The Bower Bird (13 page)

SHORE SHELTER. SEVERAL
old men. I first make a photo of the wall where no men are sitting.
NO SWEARING ALLOWED
is written large on a notice board. Old paintings and faded photographs of men and boys fishing in boats and unloading fish in the harbour line the walls.

‘Are women allowed to join the lodge?’

‘If they want. But they all be ’ome making pasties for us’ dinners.’

‘How do you make a pasty?’ I ask Mr Perkin.

‘You’ll ’ave to ask the wife.’

‘I do the cooking in our house,’ says a thin man, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe and lighting it with a match.

‘So do you know the recipe for pasties?’ I ask, all the time shooting pictures as they laugh and chat.

‘I buy short pastry from Co-op like, roll it out, cut into rounds with a plate. Then you get the filling ready.’ He fiddles with the pipe and clears his throat. ‘Chop up potato and a bit of steak and onion; mix it in a bowl with a little bit of water and with a bit of salt and pepper – I like lots of pepper.

‘Put the mix on half the circle and fold it over like. Then you press the edges together and crimp them, like that.’

He shows me how to crimp, pressing his blunt fingers on the edge of the table.

‘Bake in the oven for about an hour.’

‘You forgot to prick ’oles to let the steam out,’ says another man.

‘Oh ’es, proper job,’ says the cook, and lights his pipe yet again.

‘My ’oman puts in turnip as well as potato,’ says a man with a stick.

‘You’m spoilt rotten, you are.’ They all laugh and the turnip man looks amused and pleased.

Another man says they used to eat sheep’s heads when he was a boy. Yuk.

‘I was brought up on spuds and bread. If you had a meal, even if it was a sheep’s head boiled in broth: “Have a maw” the old people didn’t call it a slice of bread then – “that’ll help fill up the crevices.” Even if you had a salt herring and potatoes boiled in their jackets: Have a maw to fill up the holes.’

I shoot some more film in Rose Shelter too. There the men are playing euchre, a card game. But the light has gone flat and dull and the pictures I see through the viewfinder are not very exciting. It’s smoky in here so I don’t last long. But as I go to leave one of the men says, ‘Local maid, are you, my flower?’

‘I’m a Stevens.’

‘News gets around.’

‘I’m Augusta. My dad is Jackson Stevens.’

The men all look at each other.

‘Oh ah, Jackson Stevens, eh?

‘That be Hartley’s boy.’

‘Yes, Hartley Stevens was my grandfather.’

‘Never mind cheel’, never mind.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh nothing, only ’e were a bit wild, ’e were.’ The old men laugh loud.

‘’Es, ’e paid for it though. Never mind them, my flower.’ A bent over man, who looks about a hundred, winks at me.

I feel a sort of reflected guilt and shame, even though I don’t know what my father’s father did that was wild.

‘What did he do exactly?’

‘Oh, some sort of skulduggery. What was ’e accused of, Tom?’

‘Fiddled with car milometers, I heard.’

‘No, it were something about property. Always buying and selling land, ’Artley were.’

‘’Es, fingers in many pies, ’es.’

‘’E left town after. Took wife and boy away.’

Oh dear, I am taking after my Grandfather Hartley, lies and skulduggery. I feel myself go hot around the neck and face.

‘There’s only Dad left now, anyway. His parents both died years ago.’

‘Never mind, my flower. Plenty of ’onest Stevenses left here, any’ow,’ says the friendly one.

‘’Artley’s sister – what was her name?’ said the bent-over one.

‘Fay. ’Es, Fay, ’andsome she were. Red hair. ’Es, I courted she, but she wouldn’t ’ave I. Din’ want no fisherman.’

‘Din’ want a scrawny fool you mean.’ The old men are chuckling and coughing.

‘Married a big man, Fay did, not from ’ere, foreigner.’

‘Get on with the game, will you,’ says the thin one as he shuffles the cards.

I have to get out into the fresh air. The smoke is too much for me. Anyway, it’s getting late. Mum will be wondering where I am.

I wish I could have stayed and found out more.

BAD NEWS. I
bump into Bridget with her mum in Woolies. Her mum is in the sheets and towels aisle. Bridget and I shovel sweets into little paper bags – I go for the large flat toffees and she likes the cola sweets – and she tells me Brett has been to their house after school every day this week.

To see Liam? I don’t think so.

Bridget says her sister has had her belly-button pierced. Not only that, she has started to wear a padded uplift bra. She hangs around with Liam and Brett all the time and ignores Bridget or is horrible to her.

‘She’s a total pain in the neck.’

‘Purple or blue?’

‘Blue, midnight blue.’

I totally agree.

I am back at the archive with my new information. When I recover my breath I say, ‘I want to find out more about my father’s family. My grandfather was Hartley Stevens, born
1900
. He died though. But he had a sister, Fay.’

The woman shows me a box file full of Stevenses. No sign of any Hartleys or Fays but I find a long list of family nicknames including some lovely ones and some rather rude ones: Halibut Dick; Edwin Gull; Joe Powerful; Dick Salt; George Tealeaves; Georgie Pupteen; Georgie Happy; Willy Sailor; Polly Wassey; Captain Starve Guts; Tilly Toots; Bessie Wet Tits (seriously, I’m not joking).

As I give up and go to leave my eye is drawn by one of the framed photographs on the stairs. It’s a close up of two men mending a fishing net on Smeaton’s Pier, their backs to the camera. There is a signature – Amos H Stevens, and a date – 1927.

I go back to the desk and ask for information on Amos H Stevens, photographer.

‘Oh yes, there’s a book somewhere. Try over there.’

I eventually find the right book –
The Good Old Days
– photographs and paintings of the town in years gone by. I look in the index and there he is, his name: Amos Hartley Stevens.

I go to the page and find what I am looking for: Amos Hartley Stevens, born
1880
, Street an Garrow, St Ives. Proprietor, St Ives Photographic Studio, Fore Street, St Ives. My grandfather Hartley was born in
1900
, so this must have been his father – my great-grandfather. A real professional photographer! Photography must be in my genes.

No news from Brett about the Scillies. I haven’t seen him for ages.

I have never felt so much hatred for another person –
SS
I mean, obviously.

VERBS
Hate, detest, loath, abhor, execrate, abominate, hold in abomination, take an aversion to, shudder at, utterly detest, not stand the sight of, not stand, not stomach, scorn, despise, dislike.

Yes, all of those.

It isn’t fair that some girls are pretty and some aren’t ever going to be, no matter what they do to themselves. I still like my new haircut of course, but underneath it I am still the same ugly geek. No amount of piercing or short skirts will change the way I feel about myself or other people feel about me. Life is not fair. My teeth aren’t white or straight. My legs are weedy, my fingers are clubbed – because of my heart. My skin is blue, my tits and hips nonexistent. At least I haven’t got hairy toes or nostrils.

My jealousy is a poisonous acid green. It must show, surely? Jealousy is a terrible curse.

‘Gussie, what is wrong with you?’

‘What? Why?’

‘You look so grumpy, Guss.’

‘I’m nearly a teenager, I’m supposed to be grumpy.’

Even the cats are discriminating against me. They have taken to exploration. Having once taken the plunge to do a recce of the garden, they spend all their time outside, fraternising with the neighbourhood cats.

I sit in the window and try to take my mind off my problems by immersing myself in watching the birds and making notes, drawing sketches of the gulls.

I am also becoming more literate – learning a new word every day. I simply open the dictionary at any page and pick a word I haven’t heard of before. I’ll try and use the word on the day I learn it, to make sure I remember it. Today’s word is ‘
immiseration – a progressive impoverishment or degradation
.’ Huh, that’s where I’m headed.

It reminds me of
The Dice Man
– a book Daddy was once keen on. Every day you make a list of things to do, give each a number, throw the dice and whatever number comes up, you do that thing – it could be rob a bank or move to Australia, become a gun runner or take up karate. Maybe that’s how he came to run off with
TLE
. He threw a dice and her number came up.

List of things I could do about
SS
:

1
. Ignore her.

2
. Tell her what I think of her.

3. Get her little sister Bridget to give her a note ostensibly from Brett, but written by me, telling her he doesn’t fancy her. (Last time I tried forging a signature it was a total failure. I went off Religious Education when I was eight and wrote a note to the teacher saying, ‘Please may Augusta be excused lessons as she is not relijus.’)

4
. Become a nun.

5
. Be really really nice to her so she feels guilty.

6. Wear an even shorter skirt than hers, get a long dark

wig, false eyelashes and stuff oranges up my T-shirt.

Where’s the dice?

Also, my family problem. Do I:

1
. Tell Mum about my famous antecedent?

2
. Tell Daddy?

3
. Keep quiet about what I have found out?

4
. Go on with the search for living relations?

5
. Forget all about family?

6
. Ask Brett’s advice?

Still can’t find a dice – or is it die? Why is life so complicated? And language. It’s so easy to seem a complete dork by saying the wrong thing. Can’t think how to bring immiseration into the conversation either.

MUM AND I
are revisiting Paradise Park. She might not enjoy birding, but for some reason she likes coming here. It is peaceful and relaxing, which must be good, and one of the falconers is Rather a Hunk, she says.

The group of flamingos are as usual standing on one leg, trying to tie their necks in knots. I always imagined them to be taller than they are, and pinker. More pink, that should be.

We stroke Houdini, an elderly female penguin, named after the famous escape artist because she kept getting out when she was first rescued. Her back feathers feel like the pelt of a warm-blooded animal. She was hand reared and really enjoys being touched. She pushes against your hand, like a cat.

I really want to see the keas, but they’ve been moved away from the Australian section, where you could get up to the wire and almost touch them, and look into their eyes, and put into a huge aviary with lots of different sorts of parrots, where we can’t get close. I want to talk to them and watch their reactions. They are particularly intelligent and clever at solving problems – like getting through all sorts of obstacles to reach food. They are notorious at working together to peck and peel off rubber seals on tourist car windows to get at food inside. I’d like to find a good book about keas. Their bronze feathers look like scales or coats of armour, with red underneath the wings. Instead of walking they hop along the ground. In the wild they live on mountaintops on the South Island, of New Zealand. That’s somewhere I would love to go, but I don’t suppose I’ll have time.

Knowing you are probably going to die in a year or two is like waiting for a train with people you really like seeing you off, and you know you aren’t going to see them ever again. You have so much you want to say to them and the train is due in any moment. There’s so little time. You try to find the right words but your loved ones are left on the platform not knowing what it is you really needed to say. And I suppose it’s the same for them. What can they possibly say?

I HAD A
terrible dream last night: I had had my heart and lung transplant and the surgeon had forgotten to stitch up the incision so my chest was open, and blood glued the sheet to the edges of the wound. I woke in a sweat, my heart pounding like mad.

I have had an awful feeling all day, as if I have taken out the plug in the bath and my body is being sucked down with the disappearing water, dragged down.

I watch a red-headed fly wash its hands and arms very thoroughly like a surgeon scrubbing up. It does the same thing to its back legs.