Little Bird. Camilla Way

bar, moved him to grip his hand a little tighter than usual, to hold his shoulder a little longer than was necessary when they greeted each other.

      ‘Easy, man,’ Eugene complained. ‘Nearly spilt my fucking pint.’

      Frank smiled. He saw Jimmy emerge from the gents, still doing up his fly. ‘Mr Auvrey, the man himself,’ he slurred enthusiastically, already pissed, launching himself at Frank and pulling him to him into a beery, smoky hug. ‘All right, sunbeam? How’s it going?’

      ‘Not so bad,’ Frank laughed, and ordered a new round for the three of them.

      Jimmy contemplated his friend while he sipped his pint. ‘Fucking happened to you last night then? Eh? Got that little whatsername bird back to yours pretty sharpish didn’t yer?’ He gave Frank a congratulatory pat on the back and didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Just goes to fucking show. Always the quiet ones. Bet she went like a good ’un too, didn’t she?’ He nodded his head sagely. ‘Mine was a dead loss. I should have stuck with the mousey one. Mind you, your bird was almost catatonic, weren’t she? Thought she was fucking you know, what’s the word, deaf and dumb at one point, didn’t open her trap once. Those two me and Euge had, oh dear me. Sniffed all our gak, didn’t they? Went through the whole fucking lot, so spangled in the end my one was good for nothing. Did my Elvis number for them and everything, fucking passed out, didn’t she? Total waste of time.’

      He finally noticed that Frank hadn’t said anything. ‘What happened, then? Any good?’

      Frank looked down at his pint, struggled for a few moments to keep his face straight and lasted exactly four seconds. Jimmy gazed back at his friend, taking in his shiny eyes, the wide grin, the way he suddenly seemed taller and surer and better looking. ‘Oh dear,’ said Jimmy, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

PART TWO

nine

       L’Hopital des Enfants, Rouen, Normandy, 5 November 1995

      In the hushed white room the people come and go. At first fear lies heavy upon her senses, like a thick layer of snow, and she’s scarcely aware of the sharp, acrid smell, the bright lights, the repetitive swish and whine of the swing door through which emerge yet more faces and footsteps and hands and eyes that probe and stare, probe and stare. And so she sits on the little, white bed, dressed in crisp, white pyjamas, the small, carved bird gripped tightly in her fist. She sits, motionless and calm but in the depths of her, behind that still, quiet gaze, she has returned to the forest and sees only the leaves, smells only the bracken and the river, hears only the birds that call to each other from the trees.

      At night, from somewhere behind the now-still door, shoes squeak upon linoleum, machines bleep, urgent trolleys trundle past. And beyond her window, from out of the orange-tinged blackness where the grey buildings loom and sulk across the street, drifts the distant noise of a world she can’t even begin to fathom; the sounds of growling, mumbling traffic, of unimaginable lives being lived beneath an unimaginable sky. And when sleep at last comes for her, it takes her on its soft, silent wings, back, back to the forest, where she flies and swoops and soars, to rest once again within its leafy arms.

      And yet she has a brave heart, this child that has emerged from the woods like a hatchling from its egg. Slowly, gradually, beneath that thick, freezing fear there begins to stir the first tentative shoots of something else: a strange long-dormant impulse that grows ever more insistent. Gradually, she becomes accustomed to the faces that appear to her each day, and her ears begin to tune into the sounds that they make, a strange but infinitely seductive sound that seems to pierce the fear and confusion like sunlight through leaves.

      And then: something else. Like the dragonflies that used to flit across the surface of the river, long-forgotten images begin to land briefly upon her memory: a woman’s face, a certain smell, and, stranger still, snatches of a nursery rhyme, words spoken by her and understood; a woman’s voice responding to her own. But they are impossible to hold onto for very long; too soon they take flight, disappearing once more into the sky. Nevertheless, some deep, instinctive part of her begins to respond to the voices of these white-coated strangers, to unfurl and reach towards them like a seedling towards the sun.

      At first she tries to offer the birdcalls that had once given her such pleasure in the woods. But although the people smile and nod their encouragement at her whistles and her coos, her chirrups and her twitters, she knows that they’re not right, are not what’s needed now. Sometimes she feels as if a flock of frantic sparrows are trapped inside her chest. In vain she tries to free them, but her throat will not obey her, will only allow, at best, meaningless gurgles and grunts. Her frustration grows until, from out of the strange, dark world that lies beyond her window, into the white, hushed room walks the woman with the pale blue eyes.

ten

       Locust Valley, Long Island, New York, 7 January 1996

      High Barn is very large and made of wood and glass. It stands alone on a hill and from her bedroom window she can see the garden’s well-kept lawns, a winding road, a copse of trees and then in the distance, the quiet roofs of a small town. She remembers little of her journey here. A meal at the hospital, a car ride through dark streets where exhaustion had come from nowhere, filling her eyes and nostrils like mud. She recalls being led through a large, frightening place full of light and people, walls of glass through which she could see monstrous metal birds roaring to the sky. Later she had woken only once, groggy and confused in a small narrow bed, a low drone all around her, a row of closed white shutters, a pale, cold light. And then, oblivion again.

      She understands only that she’s very far from home, that her old life and everything familiar and loved is far behind her now. This bedroom has sloping ceilings and a pattern of rose buds on the walls. Each night she dreams of the silent man, the stone cottage, the forest. Each morning she wakes in this strange, new bed and waits for the woman to lead her down to breakfast.

      The woman is very tall and has yellow-white hair tied tightly back from a face that’s long and pointed as a whittled stick. Her pale eyes are rimmed in pink as if perpetually sore and sometimes the girl will catch little glimpses of the skin on her arms, patches of flaky redness. It’s this tenderness, this rawness that Elodie at once and will always associate with the woman whose name she understands is Ingrid long before she can say the word.

      And from the beginning she understands that Ingrid is all she has now: the one constant amidst the strangeness, the one link to her old life and her only means of navigating this new one. Ingrid’s hands are very white, cool and dry to the touch, and in those first few days, the girl, Elodie, clings to those slender fingers as if to a twig dangling from the highest branch.

      The house has many rooms filled with soft, elegant furniture very different from the few crude pieces left behind in the cottage. On the gleaming wooden floors lie thick, muted rugs. Slowly, under Ingrid’s patient, pink-eyed gaze, the child begins to explore her new surroundings. The shelves full of books, the strange box that fires shockingly into noisy, colourful life at the touch of a button, a large blue bowl filled with dead, perfumed leaves. Each new object she explores tactilely, sniffing and touching until it’s known to her. And wherever she goes she takes the little carved bird with her, her fingers always circling its smooth round head or tracing the delicate grooves of its wings.

      On the kitchen table where they eat their meals, a large silver eagle stands, its half-raised wings perpetually poised for flight. In the window, a glass mobile throws squares of blue, green and red light upon the floor. There’s a framed photograph of a little boy hanging upon the wall. Nothing escapes Elodie’s careful examination. Even Ingrid must sit patiently while the child explores her with slow and careful fingertips. Every day, fastened to her blouse or sweater Ingrid wears a broach. It’s in the shape