Birdseye Read online

  ‘I used to pretend my real mother had been swept off by a gust of wind, because she was so very light, lighter than a leaf. And my father, brave and noble and daring, had set off to find her.

  ‘I was convinced that, as long as my mother’s clothes remained here, and my father’s too, they would be reunited. And when they were, they would come back to find me. They would step back into their clothes, their lives, and we would all be happy again.’

  When she told us this, Annie would shrug her shoulders, toss her head and then continue, ‘Except, of course, I knew they had never been happy. Even at the age of six, even before my mother cleaned him out of our lives, I knew that. I just couldn’t understand why he hadn’t taken me with him, and why I never saw him again. There had to be a reason.’

  3

  The day Annie’s father left started and ended as most days did. She had eaten breakfast, lifted milky lips to her father for her morning kiss and then run upstairs to her room to play. She was never really alone; she had her dolls, whom she was busy teaching the alphabet, and down in the kitchen was a young woman, a wide-eyed scared person called Thelma.

  At first, Thelma couldn’t cook at all. But she could read, and she was ready to lap up any scrap of knowledge that came her way. Annie’s mother organised cookery lessons for her, delivered by Mrs Champion – Champion Cookery School: Look and Learn – Cook, don’t Burn! – and in no time Thelma was churning out delicious meals. Which was a good thing, because Ma didn’t cook and the housekeepers she had employed before that had been hopeless.

  ‘Hopeless,’ Annie repeated. ‘Not really surprising, though. Ma set impossible standards, and until Thelma came along, no one had been able to meet them.’

  Annie’s mother approved of Thelma’s cooking, but her father hardly tasted her meals. Because shortly after Thelma arrived, he was gone.

  That evening, Annie had fed her dolls their supper, made them brush their teeth and get into their nighties. The dolls had said their prayers and asked God to help them to be good little girls who had learned their pleases and thank yous.

  And then Thelma appeared at Annie’s bedroom door. ‘Time for your supper, Miss Annie.’ Annie looked up, surprised, because usually Daddy would leap up the stairs calling, ‘Where’s my girl? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,’ and Annie would laugh, ‘Silly Daddy, you can’t eat a horse,’ and Daddy would say, ‘But you can eat cottage pie,’ or roast chicken or beef Wellington or whatever meal it was that the succession of cooks before Thelma had brought to the table in a sorry and pitiful state. And Annie would be hoisted over her father’s shoulder and plopped into her chair and Daddy would say, ‘I had to drag her kicking and screaming, I tell you, kicking and screaming to the table.’ And Annie’s mother would purse her lips and look at her husband as if she didn’t like him all that much. ‘Godfrey, if you will insist on the child sharing her meals with us, please don’t excite her, she’s quite noisy enough as it is.’ Annie would shoot a quick guilty glance at her dad and he would shoot one back and they’d eat their meals in silence like two small children who had been reprimanded by the head of the children’s home.

  On Saturday afternoons, when Mother was resting after lunch, Daddy would call up to Annie, ‘Come along Ann-Pan, I think it’s time for an ice cream, don’t you?’ And they’d walk down Harbiton Hill and across Hill Road. From there they would walk to Beach Road, past the second-hand bookstore, past Maddon’s Emporium, all the way to the Hot Pot Café on the corner.

  Annie would have a Peach Melba – always a favourite. A good flavour never goes out of fashion, Daddy would say. The best taste ever, of creamy yellow ice cream and orange peaches and Daddy would wink at the waitress. ‘Just a black coffee please, no sugar.’ The waitress would blush and rush off to fill their order, then bring it to their table and linger a while to make sure that the tall handsome man and adorable little girl had everything they needed. Annie knew she was adorable because the waitresses always said to her dad, ‘Is she yours? Oh, she’s adorable.’ And her dad was definitely handsome, because she’d overheard one of the women at church saying, ‘They certainly make a handsome couple, even if she—’ but then she’d seen Annie looking at her and closed her mouth quickly. The waitress would wait and Daddy would say, ‘We’re fine, thank you – thank you very much.’ Then the waitress would blush again and scurry off to serve the man at the other table who was looking at his watch and who wasn’t anything like as handsome as Annie’s dad.

  Now, as Annie walked down the stairs, she asked, ‘Where’s Daddy, Thelma?’

  Thelma’s eyes were squinched and angry looking and she said, ‘Come, Miss Annie, your food will get cold.’ In the dining room with its long, long table and its wide white cloth there was only one place set with heavy silver cutlery.

  ‘Where is my mother, Thelma?’ Annie asked politely, because she had been taught to be polite, even when she was scared, or anxious like now, and Thelma’s eyes looked even more squinchy and she said, ‘Your mother’s resting, Miss Annie. I took her supper up to her on a tray.’

  ‘Is she sick?’ Annie asked anxiously. ‘And is my daddy sick too?’

  ‘No, Miss,’ said Thelma. ‘Let me bring you your supper.’ And she left the room and Annie could hear her muttering under her breath, but she couldn’t hear the words, and then Thelma came back into the dining room carrying a large white bowl, and in it was the most delicious chicken stew. Thelma ladled some of it into Annie’s plate and Annie took a mouthful and said, ‘This is very tasty, very tasty, Thelma,’ just the way Daddy always did, especially the first time he tasted her cooking, only she didn’t say, ‘You’re a real treasure,’ because when Daddy said that her mother’s lips went all wrinkly and when Thelma left the room she said, ‘Godfrey, I have asked you repeatedly not to chatter to the staff,’ so Annie supposed she had better not. Even though Mother wasn’t there. Or Daddy.

  And now, Thelma was standing next to Annie’s chair and saying, ‘Thank you, Miss Annie. Now you eat this all up like a good girlie and Thelma will put you to bed.’

  Annie sat there, at the table, looking wide-eyed at Thelma. ‘But my daddy always baths me, Thelma. Then he puts me to bed, and tells me a story. Where is he?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask your mother, Miss Annie,’ Thelma said.

  ‘And that was that,’ Annie told Orville. ‘Even then I knew there was no point in asking anything more. My father had gone, and nothing more was said about him.’

  4

  The grass was dry that summer, leaves crackled as the wind blew them from the trees. The sky was a pale and blinding blue and the sun threw sharp shadows on the ground.

  Each time Orville reached the corner of Annie’s street, he would take a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe the sand from the shoes he had shined the night before. No matter that they would soon be coated in sand again: when Orville called on Annie his golden hair was flattened into submission, his tie straight, his shirt crisp and the crease in his grey flannel trousers razor sharp. No matter that by the end of the hot, hot days they spent together all this would have wilted in the heat. When Annie opened the door to Orville, he was shining. He was a constant brightness in the dark days spent inside that house, the flame she carried inside to light the shadowy stillness of Ma’s house and Ma’s brooding presence.

  Annie tried to speak to her mother. Wanting her approval might be asking a bit much, but she longed for it nonetheless. She ached to say Orville’s name aloud to someone, anyone, even if that someone was Ma. Instead, his name bounced back at her from the silent corners of her bedroom. It was in her heart, and in her mind, and it quivered on her lips a thousand times a day. But when it slipped free in Ma’s presence, the air grew heavy with all that Ma would not say. She refused to respond, to discuss him. And so, the only time Annie spoke his name was when she said that Orville would be calling on her after he had finished work, or that they had planned a long walk over a weekend. But she could not tell her mother how she loved Orville, n
or the myriad things she loved about him. How endearing she found the lock of hair that fell across his forehead, how he would brush it back only to have it flop forward again. How clever he was, how creative and how well read, and how they both dreamed of the day when he would be able to support a wife and a family.

  One day in February, sitting on the beach with Orville, Annie looked up to see him staring at her with an intensity she found unsettling. He’d been distracted all afternoon, answering her in monosyllables, drifting off in the middle of sentences.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Orville said.

  The late afternoon sun still glowed brightly, and Annie watched the way it glanced off Orville’s high cheekbones. He is the most handsome man in the world, she thought. He gleamed from top to toe, his hair tousled by the wind, his face and body tanned from the summer hours they had spent swimming and walking together, too poor to do anything else.

  Orville swallowed.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Annie asked him anxiously.

  His skin was losing its bronzed sheen, and he was beginning to look distinctly ill.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Orville said. He avoided Annie’s gaze and looked out to sea. ‘The thing is, though—’

  Annie’s stomach sank. So this was it then. Just like all of the boys before him, Orville was going to give up the battle. She sighed. She should have known better. And now she had to face Ma’s knowing smile, the silence that said ‘I told you so’ more eloquently than any words. Annie drew away slightly.

  Orville sensed the movement and looked over at her, seeing her troubled eyes, the way her laughing mouth drooped.

  No matter how many times Orville and Annie told us the story, this was the part where we always leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘And then, Dad?’ one of us would ask. ‘And then, Mom?’

  ‘And then I kissed her,’ Orville would reply.

  ‘But why did you look sick?’

  Orville would laugh. ‘Imagine if your mom had said no! I’d been plucking up my courage to ask her if I could kiss her,’ Orville said, ‘but when I saw how sad she looked, I had to do something to put the smile back on her lips.’

  ‘And then, Dad?’ we’d clamour again.

  ‘And then I told her I loved her,’ Orville said.

  ‘And I told him I loved him too.’ Annie voice was always soft and shy, filled with as much wonder as on the day she had first said the words.

  They would link hands across the table and smile, with eyes for each other only.

  5

  ‘Tell us about the proposal, Dad,’ one of us would say then. ‘Tell us how you asked Mom to marry you.’

  ‘That was the next step I had to take,’ Orville would say as he and Annie drew us further into their story.

  ‘But it can’t have been hard, Dad,’ Angela might say, or even Anthea, who, much as she might pretend otherwise, was as keen a listener as any of us when we persuaded Orville and Annie to tell us one of their stories.

  ‘No,’ said Orville, ‘it wasn’t hard. But you have to remember there were certain things boys and girls didn’t do when your mom and I were young.’

  Anthea would snigger at this, but we’d ignore her.

  ‘A girl would never ever phone a boy,’ said Annie. ‘She waited until he called her. And most people didn’t rush into marriage, or even engagement. They’d go out for a good while, then become engaged and use the next few years to put together money for a home. So much as I’d loved to have wrestled your father to the ground and asked him to marry me, I couldn’t.’

  ‘And I had to have something solid to offer your mother,’ Orville would add. ‘Otherwise I’d be seen as unreliable.’

  But we all knew he meant he’d be seen as a fortune hunter, and we all knew who would be seeing him that way.

  6

  Orville and Annie walked down the road, their hands loosely linked. They were officially going out now, and at night Annie would lie in her bed and practise saying, ‘My boyfriend. I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Orville Little.’ And then she’d dream a little deeper into words like ‘Annie Little, how’d you do?’

  ‘… another two years, Annie.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Orville,’ she said. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I was thinking about my job. I spoke to Mr Morton yesterday. It will be another two years before I can expect a better salary.’

  ‘Oh,’ Annie said. ‘That’s a long time.’

  ‘It is,’ Orville agreed glumly.

  They walked on in silence, the noises inside both of their heads growing louder and more discordant.

  ‘I can’t wait that long,’ Annie blurted, at the same time as Orville turned to her and said, ‘But Annie – it’s too long to wait.’

  It was an afternoon like any other, the day my mother and father walked along Beach Road. They weren’t going anywhere in particular; walking was simply a way to be together.

  ‘Dad,’ we’d complain when Orville got to this part of the story, ‘couldn’t you have found somewhere better? The beach, or up the mountain? The Hot Pot even. Beach Road is hardly the most romantic place in the world.’

  ‘But it was romantic,’ Annie would insist dreamily. ‘I was the only girl to have a young man drop to his knees there—’

  ‘—in front of the Harbiton post office,’ Orville would interject.

  ‘—and ask for her hand in marriage. The rest of the world may not have seen them, but there were fireworks in the sky and in my heart, and I pulled him up and covered his face in kisses.’

  ‘And what did you say, Mom?’ one of us had to ask at that point.

  ‘What did I say? What do you think I said?’ Annie would ask and we’d all laugh and yell, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’, the words bright sparks that shot upstairs and must have made Ma Bess grit her teeth in rage. Because the last thing in the world, the very, very, very last thing she had wanted was for my mother to become Mrs Annie Little.

  On the evening Orville proposed, Annie carried something extra into the house. Her heart beat rapidly, she could feel it thud-thudding with joy. She heard it in her ears, felt it in the small pulse at her neck. She could not tell Ma what he had said, how he had said it. Not yet. She was cloud-borne, floating.

  Ma knew, of course. Ma knew everything. And Annie could tell her nothing. She hugged her precious secret as close as she could, hiding it from her mother’s scathing disdain. Eventually she would have to say something, let Ma Bess know she and Orville wished to marry. But that night, that wondrous, fragile, precious night, all she wanted was to escape to her room and gaze at herself in the mirror and watch her mouth shape the words ‘Yes, oh yes’ over and over again.

  But with Ma in the house, nothing could ever remain sacred.

  When she got home, Annie tried to slip up the stairs past her mother, calling a breezy goodnight, as if this evening was the same as any other.

  But Ma blocked her path. Her darkness filled the doorway and she said, ‘Make me a cup of tea, Ann, and bring it into the drawing room. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m tired, Mother,’ Annie said. ‘Can we talk in the morning?’

  ‘Tea, Ann. Now.’

  Annie’s was a life of silent screams. She had never contradicted her mother, she had never dared the word ‘no’. She went to the sink and filled the kettle.

  Annie made the tea and took it in. She poured her mother a cup and then she sat on the edge of a chair and waited.

  ‘So, Ann.’

  ‘Yes, Mother?’ Annie’s voice was quiet.

  ‘Why didn’t your young man come in this evening?’

  ‘It’s late, Mother. He has to work tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s never too late to be polite, is it?’

  ‘But he is polite, Mother. I told him not to come in. I sent him home.’

  ‘Well, my girl, I think it’s time you sent him packing.’

  The ‘no’ was on Annie’s lips
before she could stop it.

  And so, as Annie told us again and again, another epic moment was written into the annals of our family history. As such moments tend to be, it had no doubt been embroidered over the years. Perhaps Annie’s voice was not as resolute as she made it when she told us this story. Perhaps the light didn’t dim in the gust of Ma’s anger and my father didn’t feel the hair at the back of his neck rise at the precise moment that Annie faced her mother down.

  Warmth spread through Annie’s body. The warmth of courage and the strength of heroines and the bravado of the lion-tamer. The gall – the sheer gall – of the mountaineer who scales perpendicular faces with nothing but narrow handholds to reach for.

  Annie looked at her mother. Without flinching! Without dropping her eyes! For the first time ever, Annie stood up to Ma Bess. ‘I love him, Mother. And I’m going to marry him.’

  That, according to Annie’s telling of it, was when the lights lowered. Ma sucked in a breath and with it she sucked light, and there was a terrible darkness. It spread around her and reached for Annie and grasped at her with grabby hands.

  And then Ma breathed out, and spoke. A torrent of words. A spewing. She had never before said anything to Annie about Orville, but that night she said it all. ‘You will not throw yourself away on that man. I have raised you for better than him.’ Ma’s voice brooked no argument. And it continued, on and on. ‘What can he offer you? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. He’s a failure. I can see it in him. In his meek mildness. There’s no spine to him, nothing solid. He is a weak man, and all you are, my girl, is a meal ticket.’

  All Annie’s protests were overridden. ‘Do you think I don’t see the way his eyes skim this house? He’s assessed you, Ann. He’s taken a good look at what’s here and he thinks he can just step on the gravy train. He smells money. He’s got a good nose for it.’

  ‘No.’ Annie whispered the word. ‘I won’t let you do this, Mother. Orville loves me. Can you understand that? He loves me. Not because I’m rich, or because you are. He’s the bravest man I know.’