A Thousand Paper Birds

by Tor Udall

  The receptionist touched the crucifix nestled against her neck. ‘Yes. Of course, dear. Yes.’

  This bereavement was a shock to Milly. As Edith Bronwyn knelt down to reach under the desk, she tiptoed across the once-plush carpet. She glanced at the computer screen at the same time as Audrey.

  BARCLAY H. 1A EARL ROAD, MORTLAKE, SURREY

  When Miss Bronwyn stood, she didn’t notice a girl’s fingers gripping the counter. Instead she held out a glossy brochure describing the options of commemorative gifts, from planting trees to sponsoring spring bulbs. She passed the information to Audrey delicately.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. What a terrible loss.’

  ‘How kind of you. I’ll be in touch.’

  Harry was still in Duke’s Garden.

  Milly rushed over to the bed. ‘I tried to stop her.’

  ‘Slow down, luv. Breathe.’

  ‘Audrey found an address, but it’s not where you live. I tried to tell her, but, Hal, she couldn’t see me . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She looked straight through me.’

  Harry began muttering to himself. Something about a couple of days ago. At Audrey’s house.

  ‘I just wanted to check she was all right. Christ! Why couldn’t I stay away?’

  He threw down his gardening gloves and half-ran, half-stumbled towards the exit. Milly looked down at where he had been working. Next to the lavender was a small pile of cigar ash, but the wind soon took it.

  Interludes in Late October

  It is a masochistic passion: autumn. It leaves Harry with an ache as deep as a broken bone. With the expectancy of loss there’s always a better appreciation of life. He writes in his notebook about burnished days and falling light.

  Photographers cluster around the chittamwood, as if the scarlet leaves were starlets.

  An unusually quiet school trip. The teacher gestures in sign language.

  An old lady feeds a squirrel the crust of her sandwich . . .

  ‘C’mon, Hal, you promised.’

  ‘All right, I’m ready.’

  They are sitting under the Wounded Angel, Harry’s back resting against the plinth. When they start the chess game it’s obvious that Milly’s mind is elsewhere but it takes her twenty minutes to ask how old she is.

  Harry splutters. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m eight,’ she says.

  ‘You’re ten. And don’t ask how old I am. I’ve lost count.’

  She fiddles with the pinecone that is her bishop. ‘But someday I’ll grow up?’

  Harry lifts his palms.

  ‘Not even when I’m forty-five or ninety-two?’

  ‘I’m sorry, luv.’

  Neither of them can bear to say it, but the truth sits between them. If passers-by came close, they would think it was a discarded chessboard, but then they would notice a pawn disappear and reappear an inch from its original place. Once it leaves Harry’s grip, it becomes visible again, like the trail of his cigar smoke wafting in the air. He tries to explain that they are subject to the squint of another person, like a shaft of light picking up dust; the particles are still there in pitch black.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ Milly’s stare melts into tears, but her eyes refuse to release them.

  ‘Why doesn’t that skateboarding lad see you? The Bird Keeper ignores you. Everyone does.’

  ‘Some pay attention. A baby. That guy yesterday . . .’

  ‘He was drunk.’

  Milly refuses to look at him. Her jaw is locked, resisting. ‘But Jonah can . . .’

  ‘He’s an insomniac. And now that he’s getting more sleep . . .’

  ‘We haven’t talked for months.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Harry takes off his hat. ‘I’m sorry, luv.’

  She covers her ears. ‘I don’t want to know. Shut up.’

  ‘After a while Jonah won’t feel your hand in his.’

  ‘But I’ll feel him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  How can he explain that when the world’s memory of her fades, her impact will evaporate? That’s when the dying really happens. Harry kissed Audrey and she felt nothing.

  The sun highlights the curves of Harry’s black queen. As Milly stares at it, he wonders how many boys she was supposed to date. Is there someone out there who was destined to be her husband? Which exams did she never pass, what countries won’t she visit? Would she have been happy and full, fat with life . . . lucky?

  He mustn’t break. ‘There’s nothing here for you, luv.’

  ‘There is.’

  ‘But if you leave you might be able to grow up.’

  Her eyes remain locked on the chess piece. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That my memories will disappear.’

  He doesn’t know how to tell her that what she’s really frightened of is remembering everything she has lost.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she whispers.

  The plinth of the Wounded Angel is hurting his back. As Harry stretches out his spine, a joint cracks.

  ‘I’ve no idea how you can leave. Perhaps you have to accept what happened.’

  ‘But I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘Then you’re not ready yet.’

  He thinks back to the Ruined Arch and its crumbling promise. Then he looks up at the sky and takes a breath. He tells Milly about the time when the bluebells were out. He was pulling out the giant hogweed, the yellow perfoliate alexander, then a tourist looked him dead in the eye.

  ‘He was Japanese. Sober. Not the sort who usually sees us. So I followed him through the woods. A few minutes later, the man clutched his arm.’

  Harry remembers the sound of him falling into the flowers. He had known what this stranger was feeling: the irregular rhythm of this unexpected hour. While the tourist’s wife screamed in a language he didn’t understand, Harry crouched down and squeezed the man’s fingers. When his breath stopped, the day settled into a sense of rightness.

  The ambulance men came for the body while Harry and the stranger went for a stroll around the Japanese Gateway. Harry talked about his years of waiting, but as they walked under the Ruined Arch, his companion disappeared mid-sentence. Even his words seemed to disintegrate.

  Harry stared at the Ruined Arch for a long time. He was, perhaps, there for days. The man had taken the central tunnel, not the left like Harry. He had assumed that there was only one opportunity to leave this place, and for all eternity he would be huddled around that missed chance. But now that he was given a choice, he hesitated. He peered through the middle arch. Should he do it on hope alone, or curiosity? To walk into the unknown . . . he daren’t do it.

  ‘I’ve dedicated my life to this place. After the war, luv, I found myself again – in the soil, the Victoria, the arboretum.’

  He picks at some mud on his trousers, wondering how to explain this to a kid.

  ‘I’ve planted so many of these trees, watched them grow. Who in their right mind would want to leave?’ He puts on his hat and tips the peak. ‘I’m exactly where I want to be.’

  Milly’s forehead puckers. ‘But you’ve walked through it. All the time you . . .’

  ‘Never the middle one.’

  ‘But I have.’

  ‘’Fraid so. I don’t know why it doesn’t work, Milly. It should be as simple as walking through . . .’

  He pushes back the hair from her face, but it sticks to her cheek, glued down by her salty, snotty weeping.

  ‘There were others,’ he tries. ‘Every few years. I’d be minding my own business, then someone would look at me. I’d check they weren’t crazy, then I followed them.’

  ‘And . . .’

  ‘They died.’

  There was no leveraging of their fragile souls from their bodies. It would just be Harry sitting next to a corpse, surrounded by crying.

  ‘So what was different about that bluebell guy?’

  ‘God knows. I
was thumping his chest like an idiot. A similar thing happened with you. I got all heroic . . .’

  ‘And why are you still here?’

  ‘Because I chose it.’

  Harry notices the one button left on his jacket; it is hanging by a thread.

  She looks at him squarely. ‘I don’t want to leave this garden.’

  Yes. That’s the rub.

  The world sighs . . . or that’s what it feels like; the last breath before winter sets in. Harry looks up at the trees, wearing their dying glory, then spots Jonah in the distance. He remembers how he relished his time with Audrey and tentatively says, ‘He’s waving.’ Milly looks over her shoulder. She hesitates for only a moment, glancing back for Harry’s blessing, then she runs off, leaving the discarded chess game. Jonah greets her fondly and off they go, Milly trotting to keep up. They gaze at the Turkish hazels, savouring autumn’s pleasures and flavours, and Harry realises he has sympathy for them all: the living, the dead, and the beauty.

  ‘So, tell me about the guy you were playing with. Was that your dad?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Jonah had only seen him from a distance, wearing a scarf and hat. He knows he should go back and talk to him, but Milly is pulling him down Pagoda Vista. Besides, he’s too exhausted to be a responsible adult. He’s still trying to work out why Chloe doesn’t want kids. She never had a father, so maybe . . . Milly is rattling on about a game that involves racing around the pagoda.

  ‘You do it three times. Then you run around the other way. Backwards.’

  He thinks back to the moment when Chloe’s tears had moved him, when the two of them standing in that room had felt significant. But it was like putting a plaster on a broken bone. It was stupid. Stupid. Exasperated, he glances down at Milly.

  ‘God, you’re shivering.’ He squats down to rub her arms, her nose in need of a tissue. ‘You should bring your coat.’

  She is always wearing the same clothes. Jonah thinks how different it would be if he were her father. They stare at each other, unflinching, then Milly pulls on his beard, making him roar like a lion. He snatches her body up high, her legs flailing.

  The sky is the bluest Milly has ever seen. Her feet dangle in this bluest of blue; then she glances down beyond her toes and sees a woman placing flowers on a nearby bench. Wriggling out of Jonah’s grip, she drops down, her feet jarring against the suddenly close pavement. She scratches that soft bit on the inside of her elbow, unsure why this woman makes her nervous.

  She looks scooped out, her torso concave. She’s wearing a yellow coat, the colour of daffodils, and there’s a toddler beside her who is leaning over to watch something in the grass, an ant maybe. Milly moves closer. The woman’s eyes are stung, as if all the stories she believed in have gone. There are only atoms and chance.

  Milly can almost remember . . . a life glimmers in the distance. She can feel dry hands on her brow, the hum of a lullaby, then the memory wavers. This woman is a stranger; yet Milly knows exactly what she smells like, of flowers, coffee and newspapers. She knows what tunes she sings when she’s washing up supper . . . or when she’s drying up a plastic red mug. It had a daisy on it.

  ‘He’s much older,’ Milly mutters.

  ‘Who? That little boy?’

  A cloud of whiteness. A tissue is thrust in her face, her nose wiped roughly.

  ‘That’s better.’

  Jonah scans her up and down then grabs her hand. As he pulls her along the path, Milly glances back.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she can’t settle. While they sit under an oak, her remembering slips away – then nudges her like a playground bully.

  ‘These leaves must look forward to autumn, don’t you think?’

  ‘But they die.’

  ‘They’ve been sitting up there for ages,’ whispers Milly. ‘Then they get to do the perfect sky-dive.’

  They squint up at the leaves waving precariously above them, hanging on to the twigs for just a moment longer.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be a leaf ’cause I’m nervous of heights,’ jokes Jonah. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I was thinking of a photo that my dad showed me. It was of a lady falling from a building.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stands up over Jonah’s legs, her arms outstretched like an aeroplane. As she looks down, she feels like that woman tumbling through the air. She can see the pavement, but she never reaches it. She just keeps falling. She’s not in one place or another, but in between, and there’s no end to it. There’s just the wind whooshing by and the sight of the looming pavement and a couple of bystanders forever screaming.

  HB. 29.10.05 Redwood Grove

  As you die, you remember all the times someone’s mouth has touched yours.

  Illicit kisses,

  rushed kisses,

  lost or stolen.

  At bus stops,

  in a hallway,

  at the front of an aisle.

  Harry doodles some flowers and wonders what Milly remembered. The scratchy kiss from her grandmother, the kind that kids shirk from? Or the way her legs ached in kiss chase, her thighs flushed hot from running? Maybe one day she’ll recall a smoky kiss on her forehead at bedtime. But when it came to Harry’s time, he saw nothing.

  He never sought them out; the deaths he witnessed were rare. But in those last moments, he met their gaze and saw, in their mind’s eye, a lifetime of kisses. Some were propositions or a reconnaissance. Others an apology or a question. Then there was the girl with mousy hair. She was in her early twenties, slowly starving herself. He first noticed her being pushed around the Gardens in a wheelchair. When she raised her chin to watch him, he could see what she ached for: the purity of being. She wanted to rid herself of the blubber of sex, the stress of success, to find a simplicity that cut things to the bone. Such clean angles: to be air itself.

  Harry followed her for days, watching her weaken. In her final moments she turned to him as if he could tell her the secrets of God. Perhaps she thought she would see a tunnel of light or an angelic choir. But the only thing she saw was every kiss she had ever experienced – and she realised she was where she wanted to be all along.

  The Stillbirth of Anything that Craves to be Born

  23 May 2004

  Jonah has bought tulips. Yellow, like sunshine on our table. But there’s another brightness, just a few streets away. Don’t be stupid. If you DO go to Harry’s house, be angry, self-righteous. But the truth is I want to see him.

  On the next page is a simple drawing of the sun.

  Doesn’t everything ache and bend towards it?

  It is the penultimate entry, but it doesn’t matter how many times Chloe has read it: she is no wiser about what happened at the T-junction. A few pages earlier, there’s a scribbled address and Chloe has walked the ten-minute route to the ominous brick wall and beyond; the journey that Audrey never completed. When Chloe finally arrived at Earl Road, the couple in 1A had never heard of Harry Barclay, or a redhead named Mrs Wilson. The diary, like Audrey’s life, runs out.

  Chloe now faces a different kind of crash. Jonah is pumping away inside her but she can no longer feel him; their kisses mistimed, his touches misplaced. She focuses on the sound of the creaking bed. When he stops moving, Chloe’s muscles tense. She hovers above the statue of his body, then she lies down, breathing on to his chest. Sweat slips from his armpit on to her neck and she stays very still, hoping she can hide from this. But a few minutes later he fidgets, making it clear he no longer wants her weight. She rolls over and they lie like two corpses in a shrine. The silence drips from the ceiling and lands on to her brow. She wipes it off and sits up. Then she reaches for her knickers and pulls them on.

  His hand on the small of her back. A beat. She waits for him to speak, then, tired of waiting, she rips away from his grip.

  ‘I think I should spend the night at home.’

  He flops his weight back against the mattress. A thousand clichés swarm t
hrough her head while he just lies there, contemplating the ceiling. She searches for her bra then struggles with the clasp. Ridiculously, Jonah gets up to help, but she pushes him away.

  ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t.’

  The carpet seems more interesting to him than her face.

  ‘Shouldn’t I be the one who’s offended here? I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it up. It’s the insomnia—’

  ‘That’s not what this is about. I’m going home. I’ve got to work.’

  ‘Work?’ He bats away her words. ‘Because that’s so important – more important than talking about us? Folding bits of paper is hardly earth-changing stuff.’

  ‘What about you?’ she yells. ‘A failed musician, a failed husband. Even your wife was bored with you.’

  ‘What?’

  She can smell the damage. Audrey’s photo sits on the bedside table, her smile warping the film with light.

  Chloe feels too drained to compete. She can’t even remember who she is lying for.

  ‘She wrote a diary,’ she says evenly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your wife.’

  There are so many words she wants to say; they clog up the bottleneck of her throat, stopping the telling until not a single word can escape.

  His expression is strangely courteous, his body rigid. ‘That’s not possible,’ he says. ‘I looked.’

  ‘I found it in her office but . . . you might not want to read it.’ Enough excuses. ‘I’m sorry, Joe. She met someone else.’

  She always thought he would win their game of conkers, but now this sound will echo through her nights. The splintering of his heart.

  His gaze is frayed at the edges. It is a stare that wants to hurt her, but it’s his eyes that are smarting – with fury, loss. Disbelief. He turns away.

  ‘You’re lying,’ he whispers.

  Her thoughts collapse like clothes without a body. ‘I’m not.’

  Jonah begins to sway. It is making her seasick then his hands slam against the wall.

  ‘How could you? When did . . .?’

  ‘It’s in my flat. I can give it to you when—’

  ‘Your flat?’ He lurches.