Skellig (6 page)

“Oh,” I said.

“Don’t you agree, Michael?”

I thought of dashing across the yard with Leakey and Coot. I thought of Monkey Mitford’s temper. I thought of Miss Clarts’ stories.

“Don’t know,” I said.

“Our motto is on the wall by my bed,” she said. “ ‘How can a bird that is born for joy/Sit in a cage and sing?’ William Blake.” She pointed up into the tree. “The chicks in the nest won’t need a classroom to make them fly. Will they?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then,” she said. “My father believed this too.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. He was a wonderful man. He died before I was born. We often think of him, watching us from Heaven.”

She watched me, with those eyes that seemed to get right inside.

“You’re a quiet person,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say. She began reading again.

“Do you believe we’re descended from apes?” I said.

“Not a matter of belief,” she said. “It’s a proven fact. It’s called evolution. You must know that. Yes, we are.”

She looked up from her book.

“I would hope, though,” she went on, “that we also have some rather more beautiful ancestors. Don’t you?”

She watched me again.

“Yes,” I said.

She read again. I watched the blackbird flying into the tree with worms drooping from its beak.

“It was great to see the owls,” I said.

She smiled.

“Yes. They’re wild things, of course. Killers, savages. They’re wonderful.”

“I kept dreaming I heard them, all through the night.”

“I listen for them too. Sometimes in the dead of night when all the traffic’s gone I hear them calling to each other.”

I joined my hands together tight with a space between my palms and a gap between my thumbs.

“Listen,” I said.

I blew softly into the gap and made the noise an owl makes.

“That’s brilliant!” said Mina. “Show me.”

I showed her how to put her hands together, how to blow. At first she couldn’t do it, then she could. She hooted and grinned.

“Brilliant,” she said. “So brilliant.”

“Leakey showed me,” I said. “My pal at school.”

“I wonder if you did it at night if the owls would come.”

“Maybe. Maybe you should try it.”

“I will. Tonight I will.”

Hoot, she went. Hoot hoot hoot.

“Brilliant!” she said, and she clapped her hands.

“There’s something I could show you as well,” I said. “Like you showed me the owls.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s true or if it’s a dream.”

“That’s all right. Truth and dreams are always getting muddled.”

“I’d have to take you there and show you.”

She opened her eyes wide and grinned, like she was ready to go right now.

“Can’t go now,” I said.

Along the street, Dad opened the front door and waved.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ve got to go and get 27 and 53.”

She raised her eyes.

“Mystery man,” she said. “That’s you.”

The blackbird flew out of the tree again.

I stood up to go.

I said, “Do you know what shoulder blades are for?”

She giggled.

“Do you not even know that?” she said.

“Do you?”

“It’s a proven fact, common knowledge. They’re where your wings were, and where they’ll grow again.”

She laughed again.

“Go on, then, mystery man. Go and get your mysterious numbers.”

JUST BEFORE DAWN, NEXT MORNING
.

I shined the flashlight on his white face.

“You again,” he squeaked.

“More 27 and 53,” I said.

“Food of the gods,” he said.

I squeezed through the tea chests to his side, held the tray for him, and he hooked the food out with his finger. He slurped and licked and chewed.

“Nectar,” he whispered.

“How do you know about 27 and 53?” I said.

“Ernie’s favorite. Used to hear him on the phone. 27 and 53, he used to say. Bring it round. Bring it quick.”

“You were in the house?”

“In the garden. Used to watch him through the windows. Used to listen to him. He was never very well. Couldn’t eat it all. Used to find his leavings in the bin next morning. 27 and 53. Sweetest of nectars. Lovely change from spiders and mice.”

“Did he see you? Did he know you were there?”

“Never could tell. Used to look at me, but look right through me like I wasn’t there. Miserable old toot. Maybe thought I was a figment.”

He dropped a long sticky string of pork and bean sprouts onto his pale tongue.

He looked at me with his veiny eyes.

“You think I’m a figment?”

“Don’t know what you are.”

“That’s all right, then.”

“Are you dead?”

“Ha!”

“Are you?”

“Yes. The dead are often known to eat 27 and 53 and to suffer from Arthur Itis.”

“You need more aspirin?”

“Not yet.”

“Anything else?”

“27 and 53.”

He ran his finger around the tray and caught the final globs of sauce. He licked his pale lips with his pale tongue.

“The baby’s in the hospital,” I said.

“Some brown,” he said.

“Brown?”

“Brown ale. Something else Ernie used to have. Something else he couldn’t finish. Eyes bigger than his belly. Something else I used to dig out of the bin, long as the bottle hadn’t tipped over and spilled everything.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Brown ale. Sweetest of nectars.”

He belched, retched, leaned forward. I shined the light onto the great bulges on his back, beneath his jacket.

“There’s someone I’d like to bring to see you,” I said when he’d settled.

“Someone to tell you I’m really here?”

“She’s nice.”

“No.”

“She’s clever.”

“Nobody.”

“She’ll know how to help you.”

“Ha!”

He laughed but he didn’t smile.

I didn’t know why, but I started to tremble again.

He clicked his tongue and his breath rattled and sighed.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “The garage is going to bloody collapse. You’re ill with bloody arthritis. You don’t eat properly. I wake up and think of you and there’s other things I need to think about. The baby’s ill and we hope she won’t die but she might. She really might.”

He tapped his fingers on the garage floor, ran his fingers through the furry balls that lay there.

“She’s nice,” I told him. “She’ll tell nobody else. She’s clever. She’ll know how to help you.”

He shook his head.

“Damn kids,” he said.

“She’s called Mina,” I said.

“Bring the street,” he said. “Bring the whole damn town.”

“Just Mina. And me.”

“Kids.”

“What should I call you?”

“Eh?”

“What should I tell her you’re called?”

“Nobody. Mr. Nobody. Mr. Bones and Mr. Had Enough and Mr. Arthur Itis. Now get out and leave me alone.”

“Okay,” I said.

I stood up and started to back out between the tea chests.

I hesitated.

“Will you think about the baby?” I said.

“Eh?”

“Will you think about her in the hospital? Will you think about her getting better?”

He clicked his tongue.

“Please,” I said.

“Yes. Blinking yes.”

I moved toward the door.

“Yes,” I heard him say again. “Yes, I will.”

Outside, night had almost given way to day. The blackbird was on the garage roof, belting out its song. Black and pink and blue were mingling in the sky. I picked the cobwebs and bluebottles off myself. I heard the hooting as I turned back toward the house.

Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.

I looked into the sky over the gardens and saw the owls heading homeward on great silent wings. I put my hands together and blew into the gap between my thumbs.

Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.

Then I seemed to see a face, round and pale inside the darkness of an upstairs window in Mina’s house. I put my hands together again.

Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.

Something answered.

Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.

AT LUNCHTIME I WENT TO HER
front garden. She was sitting there on the lawn, on a spread-out blanket beneath the tree. She had her books, her pencils, her paints scattered around her. I was off school again. All morning I’d been clearing the backyard again. Dad had been working in the front room, painting, stripping the walls, getting ready to hang wallpaper.

“The mystery man,” she said. “Hello again.”

She had a book open at a skeleton of a bird. She’d been copying this into her sketchbook.

“You’re doing science?” I said.

She laughed.

“See how school shutters you,” she said. “I’m drawing, painting, reading, looking. I’m feeling the sun and the air on my skin. I’m listening to the blackbird’s song. I’m opening my mind. Ha! School!”

She picked up a book of poems from her blanket.

“Listen,” she said.

She sat up straight, coughed to clear her throat, held the opened book before her.

She closed the book.

“William Blake again. You’ve heard of William Blake?”

“No.”

“He painted pictures and wrote poems. Much of the time he wore no clothes. He saw angels in his garden.”

She beckoned me. I stepped over the wall, sat on the blanket by her.

“Be quiet,” she whispered. “Be very, very quiet. Listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“Just listen.”

I listened. I heard the traffic on Crow Road and the roads beyond. I heard birds singing. I heard the breeze in the trees. I heard my own breath.

“What can you hear?”

I told her.

“Listen deeper,” she said. “Listen harder. Listen for the tiniest sweetest noise.”

I closed my eyes and listened again.

“What am I listening for?” I said.

“It comes from above you, from inside the tree.”

“Inside the tree?”

“Just do it, Michael.”

I tried to concentrate on the tree, on the branches and leaves, on the tiny shoots that grew out from the branches. I heard the shoots and leaves moving in the breeze.

“It comes from the nest,” she said. “Just listen.”

I listened, and at last I heard it: a tiny squeaking sound, far off, like it was coming from another world.

I caught my breath.

“Yes!” I whispered.

“The chicks,” she said.

Once I’d found it, and knew what it was and where it was, I could hear it along with all the other, stronger noises. I could open my eyes. I could look at Mina. Then I could close my eyes again and hear the blackbird chicks cheeping in the nest. I could imagine them there, packed close together in the nest.

“Their bones are more delicate than ours,” she said.

I opened my eyes. She was copying the skeleton again.

“Their bones are almost hollow. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

She picked up a bone that was lying beside her books.

“This is from a pigeon, we believe,” she said. She snapped the bone and it splintered. She showed me that it wasn’t solid inside, but was a mesh of needle-thin, bony struts.

“The presence of air cavities within the bone is known as pneumatization,” she said. “Feel it.”

I rested the bone on my palm. I looked at the spaces inside, felt the splinters.

“This too is the result of evolution,” she said. “The bone is light but strong. It is adapted so that the bird can fly. Over millions of years, the bird has developed an anatomy that enables it to fly. As you know from the skeleton drawings you did the other day, we have not.”

She looked at me.

“You understand? You’ve covered this at school?”

“I think so.”

She watched me.

“One day I’ll tell you about a being called the archaeopteryx,” she said. “How’s the baby today?”

“We’ll see this afternoon. But I think she’ll be okay.”

“Good.”

She put her hands together, blew between her thumbs, and made the owl sound.