A Funeral for an Owl Read online

  “How can you tell?”

  “The male has a bluey-grey back and rosy cheeks and belly, while the female is dark brown and pinky beige.”

  “Like that one?” she asked, handing back the binoculars and pointing.

  “Snap!” He reached for his notebook.

  “Is that unusual?”

  “There’s less of them than there used to be. Only used to be seen in the countryside, but they like it down here. They make neat work of the blackberries.” As she hadn’t hogged the binoculars he felt charitable. “Want another look?”

  While she was distracted, Jim watched the girl’s face relax as her shoulders lost the weight they had been carrying.

  “So, you really are a bird-watcher!”

  “Thought I was trying to impress you by pretending to have a cool hobby, did you?”

  She closed the gap between them, walking on her knees. “What’s that you’re writing?”

  “I note down all my spots. If everyone does it, it helps build up a picture of which birds are in trouble.”

  “Can I see?” Without waiting for permission, she took the notebook and flicked backwards through it. Powerless to prevent the girl from finding his sketches of her, Jim felt his body temperature rise. “Are these supposed to be of me?”

  Gas mark seven. Caught red-handed, there wasn’t much point making excuses. She studied the rough sketches, saw the lines his pencil had made.

  “Is that what I look like?”

  “I’m not really any good.”

  “You are.” She compared his sketch of a greenfinch with the photograph in the library book. “This is obviously a greenfinch. So I’m asking: is this what I look like to you?”

  He swallowed. “Not now…” It was easy for Jim to pretend his embarrassment was because he had captured her at her most vulnerable, but it wasn’t, of course. He could hardly pretend he hadn’t noticed all of her glorious detail because it was there, recorded in pencil. He waited for angry accusations, but she closed the notebook.

  “Mind if I come back tomorrow?” she asked.

  Taken aback, Jim shrugged. “If you want.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Hang about! What’s your name?”

  “Aimee!” she shouted back. “Aimee White.”

  Aimee White, he repeated to himself, narrowing his eyes. Take Aim. He shot an imaginary arrow after her. Me: he touched his chest. White: the colour of her feet.

  She was already halfway towards the steps when he remembered: “Hey! Can I have my jacket back? My mum will go -”

  She smiled, looked down at it and skipped away.

  “- mental,” he sighed. “Shit.”

  Jim got up earlier than usual and made an extra roll for his lunchbox in case he had to share again. His mother watched the food supplies like a hawk, but he knew she’d blame it on his dad, who wouldn’t understand what the fuss was about. “It’s a roll, for goodness sake!” he’d roar if challenged. “A bloody roll!”

  Yesterday, when they had run out of something, his father had said, “What’s the problem? I’ll buy some more when I go out.”

  Mouth shut was Jim’s policy when his mother put her hands on her hips and squared up to Frank. “With what?”

  “The change tin on the fridge. I’ll take it out of that.” He rustled his copy of The Sun.

  “That’s not change. It’s for bills and emergencies.” Looking up from his breakfast cereal, Jim had seen the colour of his mother’s neck rising. She had reached for the tin and, expecting something heavier, rattled it. A frown distorted Jean’s brow as she opened the hinged lid. “You’ve only been home a couple of days and you’ve already spent most of what I’d saved!”

  “It was just a few quid. Fat lot of good that would’ve been in a crisis.” He winked at Jim, thinking he was being smart.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Frank, there’s a recession on! Not many people can afford a cleaner.” She stormed out of the room, returning briefly to point a finger. “And don’t you dare joke about how little I earn when it’s me who’s putting food on your table.”

  Expecting company, down by the side of the tracks, Jim couldn’t settle. His eyes drifted from the lenses of his binoculars to his watch, to the railway bridge. He found that he was rocking back and forth. Even recording his first entry of the day led him back to his sketches of Aimee. They weren’t too bad, he decided. In answer to her question, they were exactly what she had looked like.

  A crow alighted close by and rearranged wing-feathers so black they contained hues of green and purple. Jim rehearsed what he would tell Aimee about crows. “My granddad used to tell me this story. There was a thirsty crow who found a pitcher that was only half full. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t reach the water. But instead of giving up, he collected a pile of stones and dropped them in, one by one. With each stone, the water rose up and up until, before long, it was in his reach.”

  As if on cue, the bird hopped lop-sidedly to a discarded Coke can and upended it.

  “Think you’re so clever?” He was addressing the bird now. A black eye regarded him sceptically; a black tongue probed the sickly-sweet spillage. “There’s this one crow - I expect you know him. He used to hammer nuts against stones to crack them open, but that was before he worked out how to get someone else to do the job for him. By accident, he dropped a nut at a road junction and found that the shell cracked when a car ran over it. So he started dropping nuts in front of cars whenever they stopped at the traffic lights. Soon, the drivers went out of their way to run over them for him, job done. Don’t go giving me all that ‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention’. Laziness: that’s the mother-fucker.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, turning back to where Aimee White would be sitting. “I’ve worked out a system to share the binoculars. One with the binoculars, one with the book.”

  Damn her!

  By three o’clock restlessness had sucked the enjoyment out of the day. Feeling the need to kick something, Jim decided to search out a game of footie. “She’s just someone else who’s going to let you down,” he told himself. “You’re better off without her.”

  As he walked the curve of the sloped path leading to the playing field, a squirrel, fat on a diet of monkey nuts, risked scampering between Jim’s feet and sat on his haunches making eye contact.

  “What do you want, stupid?” he demanded.

  It turned with the twitch of its tail, retreating to the safety of the trees in a series of liquid jumps, claw-deep in pine needles. Jim’s eyes followed in the direction of the children’s playground. Shrill shrieks drew his attention to a wooden frame under a wide slide, which formed a wig-wam. In that compact triangle sat a cross-legged figure, her face half-hidden by frizzy hair. She was hugging her knees and rocking, thinking that she couldn’t be seen. This was a girl who was hiding. His usual view of the world a figure-of-eight knocked over on its side, Jim crouched, training his binoculars on Aimee White.

  In the part of her face that wasn’t concealed, Jim detected loneliness, but it was the signs of fresh bruising that were unmistakable. Remembering her asking, “Are you spying on me?” he swivelled around and sat. For the first time in his spying career, Jim felt ashamed.

  Of course she hadn’t been able to come today.

  You wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER 11: AYISHA - JULY 2010 - ST HELIER HOSPITAL

  Afraid she might be turned away without the answers she sorely needed, Ayisha had rehearsed her explanation of how she knew Jim as she walked up the three flights to the High Dependency Unit.

  “I’m here to see Jim Stevens.” To her own ears, her sentence sounded like a question.

  “You’re not another reporter are you?” The receptionist looked up with a weary shift-work smile.

  “No, I’m one of his colleagues. Actually -”

  “Sorry, but we’ve had to turn a few journalists away. And you haven’t had any signs of infection?”

  “No.” Ayisha had worried unnecessari
ly. The woman had no real interest in who she was. She just wanted to put ticks in boxes. What Ayisha should have rehearsed were the questions she needed to put to Jim.

  “No diarrhoea, vomiting, fever, a cold, rash on your skin?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve used the alcohol rub?”

  “At reception -”

  “Have another go.” The nurse pointed out a green wall-mounted siphon, then lowered her voice. “Can I ask? You’re not the Aimee he’s been talking about in his sleep, are you?”

  Ayisha imagined the ex-girlfriend whose number was listed in Jim’s mobile. While rubbing the cold gel into her hands, she began her short speech. “No, I was the first teacher on the scene -”

  “I can only discuss medical details with family, but you’ll see for yourself that he’s on organ support.”

  Ayisha experienced a quickening of her heartbeat: a memory of her own panic: the moment of realisation that she would have to act; that there was no one else; the wad of tissues oozing blood.

  “Are you alright?” The receptionist was asking.

  “Fine.” Realising she wasn’t prepared mentally for what she might see, Ayisha struggled to keep her fear in check.

  “This isn’t for everyone. You needn’t be embarrassed.”

  “No. I need to see him.”

  “You want to reassure yourself.” The nurse smiled kindly - although Ayisha doubted she could possibly understand.

  “How is he?” she asked cautiously.

  “It’s early days. All I can say is that the surgery went as well as could be expected.”

  She buzzed Ayisha in. “Try not to wake him if he’s sleeping. The police have already been today.”

  Entering the ward Ayisha passed a silent crepe-soled nurse dressed in a white tunic. Acknowledged, perhaps as an inconvenience, Ayisha wished her heels wouldn’t click quite so loudly on the sealed and polished floor. There were four beds, arranged for privacy, two on each side of the ward with curtains in between. If they were drawn back, if the inhabitants were capable of raising their heads - which Ayisha doubted - they would only be able to see their opposites.

  An elderly female visitor glanced up from behind a newspaper - perhaps offering empathy, perhaps hoping to be relieved from her sentry duty - then returned to her crossword puzzle, murmuring a commentary to the figure in the bed whose face was covered by an opaque mask.

  Seeing Jim lying there, the little girl who had tried on her mother’s high heels and subjected her teddy bears to tea parties reasserted herself. Ayisha recalled an accusation her father made during an argument: “You’ve swapped your school uniform for the garb of a teacher, but I wonder, did you choose teaching as a profession so that you could avoid growing up?” She remembered feeling incensed, storming out, then her father’s humbling apology: “Actually, there’s a lot to be said for it. Adults forget most of what they knew was important as children. Friendship. Truth. Justice. Happiness...” It was hard to reconcile her father’s idea of what goes on in the classroom with her experience of being a child - and now of being a teacher. What would he say if he were here?

  The top half of Jim’s bed was elevated. Even with his eyes closed, he wore that look of exhaustion she’d seen in newborn babies. A faded blue pyjama top, together with the length of his eyelashes, gave an impression of boyish vulnerability despite several days’ worth of stubble. The youngest resident of the H.D.U., he looked strangely out of place, as if there had been some sort of mix-up. Ayisha was relieved his face wasn’t masked - that conversation would be possible. But small plastic tubes emerged from his nostrils. She noticed the line that had been left in the top of one hand; the bulge under one arm that suggested more tubing. Her eyes passed quickly over a half-full plastic pouch suspended from the side of his bed.

  As she sat, the scraping of the chair legs seemed disproportionately loud.

  Jim opened one yellowed and bloodshot eye. “You again?” he asked, breaking off painfully in a dry, hacking cough.

  “Anything to get out of helping me decorate.” Mid-sentence, the last couple of days took their toll. Ayisha rummaged in her handbag for a tissue, before remembering how she had disposed of the entire box.

  “Mine,” Jim rasped. She followed the direction of his eyes to a bedside cabinet.

  While she rounded the foot of the bed and plucked two tissues, Ayisha thought she could feel his eyes following her, imagined his quiet bemusement, almost sorry that she would be forced to change the mood. But by the time she began to say, “Listen, I’m sorry to do this but,” his eyes had closed over.

  She took a seat, at first waiting for him to wake, then unsure how long she should watch her colleague sleep open-mouthed. What felt like silence was actually the whir of the air conditioning. When it cut periodically, Ayisha became aware of other sounds. Hearts being monitored, bleep by bleep. Underwater noises of life continuing elsewhere. Repeated bomb-like screeches of self-closing doors, their dull-thudding impact. She had the sensation of being cut off. Rather than being an unpleasant experience, sitting perfectly still, Ayisha became aware of the rise and fall of her chest, the regular rhythm of her breathing. It was strangely like being at prayer. The urgency accompanying every waking moment since she’d walked away from the quad had no place here. Words, if they were spoken, were whispers. She made a fragile peace with her decision: in good faith, she had done the only thing she could have done. As if registering her thoughts, one of Jim’s fingers twitched, the slightest flicker. “Me,” he murmured pleadingly.

  “You,” Ayisha responded automatically, before considering that this might have been the last syllable of the name she had heard several times recently. Aimee.

  The elderly visitor was now separating the delicate strands of her husband’s hair with a comb. Her calm the calm of acceptance, it appeared important that she ensured everything was as her husband would like it. Watching this tender interaction made Ayisha wonder if there was something she should be doing. I can be Aimee if Aimee is the person Jim needs, she thought. Pulling a brush from her handbag, Ayisha found herself under the approving gaze of the elderly crossword woman who, accustomed to solving puzzles, thought she had the answer to five down.

  When a kindly white-tunicked nurse who came to fiddle with the plastic tubes said, “You must be very proud of your husband. We hear he was very brave,” Ayisha didn’t have the heart to contradict her. Although her initial reaction was to scoff, Stupid, more like! when the suggestion was repeated with a shoulder-squeeze, she found herself agreeing: “Yes, we’re all very proud.”

  Over the next few days, whenever this trusting nurse was on duty, Ayisha became known as Mrs Stevens and it felt no more like acting than playing the part of a grown-up.

  Sometimes Jim would mumble a few words, but mainly he slept, barely capable of acknowledging her presence, let alone correcting the nurse’s misunderstanding - Ayisha’s second lie of omission. As Mrs Stevens, she learned that Jim had been given a blood transfusion. In this comforting, alien environment, she gained an understanding of how important it was to ensure that just the right amount of oxygen was in the air that ventilated Jim’s lungs, “In order to prevent further injury.” She learned the fluids in the IV line were not just drugs, as she’d assumed, but a balance of nutrition designed to prevent dehydration and improve blood flow, ensuring his lungs didn’t fill with fluid, delivering oxygen to the body’s organs. She became familiar with Jim’s drug regime: preventative antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and diuretics, inhaled bronchodilators to open his air passages. She learned that Jim could expect to suffer short-term problems such as shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle weakness, and problems with thinking, or depression. All the time pondering: if I had been the one to arrive first, that could have been me.

  The nurse caught Ayisha looking at elderly crossword woman and whispered, “Childhood sweethearts, married sixty-five years.”

  “Incredible,” she said.

  The occupants of the beds around J
im’s changed regularly. Then, one day, the bed that had housed elderly crossword woman’s husband was stripped bare, the walls disinfected, every trace of him removed, insensitively, brutally. Grief hit Ayisha like a blow. Grief at his passing, yes, but the fact was they hadn’t even spoken. Her knowledge of him had been purely vicarious, evidenced by the liver-spotted hands that smoothed his downy hair with such tenderness. No, the main part of Ayisha’s grief was personal - the unpalatable knowledge that she would never know what it was like to look back on a lifetime of love.

  CHAPTER 12: JIM - APRIL 2010 - AT HOME

  As Jim answered his front door, Shamayal edged past into the shadows. “So? Did little Mr Stevens get some action? Hee, hee, hee.”

  The boy hesitated outside the living room door.

  He sighed, “To be honest, it wasn’t the best of first dates. Look, what -?”

  “You told her you’s a twitcher.” The boy’s voice sounded deliberately cheerful. “Man, I tried to warn you!”

  Jim noticed that Shamayal was wearing the same clothes as before. “And how was your night?”

  Having reached the kitchen, Shamayal still hadn’t turned around. “I bumped into the old geezer, din’t I? You was right. He’s cool, man.”

  “You slept rough?”

  “No! He has a flat, like you said. It needed a tidy up, din’t it?”

  The boy was hiding something. “Look at me, Shamayal.”

  “What? You want to see this?” He pivoted, holding up his face for inspection.

  Jim’s mouth fell open at the sight of the swelling. Filling up with hate, he struggled to control his voice. “Who did that to you?”

  “This?” The boy put one hand up to touch his face and pulled it away, wincing. “I think it was someone sent by them Ralegh Boyz, if you aks me. When they get bored of tryin’ to persuade you to help them out with their likkle jobs, they send someone over to rough you up, so they can say, ‘You need our protection, Bruv.’ Anyway, they had me up against a wall, when who should walk over but Bins. ‘Excuse me, boys, if you don’t mind I need to borrow Shamayal for a moment.’ They was so surprised, they let me go.”