—Did you fuck her?
—Yes.
—Liar.
We sit down at the top of the scree to get our breath back.
—I don’t care, she’s a fat minger, he says.
I think about punching him, but he says —You better not even try it.
How did he know I was going to hit him?
—I know everything you’re thinking, he says.
—No you don’t, I say.
—Listen, I know you fucked her, alright, and I’m not bothered, I’ve fucked loads of girls and they were all fitter than her. I’ll tell you something else.
—What?
—You’re a fucking nutter.
—How do you make that out?
—All that stuff about long-nose pliers reminding you of one sort of bird then another, do you think that’s normal, you spaz?
—It was the bill of a snipe, I say, —then a woodcock. But while Becky was sleeping, I realised it was more like the bill of an oystercatcher.
—Stop going on about birds, he says, —I don’t care.
He gets up and wanders off. I look around at the trees and the undergrowth. I think I see a treecreeper on the trunk of a sycamore but I need the binoculars to make it out properly. I do see a pied flycatcher though, a female, which isn’t as striking as the male, more brown than black, although it has the same wing markings. I could really do with Becky’s binoculars. They have a really impressive field of view and are a good weight and size. It felt nice to hold them in her bedroom, to cup the moulded body in my hands and feel the rubber lips of the lens-protectors mouth my eye sockets.
The flycatcher forages for insects on the ground, finds a grub and then flies off. My binoculars are a pair of Praktica Zooms from Argos. My mum bought them for my birthday a few years ago, although I chose them myself. As I scan the hedgerows, I spot something else, Ashley is walking towards me.
—Come on, he says.
—Have you found somewhere?
—Yep.
I get up and brush the bits of branches and leaves off my trousers.
—Hang on, I say, —I’ll get Becky.
He nods reluctantly and leans against a tree, almost as if he’s entertaining the idea of leaving her behind.
The Nuthatch
We trudge across barren moorland. The ground is uneven and muddy in places. It’s not much of a path, more a rabbit run. We’ve been walking for about twenty minutes in almost complete silence. I’m thinking already that this is going to be a good place to find ravens. They seem to thrive the further they are away from humans. There are lots of tall trees and rugged crags, ideal habitat. We don’t see any though, just crows, jackdaws and rooks. I’m getting quite irritated by crows now. When we were at the Tower of London, it was easy to distinguish between a crow and a raven because close up you can see that crows are much smaller. But here on these moors, the birds are much further away. We walk towards a desolate shack.
—Is this it? I say to Ashley without talking. I’m a bit disappointed. Becky has hardly said anything at all.
—Wait till you see inside, Ashley says.
We carry on walking until we arrive at the entrance of the hut. I open the door and we go inside. It’s dark and takes us a few moments for our eyes to adjust. Ashley opens his arms out, by way of introduction to the place. It’s small. There’s a mattress in one corner with some blankets heaped on top. There’s a table, a sink and some kitchen units. There’s a black pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room with a kettle on top and an old rocking chair close by. It’s cosier on the inside than it looks from the outside, but it still looks fairly bleak.
—What do you think? Ashley says.
Becky looks around, —It’s a bit small, she says.
—Where we going to sleep? I say.
Ashley looks around. —Well, I suppose you and Becky can have the mattress. I can sleep in the chair.
Becky doesn’t hear him, and I wish he’d start talking properly, it seems mean to keep her out. She goes to the cupboards and opens them. There are a few chipped enamel plates and mugs. There’s a cutlery drawer and a cupboard with some pans in. She finds a pile of chopped logs in a wooden crate.
—We can have a cuppa.
—What with?
We look in the cupboards some more. There is a tin of tuna that has rusted and looks very old. She holds the tin up and I wince. I’ve always had this thing about tinned tuna, I’m not really sure why but I think it’s to do with opening the can and seeing the moist flesh of the fish exposed, swimming in brine, like the flotsam of an aquatic disaster.
—There’s no milk, no water, and no teabags, she says. Although we all know this.
—There was a shop about two or three miles down the road, Ashley says.
We look around some more.
—How do you know someone doesn’t already live here?
Ashley looks around and shrugs. —There’d be more stuff, he says. He picks up the tin of tuna. —I mean, this is ancient. It can’t have been lived in for years.
Becky raises her eyebrows, unsure.
—It’s better than a Youth Hostel or a Bed and Breakfast, I say, picking up on Becky’s look.
—How do you work that out? she says.
—He’s right, Ashley says. —It’s better than them places.
I know what he is thinking, that those are the sort of places Dave will check out, but he doesn’t let on about Dave to Becky.
—It will do for now, she says. I go over to the mattress. I pick up one of the blankets and sniff. It doesn’t smell great. Ashley’s by the pot-bellied stove. He opens the door and pokes about with a metal rod. Becky goes to the cupboards again and carries on searching. She goes to the sink and looks out of the window.
—Shit! Someone’s coming, she says.
We freeze in panic. I grab Becky and we duck behind some cupboards. Ashley takes the poker he’s been using and takes position behind the door. He holds the poker above his head.
The door opens and in walks a man. He looks about sixty and is very large. About six foot three maybe and heavily built. He has a massive head, which is shaven, although there’s a lot of black and white stubble on top of his head and around his jaw. He has very prominent scars on his face, two deep ridges of scar tissue curl up at either side of his mouth, travelling up his cheeks almost towards his ears, which makes him look like he is grimacing. He wears a big black overcoat and has a plastic shopping bag in each hand. His hands are huge. He plonks the bags in the middle of the room.
Ashley creeps up behind him. We watch from behind the cupboards. He holds the poker and is about to cosh the man, when this man turns around just in time and ducks out of the way. He grabs Ashley’s arm and wrestles the poker off him. He throws Ashley to the ground. He strikes him repeatedly with the poker until Ashley’s head explodes and bits of skull and brain and blood spurt all over the room. No, the man hasn’t noticed Ashley, so I jump out holding a frying pan.
—Argghh! I shout.
The man turns to us now and sees me and Becky.
—Who the fuck are you? he says.
—Who the fuck are you? Ashley says.
The man laughs. —What the fuck are you doing in my house? he says. —You’ve got a fucking cheek ant you?
He approaches me and holds up the poker. He’s about to whack me.
—Wait! I shout. —We made a mistake. We thought this place was empty.
The man considers this. He lowers the poker.
—Well it ain’t. Now clear off.
Me and Becky edge towards the door but Ashley approaches the man. —Look, we’re really sorry about that, he says.
The man ignores him. —Go on, do one, he says. Ashley edges towards the door too but then turns back to the man.
—Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cuppa? he says to the man.
That’s actually not a bad idea, I could do with a cup of tea. Becky pulls at my sleeve. The man stares back as though he can’t beli
eve I’m standing in his doorway, then he charges at us. We run out the door.
We run a few hundred yards, but when we look back, the man hasn’t followed us. There’s just the dull windows of the shack staring blankly out.
—So what now? Becky says.
We sit down by some rocks, on the outskirts of the trees. Still no sign of any ravens. I take the binoculars and have a look. I search the outline of the trees. There’s a wren in the shadow of a boulder, hopping about, its comparatively long tail bobbing up and down. It sticks its bill into a fissure in the rock. A dunnock lands nearby and close to this a robin perches on a broken branch, its bright orangey-red breast still visible in the darkness beneath the tree’s canopy.
The robin’s reputation as being cute has always amused me, in fact it is a very aggressive bird. I remember a teacher called Mrs Woods in primary school telling us about a robin that used to follow her as she walked her dog along a footpath near where she lived. How friendly it is, she said. It’s not being friendly, I pointed out, you are on its patch and it is warning you off. She didn’t believe me, but a male robin will happily peck a rival male to death if it wanders into its territory. This robin watches the wren suspiciously, but the wren, probably all too aware of the robin’s ruthlessness, flies off.
I’m sure that a lot of the misunderstanding about the robin’s behaviour is down to that story we were told at school about a robin visiting Christ on the cross. According to the story, as Jesus was strung out dying, a robin came and sang in his ear to soothe him and the blood from his wounds stained the robin’s breast. And they actually expect you to learn things at school?
Apparently the robin is the most popular bird in Britain. There was a campaign a few years ago to make it the official national bird. Perhaps, given the national pastime of men fighting outside pubs of an evening, it would be an apt choice.
The robin flies off, then there’s nothing for a while, just the leaves flapping and some grass swaying slightly in the weak breeze. Then I see the dunnock again. It doesn’t stay long, it shows some interest in some of the undergrowth, pecking at some moss, then it flies off too. Then there’s nothing for a good few minutes. Becky fiddles with the zip on her coat, turning the metal clasp around and rubbing its smoothness with her thumb and index finger. Ashley puts his hands in his pockets and stares at the ground. He kicks a twig about and scuffs up some undergrowth. I take up the binoculars again and scan the line of trees. Then I see it, by the side of a tree trunk, what looks like a small woodpecker. I focus in on it, zooming in on its striking colouring, a sort of blue-grey upper body with buff under-parts and orangey chestnut flanks. Its cheeks are white with a bold black streak through its eyes. It climbs the tree in short jerky motions. It’s a nuthatch.
The first time I saw a nuthatch was when we went to Nottingham. My mum had to have an operation and we drove down with this woman she was seeing at the time called Susan. I must have been eight or nine. I was never told what the operation was for, but she’d been in a lot of pain for quite a long time and she’d be really moody for days, snapping at us. My sister was at school. I can’t remember why I wasn’t at school. I think it must have been one of the times I was excluded for not turning up to class, which I always think is a strange punishment. I got into the habit of going to Central Library in Manchester every morning instead of school. It was easy, you just had to stay on the bus until it got to the end of the route rather than getting off before. I’d go to the ornithological section and read books and make notes. I’d take my sketchbook and do some drawings. I could spend all day there and usually did.
The ornithological section was only small, really just two or three shelves. It was sandwiched between ants and rats in the main reading room, a massive dome, like being inside a giant’s skull. There was a hole at the top where light came in so that you got natural light for reading. It was like the giant’s eye, a Cyclops, an eye not peering out at the world but peering in. There were some words going all the way round the room in a big circle. Something about getting wisdom and embracing her like wisdom was a woman. Strange acoustics in there. You could hear someone at the opposite end of the room better than someone a few feet away. Someone at the opposite end of the room cutting paper sounded alien and strange and wonderful. Even someone turning the pages of a book sounded like something from Doctor Who.
I’d only meant to go there for a few days, but before you know it, I hadn’t been to school for nearly a month. They’d written to my mum a few times but I’d seen the letters on the mat and put them in the bin before she got to them. Anyway, it was a nice day out. I’d never been to Nottingham before. Susan said that they’d have to keep her in overnight, so we stayed at a B and B. I don’t remember that, but I do remember having a walk in the wood with Susan and spotting a nuthatch. My first nuthatch. This was before I had my field guide with its definitive list. I had my Usborne Spotter’s Guide which I’d bought myself for Christmas with a token my uncle Mark’s wife had given me. It’s only a small book so it’s easy to carry and it doesn’t get bogged down with listing everything, just the most common birds. We drove back in the morning, and Susan made some joke about it being a good job my mum was a dyke. But mum didn’t laugh.
I pass the binoculars to Becky and point to where the nuthatch is. She watches it prod at some bark with its long sturdy bill, then it gives a quick twit, twit, twit, twe-twe, before flying to a neighbouring trunk.
—It’s a nuthatch, I say. —Have you seen one before?
—No.
—Nice, aren’t they?
She nods. I think she’s not as mad with me now. Perhaps she wasn’t mad. Sometimes people are quiet because they are in a quiet mood, or because they are enjoying the scenery. It is nice scenery, it’s certainly better than Weaste or Ordsall, it’s even better than Buile Hill Park.
Ashley stands up, —I’ve got an idea.
—What is it? I say.
—Wait here, Ashley says. —I’ll be back in a bit. And he strides off, fists rammed into his pockets, towards the shack. His sudden movement has scared the nuthatch off. They’re quite a shy bird really. Hang on, I think, I better go with him.
My mum went a bit funny after that operation. She and Susan split up. My mum came back from the shops one day and heard some banging in the bedroom. She found Susan in bed with this woman she worked with. So that was that. Mum would be really quiet for weeks, and then she’d go out to this pub in town near Chorlton Street bus station and sometimes she wouldn’t come back in the evenings. This would go on for a few weeks and then she’d say she wasn’t drinking again. She’d take us out shopping and buy us things. I managed to get a lot of my books that way. My sister was into clothes and also Pulp, so she was happy to shop at Topshop or HMV. Pulp split up soon after that and then she got into Nirvana. But Kurt Cobain had been dead for about six years at this stage, so I couldn’t see the point.
I could see the point of Kurt Cobain shooting himself though. I think if I had to live with Courtney Love, I would have shot myself too, so you can’t blame him for that. It was when she got into Nirvana that my sister started cutting herself. One of the good things about my mum and Susan splitting up was that I managed to amass a very fine collection of ornithological books. For a while I didn’t have to take them out of the library, which saved me a lot of time and effort, although obviously not money. One of the advantages of taking books out of the library is that it doesn’t cost you anything. Unless you get caught. Touch wood, I’ve never been caught.
We find a length of fencing with barbed wire along it. We find some dead beetles impaled along the barbs and Becky wants to know why they are there. I explain that they will have been put there by a shrike. They do that. Once they have had their fill, if food is plentiful, they continue to catch it, only they impale it on spikes, thorns or barbs – a sort of larder.
It’s a funny thing with birds, they are always on the brink of starvation. That’s one of the problems with flight – weight. They have t
o be the lightest they can be at all times, so they can only ever eat enough to immediately sustain them. A bit like a jockey. They can’t ever really satisfy their appetites. We talk about shrikes, the red-backed I saw earlier, the lesser grey, the great grey and the wood chat shrike. The masked shrike is still on my list, waiting to be ticked off, but not the red-backed anymore.
—We’ll have to get fixed up with something soon, Becky says.
—How do you mean?
—Somewhere to stay. I’ve got money, she says.
He’s been a long time, I’m thinking and I’m wondering what his idea is. I suppose you’ve got to let him give it a go. I’m not too hopeful though. We examine the edges of the copse. We find a pellet, too small to be anything other than a hawk or a falcon. All I can think about though is ravens. The barrenness of the landscape should provide lots of dead carcasses. Sheep sometimes lose their footing in this terrain and can fall and break their legs. The only non-human enemy the raven has to face is the golden eagle, as they compete for food. But we’re unlikely to find any round here. Remains of ravens have been found in eagle pellets, according to the book, but they could have been taken as carrion.
—According to the book, there’s a well-established crag-nest somewhere near here, I say, examining the maps at the back.
Becky has the binoculars now and scans the horizon. —There’s some sticks gathered, looks like it could be a nest, she says.
—What’s that there?
But it’s just rooks. —It’ll be dark soon. We can’t stay here much longer. Becky sits down on a rock.
—Come on, let’s try round the other side of this crag. But she wants to have a rest. She takes out the bread, meat and cheese and we eat. She takes out some chocolate and she hands me a chunk. I bite it in two and chew. It is soft with the heat and soon turns to mush in my mouth, like an over-sweet cloying paste, all wet and claggy. It’s hard to know what the appeal is.
I realise that Ashley has probably gone to talk the man round. I doubt it will work though. He won’t want to stay in a B and B, but I don’t let on to Becky, perhaps we can sleep in the car.
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