A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  One glance in the dappled mirror at his half-closed eye - oh man! - had persuaded him to save that particular pleasure for later. His skin tone did a fair job of masking bruises, so he commenced a fingertip exploration. Shamayal already knew his chest hurt when he breathed in, when he breathed out, when he coughed and twisted - fact, whenever he moved, full stop. Now he applied pressure to individual ribs, arriving at the conclusion that three were busted, at least.

  “A & E won’t do nuffin for you,” he was telling them when Bins shuffled in and, facing the toilet bowl, started fumbling with the knot of his string belt. “Do me a favour!” Forgetting it was going to hurt, Shamayal sat up and used both hands to cover himself. He cried out in pain.

  Bins twisted his oblivious head. “Go ahead. Just help yourself. I’m a little teapot short and stout. Here’s my handle, here’s my spout -”

  No way, man.

  “- When I get all steamed up hear me shout, tip me up and pour me out.” Bins angled his chin upwards and released a stream of piss. “Aaahhh.”

  “Are you for real?” Shamayal asked after the wave of agony had subsided and the flush had reduced to a gurgle.

  “What?” The old man looked about him, confused. “What?”

  “The singin’ and all that!”

  Bins blinked. “That’s the Toilet Song. I can’t go without it.”

  Shamayal could only stare. “I guess you don’t have too many visitors.”

  “Kitty used to come on Mondays and Thursdays, but I think I must have upset her.” Bins scrunched up his face.

  Pushing his heels out and shelving his arms on the sides of the bath, Shamayal carefully slipped back into the water - OK, OK, OK - the bath groaning in sympathy. “She was your home help, right?”

  “I don’t know about help! She moved things. I had to put them all back where they belonged after she’d gone.” Unexpectedly, Bins crouched down and dangled his hands in the bathwater, as if it was a perfectly natural thing to do. As Shamayal was fighting to control his eyebrows, the old man pointed, apparently delighted. “Yours floats too! I thought only mine did that.”

  The boy thought he might actually have squeaked. Crafty old devil noticed things just fine. Must have chosen not to ask how his face got so mashed up.

  Bins shot up. “Where are my manners? We’ve got special visitors’ towels.” He shuffled out into the chaos of the hall, with its plastic-bag-and-string skyscrapers towering against a sky of geometric wallpaper. “Now, where are you?”

  Moments later he was back, carrying a carefully folded pair as if presenting a cushion to a king: they were lilac and scented like old ladies. Shamayal wondered what drawer they’d been stowed away in that they had avoided contamination. Bins appeared to examine the various options before deciding on a patch of lino. He strained, sweeping at the flooring with one hand, before positioning his precious cargo and squaring the corners. “Special visitors’ towels,” he announced, stomach out, hands in the small of his back.

  The end of the finger Shamayal pointed was rippled with map-like contours. “I bet those belonged to your mamma, am I right?”

  A response was nodded. “My dear old mum.”

  “I’ll take good care of them.”

  Bins showed no sign of allowing Shamayal a little privacy. “You can get dry, then we can continue playing the game,” he enthused.

  “The game? Right, right: the game.” Shamayal braced himself, scooped water into his cupped hands and, dipping his face, winced. “Thing is, I need somewhere more or less permanent to hide, if you know what I mean.” His thoughts turned to his mamma. How they decided on a place by closing their eyes and sticking a pin in the road map: the Middle of Nowhere. Same sort of place Christian would have gone if he’d had any sense. “Yeah, I need to find me somewhere… somewhere safe.”

  Bins perched on the toilet seat. A slow furrowed nod suggested he was dissecting words to fathom some sort of meaning. His heavily grooved tongue conducted a sortie, taking in the full circumference of his mouth.

  “Basically, I got to make me disappear.”

  Bins appeared to have grasped the situation. His tongue reversed its direction, then he pointed: “I know, I know! Invisible Man. David McCallum plays the scientist, Daniel Westin. The reels go round, the red light comes on, then he disappears!”

  “Right, right.” Shamayal felt as if he had entered some kind of a parallel universe.

  “But it goes wrong. The machine malfunctions and boom! Then the reversal serum won’t work.”

  “He stays invisible?”

  “Stuck,” Bins agreed.

  This was hopeless. “Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for, basically.”

  “I’ve got just the thing!”

  Shamayal raised his eyebrows. “I’d better have me some of that.”

  “If I can remember where I put it...”

  While Bins was searching for his vial of magic serum, Shamayal took the opportunity to haul himself dripping from the bath. That way he could swear away at leisure without upsetting the old guy. The lino felt gritty underfoot. Fleetingly, a shadowy puffed face passed in front of the mirror. He ignored it. A memory: his mamma crouched down, waiting to lasso him with a big towel, hugging him to her so that she could rub his back dry. One of the towels, he made into a lilac sarong; the other, he draped around his shoulders. The towelling, however soft and scented, weighed heavy. As he patted his tender skin - gently, gently - he remembered his mamma teaching him the twist so that he could dry his own back. He wanted to see her smile at him that way again. He wanted it so bad it pained him almost more than his ribs.

  The sound of boxes being cast aside, a scraping and banging of cupboard doors reached him. “Ah-ha!”

  He shook his head. It was his mamma he was speaking to when he said, “This, I can’t wait to see! Bins will have me dressed up in a sheet with likkle eye holes, and I got to look impressed. But first…” Shamayal steeled himself for what he knew would appear in the mirror. Putting one hand on the edge of the sink, he leaned closer. “OK, OK.” He parted the lids of his swollen eye carefully. Where the white should have been, there was only red. At least he could see. “So, you haven’t given up on me. Jesus!” Shamayal almost leaped out of his skin.

  Over his left shoulder was a frog-man, dressed head to toe in shiny green. On his head, a peaked balaclava, Bins was trussed into a jacket, trousers, a bib and braces and thigh-length galoshes. He flapped his arms. “Da-da!”

  Shamayal recovered his breathing first, but his heart was still pounding. “You know, you’re not ‘zactly what I call invisible.”

  “No, no, no!” The old man raised one hand as if he had earache. “That’s not how it works.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Bins insisted. “I put my fishing gear on and, from then on, everybody ignores me.”

  “I see, I see.”

  “You try!” The old man began to peel the jacket off.

  “Now?” Shamayal saw that Bins was shrugging off the sleeves.

  “Well.” Freed, Bins looked him up and down. “Your clothes are all ruined, and you can’t go out looking like that!”

  “Don’t mock me, man.” The boy looked down at his lilac sarong. “I thought I look like Tutankhamen.”

  After more enthusiastic shedding, Bins was naked. His little loose-skinned pot-belly stood proud. His old-man willy hung innocently. Wearing only the balaclava, Bins borrowed Shamayal’s shoulder for balance - the boy winced in disbelief as arrows shot through his ribs - splashing as he stepped into the tepid bathwater. “Waste not, want not.”

  Shamayal grabbed the top of the balaclava and pulled.

  “Oh, oh, oh!” cried Bins, ears catching, hands jumping to protect his steamed-up glasses.

  “Sorry. I’ll go gently.”

  “Gently!”

  The boy rolled the edge of the material up and then pulled it down over his own face. The reflected beak turned from side to side in the mirror. Only his eyes were on display, the
fully-open white one and the mainly-closed red one. Hardly invisible - but not so different from half a dozen other boys.

  “See!” Bins approved, his hands making whirlpools and splashing water liberally between his legs. “Next, we’re going to disappear you.”

  Mirror images, Shamayal and Bins sat, backs against the wall, knees raised, hands on knees.

  “Who’s coming to find us?” Bins asked.

  In the darkness of the boiler room, they were invisible even to each other. Shamayal wondered if he was imagining things, or if the old man’s voice wasn’t slightly different.

  “Dunno,” he answered truthfully.

  “I like to know people’s names. It’s important when you’re no good with faces.”

  Every time Shamayal moved, he rustled. Each rustle reminded him that something was about to hurt. “Are you sayin’ you’re one of those people who can’t tell black people apart?”

  “No, I’m one of those people who can’t tell anyone apart.”

  “Not anyone?”

  “With a bit of luck I might recognise the shape of their hair, or the sound of their voice maybe.”

  “Shit! So, how d’you know it’s me?”

  “Your hat.”

  This news was slow to sink in. “And if I wasn’t wearing it?”

  “Not so much. Perhaps not at all. These people: are they bad?”

  “‘Pends whose side you’re on. They’re frightened people. Basically, they’re tryin’ to protect someone. One of their own.”

  Bins snorted. “Like me.”

  Shamayal could feel trickles of sweat running down his body inside the waterproofs. “You’re never frightened!”

  “I am. A bit.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” The air was moist and muggy, like the air inside the palm house his mamma took him to at Kew. She said dinosaurs lived somewhere like that. He accused her of getting him there under false pretences after he found out from a poster on the station platform that they lived at the Natural History Museum. He sulked all the way to the ice-cream kiosk, even though secretly he was impressed by the Venus Fly Traps. “You the man with the plan.”

  “The people who are coming to find us.” It was ‘us’ now. For a moment Shamayal was relieved he wasn’t on his own, then he thought, No, it couldn’t be that way. The old man was a protected species. “They’re the people who hurt you, aren’t they?”

  So, he noticed more than he let on. “Yup.”

  “Why did they do that?”

  “Wanted to know if I can keep my maaf shut, didn’t they?”

  “Like a test?” Questions now sounded like logic.

  Shamayal rustled as his head turned blindly. “Yeah, yeah. That’s what it was. They was measurin’ my integrity.”

  The voice that said, “You’re in trouble,” was as normal as normal gets.

  “Shed loads. The people who came after me tol’ me they’ll hold me personally responsible.” As Shamayal began his story, he knew that the trickle running down his cheek was not the sweat from his forehead.

  “Maybe we should call the police -”

  Shamayal rustled. “All the police are interested in is findin’ the guys who knifed Jim Stevens and Christian Knoll. Ain’t no way they’re goin’ to show their faces. These are diff’rent guys.”

  “Then we’ve got to go and see Jim Stevens.”

  “He don’t know nuffin. Tell the truth, it’s best it stays that way.”

  “He’d want to know.”

  “I can’t go near him, not with them all peely-eyed.”

  “I can.” The voice was small, measured.

  “You? You’ve never bin off the estate in your whole life!”

  “I go to the Post Office once a week,” Bins protested.

  “Strictly speakin’, that still qualifies as the estate.”

  In the pause, there was breathing. Shamayal’s chest felt like that instrument his mamma used to call a squeeze box, the one that has to be pushed in and out.

  “I know a man from Dial-a-Ride. I think he owes me a favour or two.”

  “Man, you don’t need to wait ‘til he owes you a favour. That’s a free service.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Question is, are you sure ‘bout this?”

  Bins’s hand squeezed and then pressed down on Shamayal’s knee as his feet scraped the concrete in an effort to stand. He has no idea, he thought to himself. That way, it was easier to forgive the old guy. “You’ll be safe if I lock you in.” The retreating paces reversed. “No, I won’t do that. Just in case.”

  Shamayal didn’t need to ask why. If Bins didn’t come back, chances were he’d starve before anyone found him.

  “Go safe, yeah?”

  He saw the fluorescent yellow hands of a child’s watch arc towards him. Mickey Mouse: just like the one his mamma gave him; proper retro. In the days when he was scared of his own shadow, he was also scared of the dark. In fact, looking at it, this might even be his.

  “Take it. I always thought this might come in useful, so I keep it in my pocket.”

  “It’s your watch, man.”

  “You can give it back to me later.” Bins squeezed his hand around it. “But if the big hand gets to here,” he pointed, “You should think about making your own way.”

  They’d always said they’d be together again, him and his mamma. He had no idea how to get there, but the old man was waiting for an answer. “Yeah. Yeah. I could go to my mamma’s. That’s my best option anyhow. Fact, if you could help with that.”

  “Good idea.”

  Then, for what seemed like an eternity, Shamayal was very alone.

  CHAPTER 39: JIM - AUGUST 1992 - RALEGH GROVE, AT HOME

  Jim knew he would tell his story to the policewoman who understood a thing or two about owls. He was prepared to let her have the facts. Those that affected him. But there were huge gaps in what he knew about Aimee. The black eye, the footprint-shaped bruise - previously capable of being brushed aside - took on new significance in this restructuring of events. Jim had more and more questions but instead he was expected to provide answers. Where were the answers he wanted going to come from?

  And then there were the questions his mother would ask. Why had he lied to her? What else was he keeping from her? Could she still trust him? Because, if not, she had no idea how she could go to work, day in, day out. To Jim, it wasn’t a case of being able to trust him or not. It was all very well an adult telling you that you can ‘talk to them’ when there were so many things inside Jim’s head that couldn’t be put into words. Plus, he was at an age where he felt entitled to a few secrets. It wasn’t as if he expected his mother to give him a running commentary on her thoughts.

  He hadn’t told her where he went everyday because it was trespassing and she would have had to say she didn’t approve. That was her job, even if she would have said, “Leave him alone: he’s not doing any harm,” of any other lad he knew.

  He didn’t tell her about meeting Aimee because he’d had no idea they were going to be friends. She just turned up. It wasn’t as if they had made arrangements - not at first. And if he’d said that he had met a girl, Mum wouldn’t have been able to help herself. It would have been, “Where did you meet her?” “What’s her name?” And that’s before his mother moved on to the embarrassing stuff. “Is she pretty?” “Why don’t you bring her home for tea?”

  Plus, parents have this habit of clinging onto throwaway comments. Mention he liked something and it would be brought up a couple of years later under the most humiliating circumstances. Like the time she’d bought him a present a couple of years ago, and was beside herself, hands clasped underneath her chin, fit to burst, while he unwrapped it.

  “I had to search everywhere.”

  And when he didn’t react with quite the level of enthusiasm she expected, her expression melted away to disappointment. Controlling the urge to say, “Yes, I really wanted models of the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles when I was eight,
but now I’m ten!” he managed, “I can’t believe you remembered.” Because at least she had remembered, and maybe she’d been saving up all that time.

  Girls, well, they were another matter. He didn’t speak the language and the natives were hostile. He hadn’t had any sisters or cousins. Nothing to explain why, when he hadn’t found Aimee particularly attractive, it made him hot under the collar if her hand strayed too close; why he backed off when her hair brushed against his cheek; why he’d wanted to protect her from Nick and his junkie friends; why he’d been jealous when Andy Naylor looked at her that way in the park; why he got an erection when she blew in his ear, or teased him with a blade of grass. How he had been so aware of the rise and fall of her chest; the contrast between her long, lazy limbs and her busy hands with their chipped nail varnish; the intensity of her cat’s eyes; the way her finger pulled her lips apart as she applied gloss - far too often, in his opinion. Even the sight of her tongue pushed into the gap in her front teeth.

  To an adult, the question, “What’s your relationship with Aimee?” might have seemed easy, something to get him nice and relaxed. To Jim, it was quicksand. He wanted to pass, but he knew it was the one question the policewoman would keep returning to: “Your final score is fourteen. You passed on two questions. The green woodpecker is found in all parts of the UK except Northern Scotland and Ireland -”

  “Of course!”

  “- and Aimee White is your friend.”

  Why was it so difficult to say? If Aimee had been a boy, he would have called her a mate and nobody would have blinked. It wasn’t just the relationship: it was the tense that was proving difficult. Already, he was thinking of her in his past. Another person who’d left.

  “In your own time,” Cowley smiled.

  A train rumbled past. Jim felt its vibrations enter his body through the soles of his feet.

  “Can’t you see he’s upset?” his mother replied for him.

  That was it: he was upset. Tomorrow he would be able to find the right words. He breathed for what seemed like the first time in minutes.

  “Let’s leave it for today,” Cowley said. “Would you be able to come down to the station tomorrow? Or I can come here if it’s easier -”