The Burying Beetle

by Ann Kelley

  Method:

  Cook vegetables in stock with tomatoes.

  Add rocket and coriander, curried fish, with sauce, and crabmeat.

  Serve with croutons – small slices of bread toasted in the oven – and freshly grated Parmesan or Gruyere cheese.

  Mum usually makes rouille, which is a fiery thick sauce, to put on top of the bread, but the curried fish was hot enough. I suddenly have an appetite for fishy things.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I FOUND THIS in WH Hudson’s The Land’s End:

  On yet another morning I was awakened before daylight, but this was a happy occasion, the boats having come in during the small hours laden with the biggest catch of the season. The noise of the birds made me get up and dress in a hurry to go and find out what it was all about. For an hour and a half I stood at the end of the little stone pier watching the cloud and whirlwind of vociferous birds, and should have remained longer but for a singular accident – a little gull tragedy – which brought a sudden end to the feast. The men in fifty boats while occupied in disengaging the fish from the nets were continually throwing the small useless fish away, and these, falling all round in the water, brought down a perpetual rush and rain of gulls from overhead; everywhere they were frantically struggling on the water, while every bird rising with a fish in his beak was instantly swooped down upon and chased by others. Now one of the excited birds while rushing down by chance struck a rope or spar and fell into the water at the side of a boat, about forty yards from where I was standing. It was a herring gull in mature plumage, and its wing was broken. The bird could not understand this; it made frantic efforts to rise, but the whole force exerted being in one wing merely caused it to spin rapidly round and round. These struggles eventually caused the shattered bone to break through the skin; the blood began to flow and redden the plumage on one side. This was again and again washed off in the succeeding struggle to rise, but every time a pause came the feathers were reddened afresh. At length the poor thing became convinced that it could no longer fly, that it could only swim, and at once ceasing to struggle it swam away from the boats and out towards the open bay. Hardly had it gone a dozen yards from the boat-side where it had fallen before some of the gulls flying near observed it for the first time, and dropping to within three or four yards of the surface hovered over it. Then a strange thing happened. Instantly, as if a shot had been fired to silence them, the uproar in the harbour ceased; the hundreds of gulls fighting on the water rose up simultaneously to join the cloud of birds above, and the whole concourse moved silently away in one direction, forming a dense crowd above the wounded bird. In this formation, suspended at a height of about thirty yards over and moving with him, they travelled slowly out into the middle of the bay.

  The silence and stillness in the harbour seemed strange after that tempest of noise and motion, for not a bird had remained behind, nor did one return for at least half an hour; then in small companies they began to straggle back to resume the interrupted feast.

  We are gathering samphire from the mudflats in the estuary, close to where the birders have a hide. Not the one we went to, another one. Mum says she and Daddy used to do it when they came here together years ago. Samphire is a fleshy plant, a succulent. You eat it cooked, dipped in hot butter, with lots of black pepper, like asparagus. We have our wellies on. It’s a muggy day. The mud is sticky and the samphire is looking brownish as it’s late in the season.

  ‘We should have come Sooner,’ Mum says.

  You snip off the little Christmas-tree-like plants at mud level with scissors. They are about the same height as forget-me-nots. It’s difficult to stop once you get into the swing of it, bending like Brent Geese to cut the fleshy stems – you mustn’t pull them up by the roots or there’ll be none next year. There’s a notice saying No Bait Digging. But no notice saying No Samphire Gathering.

  There are swans and gulls and lots of LBJ’s, (little brown jobs) feeding and grooming and resting in the shallows and on the mud. It’s a meeting place for so many different birds. There are good things for them to eat – Lelant lug and ragworm and goodness knows what else. I wish I had my binoculars.

  Next time.

  We take home two carrier bags full of samphire and have to scrub our smelly muddy wellies as soon as we get there. Then Mum starts to clean the samphire, running fresh cold water through it for ages until all the saltiness has gone, along with any green orange and white ribbon seaweed. Then she strains it in colanders and sticks some of it in the fridge to cook tomorrow.

  We have a hot buttery samphire feast tonight, pulling off the steamed flesh from the woody stalks with our teeth and mopping up the buttery peppery juices with thick granary bread. You throw away the stalk and its tiny branches. And tomorrow she’ll cook the rest and we’ll pickle it with pickling spice for Christmas. She’s excited about doing this. She used to pickle onions with Grandma and Wants the Continuity of Preparing Food with me.

  ‘Seriously, Gussie, it’s important, stuff like that.’

  There are about a hundred and fifty gulls above the house, mostly mature herring gulls but also a few skuas, and our peregrine. At first I didn’t notice him, because the gulls are silent, not shouting as they usually do when he is around. Instead, they are united in a feeding frenzy of some flying insect that’s just emerged, fledged, and is flying high, and they are sipping the insects from the air, soaring, banking, swerving, and plucking the sweetness of winged insect. It must taste very good. A few juveniles arrive, making lots of squawking racket, but they are no good at it. This is a game of skill.

  They better watch and learn.

  Pop has deposited – regurgitated, I suppose – several miniscule white crab carcasses on the table on the deck. Their legs are tangled together in a pretty heap, which would make a pleasing brooch if they could be turned into silver or gold. I wish I had kept it to show Mum. Instead I threw it over the deck into our killing fields/cemetery, with the mice, birds, voles, etc. I wonder if burying beetles eat shellfish? I don’t suppose they get much chance to try it.

  I feel quite exhausted after the samphire-gathering expedition and I’m having an early night with Charlie and a book. It’s great here – there are so many books I haven’t yet read.

  Note: There is a book-louse, a wingless insect of the sub-order Corrodentia, which is found among books and papers. These are small, soft-bodied insects which have an incomplete metamorphosis. As a rule the head is somewhat large, and bears conspicuous eyes (so they can read?) There’s also a book-worm – a grub, a beetle larva (Anobium), that eats holes in books.

  It would be a wonderful thing to have super-telescopic eyesight so you could see all these tiny critters. Being bionic would be great. Perhaps I could have a leg transplant while I’m at it. Make me taller.

  I can’t read this book (British Insects by W. Percival Westell) without feeling itchy. There are fleas, flies and parasites for every bird and beast: Bot Flies – Horse Bot Fly, Ox Warble Fly and even a Sheep Nostril Fly. The Horse Bot Fly larvae feed on the lining of the horse’s stomach and attach themselves by hooks. As many as a thousand have been found in a horse’s stomach.

  Gad Flies (Tabanidae) have lovely names. Blinding Breeze Fly; Rain Breeze Fly; or Cleg; and the Autumnal Breeze Fly. But the Blinding Breeze Fly attacks horses and cattle around the eyes. Clegs are great bloodsuckers and should be studiously avoided. Right, I will studiously avoid them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE MOST AWFUL thing has happened.

  We’re having breakfast looking out at a blustery day. The branches of the tall pines are leaning over the house and the palms are clapping. The sea is a boiling white below the house and the tops of the waves are being blown backwards. Crows hurl themselves from the big trees into the wind and don’t fly at all, just seem to get thrown about by the gusts, but they seem to enjoy the sensation as they do it again and again.

  Pop sits on the rail, his feathers ruffled. I don’t know how he keeps so balanced on h
is spindly legs with his knobbly pink knees.

  Mum says, ‘Funny, Pop didn’t eat his breakfast.’

  She had thrown some old bread outside the kitchen door, where he usually waits first thing in the morning.

  She starts to clear away and I take my leftover toast, slide open the door and place it on the rail near him. He immediately flies off, trailing a long tail of transparent nylon fishing line from his beak. Why hadn’t I seen it before? He had been sitting there for ages waiting for me to help him and I hadn’t noticed. Mum and I watch him fly away over the long windblown beach.

  ‘He’ll be back, darling, we’ll try and catch him and help him then, Don’t Worry.’

  She’s right, he does return. About an hour later, we hear this tremendous kafuffle. He’s tried to land on the pitched roof but gets caught up somehow with the line and ends up hanging off the front of the roof, dangling from the line which he had swallowed. It looks like his wing’s hurt; he’s struggling and fighting the line, like a hooked fish. Just like a hooked fish. Somehow he manages to get back onto the roof and we can see the line’s caught on the top of the roof, the ridge. He lies still, exhausted, his eyes closed, facing upwards towards the ridge. He has swallowed the hook and is trapped. His beak is wide open. You can see his black thin pointed tongue.

  Mum phones our beach lifeguards to come and help us rescue him, but they don’t have anyone on duty. She phones Hayle lifeguards but they can’t come to help. She phones the vet, he’s closed. She phones the Bird Sanctuary at Mousehole but they can’t come out to rescue a hurt bird. But they’ll look after it if we take it there. She phones the RSPCA and they said they’ll send someone as soon as possible but it might be some time.

  I think of Ginnie, find the number, and ring the police station.

  ‘I’ll come straight away.’ She’s so kind.

  Pop’s still lying there, just keeping still, but every so often opening his eyes and fighting the caught line, jerking his head away from it, making things worse for himself. We find a ladder and put it up at the back of the roof, away from where Pop is, so we don’t frighten him more. Mum gets a blanket to throw over him and takes it to the ladder, but she is as bad at heights as I am and can’t go up.

  Then Pop starts to pull against the line again, obviously in pain. I take the blanket from Mum and climb up the ladder onto the roof and start to crawl towards Pop, clicking my tongue quietly at him. He looks at me and goes quiet. I start to feel dizzy but I don’t look down, just keep focused on Pop, and then I hear Grandpop urging me on, like he did when I jumped from roof to roof of the beach huts – Go on, Princess, you can do it.

  Mum says nothing, just holds the ladder steady.

  The RSPCA woman and Ginnie arrive at the same time.

  Mum’s in tears and keeps saying it’s my Grandfather on the roof. They must think we are completely bonkers. Anyway, the RSPCA woman stands on the front deck on a stool, to encourage Pop to move in my direction rather than hers if he tries to get away. Ginnie follows me onto the roof. The gusts of wind are very strong and my cowboy hat is whisked away, taken by the wind and flung over the cliff like a crow. I can’t look down. The sea crashing on the rocks below seems very close.

  As we edge towards him, Pop starts to sort of swallow more nylon line, moving up towards the roof ridge, and so he frees the line from where it was caught and he flies off, over the sea.

  ‘His wings are all right, then,’ says Ginnie.

  I don’t know how I get down again. I hate heights.

  The RSPCA woman says, ‘If he comes back, you must try and catch him and take him to a vet to be put down. Gulls die a slow and horrible death with a hook inside them.’

  But Ginnie says that she reckons their gullets and guts are so tough, he might survive. The hook might work its way out. She’ll come and help catch him if he comes back, if I want her to.

  I’m rather tearful, I’m afraid.

  Pop is back the next morning, with just a small loop of nylon sticking out from the side of his beak. I give him kitten food from my hand. It’s just right for him. He eats it all. He ignores the bread. I don’t try to catch him.

  He comes back the next day and I feed him again. He eats with delicacy and gentleness, his head on one side, his beak opening just a little to take the mush from my hand. He looks at me. The loop of line is still visible.

  We haven’t seen him for three days now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  NO NEWS OR anything from Daddy. Darling Daddy. Why doesn’t he love Mum any more? If he can stop loving her, who he promised in church to love forever, he can stop loving me.

  No sign of Pop.

  I have a cold; I’m in bed. Mum should be at work but she’s stayed at home with me. It’s not that I need nursing exactly. Just TLC, as she calls it. She brings me hot lemony drinks and refills my hot water bottle when it gets cool. She bathes my pulse points to get my temperature down, the back of my neck, the inside of my wrists and elbows, my forehead. She becomes another person when I’m ill. Not as jokey as she usually is, more serious and concerned, I suppose. She tries not to look worried, but I know she is. She gets these frown lines between her eyes. Very unattractive.

  The trouble is, ordinary colds always seem to turn into major chest infections with me, and then it’s a long haul back to feeling well again. So she’s called the doctor. I’ve only met him twice: once when we arrived here. Mum took me to see him at the surgery so he could know about me and my situation – I have to have certain drugs, and antibiotics whenever I get an infection. Then on the Sunday morning when we went bird-watching with Ginnie.

  Charlie is on my feet. I like having her there but Mum keeps putting her off the bed as I’m getting feverish.

  Earlier, Flo brought in a live great tit and Mum rescued it and put it outside and it flew away. All the cats were very excited and searched for it, not quite believing that Mum could have done such a thing. I can’t think how Flo could have caught it, unless it was feeding on the new feeder by the birdbath. It is rather low to the ground and maybe Flo was hiding nearby. The birdbath is just outside my room but I haven’t the energy to lift myself up and look out the window. Later.

  The doctor’s very kind. Dr Dobbs. What a friendly name – like an old cart-horse – and he looks a bit like one too – long face, long nose, big teeth, hairy nostrils; didn’t notice his ears.

  He listened to my back and chest, took my temperature, blood pressure, the usual stuff, admired my shark bite, said it was very impressive, smiled a lot. I like him. He’s given Mum a prescription for antibiotics and she’s gone to fetch them straight away. Mrs Lorn is coming to sit with me while she’s gone.

  Mum didn’t want to leave me but I’m having a good patch, no fever at the moment, so I’m all right to leave for half an hour. It should have been a locum doctor, as it’s Saturday, but Dr Dobbs was at the surgery when Mum phoned and said it was no bother to come on his way home for lunch. Can’t imagine a London doctor doing that.

  There are two mirrors in my bedroom. The old leather one and another, with no frame. They are opposite each other. I’m frightened to look in either mirror because I see myself going on and on for ever, getting smaller and smaller, as if I am gradually disappearing into infinity or another dimension. It’s like that feeling you get when you see a house with a bird table in the front garden that’s built to look exactly like the house, and there’s a miniature bird table in its front garden, shaped like the tiny house, and there’s another bird table… it gives me the williegogs (Grandma’s word) just to think about it. Why does it frighten me, I wonder, the idea of something going on and on for ever?

  Mrs Lorn is here now. She hums and whistles. Comforting, really, the sound of her somewhere in the house, whistling to herself.

  The sea is making too much noise. Booming like a bass drum. My head hurts with the crashing and cracking of waves against the cliff. It sounds like heavy traffic on a motorway. The wind turns into harsh music, like a terrible orchestra
playing badly – the conductor gone mad, the music gone wrong. I hate it. I hate it here. I wish we were in London.

  I want Daddy to be here, or Grandma, or Grandpop – especially Grandpop.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Note: This morning I saw this: A raft of gulls floating in the water together, mostly young herring gulls, and one adult. I looked through the binoculars and saw that they surrounded a dead adult bird, its white breast up, floating. Other birds arrived and settled in the water around the funeral procession. The adult gull stayed always close to the dead bird, his mate, I suppose. They gradually floated out with the tide, always the same few close to the body and others came and went, but there were still about a dozen or more accompanying the body out to sea. There was no noise, no screeching, just a silent procession.

  I’VE BEEN ILL for three and a half weeks, but I’m feeling much better. Weak and woolly still, a bit wobbly, but my chest is clear-ish. I’m allowed to get up for a couple of hours each morning, if I feel up to it.

  It’s a lovely warm still autumn day, with white puffy clouds in a perfect blue sky, very Rupert Bear, or even Katherine Mansfield. I’m sitting outside in a sheltered spot, in an old wicker chair, wrapped up in a big fluffy blanket, with Charlie at my feet, a book in my lap, and my binoculars around my neck.

  No cowboy hat. It had a burial at sea. Grandpop would have approved. Instead, I have a navy blue England cricket cap with lions embroidered on it. Dr Dobbs gave it to me. He’s into cricket.

  The other two cats are hanging about, waiting for Mum or me to groom them. We’ve heard a peregrine and seen it briefly, flying over the house.

  And a herring gull stands sentinel on the deck rail, like a guardian angel. Mum said he was there every day when I was ill. Mum says it’s Pop. I think it’s possibly Pop, but I’m not absolutely certain. He has a little sprinkling of pale brown on his head. Maybe it’s son of Pop. He’s very quiet and calm, and the cats tolerate him, though Charlie did have a sneaky go at him, reaching up with her front paws when he wasn’t looking. But then she ran away, the coward, and hid under my chair.