Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand

by Ann Cleeves

  Molly nodded. She found Adam an interesting young man, and she was curious to see if he would mention Tina.

  An enthusiastic discussion between George and Adam followed about the diagnostic features of penduline tit. By the end of the evening George was playing darts for the twitchers’ B team, and all thought of retirement was forgotten.

  Chapter Seven

  Terry could not settle to work after talking to Molly. He felt restless and uncomfortable. She was a nice lady and he had upset her. She would have been his friend. Now she would not like him. He brushed his hair back from his face and rubbed his eyes with the back of a red, wet hand. In the sink the water was cold and the pan was still dirty. Then he remembered the cigarettes and immediately all thoughts of Molly disappeared. But he was not allowed to smoke in the kitchen. It was better to leave work early than to smoke in the kitchen. He filled the pan with clean water and started to scrape the remnants of burnt food from the sides, but the thought of the cigarettes distracted him. He left the pan in the sink, wiped his hands on a greasy tea towel, and went out of the hotel quietly, by his own secret way, so that no one would see him.

  He did not go home. Blackie would be cross because he had left work early, and she did not like him to smoke. It was very hot, very sunny, and he walked through the village feeling brave because he ought to be at work.

  Then he decided to run away. Dennis did not make him decide. Dennis shouted a lot, but he was used to Dennis. He was walking past the bookshop, staring in at the window at the posters and shiny covers on the books. Inside there was a birdwatcher, elderly and innocent, browsing, binoculars around his neck. Terry had never seen him before. But it was then that he decided to run away, because there were always birdwatchers in Rushy. The binoculars reminded him of the person he had seen on the marsh track with Tom. Sooner or later that person would come to Rushy again, and would see Terry and would kill him too.

  Terry had run away before. Not from Blackie. He liked her and would be sad to leave her. He had run away from children’s homes when he was a boy, and once from the hospital. He had been good at it and it always took them a long time to catch him.

  He was excited about running away, and wished that he could tell someone, but it was Sunday and everywhere was quiet. Only the tourist shops were open and they were mostly empty. As he walked past the village hall a group of children spilled out of their Sunday school class and began racing and fighting. They hardly noticed him, and when a few, through habit, called after him: “Batty Terry, Batty Terry,” there was no malice in it. He waved to them and watched them chase away home to their Sunday lunches.

  With the disappearance of the children the village seemed to grow even hotter, more sleepy. He walked aimlessly, not making any plans. He had forgotten why he was going, but a memory of his fear, though vague, kept him moving through the village towards the shore. Through open windows came the smell of cooking and lunchtime sounds and the voices of babies. He smoked one of his cigarettes, enjoying it thoroughly, and turned into Anchor Lane.

  The door of the Anchor was open and he was nearly distracted. He had been paid the day before and had some money left after paying Blackie for his keep. Inside the pub two men stood at the bar. It looked cool and brown in there and he had enough money to buy them a drink. They would talk to him then. Then he saw a young couple sitting in the shadow, in a corner. The girl looked up. When she saw him standing there, hesitating, she smiled at him. Around her neck she wore binoculars, and on the wooden table between her and the boy there was an open book, with pictures of birds. The fear came back and with a sudden awkward movement he turned and ran away, leaving the girl bewildered.

  He ran on down the road, his strange, flat-footed gait carrying him quickly past the villas. Where the road turned into a grassy footpath at the edge of the marsh, he slowed down. Cows grazed there and he was frightened of cows. He had to walk slowly so they would not notice him. He could not run on the shingle. There, he stopped and took off the raincoat which he had been wearing despite the sunshine. He dropped it where he was, then went back for it, realizing that he might need it later. He took off his shoes and socks and carried them, walking painfully across the shingle bank to the sea edge, where there was a little sand. His feet made soft, wet imprints on the sand, and he laughed with delight when the waves reached his feet. He walked east along the edge of the shore towards Skeffingham, along the straight, endless beach interrupted only by wet wooden breakwaters and scattered families, the people small and unreal in the distance. He knew now where he was going.

  Adam lay on the bed. It was late afternoon, but he had drawn the curtains and it was nearly dark. On the bed beside him lay an old copy of British Birds magazine—the edition of the previous November, which listed the year’s rarities and the people who had found them. He liked to see his name in print. He had not found any of the birds listed, but on two occasions had been the second observer. Because of his initials, his name came first. Next year the bimaculated lark would be there, and his first place would be justified.

  He went over in his mind the details of the weekend. The penduline tit was a good bird to get. He saw it as he had seen it in the field, and regretted again that he had not been the person to find it. He remembered Tina, strong and alive, playing football on the sand, and the thrill of touch as they fell together, and the companionship of their shared conversation. He wished that he had made a definite arrangement to see her again. He wondered when they would next meet. He let himself imagine what it would be like to kiss her.

  Yet, underneath these normal, teenage dreams, he was frightened. Important as Tina was, the fear dismissed any pleasure in the thought of her. There was no one to tell. No one would believe him. He had thought, for a moment, that he might tell Tina, but realized almost immediately that she was the last person to tell, and that she must not be involved.

  He had always hidden in his room. It had been his room since he had been a baby. Once, in some gesture of paternal affection, his father had had a new room furnished and decorated for him, a big room in the attic. There had been a table with a huge and sophisticated model train set, already laid out on the green baize. He had come home from school at the beginning of the Christmas holiday to be greeted by the new room. He had not been able to face it and had refused to move. There had been a confrontation, but he had won. It was one of the few times he had won. In his small dark room, which he kept very tidy, but which had a slightly musty human smell, he felt safe. His father thought that he had been too young to remember his mother, but he remembered a sense of her, a scent which had become associated in his mind with the scent of his room.

  He remembered too, very clearly, a number of incidents connected with her. He was sure that they had happened, but he had never discussed them with his father, so this had never been confirmed. He did not know where his mother was now. He knew that she had remarried, twice. He supposed that she was still alive.

  Adam wondered sometimes if it was his mother who had caused the distance, the coldness between his father and himself. She still seemed to stand between them. A relative had once told Adam that he looked very like his mother. When he was a child he had tried to please his father, but had always felt that he was a disappointment. He had lived for years with his father’s mockery.

  He remembered, still with embarrassment, the evening he had brought Tom French home to stay. Tom had been at his peak then, a celebrity, and he had given time, experience, even an old pair of binoculars to Adam. They had been together, to see a rarity, quite near to the village where the Andersons lived. For some reason Tom had not been able to get home, so Adam had invited him to stay at his house, proud to do something in return. His father, unusually, had been in, and although finally he had allowed Tom to stay, he had been offensive, rude, as if there had been some intense personal animosity between them. Tom had been understanding, of course, but Adam had felt awkward about the incident for a long time afterwards. His father’s obvious dislike of T
om made his concern now, to find out how the twitcher died, a little hard to accept. Adam tended to see it only as an attempt to meddle, but did not give the matter much thought. He had long ago given up trying to understand his father.

  He began to prepare himself to go out. He always found it difficult to leave his room, and tonight was going to be important. He wanted Mr. and Mrs. Palmer-Jones to like him. He was just pulling a clean sweater over his head when he heard the noise of the front door. His father was home.

  He knew that his father had tried to get closer to him since Tom had died. The new attempt at friendship disturbed him. It was too late. Still angry at the memory of his father’s rudeness to Tom, he did not know how to respond to the clumsy gestures of sympathy. It confused Adam. It was easier to hate his father. Yet the habit of detached and insincere politeness remained and helped him to survive. Since early childhood, after scenes and tantrums had been punished or ignored, Adam had found cold politeness to be his most effective weapon. It gave nothing away. It gave his father no excuse to seek contact.

  “Adam,” his father shouted up the stairs. “Adam, are you at home?”

  Adam looked in the mirror, composed himself and opened the bedroom door.

  “Yes, Father,” he said flatly. “I’m here.”

  His father was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, his round face, tilted upwards, was strangely unfamiliar. His lack of height, his attitude as he waited for his son, made him almost human.

  “Are you going out?” Clive Anderson asked. He tried to sound interested, but he had asked the question so many times before, with disapproval, as Adam set out with rucksack and binoculars, that it was almost ritual.

  “Yes, Father. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer-Jones have invited me to supper.”

  Forgetting his rule not to give away more information than was necessary, he added: “ They want to see my notes on a bird I found in Norfolk.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  Adam knew suddenly that his father was jealous of George Palmer-Jones, jealous of the confidence that his son placed in him. Adam wanted to say to his father. “Can I show them to you? Would you like to see them?” He wanted to say: “ I think I’m in trouble. I may need your help. Please help me,” but that would have been weakness and his father would have despised him.

  Mr. Anderson approached his son cautiously, placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Well, have a good time.”

  Adam shrank away from the touch. He said, very politely: “Thank you, Father.”

  Clive Anderson, an old man, watched the boy go, and the hatred of Tom French returned, hatred of the man who had turned Adam against him, of the man who had corrupted his son.

  Molly Palmer-Jones had to remind her husband that Adam had been invited to supper. He was preoccupied with the details, the mechanics of Tom’s death. He sat at the kitchen table, as she prepared the meal, and he wrote innumerable lists, and a chart that was a precise timetable of events. She disliked cooking in front of him. She was a good cook, but clumsy, perhaps a little unhygienic, and he was critical of her untidiness. Finally, exasperated by his concentration and the tiny, precise writing which she could not read from the end of the table where she stood rolling pastry, she sent him to the garden to cut a lettuce for the salad.

  From the kitchen window Molly could see Adam approaching the house. On his face was an expression of profound concentration. He looked at his watch and, apparently nervous that he might be too early, he waited at the gate. He could not see Molly, but he stooped, pretending to tie the lace of his shoe.

  Why is it so important for him to get things right? she thought. Does he want to please us specially, or is he nervous before meeting anybody?

  He opened the gate, fumbling with the catch which had never properly worked. Molly saw the boy blush and realized that George must be walking towards him from the vegetable garden. She felt the colour come to her own cheeks as she remembered with a vivid pain her own, shy teenage days.

  She could not hear what was being said and like a mime the scene unfolded in front of the window. George, a lettuce in one hand, held the other palm upwards to show that it was dirty: an explanation that he could not shake hands. Adam, awkward, not sure how to react to this formality, looked at his feet, twitched the hair from his eyes, then, glad at last of something to do, followed George towards the house. She saw that in one hand he clutched a battered oilskin notebook. As they reached the back door she began to hear their conversation, and the enthusiasm of the words distracted her attention from Adam’s nervous mannerisms. Perhaps, she thought, they have just become a habit, and to watch him without hearing him gives a misleading impression. Or perhaps verbally he is very good at covering up how scared he is of meeting people.

  George came into the kitchen and went to the sink with the lettuce, but Adam hovered at the door, looking in uncertainly. At home the kitchen was clinically clean. Mrs. Pargeter, the housekeeper, had insisted on machines to wash, beat and blend, a freezer and a spilt-level cooker. Her kitchen was a workplace, like a laboratory. This was a place to savour, a collage of colour and smell. One wall was covered by wooden shelves. On them were tall jars of bottled fruit, bottles of home-brewed beer, books and dust. On the floor stood pottery jars of flour and sugar, on the walls were pans hanging from nails and rusty ancient pieces of kitchen gadgetry. It was all stacked layer on layer, glass and wood on the stone wall, pot and earthenware against red tile floor, each overlaid by the smell of fruit and spice and cooking food.

  “Come on in.” George had noticed the hesitation with surprise. “Molly doesn’t mind us in here, do you?” He put his arm round his wife and squeezed her in a joking, tender way. The show of affection hurt Adam.

  “I suppose not, if you sit there out of the way.” She was a short, spry woman and she was laughing at them. She pointed to the far end of the kitchen table, the only end uncluttered. All her movements were vigorous and spontaneous.

  “Her bark is worse than her bite. The rudeness is directed at me, not you.” George felt a need to reassure the boy.

  They sat together at the table, sharing a bottle of beer, poring over the notebook Adam had brought. Molly watched as she chopped onion and carrot and mint for the salad in a smooth wooden bowl. She was glad that George was being kind. She thought that something was upsetting the thin, white lad, who now discussed so intensely the plumage details of bimaculated and calandra lark.

  Molly bullied them into clearing a space on the kitchen table so that they could eat. Adam felt himself relax. The beer was strong and he was not used to drinking. At first he fought against the sense of well-being, but the two people who sat with him were so kind and caring that he could not believe that they would do him any harm. The food was delicious and as they ate George poured more beer. Afterwards there was sloe gin, sweet, strong and scented. They went into another room to drink it, a small sitting room with deep, comfortable armchairs and a fire.

  Adam found that he was talking too much, about birds, birders, the Scillies and Shetland. George listened, gave gentle, considered replies. Adam fell silent, disconcerted because he found it so easy to talk. In the silence Molly’s deep breathing turned into a snore. She was sleeping. George grinned at Adam, totally unembarrassed. Then, seriously, he said:

  “I’d like to talk about Tom. Do you mind?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Well. He was the first twitcher I met. He introduced me to it.”

  “Were you close to him?”

  Adam hesitated. “ Not exactly close. He was quite a bit older than me. But he taught me all I know about birds. That made him very important.”

  “Can you tell me where you were on that Saturday morning, what you did and who you saw?”

  “I got to Rushy late on Friday night. You know that the weather map looked good, so I wanted to make an early start on Saturday. I dossed in the shed by the coastguard store. You know, next to the Windmill.”
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  George did know. It was a popular place for the twitchers to sleep.

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “There was someone I didn’t know, an older man. He said he’d come from Cheshire for the weekend. He sounded a bit of a stringer. And Rob Earl was there.”

  “Did you see the Cheshire stringer again during the day?”

  “He was at the lark I think and in Ella’s afterwards, but I didn’t see him in the morning. He was still asleep when we left.”

  “What about Rob?”

  “We went to the hides together, but it was too foggy to see anything much. I thought it might be better inland, so I went through the village to the copse. Rob stayed on the marsh.”

  “Which way did you go to the village? Down the wide marsh track and on to the road?”

  “I suppose so. I usually go that way.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No, a couple of times I thought I heard someone, but it was probably my imagination. I’ve never been out in a fog that thick before and it was really weird. But what’s so important about the marsh track? I thought that Tom was killed by the pool.”

  The question was asked politely, diffidently.

  “His body was found by the pool. But someone who was walking down the road from the village saw him dead at the marsh track. I’m sure that you’ll understand that I can’t tell you who that witness is. You didn’t see anything?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “What time were you walking that way?”

  “I should think it was about seven.”

  “That would probably be too early to have seen anything. What did Rob do when you went off towards the village?”

  “I don’t know. I left him in one of the hides.”

  “And what did you do for the rest of the day? Until you found the lark?”

  “I stayed out. I did the copse thoroughly and I’d been round the White Lodge several times before I found the bird. I was positive that there must be something good among all that stuff, I just knew it.”