Golden Deeds

by Chidgey, Catherine

  ‘Run and get your new picture, Daniel,’ said Ruth.

  Malcolm was already taking the glasses from the cabinet. He twisted the ice-cube tray, shook out several cold nuggets.

  ‘Do you know how insecure these old windows are?’ she said. ‘If they’re open even a crack, someone can walk right in.’

  Malcolm sighed. ‘Some of the upstairs ones, though, they’d be all right. You can get special locks for them.’

  Ruth clinked the ice-cubes in her glass, her fingers tracing patterns in the condensation.

  ‘Here,’ said Daniel, handing his father a buckled picture. Two sheets of greaseproof paper had been ironed together with a sprinkling of crayon shavings in between. ‘Like this,’ he said, and held the picture up to the light so the slivers of wax shone.

  ‘Very pretty,’ said Malcolm. ‘Is it a boat?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Daniel. ‘A boat, a boat!’ And he ran around the couch. ‘Mummy thought it was a house.’

  Malcolm put his head on one side, assessing, deciding. ‘No, of course it’s not a house. Look at these yellow bits, they’re the sails, and those are the masts, and there’s even a porthole right here.’ He glanced at Ruth. ‘I’ll pick up some locks tomorrow, shall I?’ Then he said, ‘Aren’t you a clever boy.’ And he sailed the boat slowly across the glass, and Daniel’s eyes followed it, and Ruth finished her drink and went to the kitchen.

  She twisted the roots off the lettuce as if wringing a bird’s neck. The outermost leaves were thick at the base, and a darker green than the others. Here and there along the edges they were brown and crisp, like paper starting to burn. The good leaves she plunged into water. They kept rising to the top and floating, frilly green boats, and she pushed them under again and again to rid them of the grit from the garden. The water circled her wrists like silver bracelets. She remembered seeing her mother standing at the sink in summer, her wrists held under the cold tap. It cools the blood, she’d explained. Ruth sank her arms deeper into the water, past the hot creases of her elbows. The lettuce leaves bobbed around her. She waited for her blood to cool, and she thought about locks, and window-pane oceans, and boats made of coloured wax.

  She couldn’t sleep that night. It was too hot to have even a sheet over her, but she felt exposed, unsafe without any sort of covering. She remembered staying with her grandparents when she was a girl. All the beds in their house had had layers of blankets on them, heavy wool coloured like the insides of chocolates: soft pinks and greens, thick creams. She remembered the weight of the blankets on her, their close weave, the furry smell of them. The satin binding was smooth and cool like her grandmother’s fingers, the wool itself rough like her grandfather’s cheek when he kissed her goodnight. Nobody had blankets like that any more, she thought. Nobody wrapped beds tight like gifts. Ruth slept under feathers now, and dreamt of birds, of being so light she might float away but she missed the safe weight of childhood. And sometimes she still dreamt of Laura.

  She was careful not to wake Malcolm. She wandered from their turret bedroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the lounge. She stood in every room in the house, observed the night from seven different angles. Last of all she checked Daniel, who was curled in his usual tight ball, fists clenched, untouchable. Only Laura’s room she didn’t enter, although she could have, quite easily. She could have grasped the door handle, pushed her way in. She could have brushed her fingers over clothes in the wardrobe, held the pillow to her cheek, pulled the curtains to keep out the night. Or she could have just stood there for a while, touching nothing, not even sitting on the smoothed bed. But she didn’t go in. She rushed back to her room, suddenly scared, expecting to find something dreadful if she did open the door. The man who took Laura, or her own terrified reflection.

  After Malcolm had fitted the locks, Ruth agreed to leave a few windows open during the day. Each morning she slid them up just a crack, smaller than a hand-span. All except for Laura’s room; that remained closed.

  As soon as she got home she knew that things had been disturbed: the dried flowers on the window sill were knocked over, Malcolm’s papers skewed. Pieces of Daniel’s jigsaw puzzle—Big Bird, from Sesame Street—were scattered around, patches of orange and yellow littering the floor like fallen leaves. She heard a rustling in the next room and froze.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called, motioning for Daniel to keep still and quiet. She inched her way across the kitchen. One piece of puzzle had made its way under the table: a fragment of wing, the feathers almost indistinguishable from the tail plumage. Daniel always got into difficulty with that one. He was really too young for such a confusing puzzle.

  She pushed open the lounge door. Nothing was disturbed, as far as she could tell. ‘Is there anyone there?’ she said, her voice brittle in the uncarpeted room. The new window lock was still in place, the gauzy curtains moving in the breeze. Daniel’s boat picture, held to the glass with one piece of tape, fluttered now and then. There was no one here.

  Ruth was about to kick off her shoes when she noticed a spatter of white on top of the television. It was on the floor, too, and on the rug. Bird droppings.

  She opened the window as wide as it would go. There was a smudge on it, where the bird must have flown into the glass. She peered under the couch, behind the chairs and curtains. She even lifted the rug and looked underneath, although she knew there would be nothing there but dust. The bird could be anywhere in the house.

  She worked her way through each room, finding more droppings here and there, but no bird. In Daniel’s room it had speckled the dressing-table. The poor creature must have caught sight of itself in the mirror, Ruth realised, and taken fright. She filled a bucket with warm water and began to clean up.

  ‘Why are you washing the wood?’ said Daniel.

  ‘There was a bird in here,’ she said. ‘He made a wee bit of a mess and Mummy’s just tidying it up.’

  ‘A big bird?’ he said, coming over and inspecting the surface.

  ‘Mind the bucket, Daniel.’

  ‘Was it Big Bird?’

  ‘No,’ said Ruth, drying off the dressing-table with one of Malcolm’s old singlets. ‘Just a little sparrow or a starling or something. But he’s gone now.’

  ‘Why?’ said Daniel. ‘Why didn’t he stay?’

  In bed that night, Malcolm lay on her so heavily that the air was pressed from her lungs. It was as if the hot weather had made his flesh more dense; as if there were no spaces in him. Ruth thought she could hear something in the bedroom. Was the bird still trapped there, in a corner perhaps, beating its wings under the bed like a patient ghost?

  ‘Shh,’ she said, and placed a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. She listened for the movement of wings, for feathers rustling like bedclothes.

  ‘What is it?’ said Malcolm. He was completely still now, and whispering, as if he had heard something too. ‘Am I hurting you?’

  Ruth closed her eyes and shook her head. Malcolm began to move again, and the wooden bed creaked, and Ruth kept her eyes shut so tightly she could see patterns: snowflakes magnified many times over. And with each creak she thought of thin bird-bones locking into place, preparing for flight.

  15 November 1999

  Dear Colette,

  Patrick has been making slow but steady progress. His fractures are healing well, and we hope it won’t be too much longer before he regains consciousness. Thank you all for your letters and tapes. He has heard them several times over, and were sure they’re making a difference. The balance in his account is growing steadily, too, for which were sure he will be grateful—even if he is a little gruff at first! We all know how uncomfortable he can be in the face of generosity, but please continue to help him in whatever way you can.

  Yours,

  The Friends of Patrick Mercer

  It was the first piece of mail Colette received in the north. On the envelope her old address had been crossed out with one swift diagonal line, and in her mother’s untidy hand were the words Please forward to, foll
owed by her brother’s address. Colette sighed. Just the address would have done. Her mother was always saying too much, providing unnecessary detail. She risked nothing.

  That night Colette lied to her.

  ‘I’m having a lovely time,’ she said. ‘All the courses look so interesting, it’s hard to decide what to take. And transferring won’t be a problem, they said at Registry’

  ‘And the flat-hunting, how’s that working out? Have you found anything?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve seen a few, but they’re all pretty untidy’

  ‘Have you been taking Dominic with you? What does he think?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ lied Colette, ‘he’s come with me to all of them, don’t worry. We’re having a great time.’

  ‘Have you thought about Christmas?’ said her mother. ‘When do you think you’ll be here? It’ll be nice to have my two babies home again.’

  ‘We’ll probably just come down for a couple of days,’ said Colette. ‘We thought we’d spend New Year up here.’

  ‘Oh,’ said her mother. ‘You’re not homesick, then?’

  ‘No, not at all. Dominic’s here. And my allergies are much better.’

  And Colette wasn’t sad to have shifted, to have left behind the place of her birth, to be separated from her mother. She didn’t miss the cold south, the wood-smoke that got into her throat and her hair, the frequent asthma attacks. In the north, she could breathe properly. The following year she would be able to walk to university without a coat, sit outside at lunchtime. She could see her brother whenever she wanted to, go out with him and his friends, until she had some of her own. She’d made the right decision to move, she knew, but despite the warmer climate, the lush foliage, she felt a gloominess she couldn’t identify. It filled her head, pressed itself against her temples, her ribs.

  ‘You sound down,’ said her mother. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m a little bit tired, that’s all,’ said Colette, thinking of the walk she’d taken that afternoon. She’d wandered down the street to see where it led, taking careful note of signs so she wouldn’t get lost. Give way, she read to herself. Children crossing. The sound of her shoes was huge in her head. Stop. Wait. There was danger everywhere, and what good was a signpost? It was just another thing to hit.

  ‘I’ll be fine once I find some summer work,’ she said into the telephone.

  ‘What you need is iron. Girls these days don’t eat properly, they don’t get enough red meat. You should have some lamb’s fry.’

  ‘The real name is liver,’ said Colette. ‘I abhor liver. You know that.’

  ‘Do you?’ said her mother. ‘I must be thinking of Dominic.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Colette, ‘most likely’

  Her mother always thought of Dominic. As a child, Colette had suspected she only ever wanted a boy. Later, when she could exercise adult reasoning, she believed that her mother loved him more because he was so like his father in temperament, so like the person who had left them. She had made Dominic belong to her. And then he left too.

  ‘You can come and visit any time you like, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘You can get cheap flights if you book ahead,’

  She had never visited her son, though. She had stayed in the south in her cluttered house and had focused her attention on Colette.

  ‘I can’t understand why he moved so far away,’ she said. ‘He could have studied chemistry down here, couldn’t he?’

  Colette’s brother had always liked reading about men overcoming enormous odds. As a boy, his bookcase was punctuated with stories of survival, courage, wilderness improvisation. Sailors drifted in damaged lifeboats for weeks, mountaineers endured blizzards, plane-crash heroes administered inventive first aid. The thing the stories had in common was that they were all true; he wasn’t interested in anything made up. When he poked fun at Colette’s teen-romance novels, she told him he had no imagination.

  ‘Imagination?’ he said, eyes wide. ‘What sort of imagination do you think it takes to build a shelter from branches and leaves? To survive two weeks in a snow cave?’

  Once, he’d insisted on sleeping in the garden. He’d made his own shelter from sheets and long-handled garden implements, and had even stuffed a pillowcase with hay intended for the rabbit. He ignored Colette when she told him that real explorers didn’t use pillows, and had placed it at the head of his sleeping bag.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said their mother. ‘I’m not sure I want you out there all night.’

  But Dominic had shown her his shelter, demonstrated the door flaps and the straw pillow, and eventually she relented, and Dominic got his way. Colette had looked out the window once, when she woke in the night, and there was a faint glow soaking through the walls of the makeshift tent, and Dominic’s silhouette was huge against the family sheets. That was all she remembered, except for hearing her mother getting up throughout the night and sliding open the back door to check he was all right.

  Patrick was hot, he was burning up. He could feel the heat of the flames against his face, almost touching his skin, his eyes and nose stinging, his throat rough. He was crying but the fire evaporated his tears before they ran down his cheeks. And there was something in his arm, a thin hard something right in the crook of his elbow. He could feel it every now and then as he moved.

  He opened his eyes and looked around. In every direction there was nothing but white, and above him hung a liquid-filled bag on a hook. He was very cold and had no idea where he was, or why his head was throbbing, or why, for that matter, he was so under-dressed. He fingered the stiff, scratchy gown. He must look ridiculous. He shivered. Was that snow, that soft cold substance beneath his feet? Was there anyone around who could give him directions to his mother’s house? Was there anyone here at all? Remain calm, he said to himself. Now was not the time to panic; panicking would only make his head hurt. Above him the sun was a pale disc. Children were wrong, he thought, to draw the sun with a big, smiling face. He wished he had his duffel coat with him. He was annoyed with himself: for not having the coat, for being cold, for having a headache. For getting so lost. He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Nerves, probably. Although he thought the lecture had gone quite well, he was still shaking. That annoyed him too.

  His priority, he decided, was to find his car. If he hurried, he might still make it to his mother’s house before dark. He climbed to the top of a gentle slope and turned slowly, scanning the horizon for any sign of the vehicle. The snow must have fallen very quickly. It had been fine when he’d left the university, he was sure, but now he couldn’t make out any landmarks at all, just drifts and folds and banks of snow. He knew he shouldn’t have bought a white car; he’d wanted the gold but it cost more.

  His head was still throbbing, and he realised he must have been wandering for hours. He lifted his wrist to see the time but his watch was gone, and in its place was a plastic bracelet. He raised it to his face and read his own name. It occurred to him that dusk should have fallen a long time ago, but the snow was still glaring under the wan sun. It was beginning to hurt his eyes, and he wondered if night would come at all, if the sun would ever set. Perhaps it would simply circle the horizon, always in his eyes, and the day would never end. He was so cold. He sat down in the snow and waited for someone to come.

  ‘How do you determine the original source of a medieval text?’

  Patrick opened his eyes to find a group of animals staring at him: sheep, calves, deer, goats, their eyes huge in the white landscape. Behind them the ice stretched forever, a blank page.

  ‘Well?’ said an old ram at the front of the group. ‘What about the popular image of the lone monk toiling over a manuscript. A myth, by and large, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Patrick, ‘that’s an interesting question. Yes. There has been considerable debate on that very question.’

  ‘He’s stalling,’ muttered the ram.

  ‘He doesn’t know!’ hissed another towards the back.

  ‘For many y
ears scholars have—’ Patrick began, but was drowned out by his audience.

  ‘He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know!’ they shouted.

  ‘Hey Longbottom!’ yelled an athletic young buck, ‘I thought you said they were sending an expert. We’ve all paid our fees, and this is the rubbish we get. Some old pensioner.’ He thrust a hoof at Patrick. ‘He wouldn’t know his arse from a plate of porridge.’

  The old ram smiled. ‘The brochure did, I agree, promise an expert.’ he said, ‘and as you have so descriptively expressed, Parksy, it appears Mr Mercer—’

  ‘Doctor Mercer,’ said Patrick in a low voice.

  ‘—it appears Mr Mercer here would not know his arse, as you say, from a bowl of porridge.’

  ‘I believe it was a plate of porridge, Longbottom,’ said a sleek doe.

  ‘Thank you, Melanie, you are correct, of course. Vigilance, my friends! You let a plate become a bowl and all of a sudden you’ve got pandemonium.’ He paused, smiled at Patrick. ‘However,’ he continued, ‘in these days of cutbacks and general belt-tightening we must all make do with what we have, be it plates or bowls or second-rate speakers. I’m sure I need not remind you all of the disastrous consequences of last year’s squirrel gag.’

  The young buck sniggered.

  ‘Enough!’ said Longbottom. ‘Let’s give the man a chance to redeem himself. Mr Mercer?’

  Patrick cleared his throat. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if there might be something else I could wear.’

  ‘Something else you could wear?’ bellowed Long bottom. ‘What do you mean, something else?’

  ‘Just a jumper, perhaps some socks—’

  ‘Oh some socks! Mr Mercer here has cold tootsies!’ The animals laughed. ‘You’ve been issued the regulation gown, have you not?’