Tiny pieces of enid, p.8
Tiny Pieces of Enid, page 8
‘Don’t forget I have to start cooking at three today,’ she said.
Roy turned. They discussed how long the chicken would take, when they should sit down to eat it, and what they could do with the leftovers. That would affect the seasoning Enid should use today, see. Then they digressed. Enid bought up the neighbour’s new dog – a Labrador, who had started howling in the early hours of the morning. Barb was so taken with the birds outside, Roy pointed out, wouldn’t a dog be lovely? Barb interrupted with an excited squeal, and Enid told her that she couldn’t have a dog. That discussion was for another day, she said. Back to the chicken. They agreed that it would probably take around two hours, and they would probably be hungry by five, so yes, Enid should probably start cooking around three.
Roy often found himself lost in small talk with Enid.
‘So,’ he turned back to Barb, ‘we’ve got five hours.’ He stopped short. Barb was back facing the TV. The image on the screen cut from eagle to owl, from hawk to buzzard. A middle-aged straight-faced man in a thick rainbow-striped jumper spoke directly to the camera. A parrot stood on his shoulder, eyeing him.
‘Join us at Birdland, for hundreds of spectacular displays,’ the man said, before the parrot pecked his ear, ‘and the finest exotic birds in the world.’ The parrot extended its neck, put its head to one side and picked at the presenter’s hair with its beak. ‘Like this fine beauty here,’ the man said, as he leaned away from the bird. The screen filled with a logo, followed by the directions needed to visit Birdland.
In one movement, Barb stood up and turned towards her parents.
‘Can we go there?’ she asked, her face beaming with excitement. Roy began nodding. He loved it when Barb’s eyes went wide like this. He’d created such a level of excitement in one single nod. It was exhilarating.
‘Of course, we ca…’ he started, but Enid interrupted.
‘Not today we can’t, no,’ she said, sounding shocked at Roy’s naivety. ‘Maybe another day.’ Roy turned to see his wife scowling at him. ‘Why must I be the bad one?’ she asked. ‘You know we can’t go today. We’d have to leave as soon as we arrived.’ Enid walked purposefully, but apologetically towards her daughter. Barb was already showing signs of a meltdown. Her face was red, her eyes were wet, and her bottom lip was wobbling.
‘But Dad…Dad…Dad said I could,’ Barb stuttered, and then she screamed as she stomped out of the room. Roy watched as Enid tried to hold onto their daughter, but missed. Barb slammed the lounge door shut behind her, catching Enid’s wrist on the handle as she did.
Enid sucked in air through her teeth, held onto her arm, and then turned to glare at Roy. He felt guilty, the bliss of the morning shattered in one misguided utterance.
‘So,’ he said coyly, and a little cheekily, ‘what should we do toda…’ His sentence trailed off, but Enid rolled her eyes, and he could see them already softening.
The bird was next to her partner when the first of her three eggs shook. The movement was subtle, but it was enough. They looked at each other, and then they both looked somewhere else, then at each other again, and then at the nest. Then she hopped onto the edge of the nest and flew down to the bottom of the garden.
She gave little thought to the little girl watching them from across the patio. The girl was often there, eating, singing, fidgeting. The bird rummaged in the soil in one of the beds. It didn’t take long to uncover a fat worm. She yanked it up into her beak and flew back to the nest, placing it on the floor next to the moving egg. Then pecked at the worm until it lay still.
She nudged the egg with her beak. The movement was sharp, and the egg looked fragile, but it didn’t break. She wanted her chick to feel its first movement from the world beyond the confines of the egg. She wanted it to know that there was something more outside.
The egg moved again of its own accord, and the blackbird welled up with pride. There was a tiny crack forming. She looked at her partner and saw that he had puffed out his chest.
She looked around, down the garden and then back at the egg. Along to the side gate and then back at the egg. Into the sky and then back at the egg. Up the patio and then back at the egg. And then back up the patio again.
The girl was standing now, up on her tiptoes, eyes wide, biting the side of her bottom lip. The bird looked at her partner, his blazing orange beak aimed at the little girl. He tweeted a warning and raised his tail to show that he meant business. The girl lifted herself higher and leered closer to the nest. He warbled; long, low, and melodious, defending what was his. The female blackbird knew she was lucky to have him, but she felt compromised.
There was a sound from inside the building, and the girl hopped inside, frantic and fast. The blackbird knew that the girl had heeded her partner’s warning, and she felt her heartbeat steady. She looked at the egg silently, and then back to the male bird. He was turning his head quickly this way and that, scanning for other predators or unwelcome guests. Then he looked at her. Then they both looked at the egg.
The crack had widened now, and she could see the pink skin of her eighth chick. A featherless wing, thin, fragile and swaying side to side, like a worm reaching for its next patch of soil. She pecked the egg one more time. Slowly, delicately yet forcefully, the chick pushed the crack on the shell to create a hole, just large enough for her wing, neck and back to be exposed. The bird watched as her chick felt the warmth of the morning sun for the first time.
This was good progress, she thought. She had lost four this year, raised three, and was hopeful for what would be her final attempt. She raised her head to the sky, then looked across the patio, back to the gate, and then to the lawn. Then, again, she looked at her partner, her head ever so slightly to one side. He had protected her eggs, and she was grateful.
She held onto the loose piece of shell with her beak, and pulled it away softly. The chick’s head fell backwards out onto the nest floor, the weight too heavy for the unpractised muscles in the neck.
The bird saw her chick’s beak open, hungry for the worm she had just gathered from the lawn. She recognised the yellow crusting around the chick’s tiny beak, and the pus seeping from its swollen eyes.
She heard the little girl jumping back out onto the patio behind her, and she felt the rush of wind as the girl ran to the nest. She sensed more people there, and she heard them talking.
Neither blackbird fought the intrusion this time. Neither turned, and they didn’t tweet or warble. They did nothing to defend their nest. The female bird picked up the worm from the nest floor and pushed it, hard into the chick’s open beak, but she’d seen crusting like this before, and she’d felt a similar swell. She knew there was nothing she could do.
That night, three pink, almost translucent chicks fell about the nest floor, fighting for the food that had been gathered for them. One neck would extend, beak wide and eyes shut, and then it would fall back to the nest, neck stuffed with worm. Then the next would emerge from the pile of wriggling limbs. Two of the chicks raised their heads more regularly than the third, and their mum noticed. When the third did lift its head, it looked desperate – more a struggle for survival than a request for food. The crust had already grown wider, and the eyes were now bulbous and wet.
She fed whichever beak was presented to her, but on the occasion that the infected beak reared itself to the feast, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed; for herself, for her poorly chick, for its siblings and for the waste of a worm.
In the morning, Barb woke to the loudest of birdsong. She rushed outside excitedly to see how the new arrivals were. Both parents were in the nest when she jumped out onto the patio, the brown one patting something down with her foot. Barb stayed back. The yellow ring around the darker bird’s eye seemed to dart from one spot to the next, never leaving the inside of the nest. Finally, she watched him raise his tail and hop across the nest wall, taking to the sky, over the fence and out of the garden.
Barb crept forward; her bare feet cold against the tiles, still wearing her summer pyjamas as late as August. Not so close as to alert the remaining parent, she stood on tiptoes and looked over the bird and into the nest.
Her bottom lip pouted out from under her top involuntarily, and she fell back onto her heels, her body swaying. The brown blackbird patted the nest again with her scaled foot. While two of the chicks moved and stretched, and writhed and twitched, the third lay underneath them, limp.
Barb thought of the new Labrador puppy next door, howling during the early hours of the morning. The dog must have been outside for her to have woken from the noise. She thought of the nest’s low position in the weeds. She clenched both her fists, her arms rigid by her sides. Her bottom lip remained, but the rest of her face contorted from despair to anger.
The bird sang loud as Barb bent down, a sound which she took to be gratitude. When she placed her hands around both sides of the nest, the small bird jumped and jumped, she beat her wings, she screamed the most beautifully haunting song. It wasn’t until Barb was about to lift the chicks, the nest and the tumble of weeds surrounding it that she stopped.
‘Barb,’ her mum called from the patio doors. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Barb stumbled from the shock of hearing her mum’s voice. Still angry at the dog, overcome by emotion for the chick, and now confused by the pain shooting up her leg, Barb started bawling. When she opened her eyes, she found herself on the ground. Her mum was running towards her, panicked. The world was blurry though tears, but Barb could see the nest propped at an angle, and the limp chick lying on the patio.
Only Enid joined Barb in the ambulance, and she was a little embarrassed at having called one. By the time the paramedics had arrived Barb had stopped crying. Red tracks of tears could still be seen marking her cheeks, and the occasional sniff escaped, vigorous enough to shake Barb’s whole body, but she would be alright.
When Barb had first tried to walk after the fall, she hadn’t been able to put weight on her foot, so Enid and Roy had waited with her in the lounge, Barb sobbing on Enid’s lap and Roy attempting to make jokes to cheer Barb up.
Roy had offered to come with them, but Barb had said no. Instead, she’d asked him to look after the birds, with a sincerity in her eyes that only a child can manage. Roy had smiled and agreed. No one had touched the nest since the fall, and since the birds meant so much to Barb, it had seemed a reasonable request.
Before Enid and Barb had left, Roy had told his daughter that he loved her. Barb had replied that she loved him too, and that she loved birds. Roy had just nodded. Enid had attempted to stifle a laugh.
‘What a weekend,’ Enid said to her daughter in the back of the ambulance. The sirens weren’t on. ‘With your Birdland tantrum, the chicks, and now this.’ She wasn’t cross.
A few seconds of silence passed, while Enid contemplated the ups and downs of family life.
‘The bird is dead, Mum,’ Barb whispered. ‘It’s dead.’ Her head dropped, and again, she started to cry. Softer now; deeper. Enid put her hand on Barb’s leg and shook it gently. ‘I…I was trying to help,’ Barb stuttered.
Enid didn’t lift Barb’s face, and she didn’t talk. Instead, she allowed her daughter to experience the sorrow of death. Sorrow leads to healing. After a while, her daughter looked up at her.
‘I’m sorry I hurt you with the door,’ she said, and Enid nodded.
‘You didn’t mean to.’ She gave her daughter a half-smile. ‘Even if you did, I’d still love you.’
17
Enid felt as if she was forever being told she wasn’t a prisoner, but she certainly felt like one. No one else ever brought it up, but when asked how she was, she would often reply that she was stuck, or trapped. She brought it up, a lot.
‘Oh, Mum,’ Barb had laughed, kindly. ‘You’re not trapped. They’re nice here – you said so yourself – they’re nice people, and they’re helping you.’ Enid knew that Barb felt uncomfortable on the subject, but she also knew that this discomfort was because, fundamentally, Barb knew that Enid was a prisoner.
There were codes on the doors that Enid would never be able to remember – that was if she’d ever been told them in the first place, which she was sure she hadn’t – and there was always a carer by the main door. Beyond that door was a reception area, with offices, before another coded door. Enid was a prisoner, and she, Barb, and the carers all knew it.
On the odd occasion that Roy had visited with Barb, he agreed. He was the only one.
So, when Enid, along with a selection of the other residents, was allowed to sit on the bench at the bottom of the drive, she would pretend she could still enjoy freedom. She’d imagine that she was waiting for a bus, and when a bus did come, which was rare, she would imagine boarding it, as if she had just finished her shopping and was going home to Roy. Soon, she realised, she would not have to imagine going home to Roy. Soon, he would be home with her.
The memory of her old home was fading. Enid could still remember specific scenes from her life in each room, but she couldn’t imagine walking through it as she once had. She could remember the elaborate cake she’d once baked for Roy sixtieth birthday. She’d carried it from the kitchen out to the dining-room table, where Barb, Calvin and Alex had all been seated with Roy. Everyone was dressed up. They’d just come back from a meal at the posh pub at the beach, with the nice views. Enid could remember this, and the memory included her dining room and kitchen, but at the time they had just been background details. Now, they seemed more important to her.
Today, much like other days, no one on the bench talked much. Enid could hear Duncan and Kara chatting a few paces away, over by the gate. It was the height of summer; the sky was a sheet of blue and the bushes before the bay a random pattern of pinks and greens. A seagull landed on the pavement a few metres away from the residents. The bird tilted his head and then looked down at Enid’s bag. Defensively, she picked the bag up and rooted through it, looking for the photograph of Roy that she sometimes carried with her.
A breadstick, some spoons, lots of quilting squares (that’s useful, Enid thought), a scarf that she didn’t recognise but which was made from a lovely fabric, a tissue with something scribbled on it and a plastic fish. The picture wasn’t in there.
The calm sounds of the sea below, and of the birds above, were interrupted by a vehicle coming round the corner. The seagull, which Enid had noticed edging closer, probably after food, took to the sky as a bus pulled up at the stop next to the residents. Enid picked up the tissue from the bag and rubbed it against her dry nose, more out of habit than necessity. She looked at the scribble on the tissue.
Then she looked up at the bus. There was a shape on the front of it.
47
Once again, Enid glanced at the tissue. The shape appeared…could it be the same as the bus? It wasn’t a click as such, but a slow realisation that swept across Enid. She scrunched up her face and clenched her fists with joy. She knew how to get home. Without a moment to lose, she rose to her feet. Unfortunately, she lost a million moments in the time it took to prepare her joints and straighten her legs. As always, she worked through the pain, but by the time she was up, the doors had closed, and the bus was inching forward to leave.
‘Time to go back in for dinner,’ Duncan called over from the gate. Enid felt like she’d been punched in the stomach.
The seagull landed again; this time so close that Enid could have touched it with her foot. It studied the area around the bench while the other residents started to rise. Enid began to bend down to pick up her bag, whose zipper top sagged open, but before she could, the seagull swooped its head down, plunging its beak deep inside the bag. Enid froze as the bird ran away, wings lifted over its back, plastic fish in its beak.
18
Roy had been alone for four months now; the house silent for four months. It felt like years. Enid had been taken to the hospital a few weeks before that of course, but those first weeks had been bearable, her space on the sofa temporarily vacant. Roy had known it was likely that she wouldn’t be able to come home, but there had been hope, and it had been enough to cling onto, just enough to believe. When the decision was finally made, when Roy’s worst fears had finally been confirmed, the house fell into a permanent, overwhelming silence.
It wasn’t a literal silence – he had visitors. Neil popped in now and again offering to pick up milk and groceries, which Roy regularly took him up on. Barb often came over too, making the same offer and staying for a cuppa. Roy knew how busy she was, and he was grateful for the visits, but even with people there, even when Barb had Alex with her, the house felt silent. It pushed an absence on him, every movement they made a reminder of other movements that were missing.
On the telly, Countdown had just begun. Roy chuckled as Rachel Riley placed suggestible letters on the board. Rachel herself looked a bit uncomfortable. Roy still played Countdown every day, with the same notepad he’d used when he’d played with Enid before. Enid’s own paper was still on top of the record player, her pen beside it. Roy sat in the same spot on the sofa, despite the fact that Enid’s had a better vantage point, and he still prepared a cup of tea and five biscuits for the programme. Five were always too many, even when Enid had lived there, but five was what they had, and so it remained.
Roy found his Countdown skills had depleted since he’d lost his opponent. He didn’t feel the same pressure from the clock that he once had. Some days he hadn’t even bothered trying. Today though, he found himself wanting to find a sensible word from the overly suggestible letters, and well before the minute was up, he’d managed it.
TRISQUARE. All nine letters. A victory to share with no one.
He picked up his cup and swilled the dregs in the bottom, before finishing the last mouthful, the sweet, sunken sugar now cool.
