The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley Read Free Book Online Page A

boots (foot metaphor again).
    All I know about them is that Grandad Stevens was a car dealer, and always drove around in smart new cars. Rovers, I think he sold. And Grandma Stevens wore stiff corsets and had pink hair or blue hair and drank her tea with her little finger in the air.
    Mum never met them. She says they wouldn’t have approved of their son’s choice of a much older wife.
    She doesn’t look her age, Mum, except when she tries to look younger.
    Something or someone emptied our dustbin today. Mess everywhere. Mummy was Not Happy. At Peregrine Cottage we would blame a fox, but here in the heart of the town, who knows?
    In Essex, where Grandpop and Grandma lived, there was a fox who used to come into their garden each night looking for titbits, (that might be tidbits as titbits sounds rude). I often saw him by the orange street lamp, sauntering across the road and going under their car briefly before doing his usual snacking in their back garden. Grandpop made a habit of leaving food for him. But Grandpop’s favourite was the robin. It would follow him around while he was gardening, practically landing on his hoe or spade or whatever. Grandma did most of the gardening but Grandpop was allowed to do the heavy stuff, like digging.
    I had a disgusting job to do in her garden – collect caterpillars from the cabbages and drown them in a bucket of water. It didn’t occur to me to complain about being hired to torture and murder living creatures.
    I wonder how mentally developed a creature has to be before it has a personality. Obviously dogs and cats have personalities, each one a separate identity, like bossy Flo and wimpy Rambo, but what about robins and rats, guinea pigs and toads? If we thought that sheep were interesting characters and have real relationships with each other, would we still kill them for food?
    I heard on Radio Four an organic dairy farmer saying that her cows all knew each other and had lasting family relationships. She had witnessed young heifers joyfully greeting their mothers after being separated from them for a year. A joyful cow? What does she do? Jump for joy?
    What makes a creature more than just alive? What gives it purpose and contentment, affection for its family?
    I do know that certain birds, including swans and geese and herring gulls, mate for life. But what about insects? If I knew a mosquito had thoughts and feelings and a mother who loved it, would I still want to swat it? What about crabs and prawns? Do they form attachments? Oh dear, I don’t want to survive on lentils and bean sprouts and soya beans.
    Oh no, I should never have thought about insects dying. Into my cold soup, gazpacho it’s called and it’s made from chopped tomatoes, has landed a black-fly. He looks like a miniature angel spread-eagled on the red sticky surface – an angel fallen into Hell.
    ‘He’ll have tomatoes up his nose,’ I say. I can’t bear the thought of him drowning slowly so I scoop him out and squash him properly and thoroughly.
    ‘He’s got more problems than tomatoes up his nose now,’ said Mum, rather callously in my opinion.
    When we get home, black-fly and greenfly are everywhere in the garden, all over practically every leaf, and I have frenzy of killing. I don’t understand. Why did I feel compassion for one drowning black-fly in my soup and now I am a mad killer with no remorse? I went from being a Buddhist to a maniac mass murderer in less than two hours.
    Death: I know, or think I know that death will only be nothingness, but I don’t want oblivion yet. I want to smell honeysuckle in the dark, I want to hear my cat greet me with her special purring mew. I want to smell old books. I want everything, clouds, sunshine, I want to see a whale – I’ve never seen a whale. I even want to hear the terrifying sound of the sea in a storm. I want a boy to kiss me one day. I want to run along a beach again. I want to go to America and Australia. There are so many books I want to