The Crocodile Bird Page 4

  Mother had been gone a long time. Who could say now how long those long times actually were? It’s different when you’re four. Half an hour? An hour? Or only ten minutes? She had read the letters in the rag book and made them into words, “dog,” “cat,” “bed,” “cot.” The baby bottle had been sucked dry and the pencil had scribbled over every single sheet of paper.

  She climbed upon the bed and crawled on all fours over to the window. The room had six sides and three windows but was too small for the bed to be anywhere but pushed against the wall with the window that had the best view. The sun was shining, sparkling on the river, and the wind was blowing the clouds and making their shadows run across the slopes of the high hills. A train whistled from somewhere out of sight and came into her view from out of the tunnel. She climbed onto a chair to look out of the window that overlooked the gateway and the little castle.

  There was never anyone there. There was never anyone to be seen but Mother, the milkman and the postman in the morning, and Mr. Frost on his tractor on certain afternoons. Sometimes a car came down on its way to the bridge. Mostly the lane was empty and all that showed its face in the barn on the other side was the white owl, so seeing the man made her jump. He was holding on to one of the gates and looking toward Shrove, a tall man in blue jeans and a pullover and brown leather jacket and with a canvas bag on his back.

  Suddenly he looked up in the direction of her window and saw her there between the curtains. She knew he saw her and it frightened her. She couldn’t have said why it did, but it was something to do with his face, not a nice face, not the kind she had ever seen before. It was masked in yellow-brown hair all over it, great bushes of curly hair from which eyes stared and the nose poked out. Later she wondered if she had thought the face not nice because of the beard, which was new to her. She never saw another until the day Bruno and Mother took her shopping in the town.

  She was afraid he was coming to the gatehouse and would get in and come to get her. Ducking down from the window and wriggling across the floor and hiding under the bed couldn’t stop that and she knew it. She knew it even then. Under the bed she didn’t feel safe, only a bit safer, and she thought it might be a little while before he found her. Mother had locked the door of her room and the front door of the gatehouse, but that didn’t make Liza think the man wouldn’t be able to find her.

  A long time went by and Mother came back. She pulled Liza out and hugged her and said she hadn’t seen any man and if there was one he was probably harmless. If he wasn’t she’d set Heidi and Rudi on him.

  “How will you know?” Liza said.

  “I know everything.”

  Liza believed that was true.

  Late that afternoon there was a knock at the front door and when Mother went to answer it the man with the beard was on the step, asking for a glass of water. Liza thought Mother would say no, she hung on to Mother’s skirt, peering around her until Mother said to let go, not to be so stupid. The man said he hoped he wasn’t a nuisance.

  “Go and fetch some water, please, Liza,” Mother said. “Not a glass, a mug. You know how to do it.”

  Liza knew. In some ways Mother had brought her up to be independent. Only in some, of course. For a long while she had fetched her own water when she wanted a drink, climbing up onto the chair by the sink, taking a mug from the shelf, turning on the tap, and filling the mug and then being very careful to turn the tap off again. She did this now, filling the mug that had a picture on it of a lady in a crown, and carrying it back to the front door. Some of it spilled on the way, but she couldn’t help that.

  The man drank the water. She saw so few people she noticed everything about the ones she did see. He held the mug in his left hand, not his right like Liza and Mother did, and on the third finger of that hand was a wide gold ring. That was the first time she had ever seen a ring on anyone’s hand, for Mother wore none.

  He said to Liza, “Thank you, darling,” and gave her back the mug. “Is there anywhere around here doing B and B?” he said to Mother.

  “Doing what?”

  “B and B. Bed and breakfast.”

  “There’s nowhere around here doing anything,” Mother said, sounding glad to say it. She took a step outside, making him step backward, and spread out her arms. “What you see is what you get.”

  “Best press on, then.”

  Mother made no answer. She did what Liza didn’t like her doing to her. It was a way she had of lifting her shoulders and dropping them again while looking hard into the other person’s eyes, but not smiling or showing anything. Until then Liza hadn’t seen Eve do it to anyone but herself.

  From an upstairs window, the one in Mother’s room in the gable which overlooked the lane this time, they watched the man go. It was only from here that you could see where the lane ran along past the wood on its way to the bridge in one direction, and in the other to peter out into first a track and then a footpath. The man walked slowly, as if his pack felt heavier with each step he took. At the point where the lane wound and narrowed he paused and looked back in the direction of Shrove or perhaps just at the high hills.

  They lost him among the trees, but they went on watching and after a little while saw him again, by now a small figure plodding along the footpath under the maple hedge. After that it became a game between the two of them, each claiming to be able to see him still. But when Liza got excited, Mother lifted her down from the window and they went downstairs to get on with Liza’s reading lesson. An hour every afternoon was spent on teaching her to read and an hour every morning teaching her writing. The lessons were soon to get much longer, with sums as well and drawing, but at the time the man with the beard came they lasted just two hours each day.

  Every morning very early, long before the writing lesson, they took the dogs out. Heidi and Rudi had been used to living indoors, so couldn’t have kennels outside, which Mother would have thought best, but slept in the little castle. Liza had never been in there before the dogs came, but Mother had a key and took her in with her and she saw a room shaped like her bedroom with six sides and narrow windows with arched tops, only these had no glass in them. The floor was of stone with straw on it and two old blankets and two old cushions for the dogs. Rudi and Heidi bounded about and nuzzled her and licked her face, making noises of relief and bliss at being released.

  Liza had thought how horrible it would be if they met the man with the beard while they were out in the water meadows. But they met no one, they hardly ever did, only a vixen going home with a rabbit in her mouth. Mother ordered the dogs to sit, to be still, and they obeyed her. She told Liza about foxes, how they lived and raised their young in earths, how people hunted them, and that this was wrong.

  That might have been the morning she saw her first kingfisher. It was about that time, she couldn’t be sure. Mother said kingfishers were not common and when you saw one you should phone up and tell the County Kingfisher Trust. So it must have been that morning, for after they got home and the dogs were back in the house next door, Mother locked her in her bedroom and went over to Shrove to phone.

  Liza read the words in the rag book and drew a picture of Mother on one of the sheets of paper. It might have been another day she did that, but she thought it was the Day of the Kingfisher. From about that time she got it into her head that all men had fair hair and all women dark. The man who delivered the oil was fair and so were the postman and Matt and the man with the beard, but Mother and she were dark. She drew a picture of Mother with her long dark hair down her back and her long colored skirt and her sandals.

  It was just finished when Mother unlocked the door and let her out. There was something different in the living room, Liza spotted it at once. It was hanging up on the wall over the fireplace, a long dark brown tube with a wooden handle. She had never seen anything like it before, but she knew Mother must have brought it back from Shrove.

  “It was a gun,” said Sean.

  “A shotgun. There were a lot of guns at Shrove. I
began thinking about it later—I mean years later—and I think that man had really frightened her. Frightened is probably not the word, she doesn’t get frightened. Let’s say, alerted her to danger.”

  “Yeah, maybe she reckoned she should never have said that about what you see is what you get. I mean, like, you know, not being no one else around for miles.”

  “I expect so.”

  “But he’d gone, hadn’t he?”

  “He came back.”

  It stayed light in the evenings until nearly ten, but Liza was put to bed at seven. She had her tea, always wholemeal bread with an egg or a piece of cheese. Cake and sweets were not allowed, and years passed before she found out what they were. After the bread she had fruit, as much as she wanted, and a glass of milk. The milkman came three times a week, another man with fair hair.

  Mother read her a story when tea was over: Hans Andersen or Charles Kingsley, books borrowed from the library at Shrove. Then came her bath. They had a bath in the kitchen with a wooden lid on it. She wasn’t locked in her bedroom at night, she was never locked in except when Mother went to Shrove or shopping in the town. When Liza couldn’t get to sleep she knew it was useless calling out or crying, for Mother took no notice, and if she came downstairs Mother would shrug at her and give her one of those wordless looks before taking her back up again.

  So all she could do was wander about upstairs, looking out of the windows, hoping to see something, though she hardly ever did. If Mother knew Liza went into her room and played with her things, she gave no sign of it. Mother read books in the evenings, Liza knew that, or listened to music coming into her ears through wires from a little square black box.

  In Mother’s room she opened the cupboard door and examined all the long bright-colored skirts that Mother wore and the other things she never wore, long scarves, a couple of big straw hats, a yellow gown with a flounce around the hem. She looked in her jewel case, which was kept in the dressing table drawer, and could have told anyone precisely what the case held: a long string of green beads, two pairs of earrings, a hair comb made of brown mottled stuff with brilliant shiny bits set in it, a brooch of carved wood and another of mother-of-pearl. Mother had told her that was what it was when she wore the brooch just as she told her the beads were jade and the two pairs of earrings made of gold.

  That evening the green beads and one pair of earrings were missing because Mother was wearing them. Liza closed the box, went back to her own room, and knelt upon the bed, looking out of the window. The gatehouse garden, in which Mother later on grew peas and beans and lettuces, soft fruit on bushes and strawberries under nets, was mostly bare earth at that time. Mother had been working on it that day, digging it over with a fork. There was just one tree, a single cherry tree, growing out of the soft red-brown soil, and two long grass paths.

  Liza shifted her gaze upward, waiting for the last southbound train, which would go through a bit after eight-thirty. She hadn’t known about north and south and eight-thirty then, though Mother was teaching her to tell the time and to understand a map, but she knew the last train would come out from the tunnel while it was still light but after sunset. The sky was red all over, though you couldn’t see where the sun went down from her room. Once it had set, the high hills went gray and the woods changed from green to a soft dark blue.

  The train whistled at the tunnel mouth and came chugging down. Lights were on inside, though there was a lot of light outside still. It would stop at the station, at Ring Valley Halt, but you couldn’t see the station from here. In the distance, the train grew very small, long and wriggling like one of the millipedes that lived near the back door. After it was gone there would be nothing more to be seen from this window. Liza scrambled off the bed and went on tiptoe back across the landing to Mother’s room.

  From here, you could see the bats that lived in the barn roof on the other side of the lane and swooped after moths and gnats. Sometimes she saw the great cream-colored owl with a face like a cat’s in a book. She had never seen a real cat. It was a little too early for owls this evening. Down below her, in the little patch of front garden, as twilight came, the color began to fade from the red and pink geraniums and the tobacco flowers began to gleam more whitely. If the window had been open she could have smelled them, for their scent came out at dusk.

  Just as Liza was thinking nothing would happen, it would get dark without anything happening, the front door opened and Mother came out in her green and purple and blue skirt and purple top, her green beads and gold earrings, with a black shawl wrapped around her. She opened the gate in the wall that ran around the garden, unlocked the door of the little castle, and the dogs came rushing out. Mother said, “Quiet. Sit,” and they sat, though trembling and quivering, Liza could see, hating this enforced stillness.

  Mother said, “Off you go,” and the pair of them began gamboling about, jumping up and trying to lick her, leaving off when she didn’t respond. She walked around the side of the gatehouse out of sight, the dogs following, but Liza knew she wouldn’t go far because she never did in the evenings.

  Liza ran back into her own bedroom, climbed onto the bed, and pressed her face against the window. Outside a bat swooped, so close that she jerked her face back, though she knew the glass was there. Rudi and Heidi were in the back garden playing, grappling with each other and making mock growling noises and rolling over and over. Mother wasn’t with them, Mother must have come back into the house.

  Back on the landing, Liza listened, but she couldn’t hear Mother down there. She ran into Mother’s room and up to the window. Mother was sitting on the wall, listening to the music coming out of the band around her head and holding the little black box in her hands.

  Where were the dogs? No longer in the back garden, she discovered as she bounced back onto her own bed. They must have gone out through the opening in the fence and into the wood, as they sometimes did. But they were well-trained, they always came back at a call.

  It would get dull now if nothing more happened than Mother sitting on the wall, waiting for the dogs to finish their play. Liza never considered getting back into bed and trying to sleep as an alternative to this roving from room to room. Either she fell asleep when she happened to be on her own bed or Mother found her asleep on the landing floor or in the chair by the front bedroom window. She always woke in her own bed in the mornings. But she didn’t want to be there now, she wasn’t tired.

  Perhaps Mother had decided to do something different. Liza ran back to check. Mother was still there, still listening. It was nearly dark but not too dark to see the man with the beard come along the lane from the bridge direction. The man looked just the same except that this time he hadn’t got his backpack with him.

  His footsteps made no sound on the sandy floor. Mother wouldn’t have heard them if they had with that thing on her head and the music that was called Wagner flowing into her ears. Liza began to be frightened. Mother had said the dogs would protect them but the dogs weren’t there, the dogs were a long way away in the wood.

  Liza couldn’t look.

  Why hadn’t she banged on the window to warn Mother? She hadn’t thought of that till afterward. The first time the man came she had got under the bed, the second time she had fetched him a drink of water. This time she put her hands over her eyes. They were talking, she could hear their voices but not what they said. Very cautiously she parted her fingers and peeped through them, but they had gone, Mother and the man, they had come too near the gatehouse for her to see or else they had walked around the back. She ran to the back and as she jumped on her bed, Mother screamed.

  “What was he doing to her?” Sean said.

  “She never told me, she never said a word about it, not then and not later. I know now, of course I do. When she screamed I was so frightened I covered up my ears, but I could still hear, the window was open. I thought the man would catch her and—oh, make her his prisoner or something—and then come and get me.

  “You were only a l
ittle kid.”

  “And there was no one else for miles and miles. You know that. There never was. If there had been it couldn’t have happened, none of it could.”

  It wasn’t dark but the beginning of the long midsummer twilight. When Mother’s scream died away she heard the man laugh but she couldn’t hear what it was he whispered. She looked out of the window, she had to look, and Mother was on the grass path and the man was on top of her. He was trying to hold her there with one hand and with the other he was undoing his jeans.

  Liza was so frightened she couldn’t make a sound or do anything. But Mother could. Mother twisted her head around under the man’s arm that pinned her neck and bit his hand. He jumped and pulled up his hand, shouting that word Matt had used on the doorstep, and Mother screamed out, “Heidi, Rudi! Kill! Kill!”

  The dogs came out of the wood. They came running as if they had been waiting for the summons, as if they had been sitting among the trees listening for just that command. In the half-dark they no longer looked like nice friendly dogs that licked your face but hounds of hell, though that was before Liza had ever heard of hounds of hell.

  They didn’t jump at the man, they flew at him. All eight powerful black legs took off and they were airborne. Their mouths gaped open and Liza could see their white shining teeth. The man had started to get to his feet, but he fell over on his back when the dogs came at him. He covered his face with his hands and rolled this way and that. Heidi had half his great yellow beard in her jaws and Rudi was on him biting his neck. The dogs made a noise, a rough, grumbling, snorting sound.

  Mother jumped up lightly as if nothing had happened and dusted down her skirt with her hands. She stood in that way she had, with her hands on her hips, the shawl hanging loose from her shoulders, and she watched them calmly, the dogs savaging the man and the man screaming and cursing.