The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory Read Free Book Online Page B

the child had been at the window before we had awoken, Archie had been more important to Harry than we were. He had watched and signalled to the cormorant, oblivious to our presence in the room. Ann said she would go back to the Midlands for two weeks and return to Wales for Christmas. In that time, I would be able to make suitable arrangements in the bird’s routine, make the cottage a safer place for our son.
    I drove Ann and Harry down to Caernarfon, where they were booked on the coach to Derby. In spite of my efforts with water and sponge, I could not disguise the smell of the bird in the little van. I swept out the dry droppings and discarded feathers, wiped the windows which were smeared by the bird’s breath and tongue. But the van smelt of Archie. It had pecked holes in the plastic upholstery, pulled out beakfuls of foam rubber, leaving the seats pock-marked, pitted with yellow craters. Under the matting there was sand. A few strands of seaweed clung to the seat belts, there were fish scales like sequins which had come from the cormorant’s feet. Ann rode in silence, with her face near to the open window. She held on to Harry, in the absence of a child’s seat; I felt the tacit criticism, that I had adapted the van to accommodate the bird but never thought to fit a seat for the safe keeping of our son. Harry also sat silent, round-eyed, his nostrils twitching at the strong scents. Throughout the twenty-minute journey, he made no sound. He was alert to the presence of the cormorant.
    In the main square of Caernarfon, we awaited the arrival of the express coach. It was a mild, damp afternoon. The lights came on in shop windows and banks, there were slippery leaves on the pavements from the young sycamores. Over and around the walls of the castle, the gulls circled, screaming. There was a mantle of droppings, like early snow, on the statues of Lloyd George and Sir Hugh Owen; the stone figures shook their fists furiously at the birds. Harry squirmed in Ann’s arms. She was glad that he was aroused from his trance, once again just a fidgeting toddler. He pointed and shouted at the people in the bus queue. Some of them smiled, others looked away, embarrassed. When the coach drew up, I kissed Ann on the mouth, wanting her to stay so much that I would have killed that wretched bird if she had asked me to. I was engulfed by my love for her; just for a moment it obliterated everything else. Harry wriggled away when I tried to kiss him, putting up a chubby fist and slapping me on the lips. They boarded the coach. As it pulled out of the square, Ann’s face was close to mine through the perspex. The child was staring over my head. For a second, again there was the mesmerised glitter of dreams on his face. Harry gaped into the distance, his mouth fell open, his right hand came up and was planted on the window. The bus moved out. I shivered at the final impression of the child. Harry was pointing, gesturing wildly over my head, vainly trying to make his mother see, as the bus disappeared around the corner. When I turned, there was nothing which should have fascinated the child so much: no fire engine, no brass band, no soldiers in uniform. Only a few pedestrians on a glistening pavement, no-one familiar. Except . . . no, a gray figure, the figure of an elderly man vanishing into the warmth of a shop. I found myself shivering again. I followed the man, stopping at the shop window. And with a shrug, I saw a complete stranger, a greying figure, rather blurred in the smoke of a dying cigar.
    I drove back to the cottage in the mountains. I had already decided that, in the absence of Ann and Harry, I could spend the fortnight trying to soothe the spirit of the bird rather than simply confining it more strictly. First of all, it would be freed from its cage, to wander on the length of its leash within the yard and garden. Archie had never shown the slightest inclination to fly: indeed, I doubted whether it was capable of doing so.