She laughed and Viv warmed to the sound. Geraldine must be a nice person to have such a lovely, tinkly laugh, she decided.
‘As for Armstrong’s name, in case you’re wondering, his father was a space enthusiast,’ Geraldine continued. ‘He died last year and they sent his ashes up to heaven in a firework, can you believe?’
Viv was hypnotised by the owl’s antics. He was on the edge of the table now and seemed to be reprimanding the cat with angry flaps of his wings and squawks. Then he jumped down onto the floor beside him.
‘Oh my God . . .’ Viv shooed at the predatory Bub by her feet. She was sure she was about to witness the last few seconds of the bird’s life.
Geraldine laughed as she watched Viv in full panic mode whilst Bub flashed her the sort of look he reserved for viewing things he’d done in his litter tray.
‘Piccolo is safer than the rest of us with Bub. They have what Heath always calls “an affinity”.’
‘Heath?’
‘Heath Merlo, the boss,’ explained Geraldine. ‘I thought it was serendipitous that his name means “blackbird” in Italian. It was like a sign that you were the one we should take on. Mind you, we were hardly overrun with applicants.’
It was the first time Viv had heard mention of ‘Heath’. She’d presumed that Geraldine was the one in charge.
‘Heath is away with Wonk at the moment.’ Geraldine went into further explanations. ‘Wonk is our three-legged donkey. She’s having a new prosthetic limb fitted because she’s outgrown the other one.’
‘You have a three-legged donkey here?’
‘Yes. She had a rich owner who left us Wonk when she died on the proviso that we would look after her. Her legacy goes a long way to supporting us. Come on, I’ll give you a very quick tour whilst the kettle is boiling. It takes an age and I don’t help matters by always over-filling it.’
Geraldine beckoned her to follow and they left the owl cawing an angry protest at being left by himself with no one to entertain, stomping up and down the table on legs that looked too long for his small body. Viv was sure the low mist had thickened since she had arrived. Walking behind Geraldine, even at a close distance, Viv couldn’t see her feet and it was as if she was floating.
‘I’ve never seen mist like this before,’ said Viv.
‘It is unusual,’ replied Geraldine. ‘Legend has it that years ago the valley was a sacred lake inhabited by a water nymph called Isme who was trusted to look after all the creatures who lived in it, but she fell in love with the local bad boy – the Lord of the Manor’s son. One day he stripped the lake of all of the fish and Isme’s furious father forced his daughter to take revenge by dragging the young man into the lake and drowning him. Heartbroken, Isme withered away and the lake dried up with her until all that was left was a lingering mist and the wildflowers which had taken seed in the places where her tears had fallen.’
Viv bent down to a vibrant blue patch of them. ‘Love-in-a-Mist. How beautiful.’ She had recognised them immediately.
‘I see you know your plants,’ smiled Geraldine. ‘They flower continually.’ She picked out a plump purple seed case hidden inside its lacy netting. ‘I think they’re as pretty when they pod, don’t you?’
They carried the faintest scent of strawberries tinged with smoke. Viv could pick it up, just, but it was almost missable, even to her.
‘We’ll start from furthest away and work our way in,’ decided Geraldine. ‘Our birds.’ She lifted a large stiff leather glove from a hook outside the door and Viv wondered why she’d need that.
‘At the back of the house, there, is our food preparation area,’ said Geraldine, pointing to an outbuilding with an arched barn door. ‘Do you want to see inside?’
‘Not really,’ said Viv. She guessed it wouldn’t be full of packaged ready meals.
‘Thought not,’ grinned Geraldine. They walked down the dirt-track road. Viv didn’t really need to see the birds – she’d hardly be interacting with them. And she didn’t like birds even more than she didn’t like other animals. The Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds encapsulated all her worst nightmares: their capriciousness, their flapping wings, their ability to peck out your eyes. She shivered at the thought and hoped they were all locked away.
They arrived at the aviaries clustered around a central grassy area where perches were studded into the ground.
‘This is our flying arena,’ explained Geraldine. ‘And there are our birds. None of them would survive in the wild. They’re all damaged in some way, poor dears.’ She sighed. ‘Come on, Vivienne, let me introduce you to our family.’ Geraldine walked to the first cage.
Staring at Viv was a large tawny owl with the most beautiful feathery face.
‘That’s Melvin. He was found with terribly broken wings. He can fly after a fashion now but it’s not a very good fashion. His partner in crime is Tink there.’ Sharing the same shelter was a much smaller owl with eyes that seemed to take up half her head. ‘They used to talk to each other through the wire, so Heath decided to test them in the same aviary and they bonded. It’s very sweet to watch them when they are perched together. They lean on each other.’
Tink was tongue-clicking at Viv as if she was warning her off looking at her fella. Viv sent a silent psychic message that Tink had nothing to worry about – she would be staying as far away from them as possible.
They moved on. ‘In here is Beatrice, our eagle owl. Rescued from a wardrobe – I kid you not – where a stupid prat was keeping her as a pet.’ Geraldine shook her head in dismay.
Beatrice’s orange-ringed eyes swung over Viv as if she were of no value.
‘Come on in,’ said Geraldine. ‘Beatrice is a love.’ She pulled the latch back.
‘Are you kidding?’ said Viv.
‘No, not at all.’ Geraldine opened the door.
‘I . . . I can’t,’ said Viv.
Geraldine put her left hand into the glove.
‘You’ll be doing this in no time if you choose to. Beatrice is a good one to start off with because she gets on with everyone.’
Viv would rather have eaten her own head than interact with birds. Especially large terrifying things like this one.
Beatrice started making a ‘yarp’ sound.
‘That noise tells you that she’s happy I’m around,’ said Geraldine. ‘She’s bonded to me. And I’ve bonded to her, haven’t I, girl?’
The bird lifted up its wings and seemed to rise up as if on a heat thermal, coming to perch on Geraldine’s outstretched glove.
‘I have arm muscles like you wouldn’t believe,’ chuckled Geraldine. ‘She’s quite a weight, I can tell you.’ Geraldine gave the owl a scratch on her head as she addressed her. ‘And you’ve just had your twentieth birthday, haven’t you, my love? Okay, off you pop.’ She jiggled her arm up and down but the owl gripped on.
‘She’s spoiled,’ laughed Geraldine. ‘Go on with you. I’m showing a guest around.’
In the next cage was a large white owl that started flapping her pepper-speckled wings as soon as they neared.
‘Just as Beatrice loves everyone, Ursula hates everyone, even Heath.’ Geraldine clucked at the bird in greeting. ‘We keep trying to get her to trust us, but we haven’t made a lot of progress, I’m afraid.’
The large white owl stared at Viv with ‘I want to kill you’ eyes and started bobbing her head up and down.
‘Why is she doing that at me?’ said Viv, feeling ridiculously intimidated.
‘Well I never,’ Geraldine said, raising her eyebrows.
‘What?’ asked Viv.
‘That’s very interesting. She’s interacting with you.’
‘Is she?’ asked Viv.
‘Yes, she most certainly is. She’s taken her eyes off you to bend her head. That’s a sign of trust.’
‘Oh.’ That bird was a rotten judge of character, thought Viv.
Geraldine grinned. ‘There is no rhyme or reason why birds love you or hate you. They just do.’ She pointed acro
ss to a cage. ‘There’s a red-tail hawk over there called Sistine that I found entangled in thorns and I nursed her back to health. But is it me she’s grateful to? Oh no. She’s Heath’s girl.’
There were hawks and eagles and owls and the ugliest bird Viv had ever seen in her life: a white-headed vulture. The inside of his aviary looked like a Toys R Us for birds. He had a tyre on a rope, a ladder, a huge rubber Kong, a climbing frame.
‘Frank turned up in a Manchester scrapyard. He can’t see very well but he likes to play,’ smiled Geraldine. ‘He’s likely to run off with the hosepipe when you clean him out.’
Viv hoped that Geraldine meant a general ‘you’ and not a specific one. She wouldn’t be cleaning Frank out. Ever.
‘Like fresh eggs for breakfast?’ asked Geraldine as they made a slow walk back towards the cottage. ‘We’ve taken in some ex-battery hens. They’re just getting used to being outside and having room to move. They’re learning to scratch for worms and insects and their egg yolks are lovely and golden as a result.’
That nearly put Viv right off eggs for life. She had always been quite squeamish and once hadn’t eaten cod from the chippy for over a year after hearing that it ate any old rubbish it could get its jaws on, unlike the more discerning haddock.
The sanctuary was also home to three limping geese, all with deformed feet, who still managed to swagger around like drunken John Waynes; and a blind baby goat called Ray who was glued to the side of his sighted twin Roy. In a run with a wooden shelter in the shape of a giant Toblerone were two hedgehogs – a strange albino one who looked as if she would glow in the dark and another with incredibly short prickles, as if he’d had a tough-guy crew cut: they were introduced to Viv as Angel and Bruce Willis. They wouldn’t survive in the wild, Geraldine explained. They’d taken in lots of hedgehogs over the years, and patched them up and sent them out again – but only if they knew they’d be safe. There was a huge black hairy pig called Bertie who had formed an attachment to a beautiful pair of shire horses who looked as if they were wearing shaggy fur boots. As soon as they spotted Geraldine, they started walking across their field towards her.
Even though there was a sturdy barrier between them, Viv instinctively took a few steps back.
‘You don’t have to be scared of Roger and Keith, duck,’ said Geraldine. ‘They’re as gentle as spring lambs.’
‘They’re huge.’ The hairs on the back of Viv’s neck stood up as two tonnes of horse approached the fence. They could cause a lot of damage if they were suddenly spooked: flatten her like a pancake, kick her into Kingdom Come. She’d err on the side of caution, thank you, and not get too close.
‘Roger and Keith have been at Wildflower Cottage for ten years,’ explained Geraldine. ‘Heath’s father took in four shires from a disgusting farm near Saddleworth, but Pete didn’t make it through the first night and we lost John only a few weeks ago.’ She sighed. ‘He was such a dear fellow. I’m only glad that he had a few safe, happy years with us. He’s buried in our graveyard with all his sanctuary brothers and sisters behind the house. I can’t bear the thought if we have to—’ She pulled herself up short and shook her head. ‘Anyway,’ she said then, as if she was forcing herself to move on. She extracted a tube of Polo mints from her pocket. ‘Want to give one to the horses?’
Viv declined hurriedly.
Geraldine tilted her head and looked down into the eyes of the much shorter Viv. ‘I must say, you’re not at all what I expected.’
‘Oh?’
‘In a nice way, I mean,’ Geraldine said. ‘Some people have sounded perfect on the phone and when they arrive . . . well, I’ve known I’ve made a huge mistake. But I don’t get that feeling with you. Though you’re not at all confident around animals, are you?’
‘I wouldn’t do them any harm,’ Viv replied quickly, to dispel any fears Geraldine might have on that score. ‘But admin is more my thing.’
‘Well, that’s what we need really. Someone efficient. Heath has let things slide and hasn’t got the time to sort out the backlog and I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I can’t use computers and I don’t like being on the telephone, as you might have been able to tell. I much prefer to roll up my sleeves and pull a pair of wellies on.’
‘I passed a lady on a black horse when I drove down the hill. Is that one of your animals too?’ asked Viv. Did she see Geraldine bristle slightly?
‘No. That’ll be Antonia Leighton. She lives up in the castle at the top of the hill. Let’s go and get that cuppa,’ said Geraldine. ‘Are you hungry? That’s one good thing about working here; everyone in Ironmist thinks we’re starving, so they’re always sending us cakes and bread from the bakery and pies, butter, vegetables, you name it. It’s a very kind place.’
So that was Antonia Leighton, thought Viv. She hadn’t recognised her because she looked very different from the smiling picture she had seen in the glossy magazine. She was the daughter of Nicholas Leighton, the man that her friend Hugo had said would be a very useful person to get to know. And he was the real reason why Viv was here.
Chapter 2
‘Bloody hell, Stel, what’s up? Your head’s the colour of a stick of rhubarb with high blood pressure.’
Linda leaned over the coffee table and handed her friend a plastic fan. There were five women in the room and all of them had small whirring blades cooling their faces, even Iris, Linda’s eighty-two-year-old mother. And surprisingly Caro too, who was floating through the menopause as if she was aboard an enchanted craft with an anti-menopause cloaking device, had beads of perspiration pushing out of the pores on her forehead. She dabbed at her temples with her fingertips. She even makes sweating look elegant, thought Gaynor.
‘Thought you didn’t get hot flushes,’ she said, tapping her fan on the table, hoping that would somehow rev up the dying battery.
‘I don’t usually. My thermometer might be getting more and more on the blink, but I haven’t had that experience you seem to get where you say you feel it rising up from your feet,’ replied Caro.
‘I used to sweat so much in bed, Dennis used to have to sleep in a wetsuit,’ sniffed Iris, putting down her fan in order to sip delicately from her special china cup covered in irises which she lifted from a matching saucer.
‘Slight exaggeration there, Mother,’ said Linda. Her hair was plastered to her face with perspiration. ‘Dear God, this can’t be normal.’
‘I didn’t get the sweats until I was over a year into the full-throttle menop— oh bugger, my battery’s knackered as well,’ said Stel, banging her fan on the side of the sofa in an attempt to revive it.
‘Here, Stel.’ From a drawer in the dresser behind her, Linda retrieved another fan from the job-lot stored there and tossed it to her. Linda’s husband Dino was a market dealer (Aladdino’s Cave) trading in allsorts and novelties which he imported from the Far East.
This quintet of friends always jokingly referred to themselves as ‘The Old Spice Girls’. They’d known each other for ages; but two years ago they’d decided to make their meetings a regular Sunday event from 5.30 until 7 p.m., to galvanise them for the week ahead with pots of tea and finger food.
If they had been actual Spice Girls, it wouldn’t have been too hard to choose their names. The preened and perfect Caro would have been Posh Spice. With her rounded vowels and cultured ways, she made Victoria Beckham look like Pat Butcher. Iris would have been Blunt Spice, since the brake on her mouth had long since failed, much to the frequent embarrassment of her daughter. Linda would have been Bountiful Spice because everything about Linda was big: her hair, her bum, her appetite and her heart. Gaynor would have been Bitter Spice. She was twisted up in knots about her husband running off almost a year ago with a cheap young tramp, and fed off his frustration that she wouldn’t give him a divorce. And Stel Blackbird would, at the moment, be Sad Spice. Her much-loved only daughter Viv had left home that day in order to work in a godforsaken place up on the moors. She’d said she only intended to work there t
hrough the summer, but Stel had said the same to her parents and then had never moved back to the family nest.
‘Linda, you do know the central heating’s on, don’t you?’ said Gaynor, feeling the radiator. ‘No wonder we’re all wilting.’
‘It’s what? But it can’t be . . .’ Linda broke off her sentence as the penny dropped and she turned slowly to Iris, her eyes narrowing to slits. ‘It’s you again, isn’t it, Mum?’
‘I must have forgotten to turn it off,’ said Iris. ‘I thought I’d warm the room up a bit for everyone.’
Linda bobbed next door to turn off the heating, chuntering profanities in her mother’s direction.
‘It’s always cold when you first come in. I was only trying to help.’ Iris lifted up her shoulders and dropped them as if hurt.
‘It’s seventy degrees in the shade today,’ Linda batted back. ‘You can fry eggs on the pavement.’
The Old Spice Girls met in Linda’s ‘party room’. Dino had converted half their enormous garage into an extra reception room so that he and the lads could go and have a game of darts, or watch the football on the sixty-inch screen mounted on the wall whilst partaking of a few beers, and Linda could fill it with her friends on Sunday nights.
‘I thought I was having a hot flush to end all hot flushes. Four years I’ve been having them now and I’m bloody sick of them,’ said Gaynor, wishing there was a turbo facility on her fan. ‘I must be coming to the end of them by now, surely?’ Sometimes Gaynor felt as if nature was against her as well as everything else. ‘Can I open a window, Linda?’
‘Open the bloody lot of them,’ said Linda. ‘It’s like a slow-cooker in here.’ She gave her mother a warning look. ‘And don’t you dare moan that it’s draughty.’
Iris managed to arrange her features into a perfect balance of innocence and disgruntlement.
Caro turned off her fan and put her cup of coffee down on a small glass-topped table with a shelf underneath, She could see a child’s book parked there, entitled Jolly Jellyfish. She gave a gasp of joy at the sight.
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