STAR 6
My friend Garth Christian, a naturalist who also writes about bird behaviour, sent me an article about an experiment on Jackdaws, which showed that they could learn to count. “Can your birds do this too?” he had written above it. That set me thinking. Star did not roost inside the house, yet at six o’clock every morning she was the first to arrive for a nut. The next morning, when she was at the windowsill again, I decided to try it out.
“No,” I said to her. “First, you have to tap.” I looked into her eyes and said very clearly: “Tap. Tap.” I tapped my knuckles on the wood. Star tapped her beak twice against the window frame. Then she flew to my hand for her nut. I knew that Star was intelligent, but I had not expected this—she knew exactly what I wanted! It made me think of Twist, another very unusual Great Tit, who would give me a kiss if I asked her. The next day I again asked Star to tap, and once more she did what I requested. We repeated the experiment another four times that day, and each time she tapped back.
The next day there was a problem. Star flew into the house, tapped on the wood three times, and flew to my hand for her nut. I did not give her it because I wanted her to imitate my tapping—after all, I was teaching her to count. So then she flew off, quite off ended. By her standards she stayed away for rather a long time afterwards, four hours at least, and on returning she again tapped three times on the window frame. So then I gave her the nut she wanted, because she clearly thought she had done something well and I did not wish to off end her anew. The next time, fortunately, she waited for my instructions.
The following step was to teach her how to tap out the correct numbers. If I tapped twice, she had to tap twice in response, and only then would she receive her nut. She swiftly understood. Tapping two was successful, three too, but when I gave four taps she looked doubtfully at me, as if she could not hear them well. I was tapping with my knuckles on wood. Perhaps that sound was too dark and muffled. I then tried with a pencil and that worked very well. We practised in that manner during the following weeks: four, five, six and then seven taps. She tapped the larger numbers in groups of two, three and four. Eight, for example, was tapped as two groups of four, very occasionally as three-three-two. Star usually cooperated extremely well, and often wanted to tap of her own accord, although there were also some mornings when she could not be persuaded. If she felt like tapping, then she would perch on the edge of the window, her head pointing at her feet; if she did not wish to do it, she held her beak in the air. She obviously found it fun, but only in the right circumstances, and I did not always understand what those were.
In February the lessons were interrupted because the territorial war had broken out again. Baldhead was too weak to do battle and Star took on both Smoke and Inkey. Females rarely fight with males. I had never witnessed it before and never saw it again. During this period, if I tapped for Star, she simply gave me a sidelong glance, and if I did not offer her a nut, she would hammer on the wood until I gave in. A few times, when there was a lull in the squabbles, we had a couple of tapping sessions, but Star had her mind on other matters.
1921
We’re sitting in a semicircle with the first violins, twenty-eight legs in dark trousers and stockings. “More expression,” Stockdale snaps at Joan, who nervously lowers her eyes. “And a strict one, two, three. Stress on the one.” We’ve started the piece thirteen times already and each time something is wrong. But the problem lies with Stockdale himself, who keeps changing the tempo—this time it’s faster—as if his mind isn’t quite on the task. “All together,” Stockdale says. We start on the upbeat. I close my eyes and let myself be carried along by the cellist beside me. He’s always just a little too quick, a fraction, so if I play a little slower, then it’s right. “No, no, stop.” Stockdale shakes his head. “That’s enough. We’ll resume tomorrow. Joan, I really expect more feeling, more energy. I don’t want it louder but fuller. If you continue like this, I think we won’t be able to carry on together.”
Joan has tears in her eyes. She rubs at her gaunt cheeks, making them more hollow.
“Don’t take any notice of him,” I say when Stockdale has gone. “His uncertainty is affecting your performance.” Not just her performance, but her whole self, as if she were his echo. I put my violin in its case. It’s not performing that irritates me, never, it’s the people.
Priscilla is in a rush, is suddenly there in front of me when I stand. She stumbles. “Oh God, sorry,” she says to her cello.
Joan walks outside with me. “It’s always like this,” she says. “I clam up if someone treats me that way. Even now. Even though I’ve known Stockdale so long, know exactly what he’s like.”
“I understand.” Stockdale blew his top last week and sacked yet another clarinettist.
It’s October. Leaves are blowing against the window. A young, red-haired chap stands in front of the Art School, smoking. I walk past him with Joan. He says hallo. I say hallo back to him.
“Hang on a mo.” He stubs out his cigarette. “Can I ask you something, or are you in a hurry?” I stand still, my head cocked, like a Blackbird’s. Joan says she has to go and she’ll see me tomorrow.
The young man is often here and we’ve been greeting each other for several weeks now. He looks at me, but says nothing. “I can’t wait all day, you know,” I say, taking a step towards the spindly birch trees further along.
He shakes his head. “Shall we go for a walk then?” A yellow leaf blows against him. “Or a coffee?” He takes the leaf from his forehead and carefully examines it for a moment. The clouds above us mirror the whole world, each and every thing.
In a café by the Thames he shows me his drawings. Birds, horses, dogs, fabulous creatures, lines that flow into their surroundings, that not only make me see him differently when I look up again, but everything else too.
“They’re just sketches,” he says.
I pick out the Jackdaw he showed me, and tell him about Nora, the Jackdaw I reared, who stayed with me for three whole years. “After the first year she’d sometimes go exploring, but she always stayed in the neighbourhood. Last year, in the spring, she suddenly vanished. I think she must have met someone, or else she found a good place to nest. Jackdaws have minds of their own, you know.” I take a sip of coffee. “I found her near Hyde Park when she was just a few weeks old. The parents were nowhere to be seen. Baby Jackdaws learn to fly from the ground, you see, so you mustn’t simply take them away if you find one.” Some people have never held a bird—those soft feathers, that vulnerability, so much life in something so small.
Outside the gale is increasing. Long grey lines move across the water, all equally grey; drops become larger drops become a river; what the wind blows upwards changes back into rain.
“I thought I’d be happy here, that it would just happen. Away from my parents, away from what was expected, alone with my violin.”
“So you aren’t happy, then?”
“When I play, I’m happy.” The orchestra stifles me sometimes. Joan and Billie keep asking if I’ll go dancing with them, when I’d rather be out of doors in my free time. I have another pile of notebooks now, filled with bird stories.