Birdseye Read online

  ‘Thank you for taking the time to chat, Bird,’ she said. ‘It’s been a delight.’

  I skipped away from the table and cannoned straight into Anthea. ‘I see you were chatting to the outcasts,’ she said. ‘What did they have to say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said airily. ‘Nothing at all. I was just making them feel welcome.’ I turned and gave Pa God a big wink.

  24

  1991

  I was just thinking, I said to Ollie and Oz, it’s six years since you left. You probably don’t know what any of us even look like any more.

  It was hard keeping track of everything my brothers needed to know. Fortunately, nothing much changed inside Marchbanks itself – the only time the furniture moved was when it was dusted – but we had all changed. Angela had left the house, Alice was away at university, Anthea was hardly ever home.

  Annie and Orville haven’t changed that much, but they do look older. Their eyes aren’t as bright and Annie’s hair has quite a few grey streaks in it. But her chin is still pointed and her eyebrows are like wings, and she still has high cheekbones. She’s beautiful, and sweet and soft, but mostly sad.

  The same with Orville. His hair is still blond and he’s still very tall and his shoulders are just as broad, but they’re a bit more stooped, and his eyes are a darker grey. They grow so soft when he looks at Annie, but their love is quieter, as if someone slid the volume control all the way down, so that the song’s still there, but they’re singing the blues softly. Whenever they’re in the house at the same time, they’re usually close to each other, at the dining-room table, or watching tv, or reading in the sitting room, but Orville spends more time in his darkroom than he used to, and Annie doesn’t go out into the garden much any more. She likes tidying. We have very neat cupboards.

  The girls? Well Angela hasn’t changed that much. She’s tall and slim. She doesn’t think she’ll ever have proper hips. That’s what she said the other day. But Anthea told her to count her lucky stars: being overendowed wasn’t always a blessing. As for me, even though I’m almost twelve, I don’t think I’ll ever get hips, or be the slightest bit endowed.

  Anyway, Angela’s our bright shining Angel, and Anthea’s the complete opposite. Orville thinks there must be Gypsy blood in our family, wild and fiery. Myself, I think the Gypsies dropped off one of their children and stole a fair-haired, sweet, quiet kid from the nest. That would explain a lot.

  Alice would probably kill me for this but I think she looks a lot like Ma Bess, even though her hair is blonde, darker than Angela’s, more like Orville’s in colour. Alice’s eyes make sapphires look dull. She hides them behind her glasses, and never wears make-up. When you see her in her swimming costume she’s got plenty of curves, so I suppose she’s done okay with being endowed. But most of the time she wears really boring clothes. She’s not a shopper and Annie has to force her to buy new stuff. When she does it’s usually jeans and T-shirts – baggy ones.

  Ma Bess has changed quite a bit since you left. That happens as you get older, you deteriorate fast. The faster the better Anthea says, the sooner she’s dust the happier we’ll all be. Ma Bess still has dark hair – the hairdresser comes every six weeks and the house smells like Orville’s darkroom. It makes her face look even whiter. Her eyes aren’t as clear as they used to be, but they’re still pretty spooky. They bore right into your brain. Annie’s worried about her blood pressure, because she isn’t getting any exercise. She sits in her wheelchair day in and day out. She’s wobblier on her feet, she’s finding it harder and harder to walk. The doctor says it’s osteoporosis now, as well as the arthritis; she has to take calcium tablets, but her bones are probably already quite brittle. She never makes it downstairs any more. Her stealth attack on Pa God was the last time we had the pleasure of her company. So yes, she is crumbling, falling to bits, but sometimes I wonder if she’s as frail as she makes out to be. I reckon she just likes to have excuses for making us run around after her. She’s as skinny as ever, and her hands are longer and bonier every time I see her. Her clothes are beautiful though. A lady from Maddon’s comes here twice a year, to show her the winter and summer range. Alice says what she spends on clothes and shoes could probably feed several small African villages.

  Thelma will never grow old. Her skin is as smooth and soft and chocolate brown as ever and she doesn’t have any wrinkles. The only thing that’s changed about her is her size. Annie says she was a tiny thing when she first arrived here. She’s much rounder now. I love hugging her.

  Things are changing in our country, though. Remember I told you about Mr Mandela being in prison on Robben Island? You can see it from the main harbour in Cape Town. Just across the water. So near to his family and his children, and his country, but so far. He was there for twenty-seven years, before he was freed. That’s what Sister Feliciana told us. She’s young, which is quite strange because most of the nuns at St Agatha’s are pretty decrepit. That means decaying, falling to pieces, like Sister Juliana, even if her mind is as sharp as a tack. That’s what she’s always telling us – Don’t try to put anything past me girls, my mind is as sharp as a tack.

  Anyway, Sister Feliciana is young and rosy cheeked and she’s very serious about important things like politics. She said imagine being on Robben Island for as long as we have been alive, and then double that and add three years. She had tears in her eyes when she talked about Mr Mandela and all the other prisoners on Robben Island. They couldn’t escape, because the water between Cape Town and the island is vrek cold. Sister says we can’t live in South Africa and not be aware of our country’s history. So I’m going to watch the news more and try not to be an ostrich with my head in the sand. Which is pretty much what all of us are in Marchbanks.

  I suppose I’m changing too, but I don’t need to explain myself to you do I? Okay, just to be on the safe side, here’s what I look like. Amelia Little, aka Bird. Nearly twelve years old and just started senior school. Still skinny, still fair-haired, still no curves, still has her nose stuck in a book all the time. The nose itself is straight which is a blessing. Some freckles on it, sadly. Long narrow feet, long fingers. Big mouth, big smile, and it looks like my teeth will be straight which is good, because I hate the idea of braces and Annie and Orville would battle to pay for those. Pointy chin, wide forehead. Collarbones stick out, knees and elbows still knobbly. Anthea says I have potential, but because I don’t put in the effort, I’ll never be beautiful, but Orville said that was ridiculous. He said I had a fine-boned beauty and one of these days the boys will be bashing down the door. Nice try, Dad. He’s really sweet.

  25

  I don’t see why I have to go to St Agatha’s, I complained to my brothers. It’s not like we’re Catholic or anything, but I have to go to a stupid private school with nuns. I wish I could go to Harbiton High. I could walk to school, it’s just down the mountain, but no, I have to go all the way into town with Orville every morning and then all the way back again when he finishes work. And all because Ma Bess has some old-fashioned idea about us being brought up like ladies. That didn’t work too well with Anthea, did it? I don’t get a choice. No one ever asks if I want to wear a school uniform that comes out of the ark. And that stupid boater. To be worn at all times when you are outside the gates and in school uniforms, girls. That’s Sister Juliana and her school rules – also straight out of the ark. All it does is make my scalp itch. Forget school rules. I wish I could just lose the bloody thing.

  Going to Saint Agatha’s separated me from Harbiton, put me in a position where my friends, if I ever made any, would be from somewhere else. The blue and beige of my uniform labelled me as surely as if the motto of the school had been tattooed across my forehead. Veritas. Truth. But at school I wasn’t truthful at all. I learned to deny who I was, creating a person totally unlike myself. I learned to squash my thirst for knowledge, my longing to let stories spill out of me. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if I wanted to fit in I had to do the right things, say the right t
hings, scorn the right things. No bright plumage for this bird. And the less anyone at school knew about my life at home, the better. I made no ripples, created no waves – until the day that Raffaella Franco, the girl destined to become my best friend, arrived in our classroom.

  She stood in the doorway, olive-skinned, dark-haired, bright-eyed and snapping with energy, smiling at us as if we’d all open our arms and welcome her in. But our school wasn’t like that, and she didn’t know it, especially as she was wearing a dress that was too short and too tight for her, and socks that were a dull grey rather than sparkling white.

  ‘Second-hand clothes shop,’ I heard Melanie Brookes whisper loudly as Raffaella made her way to the desk just in front of mine. I saw the back of her neck redden, and her shoulders lift slightly. But instead of saying or doing anything, I stared ahead and concentrated as I seldom did on what Mrs Baxter was saying. Just as well, because I caught the tail end of her sentence. ‘And so, Amelia, I know we can rely on you to make sure that Raffaella will feel at home in her new school.’ I looked around. Melanie Brookes was grinning and so was Roxanne Smuts. I grimaced at them and shrugged my shoulders in a sort of what-can-I-do? way. They smirked back in sympathy.

  As I turned back, I saw Raffaella. She’d caught every nuance of the mime. She looked at me squarely. ‘Don’t worry,’ she hissed, ‘I can take care of myself.’

  I blushed then, red and fiery. I hadn’t realised until then how shame worked. It made me feel hot and prickly and uncomfortable. As if I had to make amends in some way.

  But it was accompanied by a deep fear. If I made a move in Raffaella’s direction, Melanie and Roxanne and the rest of the clique would be merciless, as only girls can be. I’d be blowing all of my hard work, moving from us to other, and I didn’t know if I could afford to do that. Because once they had me in their sights, they’d dismember me, and I didn’t know that I’d be able to put myself back together again.

  26

  I carried my shame home with me that day. I sat quietly in the car, answering Orville in short syllables when he asked how my day had gone.

  ‘Are you all right, Bird?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I watched the trees flash by on the side of the freeway, felt again the slow burn of embarrassment as Raffaella Franco’s eyes met mine. The way the smile had left her face, the look of contempt that had replaced it, leaving me feeling as if she’d slapped me. If I could have, I’d have stamped my feet in fury. What right did she have to make me feel that way?

  When the bell had rung for break, I’d turned to her and said, ‘Come, I’ll show you around.’

  ‘No thanks,’ Raffaella had said. ‘I told you, I’ll look after myself.’

  She marched out of the classroom into the corridor where our rucksacks stood lined in a neat row. I stood in the doorway and watched her as she opened hers and took out her lunchbox.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said hastily. ‘Nothing. I’ll just wait for you and show you where to go.’

  ‘What part of “no thanks” did you not get?’ Raffaella’s voice was tight and squeezed. Her eyes glazed, and she swiped at them before a tear could betray her. ‘Just leave me alone,’ she said. ‘Run off and join your friends.’ She spat the last words, but her bottom lip was trembling.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s just that Mrs Baxter said—’

  She straightened up and stared at me. She was as short as I was, but where I was all knees and elbows, Raffaella’s body had already burst into curves. Everything about her was bright, especially her anger.

  ‘Listen, A-me-lia. I don’t care what Mrs Baxter said. Just go. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I mumbled. I walked to the top of the stairs. I turned, with ‘Sorry’ on my lips, but she met me with such a hot-eyed glare that I felt an answering surge of anger.

  What was her problem anyway? It wasn’t as if I’d said anything. Melanie Brookes was the one who’d made the bitchy comment about her uniform. Not me.

  So why did my supper sit like a lump in my stomach, and what was it that made me wake up feeling as if something was out of place? Something that I wouldn’t be able to put back. Raffaella Franco wasn’t even my friend. So why did I feel as if I had betrayed her?

  27

  The next morning, Orville told me to hurry a little. ‘I’ve promised a lift to a child who goes to your school,’ he said. ‘Her family has just moved here from Durban and Sister Juliana phoned Mom yesterday to see if we’d be able to help out. Her mother’s just had a baby, so things are a bit chaotic for them at the moment.’

  ‘Hmmm?’ I asked, my nose deep in the pages of our new set work, Good-night Mister Tom. ‘Sorry, Dad?’

  ‘Come along, Bird, let’s get going.’

  I reached for my rucksack and my boater, grabbed my gym bag and ran to the car, my head filled with Willie Beech and old Tom Oakley. The moment I’d strapped myself in, I opened the book to where Zach walks into the story.

  ‘Right, here we are,’ Orville said. ‘Number 14.’

  ‘What?’ I lifted my head, dazed. In the time it had taken my father to drive into the higgledy-piggle of streets in Harbiton Village, I had made my way to where Mr Tom had decided to give Willie a bath.

  I looked at the square house with its overgrown front garden. ‘What are we doing here, Dad?’

  ‘Bird, you have to learn to listen,’ Orville said. ‘What are you going to do when you have a job and someone asks you to do something? Ask them if you can finish your chapter?’

  He was about to get out of the car when the front door opened and a small whip of a woman with a beautiful olive-skinned baby on her hip hurried out. The baby crowed and reached for her hair, trying to pull it loose from its wispy bun.

  ‘Mister Little,’ she said, ‘this is too, too kind.’

  Hot on her heels came Raffaella, ramming her boater onto her head with one hand, shoving the last of a thick slice of toast into her mouth with the other, her rucksack falling off one shoulder.

  She stopped short when she saw me.

  ‘Oh no,’ she groaned through a mouthful of toast. ‘Mama—’

  But Mrs Franco was pushing her towards the car, allowing no space for Raffaella to interrupt her rapid-fire, heavily accented English.

  ‘Now Rafi, you be sure to thank Mr Little and tell him how happy you are in this beautiful part of the world and to have found a friend from school, so easy, so quick.’ She beamed at me. ‘My Rafi, she had to leave so many good friends behind her when we came here, but it’s a good promotion for my husband. And we will love Cape Town.’ She directed the last at her scowling daughter. ‘It will take some little few months and we will all be settled. But look at me here talking and you are all in a hurry to be gone.’ She planted a smacking kiss on Raffaella’s cheek and shepherded her to the car. ‘Thank you to your wife too, Mr Little. We can talk about lifts maybe? To share this transport.’

  ‘Share?’ I looked at Orville in dismay and saw Rafi casting exactly the same look of horror at her mother. No more early-morning rides to school on my own with my dad? No chances to tell him everything that was happening in my life? No gulping down a chapter or two of whatever book I was immersed in? And worst of all, all the way into Cape Town and all the way back with Raffaella in the car.

  I glared at Raffaella and she glared right back. She slid into the back seat of the car and said brightly, ‘Thank you so much for the lift, Mr Little. It’s so good to meet neighbours who are kind – and considerate. I thank you. My family thanks you.’

  Orville peered at her in the rear-view mirror, bemused. ‘That’s no problem, Raffaella,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly out of our way, is it, Bird?’

  ‘Bird?’ Raffaella said.

  ‘A family name,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Oh, how tweet,’ she said.

  I ignored her and opened my book.

  But I couldn’t read. Well I could, but only the same two sentences, over
and over: Willie stared in horror at the bubbling water and backed towards the table. He watched Tom lift two more saucepans from the stove and empty them together with a handful of salt into the tub.

  ‘How long have you lived in Harbiton, Mr Little?’ Raffaella asked politely.

  ‘Oh, quite a few years now,’ said Orville.

  ‘And do you live here, in the Village?’

  ‘No, we’re up on the mountain,’ Orville said. ‘My wife’s mother has a house up there.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Raffaella. ‘Up there.’ She pointed back to the mountain. ‘A bit higher up than us then.’

  ‘Just a little,’ Orville laughed. ‘But it’s all Harbiton.’

  ‘Some people might not think so. Some people might think that being up there is better than being down here. You know, where the houses are smaller, and people might have to buy second-hand clothes …’

  Willie stared in horror at the bubbling water and backed towards the table. He watched Tom lift two more saucepans from the stove and empty them together with a handful of salt into the tub.

  ‘I’m not quite sure—’ Orville began, but Raffaella dashed gaily on.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Little,’ Raffaella said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. You seem like such a nice, kind man.’

  I flicked the page loudly even though I hadn’t read another word. So much for losing myself in a good book. That didn’t look like it was ever going to happen again. And on top of that, Raffaella was now deep in a conversation with Orville about Italian cooking.

  ‘Oh, you’d love my mom’s cooking, Mr Little,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘There’s nothing she likes more than cooking a huge pot of pasta and inviting friends to share our meal. She’s like that. My dad says it’s her Italian blood. Very hospitable.’

  I pulled down the visor and glanced in the mirror. Raffaella’s eyes were bright, her face flushed. She caught my eye.

  ‘I’m so sorry … Bird,’ she said. ‘Am I interrupting your reading?’

  Her bottom lip quivered, just as it had done the day before.