2008 - The Bearded Tit (13 page)

Oh dear. At some point in the evening things must have stopped going according to plan.

B
irds get up early. Birds react to light. The slightest glimmer of dawn rouses them. In the summer, this can be as early as three thirty in the morning. On a cold, cloudy winter’s day it can be as late as seven thirty. I record, not with a great sense of pride, that I have observed this mainly by having hangovers. A hangover is a great way to learn how early birds sing. And how loud. Before I got into birdwatching and caught them off guard by actually being up before they started singing, the birds whose songs I knew best were those early morning ones: the song thrush (
Turdus deafeningus
), the blackbird (
Turdus headacheus
), the wren (
Troglodytes shutthefuckuppus
), and, when I was back in Cornwall, the herring gull (
Larus die-for-god’s-sakeus
) and the droning out-of-tune cuckooing of the collared dove (
Streptopelia tedius
).

I didn’t know what birds they were then; I just knew their singing. Staggering home a couple of times I remember looking behind me just in case they were there, following me. Or maybe just peeping out from their roosts at me and thinking, ‘Aha, look at the state of him; early chorus tomorrow, everyone!’ And they’d stalk me all the way home to find out which window ledge was my bedroom so they’d know where to perch at 5 a.m.

For years I couldn’t have identified the alarm call of the blackbird, so strident and insistent. But once it was pointed out to me, I realized the sound had been with me all my life. Late in the evening, early in the morning, it’s the bird sound I’ve heard most. You will have heard it a thousand times. Since everything in the world seems to alarm the blackbird, its call is extremely easy to hear. The morning after my pub crawl with Brigid I heard a blackbird (unseen and, then, unnamed) loud and clear. It is a beautiful, fruity, flutey song, with trills and warbles. It’s peaceful, but melancholy. That’s what I think now. Back then it was invasive and mocking. It was one of God’s creatures wagging a finger in my hungover Catholic direction. I turned over and felt my brains sloshing around and banging against the sides of my skull.

My room backed on to the bus station. I had eventually got used to the grinding, grunting, shuddering and spluttering of diesel engines. It had taken a while. In the first few weeks I could work out the time of day (or night) from the buses. The night bus to Bedford. The first of the city centre buses at 5 a.m. The six o’clock to Royston, the six thirty to Haverhill via Hospital.

Over the years, different things take over your early morning. Milk floats. Do they still exist? The faint hum of their battery-powered electric motors. The chirpy whistle of the milkman which, he thinks, says, ‘God, what a lovely time of day this is to be up and about. It makes me so happy I want to whistle a happy tune.’ But we know it really means: ‘I’m up at this time while you lucky lot sleep so I’ll whistle an annoyingly chirpy tune. Not only that, but I’ll whistle it slightly incorrectly so it’ll get on your nerves even more.’

And bin men who have to shout to each other, ‘Oi, Dave, move the fuckin’ thing over here,’ and clang as many bin lids as they can to remind people what a dirty yet vital job they perform in the early morning as we sleep.

But that night I was lying in bed with a headache, feeling guilty that I’d let down JJ and probably ruined the best relationship I’d ever had (if I actually had it), and there was that insistent alarm. And a drumming on wood. A woodpecker? Not here surely. The park is close; there are woodpeckers there. No, this is a tapping. Is it a thrush banging a snail shell against a rock? That’s what they do, isn’t it, thrushes? Everybody knows that. It’s one of the primary-school facts about birds: thrushes eat snails and using a rock as an anvil they smash the shells to free the juicy snail inside. Magpies steal shiny things; that’s another nursery myth about birds. The thieving magpie. Robins have red breasts and appear on Christmas cards because that’s the only time you see robins, isn’t it? Blue tits steal cream from the tops of the milk. They peck open the silver tops of milk bottles that have been left in the very early morning by the chirpy, whistling, angry milkman and suck all the cream out. What do blue tits do now that milk comes in cartons, I wonder. What do milkmen do now that everyone buys milk from petrol stations?

And come to think of it, I was lying earlier about collared doves waking me up in Cornwall. There were no collared doves in Cornwall when I was a boy. Now, you can’t move for them, but back then, there were none.

How strange memory is: what spoils it most is not the things you forget but the things you keep adding to it, the things you keep rewriting, embellishing and streamlining.

But one thing I’m sure of from that morning, I was lying in a fug of night-before beer and guilt, woken by the alarm call of a blackbird, when I heard a faint tapping on wood.

I
opened my eyes. JJ was standing over my bed.

‘The door was open…I hope you didn’t mind. I did knock.’

Panic. Sheer panic. Why was JJ was in my room? I was in bed feeling terrible and a skull-splitting alarm was going off in my head. My brain had to go from zero to 120 miles an hour on a freezing morning in less than one second. A tough call. Working backwards: drinking with Brigid, the South African waitress; miss meeting with JJ; bumped into Brigid on way to meet JJ; just bought a cuddly, singing long-tailed tit for JJ.

‘I was just wondering what happened last night?’ she asked gently and, I think, with genuine concern.

My reply was instant and delivered with all the insouciance I could manage, ‘Er…I…Er…’

It was not one of my smoothest lines. I sat up in bed gripped with fear. I looked round the room, clammy with apprehension. Was Brigid still here? No, there was no sign of her. That was a start.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said, ‘but the thing is…’

JJ waited benignly. She was clearly keen to hear my explanation.

So was I.

I got out of bed and sat next to JJ. I realized I was fully clothed.

‘You’ve still got your clothes on.’

That was a good sign. That seemed to indicate that if Brigid had come back to my room last night, nothing sexual had taken place. I looked at the clock. 08.30. My memory hadn’t reported in for work yet.

‘I was worried when you didn’t turn up last night.’

She seemed so genuinely upset that my self-hatred quickly went up a notch to self-loathing. Why couldn’t I just have told Brigid the truth? And JJ? Why had I been so cowardly? Now I had jeopardized everything we had. I didn’t know what it was exactly that we had but I knew it was precious and I knew it was fragile and I knew that I was close to blowing it all—if I hadn’t already.

‘I was torturing myself with all sorts of fantasies,’ she said, putting her hand on my thigh and stroking it. That was the most actively physical thing she’d ever done. I put my hand on hers expecting her to pull it away. She didn’t.

‘I assumed,’ she said, ‘that you’d got fed up with me, you know, stringing you along, keeping you at arm’s length. Not spending more time with you. I presumed you’d found another girl and decided to have a proper relationship.’

‘Not at all!’

‘I wouldn’t have blamed you.’

‘No, there’s no other girl!’

‘I thought I’d blown everything we’ve got.’ It was heavenly to hear her say the words that made me realize she felt the same as I did. ‘I don’t know what it is exactly that we’ve got,’ she continued, ‘but I know it’s very precious to me and I know it’s very fragile and I don’t want to lose it.’

We hugged.

‘I’m so sorry about last night. Nothing’s changed between us,’ I said.

She clearly felt the same way about our relationship as I did so I felt confident enough to tell her what exactly happened. ‘There was this drinks do at Rex the Chaplain’s and I—’

‘Look, there’s no need to explain. I’m not asking for an excuse or an explanation, let’s just leave it.’

Did she know I was telling her a lie and was giving me the opportunity not to? She was sensitive enough to know that genuinely nothing had changed between us whatever happened last night, so why discuss it. Having nothing to feel guilty about didn’t stop me feeling guilty and I was desperate to explain.

‘Yes, there was a party at Rex the Chaplain’s and I think I must have had a few too many glasses of the college sherry, or Wrecks the Chaplain, as it’s known, ha, and lost track of the time. When I looked at the time I realized that you would already have got your bus and gone home and I had no way of contacting you.’

‘I waited a bit longer for you. I missed my usual bus just in case.’

In my mind the swamp of guilt gurgled louder. Bubbles of poison gas came to the surface and popped. The stench was unbearable.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Oh yes, I’m just really sorry I didn’t come over to the shop in case you were still there.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.’

What a superb girl she was. She was bright, fragrant and sunny sitting next to me on my bed. And I, sweating in my clothes and a cloud of alcoholic vapours, was dark, dank and sleazy, crippled with fear and shame.

Then, on my desk, I saw it. The fluffy, twittering long-tailed-tit. This could be a great help.

‘Hey, wait. I’ve got something for you. Close your eyes.’ I went over to the desk and picked up the bird. As I did so I noticed that on its fluffy white breast was an imprint in blaring pink lipstick of Brigid’s outrageously plump lips. I couldn’t give this to JJ.

‘Can I open my eyes yet?’

‘Er…hang on!’ I thrust it into the wastepaper basket. ‘Oh damn, I must have left it in Rex the Chaplain’s room!’

She opened her eyes.

‘I’m really sorry. I’ll get it later.’

As I said this a lively, bell-like twittering came from the bin.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t hear anything. Can I make you a coffee?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Correct, I’ve got no coffee.’

‘I’m on my way to work so I’d better get going.’

We stood facing each other, holding both hands.

‘Thanks for coming over.’

‘My pleasure; I’m glad everything’s alright.’

‘Everything’s fine. It’s nice to have you in my bedroom. Sure you don’t want to stay? Have the day off.’ I was straying into unknown territory here. It was exciting. And scary.

Her smile was tender and calm.

‘One day. One day soon.’

She leaned towards me.

I leaned towards her.

I could feel the warmth of her breath.

She closed her eyes.

I closed mine.

She kissed me softly, and briefly, on the lips.

We opened our eyes and looked deep into each other’s and knew that the next kiss would be more than a kiss. It would be the crackling, sparkling flame snaking along the fusewire to a bomb. Closer still.

‘I was worried there was someone else,’ she whispered.

‘No,’ I breathed. ‘No one else.’

We closed our eyes, put our arms round each other and BANG!

‘Bloody hell, you’ve got to walk miles to take a shit in this place!’ said a rasping South African voice as the door was flung open and hit the bedside table.

Brigid appeared in the doorway.

Semi-naked and scratching her wispy, ginger pubes.

S
o much pale pink, tasty flesh. Where do you begin? Feel how firm that breast is. Imagine how much one of them weighs. Look at the legs. Dark, muscly and mouth-watering. A carnal feast. A meat treat.

‘I think it’s disgusting,’ Kramer said grabbing a plate and standing in the queue.

I didn’t think it was disgusting but I had felt better in my life and the sight of so much food laid out was a tiny bit off-putting, but, then, it was only once a year.

‘It’s better than the usual shite they serve us.’

‘That’s not true. There’s just more of it and you get a paper cup of watered-down wine,’ mumbled the gloom-meister.

‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘You can’t beat Christmas dinner.’

‘Why turkey, though? Why does it have to be turkey?’ he grumbled, and I remembered he was Jewish.

‘Hey, it’s not even your festival, so shut up moaning!’

‘It’s not
your
festival either. It’s a mish-mash. It’s mostly pagan. It’s the Roman saturnalia.’

The queue had moved slowly as far as the carved turkey. Kramer went on, ‘And since when has turkey been traditional in Britain? It’s American.’

I ignored him. ‘You a leg man or a breast man?’

‘I go for the personality, actually.’ Kramer was interrupted by Lazy Lobby, the non-homosexual rugby club stalwart and ponding enthusiast, who quipped, ‘I think the important thing is how they gobble.’

Kramer suddenly turned to me and caught me off guard with his question. ‘Talking of which, there was a lot of laughing and shouting coming from your room last night. Monocellular Mike said he saw you staggering back into college quite late with a girl who definitely did not fit the description of a certain pretty and gamine bookseller.’

‘Oh yeah, I was out with a load of the Modern Languages lot. Sort of end-of-term thing.’

He didn’t seem convinced. ‘Not Brigid that South African girl who worked in the canteen last year?’

‘Oh her, I remember her. She was a real…er…’ I stumbled.

‘Turkey?’ Kramer helped out.

The turkey is originally Mexican rather than North American, and the Incas were big fans. This unsightly and gormless bird provided everything that was precious to the Incas: meat, eggs and ludicrous headgear. It has almost nothing to do with the country of the same name. Turkey, Greece and those parts of the world provided us with the similarly plumptious guinea fowl which was often called, wait for it, the turkey-cock.

My childhood Christmases would not have been the same without a turkey, and the invariably gigantic bird would do our family of six for several days: roast turkey on Christmas Day; cold turkey on Christmas Night; turkey in white sauce with rice on Boxing Day lunchtime; curried turkey on the 27
th
; turkey sandwiches on the 28
th
, and on the next day a broth based on the boiled-down turkey carcass with barley, carrots, onions and, indeed, whatever bits and pieces were left over from the festivities chucked in for luck. This last dish, the ‘turkey soup’, was in many ways my favourite meal of the whole holiday, even though one year I found a party-popper in it.