The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley Read Free Book Online

ladder that goes from the sand up to the door of a beach house. A group of people sit drinking white wine and beer and passing a big bag of crisps between them. There are some wrinklies and two babies and three toddlers and several older children too, who are running around giving the little ones towel rides on the sand.
    Most people on this beach are hiding behind windbreaks but not this crowd.
    ‘Gussie, don’t stare. It’s rude.’
    ‘I’m not.’
    ‘You are.’
    I am. I do that. It’s a bad habit. But I am genuinely interested in other people. It’s like being an anthropologist studying the behaviour of a lost tribe. I can’t help it. Better than being totally uninterested in life around me.
    At Peregrine Cottage there was only Nature to observe. Here, there’s loads of people. There’s a rather lovely woman, tall and slender, dark, who is holding a tiny baby, not hers. She has a sweet face, not exactly pretty, but more than pretty, glowing and kind – concerned. Her husband is much older and wrinkly and very tanned. He is obviously well known, like a Godfather figure. People keep making a detour to come to him as they are walking along the beach. They don’t kiss his ring or his hand though. They sit for a while and are offered a glass of wine or a little bottle of beer.
    ‘He must know everybody. I wonder if he knows Daddy’s family?’
    ‘Gussie, stop it!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You know what. Don’t Do it!’
    ‘Oh look Mum!’ The weird, big-eared cat is standing at the top of the ladder looking down at his family on the beach. One of the girls climbs the ladder and carries the cat down. She places it on a rug and strokes it.
    I yearn to go and say hello, but I am suddenly shy. Why? In the past I would be perfectly able to meet new people. Am I too grown up to be naturally gregarious and sociable? I make myself stand and walk slowly to where the cat is. I crouch to look at him.
    ‘Hello, may I stroke him?’
    The child, who is like a little fairy, with fine blonde hair and white skin, nods at me, and I reach out to touch the strange creature. His back is barely covered with a fine curly down, hardly fur, more like velvet or felt, and he has no eyebrows or fur on his face. His pink belly is loose and swings from his ribs when he moves.
    ‘He feels strange,’ I say. ‘What is he called?
    ‘Wobert, he’s a Sphinx, a throwback,’ says the little girl, ‘but he’s very clever. He carries his blanket around.’
    Poor little cat. His eyes bulge, his ears are huge, he looks and feels so weird, sweaty skinned, warm and clammy, I bet he doesn’t get stroked or cuddled much.
    ‘I have to take him in now, or he’ll get sunburned.’ She lifts him carefully and takes him up the ladder.
    There are too many Stevenses in this town. I looked them up in the local telephone directory: two fish merchants, a plumber and a builder, a funeral director, a swimming pool engineer, a wine merchant, an interior decorator, an estate agent, an hotelier, a publican and a builder. And all the regular Stevenses who don’t have a commercial title.
    I suppose I could go through the entire directory, phoning them all and asking about their family history – see if any of them know Daddy. Perhaps not, it would be a huge telephone bill. Next time he phones I’ll ask him to give me a lead. Mum says Daddy is not strong on family.
    I’d noticed.
    Maybe because he was the black sheep of his family, he said, thrown out of the nest. No, that’s a mixed metaphor. Sheep don’t have nests. He hotfooted it out of town as soon as he could – (another foot metaphor).
    Is it fate that Mum brought me here? She could have taken me to any one of a dozen different Cornish towns – Newlyn, Mousehole, Mylor, Penzance, Falmouth. But we came here, to where there are at least a hundred other people called Stevens.
    I think I am here to find my lost family, my Daddy’s family. He didn’t want to be Cornish. He was probably too big for his