Birdkill (2 page)

Robyn unpacked her bag, precious little to show for her thirty-four years on this earth but still pretty much all she possessed apart from her treasured TT. She hung the clothes up in the cupboard. There weren’t enough classroom outfits; she’d have to find the nearest Sainsbury’s or Asda and pick up some cheapies. She dressed, treating herself to fresh underwear and t-shirt. The urge for a smoke hit her and she traipsed downstairs. She scooped the card key from the dining table and pushed it into one of the slots in her black leather purse and pulled her denim jacket up off the orange-cushioned seat by the open fireplace. She patted the pocket for the reassurance of the rectangular box of cigarettes and headed outside for a walk in the woodland surrounding the Institute’s manicured lawns.

The air smelled
green
. It had that after the rains grassy zest to it. The leaves dripped onto the woodland floor. Her booted feet scuffed up the leafy ground, releasing fragrant woody notes. She crossed the road she’d driven the night before, soon lost once more in woodland. Bluebells were bursting open, she spotted a dewy crocus and for some reason it made her grin. The cries of children playing stilled her. Alert, her nose to the wind like a startled forest animal, she cocked her head to their laughter.

She pulled the cigarette packet from her hoodie pocket and twisted the two elastic bands away to allow her pop the lid. The wheel on the red plastic lighter sparked a moment of flame and the end of her cigarette crackled and flared. She inhaled greedily, her hand shaking as she blew smoke towards the leaf canopy. She stretched the bands to snap back into place. She followed the path through the wood, catching occasional glimpses of the rolling fields beyond.

She’d have to give up, had done for six months, in fact, before she had accepted the posting to teach in Lebanon which saw her adventuring to the charming mountain town of Zahlé with its riverside restaurants, lazy evenings and the constant haze of
argileh
smoke. Fadi, the podgy young Lebanese who headed up the humanities department had urged her to try a pipe with apple-flavoured tobacco and like an idiot she had, sitting on the plastic chair with her legs tucked up under her like Alice’s hookah-smoking caterpillar.

It had been her undoing. Now she was back fighting the urge to dip into the packet at any trigger; a phone ringing, a moment of uncertainty. The elastic bands were meant to provoke consideration. She wasn’t sure they were working that well.

She heeled a hole and buried the mottled orange stub in a shallow grave of wet leaves.

Another snatch of excited voices reached her, the red flash of a tiny figure running past a gap in the trees, out in the field. Robyn wandered to the shaded boundary of the wood and looked out across the piece of commonage with its sheep-cropped grass. A group of children was playing at the far edge of the field; hedgerow framed them as they raced in circles, perhaps two hundred yards distant. Four were boys, maybe eleven or twelve years of age. The two girls were distinguishable only because they had longer hair, all six were dressed in jumpers and jeans. They were capering around one of the boys, the smallest, who was standing stock still and looking towards the woodland canopy bordering the third side of the grassland. The girl in the red jumper seemed to be leading the whooping dance around the small, expectant figure in the centre. The small boy fixed his gaze on the treetops. He reached down and touched the tip of a small brown pile with his index figure.

A cuckoo called and Robyn, distracted, almost missed the boy reach up to the sky. The girl in the red jumper faltered, then dropped to the grass, screaming. The dancers halted, confused. The girl on the ground kicked. A bird flew to the small boy, perching on his beckoning index finger. Quick as thought, he gripped the bird and twisted its neck. The faint crack carried across the field. Again he reached out and again a sparrow alighted, only to drop to the pile of dead birds. Red jumper screamed again as a third bird came to its caller and fell to the pile. A fourth. A fifth. The dancers had come close now, and were holding hands in a ring as the sixth bird died. Red jumper was silent as the little feathery pile grew. She staggered to her feet and joined the dancers but her pallor was clear, even from that distance.

Robyn blundered through the undergrowth towards the little group. Something clamped onto her mind and she slammed against the trunk of a tree, grasping it like a long lost friend. The boy turned to her, his hand outstretched.

Foreboding washed over her. His beckoning filled her vision. She struggled to break the hypnotic, violent stare. The urge to go to him filled her. She clutched at the tree. Acid bile rose in her throat, green tree-moss stains slashed across her chest. To give herself up, to let him take her and snuff out her life, yield herself up to the Void was all she wanted and yet she struggled against the compulsion. She was on the edge, her fingers slipping on the moist bark when the girl’s scream ‘Martin!’ brought release like the lifting of stone weights pressing the life from her. The boy span away and the group fled into the far woodland.

Robyn slid down the trunk, spent, her back scraped by the rough bark. She slumped on the bed of damp leaf mould. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her gasping breath tore at her throat.

Back in her apartment at the Institute, Robyn slammed the door and stood with her back pushed against it, trying to drive the memory of a teenager snuffing out the lives of alighting sparrows from her mind. She wasn’t even sure of how she had got back here, out of breath from running through the woodland. She gazed down at her hands, stained green with lichen, streaks across her top and damp muddy patches on her jeans.

Dragged through a hedge backwards.
She recalled her mother’s favourite phrase before The Fall when she had gone quiet and stopped being as interested in Robyn as she was in Martini.

She pushed away from the door and went upstairs to wash the chlorophyll stink of lichen off herself.

Robyn towelled her hair, noting the scratches and red welts on her pale shoulders where she had grabbed at the tree trunk. The shower head was still dripping, reminding her of the water dropping from the leaves in the wood. It all came back to her, the fear and the urge she had felt to give herself up to the darkness, to float in peace. She stared at herself in the mirror.

‘No.’ she admonished herself. Turning away from her watery reflection, she repeated the word, more strongly this time. She went into the bedroom and grabbed her dressing gown from the floor by the bed and slipped her feet into her worn faux-fur slippers. She took off flapping down the stairs, sliding her hand along the cool banister for support.

She found her bag and pulled out her mobile. She dialled Mariam. She hunched against the cold, praying for an answer.

‘Hi. This is Mariam.’

Warm relief. ‘Mariam, hi, it’s Robyn. Look, I—’

‘I’m not available right now, but you’re more than welcome to leave a message.’

Robyn winced. It caught her every time, that stupid message. The secret to comedy, Mariam would always point out gleefully, is… The peep sounded. ‘Sorry, it’s Robyn. Look, I’m down here now and the place is amazing but I have some…’

Some what? Robyn cursed herself. Some issues? Reservations? Problems.

‘I’m just not sure I can, well, you know, make it. It’s all too strange, there’s stuff here I can’t get my head wrapped around and I’m feeling a bit lost, to tell the truth.’ She was gabbling, the machine silently digitising her panic, recording it. Preserving it for posterity. Timing out. Robyn freaks over nothing again. ‘I’m sorry, I just… Look, could you call me back if you get a chance? I’ll try and get you later if you can’t get through or something. Umm, thanks.’

She took a deep breath. Coffee. That was usually the solution. That and red wine. She wondered where the nearest source of firewood and red wine was, flipping open the kitchen cupboards in the hope of finding a home pack of essentials or something. She fought for a tether, for something that would bring her routine, reality. A rock. She didn’t even have any damn cornflakes and the fridge was empty when she checked it. She slammed the door. You’d have thought they’d put in a pint of milk and a loaf of bread or something. She clenched her hands, trying to still the anger and frustration she knew was unreasonable; the urge to lash out was purely a reaction to her own confusion. She ran her hand through her hair. Even that was too long and brittle. Her mobile rang and she picked it up absently, still lost in her own misery.

‘Hi, this is Robyn.’ Her gown had come undone. The kitchen worktop was cold against her belly.

‘Hey, babe.’

Mariam Shadid. She was always so bloody confident, despite having been another of the waifs and strays in Robyn’s trauma counselling group. Mariam’s deep, louche voice stilled Robyn’s hammering heart and the panic that banded her chest abated. She breathed freely, released. ‘Thank fuck. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I’m doing very well here.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘It’s a bit strange and I’m feeling,’ Robyn glanced around. ‘Unhinged.’ She tried to calm herself, to think rationally. ‘Untethered. Can you come down? There’s a spare bed here, you could stay tonight and go back tomorrow.’

‘Sure. That’s no problem. I can be down by lunchtime, I reckon.’

‘You’ve no idea how—’

‘I do. Believe me, I do. I’ll see you lunchtime. It’s okay, Robyn. Chill the fuck out. Do breathing exercises. Stuff.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Laters.’

TWO

A Friend in Need

Mariam pressed the buzzer and waited, catching the darkening of the little fish-eye security thingy in the door. The security chain rattled.

She’d made record time down from London, pressing her battered old Ford Focus to its limits and dodging the cameras. Google had said three hours forty eight minutes: Mariam had done it in three on the nail. She was scared for her friend. You’d hardly expect someone on a trauma counselling gig to be quite a hundred percent, but Robyn sometimes appeared so brittle and frail Mariam was scared she’d just shatter into a million little fragments. A porcelain girl, flung down on the hard stone floor to burst into powder.

They’d been two days into Paul Hass’ trauma counselling sessions at the college before discovering they shared a connection through the Lebanese city of Zahlé, perched prettily up at the head of the fertile Bekaa Valley, the other side of the mountains that rose behind Beirut and its azure coast. Amazed at the coincidence, discovered over a tea and seed biscuit break from a session on coming to terms with the monkey on your back – whatever that was – they chattered through the tinkle of the bell calling everyone back into the room, left alone in the little café, oblivious to the world outside their common link to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Mariam gained strength from being Robyn’s prop, bestowing a sense of purpose and helping which helped her put her own troubles aside. Taken on the Syrian border by pro-government forces, pitched into captivity by ISIS thanks to the fortunes of war and rescued months later alongside a couple of British journalists who had adopted her, Mariam had earned her place on the trauma counselling course the hard way. Robyn was a project for her to focus on as she healed herself. Mariam, always energetic and bull-headed, channelled her certainty and self-assurance into propping Robyn up when things got too hard. But she’d never heard Robyn, broken as her friend was, snivelling like she did on the phone that morning.

The door opened and Mariam almost stepped back in shock. Robyn was exhausted. Her shoulders sagged and that dopey grin on the pretty face hardly lifted the care-worn features. She leaned into Mariam’s embrace. ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for coming. You don’t know how much this means to me.’

Mariam grinned and patted Robyn’s back. ‘Who’s the strung-up bitch at reception? I thought I’d have to shoot her.’ She held Robyn by the cheeks and gazed into the dark-rimmed brown eyes. ‘You look like shit, by the way.’

‘You always say the nicest things.’ Robyn stood aside as Mariam strode into the chic apartment. ‘Reception? You mean the blonde lady? Maybe a bit earnest?’

‘Earnest? Christ, she’s like the Nazi gatekeeper from hell.’

‘That’d be Heather. She’s nice, you’re being hard on her.’

‘Whatever. Tell me you’ve got booze in. Wow. This is a serious pad. You’re on the way up in the world, my girl. I told you to stick with me.’ Mariam span on her heel, letting her handbag fly into the cushions around the fireplace. Robyn was laughing, which was something after the way she’d sounded earlier. Mariam worried at her friend’s pallor.

‘I haven’t had time to look for booze I wanted to get some firewood, too.’

‘Come on, then. Let’s go shopping. You can buy me lunch. There’s a hotel in the town, I passed it on the way in.’

Laughter freshened Robyn’s pasty face, like she’d just scrubbed with a flannel. ‘You’ve only just got here. You’re impossible.’

‘No time babe, got to leave super-early tomorrow, I’m starting a new job. Come on, lunch before I waste away.’

‘I’ll drive.’

‘Great. I’ll drink.’ Mariam scooped up her bag. ‘Let’s do this thing.’

They clattered down the wooden stairs and into the cold air. Robyn clicked the key and Mariam slid into the cold, black leather passenger seat with a whoop. ‘Shit, this thing is cold.’

‘Shush! Don’t listen to the rude girl, baby.’ Robyn caressed the dash. She hit the starter and the two litre engine roared into life. ‘Apart from you, she’s probably the only thing keeping me sane right now.’

Mariam always admired the change in Robyn when she got behind the wheel. She was a driver’s driver, fast and focused. Their roles reversed in the car. Robyn was bursting with quiet confidence and Mariam became passive and vulnerable. A poor passenger at the best of times, Mariam had never experienced a single moment of insecurity being driven in Robyn’s powerful sports car. Even on the day Robyn had taken her to a ‘track day’ when all insurance was invalid and Mariam was made sign a personal liability waiver.