The woman finished her cigarette and stood to go in, taking one last look at the van and at me, her face unreadable in the dark.
‘Some kids,’ she said with scepticism, and then closed her caravan door behind her.
From that night on, the van seemed to become the focus of some malevolent fury – flat tyres, scratches, siphoned-out petrol – a steady drip of harassment, demoralizing and constantly there. My nights were besieged. I lay awake for as long as I could, listening, the heavy weight of my torch in one hand for comfort, poised for a confrontation that never came. I slept to dream of things prowling, man or wolf, surrounding the van. I became grey with tiredness, my eyes gritty with the need to sleep, a danger to myself and others on the road. Night after night as the waking hours ticked by, I half persuaded myself to give up. But each morning, as the birdsong filled my ears, I found a fresh resolve to make it through another day. As long as I was vigilant I would be all right. As long as I kept my wits about me. As long as I never admitted I was scared.
And so I kept up the front. People picked up the pieces, put my van back together for me, looked at me as I stood there, contemplating the latest manifestation of David’s spite, wondering if they should be concerned.
‘You all right, love?’ they asked, uniformly. ‘You OK?’
A question expecting the answer yes. I could see the relief in their eyes when I nodded, laughed it off, dismissed their half-hearted suggestions that I call the police.
‘Yeah, no, it’s great, fine, everything I was hoping for,’ I said unconvincingly to Zannah on her nightly call and she seemed content to believe me. ‘I’m in King’s Lynn – the Peak District – the Lakes – Yorkshire – Northumberland.’ She pressed me for details, routes, but I was growing cagey about my exact whereabouts. I didn’t trust the phone any more. I didn’t trust those half-friendly conversations – over a flat tyre, in the hides, pleasantries exchanged in the campsite bar or chip shop – about routes, mileages. And I didn’t trust myself either, not to talk to Tom, to hear any genuine concern. I let his calls go unanswered, deleted his text messages unread. There would be time enough for that later. For now I let the birds draw me on, the prospect of another sighting, another tick, the list mounting up towards some target I hadn’t yet set, that would free me from this endless journey.
And so I had reached Scotland. And even though there would be nothing new there for me, I found myself drawn to the high buffeting winds and sheer cliffs of St Abb’s Head. There were guillemots there, and razorbills, fulmars, kittiwakes, gannets – the birds of the open sea, touching down to nest on the inaccessible crags. The cliffs were alive with them, with their racket. For a while I sat on the grass and just watched the birds in the colonies go about their lives, indifferent to my gaze. Something about their busy preoccupation left me with an ache of loneliness. Behind me, dog walkers and hikers and other birders passed on the path, all in their bright clothes, cheerful in the early summer air. I was as lonely and alien among them as I was among the birds. I would pass through their lives unnoticed.
I stood up and stared over the cliff with the steady force of the wind pressing against me. The grass sloped gently down towards the drop and there was nothing between me and the cliff edge and the sea roaring hungrily beyond. The cliffs dropped several hundred feet down into an inlet of the sea, and the air was filled with birds. It would be a quick end, I found myself thinking. And a sure one. There wouldn’t be time to be frightened as you fell, and if the rocks didn’t get you, the tumbling maw of the sea quickly would. No time for second thoughts. Nobody called a leap from a cliff a cry for help. I held the gaze of the sea as it tried to hypnotize me forward, that endlessly restless, sucking, retreating, roaring mass of water. A quick end, and a sure one. No horrible drugged aftermath of stomach pumping and hospital. Just the final rush of fresh air and oblivion. I didn’t know where the thought had come from but once it was in my head I couldn’t shake it out. A quick end. A quick end. And a sure one.
Perhaps I should have just fallen then, gone to join the screaming fulmars as they plummeted through the air. Perhaps it would have been for the best. The birds would not have noticed as I fell. I would have been no more than a darkening of the sky above them, a rush of air. Instead, I gathered my shaking wits and stepped back. A woman was standing on the path, a Labrador on a lead beside her, watching with concern.
‘You OK?’ she asked, touching my elbow, her eyes meeting mine.
I smiled weakly. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Those cliff edges, they can crumble,’ she said. ‘Easy to slip on that grass too.’
She kept her voice light but her gaze still searched mine, looking for clues.
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘Moment of madness.’
It was a feeble joke but she granted it a smile. ‘If you’re not all right. . .’ she said, and left the offer open.
‘I’m fine,’ I said firmly, stepping back onto the path, and bending down to greet her dog, covering the moment’s weakness by burying my face in thick yellow fur and the warm rough smell of it. And I was fine, too. Suddenly I was fine. The moment had passed and left me trembling, but OK. The woman walked away, looking back occasionally, acknowledging my wave as I turned away from those seductive cliffs and back towards the shelter of the trees. I was fine. And I wondered about my mother, about the moment when she had poised herself to leap to her death, what she had felt, what she had seen, how close it had been to what I’d just experienced, how close I had come to following her. Was that really all it took, all it would have taken to stop her, a few words of kindness at the right time from a stranger? Did words really have that power?
I looked back at my saviour, her and her dog, both of them ordinary, unassuming, going about their lives. And I wondered what she would have done had she known, if she would have stretched out even a finger to save me.
And so I had come to rest in this unremarkable car park, down away from the cliff edges further along the coast, washed up. I no longer knew where I was going. I no longer cared what I was running away from. The van, for once, had escaped attack, but that no longer seemed to be the problem. I felt I had reached some sort of a turning point, perhaps my journey’s end. The problem was that now I didn’t know where to go next.
I let the birds decide. Eagles, in fact, golden eagles. Two text messages were waiting for me on the phone. Eagles showing nicely in the mountains around Aviemore. And Tom.
I was treating him badly, I knew, and the guilt made me impatient, as though it were somehow his fault. But loneliness can do funny things to you. I no longer felt as though Tom’s patience was a dead weight pulling me back towards him, wanting to tie me down. That tug now felt like something I wanted. And the thought of eagles made me think warmly of Tom, the way he loved raptors, would watch them for hours, his face lifted to their soaring heights. I sat on the sea wall and read through his message, asking me if I was OK, asking me to call him. I looked at the restless sea now calming into evening. I thought about the way an eagle rose, big as a barn door yet seemingly effortless, feeling the rising thermals, undisputed master of the sky. That was a bird to end a trip on. That would be something for the list. And that might free me from my quest, my journey, allow me to return to Tom, waiting so patiently for me to come home. I dialled the number. I waited for him to answer, heard his voice, quick and eager, ‘Manda?’
What was it I felt for him, I wondered. Not love, not the love that was written about in songs or books, anyway. Not what I’d felt for Gareth, that immediate need to have him, that feeling of completion. Tom used to intimidate me with his precision, his stern judgement. I had once thought him cold, disdainful, unattractive.
‘Manda?’ he said again, less certainly this time. ‘Are you there?’
I felt sorry for him, a little. I felt grateful towards him. I realized that I had grown to need him, a bit, needed to have him around, waiting. Needed to be needed.
He said nothing, but I could hear him breathing. H
e tried again. ‘Hello?’
I found I dreamed about him. Disturbing dreams that left me restless. I caught myself thinking about him when I awoke, when I saw a good bird, thinking about sharing it with him.
I wasn’t sure it was enough. He hadn’t hung up yet, I realized. I clicked the call off.
‘Sorry,’ I said, talking to the sea. ‘I’m going to need more time.’
I rang Zannah instead, told her I was going up to Aviemore, would stay there for a while.
‘When are you coming home?’ she asked, as she always did. When I work out where home is. I didn’t reply.
On the road up to the highlands I stopped at a lay-by and watched a single red kite, its forked tail twisting as it mastered the cross winds. It was no eagle, of course, but this was a bird that, more than any other, I associated with Tom; his bird, his special favourite. And they were the first birds I’d ever ‘got’ without Gareth, on a trip organized by the university club, back when we were students. Alan had made the plans and borrowed the minibus but Gareth had been ill, flu or something, and when he’d feebly insisted I go anyway, without him, I surprised him by agreeing. By the time we climbed out of the minibus in the car park at Aston Rowant I was ready to see a kite up every tree, jumpy with the desire to be the first one to spot it. I could feel my palms sweating and Gareth’s borrowed binoculars were heavy around my neck and slipping in my hands where I gripped them. It was the year when the offspring of the first Spanish reintroduced birds had bred in their own right, the year the population had become established and thus, crucially, tickable, so for many of us this would be a first, a lifer. Not for Tom, of course, who at fifteen had hitched down to Wales to see the last holdout of the British population. Even Alan was deferring to him as we made our way along the edge of the escarpment and paused at a likely spot, scanning the skies. We stood high above the dramatic cut of the M40 and below us the motorway roared and glittered in the sunshine. Beyond the road lay rough grassland, dotted with bushes, sloping back up to a skyline of trees. Ahead of us the patchwork scenery of fields and hedgerows and clustered farmhouses was laid out at our feet, diminishing into the distance. The air was gin clear and the sky washed with a few faint smears of cirrus, but otherwise crystalline blue.
It was Tom, of course, who gave the first shout of recognition, pointing first to the moving shadow of a bird that was projected onto the hillside opposite, and only then upwards to the gliding speck that had cast it.
‘That’s it,’ cried Alan. ‘That must be it.’
But Tom was more cautious. ‘Wait, wait,’ he said, still watching, still pointing with his hand following the movement as the bird soared, was lost for a second, then reappeared above the trees. It caught the sun, glowed briefly russet, then dropped back in among the trees.
‘Red, red tail,’ Alan said, more excited now than ever. ‘That’s it, that’s definitely it.’ But Tom was still cautious, waiting, watching, for the bird to reappear.
‘Wait for it, wait for it,’ he was saying under his breath and I allowed myself to be impressed by his honesty, requiring of himself the same standards or proof that he imposed on others. I watched and waited too, tracking the cast shadow until the bird rose once more above the trees, higher, nearer, quartering back over the rough grass until it seemed almost within touching distance. It banked over the motorway and hung suspended against the green of the distant fields, then turned and swooped on something in the grass, settling with a shuffle of the wings, a last flick of its ever-mobile tail.
‘That’s it,’ Tom sighed at last, binoculars still held up in readiness for the bird’s reappearance. ‘That’s it.’ And we turned to each other and he grinned with pure pleasure, for we had seen it all – not just the sighting, the diagnostic forked tail, not just the tick, but the bird in all its glory. And I was grinning too, unable to help myself, because the bird had been everything I wanted; beautiful and rare, and framed against the hazy background of the English countryside like a jewel in a velvet case.
They are commonplace now, the Chiltern red kites, a reintroduction success story. And anyway, kites are not what they seem. All that twisting mastery of the air is just show, for they are garbage birds, scavengers. Outside the villages in Africa the black kites spiral like ash above a bonfire, swooping to pick up the scraps and leavings, marking each settlement long before the houses have been seen. In Europe the red kites live on roadkill; we have long since driven them out of our cities, replacing them with the scuffling feral pigeons. Once they were hounded almost to extinction. We don’t like scavengers, however useful a function they perform. We don’t like the reminder that all flesh is grass. And we suspect them of being impatient for our end.
Once in Aviemore, I found a busy campsite and chose a pitch right next to an elderly couple seated in deckchairs outside their neat white caravan, hoping they’d be around most of the time, watching, a deterrent to David. They looked a little askance at me as I arrived, the woman granting my nodded greeting a sour pursed smile which was quickly withdrawn; her husband merely staring, tracking my progress with his eyes. I didn’t care. They’d watch the van all the more closely if they thought I was up to no good. In truth, the van looked terrible, its paintwork scratched and scarred from scrubbings, the ghost of scrawled obscenities still visible here and there. One mirror hung at a defeated angle, one window wouldn’t properly shut now and had to be taped up. The interior was no better; six weeks on the road had seen to that. Tom’s meticulous handiwork had been undone by my own carelessness, stuff thrown hugger-mugger into the back rather than being put away, my cool box a foul sewer of melted ice and stray scraps of food. I spent the first day cleaning it all out, repairing what damage I could, bringing the van back to a faint echo of what it had been. As the machine in the laundrette whirred and mumbled through a backpack worth of dirty clothes, I found an internet cafe, followed up on the golden eagle sightings. It would be a trek, I realized, as I bought a Landranger map from a nearby walking store, but worth the effort. Golden eagles were something I had always missed out on in the past. What a way to end the trip – not in defeat, but triumph.
And for the first time since I’d left Tom’s cottage, I could actually picture myself returning, going back to pick up the pieces of my life, beginning to make some sense of it all. I had got this far, after all. I had not been frightened off. In a way, I had won.
When I got back to the van the couple seemed not to have moved. Now both of them ignored me, or tried to, their heads none the less following my movements. I packed and folded away clean clothes, scrubbed and refilled the cool box, made myself a cup of tea. The summer solstice was approaching, the longest day, and the light seemed reluctant to leave, the evening barely darkening as I sat on my step and watched the comings and goings of the campsite. It felt good to be still, no longer on the move.
For three days I hunted eagles through the long hours of daylight without success. I saw other birds, of course, and I filled my eyes and ears with the sights and sounds of the empty hills, often spending whole days alone except for the sheep and the hares and the birds, no other living soul present. Each night I checked for sightings and got fresh leads, then fell into an exhausted sleep born of fresh air and exercise. The couple seemed never to move from their post beside their caravan, side by side, silent, endlessly staring. I spoke to nobody, not them, not Zannah, content with the cycle of my own thoughts.
Then one evening, two days before the solstice, I was jerked back into the harsh reality of my life. The endless fade of dusk was barely beginning. I had walked into the town, leaving the van under the couple’s unblinking stare, and made my usual check at the internet cafe for the latest bird sightings in the area. I scribbled down a map reference, and was looking around for a supermarket to stock up on food, when I spotted a familiar beaked profile, just at the end of the street, ducking into a shop doorway as though to avoid me. David.
Intellectually, of course, I had known he was likely to be about, following me. Bu
t I was surprised at the way the fear returned in a sickening rush, physically nauseating. I stood on the pavement, tourists bustling around me, unable to move, eyes pinned to the door where he had disappeared, willing myself to confront him. Sweat started from me – I could feel it beading my lip, prickling under my clothes. The sour taste of terror filled my mouth. I couldn’t go near him. The thought of it made me sway and weaken. I hadn’t the courage to face him down. He had me in his power, the mere sight of him enough to reduce me back to the wreck I’d been, huddled on the step to Tom’s house, waiting for him to come home.
People were looking at me curiously now. I forced myself to move, to walk away, my whole back rigid with terror. Once out of sight of the street where he’d been I sat down weakly and took a few deep breaths, reasoning with myself. Of course he was here, he had to have been following me. Having seen him, I was better off than if he had remained hidden. But I thought of those lonely places I had been and shuddered. Had he been there then, hiding somehow, watching me? This was it, I knew now. I could not go on. I would pack up and go right now, drive down as fast as I could, be back at Tom’s within a couple of days.
I walked back to the campsite, fighting to keep my pace normal, not to break into a run and not to look behind me. I was relieved to see the van still parked in its spot, unblemished, whole. Once more I reasoned with myself. Seeing David hadn’t changed anything, not really. Two or three days without attacks meant nothing. I’d done little to shake him off. So I would be overreacting if I rushed away now, with the night drawing in, weary to my bones. Better to sleep and leave in the morning. Better to go on my own terms. I thought about ringing Tom, properly this time, preparing him for my arrival. But then I decided against it. I didn’t trust the phone these days. I knew they could be bugged, easily intercepted. I deliberately kept my preparations for leaving minimal and discreet, glaring at the elderly couple as I moved around the van. I was finding their surveillance disturbing now. In the morning I would go, early, before anyone was up. I would slip away.
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