A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  The thought wasn’t left to brew for long. “It’s best if we come to you.” Fewer neighbours and prying eyes. “But it’ll have to be after I’ve finished work.”

  “Jim, do you mind if I have a private word with your mother?” Cowley asked.

  He was relieved to be able to escape to his room and close the door. Taking out his sketch book, he flicked through to the entries Aimee had made, the place where she had signed her name. He compared her carefully joined-up writing - its round letters and curly tails - with his own miniscule scrawl. However confidently the policewoman spoke about how big a help he could be tracking Aimee down, Jim knew she was gone, and this was all she’d left him: these few words; some of them written only a week earlier.

  Jean brought the policewoman another mug of tea and perched warily on the far end of the sofa, knees glued together.

  “So,” Cowley raised her hand to decline the offer of sugar, “What do you do work-wise?”

  “Just a bit of cleaning.” Jean held her mug in both hands, trying to steady them. She longed for a cigarette. Her eyes strayed to a copy of Women’s Weekly on the coffee table. “You know.”

  “And who looks after Jim while you’re out?”

  “That would be his father. Until a few weeks ago.” Jean glanced up at the sound of the upstairs neighbours thundering overhead. “You have him at your disposal at the moment.” Try as she might, she couldn’t keep the note of blame from her voice.

  It was then that Jim remembered the white feather stowed away in the pocket of his rucksack, the only part of the owl that remained. Extracting it, his fingers became a loom as he wove it backwards and forwards, smoothing the barbs then ruffling them again.

  He thought of Aimee pushing her tongue into the gap in her teeth as she drew in her notebook.

  He thought about her silhouette against her bedroom window. Pressed against the glass with her hands raised. No longer waving, but an animal in captivity.

  He thought about her staring at the tracks. Just staring.

  He closed his eyes as he remembered the violence of the vacuum of air.

  “I’m sorry,” she had said. Well, sorry wasn’t good enough!

  “I see,” Cowley nodded, no surprise in her voice. “Is there no one else?”

  The corners of Jean’s mouth twitched. “My father passed on over a year ago.” Was it really only a year? It felt like an eternity.

  “Sorry to hear that. No aunts or uncles?”

  “I was an only child. I dare say there might have been more, but my mother died when I was three.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  “It wasn’t actually. It worked just fine, me and my dad. That’s all I can remember.”

  Jim felt the heat of his fury rise from his stomach to his head. Aimee had pummelled him with her fists after he hadn’t shown up for three days. She had clawed at his clothes. “I thought that something bad had happened to you,” she’d said.

  “What about me? Did you think about that?” he said out loud, his face crumbling.

  “I can’t work you out.”

  “Does it matter?”

  It mattered. Of course it bloody well mattered!

  “Is Jim an only child?”

  “His brother’s long gone. Listen -” Jean leaned towards the policewoman “- Jim’s as good as gold. I’ve never had an ounce of trouble from him.”

  “At the moment, Mrs Stevens, it’s you we’re concerned about.”

  “Me?” Jean’s laughter signified disbelief.

  Cowley nodded, deadly serious.

  She sat back, one hand on the rise of her chest. What had she ever done but try to set a good example? “If I don’t work we don’t eat, simple as that...”

  “You’d be entitled to benefits…”

  “No!” Jean barked, then she softened. “Look, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m expecting you to know too much. My husband went wrong a long time ago. It broke my heart when my older boy -” She struggled to control her voice. “There’s only Jim now. I have to show him there’s another way. He’s all I’ve got.”

  “I understand.” Jean felt Cowley’s hand on her arm.

  “I’m doing the very best that I can.”

  “I know you are.”

  She appealed to the policewoman through blurred eyes. “Then why is it never good enough?”

  Jim’s head cleared. It was as if a familiar song had been playing in the wrong key. He realised he had interrupted Aimee a second time, and the weight of this knowledge - the absence of doubt - made something inside him sever. Looking down, he found that he had snapped the vane of the owl’s feather. Jim hurled his notebook, with his sketches of Aimee in it, across his bedroom.

  Cowley’s tone altered and she asked softly, “Is there anyone who can be with Jim while you’re at work?”

  “He’ll be back at school next week. I’m just glad he’s got his birds. They’re what he lives for.”

  Jim turned and kicked the door. Not satisfied, he punched it, yelled in protest at the pain, checked that all of his fingers were still operational and went at it again.

  Jean frowned at the ceiling, then realised that the pounding was coming from the other side of her own hallway. “Is that…?” She put one hand on the arm of the sofa as if to push herself up. “Jim!”

  “It might do him good to let off steam.” The woman’s eyes were knowing. They both stood. “Does he have many other friends?”

  “Not that I know of.” Jean hung her head. What mother wants to admit that? “There’s some lads he plays football with, but he never brings anyone home.” It was fairly obvious that Aimee invited herself - and he wasn’t at all pleased about it. Jean followed the policewoman out into the narrow hall with its woodchip wallpaper. The lad from number 29 loped past, trainers scraping concrete, eying Jean accusingly at the sight of navy uniform.

  “What about his brother?”

  The four fifteen rumbled past. Jean gripped the wood of the door. “We don’t see Nick.”

  “That’s a shame. It might be just what Jim needs.”

  “I know you mean well, but you don’t know us. To be honest, I thought you were here to talk about his brother. It wouldn’t be the first time.” Jean reflected that, if anything happened to Aimee, Jim would blame Nick. “Do you really think Aimee has just run off?”

  “I don’t think of it as just. We can only hope we find her before she lands herself in trouble.”

  Humbled, Jean blinked. “Of course.” Sixteen. And she’d sent him out to fend for himself.

  Jim heard his mother’s voice on the other side of the door. “Feeling better now?”

  “No!” He nursed his knuckles back into shape for another onslaught.

  “Then I’ll sit here and wait until you do.”

  CHAPTER 40: AYISHA - AUGUST 2010 ST HELIER HOSPITAL

  “You haven’t seen Shamayal?” Ayisha asked Jim, incredulous.

  “I thought he was at yours.” The impatience in his voice barely disguised, he clawed both sides of his face as if trying to rid himself of the growth.

  “I told you: I’ve been at my parents’.” There was no concern for the fact that she had gone AWOL for almost a week, but the boy… then she checked herself, acknowledging the jittery feeling in her stomach: where could he be?

  Ayisha thought of all the time she’d wasted. She hadn’t worried when she arrived home to find the envelope still on the table in the hall, where she’d left it. After five days of being cooped up in a mock-Tudor semi and being dragged around National Trust properties (members, her parents liked to get their money’s worth), her priority had been exercise. Because it was such a beautiful day, she had decided to walk to the hospital via the farmers’ market. For her last few days’ freedom, she chose uncomplicated clothes: a long sleeved t-shirt the colour of the spring sky when it is the backdrop to cherry blossom, a white ankle-length skirt, oversized sunglasses. She had dipped in and out of the shade of striped awnings, the soles of her Fitflops gently
slapping the soles of her feet, enticed by punnets of yellow-skinned cherries. Apricots and plum tomatoes still on the vine were also rustled into brown-paper bags by a man with a pencil behind his ear, the corners delightfully twisted; a ten-pound note parted with, loose change tipped into her palm. After sampling a plump queen variety of olive, with oil dribbling down her chin, Ayisha had felt obliged to purchase a small tub. Fresh bread, too, made its way into her hessian bag, ridiculously priced for what she reflected was only a mixed grain loaf.

  “He’s left it two days between visits before - on the days he knew you were coming - but never longer than that.”

  Ayisha’s anger, both with herself and with Jim, spilled into the question, “Why on earth didn’t you call me?”

  “This is my first day back on the ward.”

  “What do you mean?” she found herself snapping. His explanation had better be good.

  “I had what was described as a bit of setback.”

  Looking at him properly for the first time that day, Ayisha was forced to admit to herself that Jim looked awful, his eyes hollowed out, his skin puffy. She was almost nervous to ask. “What kind of setback?”

  “I’ve been back in H.D.U. They’ve been pumping me full of someone else’s blood and yet more antibiotics.”

  “For what?”

  “Septicaemia.”

  Her breath made an Ah! sound in protest: hardly just a setback. Seeing him struggle to find a comfortable position - “Here, let me” - she stalled for time, fluffing his pillows, holding the corners, shaking, then patting them into place. “Well, I’m here now. First thing’s first, I’ll go and check at your flat.” Her priority was finding Shamayal - before someone else did.

  “He won’t be there.”

  “Then his flat.” Feeling it was her job to reassure Jim, Ayisha risked a laugh. “If half of what that boy spouts on about is true, he’s probably seeing a girl!”

  She felt her arm being gripped, the skin twisted. “There is no girlfriend. There are no friends.”

  “Don’t you be so sure!” She sat back down and lowered her voice. “He’s a fourteen-year-old boy. Do you think he tells us everything?”

  Jim smiled wryly. “What teenager with mates - let alone a girlfriend - chooses to spend time with his his-tor-y” - Ayisha noted how Jim had reverted to bored-student pronunciation - “teacher?”

  “You’re not such bad company.”

  “Huh.” Self-deprecating, he raised his eyebrows. “I take him bird-watching, for God’s sake!”

  “Still.” She hoped the wincing of the corners of her mouth wouldn’t betray her. “Five weeks is a long time in the life of a teenager.”

  “Is that how long I’ve been lying here?” With an expression more desolate than Ayisha could recall, Jim appeared to be in serious consultation with one corner of the ceiling.

  She was keen to be on her way but, although his grasp had loosened, Jim’s hand still circled her wrist. Had he forgotten it was there, she asked herself, or was he just distracted?

  “There’s something I ought to tell you.” He blinked, his eyes looking down at the bedclothes, as if they might hold the answer. Ayisha didn’t like the sound of this. She must have looked hesitant. “Something I need to tell you,” he said with emphasis. “You see, I’ve not been completely honest with you.”

  He had been holding back on her! About to demand answers, she saw that he was in torment. She relented and prepared to listen. Anything that might help her track the boy down. “Alright.”

  He was slow to begin, so slow that she became concerned he was about to reveal something awful; something that would have her questioning her own judgement. “There was a time I was so caught up in problems of my own, I didn’t notice someone close to me was in serious trouble. She -” There was such sorrow distilled in the voice that now faltered. “Well, the truth is, no one knows what really happened to her.”

  So, this wasn’t about Shamayal. But what else could be so important that he must tell her now? Looking at the hand, Ayisha saw dark hairs standing out against the pale skin between the second joints and the knuckles. It showed no sign of letting go. “Do you want to talk about it?” Ayisha ventured, reluctant but curious.

  “Out loud?” Jim laughed.

  Lowering her head, Ayisha’s hair fell forwards. She was deeply unsettled by her wildly see-sawing emotions. A decision of whether to place her hand on top of another person’s hadn’t seemed so monumentally life-altering since she was twelve years old. But, before she could move, Jim’s hand was withdrawn, leaving her feeling deflated.

  “That’s better.” He was tucking her hair behind her ear, a gesture so startling in its intimacy that she could barely breathe. “Now I can see you properly.”

  Now! she commanded her hand, but it seemed to be super-glued to the bed sheet.

  “It was the summer holidays of the year I turned twelve.” He picked the disobedient hand up in both of his as if examining it. Do you mind? his expression seemed to ask.

  She listened, absorbed: so this is who you are.

  This is why you teach.

  Why I find you perched on the corner of desks talking to pupils.

  The hospital, together with all of its smells and noises - the senile shouts, the arrival of the tea trolley, the constant to-ing and fro-ing of feet, the irregular thop, thop from the tennis courts next door - faded. There was nothing but the rise and fall of his voice, the movement of his mouth, the occasional intrusion of the hand that scratched at its corner.

  Ayisha decided she liked the beard.

  And this is why you have a picture of a white owl - a barn owl, you say - in your living room.

  Why you hate the holidays.

  As he closed his eyes, as he spoke about the press conferences he had memorised word for word, she felt her skin shrinking. “Aimee, if you’re listening, please know how much we miss you. You’re in our thoughts and prayers every minute of every day. There’s nothing we can’t work out between us. Come home. Whenever you’re ready, come home.”

  Jim had been here before! Even before the news of Christian’s death was broadcast, he thought he knew how it would end. But now his story was at an end. Had she missed something?

  “So they just gave up looking? Aimee was never found?”

  “I would have liked someone to prove me wrong, but no.” He shook his head, berating himself.

  No body meant there was hope. Not much, but hope all the same. Ayisha imagined a girl. A young girl; alone, on the streets. She had seen plastered-haired girls like this, under railway arches, on pedestrian bridges, holding out take-away coffee containers, asking, “Got any spare change?” And she had clutched her expensive handbag tighter as she walked past.

  “You can’t possibly blame yourself!” she said but, as Jim hung his head, she realised: he had spent his adult life trying to compensate for whatever wrong he thought he had committed as a boy. “You were twelve!” she said, incredulous, her eyes falling on his notebook, lying on the table, a pencil employed as a bookmark. She picked it up, opened it. “Have you spent all these years telling yourself that bird-watching should have made you an expert on people?”

  His eyes flitted to hers, blue, questioning. Ayisha doubted that anything she could say would undo the damage.

  “I tried to provide Shamayal with a distraction, but what if it’s knowing me that’s the problem? If they’ve been watching him - who am I kidding? They’ll have seen him coming to visit me. They can’t get to me but -”

  A smiling nurse wheeling a trolley of goodies arrived at the foot of the bed. “Any painkillers for you, Jim?”

  As their exchange passed, Ayisha had time to reflect. If they had been watching Shamayal, they would know where she lived; know she lived alone. An uncomfortable thought. One that would make her nervous if she dwelt on it. If not for herself, they might use her as a means to get to the boy. Ayisha waited until the nurse had passed on before picking up where Jim had left off: “You’ve been t
alking to the police.”

  “Anyone watching might assume that Shamayal’s been feeding me information. He threatened to disappear himself once before and I didn’t ask him what he meant because I thought I knew.”

  “We’ll find him,” Ayisha tried to assure Jim, squeezing his hand.

  “You sound far more confident than I feel.”

  “It’s something he said to me. He as good as told me we were both survivors.”

  All of a sudden, they became aware of something taking place in the corridor outside, close to the nurse’s station; a re-grouping of resources. It was extraordinary in that voices were lowered.

  The man from the bed opposite, who had decamped to his visitor’s chair to read a newspaper also sensed it. “Why’s it all gone quiet?” He sat forwards in his seat. “I can’t see a sodding thing from here. Someone must have died.”

  “Who’s died?” an unseen voice piped up from behind a curtain.

  “I thought it might be you, Stan! You’ve been very quiet.”

  “It was a close call after last night’s Chicken Kiev. Good God!”

  It amazed Ayisha, the patients’ capacity for complaining about hospital food. The man opposite addressed her as if he was suggesting she should stick around for a scheduled entertainment: “They’ll be in to hose the walls down in a minute. You wait.”

  Sophia padded into the ward, detecting the sudden change in atmosphere. “What are you boys up to? Honestly! Soon as my back’s turned, you’re plottin’ something!”

  “We thought you might tell us.”

  “What you talkin’ ‘bout?” she said dismissively, approaching the corner bed. “Now if you’ll ‘scuse me, I need a quiet word with Jim here.” As she trailed the curtain behind her, the colour and quality of the light became a tent-like glow.

  Ayisha made as if to stand. “I’ll wait outside -”

  “Stay.” Jim squeezed her hand urgently.

  Eyes sweeping across their conjoined hands, Sophia lifted her eyebrows and sighed that she had expected as much all along. “Security have removed a man from reception. Thought he was causin’ a disturbance, but it turned out he was having a panic attack! A man from Dial-a-Ride has brought him back in. Furious he is - says he’s here to see you.”