Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [129]
“Well, you could make the effort now and then,” she said. “It’s not hard.”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Linver,” I said. “I thought you might not want to see me.”
“Don’t be stupid.” She shifted her basket to the other arm grumpily. “You’ve got to get over that,” and stomped off.
My God, that brought a tear to me. I ran after her. “How are you, Mrs. Linver?” I said. “Can I carry that for you?”
“Too late now,” she grumbled, but I persisted and walked her home to Fournier Street, and went in and built up the fire for her and made tea, and sat and drank it with her for a while. I felt curiously fond of her, painfully grateful that she could bear to be with me.
“She never comes to see me either,” she said. “Always the same, ain’t it?”
“I don’t suppose she gets much time,” I said.
“She does, she just don’t come. Too busy getting her beauty sleep. She’s gone back to the singing.”
“Has she? Where at?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The Goose, I think.”
“Still engaged, is she?”
“Oh yes,” she said, preening as if it was her own beau she was talking about. “He’s a lighterman, he is. Very steady.”
I didn’t mean to but I went to Paddy’s Goose. My feet just took me, and there she was sitting at a crowded table, soft and tipsy, in tears, giggling. I hadn’t seen her since that time, so stiff and awkward, when she kissed me in the hall. I walked straight over and pushed in next to her.
“Saw your ma,” I said.
She turned to me smiling, her face shiny, sleepy eyed. “It’s Jaffy,” she said, leaning on my shoulder and putting a knuckle in her mouth, “my dear old Jaffy.” The way she slumped, the peculiar fixed stare. Drunk off her silly head. Now I was here I didn’t know what to do.
“I’m away tomorrow, early,” I said.
“Lord,” she said, her head rolling back, “isn’t that always the way?”
I put my arm round her. “Where’s your Frank?” I asked her.
A crowd jostled our shoulders, making the curls on the back of her head bob.
“Somewhere around.” She glanced vaguely about. “My lovely, lovely Jaffy,” she said. The kiss she gave me was hot and heavy, blunt and heedless as a child’s. “Don’t worry, Jaf, he won’t mind if I kiss you,” she said, crying all the time, pulling away and wiping her cheeks with her palms.
“Why are you crying?”
“Me?” She laughed. “I’m not crying. I’m doing very nicely, darling. Packed my job in,” she said. “Couldn’t stand it. Fool’s game, I can make more down here. Look, sweetheart, watch me,” and she grabbed and drained her drink straight down, a practised passage, then jumped up and joined the dancers. The fiddler, a less skilful man than Simon Flower, played a waltz. What a show that girl was, smiling her way through the bright, smoky room. I wasn’t sober. How much I remember is true I don’t know, but it seemed to me she never actually took her eyes off me while she danced, even when the fiancé came and put his arm round her waist. But I waited and she never came back to our table. In the end I lost her in the crowd, and went home half hating her.
I steered clear of her after that. She was too unsettling. I went back to sea, and at night in the fo’c’s’le by candlelight I’d look at my Audubon birds. Somewhere I picked up a drawing book like the one Skip used to have, and whenever she came creeping in my head, I set to copying the pictures as carefully as I could. It cleared my head, dropped a curtain between me and my ceaseless, bloody mind. I didn’t know if my drawings were any good. I liked them. I went mad raiding Dan Rymer’s bookcases when I was home, grabbing any book with pictures of birds in it. Mr. Jamrach gave me Cage and Chamber Birds by J. M. Bechstein. My drawings multiplied: lark, linnet, lovebird, woodcock. I loved the detail. Siskin, nightingale, goldfinch, waxbill. Still she wouldn’t go away. I’d draw every known bird in the world. Avadavat, turtle dove, chaffinch, bullfinch. It would be something to do and it would take care of time and give me some pleasure. I’d do all the different varieties of all the different birds. I’d have to learn to paint. It could take the rest of my days.
In the silent bird