Birdseye Page 17

  ‘No,’ I said shortly.

  ‘Bird—’ Orville said, shocked.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I yelled at the same time. ‘Okay? I’m sorry. And I don’t care if you believe me or not. But I am. I should never have let Melanie be so rude or let Roxanne laugh at you, and I don’t care what your clothes look like or what colour your socks are, that’s not what counts, and my mom and dad – they’d be furious if they knew how rude I was. I’ll probably be grounded. For life. Or at least for weeks. It’s just, if you’re not cool, Roxanne and Melanie can be really mean. I’ve seen them do it to other girls and I didn’t want them to do it to me. But still,’ I ended miserably, ‘that’s no excuse. I’m really, really sorry.’ I collapsed back against my seat.

  ‘Bird,’ Orville tried again. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Dad. Please, just leave it.’

  I was just about to open my book again, only this time I knew I wouldn’t be able to read because my eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Jeez,’ said Raffaella. ‘Do you know, you talk even faster than my mom does when she’s upset? And that’s saying something.’

  I sniffed and she dug in her blazer pocket and passed me a crumpled tissue.

  I took it cautiously.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s clean. They’re always clean, I just can’t make them stay folded.’

  I blew my nose, a long honking snort.

  ‘Okay?’ said Raffaella.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  I caught her eye in the mirror again and we both smiled at the same time.

  Orville shook his head and continued driving.

  So that’s Rafi, she’s already told me to call her that, I said to Oz and Ollie that evening. I have a really good feeling about her. And who cares what Roxanne and Melanie think? Having a friend, a best friend, is way better than being part of a stupid group who are too scared to say or do the wrong thing just because it’s not cool.

  Such a relief. I don’t have to pretend to be stupid any more.

  28

  It’s like drama follows Anthea wherever she goes. She can’t ever sit still and just be calm. She’s always on the go, looking for new experiences. Throwing herself at life, head first. And then her head is sore and she wonders why. But if Mom or Dad say anything like that to her, she gets angry and throws all her toys out of her cot. Which is what she was busy doing when I came back from school this afternoon.

  ‘It’s what I want!’ Anthea was screaming. ‘You don’t understand—’ and then I heard Annie’s voice, and Anthea yelling back. ‘I don’t care if he’s married!’ I hung back from the front door. But that didn’t work too well because Anthea came storming past me and onto the stoep, followed by Annie.

  ‘Bird, go upstairs, right now,’ Annie snapped over her shoulder.

  ‘But Mom—’

  For once Anthea didn’t have anything sarcastic to say. She was too busy looking down the road. And then I saw it. Orville and Annie’s big suitcase.

  ‘But Mom, your suitcase,’ I said.

  ‘Bird – now!’

  I turned and walked into the house. If I sat on the third stair, I had a perfect view down the hall of the two of them, and of the front road as well. I decided to risk Annie’s wrath and craned forward.

  ‘He loves me, Mom. Can’t you understand that?’

  Annie reached out, but Anthea ran for the gate. ‘He wants us to be together properly. We will, just as soon as his divorce comes through.’

  ‘But darling, don’t you see …’ Annie had Anthea by the arm now and was trying to hold her back. ‘Look at me, Anthea.’

  Anthea reached for the latch, straining against Annie. ‘He’s coming for me, Mom. He’s found a place for us to stay. Just until—’

  ‘Until he leaves his wife?’ Annie’s voice was tired. ‘Oh Anthea, that’s the oldest line in the book.’

  ‘It’s not!’ Anthea wrenched herself free and opened the gate.

  ‘Anthea,’ Annie called after her, ‘at least wait until your father gets home—’

  ‘I’m twenty, Mom,’ Anthea said. ‘I can do what I like.’

  A long car pulled up outside the gate. It was maroon with tinted windows. Anthea ran towards it.

  ‘The case, Anth,’ I yelled. ‘What about your clothes and everything? Your toothbrush?’

  She ran back, grabbed the suitcase and heaved it onto the back seat. Then she slipped into the car and fell sobbing into the man’s arms.

  His hair was dark, flecked with grey, and his face – what I could see of it – was creased with concern. He unwound himself from Anthea’s embrace and leaned across her to close the door.

  ‘Anthea,’ I yelled ‘what about Dad? You haven’t said goodbye.’ But I was shouting into silence. The large car had whirred away.

  Annie came back inside and slumped down on the stair next to me. She was too distracted to remember sending me up to my room.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked the path, the open gate, the empty road.

  I didn’t know the answer to that. One thing I did know, though – Anthea was so pretty, so young, her skin so fresh and firm.

  ‘Mom.’

  ‘Yes, Bird?’

  ‘He’s really old.’

  And that’s what I heard Annie telling Orville when he got home. ‘She wouldn’t tell me where she’d met him, Orville. Or where she was going – no phone number. No way of contacting her. I don’t even know his name. Can’t we stop this? Get the police onto him?’

  ‘We can’t, darling.’ Orville sounded stunned.

  ‘But Orville, she’s a baby,’ said Annie. ‘And he must have been forty if he was a day.’

  I nodded in silent agreement. As I’d thought. Really old.

  29

  Anthea’s back, I told the boys, quite soon after that. I heard the front door open this afternoon and then Thelma’s voice sounding happy and surprised. When I ran to the landing and looked over, there was Anthea, hugging Thelma, and Thelma patting her, and Orville and Annie’s suitcase. All back home.

  Anthea ran up the stairs, bumping the suitcase behind her. Her hair was tangled and her eyes were swollen and red.

  ‘Anth? Are you okay?’ I called.

  ‘Just leave me alone, Bird,’ she said, slamming her bedroom door shut. Her voice was wobbly, as if she didn’t have enough energy to force it into a yell. ‘I just want to sleep.’

  And that’s what she did, for two days solid.

  But then, on the third day, just as I was about to start my homework, she came to my room.

  ‘Hi Bird,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She wandered to the window and looked out.

  ‘You weren’t gone all that long,’ I finally said.

  ‘I know.’ She said it so quietly I didn’t know if she was talking to me or to herself. ‘Mom was right. He was never going to leave his wife.’ She sniffed and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Anth.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to hang around while he decided what to do.’

  ‘So you just left?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ She looked at me with a sudden scowl, and I was relieved to see some of the old Anthea creeping back. ‘Yep. Packed my bags and left him a note.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  ‘Good? What do you know about it, Bird?’

  ‘Well, Sophie James – you remember the girl in my class?’

  ‘Not really.’ Anthea looked uninterested so I hurried on before she re- entered her skin and told me what a boring little shit I was.

  ‘Well, she was telling us all at break the other day, her dad had had a girlfriend for ages. Sophie’s mom didn’t know about her and when she found out, she threw all his stuff on the lawn and changed the locks. She said if she could find the bitch who’d been screwing her husband, she’d kill her. And then his girlfriend showed up, calling Sophie’s mom a stupid cow, saying at least she could make her
dad happy. They started punching and kicking each other and all the neighbours came out to watch and one of them pulled them apart and he got a scratch on the cheek.’

  Anthea stared at me, baffled.

  ‘So aren’t you glad you’re home, Anth,’ I hurried to fit a few last words in, ‘safe from his wife?’

  Anthea buried her face in her hands. She rocked backwards and forwards, and I moved to the window and risked putting my arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’ll all be okay now, Anth, now that you’re home.

  ‘Thanks, Bird.’

  ‘You are staying?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  I smiled. Marchbanks was just too quiet without Anthea around.

  But she didn’t stay, of course. She was home for about a week, and then, one afternoon, there was a loud banging on the door. Only Thelma was there to hear it. Anthea left a note for Annie and Orville and Thelma filled us in on the details at supper when she brought in the spanspek. He had come knocking and Anthea had flown down the stairs straight into his arms and he was saying he was so sorry and he was starting divorce proceedings that very day and could they please try again.

  ‘And then they kissed,’ said Thelma, ‘and he told Anthea to pack her things, that he’d wait.’

  ‘So I said to him, “Sir, you can wait outside”, and I left him on the stoep, and then Anthea was back and there was more kissing. Then she hugged me and gave me the letter for you.’

  Annie sighed. ‘Well at least we know where she is now, a telephone number and an address.’

  ‘Mom,’ I said tentatively.

  ‘Yes, Bird.’

  ‘If you don’t want Anthea to stay there, the best idea is to let his wife know all about it. It works. Sophie James said her mom put an end to it once and for all.’

  30

  1992

  You know the way none of us can ever figure out how Ma Bess knows everything? We blame each other, but we know that when it comes to the important secrets, not one of us would ever tell on the other. It’s an unspoken code. But somehow, she always knows exactly what’s going on.

  Turns out I’m the one who told her. Because of me, that bitch upstairs got a bird’s-eye view of our world. I am so stupid, I could kick myself. So stupid I didn’t realise how easy it was to fool me, to use me.

  I don’t want to write about this, but I have to. It’ll help explain why things might have to change for a while.

  I’d been sent home early from school, a temperature raging, my cheeks flushed. ‘Run upstairs,’ Annie said, ‘and hop into bed. I’ll get Thelma to bring you up a nice cup of tea and then I’ll come and chat to you.’

  I hated being sick. But I loved having Annie all to myself.

  ‘Thelma,’ I heard her calling as I trudged up the stairs, my legs heavy. ‘Thelma.’ But Thelma wasn’t in the kitchen. As I opened my bedroom door, I found her kneeling next to my trunk, a key in one hand, a blue exercise book in the other.

  I stared at her, and she looked up at me, her eyes wide, her face paled to grey. My headache pounded even harder. She turned, opened the trunk, replaced the book on the pile, closed the lid, locked the trunk, put the key in her pocket, then stood and faced me.

  ‘She has a key too, Birdie,’ she said.

  Of course she had. And I had been stupid enough not to ask Orville to buy a new padlock.

  Everything slid into place, all the cogs that asked ‘How could she know? Who told her?’ They locked against each other and began to turn, whirring, gathering speed.

  ‘You tell her what I write?’ I said.

  She shook her head. Her face was expressionless, a mask. ‘No, I take them up to her every week.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she tells me to.’

  ‘But I thought you were my friend?’

  She looked at me as if I would never understand. Then she clicked her tongue.

  ‘Your friend, Birdie?’ she said. ‘Friendship doesn’t pay my salary. It doesn’t feed my children and my grandchildren. I am sorry.’

  And she was, I knew that. But she was Ma’s employee, and the grip on her was far tighter than it was on us.

  ‘How long?’ I asked.

  Thelma knew what I meant. ‘For as long as you were writing,’ she said.

  I slumped on the bed, my throat sore, my eyes burning.

  ‘Are you going to tell her you found me?’ Thelma’s voice was quiet.

  ‘Yes!’ I wanted to scream. I wanted to run up those stairs, bash open the door and throttle her. Lock my hands around that scraggy neck and squeeze. Kick those skinny shins.

  Thelma stood, waiting for my reply. Ma Bess was always going to win, I realised. If Thelma hadn’t taken my books up those stairs, she’d have found out our secrets some other way. Thelma didn’t have to beg me or plead. I knew what would happen to her if Ma found out I’d caught her. She wouldn’t fire her – even Ma knew what side her bread was buttered on – but she’d increase her stranglehold on Thelma, humiliate her yet further. And Thelma would have to put up with it, because she’d never be able to find another job that paid as well as this one.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to tell her, but she’s not going to read anything else. I’ll have to stop writing.’

  As I said the words, I knew it was impossible. I couldn’t stop writing to Ollie and Oz. I might as well stop breathing.

  ‘If you stop, she will know.’

  Thelma and I stared at each other. I was so tired. All I wanted was to sleep. Lie down on my bed, put my cheek against my cool pillow and pretend none of this had happened.

  What could I do? It wasn’t just Thelma, or the horror of knowing that Ma Bess had worked her way inside my head, read everything I thought about her and my family. What would the others do if they knew I was the source, the traitor? That I’d been observing them and writing them down? What if they saw all the things I’d written about them? At the very thought, my soul shrivelled. No, I couldn’t stop, and nor could I continue. I was stuck.

  I had to do some serious thinking. I gazed at the cracks and shapes in the ceiling plaster.

  And then Thelma turned to me, her face suddenly lighter and happier. ‘Birdie,’ she said. ‘Here is a very good idea.’

  31

  That’s how it started. Two piles of notebooks grew in my trunk. The blue ones and the brown ones. Thelma still fed Ma the blue ones. The only thing was, Ma Bess was treated to a sudden change in diet. I couldn’t do it too quickly – she was too clever for that. No, it had to be a gradual process. A slow swing from fact to fictionalised fact and from there to pure storytelling. With plenty of rambling thrown in because I knew how irritated she became when I didn’t stick to the point.

  I included enough to make it still seem as if I was describing the life of my family. But I was also responsible for some very interesting misconceptions, and I think I made Ma’s world a harder place to live in. She had to know. She had to be on top of us all. And in me she had found a perfect and unwitting spy. But the turncoat turned coat again and became Miss Misinformation. In the brown books I wrote about our real lives; the blue books fed Ma dreary, mind-numbingly dull titbits about life in Marchbanks.

  At first it was hard to get the words just right. I laboured over the first entry, tried several versions before I copied one in. It looked too neat, and so I had to learn to make mistakes. And cross them out, smudge and smear and make an ordinary book out of lies. Slowly and stealthily I pulled my tricks on Ma. To do so, I had to think of the most boring things I could write. Make her grit her teeth in rage and, I hoped, fling small blue books across her room.

  Things had to be done carefully. Said carefully. I was almost thirteen when I learned the art of the near-truth, of skating the edges but never going so far that the ice would crack and the cold waters close over my head.

  And then there was Thelma. I had to protect her, make sure she didn’t come under suspicion.

  With her prying, I
felt as if Ma had sliced off the top of my skull, scooped out my brain and spread it out in front of her. She had picked through my life and examined every thought I’d ever had. I had to let her feel she was still able to do that, but now it would be on my terms.

  32

  Seeing as I won’t be using these blue books any more, let me show you what’s happening inside them now. Here’s an excerpt from:

  A New and Amended Version of Bird’s Life. Diary, Blue

  Soon I will be thirteen. It is time for me to grow up, but I don’t know if I ever want to. Almost thirteen is a terrible age. It’s neither here nor there. Only yesterday I was still young, now when I try to get the feeling back, something always stops me.

  On top of it all, school is such a drag. We’ve got this project which is going to take for ever, and it has to be illustrated and I’m not good at art. We have to explore the area we live in, and then design a tourism brochure. How boring is that? I’ll do my rough work here, for you to read – maybe you’ll discover all kinds of things you didn’t know about Harbiton!

  I put down my pen and smiled. Ma Bess was about get Harbiton in chunks: history, local attractions, flora, fauna, all the blah-blah, blah-blah-blah about our sleepy little dorpie. Whatever I could dredge up about Harbiton, Thelma could take straight upstairs, with my blessings. After Ma had waded her way through that, I’d find something equally mindless to fill the next ten pages, and the next, and the next. And if she suffered a slow death by drowning in trivia, it served her right. Prying, snooping old bat.

  The next day I was true to my word. First, a note to Ollie and Oz in a new buff-coloured jotter:

  So like I said, I have to do this Harbiton thing. I hate projects like this, but I can’t think of a better way to bore Ma Bess to tears.

  Anyway, here goes. This is Bird, signing out and continuing with Project Blue Book.

  A New and Amended Version of Bird’s Life. Diary, Blue

  Okay, Oz, Ollie, just in case you’ve forgotten all about Harbiton …

  The Whales of Harbiton – A Forgotten History by Amelia Little

  Looking at Harbiton now, a tranquil village watched over by the large houses on the hill, it is hard to believe that whales were once slaughtered here and dragged ashore to be dismembered. But that is what happened. In late July the whales would arrive, heading for safe harbour where they could calve and then take their young out into the deep waters of the world.