The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory Read Free Book Online

and faced me. In the darkness, Archie was all black, its wings held out in a mockery of benediction. The bird came at me in two leaps, brandishing the heavy beak, punishing the night shadows with the power of its wing beats. There was blood on its bill. The broad feet shone red. Among the ruffled feathers of its breast were smears of sappy gore where it had begun to clean its face. I kicked out with my slippered foot and the bird flapped backwards, long enough for me to take up some slack around my wrist and reel it in, retreating to the lights of the kitchen. Archie resisted, skidded forward on slippery feet. As I fumbled with the hatch, the cormorant struck hard at my hand. Swearing, lashing out, I caught the bird’s throat, lifted it up sharply and held it away from me at arm’s length. The feathers flew about my head, the winter night stormed around me in the narrow confines of the backyard, I opened the hatch wide and flung the cormorant inside like a bundle of rags. My hand was bleeding. I secured the cage with more than my accustomed thoroughness and went back into the cottage.
    Slipping the dead cat into the dustbin, I covered it with cold ashes from the previous day’s fire. There was nobody in the living-room. I could hear Ann’s low, musical voice in the bedroom above my head, the answering chuckles of the boy. Before she could come downstairs, I went to work on the stains of blood and urine which the cat, in its death throes, had left on the hearth-rug. Still wet, they shifted easily with vigorous rubbing. The scents of soup, sizzling wood and the needles of pine were gone, obliterated by the ammoniac whiff of disinfectant. The room seemed shabby: the fire was fading, there were brown-ringed bowls and spoons left lying on the carpet, my cigar had gone out, stale and neglected. There was no warm woman or child, no cat. I put some coal on the fire and chucked the butt of my cigar into the grate. When Ann came down, she was a different woman. She was stone, she was ice. She shed no tears for the cat, her cat which she had taken in years before, before she had met me. Ann was drained from her performance with Harry, disguising her nausea for the sake of the child. Unable to speak, she sat in silence and stared at the fire.
    ‘It was Archie, it got out of the cage,’ I said.
    She turned her face to me blankly, as though I had addressed her in a foreign language.
    ‘Your hand . .
    I had forgotten my hand as I cleaned up the room. Blood ran down my fingers into the edges of my nails, but it was drying, a blackening crust.
    ‘It got me when I was trying to stick it back in the cage. I’d better wash it . . .’
    ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it,’ and she stood up, drawing me with her into the kitchen. I let her put my hand under the tap and clean it with soap. There were two ragged cuts half an inch long which she dabbed with a stinging disinfectant. She ignored my wincing, she was looking through the window into the area of light, watching the cage for a sign of movement. I said nothing, just followed the direction of her eyes into the shadows of the backyard. She patted the hand dry. Turning back to the living-room, she said, ‘What about Harry?’
    ‘The bird’s locked up now. It can’t get out.’ 
    ‘The cat,’ she said. ‘Look at your hand. What about the boy?’
    I paused before replying.
    ‘We’re stuck with Archie for as long as we want to live in this cottage. The thing could be with us for five or six years . . .’
    ‘That’s six years of watching Harry keeps right away from it. Even in the cage, it’s not safe. He could open it already, you know how inquisitive he is, he has to touch everything. It’s natural. If we’ve got to keep the filthy creature, get it somewhere secure, away from the garden.’ But we both knew that, under the conditions of Uncle Ian’s will, the cormorant must remain as part of the household, on the premises. The executor would certainly see to that.