What the Birds See

by Sonya Hartnett

  * * *

  On Monday morning he refuses to go to school. “You’re not sick,” Beattie tells him. “You were playing on the road all day yesterday, you can’t be too sick. Get dressed, Adrian.”

  But he clamps his mouth and simply looks at her, his grey eyes large in a small, ashy face. He sits in his pyjamas on the end of his bed, aimlessly kicking his heels. By now he should be showered and eating breakfast, and time is getting away. “Do you want a belting?” she asks.

  He considers this. “If I don’t have to go to school.”

  Beattie hisses air past her teeth, throwing his shirt to the floor. She should make good her threat and smack him, but the truth is she’s nonplussed. He has never refused to go to school before – he takes school the way she takes church, with never so much as a whimper. He knows that attendance is one of her rules and that her rules are well nigh set in stone. He must have his reasons for resisting now, when never before. He slouches like an untidy elf, the living image of all that’s stubborn. There must be something grim about today, something he’s not telling. “Do you have a test?”

  “No.”

  She peers at him, sees he’s not lying. “Your teacher’s back from her honeymoon today. Don’t you want to see her?”

  He pauses, not wanting to be unkind. “I’ll see her another day.”

  Grandmother and grandson gaze at each other; her eyes are like beams, unchallengeable, and he glances away defeated. His hands fidget like flies on his knees. “Get dressed, Adrian,” Beattie sighs. “I’m tired of this.”

  She strides for the door. “Please don’t make me,” he groans.

  She marches down the hall and into the kitchen, slamming herself into a chair. His cereal sits waiting, dry as slate in its bowl. His cup of tea stands beside hers, a skin of coolness on the surface of both. There’d been panic and despair in his voice when he asked her please.

  She sips her tea, the skin breaking into minute continents. She thinks that she’s too old for all this: I’ve forgotten what I’m meant to do.

  Capitulation now will certainly mark the beginning of an unstoppable erosion – soon enough he’ll be disobeying every one of her commands (soon he’ll be a teenager, run completely wild). Yet Beattie feels an inexplicable desire to let him do as he wants: she has the peculiar sensation that, should she send him off to school, some dreadful harm will come to him.

  She puts her cup down with a splash and marches along the hall to his room. He is standing beside the bed, slipping thin arms into a school shirt. It pleases her to see he’s succumbed to authority and is doing what he’s told, but her mind, finally made up, won’t now be changed.

  “If you stay home,” she growls, “you have to stay in bed. No television, nothing. If you’re sick, you rest. I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice. And don’t you smile at me.”

  She spins on her feet, slams the door after her. I’m too old for this, she insists to herself, and yet she does feel better.

  He lies in bed for hours, flipping through the pages of National Geographic. He glances now and then at his Batman clock and wonders what’s happening at school.The teacher, returned from her honeymoon, would be in a good mood. She’d be glad to see them, want to know what work they’d done. She would ask what had happened to Horsegirl, and a serious girl would recount the misadventures; there’d be additional asides offered from those who perceived she was forgetting important details. Their teacher would listen, and then she would explain the disappearance to them in a way that made it seem less menacing.

  His back gets sore and he wriggles around. Rory visits and they play Battleship. In the afternoon he surprises himself by falling into thick, claggy sleep. When he wakes the blankets are knotted round his stomach and his head vaguely hurts. He stares in a daze at the sea-monster, at its dapples of glittery gold. He’s made a mistake by staying home, he sees that now, but it is too late to change.

  On Tuesday morning he gets dressed for school without a word of protest. He keeps his distance from Clinton in class. At recess he doesn’t go to the usual place beside the drinking fountains outside the toilet block: instead he takes his playlunch, two biscuits wedged with butter and jam, down to the school gates. He hoists himself to the top of the wall and sits so his legs dangle free, so part of him, at least, is not fenced in.

  It had been a mistake staying home yesterday because his absence had whispered surrender. From his eyrie on the wall Adrian sees Paul do a crazy jig, a victory dance solely for him. He looks away, nibbling the biscuits. He decides to stop regretting his missed day of school – it might have appeared a tactical error, but it wasn’t really. His presence would not have kept Clinton loyal, it wouldn’t have fended off Paul. He chooses to see his peaceful day at home as one hard day he had not spent at school.

  Inside himself he’s crawling, though, flailing in quicksands of anguish. He does not know what he’s going to do.

  He shifts on his perch, watching the cars on the road. A ghost of himself is proud that he sits, head up, with dignity. No one watching would guess how he feels. There are years of this life ahead of him. Just one year is a long time, unfathomable. His lips move silently as he counts the cars passing, for want of something to do.

  It’s the going-home bell he looks forward to, the time when his grandma arrives with the car and he can sit in his chair at the kitchen table, drinking Milo from a glass and talking to her while she prepares his dinner and he attends to his homework. He keeps his ears pricked and the minute he hears the ringing voices of his neighbours he is rushing for the door, forgetting his homework, dropping the conversation, ignoring his coat and gum-boots. In the hour before darkfall the four children sit in the gutter, leaves blowing past their ankles, Nicole’s long legs folded underneath her chin. Giles potters in the mud, Joely brings her swapcards and Barbies and hoop. They chat about nothing, just childish things. They make-believe, toss gravel, peel bark off papertrees. Adrian discovers that he lives for these moments, this one gloamy hour of the day. His neighbours want him with them; on Thursday, when he’s delayed helping Rory stretch canvas, Joely comes knocking like a mouse at the door, wondering what’s happened to him. On Friday evening, when his first lonely school week is done, he hunkers forward round his cold white hands and, nodding up at Mr Jeremio’s house, says confidently, “You’re going to live here for ever, aren’t you?”

  Nicole is scraping a stick along the gutter and doesn’t look at him. “This isn’t our first house,” she says. “We’ve had a lot of others. Dad’s work sends him all over the place, and that’s when we move home. If they send him somewhere different from here, then we’ll have to leave.”

  Adrian feels as if he’s turning to jelly. “Do you think he will get sent away?”

  Nicole shrugs, prodding leaves with the stick. “I don’t know. He said Mum’s too sick, now, to keep shifting everywhere.”

  Adrian dips his head. He feels the sadness coming off Joely for a mother who can’t walk or feed herself, who’s visited each day by a nurse. And although he feels awful, he cannot help it: he cannot help hoping that the lady will never get well.

  NINE

  That evening there’s a rare, rather insidious hole in Marta’s hectic social life and, unable to fill the gap with her own company, she decides, at the last minute, to dine with her mother and brother. When Adrian comes indoors, he is surprised to find his gran in the flurry of fretful organization that only a visit from her daughter can incite. She dumps Adrian’s dinner in front of him and hurries off to set the dining table without bothering to pronounce her customary warning about catching flu from sitting in drains.

  He blows on the chips and the single flat chop, the steam of boiled carrots churning at his throat. His chilled ears burn with the warmth of the room. His grandmother slams the oven door, polishes a tray of glasses. “Hurry hurry hurry,” she singsongs. “There’s a scrap of yesterday’s apple pie for your dessert, Adrian.” While he dawdles over his meal she whips up a frantic
batch of lemon-delicious, in her cruel haste forgetting that he reserves the right to lick the bowl.

  Aunt Marta arrives in her perky blue car, bringing with her a brilliantly patterned skivvy that she insists Adrian put on. “I bought it for my favourite nephew,” she smiles. “You’ll be adorable.”

  Adrian looks down at his paisleyed self in dismay. Rory, stalking down the hall, catches sight of him and stops dead. He lets his eyes grow round and wide, he rolls them dementedly in his head. Adrian starts to giggle, and Marta wheels, bristling. “Tell me what you know about fashion, Rory? Tell me!”

  “He looks like a clown!”

  Adrian’s glad when the adults are finally cloistered in the dining room, leaving the run of the house to him. He struggles from the grip of the skivvy and changes into his pyjamas. He lies on the floor in front of the telly, his socked feet on the bars of the radiator. The weekend flows ahead of him like a deep and lazy river. The past few days have chewed a great chunk from him, like the bite of a shark – he feels exhausted from the sheer effort of living through those massive unfriendly hours. But the weekend is here now, come to his rescue: he wishes he could slow it down, that it would stay Friday night for years, until he was older and brave.

  He waits patiently in the den until he hears his grandmother bring out the empty dinner plates and take the lemon-delicious from the oven. He hears her scoop the pudding into bowls and spoon onto the top of each a blot of cream and ice-cream. He sits steady, watching the television but no longer seeing it, as she carries the bowls to the dining room and the door swings shut behind her. He allows a few more minutes for them to be absorbed in their talk and dessert. Then, a scavenger in search of leftovers, he scuttles to the kitchen.

  The pudding tin stands on the sink. There’s three or four teaspoons’ worth of yellow goo stuck to the sides. He scrapes this out and shakes it onto a plate, wary of making a noise. He hears his aunt laughing, the clink of silverware on crockery. He pads to the freezer and slides out the ice-cream bucket. A platter of ice is frozen to its frigid plastic lid.

  Words come suddenly through the wall. “Like a dog,” Aunt Marta is saying. “Wouldn’t you, if you got one?”

  Adrian goes completely still, the quarry-work of the spoon halting in mid-gouge. His mind, fast as lightning, fills in the blanks of their conversation. They are going to get him a dog.

  A dog! He’s always longed for one. He would love to have a dog, somebody of his own, someone who would share his life, who wanted to be with him. A dog who’d sleep at night in his room, though Gran wouldn’t let it on the bed; a dog to romp with in the garden, to gallop alongside in the park. It wouldn’t matter if he spent his school days alone: he would have a dog to come home to, someone waiting and watching for him.

  Standing in the kitchen, Adrian sees it all clearly: going to the pound, picking out the dog, kneeling before the dog’s brown face, the dog sniffing, then licking, his hand. Bringing her home in the back seat of the car, giving her a name. Adrian’s heart beats hard and fast, he wraps his arms around himself.

  His aunt is talking, and he creeps closer to the door. He hears her say, “He’s growing up, don’t forget. He’s probably getting hormonal.”

  “He’s nine,” Rory scoffs. “How hormonal can he be?”

  Gran says, “I don’t think it’s him getting older, I think it’s me. My mothering days are done.”

  “Oh, Mum!”

  “I tell you, it wears me out. I haven’t got the energy I used to have. It was so nice the other day, when he went to stay at Clinton’s. I had a whole afternoon to myself, not worrying about a thing.”

  “But why does he worry you at all?” questions Rory. “He’s only a little boy—”

  “Yes, but he rules my days. I can’t go anywhere, I can’t forget myself – I’ve got to be here every three-thirty, collecting him from school. I get a holiday only when he does. I’ve got to cook a decent meal for him each night, so he doesn’t waste away. He needs cleaning, clothing, carting here and there. It’s hard work, rearing a child. It’s not work for the old.”

  “You’re not old, Mum,” soothes Marta. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Beattie smiles tightly, but will not be pushed off-course. “Sometimes I think I’m bad for him. I don’t have the patience I used to have. I remember when you three were young, I was much more tolerant with you. Poor Adrian’s always in trouble, and that isn’t good for him.”

  There’s silence over the dinner table while her children look for inspiration in their bowls. Marta says blandly, “We’ve spoken about this before. I should think the person all this worrying isn’t good for is you, Mum.”

  But Beattie isn’t listening – her eyes have glazed, she turns her spoon. In a muted distant voice she says, “I was thinking, the other night, about those missing children. Two girls and a smaller boy – like Sookie and Maggie and Rory. I thought that, if I’d lost the three of you that way – that would certainly have killed me. I would have fallen down and died. But you don’t die for other people’s children – only for your own. I love him, of course – I’ll protect him and keep him and do whatever needs doing to get him grown; I wouldn’t let him be hurt or lost, he’s a part of me – but I know he isn’t mine. And I sometimes worry that’s the way I treat him, as if he isn’t mine. I think, How can he possibly thrive?”

  Her children stare across the table at her and for some moments neither can fathom what to say. Then Marta splutters, “You should have made her take responsibility, Mum. What right has she got to do this to you?”

  Rory groans. “Forget Sookie, Marta. Just forgive her, and forget.”

  “That’s easy to say, and nice for Sookie, to leave everyone else with her mess!” Marta twists towards her mother, flames springing in her eyes. “Maybe you should think of doing something, if that’s the way you feel, Mum. Maybe it’s best for him, and best for you. After all, he can’t be happy—”

  “He is happy! He’s perfectly happy!”

  Marta disregards her brother. “I’m not saying you must, Mum. But it’s like I was saying: if you bought a dog and realized the breed didn’t suit you – that it needed more exercise than you could give it, or ate more than you could afford – then it would be right, wouldn’t it, to put it somewhere it got proper attention? That would be a kindness to the animal itself, wouldn’t it?”

  “You disgust me,” Rory sighs. “I wish you wouldn’t speak any more.”

  “At least I’m trying! I want to do what’s best for Mum! Hasn’t she got any rights?”

  Beattie listens without interest as they sink their verbal fangs into one another, their lifelong rivalry taking no prisoners, sacrificing innocents, as real as a stench in the room. She feels, as she sits there, a sudden toothy hatred for her children, and wonders what error she and Lester made, to produce three such graceless offspring. Adrian, she thinks, is the only worthwhile thing ever to come from them. She clatters two bowls together, fracturing the quarrel’s momentum. “I know what you’re saying, Marta,” she says, “And I’m grateful you’re concerned. But I’ll keep him – he needs a family, he needs a home. He can be the comfort of my old age. And at least he’s not always bickering, like some children I could name.”

  She hoists herself to her feet and collects the crockery while they watch, amused and impressed and pleased, more than anything, that this well-worn conversation topic has been dealt with successfully once again. They know nothing will come of it, it’s left no mark on their minds, they can rehash it afresh next week and pretend, as always, that they’ve made headway on a vital matter, that they have not simply been wading through mud. By the time she returns with the coffee, they’ll be happily ripping up something new.

  She pushes past the swinging door, the bowls rocking on a palm. The kitchen is empty and tinged with coolness; from the den wafts the sound of the TV. She reminds herself that they must keep their voices down, given some of these walls have ears.

  Adrian should know better than to
eavesdrop. Not a year has passed since he stood listening in the hallway of this very house, just out of sight of the kitchen. Subsiding at his knees that day had been a garbage bag packed with all he owned. He’d been instructed to take the bag to the spare room but he had hesitated on rounding the kitchen doorway, and flattened himself to the wood-panelled wall. He can still remember how warm and smooth the wood had felt between his shoulder blades.

  In the kitchen, Adrian’s father was talking to Beattie. “I need to be free,” the man had pleaded. “This isn’t the life for me.”

  Beattie swears later that she’d craved to slap his face. “Lester’s not cold in his grave,” she said. “This isn’t quite the time.”

  “Lester loved Adrian. He would be happy to know his grandson was here. It’ll be company for you – for him and for you.”

  “Don’t you say Lester’s name.” Beattie was murderous. “I won’t hear it from you.”

  The rubber soles of the father’s boots squelched across the lino; Adrian had turned his eyes away, as if doing so would hide him. He caught sight of his reflection in the hallway mirror, an undersized fair-haired boy wearing a trim navy coat. Inside the coat’s collar was stitched a tag on which his mother had printed his name. He heard a match struck, the crackle of a cigarette. There’d been a long pause where nothing was said, but Beattie was the only one thinking. Adrian’s father had already decided what he was going to say.

  “How can you do this?” the woman asked eventually. “He’s your son.”

  “Well, so Sookie says.” The man tried to sound casual, bohemian enough not to care. “She’s not exactly reliable.”

  Beattie gagged. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare! You’re not a father’s bootlace, you!”

  The smell of smoke found the boy in the hall. There was squelching as the man recrossed the room, crackling as he burned his cigarette. “Look,” he said, “that’s by-the-by. We have to do what’s best for him. I can’t take care of him, and that’s all there is to it. I need to be free.”