There was broken glass everywhere. Bullet holes in the walls and the ceiling.
And blood. It dripped from the mantelpiece, from the edges of the hearth, from the furniture, and it pooled on the threadbare carpet. It dripped from my eyebrow onto the mouthpiece of the telephone.
The voice was quite foreign to me, a breathless prattle: '– ringing to wish you a Happy Christmas, and of course your birthday! A teenager, thirteen today, a big man! Congratulations, my darling!' And then singing, as soft and sweet as the voice of an angel. 'Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you . . .'
I put the receiver onto the lid of the record player. There was a gasp from the fireplace, and I saw Sophie's eyes flick open. I knelt quickly to her, and with the ball of my thumb I wiped the clotting of ash and blood from her lips. She coughed, inhaled very deeply, and stared at me, reaching up to touch my cheek.
'It's all right, Sophie,' I said, 'you'll be all right,' and very gently I prised her out of the hearth. She stumbled to her feet, wobbling like a newborn foal. As I helped her across the hall to the front door, my mother's singing continued and followed me. I could still hear it very faintly as we stepped outside, into the gleam of sunlight and snow – 'are you there, my darling Alan?' – a voice from hundreds of miles away, oblivious, as though from another planet.
A beautiful, beautiful morning.
The sky had cleared from grey through silver to an exquisitely pale blue. And the snow was lovely on the lawn and in the woodland. The crows had come down again, a squabble of wings and claws and sharp black beaks beneath the boughs of the copper beech. Although they'd risen in panic when the man with the gun had appeared, they hardly flinched from me and the girl. They only fidgeted and flapped when we emerged from the door, before settling again to their Christmas dinner.
I sat Sophie on the front steps of the school. She leaned back and turned her face to the full light of the sun. I said, 'You're safe now,' but she couldn't hear me. I could see from her eyes that she understood.
I skirted the lawn, turned away from the front of the house and went round to the stable-yard. One more thing to do.
The car was there, mounded and filled with snow. It looked as lithe and perfect as new; all of its scars and wounds had been healed over. I pushed open the door of the stable, and a stripe of sunlight fell through it and onto the bird. It was perfect too, from the tips of its blue-black claws, the shimmer of its plumage, to the blink of its beady eyes and the gleam of its beak. I whispered as I crossed the stable, and it shivered with the anticipation of my touch. 'My little imp – this time it's real.'
The jackdaw consented to having my fingers on its leg. Indeed, it closed its eyes in a kind of swoon as I untied the jesses from the perch and the bells tinkled for the last time. I held the jesses with one hand, and the bird sprang onto my wrist.
Together we stood in the stable-yard. We smelled the air, so cold and clean that it burned in our nostrils, and we narrowed our eyes at the bright sky. I undid the jesses from the bird's leg and dropped them onto the snow.
The bird gripped my arm, untethered now. It ducked and shuffled, making a curious mewing sound, cocked an eye at me and then at the treetops beyond. I said very softly, 'Go on, go on, you're free . . .' and it beat its wings so hard that the sunlight dazzled and glittered around my head.
The jackdaw leaped from my arm, up and up, onto the stable roof. It scrabbled and hopped and slithered, fell off – and as I hurried forwards to catch it, it swerved away from my hands. It climbed into the air. Gaining height, it flicked from one end of the yard to the other, skimming the roofs of the stables. Then it banked sharply, up and away, and was gone.
I waited, in case the bird turned and I'd see it again for one more second. It did not. I was alone. I breathed deeply, easily, and the sun felt good as I lifted my face to the sky.
The Perils and Dangers of this Night Page 21