I blow on my tea.
“And how is love treating you?”
“Mama, please.” On the table in front of me there’s a red napkin with golden stars, folded into a fan.
“But if I don’t ask, you don’t like it either.” She purses her lips. “And you’re really quite presentable now.”
“I’m too busy for all that.”
“Quite presentable still. But you mustn’t wait too long.”
“The menu, ma’am.” The waiter places two menus in front of us. My mother asks him if the lobster is truly as delicious as reputed.
There’s a cough from the man at the next table. “If I may be so bold: the lobster is without equal.” His voice sounds too high-pitched for his body. He gasps for breath after speaking a few words. His belly touches the edge of the table.
“So, I know what to order then.” My mother gives me a triumphant look.
“I’d like to study the menu a little longer.” I smile at the waiter, who nods and leaves us.
Our neighbour coughs again. He is wearing a gleaming dress suit and a red bow tie with green dots. “My wife has left me,” he says quietly to my mother. “Yesterday. She said she could no longer put up with it.”
My mother looks shocked. “With what?”
“Goodness knows.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin, then stands up. “Happy Christmas then.”
“It is difficult sometimes,” my mother says, when he has gone. “He seemed a nice man, but so does your father. Here.” She pushes a package towards me. “I was supposed to give you this.”
I carefully unwrap the shiny red paper. Birds of the City and Suburbs. Line drawings and advice on how to make our environs more welcoming for birds.
“Do the ladies know what they would like to order?” The waiter leans over my mother, who gives him her best smile. I order game pie with Cumberland sauce. I’m not terribly hungry.
At the end of the afternoon I take my mother to her train. As I walk back home it begins to snow at last. With the snow comes solace and expectation. Children are allowed out of doors a while; adults remember that they were once children. The sounds of the city swiftly diminish, become duller, thicker. Dirt disappears into the whiteness. I breathe the cold in, clouds out.
The next morning I get up earlier than usual to make my own tracks, so I can walk without having to follow the tracks of others. A Crow flies cawing overhead—for a moment I miss Charles so intensely that I can hardly breathe. For a moment I miss Olive and my father, even Dudley and everyone else.
When I’m inside the house again, I pick up my violin and use my fingers to search for what I’m feeling. I play until it’s over. As long as I do my best, I’ll be all right.
After the last performance of the year, we hurry through the rain to the bar. Stockdale orders punch all round. “Well played, all of you.”
I hang my coat on the rack and sit down by Billie. She asks if I’ll go with them to a New Year’s Eve party. Then a gust of wind draws my attention to the door, where a woman in a green coat is entering, arm in arm with a man. Her silhouette seems familiar. I jump up and worm my way through the crowd towards her. She takes off her coat when she reaches the bar. Pearl necklace, gold chain and locket, dark-red frock. “Patricia?”
“Hallo Len.” She laughs. “You did it!”
“How wonderful to see you.” I embrace her, smelling perfume and cigarettes.
“This is William.”
I hold out my hand, and he kisses it, quite the gallant. “My husband.” Her tone is a little exaggerated, just short of being affected.
I raise an eyebrow. “Surely not.”
“Oh yes. I’ve caved in. To the charms of this heartbreaker.” She turns towards him. “Lennie and I swore that we’d never get married. That was in my wilder days, when all I wanted to do was write.” She lays her hand on my arm, and takes my wrist. “I do write,” she tells me, my disappointment lying between us like a cloud, visible but not tangible. “I’m writing a manifesto at present, on the position of women in marriage.”
“For a year now,” William laughs. “For a whole year and nothing to show for it. But when the baby comes, she won’t be such a fidget.”
She also laughs. “No baby. Definitely not.” She taps her finger against his nose. For a moment I see Paul in her—he left for London two years ago, and since then I’ve heard nothing more of him.
“How is your brother?”
“He’s well. He’s in Brighton now, by the sea again. His first collection came out last year.” She is still holding tightly on to my wrist. I hope she won’t let go, and I nod.
“Yes, I’ve read about the book. It’s had good reviews.”
“Sorry, I completely forgot to ask how you are. Do you still play the violin, Lennie?”
William spots an acquaintance and excuses himself. She pulls me closer.
“What on earth happened?” I ask her.
“Purist!” She laughs.
“Are you really expecting a child?”
“In his dreams.” Perhaps it’s not my disappointment, but hers. Perhaps it can be felt, but not seen—wind, not cloud.
“But is everything going well?”
Her grip tightens before she lets go. “Not as well as for you. I’ve been ill. I’m…” She hesitates. William is coming back. “Not as strong as I’d like to be.”
“Are you coming, darling? We should leave now.” He places his hand on her back. “We’ve bought tickets for the cinema,” he tells me.
Sound. Sound is something you can feel but not see, unless it moves something else. I lean towards her, kiss her cheek, hold my face beside hers a little too long. She whispers something, but walks away before I can ask her what she means—the music is too loud and everyone is talking at the top of their voices.
He holds her coat open for her, she wriggles herself into it, left arm, right arm, her face turns round further, till she sees mine, and she waves. Waving is unnecessary, so I smile at her and she smiles back.
STAR 5
The Great Tits would generally grasp my meaning very swiftly. If I was at table, eating a sandwich, a couple of them would always come for a look. If I did not react, then they would perch on the plate to take a morsel. If I sternly said no, they flew up. If I moved my hand when I spoke, they would fly away from the table entirely. If I was really cross, they would even fly out of the window. Then if I told them sweetly that they could come back, they quickly returned; if I said nothing at all for a while, they would also come closer, but slowly. If I said “Go on then”, they would immediately take a titbit. But with Star it often seemed as if she understood my meaning before I expressed it in voice or movement. She could read my facial expressions very well, just as well as my gestures and tone of voice. Her brain seemed to register my intentions even earlier than my own.
Star was friendly with the other Great Tits and was rather playful, certainly in her younger days. But she would not let the other birds boss her around: if she wanted to build a nest somewhere, she made sure that no one else came near, and that was also the case with her other projects.
In September and October the Great Tits always started their demolition work: tearing up paper and hammering holes in wood. They seemed to do this for pure delight. They had time to spare, because their youngsters could now look after themselves, and they had no need yet to prepare for the winter. In these games they displayed their own individual characters. There were some Great Tits who tore paper for fun and others who did it simply to attract the attention of another bird. Star was particularly zealous: her holes were deeper than those of the other Great Tits and she could tear paper more swiftly than anyone else. But at the end of November the birds always stopped this pastime, because it took them more time to find natural food and they had to prepare for winter.