Bird. That’s what they called her. That’s what the voice said now, when she answered the phone.
“Bird.”
“Yes?”
“You okay? You sound different.”
She was different. She felt different. Funny how he could tell it just from the way she said yes.
She listened to him talking into her ear, a disembodied voice, as she sat on the back doorstep, skirt hitched up so her legs could catch the sun. The floor was silvered by the long wings of fat flying ants. She peered at them, their black shiny bodies. Hard bodies that surprised her with their impact when they flew into her, crashing against her arms, her legs. Bird. If she really were a bird, she would want to eat these fat black shiny things. One crawled slowly up her leg. Maybe she should eat it. She wondered if its shell, its carapace, would crack audibly when she bit into it.
The voice in her ear burbled on. Her distracted, ant-inspecting silence apparently didn’t matter. She placed a finger in front of the ant. It paused, then clambered up onto the digit. She could raise her hand to her mouth now, she could place her finger and the ant inside her mouth. The wings were so long and sleek. The wings put her off. She thought they would tickle on the way down. She opened her mouth and blew. The ant suddenly found itself airborne.
She looked up into the sky, squinting, one eye closed against the brightness of the sun. She felt the warmth of it against her face and remembered another day like this. Warm sun on face, sitting on a back doorstep. She had tipped off her shoes that day and stretched out her legs. She did the same again today.
His voice was still pouring words into her ear. She looked at her feet, the whiteness of the skin, the blueness of the veins, so close to the surface, so fat and full of blood. She thought of the blood they held, thick and red and metallic. It would taste good in her mouth, that blood. Thick and round. The veins in her wrists were fat and blue today, too, just beneath the covering of skin that seemed paper thin.
She found suddenly that she wanted to say something. She waited for a moment, to be sure. She did not want to waste any of her words. She knew it didn’t pay to be profligate. Then the sun hid behind a cloud and the moment passed.
He, however, was still thriftlessly pouring words into her ear. This was what he liked about her, she knew. That she sat silent and let him talk. It was like the sea washing over her, the same tidal flow, back and forth, back and forth. She sat there, sometimes seditiously, sometimes passive, hardly ever listening. Like a member of a junta, happy to be there, patiently waiting.
“Bird?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you are still there then.”
“Yes.”
Bird. Such a name. Such a strange choice, and yet it suited her. It was what they all called her. Most of them had forgotten her real name, a turn of events that it suited her not to change.
Bird. Big Bird. Baby Bird. Ladybird. The sun peeped around the cloud, then went back in again. Bye bye Blackbird. Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Bird singing in the sycamore tree. Say nightie night and kiss me.
That was where this began, in the middle of a kiss. A kiss goodbye, a see-you-later, see-you-again, see-you-soon kiss that lingered on the edge of luscious before hurtling down to say nightie night and kiss me again. A standing kiss, like a standing order, a kiss to be paid same time, same place, but then that kiss hurtled them down. She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip at the memory. 32 days ago, more than a month ago, but maybe that meant nothing.
The sun came out again. She squinted at the sky and saw, as though it were a lesson newly learned, that the sun did not come out at all. The clouds withdrew their comfort.
She looked down. Fat black shiny bodies, long iridescent wings. One day the bugs would inherit the earth.
“When will you be home?”
She spoke almost without realising it, broke into his monologue, a tiny eddy in his ceaseless torrent of words.
“Another week yet, darling, why?”
“No reason.”
32 days ago, more than a month ago, a meeting, a greeting, a morning of more words, more talking, but not a river, not an unabashed outpouring from the mouth of one into the mind of another.
A meeting on Bridgewater Street. A walk to a pub where she used to go with a violinist from the Hallé when she was 17 and he old enough to know better. A lunchtime drink, a kiss goodbye, a change of plan. A drive in a car not her own to a back doorstep not her own. Hot afternoon sun, her shoes tipped off, her skirt hitched up, a cold ice-filled glass pressed into the back of her neck, making her shudder with illicit pleasure, his hand holding her hair away, and a kiss that led to this by way of that. Her skirt hitched up, accommodating little minx. Her skirt hitched up and him, unlike all the rest, a surprise, calling her by her name, speaking it into her ear in rhythms as hot as the sun beating down on his back.
Birds singing in the sycamore tree and kiss me again.
Sun-kissed. That’s what she was. Sun-kissed and 32 days older. There were tiny freckles on her shoulders, but they were not what made her different. The cold ice-filled glass pressed into the back of her neck was what made her different. That shudder of illicit pleasure and him, unlike all the others, calling her by name.
Mr Chatterbox, him, this one here, did not even notice that she came home smelling of him. She could smell him, warm all over her body, tangy where her skirt hitched up. She could smell him and did not want him to go away.
32 days older, and now he knew she was different. The city knew she was different too. The city claimed her as its own. She walked along the streets and knew herself to be in the pavements, the bricks, the glass, the steel.
She had closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and he had been looking at her, his eyes looking directly into hers. He had been a revelation that day. A waking dream, a glimpse of the future.
She okayed-to-end and sat on the back doorstep, skirt hitched up, silent phone in hand, the words that had flowed into her ear now ebbing from her head, leaving nothing behind. She smiled.
32 days older. A bird who had all but flown from her cage.
© J R Hargreaves 2003
