We returned to the kitchen with the plates still half full of biscuits and set about working our way through them.
‘What are they blathering on about in there now?’ Gran asked. She didn’t seem to think much of Grandad’s friends.
‘I wasn’t really listening,’ I admitted. ‘Something about vacancies at the Saturday market.’
‘They called me an ethnic minority,’ said Alison, in a tone of bemusement but also pride.
‘How rude.’
‘I don’t think she was being nasty,’ I said. ‘She just noticed that you were from a different … culture, I suppose.’
‘What nonsense. Alison’s from just the same culture as all of us. Aren’t you, lovey?’
‘Well, not really,’ said Alison. ‘I’m from Leeds.’ She took the last custard cream and popped it in her mouth in one go. ‘Anyway, it’s my dad who’s black and I hardly ever see him. My mum’s as white as they are so I don’t really see what they’re on about.’
‘Quite,’ said Gran, and we all fell silent.
‘What is a Conservative, anyway?’ it now occurred to me to ask.
‘Well, I suppose a Conservative,’ said Gran, ‘is someone who likes things the way they already are. They think that the world is essentially how it should be and we shouldn’t mess about with it too much.’
After reflecting on this I said: ‘That sounds OK. I like things the way they are, too. Doesn’t Tony Blair?’
‘Mr Blair is the leader of the Labour Party,’ said Gran, ‘which in days gone by used to believe in a thing called socialism. Socialists think that the world could be made much more fair for everybody but in order to do that, you have to change things and sometimes scrap things which are traditional and perhaps a bit out of date.’
‘But he doesn’t believe that any more?’
‘Well … nobody is quite sure what he believes.’
‘And what about you, Gran? Which one are you?’
She let out a heavy sigh. ‘Frankly, Rachel, right now I think I’m one of those people who’s starting to believe that none of it matters in the slightest.’
She turned away from us: perhaps, even, because she was trying not to cry, although neither Alison nor I was likely to notice. From our point of view, this conversation was getting a bit boring, and we had far more exciting news to tell her.
‘Ooh, Gran, guess who we saw up in the wood?’ I said. ‘The Mad Bird Woman. She gave us a terrible fright.’
Alison glanced at me: a silent reminder that we were not supposed to have told anyone about this. But since the secret was out now, she added:
‘We were just walking around, minding our own business, when she sort of popped out from behind a tree. It was almost like she wanted to scare us. Nearly gave us both a heart attack.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Gran. ‘How horrible for you both. She really is the nastiest, most difficult person …’ She pursed her lips. ‘If she deliberately scared you then I suppose I should really — one of us should really go and speak to her about it …’ She tailed off, clearly not relishing the prospect of such a confrontation. I felt sorry for her, and said:
‘Don’t worry, Gran. There’s no need to do that. Is there, Ali?’
I looked to my friend for confirmation but all she said was: ‘Where does she live?’
‘There’s a tiny little road,’ said Gran, starting to rinse the biscuit plates under the hot tap, ‘which runs off Newbegin. It’s called Needless Alley, because it doesn’t go anywhere. That’s where Mrs Bates used to live. And when she died, she left the house to Miss Barton.’
‘Why did she do that, I wonder?’
‘Yes, a lot of people wondered that,’ said Gran. ‘In fact, they did more than wonder about it. They got very angry about it, which was a bit stupid of them.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Because it was none of their business really, was it?’
‘Exactly. But people can be very … judgemental.’
‘What’s the number of the house?’ Alison asked. She was trying to sound casual but I could tell there was some secret purpose behind these questions.
‘I can’t remember, offhand,’ said Gran. ‘But you can’t miss it. It’s the one that’s covered in ivy and laurel bushes and goodness knows what, and the whole thing is covered in netting and behind that she keeps birds.’
‘Birds?’
‘Oh yes. A regular aviary, it is. Budgerigars and canaries and all sorts.’
‘No kestrels?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No, she doesn’t have a kestrel any more. I don’t know what became of it.’
It seemed that we had exhausted Gran’s knowledge of this topic now, but in the process she had stretched our curiosity to breaking point. When we went upstairs to discuss our plans for the rest of the day, I knew exactly what Alison was going to suggest.
‘We don’t have to go inside,’ she insisted. ‘I just want to see what it looks like. Don’t you want to see all these birds and everything?’
It was true, I was desperate to see where the Mad Bird Woman lived, even though she scared me almost to death. And so later that afternoon Alison and I set out to find Needless Alley.
It didn’t take long to get there. Newbegin was a long one-way street leading from Westwood down towards the town centre. The Alley peeled off from it towards the left, running at first between the walls of two very tall houses: this part of it was so narrow that there was barely room for the two of us to walk abreast. Soon, however, it widened into a short cobbled street with large, venerable, eighteenth-century houses on both sides. The one we were looking for could not have been easier to spot. It was set quite apart from the other dwellings, being separated from its nearest neighbour by a long, low wall running around an expanse of unkempt, not to say chaotic, front garden. On the front door was the house number in rusty silver numerals. It was Number 11.
Presumably the house was built of brick, but you would never know it, looking from the front. The entire façade was covered in foliage of one sort or another — mainly ivy, although there were also many other climbing plants which I couldn’t identify, all mingling and interlocking and twining themselves around each other in a thick jungle of greenery. In the midst of all this, dozens of little birds were hopping, fluttering or resting: a few of them were exotic and brightly coloured but mostly they were your regular songbirds — sparrows, thrushes, that sort of thing. Dark-green netting was stretched over the whole front of the house, preventing them from flying away to freedom. They were basically trapped in a huge verdant open-air cage, but they seemed perfectly happy about it, and kept up a pleasant chorus of chirruping which contrasted with the otherwise sinister ambience of the Bird Woman’s house. I couldn’t help noticing how thickly the ivy creeped over the walls, trespassing on the windows as well, obscuring half of them almost entirely so that it must, I imagined, be quite dark all day inside most of those rooms. I was glad that we’d found it and seen the birds, but still, it was the kind of house you immediately want to run a mile from, the sort that gives you bad dreams. Only a crazy person, I thought, would want to live in it; or even go inside; or stand any closer, for that matter, than the two of us were standing now.
At this point Alison cheerfully pushed open the gate and walked into the garden.