“Flossie?” Papa pops his head round the door into my mother’s bedroom. “I’m just taking Lennie into town to buy some mince for the Blue Tit.”
“Please call her Gwendolen, her proper name. And shouldn’t you be working?” My mother’s voice sounds lighter than it has done these past few days. Perhaps she doesn’t have a headache any more.
Papa turns a deaf ear to her objections.
“Come here, Gwendolen.” Reluctantly, I enter the dark room. It smells of sleep and of something else too. Something old. My mother adjusts my dress and presses me against her. She is the source of the smell. When she releases me, I quickly run back to my father, who is waiting outside.
I skip along the broad pavement, in exact time with Papa’s footsteps. “Where are we going?”
“First to the butcher’s, and then to Mr Volt’s.”
I prance along, raising my legs higher and higher. I’m very good at it. My feet touch the ground at precisely the same point as Papa’s. Pa-dum, pa-dum. The hooves of a half-horse.
When we reach the butcher’s, Peter has to wait outside. He sits down immediately. He knows what he has to do. I stroke his white bib a moment, then quickly follow Papa into the shop.
“Some finely minced beef, please. It’s for a Blue Tit, so don’t give me too much.” Fat Jimmy doesn’t always serve in the shop, only if Mr Johnson, the butcher, isn’t there. He’s very slow and he doesn’t give me a slice of ham.
“Thank you. And may I also have a slice of ham, please?”
Fat Jimmy shrugs his shoulders and turns to slice the ham. My father gives me a wink. When we’re outside again, he tears the slice of ham in two. One half for Peter and one for me.
Mr Volt sells everything. One of his eyes droops a little lower than the other, and it bulges too. Duddie says someone once gave him a great thump and his eye flew out of his head and then it didn’t want to go back in again, and Olive says he can’t see out of it any more, but he always looks at me with it, as if he really can see me like that, as if he actually can see more with that eye than other people, things they can’t see.
“Good day, Mr Howard. Good day, young lady. What can I do for you both?”
“Some birdseed, please. For a little Blue Tit.”
“Certainly, sir. Our Universal Blend. How much would you like?” He takes down a canister from the topmost shelf, and picks up a paper bag.
“Just enough till the little one can fly again,” Papa says.
The whole shop is full of canisters and storage bins and in the corner there’s a skeleton. I walk towards it, finger the bones, and then shrink back when the skeleton starts moving.
“Oh, dearie me,” says Mr Volt. “Be careful now. Sometimes the spirit suddenly moves him.”
“How much do I owe you?” Papa asks.
“Oh, it’s hardly worth adding to your account, sir. Now then, young lady.”
I go to the counter.
“A bull’s eye or a humbug?”
“A humming bug, please!”
From one of the glass jars that are kept behind the counter, he takes out a sweetie. It’s green and red and looks like a stripy beetle.
“Thank you!” I curtsey to him, just like I’ve practised with Olive.
“What lovely manners!”
Peter races home ahead of us. The humbug melts in my mouth and it’s very sweet. I take it out to see if it still looks like a beetle. But the bug has become a flat patch. Paddy the Patch Bug.
Tessa opens the door for us, at the precise moment that we arrive. I run past her through the high-ceilinged entrance hall and into the parlour, where the box with the Blue Tit is still on the table.
“He’s still alive!”
“That’s good. So now we can get to work. What’s the time?”
I go and take a look at the clock on the windowsill. “It’s three o’clock.”
“Exactly three o’clock?”
“Almost exactly. One minute past, no, two minutes past three.”
“Yes, that’s almost exactly. Now listen. We must feed the birdie once an hour.” He forms some of the minced meat into a tiny ball and pushes it into the bird’s throat with his little finger. The bird swallows, and I give a very soft cheer.
“Soon I’ll mix the birdseed and the minced meat together, with a little water. And then it’s just a question of feeding him. If the birdie lives till tomorrow, you can feed him too.” He gives the Blue Tit another little ball of food, and then another, till the birdie doesn’t want any more. My father’s fingers are long and clever. I watch everything he does very closely, so that tomorrow I can do it too.
“Go and ask Cook if she has a foot stove. I have the impression that this little chap is cold.”
“Can’t I hold him?”
My father shakes his head. I run to the kitchen.
“Cook, Cook, we’ve got a little Blue Tit! And he’s cold! Do you perhaps have a foot stove for him?”
I hop from my left foot to my right foot, from my right foot to my left.
“Goodness gracious, child, calm down!”
Cook slowly gets out of her chair and stands up, groaning.
“Come on then, but no more shouting. Your mother isn’t well.”
I follow her down the steep, narrow staircase into the cellar. Small footsteps, my hand against the clammy wall.
“If he’s still alive tomorrow, then I’m allowed to feed him.”
Cook hums a little, then finds a foot stove in the open cupboard by the back wall. I take it from her.
“Tread carefully,” she calls after me, but I’m nearly upstairs already.
STAR 2
Countless numbers of Tits, Blackbirds, Sparrows and Robins lived in and around the garden of Bird Cottage. And there were also regular visitors, such as Jackdaws, Crows, Jays, Blue Tits, Finches and Woodpeckers. Some birds, such as the Swallows, returned every year; others visited now and then. There were birds who should have been summer visitors, but who stayed in the neighbourhood for their whole lives; others came for a season, or a number of years. Nearly every kind of bird has taken a peek inside the cottage at some point, but I have always tried to keep birds of the Crow family outside, as much as possible. They upset the smaller birds and rob their nests. The birds with whom I have developed the closest bond are the Great Tits. Great Tits are perhaps the cleverest birds of all, and full of curiosity. They are ideal research partners.
During their first visits Billy and Greenie were clearly quite nervous still, but very soon they began to stay inside, especially when the autumn gave way to a winter with several weeks of snow. Other Great Tits soon followed their example, and that December the first ones began to search for roosts in the house. Their choices were not always happy—they would roost between the curtain rods and the ceiling, or in the frame of a sliding door, which meant that it could no longer be closed—and so I began to hang boxes on the walls, or old food cartons, or small wooden cases. Each time they swiftly understood their purpose and it was not long before several diff erent Great Tits had taken possession of a roosting box of their own. They squabbled less about their roosts when they were inside than they did out of doors, perhaps because they viewed the cottage as my territory. In the breeding season, however, they always looked for an outdoor spot where they could nest. Up to now, not one Tit has nested inside the house. Perhaps, after all, there is insufficient privacy here.
The Great Tits soon grew to know me, and although my presence sometimes influenced their behaviour (they would startle, for example, if I suddenly stood up; and when I was coming in I had to sing out “Peanut!” from behind the door, to tell them I was entering), most of the time they carried on as usual. Not only did that give me the opportunity to study their behaviour, I was also able to record their interrelationships from close at hand. In this way I became acquainted with around forty different Great Tits, all of whom had their own particular inclinations and wishes.