Birdseye Read online

‘Brave? Pah!’

  Annie couldn’t remember getting to her feet. But not only was she standing, she was leaning down, her face close to Ma’s. ‘Yes,’ she said, and she found that her voice had become cold, and hard. ‘He’s the first truly brave person I’ve met, Mother. Do you know how many friends I could have had? But one look from you, and they ran off with their tails between their legs.

  ‘They laughed at me. Girls at school, they’d giggle behind their hands and exchange horror stories about the way you treated them.

  ‘And boys? Some of them tried. Some of them even told me that, if it hadn’t been for you, there might have been a chance.’

  Ma sat still, silent.

  ‘I’m not going to lose him, Mother. Can you understand that? He’s the only one who has stayed. The only one who’s come back for me. He hasn’t given up. Because he loves me. And you can’t change that. You can try, but you won’t win. Oh, I know, you want me to see him as a fortune hunter. Good God, Mother! What man in his right mind would dream of wanting to include you in his life? No fortune would be worth it. The only man who would do that would have to be mad. Made mad and brave and strong by love. Like Orville.’

  Annie sat. The room filled with silence.

  And then Ma laughed, a light chime.

  ‘We’ll see, Ann,’ she said. ‘We’ll see who’s right on this one. Have your little fling. Keep your Little man, and we’ll see what happens.’ She laughed again. ‘Marry him. I won’t stop you. I’ll look on. And one of these days, you can tell me who was right.’

  In the days that followed Annie’s confrontation with Ma, she was filled with a wild recklessness. Until the night of Ma’s laughter, there had been a certain decorum to Annie and Orville’s relationship. They had kissed, and they had felt passion rising. But at that critical stage between holding back and giving in, one of them had always drawn back. And then, everything changed – or so I imagine. That was one part of the story of Orville and Annie that we were never told. Annie always hurried on to the next bit.

  It all started with creamed spinach.

  7

  Ma Bess and Annie sat facing each other – one at either end of the long stretch of table. Thelma had cleared away the first course. Next she brought in the roast, the glistening gravy, the crispy potatoes, carrots and spinach.

  Annie helped herself to small portions, watched in silence by Ma.

  Lunchtime conversation had come to a standstill after Annie had stated her determination to marry Orville. The weeks that followed had been tight and silent. Ma had washed her hands of Annie and Orville, and all the young couple wanted was to find somewhere cheap to live.

  ‘It doesn’t matter where it is,’ Annie had said to Orville just the previous evening. She lay on her back looking at the stars. ‘It can be a bedsit, or a room in someone’s house. I’ve got some money saved, we can use that to buy a bed.’ She blushed. ‘And other stuff of course.’

  ‘And I can build shelves and make a table. We don’t need all that much.’

  ‘No, just the first month’s rent, and deposit, and we’ve nearly saved that.’

  ‘I spoke to Mr Morton again,’ said Orville. ‘Explained that we wanted to marry, and he said he’d let me do weekend work. Weddings, christenings. Not much to start with, he wants to see how I do, but it’ll give us a little more money.’

  ‘I can hardly wait.’ Annie stretched luxuriously. ‘Imagine. We’ll be together all the time.’

  Annie smiled as she remembered the look on Orville’s face. And then the smell of the spinach hit her and she gagged. Her mouth filled with salty liquid and she pushed her chair back from the table. She bolted from the room to the cloakroom under the stairs, where she stood bent over, her stomach heaving. When she felt as if she couldn’t possibly retch again, she washed her face and walked back into the dining room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Ma. ‘I think I’ve got some sort of a bug.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ma said, her voice dry. ‘And if my guess is correct, it’s the sort of bug that can’t be fixed by a doctor.’

  And so courtship was cut short, and marriage happened, and Annie and Orville lived together in Ma’s house until they could get on their feet, sort themselves out. They planned and planned. And as they planned, Annie’s stomach grew. Soon they would have enough money to leave. Soon, soon …

  Orville and Annie anticipated a future free of Ma, but their plans were turned topsy-turvy by Annie’s pregnancy. The doctor was worried. He advised days of bed rest, cautioned her about overdoing things. More than that, though, Annie couldn’t keep working. The moment her pregnancy started to show, she had to leave her job. It would be waiting for her after she had had her baby, she was assured, but pregnant salesladies didn’t grace the floor of many department stores in the 1960s. Orville had no one to call on for help. His parents had used a small nest egg to buy a home in Grahams-town and there was nothing to spare for the young couple.

  The bills mounted.

  Ma, of course, had lots of money. Pots of it. When the doctor’s bills arrived, she paid them. She didn’t charge Orville and Annie rent. She didn’t say a word when Annie approached her and asked her for more money to tide them over, until … Until the baby was born. Until Annie could start work again. Until they were on their feet.

  8

  It was a hot day – clammy hot. Annie sat in a sheen of perspiration. Her face was a pale, fluorescent green, reflecting the greenery around her. Lit from within by that sickly glow that shows in fair skin when it is very hot.

  She was in the garden looking at flowers she wasn’t allowed to tend. The garden was her refuge, a place where she could find cool shade, where she could daydream without worrying about everything that crowded in on her when she was in the house: doctor’s bills and baby clothes, how small Orville’s salary was and how much they needed money.

  Her legs were bloated, her feet swollen and uncomfortable. She bent down to loosen the strap on her sandal, and as she bent, she stiffened. A rolling, grabbing movement hardened her stomach, left her breathless and shocked.

  It’s too soon, she thought. It’s happening too soon. If I ignore it, it will go away. She stumbled to a chair and sat down slowly. Her stomach, a seven-month mound, settled on her thighs. Dizzy with fright, Annie leaned forward to put her head between her knees. There was a faint pop and her feet were suddenly drenched in warm liquid. Angela was on her way and nothing was going to stop her.

  Still Annie couldn’t believe what was happening. Another huge contraction gripped her. And shortly after that, another. Harder and faster than they should, and Annie was powerless in their grasp. Maybe if I try to sit very quietly, she thought, maybe then I can hold my baby in place. She sat immobile, hoping, praying for time.

  ‘Annie? I’ve brought you a cup of tea. Thought we’d have it outside …’ The words died on Orville’s lips when he saw the stunned face of his wife.

  It was at this point that the story became a jumble of screeching tyres and frantic action, anaesthetic and flashing knives. Angela was lifted out of Annie’s womb two hours later and placed straight into an incubator.

  Orville and Annie stood at the window of the newborn Intensive Care nursery, day and night, taking it in turns to watch over her. Small as she was, she was perfect. Her hair was silver and her large eyes never lost the deep sinking blue of birth. She was the most beautiful baby ever born – and the most expensive one ever delivered, or so it seemed to Orville and Annie when the bills for her birth started to arrive.

  One night, Annie leaned her head against the cool glass, watching, with tired eyes, the gliding calm of the nurses and sisters inside. All she could see of her child was the mound of white swaddling she was wrapped in. The rest was obliterated by the stand of the oxygen tank and the shining struts of the incubator. No matter how busy the nurses were, how desperate the situation inside, it was as if God had given them small wings on their ankles to float them around the ward, their caps always immaculately starched,
their gleaming white aprons pinned neatly to their uniforms.

  It was quiet that night. Normally there would be others to share the vigil with her. After two weeks of visiting the hospital, she and Orville were on nodding terms with most of the parents who came to watch their babies through the glass with hungry eyes.

  ‘You should go home, Mr Slabbert,’ one of the sisters would say, or ‘Mrs Boniface’, or ‘Mrs Samuels’, or ‘Mr Woods’. ‘There’s nothing you can do, you know. You should be conserving your strength for when Fanie gets home,’ or ‘Daphne’, or ‘Zander’, or ‘Baby Little’. Annie and Orville hadn’t dared choose a name for their baby. Neither of them could admit to the other that perhaps the naming should be delayed, so they wouldn’t become too used to saying ‘Rose’, or ‘Abigail’, or ‘Jennifer’.

  The parents would nod obediently, and say, ‘Yes, Sister.’ But they wouldn’t surrender their spot at the window.

  ‘And that was when you felt the angel’s wings, wasn’t it, Mom?’ one of us would always ask. ‘When you were staring through the window?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t then,’ another sibling would chime in. ‘It was later, when she dozed off.’

  If ever any one of us tried to change the story, Annie would take over, and make sure we had each detail correct. Right down to what she was thinking that night in the lonely corridor, slumped in one of the metal-framed chairs that were dotted throughout Harbiton Hospital.

  Annie was worried. She tried to tell herself it was because of the expense of the baby’s birth, how each day made her and Orville more financially dependent on Ma Bess. They couldn’t afford the cost of the hospital stay and the baby was beginning to look very much at home in the incubator. Up to this point, Annie had coasted on a wave of adrenaline. It had pumped her into action each morning, kept her going through the long days and nights. Each day she would ask the doctors, the nurses, the ward sisters how her baby was doing. The response was always non-committal. The hospital staff was worried, and Annie knew it was because their baby wasn’t gaining the weight she should.

  For the first time, a small crack opened in Annie’s mind. Just wide enough to allow the thought that her beautiful little girl might not survive.

  ‘You will live,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You will live.’ Anyone walking down the corridor at that moment would have seen a woman bent over, crooning words in a half murmur. And if they had stopped long enough, they would have seen her head dropping forward and her eyes closing.

  Annie was scared. And tired. So tired that she dozed off, and so she cannot say whether what happened next was a dream or not. Because just as she felt her body sag into despair, something soft, small as the brush of a moth’s wing, stroked her cheek. Her mind was filled with a bright and shining light. And a voice murmured, so lightly that Annie could only just hear the words, ‘It will be all right.’ Annie looked around. At the far end of the ward, two nurses talked quietly at the desk. A feather touch on her shoulder, and again the words, ‘It will be all right.’

  ‘Who was it, Mom?’ No matter how many times we heard the story, the question had to be asked, so that Annie could reply, ‘An angel.’ A small angel had dropped in, taken time off from whatever else it is that angels do, to let Annie know that things would be okay.

  ‘But how did you know, Mom? How did you know for sure it was an angel?’

  ‘Well …’ Annie would smile and then continue the story.

  The next morning, when Orville came to take over from her at the hospital, she told him that she wanted to call their daughter Angela.

  Orville smiled at her. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Annie asked. ‘Don’t you have any other names you like?’

  ‘No,’ Orville said. And then he told Annie. The night before, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He had lain awake, agonising, wondering if his little girl was going to live, worrying about taking care of his new family if she did.

  ‘I was beside myself,’ Orville said. ‘Then, suddenly, I felt like I’d been opened up, filled with strength. You’re going to think I’ve lost my marbles, Annie, but there was this light, bright and warm.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie.

  ‘And then I knew our baby would be fine.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie again. ‘Me too.’

  And so it made perfect sense to Annie and Orville to name their baby after the little angel who had so kindly stopped to set their minds at rest.

  9

  In those early, golden days, Annie and Orville had talked of having a big family. Not for them the lonely single child who had no siblings to share with, to fight with, to laugh and cry with. No, they decided. They would like three children, if not four. As soon as they had paid Ma back, they would find a house with rooms to fill, and banish the dark solitary memories of Annie’s childhood with the sound of children’s laughter.

  But after Angela, Annie was worried. Was she going to battle to have children? Would she prove an unworthy incubator? She needn’t have fretted. If anything, more children came too soon. One baby followed another. Anthea arrived the following winter, and Alice the year after. Orville and Annie had their three children. Now, surely, they could concentrate on getting back the life they had dreamed of? They could start looking for a home. Move from Ma’s house and become a family on their own.

  Orville’s job was going well. Mr Morton was allowing him to do more and more of the weekend wedding work. He’d even been able to convert one of the outside rooms at Marchbanks into a darkroom.

  ‘One of these days I’ll be able to start up on my own, Annie,’ he said. ‘Set up a studio in Harbiton.’

  Annie was also talking about getting back to work, once the girls were a little older, something part time perhaps, or work she could do from home. They would speak to Ma about repaying her on a monthly basis. They would juggle their finances, scrimp here and save there and find some way of escaping.

  But by the time Annie was thirty-two, and Orville thirty-five, the brood had increased by two more. Golden-haired, blue-eyed cherubs – Oscar and Oliver, the twins.

  ‘In my mother’s mansion there are many rooms,’ Annie joked, ‘and it was decreed that I should fill them all.’

  By the time I was born, four years later, everything had run out. The last to go had been hope, waving a final goodbye, as Annie learned she was pregnant with me.

  My name was Amelia, but because I cheeped so softly and hopped so happily, they called me Bird.

  II

  1

  1984

  ‘Next time, can I go?’ I asked. The answer would always be no, but that didn’t stop me trying, time and again, to be allowed to join my brothers on their big adventures.

  Ollie smiled at me. ‘Sorry, Bird, you have to be much older, then you can. Hey, Mom? She can, can’t she?’

  Annie put down her knife and fork. ‘When Bird is ten.’

  Ten! It would take for ever to be ten. In the meantime I’d have to listen to the stories of fish and fishing and imagine myself standing next to my brothers on the wave-wet stone, casting my line, reeling in my fish, and then scaling and gutting it all on my own.

  That December evening – the night Annie set an age limit on having fun – I lay staring at the cracks in the ceiling, watching the summer dusk shape and melt them into all the fish in the sea, the waves, the unexplored deep.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Bird,’ Oz called quietly.

  ‘Yes?’ I sat up in bed.

  The door opened and the two boys walked in, hands behind their backs, huge grins on their sun-pinked faces.

  ‘We have a very special present for you,’ Oz said.

  ‘Very special,’ Ollie echoed.

  ‘But we can only give it to you, if you promise to guard it—’

  ‘—with your life.’

  ‘Can you do that, Bird?’

  ‘Can you promise?’

  I bounced on the bed. ‘Of course I can. I’m five and a half, yo
u know.’

  ‘You sure?’ Ollie spoke solemnly.

  ‘I am, I am.’

  They looked at each other and nodded and then, from behind their backs, came the special gift.

  Oz held the hook, sharp and wicked, Ollie the line, thick and capable of withstanding great weight.

  ‘You can’t come fishing with us, Bird—’ Ollie said.

  ‘—and we know it’s hard being the littlest—’

  ‘—staying behind—’

  ‘One day, when you’re bigger, you can come.’

  ‘We think you’ll be excellent at fishing.’

  ‘But until you can, we’ll give you these.’

  ‘They’re sort of a trophy.’

  ‘We need you to look after them for us.’

  My grin was as wide as the sky, and the hole inside that opened whenever I couldn’t do anything because I was too small closed a little, and then a little more.

  Oz wound the line around the hook, his small hands moving surely. ‘Now, be careful, Bird,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever hold this by the point. We need to find somewhere safe to put it.’

  For my birthday the previous year I had been given a jewellery box. When I lifted the lid, a ballerina rose from the red velvet and turned and turned to a tinkling tune. In it, I kept my small treasures.

  I leaped out of bed. ‘I know just the place,’ I said. I opened my ballerina box, and we all watched and listened as the tiny tutued figure revolved.

  Then Oz handed me the line and the wrapped hook and I laid it in a velvet compartment next to a small stone, a shard of perlemoen shell and a scrap of ribbon.

  ‘Good,’ said Oz.

  ‘Great,’ said Ollie.

  ‘Night, Bird.’

  ‘Night, Bird.’

  They slouched to the door, boys of a large, wide world, heroes of my small one. At the door, they turned. Ollie winked, Oz grinned, and then they closed the door behind them, leaving me warm and happy in the falling dark.

  Oscar and Oliver, Ollie and Oz. Always together. Finishing each other’s sentences, reading each other’s minds. Clattering down the stairs, hacking a loaf of bread into thick doorstops. Two rucksacks flung into the hallway, two caps sailing after them. Two pairs of scruffy shorts, two torn T-shirts drying on the line.