The Bluebird Café (12 page)

Gilbert always arrived at least an hour before school started. His mum gave him two slabs of bread and paste, breakfast and lunch. He sat on top of a concrete tunnel in the corner of the playground to eat the first one, neatly round and round the edges, to leave a perfect pink disc. The other children played, ignoring him. Gilbert had warts on his knees and prickly fingers with chewed nails and grimy plasters. Mr Dove saw this sad leprechaun each morning when he and his wife arrived at the school, rolling towards the staff car park in their green Morris Traveller with its window stickers from Canada and the Bluebell Railway, Mousehole Seagull Sanctuary and Gweek Seal Rescue Centre.

This morning the children sat cross-legged on the floor of the hall which was also the dinner room and the gym. They could hear the canteen ladies behind the hatch. Tinned tomatoes, soft watery quiche and boiled potatoes, and semolina with blobs of strawberry jam today. The teachers sat on a neat row of chairs at the back, Mrs Dove (PE and Maths) grimly knitting. Mrs Ford, the headmistress, was standing on the stage saying that everybody
must be kind to Gilbert because his mother had been killed in an accident.

Mr Dove's chair, on the end of the row, was empty. He was walking round and round the football pitch with Gilbert who was aware that he, the last to be picked for any team, had finally been chosen for something. There was a fairy ring beside the goalposts. Gilbert pointed it out to Mr Dove who said, ‘Yes, yes.'

When Mr Dove said: ‘I expect you'll have some time off school,' Gilbert said: ‘But I'm meant to be a weather monitor again next week!'

The boy didn't seem to be grasping what had befallen him. Mr Dove felt a depression descend. When their next circuit passed the fairy ring, Gilbert kicked over all the tiny toadstools to make it rain.

‘They have an underground network, Gilbert,' Mr Dove couldn't resist telling him. ‘Hyphae of mycelium.'

Mrs Dove had never especially liked Gilbert; but then he wasn't a particularly likeable child. She sat through the special assembly, knitting. She dropped three stitches in annoyance when she saw her husband walking back towards the hall and Gilbert carrying a balled-up handkerchief, an initialled one that the twins had given Ian, and she herself had ironed. How typical of the boy not to have his own with him. She retrieved the stitches and jabbed the needles into the ball of wool, even though a friend of hers had insisted that it could lead to pilling and hobbling later on in the life of the garment. She marched off to make herself a cup of tea. Her navy T-bar shoes clicked across the staffroom floor.

And yes, it turned out that she was quite right to be annoyed. Ian came back with some nonsensical scheme about fostering
and then adopting Gilbert. She soon put a stop to that. They'd had their children, a set of twins, who were in their second year at Cambridge, reading Medieval History and Biochemistry.

So it turned out that nobody came to Gilbert's rescue, nobody took him in, nobody helped. Nobody ever does.

Gilbert's Auntie Vi arrived to organise the funeral, but she had to get back and she wasn't taking Gilbert with her. He was sent to ‘The Elms'. For the next eight years he rarely wore an outfit twice.

The clothes were kept in tea chests. It was first come, first served, and by the time Gilbert fought his way to the front there was only ever a bizarre jumble of things left. He once had to wear a girl's blouse. He rolled up the flouncy yellow sleeves to disguise it. Luckily it wasn't a PE day.

There was a big TV in the sitting room. When it rained they all watched
Blue Peter
and
Scooby Doo
and
Vision On
. Gilbert wished that he had a grown-up to help him make some of the things they showed. Collecting boxes and paper and things was really hard. He wished that he had some paints and some glue.

The Elms had a garden, though. There were some huge sighing trees where wood pigeons lived, and a shed with a window and a bench where Gilbert could sit. Sometimes he saw squirrels.

Maggie Cloud (capable hands, neat polished nails) shredded orange tissue paper into pretty ribbons for Paul and his sister, Kate, to use to pack their harvest boxes. Mr Dove organised the collection, and after a special assembly the children took the baskets of goodies to local old folks.

‘Mum, Mr Dove wouldn't mind brown paper,' Paul told her.

‘What's this?' Kate asked.

‘Asparagus. It'll be a special treat for someone.'

There were two pots of Maggie's home-made raspberry jam, two jars of her green-tomato chutney, two warm fruit cakes, decorated with concentric rings of almonds, two oranges, six apples, four bananas, two tins of Baxters Scotch Broth, two very small marrows and two jars of peaches preserved in brandy, all for the pair of them to pack.

‘Isn't it a bit good, Mum?' Kate asked, as she did every year. She knew that her friends would bring damp cardboard boxes with cans of S&B baked beans and Smedley potatoes and butter beans, tins of custard powder and packets of Bourbons. For some clever children, Harvest Festival was an occasion for ridding the store cupboard of hated groceries. Tins of carrots, tins of prunes, whole cabbages and packets of blancmange found their way into the boxes. Mr Dove once retrieved a half-empty bottle of banana-flavoured antibiotic medicine from a harvest box. It was sent home with a note.

At the beginning of the Harvest Festival the children
marched across the stage and plonked their boxes on the trestle tables that Mr Dove and Mrs Field (Music) had covered with greengrocers' grass. This grass would endure for ever. It could withstand a nuclear strike. It was just as sharp, bristly and shiny as when ten years earlier Gilbert had brought his own harvest basket. It was a soap-powder box, one side cut off, almost all of the washing powder gone. Inside were some bendy leeks, a packet of biscuits and some windfalls. His mum had helped him. Her nail scissors had made deep pink ditches on his pudgy fingers as he'd tried to cut through the heavy card. In the end he'd sawed out a panel with the breadknife.

But the next year his mum was dead and he had nothing to bring. The kitchen ladies at The Elms said that there was nothing spare, even if it was for Harvest and God. He was summoned to see Mr Dove. He didn't want to tell him that he had nothing to bring, but he'd have to.

‘Ah, Gilbert. Come in.' Mr Dove's plain, calm face appeared around the door of the science cupboard. ‘Could you help me with these please, Gilbert?'

And there on the bench between the gas taps and the sink was a cardboard box and a green canvas holdall of provisions.

‘There's paper here for you to decorate the box; scissors, glue, coloured pencils. Make sure you put them back in the right trays. You should have plenty of time.'

There was half of dinner play left. Gilbert wouldn't be missed on the football field or by the groups playing trumps or jacks or French skipping.

‘You can leave the box here tonight where it'll be safe. Collect it before assembly tomorrow.' Mr Dove pushed his stool under the bench where it couldn't constitute a tripping hazard.

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

‘It's the very least I could do, Gilbert.'

And Mr Dove wanted to hold that small, breakable boy. To stroke his unbrushed, unwashed curls, to make things all right. But he didn't.

‘And, Gilbert,' he said, ‘if there's any way that I can help you, please come and find me.'

The Badger Centre Management Committee met on the second Wednesday of the month. Their meetings were watched by the newts, rats, ants, wood mice and assorted freshwater fish and creatures of the Solent Estuary, the Centre's permanent residents. Paul always felt that they should be listed in the minutes as ‘in attendance' along with the other non-voting members of the committee. The minutes were printed on a special type of recycled paper, unique to the Centre and guaranteed to jam any copier or fax machine. It had been made by a workers' cooperative of local wasps. The committee was chaired by Cllr Bette Doon (Lab). The first time Paul had seen her, he thought that she was a female impersonator. She seized every opportunity to squeeze people's arms and give hefty, jocular pats on the back. Paul always tried not to sit or stand anywhere near her.

There was only one item on the agenda that really interested Paul: ‘This Month's Sightings'. He didn't give a damn about ‘Staffing Issues' or ‘Fund-raising' or ‘Treasurer's Report'.

‘A pair of goldfinches have been seen eight times feeding in the heathland area. Cuckoos have been heard on numerous occasions. Fifteen pairs of tufted ducks are nesting beside the cemetery lake. This month there are twelve known cygnets, the highest number since records began six years ago.' Paul fell into a reverie. The meeting continued. Some minutes later he heard himself agreeing to take part in a sponsored whittling event for the Badger Centre and the New Forest Owl Sanctuary.

‘What a hoot!' quipped Cllr Doon.

Hoots of derision from Lucy, Paul thought. He wondered who he could ask to sponsor him. He decided that he'd just have to invent the sponsors and donate all of the money himself.

Outside in the Centre grounds a hedgehog trundled across a tiny bridge, briars twisted above a path, making a bower for a silver tabby cat who was waiting for mice, or perhaps to take part in the Official Government Bird-Ringing Project. That afternoon Lucy and Paul had sat on one of the many ‘In Memory' benches, and Lucy had silently vowed that henceforth she would wear only the colours of the hedgerow.

Old man's beard, old man's beard, thought Paul to himself, But what is its real name?

Someone was lurking in the bushes, waiting, waiting for the meeting to end. A rustling of greaseproof paper and the reflective strips on the arms of her anorak betrayed her. She was wishing that she'd brought along a flask of Horlicks, there was nothing really warming about her piccalilli-and-paste sandwich. The damp was seeping through her plimsolls and socks, and underneath her skirt, her calves were blue and mottled.

Cllr Doon always seemed surprised to see her, even at the Councillors' Surgery where Mavis dropped in each Saturday now, with something new to report on her windows, her housing benefit, the terrible state of Kingsland Market, there was always something to talk about.

Cllr Doon had noticed that some of the newer councillors didn't hold surgeries, they just said that they would visit people in their own homes, and who would want that? She was thinking of dropping her surgeries, or at least her St Mary's
one which Mavis now thought of as her own. She had once scolded Mavis quite harshly for trying to bar the way to a group of young mums who wanted to see her about the closure of the After-School Club. Mavis was saying that the double buggies would block the exit and be a fire risk, but Cllr Doon knew that Mavis just wanted the time all to herself. She'd barked, ‘Be quiet, Mavis! Stand back. Let the little children come to me!' Mavis had sulked outside eating Wagon Wheels.

Wagon Wheels were Mavis's favourite even though the soft mallowy discs gummed up her mouth whether or not it was encumbered by teeth. Her passion for Wagon Wheels had brought to an abrupt end one of her attempts to do a bit for charity, to get out more. She was asked to leave the League of Friends when she was caught cramming half a dozen of them into her bag. There had been other reasons why they'd wanted her to leave, her habit of cleaning her fingernails with knives that were meant for buttering scones, and the time she was suspected of filching three copies of
Woman's Weekly
from a partially-sighted patient who had, sadly, passed away.

Here she was now, waiting for Cllr Doon. She wanted to talk to her about something, and if Cllr Doon had her car then Mavis would make sure that she got a lift home. After all, she didn't want to be wandering around on the Common in the dark, did she?

When the Badger Centre minutes arrived in their mouse-scented brown envelope ten days later, Paul discovered that not only had he volunteered to take part in the sponsored whittling event, but that it was to take place in the Bluebird. The date was familiar. Oh yes. Lucy's birthday.

Minutes of the Meeting of the Badger Centre General Committee
11 May 1999 at the Badger Centre. 7.30 p.m.

Present: K. Watts, D. Mellish, P. Tupper, J. Tupper, K. Tupper, C. Polls, P. Cloud, Cllr Doon (Chair), A. Wallis.

Apologies: J. Fielder, K. Stoops.

Matters arising from minutes of 10.4.99.

1. The wind-damaged bird table has been replaced. Thank you, Paul.

2. The water vole has been seen four more times.

3. The fire extinguishers have now been checked and serviced.

4. The date of the first-aid course has been changed from 10.8.99 to 11.8.99. All staff, volunteers and committee members are requested to attend.

1. New pond
The new pond will be dug on 20.5 from 9 a.m. P. Cloud, K. Tupper and J. Tupper all volunteered. Others welcome. A newt-moving licence has been granted.

2. Fundraising
The sponsored whittle is going ahead, but will now be on June 26. (NB A post-meeting change of date by arrangement with the Bluebird.) Thanks to the Bluebird Café for offering refreshments, etc. Our next event will be a stall at the Balloon
and Flower Festival, first weekend in July. Stall theme to be decided at next meeting. Volunteers required to staff it. D. Mellish to draw up a rota.

3. Leather Bookmarks
At the request of two vegan members, leather bookmarks will no longer be sold at the centre. Current stock (approx. 12 bookmarks, assorted colours) will be given free to the next school party.

4. Treasurer's Report
In the absence of the Treasurer there was no Treasurer's Report. The Treasurer will be asked to submit a written report when she is unable to attend meetings, especially as this often seems to be the case.

5. Staffing
The Centre Manager's position will be advertised in the
News
next week. Interview panel will be P. Tupper, Cllr Doon and C. Polls. Agreed to ask the successful candidate to start ASAP, to ensure the bird-ringing project is properly supported. Contract renewable annually. Salary £17,695, or less if the Woodman's Cottage offer is accepted.