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

read. I want to live.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    WE’VE BEEN WATCHING our video of Casablanca again. It never fails to make me cry. Mum too.
    Goodbyes: I hate them. At airports, railway stations, docks – even other people’s goodbyes. Even their hellos make me want to cry: emotion as catching as a virus. When a child runs and jumps into the open arms of a grandfather; strangers’ tears; other people’s happiness, other people’s grief – it gets to me. All those people at the barrier when you go through customs, you can see the anticipation written in their eyes, searching for the face of their loved one, the familiar shape of family. I am moved by their strong feelings. It’s as if it’s me they have lost and found again, or I’m a hero come home from a war. I am affected especially by men’s affection, men hugging their wives or mothers, their children or each other. That moment when a man hugs another man, perhaps knowing they won’t see each other for a long time, maybe imagining it’s for the last time. Men being affectionate, men crying. That is so… so… it’s wonderful and terrible.
    I remember Daddy after Grandpop and Grandma died. He had been so brave for days, Mum said, phoning friends to tell them the terrible news. He came to see me in hospital and suddenly started weeping – silent tears at first. But then he held my hand tight (he wasn’t allowed to hug me as I was wired up to machines and had tubes coming out of every orifice) and he gave way to his sadness and really sobbed for a moment before pulling himself together, controlling his shaking shoulders and blowing his nose loudly. And they weren’t even his parents. They were Mum’s. It was awful to see him cry. His face didn’t dissolve like Mum’s does – her nose goes red and big and spreads all over her cheeks, and her eyes are puffy for at least twenty-four hours. He looked untouched by his emotion, normal, but with brimming eyes, like a film star who has had glycerine drops to make his eyes glisten. He told me that that’s what they do in films. He knows all the tricks of cinematography. That’s the art of filming.
    I think he should have been a film star instead of a filmmaker. He has that soulful, clapped out look, like Gerard Depardieu or Johnny Halliday or Bruce Willis. I love French films, not only because he does. He once met Jeanne Moreau – his greatest moment, he says.
    His favourite movie is Léon , directed by Luc Besson. We watched it together in a private cinema in Paris. It was brilliant – lean-back seats as comfortable as armchairs, and there was champagne, well, not for me, obviously, but for Daddy, and he gave me a sip. Even the smell of the place was expensive, as if someone had dropped an entire bottle of lavender oil into the foyer. And the girl – Natalie Portman – when the film was made she was only a little bit older than I am now. Twelve. She’s beautiful. And I love her hair, though I think it’s rather an expensive looking cut for a girl her age, but maybe all French girls have access to good hairdressers. It’s an ace film. Complicated, but with an English soundtrack. Daddy knows all sorts of film people, being in the business.
    It’s a shame he’s lost TLE : The Lovely Eloise. She’s very pretty. I wonder why she left. I expect she got bored with being asked if he was her father. Or maybe her career as a model/actress got in the way of a lasting relationship with a man who isn’t really going to help her on her way to fame. But that’s being sarcastic or…? Oh, I’ve forgotten the word. Cynical.
    I was once accused of being sophisticated by my teacher. I can’t remember what I said to her to make her say that. I thought sophisticated was a good thing to be, but no, she said, no, it wasn’t. It was very very bad. She made me look it up in the dictionary. I did.
    Sophisticated: adulterated; falsified; wordly-wise; devoid or deprived of natural simplicity; complex; very refined or subtle; with