A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  “High five!”

  But the boy rested his chin on a shoulder. “Man, this sucks! I was only just gettin’ to know you, you know?” Too late for reservations, he laughed despite himself. “You sure you don’t wanna come with me? My mamma won’t mind. I never had no granddaddy.”

  “Aw.” Bins extracted himself. The torch back in his mouth, he raised his hand, insistent on the high five. Fighting the pain, Shamayal went through the whole made-up handshake routine. The old guy had earned it.

  Nick tucked his head inside the door. “All clear. It’s time to go.”

  Shamayal rearranged his nose. “Keep an eye on my dad for me. You don’t have to talk to him or nuffink.”

  The dark outside wasn’t as dark as the dark inside the boiler room.

  “Sun’ll be up soon,” Nick said as Shamayal took one last sideways glance at the silhouettes of the Lego-brick towers, all of those people piled on top of each other. Somewhere, music was playing, the boom-boom of a drum. Lady Gaga had gone and left her head on the dance floor again.

  Bins was right behind him. “Don’t stand for any crap.”

  The boy sat carefully - “You’re family, man!” - then twisted his legs so that he was in the back of the van. Nick put his toolbox inside, whistling. “Lock me in, yeah?”

  The door was slammed - the force hitting him like a slap - but he heard the jangle of keys. Muted conversation, just an old man passing the time of day with a locksmith. The cold floor below Shamayal’s knees was ridged. There were no windows to let the light in - more importantly, no windows to let prying eyes in. He groped around and located his kitbag, felt for the zip, identified a hoodie by touch and shape. Raising his arms over his head to put it on sent pain ripping through his torso. “I fought I told you guys to mend!” he scolded his ribs, but the fleecy lining soothed his skin. A nest of blankets, a pillow of clothes, he lay down and curled himself up with his T-Rex arms folded over his sore ribs. His head jolted. Only a speed bump. Still, this wasn’t going to be no comfortable ride. Corners sent the toolbox sliding. Shamayal rotated by moving his feet until he thought his head was safely out of the way. He would only relax when he arrived at the service station. To calm himself, he imagined being in his father’s minicab, driving through night-time streets. Open his good eye and he would see the domes of the big Tesco not doing a very good imitation of Brighton Pavilion. Next stop, Heathrow. Then the corners stopped. The stop-start ceased: open road. He was on his way. For better or for worse.

  CHAPTER 47: AYISHA - AUGUST 2010 - MOTORWAY SERVICE STATION

  Seated by the window, Ayisha nursed a cup of coffee, keeping one eye on the service station car park and the other on the sliding doors. She had been surprised by how many people were up and about at this time of the morning, how she had been unable to escape the statutory RAC salesman, how frequently she’d needed to defend the chairs slotted under her three-person table. Tired-looking businessmen stared at sports pages while devouring full English breakfasts en route to appointments. Their female colleagues rotated compact mirrors to check their make-up, portion by portion: smoothing eyebrows; widening eyes. Quick-marching mothers hauled toddlers in the direction of the toilets, scolding, “If you’d have gone before we set off...” Toes just touching, a young couple sat exchanging shy smiles. Ayisha felt envy: Oh, for something so uncomplicated.

  Items were snatched up from the tabletop adjacent to hers and a none-too-clean looking dish cloth swiped briefly. She hooked her knees to the side so that the floor could be mopped.

  As she was tearing off a morsel of blueberry muffin, she heard a familiar voice, “Yo, Miss!”

  Swivelling round, she wondered how she could have missed Shamayal’s arrival, then her smile froze. “My God, your face!” The words were out before she could help herself. The boy winced away from her.

  “I’m Nick,” the man accompanying him said, extending one hand.

  “Ayisha,” she responded automatically. There was an awkward moment’s silence. “Breakfast!” Picking up her bag, she slung its strap over one shoulder. “Who’s having what? My shout.”

  She was glad for the queue at the counter; time to gather her thoughts - what she must and must not say - while sandwiches were toasted and pastries crushed by stainless steel tongs; as she inserted her card into the machine to pay, side-stepped other customers with a tray held high, identified sandwich fillings and sidled back into position.

  “So, you work with my brother?” Nick asked.

  “That’s right.” Her hands sought refuge on the side of her second cup of coffee. In dire need of a caffeine hit, her eyes felt tight and heavy, her skin pinched.

  Nick wrapped his B-L-T panini in a paper serviette and picked it up with both hands. “Is he any good?”

  “I’ve never seen him in action. What’s your verdict, Shamayal?”

  “He shows you stuff. He don’t just say, ‘Open a book and read,’ like most teachers.”

  As stinted attempts at polite conversation continued, Ayisha studied Nick. So unlike his brother and yet the odd mannerism, the odd facial expression, suggested shared DNA. She felt more comfortable looking at him than trying to ignore the swelling on Shamayal’s face. This was the man Jim might have become, had he not met Aimee White in the summer of his twelfth year.

  As if reading her thoughts, Nick extracted a small square photograph from his wallet. “The four of us.” Flat-palmed, he pushed it across the table towards her. “There aren’t many pictures of us as a family. In fact, this might be the only one. There was usually someone missing.”

  Your father, no doubt, Ayisha thought.

  He deferred to Shamayal. “It wasn’t like today when everyone has cameras on their phones and snaps away all the time.”

  Ayisha couldn’t help but feel touched. This man who didn’t see his family carried a photograph of them in his wallet. The father, handsome and with sideburns, had one hand on each of his sons’ shoulders. The mother’s head was turned to kiss her husband’s cheek. “Has Jim seen this?” She smoothed a crease out of one corner of the white frame.

  “I doubt he remembers it.”

  Ayisha suspected the sight of his father posing as the family man might anger Jim. But the boys were jostling with each other, sharing a joke, and the mother appeared to be happy - not as Ayisha had imagined her, but somehow beautiful.

  “Let’s have a look!” Acknowledging that Shamayal was in no fit state to gallop his chair round the table, she handed him the photograph. “Man, who’s that short arse? No way that’s Jim.”

  Nick nodded: “Weedy little sod.”

  “For real? He’s, like, six foot three.”

  “That’s how I remember my brother. It was a shock seeing him lying in hospital, I can tell you.”

  It seemed strange that Nick expressed his shock in terms of his brother’s height. Ayisha held her breath, expecting that at any moment one of them would ask By the way, how is he?

  “He’d tower above me now. I stopped growing at sixteen. I hope you don’t smoke, Shamayal.”

  At least this was a conversation she could contribute to. “That was the age you left home at, wasn’t it?” Suddenly Ayisha worried that she had asked something terribly personal, but Nick didn’t seem to take offence.

  “Sixteen.” He shook his head. “God, I was a mess! You name it, I was doing it. I’m not proud of myself. It took me years to get my act together.” He addressed Shamayal. “The old man back there?”

  “Bins?” Shamayal asked, a burger suspended halfway to his mouth.

  “He put me up while I got myself clean.”

  “No kiddin’? Man, p’rhaps he is some kind of guardian angel!”

  “He certainly was mine. Anyway,” he checked his watch nervously. “I should get going. I’m on call. Thanks for breakfast, Ayisha. You tell that brother of mine… tell that brother of mine…” Faltering, he studied the photograph again before slotting it back into place. “Tell him Mum did the right thing. He’ll know what I
mean.”

  Knowing what he meant, Ayisha wondered what effort it took him to say this. “I’ll tell him.”

  “Good luck, mate.” He squeezed rather than shook the boy’s hand. “Hope it all works out.”

  “You too, man.”Ayisha observed that the boy looked sheepish. “Hey, thanks. I’m sorry ‘bout what I said before. I never been kidnapped before -”

  “Smuggled.”

  “Right, right. You did a good job. If you ever need a reference…”

  Ayisha observed Shamayal watching Nick leave. He lifted one hand gingerly as Nick saluted from the door. She had time for a good inspection of his swollen eye, the red that should have been white, before the boy turned back to her. “He din’t seem as bad as I thought. You think people can change?”

  She tried to disguise her spark of anger. “We all make mistakes.”

  “What you goin’ to tell Jim?”

  There was a moment - just a moment - when she thought that Shamayal deserved the truth. The boy had put himself in danger, not only in running to Jim’s rescue but in continuing their relationship, knowing all that time what it might lead to. He had taken more risks than Ayisha - and possibly even Jim - had. It had only ever been her job that was on the line, but this loyalty, this friendship, was real. Just as the boy had said it was. “I’ll tell him about the photograph.” It would be nice if Nick had the chance to tell Jim the rest.

  Shamayal frowned. “Don’t go stickin’ your nose in, Miss.”

  “As always, that’s extremely good advice.”

  “The situation… as I see it, it’s complicated.”

  Yawning, Ayisha programmed the postcode Shamayal gave her into the satnav of her Mini. Caffeine wasn’t compensation for lack of sleep. She distrusted the wired feeling it gave her. “Don’t you think you should call your mother?”

  “I want to see the look on her face when she turns around and sees it’s me.”

  Looking at Shamayal’s swollen face, Ayisha couldn’t help flinching at the image this conjured up.

  “What? You don’t like surprises?”

  Leaning across the handbrake, she pulled down the sun visor and lifted the cover of the mirror in front of him.

  “Man, they mashed me up good and proper!” He pulled his beanie a shade lower and sunk back into the seat. It was as much as he was going to tell her. “Miss, you used to live somewhere else, din’t you? What was that like?”

  “It was very different.” She buckled up. “Small. Quiet.”

  “Why d’you leave?”

  “After I did my teacher training it felt - I don’t know - claustrophobic when I went back home. Too much pressure.” She refrained from saying that if he ever met her mother he would understand.

  An unnecessarily complicated series of white arrows led back to the slip road, by-passing the queues at the petrol pumps. Ayisha waited for an articulated lorry to pass and then accelerated into the flow of the motorway.

  “Get me, runnin’ away.”

  “We’re nearly halfway. You’re not running anymore: you’re moving towards your new home.” Gripping the steering wheel, Ayisha risked taking her eyes off the road for a second, looked in the mirror and saw doubt she hadn’t anticipated.

  “Miss, does the smell of cut grass really stop you breathin’?”

  “Where did you hear that?” She laughed.

  He shrugged defensively. “Only askin’.”

  “It’s the smell of silage you want to worry about!” She pressed a button and Shamayal’s window slid down, allowing the sickly-sweet smell into the car.

  “Whoa! Are you for real?”

  She laughed at the sight of his appalled expression in the rear-view mirror; the window sliding back up.

  “You could have warned me, Miss!”

  Seeing how coughing pained him, she relented and pointed to the dashboard. “Look in the glove box.”

  Shamayal leant forwards carefully and took out the carrier bag, its spare plastic doubled around the package. He weighed it in one hand and said, “I know what this is,” before looking inside. “Jim’s binoculars. And his book!”

  “He wanted you to have them.”

  “Man, he din’t hafta do that. They’re, like, his history.” The word was said with respect. “There’s a whole load of stories to go with these.”

  It was a sobering thought. Maybe, if Jim pulled through, it would be possible for him to let go of the more painful of them. It might even be possible for him to forgive the person who once took punches for him. History meant something in Jim’s world.

  “When I first went to his place, yeah? I picked them up and he was like, ‘Get your hands off my stuff.’” Shamayal slid the binoculars out of their case reverentially and hung them round his neck, even though the effort clearly pained him. “I don’t want him goin’ and thinkin’ I was just another person who left.”

  “He won’t.”

  From the corner of her eye, Ayisha saw Shamayal rearrange his nose. “You know, Bins will never recognise him now.”

  Bins, who had stood guard outside the hospital, refusing to leave until he heard that Jim’s condition was stable.

  “There was some reason - I never got to the bottom of it - but Jim stopped bird-watching for a few years.”

  Saying nothing, Ayisha thought she knew why.

  “That’s when he got fixated on his history books.”

  Aimee’s gift.

  “Then one day he saw Bins and the old man didn’t know who he was. Jim called out to say hello, but Bins blanked him like he was a stranger, you know? He had to tell him his name and everything. ‘Jim Stevens?’ he asked, like he was some distant memory or somethink. ‘You haven’t got your binoculars on. That’s like me not having my fishing rod.’ Those were their things, yeah? Jim had his binoculars, see, and Bins had his fishing rod. And Jim goes, ‘You’d still be you without your fishing rod.’ ‘Ah, but would I, Jim Stevens? Would I?’ Next day, Jim finds hisself talkin’ to a robin. That’s when he started up again.”

  Ayisha discovered she was smiling. “What do you think you wouldn’t be yourself without?”

  “Dunno. Might be handy not bein’ recognised, you know?”

  She indicated left. “This next junction’s ours.”

  “Thank Christ!” He sniffed. “No disrespect, Miss, but you’re not that great a driver.”

  “You ungrateful little -” She went to swat his knee and deliberately missed. Eyes on the road. “I got up at the crack of dawn for you!”

  “Hee-hee-hee. Let Jim do the drivin’. But keep this car. A Mini trumps a Corsa any day.”

  Before long, they were no longer driving on A-roads by the side of fields: they were driving on single-track roads that dissected fields, hedged with hawthorn and hazel. While Ayisha worried what she would do if she met a tractor coming in the opposite direction, Shamayal said excitedly, “Hey, you know what? This is actual hedgerow!”

  She had been trying to keep the wheels in between crenulated mud-tracks deposited by farm vehicles, but swerved to avoid roadkill. “I suppose it is.”

  “Proper owl country.” He had dropped the almost compulsory questions tagged onto the end of sentences. “I never seen one of those. Not yet. I’d like to tick one of them off of my list.”

  Be careful what you wish for, she thought. But his enthusiasm was contagious, and she began to enjoy herself. “From the state of the roads, it looks as if it’s badger country.”

  “Is that what they are?”

  “Were,” she said with emphasis.

  “True, true.” Shamayal turned his head for a better look at the entrails. “How far is it now?”

  “Only another five miles or so.” As she said it, Ayisha felt a dip of disappointment. Five more miles; perhaps ten minutes, and then…

  “This won’t be far from where I live. I could walk here if I wanted.”

  They approached a five-way junction with a painted road sign. Ayisha consulted the dashboard, backed up a few feet and turn
ed left alongside a river. There was a church with a spire, a pub, a primary school, a signpost pointing down an unmarked road that said Village Store. Ayisha wondered how Shamayal would cope here, but it wasn’t her choice to make. She was simply the chauffeur.

  She pulled over opposite the store, cranked on the handbrake, killed the engine. “How did you manage to hide it from your father that you stayed in touch with your mother all these years?”

  Grinning, he showed her a mobile phone, not a shiny slim-line model, but the kind of plastic-looking phone you might give a child. “No Ralegh Boy would be seen dead with this. I got your number in here too. Emergencies and all that. Hey! You’re going to like my mamma, cast-iron guarantee.”

  Now that they had arrived, and faced with the prospect of saying goodbye, Ayisha acknowledged that she didn’t feel predisposed towards the woman who had abandoned her ten-year-old son. “Let’s get your bag out of the boot.”

  Their hands collided as they both reached for the handle. Shamayal pulled back, cradling his torso. There was no way he would be capable of lifting. He grinned, a hint of his usual self. “You tryin’ to make a move on me, Miss? Go ahead. Might be your last chance.”

  “I’ll risk that.” Ayisha hoisted the bag over one shoulder and staggered. “This weighs a tonne!”

  “Careful. That’s everything I own.”

  “First thing you need to do is register for school, you hear me?”

  She followed Shamayal up the two steps to the shop. There were sweet jars in the window: proper old-fashioned jars filled with sherbet pips and aniseed twists and fruit salads, oversized lollies and boxes of toffees whose picture-postcard packaging had been bleached by the sun. A bell over the door jangled as they stepped inside. Ayisha put the bag down at the first opportunity. Behind the counter a short woman was rearranging tins of baked beans. She was wearing traditional African dress, as if her role was to provide novelty value. She turned to them, ready with her Can I help you? but before the words were out her face was transformed by a range of emotions. “Son?”

  Shamayal nodded to one of the sweet jars, his voice serious. “A quarter of chocolate limes, please.”