The Crocodile Bird Read online

  The milkman said, “It feels like spring,” which was silly because it was spring, and “Here comes the train,” that he needn’t have bothered to say because anyone could see and hear it.

  They got very few letters. Liza never got any. Letters came for Mother sometimes, from someone called her aunt, though she never explained what an aunt was, from her friend Heather in London, and one regularly once a month from Mr. Tobias. This one had a piece of pink paper in it, which Mother said was a check. When next she went to the shops she took the pink paper with her and took it to a bank and they turned it into money. Like a good fairy waving a wand, suggested Liza, who was much into fairy tales at that time, but Mother said, no, not like that, and explained that this was money which she had earned for cleaning Mr. Tobias’s house and looking after it and seeing it came to no harm.

  In April the dogs came again to stay. Matt brought them and told Mother that Mr. Tobias had gone to somewhere called the Caribbean this time, not France. Liza hugged Heidi and Rudi, who knew her at once and were overjoyed to see her. Had they forgotten the man with the beard called Hugh? Had they forgotten how they attacked him? Liza wondered if they would attack Matt if she called out, “Kill!”

  “Why doesn’t Mr. Tobias ever come himself?” Liza asked Mother while they were out in the meadows with the dogs.

  “I don’t know, Lizzie,” Mother said and she sighed.

  “Doesn’t he like it here?”

  “He seems to like it better in the Dordogne and Moçambique and Montagu Square and the horrible old Lake District,” said Mother incomprehensibly. “But perhaps he will come one day. Of course he’ll come one day, you’ll see.”

  Instead of coming himself, he sent a postcard. It had a picture on it of silver sand and palm trees and a blue, blue sea. On the back Mr. Tobias had written: This is a wonderful place. It’s good to get away from cold, gray England in the cruelest month, though I hardly suppose you would agree. Say hallo to Heidi and Rudi for me and to your daughter, of course. Ever, J. T.

  Liza couldn’t read joined-up writing, even the beautiful curvy large kind like Mr. Tobias’s, so Mother read it to her. Mother made a face and said she didn’t like him putting his dogs before her daughter but Liza didn’t mind.

  “I know what T’s for,” she said, “but what’s his name that starts with J?”

  “Jonathan,” said Mother.

  By the time the summer came, Liza could read Beatrix Potter and the Andrew Lang fairy books if the print was large enough. She could write her name and address and simple sentences, printing of course, and she could tell the time and count to twenty and add up easy sums. Mother took her into the library at Shrove and said that when she was older she would be welcome to read all the books in there she wanted. Mr. Tobias had told her to help herself to any books she fancied reading, he knew she loved reading, and of course that invitation extended to her daughter.

  “Jonathan,” said Liza.

  “Yes, Jonathan, but you must call him Mr. Tobias.”

  There were history books and geography books and books about languages and philosophy and religion. Liza noted the words without understanding their meaning. Mother said there were also a great many books that were stories, which meant made-up things, not things that had really happened, they were novels. Most of them had been written a long time ago, more than a hundred years ago, which wasn’t surprising since they had belonged to Mr. Tobias’s grandfather’s father, who had bought the house when he got rich in 1862. The books were rather old-fashioned now, Mother said, but perhaps that was no bad thing, and she looked at Liza with her head to one side.

  It grew hot that summer and one day Liza went with Mother to a part of the river that was very deep, a pool below the rapids that came rushing over the stones, and Mother began teaching her to swim. Mother was a good strong swimmer and Liza felt safe with her, even where the water was so deep that even Mother’s feet couldn’t touch the bottom. The second or third time they had been down there they were coming back up the lane— Mother said afterward she wished they’d come through the Shrove grounds as they usually did—when they had to flatten themselves against the hedge to let a car go by. It didn’t go by, it stopped, and a lady put her head out of the window.

  That was when Liza had to revise her ideas on her hair-color-sex-linkage theory, for the lady’s hair was blond. It was not otherwise much like hair at all but seemed to be carved out of some pale yellow translucent substance, a kind of lemon jelly perhaps, and then varnished. The lady had a face like the monkey in the illustrations to Liza’s Jungle Book and hands with ropes under the skin on the backs of them and a brown paper dress Mother said afterward was called linen and made from a plant with blue flowers that grew in the fields like grass.

  The lady said, “Oh, my dear, I haven’t seen you for an age. Don’t you ever come down to the village anymore? I must say I’ve expected to see you in church. Your mother was such a regular at St. Philip’s.”

  “I am not my mother,” said Mother, very coldly.

  “No, of course not. And this is your little girl?”

  “This is Eliza, yes.”

  “She will be going to school soon, I suppose. I don’t know how you’re going to get her there with no car, but I suppose the school bus will come. At least it will come to where the lane joins the main road.”

  Mother said in the voice that frightened Liza when it was used to her, which was seldom, “Eliza will be educated privately,” and she walked away without waiting for the lady to put her head in and her window up.

  That was the first time Liza heard school mentioned. She didn’t know what it was. At that time no school or schoolchildren figured in the books she read. But she didn’t ask Mother, only what the name of the lady was and Mother said Mrs. Hayden, Diana Hayden, whom Liza would probably never have to see again.

  They had the dogs back for a fortnight in October and again six months later. When the time came for Matt to come with the van to collect them he didn’t turn up. Something must have gone wrong, Mother said. There was no means of letting her know, as they had no phone and it was impossible to send telegrams anymore.

  But when he didn’t come on the following day she got it into her head this was because Mr. Tobias would come himself. He had told the man to leave it to him this time, he would collect the dogs when he got back. But he wasn’t due back till today. After he had had a good night’s sleep and got over his jet lag he would get in his car, or more likely the estate car, and drive down here from Ullswater, where he lived but had no one willing to look after his dogs. Mother was sure he would come. She and Liza went over to Shrove early in the morning and Mother gave it a special clean.

  At home she had a bath in their kitchen bath and washed her hair. That was the next day, in the morning. She put on one of her long bright-colored skirts and her tight black top, the green beads around her neck and the gold hoops in her ears. It took her half an hour to plait her hair in the special way she had and pin it to the back of her head. And she did all this because Mr. Tobias was coming.

  He didn’t come. Matt did. He drove up in the afternoon and pushed past Mother into the gatehouse before she could stop him.

  “I’ve been down with one of them viruses that’s going about,” he said, “or I’d have been here before.”

  “Where is Mr. Tobias?”

  “He rung up from Mozam-whatsit, said he’d be home today. Didn’t he never let you know? Dear, oh, dear. Never mind, there’s no harm done, is there?”

  No harm done! Mother went up to her bedroom after Matt had gone and lay on her bed and cried. Liza heard her crying and went up and got into bed with her and hugged her and said to stop, not to cry, it was going to be all right.

  And so it was. In the month of June, when all the wild roses were out and flowers were on the elder trees and the nightingales sang in the wood, Mr. Tobias came to Shrove in his dark green shiny Range Rover and, with the dogs at his heels, ran up the cottage garden path and banged on t
heir door, calling, “Eve, Eve, where are you?”

  That was how Liza learned what Mother’s first name was.

  She called the day gone by the Day of the Nightingale because the nightingales had sung from morning till night and beyond. People who didn’t know, Mother said, believed nightingales only sang by night but that was false, for they sang all around the clock.

  SIX

  MY real name’s Eliza. I’ve sometimes thought she called me after Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. ”

  “Come again?” said Sean.

  “Because she intended to do the same thing with me as Pygmalion did with Galatea and as Professor Higgins did with Eliza Doolittle, he remade her to be the way he wanted her, or let’s say he had an ideal and he tried to turn her into that.”

  Sean frowned while he concentrated. “Sounds like My Fair Lady to me.”

  “She said she didn’t, anyway, when I asked her. She just liked the name.” Liza finished her strawberry milkshake and wiped her mouth. “Sean, can I have a burger? D’you know I’ve never had one.”

  “’Course you can. We’ll both have a burger and chips.”

  “Isn’t it funny? I was so afraid to leave the gatehouse and her, I thought I’d die of fright.”

  “You’re always dying of something, you are.”

  “Only I never do really, do I? I was so frightened and now I’m out in the world—that’s how I see it, out in the world—I really like it. Or perhaps it’s just you I like. I wouldn’t have liked Heather.”

  “You might’ve. You don’t know her.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I did. She came to stay. But not then, not till after Mr. Tobias had been.”

  They were in the town, Liza wary of the crowded pavements but liking the shops and the big green with a few old people sitting on wooden seats and children feeding ducks on a pond. Sean wouldn’t take her money, he had a bit saved up, and when they had had lunch he bought two bottles of wine and sixty cigarettes, something else she had never tried before. Sean lit a cigarette as soon as he was in the car.

  “Eve said they kill you.”

  “She’s not the only one says that. But I reckon it’s just the same old thing, them trying to stop you having a bit of pleasure. I mean, look at it this way, my grandad, he’s eighty-seven, he’s smoked forty a day since he went out to work at fourteen and there’s not a thing wrong with him, spry as a cricket he is.”

  “What’s a cricket, Sean?”

  “There’s the game cricket, you know, test matches and whatever, there’s that, but it’s not that, is it? I reckon I don’t know what it is, to tell you the honest truth.”

  “You shouldn’t use words if you don’t know what they mean.”

  Sean laughed. “Sorry, teacher.”

  He wanted her to try a cigarette, so she did. It made her cough and then it made her feel sick, but Sean said it was always like that the first time and you had to persist.

  They called in at the farm shop on the way back to the caravan and saw Mr. Vanner in the office. He was short of pickers for the Emile pears and took them both on to start next day. On the way out Liza helped herself to a James Grieve from the basket with the notice that said: Help yourself and enjoy a great taste.

  She’d taken a big bite out of it when Mrs. Vanner behind the counter said in a nasty tone, “Those apples are intended for our paying customers, if you don’t mind.”

  No one had ever spoken to her in that rude way before. Sean squeezed her arm to stop her answering back, though she wouldn’t have done that, she was too shocked.

  “What a horrible woman,” she said the moment the door closed behind them.

  “Mean old bitch,” said Sean.

  Another camper had arrived at the caravan park. Whoever owned it had already put up a washing line with washing on it and tied a black terrier up to the steps. Liza glanced at the other camper, the one who was there before they came, and saw the blue glow of the screen under the raised blind.

  “D’you know what we forgot, Sean? We forgot to buy the television set.”

  “I can think of better things to do than watch telly,” said Sean, putting his arm on her shoulders and stroking her neck with his fingertips.

  “And something to read,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’ll need books to read. How can I get books?”

  “I don’t know.” He wasn’t interested.

  “I can’t exist without books.”

  But she went into his arms very willingly when they were inside the caravan and the door was shut. She was soon pulling off her clothes and climbing across the bed to where he waited for her. They hadn’t bothered to put the bed back in the wall that morning, knowing they would be sure to need it again soon.

  Mother said, “This is Mr. Tobias, Lizzie, that you’ve heard so much about,” and to Mr. Tobias she said, “I’d like you to meet my daughter Eliza, Jonathan.”

  It was a new experience for Liza to shake hands with someone. Mr. Tobias’s hand was warm and dry and his handshake very firm. He got down on his haunches so that their eyes were on a level. His were dark brown and his hair light brown, lighter than his skin, which was very deeply tanned. Of all the men that Liza had ever seen—the milkman, the postman, and the oilman, Mr. Frost, Mr. Tobias’s man who brought the dogs, and that other one who had a beard—of all of them, Mr. Tobias had the nicest hands. They were thin and brown with long fingers and square nails.

  And he had a lovely voice. Instead of sounding like Matt or the oilman or the man with the beard or the milkman, who all sounded different from each other, his voice was more like Mother’s but deeper of course and somehow softer. It was the sort of voice you’d like to read you a story before you went to sleep.

  “She’s very like you, Eve,” he said. “She is you in little. A clone, perhaps?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Mother said. “But I’m glad she looks like me.”

  Liza was very surprised to see a bottle produced and two glasses, a bottle with brown liquid in it, and orange juice for her. Mr. Tobias was very tall and had to bend his head to get under the doorway into their living room. He wasn’t wearing jeans like most of the other men she had seen or the bottom part of a suit like Mr. Frost, but trousers in pale fawn stuff like the ribbing on a sweater and a white shirt with an open neck and a brown velvet jacket. Eve told her afterward that it was velvet. It looked, and she imagined felt, like the mole she had seen come out of an earth mountain on the Shrove lawn.

  She was very shy of him. While he talked to her in his bedtime-story voice, she could only stare at him with her eyes very wide open. He asked her what she did all day long and if she could read and would she draw something for him. While she was drawing a picture of Shrove with the river behind and the high hills and Heidi and Rudi running about on the grass, he said he expected she would be going to school soon. Mother said briskly that there was time enough for that and changed the subject. She wished he had let her know he was coming, she would have got some food in and given the house a special clean.

  “You would? You’re supposed to get a woman in from the village to do that.”

  “I know, but they aren’t reliable and they’d have to have a car. It’s easier to do it myself. I prefer to do it myself, Jonathan.”

  “I thought it was odd when I went through the accounts with Matt and there was no provision made for a daily.”

  Mother said again, “I prefer to do it myself.” She looked down in rather a meek way, her long eyelashes brushing her cheek. “You pay me so generously that, really, I feel it’s my duty.”

  “My idea when you came here was that you would be a kind of estate manager. You had the cottage and a—well, a salary, to run the place.”

  “Dear Jonathan, there’s nothing to run but Mr. Frost and the oilman,” said Mother and they both laughed.

  Liza finished her drawing and showed it to Mr. Tobias, who pronounced it very good and said she must sign it. So she wrote Eliza Beck in the bottom right-hand corner and wondered why Mr.
Tobias gave her signature such a strange long look before turning to Mother with one eyebrow up and a funny little crooked smile.

  The dogs were not to sleep in the little castle this time but over at Shrove with Mr. Tobias. Liza played with them until it was her suppertime, and then she and Mother took them halfway up the Shrove drive and released them. She stood under the tallest Wellingtonia and called to them to run home, to run and find the master. Mr. Tobias came to the front door of Shrove and down the steps and waved to them.

  He had something hanging around his neck on a strap. Liza couldn’t see very well from that distance, but as they came closer she thought it looked rather like the thing Mother had that made music. He beckoned and put the thing up to his face, holding it in both hands. Mother went on walking toward him, telling her not to be shy, Mr. Tobias was only taking a photograph of them. But Liza was shy, she hid behind a tree, so Mother got into the picture by herself.

  By this time she had almost grown out of that baby game she used to play after she was put to bed, running from one room and one window to the other, but that night, for some reason, she felt like playing it again. Perhaps the reason was that Mother had come upstairs to check that she was asleep. Liza dived under the covers and lay with her eyes shut, breathing steadily.

  She half opened an eye as Mother tiptoed out and saw that she had changed into her best skirt, the one she made herself from a piece of blue and purple and red material she had bought when she went to town. Mother wore the new skirt, which was very full and long, nearly to her ankles, a tight black top, and a shiny black belt around her little waist. Her hair was done in the way Liza loved and which took half an hour to do, drawn back from her face and done in a fat plait that started at the crown of her head and was tucked under at the nape of her neck.