A Thousand Paper Birds

by Tor Udall

  I don’t know where it came from, this quiet statement, but he looked into my eyes with a compassion I’ve not seen before. I didn’t know how to explain the ache for my faceless daughter, my faceless son. I didn’t have to. I asked him what he thought had happened to them, if there was a place for lost souls, but he didn’t know. I told him everything – how sometimes I glimpse a child’s shape in the doorway, or feel a tug on my fingers when I walk down the street. I know I’m imagining it, but . . .

  I mentioned the girl we saw in the garden, but I couldn’t remember her name. Was it Emily? I confessed that sometimes I see her. It’s an echo, a whisper . . . but he just dug his chin into his chest and said it was a nice dream. He edged away a little, his mind elsewhere. Perhaps Harry Barclay just pities me.

  The sides of their thighs touching made Harry euphoric, aware of each place of contact, each thousandth of an inch. But each time he considered the risks they were taking, he felt seasick.

  There were many things he loved about Audrey: the winter sun shining on her freckles, her hair tied back, her lips chafed with wind. Nose blushed with cold, she looked no older than seventeen. Trying to keep his mind off her mouth, he said that the weather reminded him of the Allegro in Vivaldi’s Winter. Audrey replied that Jonah never talked about such things.

  ‘That’s not true,’ she added. ‘He used to.’

  Harry did consider Jonah during those winter months, but mostly he was worried about worse things than breaking up a marriage. Jonah was the man he wanted to be – young enough to have the ever-present possibility of becoming happy. And why wasn’t he? Harry would give anything to wake up to Audrey’s hair brushing against his face, the soft pad of her fingertip against his lips. But Audrey and he had no future. If Harry touched her the way he wanted to, she might disappear for ever.

  The Wounded Angel has a cracked face. Only his head stands on the plinth, his hair stretched out behind him like a wing. Carved from marble, he has a Roman nose, a plaintive eyebrow and a feminine curve of the neck. He’s not like the cherubim that clutter churches; instead, he feels heavily human. The left side of his face is unmade, trapped inside the stone as if smashed against a pavement, damaged by his long fall down to earth. But his right side is handsomely slanted as if in sleep. As the dew lays itself on the ground, the light streams on to his smooth, aristocratic cheek. Harry would give anything to have such nobility, such strength.

  The gates aren’t open yet. The early-morning light stands between them, glimmering innocently.

  ‘Audrey was Jonah’s wife, wasn’t she?’

  ‘No.’

  They listen to his lie again. The dawn sky reverberates with it.

  ‘How could you?’ Milly shouts.

  Harry flounders. Since Audrey’s death, Milly has been his only companion. He realises how quiet she was last night, silently stewing. As he looks at the scar on her temple, he can’t believe what he’s saying.

  ‘I’m sorry, luv. We need a plan. Perhaps we can work out how you can leave . . .’

  ‘Leave what?’

  ‘Me. The garden . . . everything.’

  Her eyes immediately brim with tears. ‘But, Da, I like it here.’

  As if that makes any difference.

  Harry walks around the statue. As he wrestles with doubt, the sky brightens. He has always loved the smell of a new day, when the soil has slept, and is now richer from the night’s tossing and turning. Everything is bristling, fresh. He understands all too well why Milly wants to stay. Without her, he would have nothing.

  ‘If you’re worried about me telling Jonah, you needn’t.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Or is it? Perhaps he’s just trying to save his own bacon.

  ‘But we’ve got to help him. I could just—’

  ‘You can’t.’

  She takes a step back, as if he might strike her. He hadn’t meant to be fierce, but how can he explain about the rules he has broken – the rules she wants to break now?

  ‘I want to be friends with Jonah,’ she pleads. ‘He’s the only one who talks to me. He’s been asking about my school, if I have any mates, and . . .’

  Her chin is quivering. She’s never asked these things before. Perhaps she knew her mind couldn’t tolerate the truth, and Harry never wanted to tell it.

  ‘Why are you pretending to be earthbound?’ It is a simple question.

  She shakes her head in frustration. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you see any other children in this garden? Stranded? Homeless?’

  ‘I just want someone to play with. It’s—’

  ‘Too dangerous, luv. You could cause havoc.’ He squats down and holds her petulant shoulders. ‘We mustn’t interfere.’

  ‘You did.’

  As he smarts, one lonely teardrop falls from her chin.

  ‘You and Audrey . . . you made a mistake?’

  Harry thinks of a thousand excuses. ‘Yes.’

  As she studies him, it feels like he is sitting naked on an uncomfortable stool. People in a classroom are drawing him and he’s shrinking under their gaze. But when he looks up, he sees kindness.

  ‘We’re going to make it better,’ she says.

  ‘How?’

  It feels like a hair is caught in Harry’s throat. However hard he tries, he can’t find it. He knows that the last thing they should do is meddle. But something happened to them all, that particular day in September. Perhaps he should trust the mysterious scheming of the stars. Maybe some good can come of this. That’s what he prays for: redemption, or at least a way out.

  The sound of screeing. The time of the birds. As the waterfowl gather for breakfast, Harry brushes off the redwood debris from his arms.

  ‘Why don’t you help feed the birds?’

  He watches her walk towards the lake, where the fine morning will greet her. Once she has disappeared, Harry looks up, hoping that something will guide him. The Bird Keeper whistles and the sky darkens with wings. As two geese fly through Harry’s body, their feathers don’t slice his skin.

  Part IV

  A Difficult Art

  Look out my window, what do I see?

  A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me.

  All the nightmares came today

  And it looks as though they’re here to stay.

  ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’, David Bowie

  The Garden of Eden

  Kew is in holiday mood. The sky, a devastating blue, has swept the people out of their front doors, for a walk, a kiss, a day beyond expectation. As they leave their homes, they hold their hands to their eyes, blinded by the sunlight.

  In the Gardens by the Minka House, a young couple bang on the giant xylophone that stands amid the bamboo. A sprinkler catches the girl and she squeals and hops until she stands before the boy, wet through. A little way along, a solitary old man is snoring. As he sleeps on Edith Parker’s bench, anyone could take his book and carefully packed lunch, but they don’t. The inscription reads ‘One of Nature’s Children’.

  Above Harry is a deep Rocky Mountain blue, as if the splendour of a foreign sky has trespassed over the quiet suburb. Parents juggle children and sticky cartons of juice. Harry jots down notes about a drunken bee flying between the blowsy hydrangeas, another digging around in a giant thistle. A French family is feeding bread to the ducks; then Harry notices Audrey’s bench, back behind the purple petals of the great willowherb. Jonah is reading some paperwork and Harry aches to tell him the truth: his wife never sat here. But what can he do? If Harry took the bench again, Jonah would find it at the pagoda and they would go on with this tug-of-war, pulling and pushing the bench to its rightful place for ever.

  Harry closes his eyes and remembers – Audrey in the spring of 2004. That April was a time for catching, for catching each other. The daffodils were still out, and who could feel guilty on days like that? Even their petals were quaking with happiness.

  ‘What do you believe in, Hal? Are you religious? Agnostic?’

  �
��This garden is my church,’ he replied. ‘Trees like steeples. And the sunlight through the leaves is like stained-glass windows. Can you feel it?’

  She put her hand on his chest. ‘I feel it here.’

  That was the most wonderful thing anyone ever said to him. She was like a flower growing towards the sky, feeling the encouragement of light against its being. She pressed her cheek against his, then pulled back laughing.

  ‘I’m going mad.’

  It didn’t sound funny. She looked at him as if he could understand each of her whims and terrors. Then, under the sun-ripped leaves, she started to weep. He held her in his arms, taking in the scent of her neck. How could he resist? She was the sun to him, the redwoods made flesh.

  She began talking about her attempts to conceive. It snagged Harry’s heart and yet he said, ‘Jonah will make a good father.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he will. But that’s not what I mean.’

  She wiped her nose then looked up, red-eyed, hopeful. ‘You do something I can’t, Hal. You grow things, create life—’

  ‘Only in the right conditions.’

  ‘You would make a great dad.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  How could he explain? As he searched her eyes, he still didn’t know why they had met. On that first day, Audrey was a little bleached out, perhaps vibrating at a similar wan frequency. But the people who usually noticed him were children, not yet addled with civilisation and logic. Or insomniacs, addicts and drunks, the kind who slipped between the cracks, but Audrey wasn’t the usual hapless character chatting to herself on a park bench.

  She had every weather and season inside her. Perhaps Audrey was there to show him what he had missed out on: a woman’s love, the comfort of company. Perhaps he was still here because he wasn’t finished, not yet. As they embraced under the sunlit trees he forgot that death was around him. The miracle was that she could feel him. He began to hope that she could give him gravity and weight, that if she assumed him to be real then he was. But it wasn’t Harry changing frequency; it was Audrey becoming lighter. And lighter still.

  All he wanted was to make her happy, but his logic was thwarted. He was overwhelmed by her lips brushing against his earlobe. In that moment, he didn’t worry about God. The only thing he could lay claim to, that he knew for certain, was something existed called love.

  Audrey drew back. ‘Look, Hal. I’ve brought you a gift.’

  From her bag, she pulled out an orange scarf. As he wrapped it around his hand to admire the soft muslin, he knew it was a binding of their affair, a promise. The tassels were the same colour as Audrey’s hair. He held her gaze until she blushed, then she smiled too brightly. Elegantly changing the subject was one of her talents. She began talking about Vivaldi. Gloria in D Major was Harry’s latest recommendation, but while they discussed music, their minds were elsewhere. They were giving their agreement time to settle. As Harry tried to remember terms such as ‘harmonic motion’, their potential future was shaping itself, between them.

  Harry hums the Gloria as the heron flies over the lake, its long neck unwieldy. The August day is turning into a sun-soaked evening. People are beating out picnic blankets, scattering crumbs and empty crisp packets. Others are closing their dog-eared novels and sauntering towards the exits. But today there is a rebellion at sunset.

  It is past closing time, but various groups turn to look back at the Palm House, the light hitting their foreheads. Even the birds pause. They stand there – the visitors, the ghosts and gulls – all of them asking for one more minute with this day, with life itself. A plane flies overhead while a goose opens and closes its mouth to the setting sun. The Kew constable chivvies people along.

  ‘Time’s up.’

  Among the dawdlers, Harry spots Milly. ‘We need to talk, luv.’

  Pretending not to see him, she crosses the road to the ice-cream van, where a dozen people are queuing. James Hopkins is at his tricks again, his skateboard wheels screeing along the pavement.

  Milly calls out, ‘Can you teach me?’

  The hooded boy continues down the road, his hands sulking in his pockets.

  ‘Hello?’ she shouts.

  The constable nudges the stragglers. ‘Come along, I don’t have all day.’

  Jonah is being shooed out of the Gardens.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Harry yells.

  But Jonah doesn’t hear him. He walks jauntily down the pavement, his shadow trailing behind him like an uninvited friend.

  In this house there are peculiar dreams.

  Audrey walks through a forest. ‘You and I will be everything you could have imagined and more.’

  ‘And more?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  Jonah lays her down on a bed of nettles, glimpsing the areola of her nipple. In her mouth there is a purple flower, but there’s no gap between her teeth. The white of her collarbone, her raven hair, those inquisitive eyes as bright and blue as forget-me-nots; Chloe winks.

  Jonah wakes to his heart beating a degenerate rhythm. His skin smells of violets and sweat. The room is heavy with sex, the mattress still wet. He lies awake, listening to the creaking of the night, and is struck by how odd it still is, to not have his wife in the bed; to feel a different weight beside him.

  He thinks about her bench at the lake. Its triumphant return was strangely hollow. It’s not the same as before, as if another man once visited daily. This morning it had felt like meeting up with an ex. There was familiarity but also the sense of being mismatched, outgrown, and yet . . . it was engrained in him to sit there.

  Chloe is holding his hand as she sleeps. The severity of her cropped hair has grown out and is more charming now in its slackness of shape. As he leans in closer, she wakes. A moment’s confusion; then she reaches out to stroke his head.

  They talk until it is light. Through the lattice window of their entwined fingers they whisper in a way that only bed sheets and confessionals witness. As he wipes the sleep from her eyes, neither of them says it, but they both feel like foreigners here, in a place they don’t understand. Intimacy is a difficult art. To invest in something again; to say yes . . .

  ‘Joe, honey, I’ve got work today.’

  ‘Yes, sleep. Sleep.’

  As she yawns and rolls away, he studies the small of her back, the etchings of her elaborate tattoo. He then pulls her towards him so they are lying in the shape of spoons. Lacing her fingers through his, she shows him the shapes their hands can make against the wall: a rabbit, a bird, a crocodile. When she falls asleep Jonah begins to cry. But he isn’t sure if he is happy or sad. Perhaps there doesn’t have to be a reason. Not wanting her shoulder to get wet, he pushes his face against the pillow.

  Chloe sits on a chair and creases light. Her hands may be ugly, her cuticles torn, but when folding paper she is immaculate in her passion. Outside is an Indian summer, the sunlight streaming in through the large sash windows. All through August, Chloe dreamt of measurements, her sleep filled with millimetres and compasses; exact geometric imaginings. She commuted to various offices where she photocopied and filed, but lunchtimes were her sanctuary. In cafés, she fiddled with napkins, making fragile things among the spills of ketchup and salt. There are paper cuts on her fingers.

  Endless folds and hours. Innocent, it looks, this art, this subtle pastime, but really she is pulling together hell and heaven. She has the power to choose what is next to happen. Putting down her work, she walks to the centre of her studio, where an enormous hoop of entwined bamboo hangs from the ceiling. String has been threaded across the circle, creating a web with a hole in its centre. The string is dyed in different tones of blue and hanging from it are tiny birds made from tracing paper. Chloe studies the gaps in the mesh, how the sun plays against the colour.

  Origami is the art of economy. Why shout when you can whisper? She closes her eyes and thinks about Jonah; surely if he knew about her deceit, he would leave her. Chloe knows too well how lives are cluttered with careless creations. Returning t
o her desk, she lays out a blank sheet of paper.

  She begins to write, but the truth feels difficult to find; from here it looks so different from how it looked over there, as if truth is a trick of the light. She tries to explain why she didn’t tell him earlier, but when she realises she has written ‘sorry’ seven times, she rips the paper. Holding her head in her hands, she fantasises about a series of birds with messages wrapped inside them. Jonah could unfold each one to crack his fortune open.

  She picks up a square of tracing paper and writes:

  It is a movement and a rest, you and I.

  She can’t believe she is going to compose her first love letter. She can hardly bear the exposure, as if her body is a photographic film spooling into sunlight and everything is too bright, too vulnerable, the moments in the film now lost for ever. But this tracing paper intrigues her. It has a ghostly quality, translucent but hardy, impervious to water. As she folds it, the letters become faint under the layers but they are still there, as if the words are both the sound and the echo.

  Focusing on technique gives her the nerve to do it. For this to work, she will need to write back-to-front, so that when the creature is folded, the words can be read the right way up. She practises for hours, until it is night, and then she starts creating not a dove of peace, but a message-carrying pigeon. A bird that knows the way home. Chloe unfolds it, remembering where the wing, tail and beak once were, then, holding a pen, she tries to muster her courage. The paper awaits the footprints of letters. For now there is perfect quiet on the wing. Destiny, as always, is silent.

  It is a methodical act, writing the words in their mirror image on the correct part of the bird’s anatomy. During this intricate calligraphy, the silence in the studio holds her spaciously. The hours widen until time is forgotten, but, by three in the morning, the ink is drying. Once she is sure the words have set, she folds the bird back into its original shape. Chloe’s final act is to breathe it into life, so she brings her mouth up to the hole in the bird’s underbelly. As she exhales, the body inflates. She pulls the wings out to full stretch, and there it is, a pigeon tattooed with black ink. Chloe finds a red box and puts the tracing paper in its nest. She plans to leave it in Jonah’s flat, but can she dare? Everything is wrapped inside it.