The Orphan Bird
ALISON LITTLEWOOD
The lake was silent. Its surface was utterly unmoving and the deepest grey in hue, except where the light made it shine the no-colour that Arnold saw in this place and this place alone. The only thing stirring the surface was his own head, a slick, dark mound in the hood of his wetsuit, as he turned to look at the bitterns. There was no other way to see them. No one else knew they were there. The only way that Arnold knew was the sound of their booming, which he had heard one day ringing emptily across the lake like a call from beyond the world. For a time, he had almost believed that it wasn’t a real thing; then he had seen the source and had been astonished, despite all his knowledge, that such a sound could come from so ordinary a creature.
The bitterns had nested in the swampiest part of the shore, if it could be truly called a shore at all. It was a nowhere place, belonging to neither lake nor land, covered by treacherous reeds that would not support the weight of a man.
Arnold lifted his camera, bulky in its waterproof housing, to the surface of the lake, tilting it to let the greyish water run off the transparent plastic without making any dripping sounds. He’d zoomed in before he’d set off that day; he didn’t want the low whirring of the mechanism to alert the birds to his presence. Now he waited for one of them to raise its head from the mud before he pressed the shutter release, barely hearing the click. The birds didn’t hear it either. They were among the rarest creatures to be found in these parts; indeed, they had never before nested by the lake until this year. It felt like a kind of portent. They were red-listed, and yet they looked like nothing. Shorter than a heron, more thick-set and with brown feathers, they were nondescript, like him. Arnold smiled. They passed through the world with secrecy and silence, despite their ability to roar. Sometimes it was good to do that, to be able to avoid being noticed.
He watched them a little longer, already knowing how he would paint them. The male would be side-on, his head raised, watching something that could not be seen beyond the edge of the page. The female’s head would be lowered, her beak ready to dart into the water to catch some fish or insect, and yet her eyes would be fixed upon whomever looked at the picture.
Arnold relaxed into the water, lifting his feet from the soft mud and floating. He rolled over onto his back, resting the camera on his chest, seeing only the grey lid of the clouds folding over the grey lake. He knew that no one was watching him. No one ever came here. The lake was too far from any decent road for coaches to come and disgorge their cargo of old ladies; too muddy for hikers with their noisy dogs; too far from anything, even the mountains he could just see rising in the distance. This part of Cumbria wasn’t an attraction. Here were no neat shores, nowhere to sunbathe, no shops selling sandwiches or gift-wrapped gingerbread or mint-cake.
He thought of all the depth of cold, dark water beneath him, of all the life that was in and around and within it, seen and unseen. A slow smile spread across his features as he allowed himself to drift. In his mind he was already mixing the paints; selecting the brush; making the first bold mark on a fresh white sheet of paper.
Later, the image he had visualised so clearly began to appear in front of him. It was never the same as the golden perfection he had built in his mind, not quite, but that wasn’t the point. The process, for him, was as important as the result.
As he worked, adding streaks and bars to a bird’s wing, he meditated on the creature. His knowledge of it, the depth of his research, was invisible, and yet he felt it gave him an understanding and a connection with his subject that no one else had. The bittern was known as h?ferbl?te in Old English. Its current name came from Old French: butor, which in turn derived from Gallo-Roman butitaurus, a compound of Latin būtiō and taurus. Taurus was a reference to the bittern’s incredibly deep cry: it was a bird with the cry of a bull. Bitterns were a member of the heron family, the botaurinae. Arnold wondered what the other herons, the tall, grey, stately creatures, would think of their ugly little brother.
He narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate more deeply. He would render the creature to perfection, capture it on the page. He would study it and describe it in the only way he knew how and finally file it, in his cabinets, along with all the information he had found. He sold his pictures, mainly to publishers of ornithological texts, but that wasn’t the point either. He had so many birds in his cabinets, along with some insects and plants; one little piece of the world after the next, catalogued and understood. Made safe. One day, perhaps all of it would be in there. Then nothing would surprise him, not any longer. Nothing would have the strength to hurt; their power over him would be altogether lost.
He realised he was staring into space, or rather, out of the window of the tiny cabin he owned near the lake, but seeing nothing that was in front of him. He didn’t realise how he was torturing the brush with his free hand, flexing and forcing it, until it gave with a sudden sharp snap, sending droplets of burnt umber across his painting.
He let out a breath with a hiss, dabbing at the paper with a tissue, but it was too late. The picture was ruined. He picked up the end of the brush with the bristles attached and realised something worse. It was his favourite, the smallest he possessed: size 000, perfect for fine work. Now it was useless. He would have to go into town before he could hope to paint the birds again.
Arnold got ready, changing his worn and paint-spattered T-shirt for a clean one, his filthy trousers for faded blue jeans. He looked at himself in the mirror before he went out. The effect, he knew, was not good. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. His hair was never anything but lank, looking almost black where it was slicked down over his forehead. His skin was pale and yellowish, and his eyes were a little too small.
He took a deep breath and picked up the keys to his dirty Land Rover. The nearest art shop was in Windermere, a good thirty minutes away, if the little roads weren’t clogged with tourist traffic. He pulled a face at himself in the mirror before he set off, twisting his florid red lips.
The sun had come out after all, sparkling off the wide blue expanse of Windermere Lake, and it had brought with it large numbers of people. The rowing boat hire, in a little inlet at the roadside, was busy. Stick-thin boys and girls lined up on the pebbly shore with their mothers and fathers and there was noise, lots of it: the hollow wooden sound of oars in rowlocks, the endlessly passing cars, a motor boat chugging somewhere out on the water. And always, there was the talk: chirping and clucking and squawking.
Arnold parked opposite. He had been lucky that someone was just leaving, so that he could nudge into the narrow space they’d left behind. As he closed the door he turned to see a small child—a girl, long hair, snub nose, blue eyes, freckles, frock—licking at an ice cream as she watched him. She gave a sly smirk before her mother said something sharp and she turned away, forgetting him instantly.
He edged around a couple of bare-chested young lads, their shoulders burnt to cadmium red, smelling of beer. He ignored the slurred cry of “Hey, mate . . .”
Across the road, a family was waiting to cross: boy, girl, mum, dad, flowery shirts, beach bag, sunglasses. He felt the father’s stare through his lamp-black lenses as Arnold walked rapidly past them and towards the shops. He kept his stride sure. He knew that was the only way. He couldn’t let them see how his heart was beating so rapidly. He had to quell the instinct to turn and run, to throw himself into the clear blue water, to swim and swim until no one could see him any longer; until no one could scrutinise him and find him wanting.
Hey, mate . . .
Look at his hair!
He’s got no mum! No wonder he’s . . .
Oi, Spotty! What you looking at, Spotty?
He paused on the corner, breathing hard, leaning against an old slate wall. The voices around him had changed. He couldn’t see the speakers’ faces, but he knew who they were. The first had been Batty Briggs, the lad with sticky-out ears. People called him Batty and it was not his name, but they did it in a way that made everybody laugh. It was different to the way they called Arnold Spotty, or worse.
He hated Batty Briggs. He always had, ever since the first day when Arnold had been shown into class and introduced and the boy had burst out laughing, as if the teacher had just told a fine joke.
Batty’s friends were Scott Williams and Dale Carter. They always laughed when Batty did, though never quite as loud. Scott and Dale always noticed every little thing that was wrong with Arnold’s clothes. They would laugh, now, at his T-shirt. He hadn’t seen any of them for ten years, not since he’d been in school, but he could hear them all the same.
“Watch out . . .”
Arnold pressed himself back against the wall as an arm brushed against his. He looked up. It was not Batty or Scott or Dale. A couple had come around the corner, a man he didn’t know with a beer belly and a woman with harshly bleached hair, brown at the roots. Her strappy top revealed a tattoo of a cobalt and rose madder butterfly just above her right breast.
Arnold’s mouth opened and closed as they went by. He couldn’t seem to pull the air into his lungs. He felt as if he was drowning, and he knew that in a way, he was. It had always been like that: out of place, out of step. Out of his element. He longed, suddenly and deeply, for the grey lake where nobody came. That was where he belonged, in the water, content with the dark and the slime and the mud, with all the creatures that slithered and flapped and did not speak.
He forced himself to start walking, more quickly than before. This medium was strange to him—he could not flourish here, did not know how to be—but it would not kill him. The sooner he had finished, the sooner he could escape.
He reached the art shop without catching anyone’s eye. He made his purchase, throwing in some extra tubes of paint so that he would not have to visit again too soon. The shopkeeper tried to make conversation, telling him about some new papers that had just come in, and he simply nodded and took his change. Then he hurried away, his head bowed, his legs moving rapidly, like a sanderling rushing along the shore.
When he got home and closed the door behind him, Arnold took out one of the books he had illustrated. It was his favourite. Although the pictures were rather small, they were printed neatly in little boxes, each with the bird’s classification and habitat and geographical spread marked next to it. He began to breathe more deeply as he looked at it. He didn’t take in any words in particular—he had seen them all already—but the images, along with the little charts and maps, comforted him. The pages didn’t turn easily because of the photographs that were thrust between them, the thicker paper impeding the flow of the book. Arnold wasn’t ready to look at them but after a while he was, and he let one fall, randomly, into his lap. He had seen it before but he studied it anyway. It showed a son and his father in a rubber dinghy, wearing blue trunks and identical grins, plastic oars clutched in their fists.
He put the photograph back. The next one chosen by the book showed a whole crowd of people standing on the shore at Windermere. It had been a hot day then too. It had sapped the strength from the flock: faces were red, every bench was occupied, and some of them had flopped to the ground until it was coated in shorts, hats, swimming costumes in harsh primary colours. He made out a brother and sister, her sitting cross-legged, his arms slung casually about her shoulders. A group of children wearing tabards and school caps walked in a line towards the dock.
None of them was looking at the camera.
After a while, Arnold slipped the photographs back into the book and returned it to the shelf, lining up its spine with the others. It was all right again; he was calmer. He was ready to go to work.
Arnold drifted down through the layers, feeling the coldness seep under his wetsuit. His arms were outstretched, loose, and he stared up at the sky as he sank, the sun a diminishing white hole. Everything else was the deep green of rotting things, of liquid that was rich in nutrients, the soup of life. It was as dark as the water in the jar he used to rinse his brushes.
He was close to the farthest banking of the lake, where twisted trees bent their limbs down towards the water. The muddy drop beneath the surface was full of fallen and waterlogged branches where black grubs squirmed and wriggled. He thought of the drenched wood as loak, though he did not know why. It was not a word, at least not until he had named it. He gazed at it all through his mask without blinking. He did not flinch at the quick, silver dart of a fish. It was natural, and he was part of it. He turned lazily in the water as a stickleback swam by, and he ran his fingers through a gelatinous clump of frogspawn. A kick of his legs took him in towards the banking. Below the trees’ roots and the fallen wood were outcroppings of rock, greened with slimy weed. Among them was a dark, blank opening.
Arnold went toward it. The water held him, suspended; it accepted him. He stared into the hole. That was where the chicks were, he knew that. He came often to check on their progress. They were enveloped by the shade, where they liked it best, but he could just make out the suggestion of a form here and there: darkness that hinted at empty sockets, twined shapes not quite like branches, interlaced so that nothing could separate them.
The fish had found them. There were more of them here, twitching and circling in excitement. Arnold watched without touching them. He only needed to see.
After a time he let the water carry him away into the deeper cold. Then he began to kick back towards the day, savouring the moment of lightness. Soon his body would take on weight again. It would feel all the more leaden, knowing what he had lost.
“Bring him over here.”
Arnold leaned more closely over the paper. Usually, when he worked, he thought of nothing else. There were only the facts he had learned and the photographs and the paint. A new bittern was taking shape under his hands: the bird with the cry of a bull.
“Hold him down.”
He shook his head, the forms in front of him blurring as if seen through dark water. What was wrong with him?
“Give it here. There’s something wrong with you.”
He let the brush slip from his fingers and rubbed his eyes. It was like yesterday. Batty, he thought. Batty and Scott and Dale. He should have left them alone. He should always have left them alone. That was what people like him did.
He closed his eyes and remembered. He had been walking through the middle of the town he’d been sent to and had reached the river. Cars idled to a stop and roared away, their drivers irritated by the hump-backed bridge they had to cross in single file. Someone had told him this was where the trolls lived, but there were no trolls now. There were only Batty and Scott and Dale.
He must have been walking back to the home from school, because he could remember the weight of his backpack, and it must have been summer because wherever the backpack clung to him was running with sweat. He hadn’t intended to stop; he hadn’t wanted to see anything. But there they were, the three of them, playing with a kitten.
He knew at once that it wasn’t a nice game. He could tell from their voices, which were bright and sharp and cut through the air. “Give it here!”
He looked over the bridge. They were on the riverbank, clustered together. Batty broke away for a moment to take something from his schoolbag: a magnifying glass. Scott was holding the kitten. It was small and it only took one hand, wrapped tightly around its ginger fur to hold it still.
Batty held up the magnifying glass before focusing the sun’s heat on the kitten’s left eye.
The three boys closed around it. Arnold could not see it squirm but he heard a single plaintive mew. He did not think but climbed the stile set into one side of the bridge and he slithered down the banking towards them. He did not shout; he didn’t need to. The boys swivelled their heads towards him, as if drawn by his presence.
“Or what, dickhead?” Batty said, as if Arnold had spoken; as if he ever spoke. At least he had lowered the magnifying glass. Scott clutched the kitten tighter and Arnold stared at it. Too late, he realised that Batty had nodded a signal at Dale. The lad ran towards him. Arnold froze, like prey. He knew there was no use in running. The taller boy would only take him down. Instead Dale stopped when he reached him then just stood there, as if he didn’t know what to do.
“Bring him over here.”
Dale reached out, tentatively, then grabbed Arnold’s shoulder and dragged him over to Batty.
“Hold him down.”
Scott reached out one-handed, grabbing Arnold’s hair and together they tugged on him. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t like fighting in films.
“Not like that.” Batty sighed as if they were idiots and he stood and kicked Arnold in the back of the knee while shoving his chest. Arnold went down flat, his backpack digging into his spine. He wriggled. He was pinned; he was an ant.
Batty’s lip twisted as he aimed the magnifying glass once more, focusing the light on Arnold’s wrist. He tried to pull away, but Dale held onto him. He was not strong enough; he could not get free. He couldn’t even see what was happening, but the heat was a liquid weight on his white skin.
“You’ll get done,” Scott said. “He’ll go crying to his mum.”
“I’ll not. He hasn’t got a mum.”
“He hasn’t got a mum?”
“Course he hasn’t.”
Arnold squirmed. He kicked at their legs experimentally, then harder as the pain bit.
“Hold him steady.”
The look on their faces hadn’t changed. There was interest in their eyes; there was curiosity.
The pain grew worse. In another minute Arnold couldn’t think of anything else, and then it intensified and he began to scream, not just one single sound but again and again.
“Shit! Make him be quiet.”
“Shut it, dickhead!”
“Fuck this. Come on.”
Just like that they left him, their shadows fleeting, the sunlight subsiding to its usual life-giving glow. There was a livid pink patch on Arnold’s wrist. He looked at it for a while, half expecting to see smoke rising from the skin, and then he raised his head and saw something in the grass.
He forgot his wrist and crawled over to the kitten. It wasn’t moving and he scooped it up; it did not struggle. He cradled it in his arms, lifting its head with a finger. It wasn’t breathing. They had broken it between them; they had ended it.
He slipped his arm from the strap of his backpack, then stopped himself. He lay the little creature on a flat grey stone by the riverbank and stroked it once. Then he walked away.
He knew he couldn’t take the kitten back to the home. No matter what they said, he wasn’t that stupid.
Of all the treatises and encyclopaedias and guidebooks and catalogues, Arnold liked medieval bestiaries the most. They didn’t just describe animals within their pages but told mankind how to deal with them, what cunning could be expected of them. They told of the essential nature of the beast that lay beyond the reality. Sometimes they amused him with their fanciful descriptions, but mostly they felt like armour: plates of steel, each overlapping the next. Their truths were not to be found anywhere else.
From Bartholomaeus Anglicus, he discovered that the eagle will slay any of its offspring that cannot stare unflinchingly into the sun. He learned that the swan sings its sweetest song before it dies. He found out from Pliny the Elder that cranes take turns to watch for enemies through the night, holding a stone aloft in one claw; if they should fall asleep, the stone will drop and wake them. Many of the bestiaries contained similar information, but there was only one that told of the Orphan Bird.
The Orphan Bird had the body of a crane and the beak of an eagle. Its feet were a swan’s, its chest and neck those of peacock, and its wings had feathers of black and red and white. The Orphan Bird lays its eggs in the water and the chick grows almost at once. The good eggs float and are hatched beneath its mother’s wings; she then leads the good chicks, with great rejoicing, back to their father.
The bad eggs—the bad chicks—sink to the bottom. There they hatch, beneath the water, and there they are condemned to live and die in darkness and in grief.
Red and white and black, Arnold thought. He had woken late in the night, as he often did. Red and white and black. Blood. Skin. Hair.
This bestiary was written by a man called Pierre de Beauvais at some lost time, though it was known to date from before 1218. His was the only known mention of the Orphan Bird, though the author referred to himself as ”the translator.” Arnold understood that. He was a translator too: birds into diagrams, feathers into shades in a painter’s palette; life into terms he could understand. Skin. Hair. Blood. Not messy but neat and ordered, everything in its right place.
The scar on his wrist itched and he rubbed at it. He was not a child any more. The child had long since passed away; now only the man remained.
The girl was watching the swans at the edge of the car park. They were big and bold and hissy, and would stick their heads through people’s car windows to grab sandwiches or crisps, dripping lake-weed over the glass and painted metal. They were as tall as she was, but she wasn’t afraid. Arnold knew that her parents must be somewhere near, hiring a boat perhaps, or queueing for ice creams.
He went over to her, bending to pick up a single long white feather. After a while, he realised she was looking at him.
“A wing feather.” His voice was dry from lack of use. “See how the outer edge is curved? It’s so the swan can fly.”
Her eyes opened wide as if he’d told her some great secret; and perhaps he had. He smiled, started to set it down, then noticed the others, scattered all around. More white ones, some muddied to brown, but there were other kinds too. He caught his breath as he saw the brilliant emerald neck feather of a mallard.
“Do you know what they all are?” she asked.
He turned to her, feeling what he thought was a smile break out on his features. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”