The Bower Bird (21 page)

Flo’s helping – sorting out wrapping paper and ribbons for me and chasing them all over the floor so they don’t escape. Charlie, who has no sense of humour or fun, sits on my bed and looks down her pink nose at Flo’s undignified behaviour. Rambo is frightened of the noise Flo and I make with tissue paper and sellotape and hides under Mum’s bed.

Our Christmas tree sits in a bucket covered with red and green wrapping paper. The room smells of pine. We’ve put the coloured fairy lights on it – the same lights we’ve always used, little plastic bells with nursery rhyme figures on them. No tasteful all-white or all-silver decorations for us. No way. If you can’t be vulgar at Christmas, when can you? Oh, dear, I’m beginning to sound like my mother.

We have Grandpop and Grandma’s old tree decorations this year. They have always been packed in cotton wool in a square biscuit tin with a picture on the lid of a little girl with yellow curls and a red dress playing with her dolls. The decorations are fragile, light as air, pure glass in lovely colours, pale pink, powder blue, scarlet, opal green. Some are balls, others like miniature bunches of grapes. I hang these baubles and try not to knock off too many pine needles. Silver strands are hung over the branches to add the finishing touch, and they glint and twinkle under the lights.

‘Shall I put the fairy on top?’

From the tin Mum produces a hideous one-eyed, half-bald, one-armed half naked doll.

‘If you must.’

‘It was mine when I was little. She’s called Tinkerbell.’

‘Go on then,’ I say, and she reaches up and slips the maimed fairy on the topmost branch.

‘What about Santa?’ I take out the little knitted Santa Claus that Grandma made and Mum positions it just beneath the fairy. I switch off the main light and we admire the pretty picture the tree makes in the bay window. Mum suddenly hugs me to her, and I can feel wetness on her cheek.

I OVERHEAR THIS
and I don’t think I am supposed to: I’m sitting by my open window, camera in hand, waiting for inspiration. The weather is so mild we haven’t even got the heating on. The starling is sitting in its usual place on the telegraph wire saying his prayers to the great Sky God, perhaps praying for a white Christmas. Mum is hanging out the washing, when Mrs Thomas from next door comes out.

Mum: ‘Hello, my dear. Lovely weather, isn’t it?’ Why do adults always talk about the weather? It’s pointless. Weather just is. Nothing we can do about it, so why even mention it? ‘How are you, Marigold?’

Marigold! What a lovely name. She doesn’t look like a Marigold, more like a Violet.

Mrs T: ‘’Es, I’m not too bad, you know, my ’ip and knees, as ever. Waiting for an appointment for my cataracts. ’Es. How ’bout you, my girl? How’s your problem? Look peaky, you do.’

Mum: ‘You were right, quite right – fibroids. Needs an operation.’

Mrs T: ‘Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Oo’s goin’ to look after the little maid then?’

Mum: ‘Oh, I won’t have it. It’ll have to wait.’

It’s evening and we are watching
Absolutely Fabulous
. We both love it.

‘Mum, what did the doctor say when you saw him?’

‘Her, my doctor’s a woman.’

‘Oh, right, what did she say?’

‘Oh nothing, it’s my age, hormones, fibroids, nothing much.’

‘Do you need an operation?’

‘No, I’ll be all right, she’s given me some tablets.’

Next day when Mrs T comes into the garden to hang up her smalls (isn’t that a sweet expression for rather big knickers?) I am ready, armed with my camera. Mum’s gone down town, last minute Christmas shopping.

‘Hello my cheel’, how’re you then? Behavin’ are you?’

‘Mrs Thomas, may I take a photo of you please?’

‘What for you want a picture of me?’

‘For my portfolio.’

‘That sounds important, portfolio. Go on then.’

I go into her garden and position her against the hedge of valerian. It’s still flowering. She is of course wearing the flower-patterned apron, which acts as camouflage.

I have transparency film in the camera.

‘Thank you Mrs Thomas, you look lovely.’

‘You’m a funny maid, you are, taking a picture of an old lady like me.’

‘Mrs Thomas, my mum isn’t well, is she?’

‘No, no, she isn’t well.’

‘It isn’t cancer, is it? She isn’t going to die?’

‘Good heavens, no, my cheel’. She’s got fibroids, that’s all. Needs an operation, is all.’

‘You sure?’

‘Don’t you go worrying about your mother, now, my girl, she’s strong as an ox.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Thomas.’ I have to sniff loudly and blow my nose. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

I was dreading she would want me to do some shopping but luckily she says no.

She sits on her front doorstep on a cushion in the sun, and her cat comes out and stands next to her, his back and tail arched in ecstasy as she strokes him. I’ve noticed before, she strokes him all the time, almost obsessively, as if her life depended on it. Shandy’s like her lifebelt and she has to hold onto him or drown.

This afternoon I go to the library to get a pile of books to read over Christmas and automatically ask to renew the lost books. The chatty lady looks at her files and says she can’t renew them until I bring the books in for them to see.

Oho! The shit’s hit the fan.

I obviously look shocked, because she says, ‘I can renew them, but it’s County Council policy to ask to see the books after they’ve been out a certain length of time.’

‘Oh dear, the fact is, you see, Mum’s… had an accident with them.’

She raises her eyebrows.

‘Yes, an accident.’ My mind is racing. What can I say? ‘A dog, two dogs, a very aggressive bull terrier and a… a poodle, attacked her and tore the books to ribbons, I’m afraid, and ate them. She was only slightly injured but her mind was affected.’

I think she believes me.

‘I see, the dogs have eaten the books. How novel. Well, perhaps you could ask Mummy to come and see us, because there will be a fine to pay.’

‘A fine?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much will it be?’

‘I’ll have to check.’

She goes away and telephones someone.

‘They weren’t new books, dear, so ten pounds will cover it.’

Ten pounds! I give her the remains of my Christmas present money, all ten pounds of it. I can feel myself blushing with embarrassment, but relief too. Whew! I’ll never ever tell a lie again.

‘You don’t have to pay it now, dear. The County Council will send her a letter.’

‘No, no, that’s fine, that’s okay. She would want me to pay now. Really.’

She makes me wait while she writes a receipt.

Ten pounds. Thank goodness I have already got most of the presents. I’ll make the rest.

Next day I wait for the post and it’s Eugene, our old postie from Peregrine Cottage. He remembers me. I give him a hug and wish him Happy Christmas. Mum invites him in for a mince pie and a glass of wine and he eats and drinks standing up in the kitchen. He says they are short of postmen this Christmas and he’s covering this part of town now. He has brought a load of Christmas cards for us. There’s a card for me from Summer, with a photo of her and two other girls from my London school, taken in a photo booth. They look so happy and carefree and I miss them all suddenly, having not thought about them at all for months.

Hurray for darling Daddy, who sends me a Christmas card, a letter, and thirty pounds for Christmas expenses. Nineteen-year-old Luk from Thailand is history, it’s someone called Natasha now. He doesn’t give her age. Mum hoots and says he’s incorrigible. She doesn’t even sound bitter.

I’M BACK AT
Arts and Artists, and I ask to see the book about Arts and Crafts. It’s a big book and the man gets it down for me. I sit at a desk and open the book.

Later, I phone Alistair.

ONLY FIVE MORE
windows to open in the Advent calendar. I’m probably too old to have one really but go along with it for Mum’s sake. She likes to make everything as Christmassy as possible.

The holiday people arrived last night. Daisy and Grace stroke our cats, who are all sunbathing in their garden. Grace is a bit younger than me but about four inches taller. I don’t think she and her sister get on very well. I heard them squabbling through the wall. I’ve always wanted a sister but maybe it’s not such a good idea. You can’t choose who to have as family, you can only choose friends.

We’ve invited them all to come round on Christmas Day.

We are at a lunchtime party at Brett’s house. We nearly didn’t come because Mum is feeling lousy and doesn’t feel up to socialising and Really Needs to be Near a Bathroom. It was only when she saw me all dressed up ready to go that she made an effort to get herself ready. She looks rather pale but very smart in a black dress and boots with a long string of red and green glass beads.

I have Brett’s present with me to give him. We’ve got a box of cocoa-covered almonds and a bottle of Australian wine for Hayley and Steve from the two of us, and a big bag of seeds for their bird feeders.

I have new khaki baggy trousers and a long sleeved black T-shirt with sparkly red bits on it. Mum spent loads in Truro on clothes and I got these and a pair of red Doc Martens – an early Christmas present. My hair is newly trimmed and gelled into individual spikes. No hat. Mum says I look like a fetching urchin!

‘What’s fetching?’

‘Pretty.’

That’s going a bit far, but I do look a little more human than usual, I suppose.

They have a huge tree that hits the ceiling of their sitting room. I’m glad Steve hasn’t insisted on a barbecue today, though it is still very mild. There are loads of guests I don’t recognise, as they’ve made many friends at the school. Mum knows a few people, including Alistair, of course, who looks rather handsome in a black shirt and cords with an orange and pink tie. He drove us here.

The beach family is here, the godfather family. I say hello to the little fairy girl and ask her about Wobert. I think he’s called Robert but she’s not good on Rs.

‘He’s fine, spends his days on a sheepskin next to the fire keeping warm.’

Brett and I go into the garden to say hello to Buddy, who peers down at me suspiciously for a while then flops down to land on Brett’s shoulder. He lets me stroke his shiny head – Buddy I mean. Brett talks soothingly to him, telling him how beautiful he is. He is so good with birds.

I imagine I am Buddy the raven, being lovingly caressed by Brett. I push my beak into his hand and croon like a pigeon. He strokes my flight feathers and I flutter them at him. Stop it, you idiot, I tell myself.

‘Gussie,’ Brett says, as Buddy flies back to his tree.

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing… I like… your
DM
s.’

‘Brett?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Is Siobhan coming today?’

‘Na, she’s not coming.’

‘Do you, are you, is she…?’

‘She’s a drongo, Guss, a dero, she’s a waste of space.’

‘Oh Brett, do you really think so?’

‘Yeah, I like you much more.’

He gives me a high five and pats me on the head, and doesn’t mind the gel.

We are at the St Ives Youth Theatre Christmas show with Claire, Gabriel and Troy. Gabriel sits next to me and can’t wait to tell me his news. They’ve got the little black puppy. When I tell him that Mum and I found her and took her to the vet he looks adoringly at me as if I am his hero – heroine.

‘What’s her name, then?’

‘Zennor.’

‘And what do the cats think of her?’

‘They’ve kept out of her way. She bounces too much.’

I nearly didn’t recognise Phaedra as her hair is pulled up on top of her head and her make-up is extreme – green and purple streaks and black lips. She has to change costumes three times, and looks great in spangled tights, leotards and high heels. She’s a wonderful singer and dancer.

In the interval I spot the man and woman I sat next to in the church, and in the second half I recognise their little girl in the show. It’s such good fun, but it goes on a bit too long for me, and I don’t like the dry ice smoke or whatever it is. But we all sing a few Christmas songs together at the end, like ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ and I feel suddenly festive and in the right Christmas spirit.

THIS VERY EMBARRASSING
conversation has just taken place:

Mum – Gussie – I want to talk to you.

Me – Yeah?

Mum – I know about the funeral.

Me – Funeral? Oh.

Mum – Yes.

Me – So?

Mum – Well, do you want to talk about it?

Me – Not really.

Tears come suddenly and once I start I can’t stop. Mum takes me in her arms and holds me tight. My scar hurts where she presses me to her but I don’t complain.