Little Bird

eleven

Deptford, south-east London, 15 December 2003

Historically, Frank’s track record with women wasn’t great. At twenty-five, it wasn’t that he ever really found it a problem attracting girls – it was the keeping hold of them he always seemed to struggle with. He had a habit of falling hook, line and sinker for a person, putting her so high upon a pedestal that the only inevitable direction they could go after that was down. All would be great for the first few months, but then, out of the blue, entirely without warning, everything he had once found so charming about her would start to sour. Her laugh would begin to grate, in mid conversation she’d say something dumb, he’d notice that when she stayed she’d leave her things all over the bathroom floor. Suddenly, reality would come screaming into focus and the relationship would become instantly and irretrievably intolerable. Pretty rich, he knew: he was hardly catch of the year. But there it was.

When he was ten, something happened to Frank that would stay with him forever. It was a few weeks after his dad had left and his Aunt Joanie had taken him and her spaniel Bongo to Greenwich Park. It was a beautiful day and the place had been full of sunbathing tourists, picnicking families, kids playing football. The dog had been running in circles at their feet as they walked, and Frank remembered thinking how strange it was that the sky was so blue and the air so warm when inside he felt so horribly cold, so horribly grey.

‘You’re going to have to be a big, brave boy now Frankie,’ his aunt was saying as they tramped along. ‘The thing is, sometimes grown-ups find life difficult …’ He tried his hardest to block out her voice but suddenly he couldn’t bear it any more. Why was everyone talking like his dad wasn’t coming back? Why had his mum not gotten out of bed for three weeks? It was disgusting, stupid the way they were all talking. He pulled his hand from Joanie’s and throwing a stick for Bongo, began to run.

Ignoring his aunt’s call he threw the stick further and further, tearing after Bongo up the steep hill, on and on until he’d left the crowds and Joanie far behind. Of course his dad was coming back. Of course he was. He ran until he was in a part of the park secluded from the rest, on the heath side, near the deer and the big oak trees. And then he’d seen her. Under a tree twenty yards away was a girl of about seventeen, her legs stretched out before her, a book resting upon her lap. Bongo was sitting next to her, his big stupid tongue lolling out. Both of them watched him as he approached.

‘Hello,’ she said, when he reached her.

He had opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed he’d forgotten how. The sun was low in the sky behind her and shone through her curls so her face was framed in a flaming halo of golden red. Her eyes were luminous; dragon-fly green. Never, never had he seen anything so beautiful. He could barely breathe, certain that if he even blinked she’d disappear, or he’d wake and find himself back in his bedroom, staring at his collection of dinosaurs. A feeling of perfect calm settled upon him.

She was very slender, across the pale skin of her chest was a faint sprinkling of freckles. Through the thin white cotton of her top he could just make out the swell of her breasts and he felt himself flush red as something unrecognisable began to stir in his underpants. He gazed at her. Everything – the green of her eyes, the golden red of her hair, the blue of the sky – was supernaturally bright. With a little sigh, Bongo had flopped down and rested his head in her lap, and Frank had almost groaned with jealousy when her small, white hand had reached over and stroked the dog’s ears.

‘Are you lost?’ she’d asked.

And even though he wasn’t, not really, he had nodded. She’d smiled, and after considering him a while said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find your way back.’

He felt as if he could stand there looking at her for the rest of his life. The world was perfectly silent, perfectly still. The sun sank lower in the sky. Just at that moment he heard Joanie’s voice calling him. ‘Frank! Frank!’ His name drifted to them like a sound from another world. He held his breath and willed her to go away.

‘Who’s that?’ asked the girl.

‘Auntie Joanie.’

‘Ah.’ She continued gazing at him for a while, and then smiled. ‘Well then, Frank,’ she said, ‘give me a kiss and then you’d better go.’

As if she was an exotic bird that might take flight at any moment, very, very slowly he had knelt down and carefully kissed her cheek.

She smiled. ‘Bye then, Frank. Be good.’

And then he had turned and run towards Joanie’s voice, Bongo racing after him.

‘Did you see her?’ he asked urgently, when he reached his aunt. ‘Did you see her?’

‘Who?’ Joanie had squinted over in the direction he’d run from, scanning the grass. ‘No dear, I don’t see anyone.’

He had turned and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, but Joanie was right: there was nothing there. The girl had vanished.

Since that day he had tried to find her again, had got into the habit of searching for her in crowds, of scanning the faces of every passing woman, but nothing. Sometimes in his dreams he would find himself back there, under the tree the summer he was ten, but just as he was about to kneel down and kiss her, he’d wake. Occasionally, listening to music, he would come close to finding again that sense of beauty – there amongst the notes and melodies and beats – but it was never quite enough: the thing he was searching for was always just out of his reach. His whole life he had been trying to find that perfection again, and in Kate he knew he had found it; he had found her.

At first, their meetings were maddeningly infrequent. Kate was the most evasive person he had ever met. She had no mobile phone, moved from job to job, avoided talking about her home (to which he was never invited). And yet, just when he was about to give up hope of ever seeing her again she would appear at his door or at the record shop where he worked, saying simply, ‘Hello, Frank,’ with that same, breathtaking smile of hers beneath that same, steady gaze.

But still she would offer nothing concrete for him to hold onto, and he was always under the impression she might disappear at any moment. Whenever they parted she would leave no trace of herself. And he had never met anyone who talked so little about themselves – women, in his experience, always liked to talk about themselves. For hours. In contrast, Kate’s silence was like a blank sheet upon which people were invited to draw whatever version of her they wished.

‘Your accent,’ he said, the second time they met. ‘Sometimes you sound American. Did you used to live there?’ Her response – a short, blithe account of a New York childhood, a car crash that had killed her parents, her move to London to live with an aunt – was so brief and delivered with such a lack of detail that he had hardly been able to land on any part of it and, almost without him noticing, she had asked a question about the record they were listening to and he had been talking enthusiastically about it for a full ten minutes before he realised the original subject had been abandoned.

And he didn’t press her. Frank was good with mystery, with a feeling of being always slightly in the dark. He was used to it, knew where he stood with it. Ever since his father had disappeared – seemingly slipping between the gaps in the pavements one day without so much as a backward glance – he had spent much of his life since wondering what the hell had happened. It was how he loved his father now; in the absence of the physical man his affection had become coloured and finally replaced by a vague, persistent bafflement.

Once or twice he would come across Kate lost in thought and it was like glancing through a window at something he shouldn’t see, something private. With her guard down, just for a second, he would see an altogether different girl looming into view behind those dark blue eyes, like something emerging suddenly from behind a tree. It was like catching sight of a fox streaking down a London street at night; an unexpected glimpse of something wild. But the moment would pass, she would sense his presence and alter instantly back into Kate. These moments would provoke in him an almost unbearable protectiveness, and yet a part of him would be relieved too, frightened of having to deal with something he wasn’t sure he was ready for, something that might demand unknown, difficult things from him.

He was falling in love. Despite the strangeness of their relationship at the heart of it lay something true, he was certain. And when, two months after they met, she didn’t turn up to meet him as planned his anxiety was unbearable. Two days passed, and then two more, and still she didn’t phone or come. Each hour without hearing from her was agony. He was certain that this time she had gone for good. Finally, sick to death of his dark thoughts he had gone to the pub in search of Jimmy and Eugene – anything to take his mind off her.

The Hope and Anchor is a vast Victorian hulk of a boozer that looms malevolently over the New Cross–Old Kent Road junction. Inside its cavernous interior the flock wallpaper is covered in photographs. Yellow, curling Edwardian prints show the neighbourhood lit by gas lamp and patrolled by horse-drawn carriages. Others depict the pub in its sixties heyday: various monochrome gangsters, minor celebrities and glamour girls caught in frozen animation before the same flocked paper. In one, Ronnie and Reggie Kray leer into the camera with dead eyes and mephitic grins. Amongst the photos hang a selection of mysterious brass ornaments interspersed here and there by dead animals in glass cases. The wall above the bar meanwhile is dedicated to the landlord’s boxing trophies, celebrating the now chain-smoking, balding cirrhotic despot’s vainglorious past.

The three of them had been drinking here since their mid teens and the ancient juke box still played the same selection of tired eighties pop. As Frank walked through the door Madness sang One Step Beyond. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and he squinted in the dimness – thick maroon velvet curtains blocked out the afternoon sun. In the Hope and Anchor, it was always midnight.

He found Jimmy and Eugene playing pool and he fetched himself a drink, glad suddenly, that he didn’t have to make conversation. Almost immediately he began to wish he hadn’t come, that he’d stayed at home with the curtains drawn and the stereo on full blast. He barely had the energy to lift his pint he was so hacked-off. After a while, Jimmy potted the final ball and came over.

‘Not seeing Kate tonight?’ he asked after the hellos were over with and he’d sat down.

Frank winced. ‘No.’

Jimmy glanced at him questioningly, but taking in Frank’s face, merely nodded. Eugene began to shout loudly into his mobile phone.

‘How’re the savings coming?’ asked Jimmy after a brief silence. ‘You must be nearly there now.’

Frank had to think for a moment before he realised what Jimmy was talking about. He’d been saving for the past year, trying to get enough money together to go travelling, and it had, until he met Kate, been the subject uppermost in his thoughts. ‘Oh,’ he said vaguely. ‘Yeah … you know. Still saving.’

Jimmy shot him a puzzled look, but Frank ignored him. How could he possibly explain how he felt? That he was half mad with thoughts of a girl he hardly knew? That nothing mattered at the moment apart from the one desperate hope that he would see her again. He knew exactly what his friends’ response would be: Stop being such a fanny, Auvrey.

‘You want a game?’ asked Eugene, nodding over to the pool table.

‘Nah, you’re all right,’ he said, continuing to stare into his pint. Now that he was here, he just couldn’t be fucked to talk to them. ‘You have another one.’ He pretended not to notice the look that passed between them.

He watched them play for a minute or two, before sinking once again into his own thoughts. He felt with Kate as if he’d discovered a whole new country that he was desperate to explore if only he could find where to catch the boat from. How then, when Jimmy asked about his plans to travel could he even contemplate Greece, Turkey, Germany, France? What the fuck did he care about those places – boring, bland, flat compared to Kate – if they were somewhere she was not? He didn’t even have a phone number for her. He hadn’t seen her for nine days.

‘Fancy a line?’

He suddenly realised that Eugene was talking to him.

‘Might cheer you up a bit.’

‘No. You know I don’t do that shit.’ He must have spoken more sharply than he’d meant, because Eugene was pulling a face.

‘Suit yourself. Jim?’

Frank went to the bar and tried to think up an excuse to leave. When he returned he realised that Jimmy and Eugene were arguing about something and half-heartedly he tried to get the gist.

‘Well, what’s the point?’ Jimmy was saying. ‘It’s Sunday for fuck’s sake. Just chill out for a night – lay off it for a bit.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Grumpily, Eugene got up and moved off in the direction of the gents. ‘Just say no, right? Thanks, Jim. Gotcha.’

When he’d gone, Jimmy turned to Frank and appealed to him. ‘It’s starting to do my head in. Seriously, Frank, I’m worried.’

He shrugged. ‘He’ll be all right. You know what he’s like.’ To be honest, the subject bored him. He’d never been into drugs himself, but everyone and their dog seemed to be coked up at the moment – it was a national sport. No big deal.

Jimmy nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah. It’s just that he’s spending all his time with those wankers down the Feathers. Andy Mitchel and that. You know the kind of shit they’re into.’

Inwardly, Frank groaned. Not this. Not now. He couldn’t bear the thought of Eugene becoming one of those sad fucks whose lives revolved around the dole office, the pub, and his next fix. In fact the thought was so depressing he refused to allow it as a possibility.

He shrugged non-committedly. ‘He’s always been like that. We’ve had this conversation ever since we were kids. He’s a grown up, Jimmy. It’s not our job to rein him in all the time is it? And to be honest I’ve got enough to worry about other than Eugene’s benders.’

He realised that Jimmy was looking at him strangely. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. A silence fell.

‘Look, Jim,’ Frank said, getting up. ‘Sorry, but I’m feeling a bit gyp. I’m going to head on home.’ Eugene had just re-emerged from the gents and he waved over at him. ‘Have a good night, yeah? I’ll give you a call in the week.’

On the edges of Deptford he passed vast sites of half-built apartment blocks. Bill boards boasting designer living with river views. White towers of little square rooms with the same dimensions and soullessness as the council flat he’d grown up in five minutes down the road, only with Italian-style taps and a £300K price tag. He felt his mood worsen.

And then, turning the corner, his spirits soared as he spied a familiar flash of yellow hair outside his door. She was sitting on his step smiling up at him as he approached. It was all he could do not to shout out with relief: the world sang.

twelve

Long Island, New York, 1997

She is fourteen when she firsts asks Ingrid about the photograph. They are eating breakfast one morning when her gaze happens to fall upon the image of the little, blond child and she asks, ‘Who is that?’ vaguely remembering Robert’s reaction to it the summer before.

‘Eat your breakfast, Elodie,’ Ingrid pours more coffee, and looks pointedly at Elodie’s bowl of cereal.

‘Yes. Who is that?’

‘That is my son, Elodie. Our son, Anton. When he was a little boy.’

Elodie continues to spoon Cheerios into her mouth. ‘Anton. Where is Anton?’

Ingrid doesn’t answer for a moment. In the silence Elodie stretches across the table to trail her fingers along the sharp lines of the silver eagle, its gleaming half-raised wings. She hums a tune she has learnt from a television advertisement for detergent.

Ingrid’s voice, when she speaks, is very quiet. ‘He lives in England, Elodie, in something called a boarding school.’

‘Oh,’ says Elodie, mulling this over. ‘Why?’

It’s the sound of creaking floorboards that alerts them to Robert’s presence. In the forest there had been a stagnant pond in which the water had sat dank and green beneath a layer of rotten leaves. Once, she had broken the stillness with the end of a stick and had recoiled in shock when a large, slime-covered toad had suddenly sprung out at her. This is what she thinks of when she sees the look that slithers between Ingrid and Robert at that moment.

Ingrid breaks the silence first. ‘Was there something you wanted, Robert?’

A second, and then another, drips icily by, before Robert drops his eyes and turns away. ‘No,’ he says, quietly. ‘Nothing.’

‘Go and get dressed, now, Elodie,’ Ingrid tells her. ‘You have an appointment with Doctor Schultz at nine.’

Later, she will be able to recall this incident vividly, because it happens on the morning that the blood comes, an event that would render every detail of that day unforgettable. Ingrid had already prepared her for her first period. Only a few months before, soon after she had turned fourteen, she had sat Elodie down and carefully explained what would soon be happening to her. She had used unfamiliar words and though Elodie had nodded and said she understood, the subject had fallen from her mind in the time it had taken to turn the TV on again.

She is about to get into the shower when it happens. It’s not until she’s removed her pyjamas and is about to turn the tap on when she looks down and notices the smears of blood. ‘Ingrid!’ Her cry is so loud and panic-stricken that she hears her footsteps on the stairs almost immediately.

In the few seconds that it takes Ingrid to grasp the situation, she stands in the doorway, her startled face looking in at Elodie as she shivers, naked on the bath mat. Within moments she has fetched sanitary napkins and clean underwear, turning on the shower and gently pushing Elodie beneath the water. Afterwards, wrapping her in a towel she patiently explains what has happened to her. Soon, Elodie is back in her bedroom, dressed and reassured, a mug of coco in her hands.

But later that evening, alone in bed, something from the incident lingers in her mind, something quite separate from the shock of her first bleeding. In the moment that Ingrid had opened the door and gazed in at her, something had passed between the two of them that had reached Elodie even through her confusion and panic. She had been undressed in front of Ingrid before, but this was the first time that she had been conscious of her nakedness. In the few seconds before Ingrid had grasped the situation, Elodie had become acutely aware of her new, small breasts and the soft down of hair that had recently begun to sprout between her legs. And as she’d stood there, shivering on the bath mat, she had felt Ingrid’s gaze linger on her body for a moment. She wasn’t sure what she had seen there, in the other woman’s eyes. Like a black crow landing briefly before quickly taking flight again. The moment passed, and almost immediately Ingrid had dropped her gaze and begun to busy herself with helping her.

Soon, Elodie grows accustomed to her monthly bleeding, but the strangeness that passed between them in the bathroom that morning stays with her, and for reasons she cannot even begin to explain to herself, she takes to locking the door now, whenever she undresses.

It’s a few months later when Anton arrives. It’s winter, Christmas time, and recently Elodie has been woken more frequently by the sound of angry, raised voices and the slamming of doors. One afternoon, not long after Yaya and Colin have left for the day and Elodie is sitting in the schoolroom finishing her lessons, Ingrid leaves her desk and comes to sit beside her.

‘Elodie, do you remember I told you about my son, Anton?’

She nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s coming to stay with us for a little while.’

‘Oh. Is he nice?’

‘Elodie. He’ll only be here for two weeks, but you will notice certain changes. You will eat your meals up here, that sort of thing. Things will be a bit different for a short time, just while Anton’s here. Do you understand?’

‘OK.’

The first change is the locked door. Although she’s never been allowed to leave the house by herself, she’s always had free range of all the rooms. Now, however, the door at the end of the landing which separates her top-floor quarters from the stairs to the rest of the house remains locked. Yaya and Colin are on vacation, and so her days are spent alone with Ingrid.

With each day, Ingrid seems to grow more distracted and unhappy, and Elodie notices that the flaky, raw patches on her arms have begun to flare again, sometimes into angry, red welts. One afternoon she looks up from her books and sees her absently scratching at herself, seemingly unaware of the tiny specks of blood that have begun to appear beneath her nails. Quietly, Elodie gets up from her seat and goes to her, gently taking the slim white hand in her own, while Ingrid looks up, startled, blinking in surprise at what she’s done.

But often during the few weeks of Anton’s visit, Elodie is left alone. In Ingrid’s absence she whiles away the time staring out of the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the stranger who’s so mysteriously kept apart from her in the house below. Mostly she watches the little TV set that Ingrid has recently allowed her to have in the corner of the schoolroom. Through endless cop shows and soap operas, romantic comedies and late-night thrillers, Elodie stares unblinking at a world beyond High Barn that she can barely comprehend. Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey, The X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Letterman and Larry Sanders, Hill Street Blues and America’s Most Wanted. With no Ingrid to monitor what she sees, two or three hours will pass without her stirring, and she’ll watch an infomercial for skin cleanser with the same open-mouthed incredulity that she’ll watch a report from Death Row. There she sits, night after night, while love and death, sex and betrayal, murder and redemption in all their myriad variations are played out before her in a billion pixellated images upon a nine-inch screen.

Later, in bed, beneath the silent darkness, her fingers caress and stroke her new, changing body. And day by day, a nameless hunger grows.

Only twice does she catch a glimpse of Anton during his stay. The first time, she is standing at her bedroom window when Ingrid, Robert and a tall, slim teenage boy emerge from the house onto the drive. The boy has long messy hair that hides most of his face and a tense, tight way of holding himself, his fists clenched by his side. It’s strange, watching the three of them without their knowledge; they seem small and far away somehow, like characters in a movie. She sees Ingrid speak to Anton, her pink, anxious eyes fixed nervously on her son’s face. And though she can’t hear them she sees that the words that escape the boy’s barely open lips in reply make Ingrid flinch as if he’d struck her. She sees, also, the quick flash of enjoyment that momentarily lights up Robert’s face, even as he puts a remonstrative hand on Anton’s shoulder.