Birdseye Read online

  Orville’s face lit up when he saw Annie. He smiled as if he was seeing her for the first time. It was really romantic. All through dinner he kept looking at her, so much that Annie blushed bright pink. And he told me how pretty I was. Angela did too. Anthea didn’t say a word. She just looked at my new dress like she wanted to rip it off. Alice didn’t notice – she never did.

  Just after we got home, a tube of Ma Bess’s special face cream was delivered from the chemist, so Annie sent me up with it. Ma Bess looked me up and down, and her lip went all snarly, the way it does before she spits out something mean. And then she said, ‘Hmmm.’ I put the cream down and said goodbye, but just when I got to the door she said, ‘Fine feathers, my dear. Fine feathers.’ I didn’t know what she meant and I didn’t care. I didn’t feel so frightened of her either. I was too busy shaking my head, all the way up the stairs and all the way down, feeling how light it was without all my hair. After a visit to Rose-Marie’s, nothing could make me feel bad.

  Granny Little would never have said something like that, I told Ollie and Oz. She would have said, ‘My, my, little Bird, aren’t you looking just the thing.’ I wish I could swap them. Send Ma Bess off to live in the Eastern Cape, and let Granny Little and Gramps come here and live with us.

  Like Orville, my other grandparents were gentle, kind people, who adored their only son, and who adored us too.

  They came to see us every second year, for two weeks. They couldn’t get away for longer, because they could only afford to pay a farm manager for a short time. When they came to Harbiton, they stayed at the Beach Hotel and we visited them there. There was never any question of them staying with us – not since the very first time they met Ma Bess. ‘Let’s just say it wasn’t a case of instant attraction, dear, and leave it at that,’ said Granny Little when I asked her why they never came to Marchbanks.

  Having fond grandparents, even if only for such short stretches of time, was a balm. They always came during school holidays and probably left exhausted, because we demanded so much from them – love and hugs and stories about when they were young and when Orville was young too. We saw how devoted Gramps was to Granny, saw the way she would touch his hand in passing. But we also saw how often their eyes rested on Orville, and the pride that shone from them.

  Sometimes, when I saw how much love Gramps and Granny had left over to give Orville – lots and lots – I wished I was an only child too. Even with Ollie and Oz gone, there were just so many of us. And all of us want to be loved in bucketfuls, not drips.

  10

  I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m really scared. Angela told me to go to my room, and try to sleep. And I did try, but there are footsteps. And lots of whispering. If I tell you what happened tonight, what I saw, then maybe it will go out of my mind and onto the paper. And then maybe I’ll be able to switch off the light and close my eyes.

  I had woken suddenly, my heart racing. Was it a voice from a dream, that feeble sound? I listened hard. It was coming from the front garden. A thin sound, as if someone was squeezing a noise from their throat. I walked to the door of my bedroom and stood listening. No lights were going on behind any of the other doors. The rest of the house was fast, fast asleep.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped. Maybe I should call Angela or Alice, or even risk waking Anthea, rather than venture all the way down into the dark. But what if it was nothing, just a sound left over from a dream? I’d just have a quick look, peep around the side of the house and see what it was. And then tomorrow I’d be able to tell Oz and Ollie all about my midnight adventure, my intrepid journey in the dark of night.

  I crept down the stairs and quietly opened the door into the dining room. So far so good. A silent dash across the kitchen floor. I reached up to open the lock on the door and stood with one foot on the back step, listening hard. There it was again. The same sound, only weaker this time. I sidled along the wall and around the corner, the damp earth freezing under my bare feet.

  There was Anthea, a small heap on the front lawn.

  I knelt down next to my sister and stroked her skin, clammy and slick under my hands. Her eyelids moved and she mewed like a kitten trying to make its first cat noises. I shook her shoulder. ‘Wake up, Anthea, wake up.’ Her eyes opened, then the lids slid shut again. ‘Please, Anthea. What’s wrong?’

  She said something. I bent my head low. ‘Angela. Get Angela, Bird.’

  Something told me to be quiet as the quietest bird. I flew up the stairs and into Angela’s bedroom. Angela sat bolt upright in bed. My finger was on my lips and I whispered, ‘It’s Anthea. She needs you.’ I led the way and Angela followed. When she saw Anthea, she said nothing. Just knelt next to her and touched her cheek.

  ‘Bird,’ she said, ‘Anthea needs us. Can you help me get her up?’

  I nodded.

  Angela pulled Anthea into a sitting position. I propped her up and Angela managed to drape one arm over her shoulder.

  We tried to stand, Anthea’s weight flopping between us. We couldn’t move.

  ‘It’s no use,’ Angela said finally. ‘Go and call Alice, Bird. Quiet now – don’t let anyone hear you.’ So back up the stairs and into Alice’s room. I pushed and pulled her into wakefulness, then winced at the tread of her feet on the stairs, but no one woke up.

  Back in the garden, Angela had Anthea’s head in her lap. She was smoothing her dark curls, talking softly. But Anthea’s eyes were still closed and the whiteness of her face frightened me. The moonlight had taken all the colour from her and left my sister’s skin blue-white, her lips black-red.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Angela, ‘but we’ve got to get her inside. To my room.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wake Mom and Dad?’ Alice asked.

  Anthea roused herself briefly. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s okay, Anth,’ Angela said. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

  Between us we managed to drag Anthea inside. I looked down and saw my bare feet streaked with something dark. Blood. I tugged Angela’s arm and showed her. Her mouth tightened and she said nothing.

  We concentrated on keeping silent, all the way upstairs and along the passage to Angela’s door. Inside her room everything shone: snowy white curtains and bedcover. She stripped her bed quickly, then threw her dark blue rug onto it. We flopped Anthea onto the bed and she sprawled there, her eyes closed. The back of her skirt was red with blood. My sisters moved as if they knew what had to be done.

  ‘Bird.’ Angela’s hands were on my shoulders. ‘Bird, can you help me again? Can you hear me?’ She bent to my level and looked into my eyes. I blinked and she swam into focus.

  ‘Bird, you’ve been so brave. Can you do something else for me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I want you to go the linen cupboard and bring me the maroon towels.

  Can you do that?’ I nodded again. I didn’t need Angela’s warning to tell me to go quietly. I was Bird after all, flitter and quiet glider. When I got back, Anthea’s skirt lay crumpled in the corner. Her slim legs lay crookedly open and blood streaked them, from thigh to ankle.

  Alice’s hands were bloody and the calm of her face was beginning to crack. ‘It won’t stop,’ she said. The dark green towels from the bathroom were lying on the floor. ‘We’ll have to call the doctor.’

  Anthea’s face had no colour. It was transparent. Only the bright red gash of her mouth and slash of blue eyeshadow told me that my sister owned this face. The rest was white, white.

  I couldn’t look at her. ‘What must I do?’ I asked.

  Angela didn’t answer. She took the towels from me and folded one of them into a large wedge which she placed between Anthea’s legs.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Alice said.

  ‘I don’t know who she went to,’ Angela said, ‘but I’ll kill them if I get my hands on them.’ She bent and stroked Anthea’s forehead, but she didn’t stir.

  ‘She’s goin
g to hate me for this, but we have to call Mom.’

  ‘Shall I go?’ Alice said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Angela, ‘quickly.’

  And then it was just me and Angela and Anthea.

  ‘Angela,’ I tugged at her nightie, ‘what’s happened? Why’s she bleeding?’ Angela pulled me into a quick hug. ‘We’ll be okay now, Bird. Mom will know what to do. You run along to bed.’

  ‘But Angela— ’

  ‘Shh, Bird. We’ll talk later.’

  But we didn’t talk later. When I woke up the washing machine was already churning. Thelma was on her knees scrubbing the stairs. When I asked her if Anthea was okay she told me not to worry, and Angela said the same. Anthea stayed home from school for almost a week and nobody explained anything to me. When I asked them why Anthea was still in bed, they just said don’t worry, Bird, and everything will be fine, Bird.

  I wish you were here – maybe they’d tell you, because you’re older, and then you could tell me. It’s a mystery. But not an exciting one like the ones in books.

  I don’t think there is a memento for something like this, but I found one anyway. A black stone from the garden, with rough edges that remind me of how jagged and squirmy I felt.

  11

  1988

  I miss seeing Detective Ace, I said to Ollie and Oz. When you first left he used to come around just about every day, and then whenever there was something to tell us. But that’s not happening much any more. Annie and Orville were touched by his concern. That’s what Annie said. I am touched by your concern Marius. But he’s not showing much concern these days. The last time he phoned I answered and when I asked him why he didn’t just come to say hello, to see how we were, he said it wasn’t a good idea. When I call or come around people think one of two things, Miss Bird, he said. Either that the news is very good, or that it’s very bad. I can’t in all fairness do that. Although it would be very nice to hear from you if ever you need to call me. But when I told Orville what he had said, and how touched I was by his concern, he said I shouldn’t just phone him on a whim. He’s a very busy man, Bird, he said, and he has to have all the time he needs to help people like us, don’t you agree? I suppose he’s right. But at least I know I can call him if I ever need help.

  So no visits from Detective Ace, and everything here stays the same.

  Annie and Thelma had to report to Ma Bess daily, receive their instructions, keep her up to date. But that didn’t explain how Ma Bess somehow knew everything that happened, news that Annie would never dream of telling her, or that Thelma couldn’t possibly know. Somehow she managed to ferret out information. And then she’d store it away. Ammunition for when she wanted to inflict maximum damage.

  We live under her roof, under her, and her laser-beam eyes bore through floors and through the walls and see everything we do, and her ears are like radar picking up the smallest whisper and all our secrets, the things we try to hide, or think we can keep hidden. She knows, and uses it all against us. We don’t ever get a chance to fight back. Her words, her weapons, are sharp needles to prick us, or else she pulls out the big guns and they blaze and cut us to pieces. We’re wounded soldiers and we crawl from her room, leaving blood on the stairs.

  If it’s bad for us, can you imagine what it must be like for Thelma? She has no control over her life. That’s what Orville said. But how can one adult have so much power over another adult? Thelma’s a grown-up. She started working here when she was sixteen and Annie was six, so that means she’s fifty-five years old. But Orville said that that’s the way it is and at least Ma Bess pays Thelma well for all the nonsense she has to put up with. But Thelma always has to obey her. Yes Madam. No Madam. Just thinking about it makes me feel hot and angry inside.

  Every night the table was properly laid, and Thelma was on call in the kitchen. Annie had a small brass bell. It sat at her right hand just above her knife, to the side of her water glass. As we finished each course, she’d lift the bell and tinkle it softly. Thelma would come through with a tray and clear the plates away, gather up the remains of the food and walk down the passage, the tray clinking with its heavy load. On Wednesday evenings, we’d have a simple supper, eat early, because was it Thelma’s night off. She had Wednesday evenings off, and Sunday afternoons, but only after she’d cooked the Sunday roast, come rain or shine, cold winter’s day or sizzling-hot one. This was the way Ma Bess liked things, the deal she had struck with Thelma when she first employed her.

  Thelma had to wear a uniform – black with a white apron and starched white cap. She had to be on call until ten o’clock in the evening and from half past six each morning. Once a year she was given two weeks’ leave to catch the train to De Aar to visit her family. I didn’t know much about them. She had three children, two boys and a girl. I knew that much, but I didn’t know how old they were or what their jobs were. As far as I was concerned, we were Thelma’s children. She looked after us, washed our clothes, cooked our food, kept our house clean. Those other children, how could they be real when they lived so far away and never saw her?

  She phoned them from the phone in Annie’s downstairs room. She was allowed to use the phone once a month for ten minutes. Her children would be waiting somewhere and she would dial the number and talk to them in a language I couldn’t understand and a tone of voice she never used to me. One that awoke jealousy in me. What right did my Thelma have to speak with such love in her voice?

  Once, Annie tried to change Thelma’s routine. ‘It’s wrong,’ I heard her saying to Orville, ‘not fair. She never has a decent amount of time to herself. And two weeks? It takes two days to get there and two days back. She never gets to seeing her children properly. She doesn’t know who they are, Orville. And as for that uniform … it dates back to the last century. It’s swelteringly hot in summer, and too thin for winter. I’m going to organise something more practical.’

  It didn’t take Ma Bess long to scotch Annie’s attempts.

  Soon afterwards, Thelma asked to speak to Annie. ‘I am sorry, Madam,’ she said.

  ‘What is it, Thelma? Everything all right at home? Are your children looking forward to seeing you in June?’

  I was curled up in the corner of the sofa paging my way through Bridge to Terabithia, leaping forward to the scenes I loved most. The long silence caught my ears and I looked up. Thelma was crying. My Thelma.

  ‘Thelma.’ Annie stepped towards her, but Thelma moved back, until she was standing at the door.

  ‘I am sorry, Madam. But The Madam does not want me to go home for longer. And I must not go home in June.’

  If Annie was Madam, Ma Bess was The Madam.

  ‘But Thelma, I want you to—’

  Thelma held up her hand. ‘I am sorry, Madam, but I cannot. If I change, The Madam says, then I must stop working here.’

  The next day Thelma was dressed in the stiff black and white again.

  No wonder I hated Ma Bess so much. I wished she would die, but I’d heard Orville talking, saying: ‘There’s plenty of life in the old girl yet,’ so there wasn’t much hope of that.

  12

  Bloody, bloody, bloody! Shit! Shit! Shit! I scrawled the words as fast as I could, my eyes smarting. It’s not just Ma Bess I hate. I hate them all. I hate Annie and Orville because they’re always too busy or too sad to listen to me. They are bloody bloody bastards. And I hate my sisters. All of them. Anthea is just a cow. She’s a bloody bloody cow. And Angela. She’s kind, but she’s never at home. She’s always out with stupid Andy. Yuck. He always has his arm around her. And she always has to be next to him – on his lap, or on the arm of the chair, or on the floor, leaning against his knees. It just looks uncomfortable to me. And I really hate Alice.

  On an early Tuesday afternoon, when I was feeling perfectly happy, Alice went and made me feel stupid, like a common or garden bug she couldn’t even be bothered to study. And she did it in front of her best friend, Jodie.

  I liked Jodie. She always took time to ask me how things were
going. When she and Alice were together, Alice seemed more alive – almost friendly.

  ‘Bird,’ Annie said to me that afternoon, ‘where’s Alice?’

  ‘She’s in her room with Jodie,’ I said. ‘They’re working on a science project.’

  ‘Go and call her for me, would you?’

  I closed my book and sighed. Then I trudged up the stairs.

  It wasn’t my fault I walked into her bedroom. She said I walked in without knocking. But I didn’t. I did knock. I knocked twice and she didn’t answer. All I wanted to do was check, because if I didn’t, then Annie would ask me if I had. And she’d send me all the way back up again. So I knocked. Twice. And there was no reply, so I walked in and Alice and Jodie were lying on the bed talking. Alice was touching Jodie’s face, and Jodie’s face was all red and her eyes were red too, like she’d been crying.

  All I said was, ‘Alice, Mom wants—’ and I didn’t even get a chance to finish, because Alice was shouting at me, yelling why didn’t I knock, and Jodie was sitting up and she was fumbling with her shirt and trying to tuck it in, and her eyes looked scared. And instead of being red her face was white and her nose was bright pink, just on the tip.

  ‘Is Jodie okay?’ I asked and Alice was shouting, really shouting at me: what business was it of mine—

  And then I got angry. ‘I did knock!’ I shouted. ‘I knocked twice! Mom said to call you! So you can stop being so rude and lie down on your stupid bed again. Do more of your stupid talking. Bloody, bloody, stupid talking! You bloody shits!’

  I tried to run out of the room but Alice stopped me. She put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Bird,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you. Jodie and I were just … we were just talking.’

  ‘I know,’ I muttered. ‘What d’you think I just said?’

  Alice was plaiting her hair and it wasn’t all fuzzy and fluffy and curly around her face any more, and she’d put her glasses on, doing her best not to look beautiful, which Anthea could never understand, because Alice was stunning she said, the best looking of all of us.