The Cormorant (13 page)

It was a delicious meal. Ann had excelled herself. She pointed out that it was her wonderful husband who had done all the shopping, making the arduous journey into Caernarfon several times, with no thought for his own entertainment. I responded by reaching under the cloth in the pretence of retrieving my fallen napkin, to run my hand along the inside of her thigh.

She was a little red-faced when I emerged again with the napkin. There was plenty of wine. Mr Knapp declared a lifting of his personal ban on the drinking of alcohol, brandishing the wounded hand. The blood was seeping through the bandage and had stained the table-cloth as well. He wore it like a badge. ‘Don’t fuss, dear,’ he said, waving away the attentions of his wife. ‘Bit of blood and a broken finger, that’s all. I’ll be pounding those roads again tomorrow morning, you’ll see . . .’

Harry was subdued. He ate what Ann gave him, but kept his eyes on the man and his growing blossom of blood.

The courses came and went with the opening and emptying of more bottles of wine. I got up to fuel the fire, Ann was back and forth to the kitchen, Harry watched us all from within his private world of silence. He flinched at the pop of the corks, and he smiled to see me throw each cork among the flames, signalling our intention of finishing a bottle once it was started. The child seemed to be studying us all, from a great distance, almost as though he were a towering adult intent on the stirring of an ant-hill. Once or twice, his eyes flickered from the bloodstained bandage to meet my eyes, and he would smile a lazy smile, as if we were sharing a private joke. Just as Ann had said before: he was like an adult, withdrawn and somewhat vacant, content to watch us and smile knowingly to himself.

It was the longest and most leisurely meal that we had had in the cottage. More wine, a drop more brandy, then the coffee pot lingered on the table and was replenished in the kitchen. Harry was encouraged to leave the table. He continued his exploration of the breaking points of his new toys; only a few gurgling cries were heard from behind the sofa, and his little blond head appeared now and then to remind us that he was still there and aware of every gesture we made.

The Queen’s speech began on the radio. We four adults sat in silence and listened, the Knapps with sombre faces, while I walked my errant hand along Ann’s thigh. She pushed me away with one of her fierce teacher’s glares, but locked her fingers into mine. ‘Amen,’ I said, as soon as the speech was finished, and quickly turned off the radio before the anthem started, to avoid the possibility of the Knapps’ jumping to their feet.

Outside, the light was already fading on a grey afternoon. There was no traffic. The village was as silent as the mountains. As soon as the debris was cleared into the kitchen and Ann had firmly refused all offers of help with the washing-up, we sank back into our armchairs. I put two logs on the fire. For a minute, the flames were muted. Then the golden tongues locked round the dry wood and the room was splashed with their glow. The lights of the Christmas tree shone. On the carpet were the scarlet and purple ribbons of discarded wrapping paper, the litter of pine needles, the wine bottles which twinkled in the growing blaze, the confusion of Harry’s toys. The room was warm and full of colour. Ann looked as though she would begin to purr loudly at any moment, curled up in her armchair, the red dress and its glimpses of her breasts. Mr Knapp put his head back; he seemed to have forgotten the throb in his hand in the fullness of food and wine. His wife was already asleep. Silence, save for the occasional spitting of the logs. My eyelids were heavy, becoming heavier, my head swam a little when I closed my eyes. Silence, and the inviting oblivion of sleep . . .

Only Harry remained wide-awake.

He came round from his toys behind the sofa, stood on the rug in front of the fire. He looked at the four adults, one after the other. The fierce-looking stranger was asleep, making a whistling noise through his beard. The lady was asleep too. His mother was asleep. Harry looked at me. I watched him through flickering eyelids. Again our eyes met, and he smiled his grown-up smile. He turned to the tree, took a handful of the needles and put them in his mouth. Then he blew them onto the carpet. It was lovely, close to the fire. For a while, he just looked into its magic places, all the different shapes and colours, faces, animals, birds. He put his cheeks nearer to the flames, withdrew them at the blast of heat. There was such a groaning inevitability about the way he turned from his study of the fire to look again at me, such deliberation in his straightening up and his reappraisal of the slumbering adults, that I felt myself weighted down, sucked irresistibly into the softness of my armchair. And, just as I had known of the cormorant’s intention even before it withdrew its beak from the stranger’s caresses, as I had watched it strike and been unable to speak, again I was frozen into inaction by the shape of the smile on Harry’s face. There was nothing I could do. I simply watched him from my armchair. His smile showed that he knew I would do nothing to stop him. The room was quiet, the house was silent. Only the regular breathing of the sleepers, a fall of embers from the fire. Harry stood on the hearth-rug. He was listening. His little body quivered in the strain of listening. He sniffed the air. He sniffed again, more than anything else in the world like a rat in a sewer, the nostrils twitching, the lips a-tremble.

With a final dismissive glance in my direction, he stepped over the splayed-out legs of the sleepers and went to the living-room door. He opened it, standing on tip-toe and stretching up to the handle. I heard him go into the kitchen.

I closed my eyes. I knew what Harry was doing.

In the kitchen, he halted. Completely still. Listening, listening. Sniffing the air. He walked the few steps to the back door. Stretched up. Opened it.

Harry stepped into the backyard. It was dark and very cold. Everything was still. He waited in the utter stillness.

Something was moving in the darkness.

A black thing was moving among the enveloping blackness of the yard. The thing creaked and hissed. Harry looked and listened and sniffed, went towards it, deeper into the dark.

He was lost in the shadows.

Someone was shaking me. It was Ann.

‘Come on, sleepy head,’ she said, tugging my elbow. ‘Come on, rouse yourself.’

I sat up and leaned forward. It was cold, there was a fearful draught from somewhere. Five o’clock. The fire had burned right down, the room was gloomy. My tongue felt woolly, too big for my mouth. I had a thick head.

‘Oh dear,’ I said very quietly. I said it again, rubbing my forehead.

Mr Knapp awoke with a start and stared around the dark room, as though for a moment he could not remember where he was. His wife was the last to emerge from sleep, as slow as a bleached porpoise.

‘Stoke up the fire,’ said Ann. ‘I think some good strong tea is needed.’

She got up and went to the door.

‘Are you there, Harry?’ she called out vaguely, expecting an answering cry from behind the sofa or from near the tree. Shutting the door and shuddering at the chill which was coming through from the kitchen, she turned back towards the fire.

‘Poor little Harry, have we been ignoring you on Christmas Day? It’s naughty daddy’s fault, with all his brandy . . .’ She cuffed me on the shoulder. ‘You naughty man, sending us all off to sleep.’

She sat down again.

‘Harry? Come on, Harry, are you there?’ Then she sprang to her feet. In a second, she reached the switch and put on the light. Mr Knapp groaned and covered his eyes. Ann was through the room like a panther, behind every piece of furniture, glancing under the tree.

‘Oh Christ . . .’ and she went up the stairs three at a time. Then she was down again. ‘Oh Christ, the door . . . he’s gone out!’

I was on my feet, quite unsteady, listening to the rumbling of surf inside my head. But I was right behind Ann as she burst into the kitchen. She turned on the light, gasped at the sight of the open door. The room was bitterly cold.

‘Go on . . . go and look!’ She was transfixed, urging me past her. ‘Please, go and look! I’m . .

She was quivering. The muscles in her face were all moving, her hands fluttered like terns at the corners of her mouth. Before I could galvanise myself, dispel the cobwebs of sleep from around my eyes, she began to sob, her face twisted with fear, tumbling tears through every line in her cheeks.

I went out. The light from the kitchen lit the yard and some parts of the garden. With a quick look at the cormorant, which was standing quite still by its crate, I dashed past the cage and down to the stream. I bellowed at the torrent of black water. ‘Harry! Harry! Are you there, Harry?’

There was Ann’s voice at the door, cracked with bewilderment and horror. ‘Find him, find him! Is he there? Oh, find him, please, please . .

The Knapps were in the kitchen, peering through the window. I came back up the garden, halted and searched through every bush and brake of bracken, kicking aside the tangles of fuchsia. I must have been sleeping still. There was a whistling in my ears. Ann was there too. She tore out great clumps of honeysuckle which had grown over the fence and onto the ground. She was crying very loudly. Mr Knapp ran past us to the stream. I nearly shouted out to him, to stop him, but my mouth formed the words and there was no sound. He went splashing into the water, pushing aside the overhanging branches of the trees. Through her sobs, Ann was yelling, ‘Come on, Harry! Where are you, Harry? Oh fucking Christmas . .

Dripping wet from his thighs downwards, Mr Knapp came up to the light again.

‘Can’t see anything by the stream. Got a torch?’ He shouted to his wife. ‘Run and get that torch from the shop! Run, woman!’ But before she could move, there came a commotion from the cormorant’s cage. Whereas Archie had been standing still, seemingly dazzled by the sudden glare from the kitchen and confused by the shouting, now it clapped its wings and launched itself at the wire. Hissing like a nest of vipers, it forced its head through the mesh, scrabbled on the wire with its black feet. Mr Knapp shook his bandaged fist at it. ‘And you can stay away from me!’ he stormed. Turning back to his wife, ‘Get the torch, what’s the matter with you, woman?’ And I intervened. I had been staring at the bird, at the cage.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait. We don’t need a torch.’

The cage door was open. The section of mesh, which I could remove and replace when taking Archie out of the cage or putting it back in again, was loose. Ann was holding her breath. I went into the cage. The cormorant retreated from the wire and stood by its crate, the white box which was still on its side since the bird’s rude awakening that morning, stuffed with straw. Archie bristled and came forward, head held low, the beak brandished like a razor in the hand of a drunk. This time there was no retreat: the bird shot at my ankles with the speed of a snake, and the beak cracked on my shin. In a second, it was by the crate again. The cormorant spread its wings across the tumble of straw.

‘Bugger!’

I rubbed the shin vigorously with both hands. There was blood on my trousers and sock. Archie waited, spreadeagled in front of the crate, ready to defend its territory.

Ann moved closer to the wire mesh, from where she could see behind the cormorant to the overturned box and the threads of straw which had fallen from it. As I advanced again and the bird angled down its writhing neck to aim low and avoid my grabbing hands, she saw into the thick bedding of the crate. There was Harry, snug and warm in the cormorant’s nest. The little blond head stirred in the straw. His face looked out, calm and serious.

‘Harry, Harry! Come out of there! Come to mummy!’ The tears fell faster.

Mr Knapp was shouting. ‘The kid’s in the bloody crate!’ He ran into the cage behind me, ducking through the loose section. ‘I’ll sort out the bloody bird . . . you get the boy!’

Pushing me to one side, he raged towards the cormorant. It flailed the beak and caught the dangling end of the bandage, flapped backwards into the corner with the unravelling red and white strip. With an incoherent bellow of anger, he bore down on the bird. He hopped forward and held up the other foot as his only weapon. Twice, three times the beak struck the thick rubber sole, bounced off. There was a length of bandage from his hand to the bird, wound around his outstretched leg and around the cormorant’s neck, like a bizarre Christmas decoration, a ribbon of white splashed with red. Keeping Archie at bay in the corner, he yelled over his shoulder, ‘Get the crate! Harry’s in the crate!’ But I could only move slowly, as though my limbs were weighted down. My mind was nearly stopped, something pressed on me and made everything slow. The voices in my head were deep and distorted, as incomprehensible as the voice on a tape recorder which is playing too slowly. Somewhere, someone’s finger was pressing on the record, making the voices grind and limp. There was no sense in them. In the crate? Why should Harry be in Archie’s crate? What did this man mean: in the crate? I felt a shove in my back and moved forward. There was Ann by my side. Her face was very close to mine, her mouth was moving, opening and closing, she was shouting but I couldn’t hear . . . only the rumble of voices, as though I were underwater and the only sound was the thunder of waves breaking overhead. I watched my own hands as they gripped the edges of the crate, I was a spectator, the hands lifted the box upright, there were my wife’s hands too, next to mine, they were half lifting and half dragging the crate out of the cage. Still the crashing of surf, the grumble of underwater voices. Outside the cage . . . the man was hopping to the door, with the black cormorant stuck like a leech to his leg, some filthy bloodsucking bat fixed on his flesh, leather wings, leathery feet, an unblinking eye, that beak . . . outside the cage. I found I was surfacing, it was lighter, my head cleared the surf . . .

Ann was moaning. ‘Harry, Harry, Harry, my little Harry . . .’

She had lifted him out of the straw-filled box. She stroked his blond hair and picked off the threads of straw which stuck to his clothes. Then her hand wiped her own eyes, dabbed at her streaming nostrils. ‘Let’s have you inside.’ She went in, with Mrs Knapp.