The Blackbird Singularity

by Matt Wilven

  Sergio rushes to his car, throwing his suitcases into the boot. Gloria screams in Spanish again and comes rushing down the stairs with rage so blind that my stomach lifts. She doesn’t even notice me as she rushes out the front door holding the shoe that was thrown back and forth between them.

  Sergio climbs into the driver’s seat and pushes down the lock just in time. Gloria is pulling on the door handle and when one of her fingernails snaps she screams up into the air, cursing his “stupid, precious car”, and then starts hammering the heel of the shoe down on the windscreen, where his face is.

  She manages three ineffective smashes before something occurs to her. She looks around the garden with fierce alacrity and rushes over to the garden wall as Sergio reverses out of the driveway.

  “Jesus,” I hear myself mutter as she runs out of the garden with half a brick poised above her head.

  Sergio, seeing her coming for him, slams the accelerator down but he’s not quite fast enough. The brick crunches against his rear right tail light, which pops and shatters, leaving a trail of red plastic and clear glass as he speeds away.

  Gloria immediately starts stamping her way back up the driveway. There is a tiny flicker of recognition as she sees me standing in front of her house.

  “Gloria,” I begin, in an apologetic tone, “it’s about Peter.”

  She strides past me and into the house.

  “Fuck off, Vince,” she says, before slamming the door in my face.

  I think about knocking on the door but turn to leave instead. Sergio’s shoe is still in the middle of the driveway.

  TWO

  The dawn chorus becomes particularly loud and full during the mornings around the summer solstice. Skylarks, song thrushes, robins and blackbirds chime in first, before the sun has risen. Then sparrows, finches and buntings add their twitters and trills. Warblers and wrens wait for the sunlight but soon catch up. Adults call. Chicks cry. Each kind uses a different frequency and only sings to its own but together the birds fill the sky with a song that is as predestined but chaotic as the pathway a growing tree takes to the sun; all the gaps are filled, not a drop of silence is wasted.

  Since the dating scan I can’t get it out of my head that our baby doesn’t exist but I also vaguely remember having some trouble with screens after Charlie’s death; a bus that was heading to Black Hole, a shadowy cashpoint where every option was Death. I don’t feel like I’ve lost my grip on reality to that extent but I have to be careful this doesn’t go too far. A few days ago I woke in the middle of the night and said:

  “The photo. There must be a photo.”

  Lyd stirred.

  “Where’s the photo?” I asked her. “The photo of the baby. The sonogram.”

  “Go… sleep,” she mumbled.

  “Did we get a photo, a picture, at the dating scan?”

  “No… forgot.”

  She rolled away from me.

  For a brief moment, I thought I’d saved myself.

  It’s the weekend now and I don’t want it to be. The weekend means I have to face Lyd and I’m so anxious at the moment that I’m afraid I won’t be able to hide it for the full two days. I managed to get through the weekday evenings by being quiet and staying out of her way.

  She’s already left the bedroom when I wake up. I get up and look out the window. The sky is low and dull. There have been showers and bursts of sunshine all week; mild drizzle, warm sunny patches, rainbows, cold hard rain, fast clouds breaking apart. Today the sky has no shifting characteristics, just a low, paper-white ceiling that will last all day.

  I’ve still not heard anything from Angela about the chapters I sent to her so I’m currently trying to blame her for a lot of my feelings of anxiety (unsuccessfully). I quickly check my email before I go downstairs: still nothing.

  In the kitchen, Lyd is holding a cup and staring out into the back garden with a mildly confounded look on her face.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Huh?”

  “You look confused?”

  “No,” she says. “Not really. The birds woke me up at four thirty this morning, they were ridiculously loud, and it’s bright so early at the moment, I couldn’t get back to sleep, we really need better curtains by the way, but, have you noticed, they’re not singing at all now? The birds.”

  I listen. It’s true. There’s no birdsong in the air. I shrug, open the sliding door, wait a few seconds and whistle. Blackie doesn’t appear.

  “I wonder why they’ve abandoned us,” she says.

  “Maybe a sultana factory exploded and they all went to visit.”

  Lyd smiles.

  “You’ve got me fixated on the bloody birds now,” she says, dismissing her curiosity.

  I step out onto the patio. There’s a little bit of birdsong but it’s sparrows and robins and other small birds. The loud and distinctive blackbird solos are the main thing missing. I walk out into the middle of the lawn and look up and around. Turning back towards the house a dark shape catches my eye. I approach it for a closer look.

  A female blackbird lies on her back, her wings inaccurately flailed out, head turned to the side, motionless, dead. Her stomach has been ripped open and an inch and a half of her pink-and-red guts are hanging out.

  My throat is closing. I’m getting dizzy. Breathing is difficult. I close my eyes and take a moment to inhale and exhale slowly. It’s just a dead bird but I feel overwhelmed by its death. I have to get away from it. I go back into the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Lyd, as I walk towards her.

  I fall on my knees in front of her and wrap my arms around her pelvis, pulling her melon-sized womb towards my head.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Vince? What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  As my disorientation passes I realise that this is not normal behaviour. Lyd is trying to wriggle away from me. I let go, stand up and try to make light of it.

  “Nothing. Really. I’m fine. I just wanted to listen to the baby for a minute… Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

  “You wanted to listen to the baby?”

  “I had an uncontrollable urge.”

  “Right.”

  “I think I solved the mystery, anyway.”

  “Mystery?”

  “Next door’s cat’s killed a blackbird in our garden. Must have scared all the others off. Her guts are hanging out.”

  “Gross,” says Lyd, putting a hand on her stomach.

  “I don’t feel like I can just throw her in the bin. It’s not like finding a dead mouse.”

  “No?”

  “I think I might bury her in the garden. If that’s okay?”

  “Put some Marigolds on. They’re full of parasites.”

  “Okay.”

  My hands are trembling as I dig near the fence with a trowel. I can feel Lyd’s glare burning my back. I’m trying not to make a big show of it but I am trying to appease the blackbirds. This is a test, or a sign, part of their system of guidance, but it also feels threatening, dark, like they want me to live in fear. By burying her I’m showing that I respect their lives and hold their species in high regard, that I will contemplate the meaning of this sacrifice.

  The grave is around seven inches deep when I’m done. I put the bird in and scatter mud over her. When she’s covered I feel the need to enact some form of ritual but I don’t know what to do. I think of priests reciting prayers and making the sign of the cross but these things don’t apply to me so I simply bow my head to offer a moment of quiet reverence.

  When I get back inside Lyd kisses me on the cheek. There is a dismissive sympathy in the way her lips make contact with my skin that makes me feel awkward and judged.

  “Chuck them out,” she says, pointing with her eyes down at the yellow rubber gloves.

  I smile and put them in the bin. She goes through to the living room. I follow her in. She’s picking up a thesis that’s been sitting half-read on the coffee table for weeks.


  “Do we have anything planned for today?” I ask.

  She looks up from her pages and around the room. Something occurs to her.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Are there more cushions than there used to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “More cushions.”

  “No,” I say.

  “There never used to be this many cushions.”

  “There’s been this many for ages.”

  “Where did they all come from?”

  I sigh.

  “There were two in Charlie’s room.”

  “In Charlie’s room?” she asks.

  “In the moon.”

  “You destroyed the moon?”

  Lyd grabs one of the cushions and holds it to her stomach. I sigh again.

  “What was I supposed to do with it?”

  “I thought you boxed everything up? What else did you throw away?”

  “Nothing. I just had to throw that thing away. I couldn’t keep it.”

  “How have I not noticed all these cushions?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If we could have only kept one thing I’d have said keep the moon.”

  “Of course you would.”

  “I would. He loved that thing.”

  “Some things are too painful to keep.”

  “And some things are too painful to throw away.”

  “Can we not do this, please? It’s done. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Fine.”

  She shuffles her legs beneath her, still gripping the cushion firmly. She puts the thesis down.

  “Let’s go and buy a crib,” she says.

  “What? Really?”

  “My headaches and soreness are beginning to level off. And I’ll be the size of a planet before long. I’m in the sweet spot for getting things done. Besides, we’re not going to have a good time today. We may as well tick a box.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  Lyd drives us to a place that’s a bit like IKEA. It stands alone off a busy dual carriageway, has the same drawn-out shopping procedure and the same homogenised but stylish produce, but it’s more expensive. I think IKEA does “style on a budget” well, so you may as well get the cheap stuff, but Lyd likes to spend a little bit more and feel like she has quality products. She says that materials matter and I agree, but I don’t think they use better materials. Still, that’s where we go. Since crashing the car during my breakdown, she’s the one who drives.

  In the car I’m trying to look at Lyd and think about her beauty and the happiness of our future life together, the simple but stylish furniture we’ll be surrounded by, but she’s grimacing.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I can hear the blood in my veins,” she says, flicking a wrist around as though shooing the sensation away.

  “Hear it?”

  She nods, clutching the steering wheel with disgust.

  “I wonder if you’re hearing through the baby’s ears?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Not really. It’s making me feel sick. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay.”

  The gigantic car park is full. We have to drive around aimlessly waiting for someone to pull out. For a couple of minutes we slowly follow a man carrying a huge box of flat-packed wood until he gets so edgy that he stops to let us past. We stop too, thinking he’s at his car, and the three of us end up looking at each other in a confused triangle. Eventually, somebody pulls out twenty metres ahead of him so Lyd floors the accelerator, which makes him flinch and lose his grip on his giant box.

  Walking towards the ugly, grey warehouse with its glassy, corporate entranceway a low flying blackbird swoops above my head releasing a flurry of loud tweets:

  – chuck-chicka-chink choo-chucka-chucka pook-pook-pook –

  (Watch out. The chaos is coming.)

  My stomach turns and the speed and proximity of its flight makes me duck slightly.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Lyd.

  “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “You must have heard it.”

  “What?”

  I’m unsure if she’s daring me to draw attention to yet another blackbird or if she didn’t see or hear it at all. I look up at the empty white sky.

  “Never mind,” I say.

  I catch a glint of disgust in Lyd’s expression and note that I’ve seen her look at me like that a few times in the last couple of weeks.

  We walk towards the entranceway with a metre between our shoulders.

  “You know, we still have a crib,” I say, as the automatic doors slide open. “In the attic.”

  This comes out at the worst possible moment. It’s my version of a nervous tick. I have a knack for finding the exact wrong thing to say at the exact wrong moment. Lyd is aware of this facet so she just glances at me sullenly. Thankfully, she’s forgotten that I stopped doing this when I started taking lithium.

  “I want everything new,” she says. “I don’t care what we’ve already got.”

  “That’s going to be expensive.”

  “It’s my money.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  As we turn the first corner we find ourselves standing at the foot of a corridor of fake living rooms full with a near-impenetrable amount of people. In this shop you can’t just find the thing you need and buy it. You have to walk through a whole labyrinth of jumbled produce, note down everything that you want and wait to see if they have it in stock when you get to the end.

  Lyd glances at me, subtly amused, knowing that this is many of my least favourite things crammed into one experience: a packed crowd, a cynically inefficient system, overpriced products, pretentious parents, identikit individualism, squealing children… My teeth are firmly clenched.

  Lyd is much more well adjusted than me and sees this place as a gift to consumers with good taste. To her it’s a chance for people of average wealth to afford the luxury of excellent design without the hackneyed feeling that it is too cheap and commonplace.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” I say.

  “Lead the way.”

  I push through the centre of the crowd in silence, evading cellulite hips and bony shoulders, moving forward at four times the normal customer rate. We get to the children’s bedrooms before the baby rooms. I’ve stopped because I’ve seen Charlie’s wardrobe. Lyd notices what I’m looking at.

  “I don’t mind so much about that sort of thing,” she says. “Maybe we could re-use the wardrobe? He didn’t spend any time in it. Touching it. You know?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “We should get all new, like you said.”

  “But…”

  “The wardrobe’s got his stickers all over it.”

  (And I smashed it to smithereens.)

  “I suppose you’re right. Do you think we’ll need a wardrobe straight away? When did we get one for Charlie?”

  I shrug and Lyd carries on talking about other things we might need but I’m not listening properly. I’m looking around for the red 1960s robot as if, by some trick of fate, it will be decorating one of these fake children’s bedrooms and I’ll be able to grab it and use it to smash the whole store to pieces.

  “So?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “What planet are you on today?”

  “We probably won’t need a new chest of drawers,” I say, clutching at an echoed memory of her speaking.

  “I thought you just said you didn’t want us to reuse anything.”

  “There’s no stickers on the drawers. I left them in the room. We don’t need more drawers. They won’t fit up the hatch into the attic. There’s no point throwing drawers away and getting the same replacement drawers.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re clenching your fists. Your knuckles are white.”
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  “I just hate it in here.”

  “Come on. I can see a crib down there.”

  We take down the product number, buy the overpriced crib and get out of there. It’s a simple white thing. Yet, for all its simplicity, back home, it takes me about four and a half hours to construct. The whole time I’m thinking that I must be a terrible writer because Angela still hasn’t been in touch. I know my expectations are usually too high when I give people things to read but she was so positive about my first two novels. The way she responds to my work has changed my life. Now she doesn’t even have a response.

  The crib is done but the baby room still looks undefined. It’s devoid of character, completely white, just the bare essentials. It isn’t Charlie’s room anymore though. Charlie has been whitewashed out of the space. For some reason, this notion reminds me of the blank screens at the dating scan. There’s nothing in Lyd’s womb. There’s no baby. Why do I keep thinking this?

  I go to my office and check my email. Still nothing. Nothing from anyone. I click on my junk folder, select all and delete them. Immediately, that weird piece of junk email returns:

  From: *CHARLIE*

  Subject: (276) Re: contact me please…

  I decide that it’s finally time to open it and click on the title.

  Dear Sir/Madam

  I am Charlie a Banker working in bank in London Until now I am account officer to most government accounts and I have since discovered that most of the account are dormant account with a lot of money in on further investigation I found out that one particular account belong to the former minister MR Dennis McShane, who ruled Rotherham from 1994-2012 and this particular account has deposit of £146,000 with no next of kin.

  My proposal is that since I am the account officer and the money on the account is dormant and there is no next of kin obviously the account owner the former president of Rotherham has died, that you should provide an account for the money to be transferred.

  The money is floating in the bank right now and I want to transfer to your account for our mutual benefit. Please if this is okay by you I will advice that you contact me through my direct email address.