’t get far enough away, did he? Should of got himself out of town.”

  “Did you know Christian?” Saying his name out loud, Ayisha was struck by how quickly present could turn to past.

  “He was two years above me, wasn’t he?”

  “I suppose he must have been.”

  “You goin’ to get that, Miss?” Shamayal’s voice was impatient.

  “What?” It was only then that Ayisha realised her mobile was ringing.

  “Might be Jim. They’ve always got the news on at the hospital.”

  “Yes, hello,” she answered.

  “Ayisha. I’m glad I’ve reached you. It’s Mark.”

  It took her a moment to process this information: Realising it was her Head speaking, Ayisha’s stomach gave a guilty lurch. “I’m just watching the news. I don’t know what to…”

  “It’s terribly difficult to know what to do with oneself, I know. That’s why I thought you might prefer to be doing something practical. I’ve already opened up the school. Some of the kids were turning up to lay flowers in the quad. I wondered if we shouldn’t put on a few refreshments in the hall. Make sure they have somewhere to come and talk. I think that’s important, don’t you?”

  “Good idea.”

  “So, I can put you down for this afternoon and tomorrow?”

  “Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be there.” Hanging up, she noticed that she had missed a call. Of course: her mother would have seen the news. “That was Mr Peel. They’re opening up the school hall so that pupils have a place to go and talk.” She was about to suggest that the boy might like to come with her.

  “And you said you’d help? We should go back to the hospital, that’s what we should do! Jim’s there all on his own!”

  “It isn’t your job to worry about Jim. Your father might be watching, Shamayal. You really ought to ring home.”

  Shamayal didn’t move. “He’ll be watching something.”

  Deciding she could only lead by example, Ayisha got up. “Well, I’m going to call my mother.”

  After an exchange, which she kept as brief as possible with the excuse of having to rush off, Ayisha found Shamayal with his eyes still glued to the television. “Come on. Up you get.”

  “What?” Shamayal’s heels slipped off the sofa, his feet landing heavily.

  “I’m taking you home. I know all about difficult parents. Trust me, your dad may have a funny way of showing he cares, but he’ll be worried. Before you go anywhere else, you need to let him know you’re OK.”

  They stood in the doorway to the living room, witness to Shamayal’s father’s grunting form sprawled on top of a woman.

  “Sandi.” She went limp in his arms, her clouded look clearing when she saw the two of them. “You might want to -”

  But his bare buttocks still clenched and unclenched
as he pumped away. “Almost there, almost there...”

  Unlike Ayisha, who allowed the discarded clothes strewn across the floor to be her focus, Shamayal made no attempt to look away. “Hello, Dad,” he said, an everyday greeting, son to father.

  Mr Thomas performed a double take, then jumped up, fumbling for his flies, roaring, “What are you doing home at this time of day, you little shit?” Barely bothering to cover herself, the woman lay passively, fleshy and double-chinned, like a Lucien Freud painting.

  “I’ve come to show you I’m still alive, so you don’t need to worry.” Shamayal turned to Ayisha. “That’s what you wanted me to tell him, right? So we can go now, and he can get back to whatever he was doin’.” As the boy walked past her, a dignified exit, Ayisha was surprised to acknowledge pride lurking among her muddled emotions.

  “Aren’t you going to stop him?” Ayisha demanded of Mr Thomas, as appalled by his lack of embarrassment as she was at the sight of the loose-skinned paunch he seemed determined to flaunt.

  “Who are you, giving the orders in my home?”

  She breathed in a warm concoction of bodies and beer. “I’m a teacher from Shamayal’s school,” she said caught off guard.

  “He’s not been bunking off, has he?”

  “No.” She knew she had no business being here with Shamayal. “In fact, your son’s attendance is good. You may have heard on the news that one of our pupils has been murdered. We’re encouraging the children to talk to their parents.”

  “Shouldn’t you be the ones giving the counselling?”

  “It’s August, Mr Thomas.” Ayisha could see this information worming its way into his head. He hasn’t even realised that school has broken up for the holidays. “With the best will in the world -”

  “Then why are you sticking your nose in? Get out of my flat!”

  “But don’t…” Astonished, Ayisha had no idea what she was going to say other than make a protest of some sort.

  “I won’t ask you again. LEAVE!”

  Jim had warned that this man threw bottles after invited guests who outstayed their welcome. She glared at the woman who was capable of lying there listening to their exchange without offering sisterly support. “Don’t worry, I’m going.”