A Thousand Paper Birds

by Tor Udall

  Later at the bus stop, Chloe circles the pavement.

  ‘What do you want, Chlo?’

  ‘For the bus to come.’

  Jonah sits down, deflated. He is too big for the red plastic bench. ‘Why are you so angry? Are you pissed off about what I said back there?’

  ‘I didn’t realise I was a stepping stone.’

  ‘That’s not fair. What were you expecting, Chlo? We never said this was about forever.’

  ‘I wrote you a frigging letter.’

  She rocks back and forth on the edge of the kerb, as if teetering over a long drop. How many times has she wished she could take that damn bird back?

  ‘Talk about mixed signals,’ he deflects. ‘You won’t even let me come to your flat.’

  Chloe sees her walls, covered in Milly. It never mattered what Claude thought, but with Jonah it is different. She pictures the eyelashes, painstakingly drawn, but Jonah blocks her view – of the empty street, the non-existent bus. He is wearing an orange fisherman’s jacket: sturdy toggles, a sheepskin-lined hood.

  She stuffs her hands into her pockets. ‘Where is that bloody bus?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. How are we supposed to get to know each other, Chlo?’

  ‘I’m right here.’

  ‘But I had no idea you didn’t want to be a mum, that we want different . . .’

  Her laughter is an attack. ‘From the start, you’ve been telling me we have no future. And now there’s kids in it?’ Her voice is higher than she wants it. ‘If you’re hoping for someone like Kate, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t even bake.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about your cooking.’

  ‘Is it that bad?’ A beat. She desperately wants to make a joke of it, but Jonah’s eyes are glassy from drinking three gins.

  ‘Audrey and I, we tried to have kids—’

  ‘But this wasn’t in our agreement.’

  ‘Neither was your letter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. It wasn’t until what you said in the pub that I realised I’d begun to imagine more . . . I mean, your poem suggested . . .’ He stops. ‘I just don’t understand who we are any more.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  It feels like they’re playing a game of conkers, their horse-chestnut hearts skewered on to string. Take a swing, darling. Missed? Chloe tightens the string around her knuckles, but the bus arrives when she no longer wants it. As she stares out of the window, she sees the back of a young girl with pigtails, standing at the bus stop.

  Chloe can’t explain that she lost a child, not to someone who wanted to be a dad. That night when he is unable to sleep, she lies in bed wishing she could change her shape into a piano. She could lay herself out under his fingers and tell her story: in the striking of the felt hammers, the change to a minor key. As Jonah plays in the next room, she turns on to her belly. Putting her head under the pillow, she wrestles with her assumptions of what she is capable of. Surely if Jonah were serious, he’d talk about smaller commitments; they could go on holiday together, get a dog. She’s not even sure if he wants her, or just someone to bear kids. His wife’s photos are still staring down at him.

  Over the next week, they watch each other lessen. She hates their cowardice to not revolt against this deadening, this dampening of light. She promises to split up with him, but on Sunday morning they are lying in bed and his calf in the autumn sunlight is so touchable she doesn’t know how to break the habit of him. His body still reminds her of Achilles – tussle-haired, wounded – but she knows that, to survive, she has to put him in a different frame. One evening she sleeps with Claude, and when Jonah asks where she was, she replies that she had dinner with an ex. It is Jonah who smiles apologetically.

  ‘Well, we’re free to do what we want.’

  Their nights are blue. Chloe is on her knees, her head rammed into the pillow; but she is the one who has put herself there, as if wanting to be punished. There are always three in the bed, entangled in knots of red hair. When Jonah kisses her neck, she feels suffocated by secrets. Perhaps she should return the diary to the flat; somewhere he will find it.

  Once Jonah is asleep, he dribbles on to her breast while she stares up at the ceiling. She contemplates how the flat has become a battleground between two women. But Audrey never steals the duvet, leaves the toothpaste lid off or nags about the stale milk. On the fridge door, there’s a photo of their wedding day; the outstretched arm making it apparent that Jonah took the picture. The angle is wonky but they are laughing at the joke of a selfie on such an auspicious occasion. He’s wearing a purple velvet suit and she’s in a white shift decorated with rosebuds, and it doesn’t matter where Chloe looks, there are always the beautiful imperfections of a marriage.

  He hasn’t seen Chloe for a week; nor has she answered his calls, only sending him a perfunctory text saying she would ring soon. He can’t bear the thought of her sleeping with another man. But perhaps this is healthier: to disappear into the simplicity of solitude.

  Wearing a frayed navy dressing gown, Jonah plays in a dim, dawn-lit room, his knees crammed under the piano. He begins composing, but each idea retreats until he inexplicably plays the Minute Waltz. For years, Audrey has been his muse, but now he forces himself to explore the possibilities in the present; the choice between one note and the next. He tries to form a chord around Chloe’s body. But all he can think about is her desire to not have kids. He’d always assumed he’d be a father; but does he really want to risk the heartbreak of trying again? He pictures Chloe in a hospital corridor, crying.

  ‘I’m not Audrey,’ she once said. The last time he saw her, she was standing in his kitchen, her skinny jumper and flat pumps reminding him of a Beatnik poet. All that was missing was a Gauloise. ‘I react differently. Want different things.’

  She stared out of the window. As she bit her nails, he wanted to ask what had hurt her, to tell her that she was lovelier than she could imagine. He yearned to speak of fragile things, to open up the space for candour, but instead he put on a CD hoping that the music would speak for him.

  As he sits at the piano, he loves her, surely. Because he has noticed her habits – the way she props her elbows up on the table and smiles through her hands, or always blows her nose when sitting on the lav. Or perhaps that’s just familiarity. Perhaps only another man can make her happy.

  Above him, is a photo of Audrey walking through a Cornwall meadow. He takes it off the wall and polishes the glass with his towelling elbow. As he studies it, he realises that, with both women, there were parts he was never allowed to become acquainted with, as if he were a boy shut out of an adult conversation. But if he gave Chloe enough room, what would happen?

  Jonah feels the grief of leaving a place. It’s like the last day on holiday, or packing up his student digs for the final time, a glance back at the Blu-Tack on the walls. Jonah walks around dazed, taking down photo after photo. Speeding up, he begins to snatch, as if quickly ripping off a plaster; but he hesitates at Audrey sunbathing in Sicily, wearing a pink, floppy hat. Her arms are hiding her naked breasts, her face turned towards the camera. That one stays, as does the photo by his bed.

  When Jonah returns to the lounge, his skin is vibrating, as if he is high and hallucinating. Above the piano, the wall looks stark and unforgiving. Jonah’s fingers tune the air before searching his laptop for a replacement. He hasn’t taken a single photo of his girlfriend but grins when he finds a picture of a bright blue fish, the edge of Milly caught in the foreground. There’s just a blur of mousy hair, a wisp of motion, but the majority of the image is of the fish and clear water. He prints it out and puts it in the frame. But when he hangs it up, he feels queasy. He stares at the picture for a long time, the stupid fish gaping at him; then he staggers to the bathroom and retches.

  Chloe stands in front of a gravestone in Mortlake Cemetery, trying not to read the initials as ‘rip’. When she turns away from Emily Richards’s name, she sees the
little girl several rows away, framed between the graves. The same ragged pigtails, the stripy top . . . Chloe blinks back the blurry flecks in her eyes and looks again. Nothing.

  She hurries towards the place where the girl was, navigating her way past mounds and stone angels, but her attention is pulled to a flicker of colour behind a tree, the crunch of footsteps against gravel. She jumps at a barking dog, the glimpse of a blackbird. A dark figure moves behind the graves – but it is only a Greek woman dressed in mourning. The sky is bleak and quiet.

  A couple of hours later, Chloe is in her studio, folding birds of paradise. She is trying out new designs using layered colours but is becoming increasingly frustrated with the limitations of a square. Surrounding her is an array of tiny models that will be scaled up for the botanical gardens – miscarried objects, all of them. She sweeps the origami off the table then holds her head in her hands, hoping that Jonah is feeling her absence. Staying away is a tactic.

  As she begins her third attempt to fold a heron, Chloe grapples with magic, rage, and the need for freedom. She notices her pale skin in the window, as translucent as paper. Her reflection tells her that nothing she touches survives. Even her work will decay. It will yellow, curl, disintegrate.

  Milly has followed her from the graveyard and is standing in the corner, surrounded by scrunched-up balls of paper. She has been trying to work out how they know each other, but these walls confront her. Her own face peers back. The room is covered in her smiles and tears. What is she doing here, duplicated and scribbled out a hundred times over?

  The woman at the desk is caressing the nape of her neck, her fingers squeezing an invisible ache. Then she stands up and opens the large sash window. As Milly walks over, her eyes prickle. It hurts to not be seen. Chloe puts the heron on the sill, then flicks it off, the bird falling three storeys into the gutter. They both lean over the ledge to see the paper turning to mush in a puddle.

  19 May 2004

  I remember the moment when I realised I wanted to have sex with H. Because I had found out all I could by talking and now needed to rely on touch and sense. Because the only way to get to know him better was to see what it felt like to have him inside me. And to know what it would feel like afterwards, listening to him breathe.

  How could I have been so foolish? I was sure that Harry wanted it too – but now I daren’t look at myself in the bathroom mirror. After a couple of glasses of wine, I can see my mother. She’s etched into my face, the turn of my chin. It quietly disgusts me, my need for approval. Why did H—?

  The flowers are dead on the sills. It’s been three weeks since I heard his feet on the gravel. Sometimes, I daydream that he’s here at the window. Tonight, I drew a heart on the steamed-up glass, then the name of one of my children. As I pressed my forehead against the pane, our eyes met. I saw him through the ‘o’ of Violet. But then he was gone.

  ‘We’ll have to pretend it’s sunny,’ Jonah mutters.

  The October sky is full of rain that isn’t quite falling. A pigeon stands in the middle of the road watching them make their way to Victoria Gate. They are wrapped up in hats and coats.

  ‘Let’s not pretend anything.’ Chloe wrestles Jonah’s arm from his pocket. ‘Let’s walk under grey skies, hand in hand, together.’

  Despite her apparent calmness, she thinks back to earlier. Jonah had been excited to show her his empty walls, the thrill of a new photo.

  ‘Was that when we were at the aquarium?’

  ‘Er – no.’

  ‘Whose shoulder is it?’

  ‘Just a girl who happened to be there. No one special.’ As he studied the distrust in her eyes, he seemed deflated. ‘I’m trying,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  A rainstorm is coming. At Temperate House the windows are ajar, and everything feels clouded: the sky, the glass, them. They walk to keep warm while coughing out a conversation. Dog-tags jangle in the trees.

  The land is weather-beaten. She leans into Jonah as if leaning into the wind.

  ‘I wish I could make you happy. You might notice all this beauty then. Like that oak over there, I wonder how old . . .’

  ‘You’re such an artist, Chlo. You see beauty and then what?’

  ‘It makes me feel less ugly.’

  ‘How can you not feel beautiful?’

  ‘That’s easy.’

  As a plane flies overhead, they look at each other, confused. The wind is in Chloe’s ears, muffling her thoughts. Forcing herself to step away, she notices an object on a nearby bench. It is square and wooden. The garden lurches. The decorative carvings are ridged with dirt, the press overstuffed with flowers – but the wood is a different shade from the little girl’s. Jonah calls.

  ‘We’ll be sheltered from the wind in here. C’mon.’

  They pick their way through the Redwood Grove until they find a path that leads them to the garden behind Queen Charlotte’s Cottage. They sit on a bench, occasionally stretching out an ache in their necks, or rotating an ankle. Chloe rolls the sentence along her tongue. Yesterday I found a diary; I haven’t read it, but I thought you should know. She imagines reaching into her bag and handing him the yellow book, but her lies press her hand flat.

  Jonah stands up and stamps off the chill. ‘I’m sorry, but – can we sit somewhere else?’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Something happened here? Say, under that birch?’

  ‘No. Well, yes.’ He shakes his head, defeated. ‘I proposed.’

  Chloe fantasises about the insults she would like to throw. They are familiar enough to hurt each other with ease; they know the words that cannot be taken back, the best ways to humiliate. She stands up and walks away without waiting. When he catches up, she collapses to the ground, just for the hell of it.

  ‘What are you doing, Chlo? It’s freezing.’

  On the muddy grass, she splays her body out into a star shape. Her new perspective is refreshing, this direct contact with the clouds, but Jonah is not so cavalier; he squats down, protecting his trousers.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not.’

  The wind is laced with light, a fragile shining. She squints up at him with one eye open, the other blinded.

  ‘I know you’ve been unhappy,’ he begins, ‘but I think, we could—’

  ‘Actually I think we should split up.’ She delivers it like a statement, but really it was a call for his passionate, appalled response. When he is silent, she sits up and frowns. This is not how the story goes.

  He is slack with uncertainty. ‘I was hoping we could work things out. I dunno, maybe you’re right – I’m not that great at—’

  ‘That’s decided, then.’

  ‘Don’t be dramatic. Let’s go home.’

  ‘Home? Where’s that?’

  The debris of their relationship is on the shelves: CDs and books, a sketchpad, her underwear. It seems an effort to sever the two lives that have been knitted together, and yet, everything is frayed. Still wearing her hat and coat, Chloe stands in the middle of the room like a child who has forgotten her lines in a school play.

  Jonah keeps an honourable distance. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shifts her weight to the other hip, smiles weakly. ‘Everything?’

  ‘Can I hold you?’

  ‘No.’ She stares at the floorboards. ‘It hurts.’

  ‘Where?’

  She gestures to her chest. Jonah walks over and places his hand there. It is solace; a quintessent pause. She wants to say this: loving you is like learning a foreign language. Instead he wipes a tear from her cheek, and his finger, now moist, ventures beneath her skirt. They push at the edges of intimacy. Does this hurt? Does this hold?

  As Audrey circled the pagoda, she seemed upset. Milly ached to take her by the hand and lead her to Harry. He was squatting in the exotic bed where they tested the hardiness of certain plants. He would be fretting over the ornamental bananas or the gingers, but she was pretty sure he’d stop for this. Audrey began walking tow
ards the exit.

  Out on the street, Milly grabbed her hand.

  ‘Are you looking for Hal? He’s in Duke’s Garden—’

  It was like Audrey was wearing someone else’s skin. She looked older, her face taut with a determination that wouldn’t stop for a gawky girl who was all elbows and tied-tongues. She was too closed off to see; but a few paces on she hesitated, as if she could feel the tugging of a child’s hand.

  ‘Audrey?’

  After a pause, the elegant woman continued her journey. Milly’s left wrist hurt as she yanked on Audrey’s arm, her plimsolls trying to find their grip on the pavement.

  ‘He loves you!’ she yelled. ‘You’ve got to listen.’

  Audrey cut down a side road then stopped in front of a Georgian terrace. On a polished black door was a plaque stating that this was an office of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

  When they entered the small, carpeted reception, the house felt like a quiet hive of activity. Milly hung back, waiting.

  Calming herself to the building’s pace, Audrey laid her hands on the desk. ‘Excuse me, I’m trying to track down an employee named Harry Barclay.’

  The elderly woman wore a mauve cardigan and a brooch of a four-leaf clover. Milly knew that was lucky.

  ‘I’ve been here for twenty years, dear, and I don’t know anyone with that name. You say Barclay?’

  ‘Yes. Can you check?’

  Her nametag said she was Miss Edith Bronwyn. She tapped into the computer then said, ‘He stopped working in the sixties.’

  ‘The sixties?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s another Harry Barclay? Or he had a son – a Harry junior maybe?’

  ‘I’m not going to find that in these records. These are very simple archives . . .’

  ‘His address?’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear, that’s confidential.’

  ‘Of course.’ Audrey pushed her hair back from her face then took a deep breath. ‘I’m thinking of buying a commemorative bench for my daughter. She died recently.’