The Burying Beetle (5 page)

Mum says Eugene’s Dishy in a Brutish way. I can’t see it really, except that I do quite like Bruce Willis, and he is rather brutish, I suppose. I don’t know why I like him but I think he has a beautiful soul as well as being tough.

I like Kevin Costner too, but he isn’t quite so tough seeming. I loved him in
Waterworld
. I’ve seen it four times. Everyone else thought it was rubbish but I loved it, all those Heath Robinson sailing boats and machines and the smoking baddies on jet-skis – cool. I liked
Rollerball
too, except for the boring love bits, and no one else did. Maybe I’ve got rather odd taste in films.

Pop is very amusing sometimes. He stands outside the sliding glass door and taunts the cats by pecking lightly at the glass until they either turn tail and slink away, or face up to him and lash out, spitting at the glass. I’m sure they know they can’t get hurt with the glass there, but it seems to me rather brave of our little cats to stand up to a bird that’s bigger than them, and with a long sharp beak.

I have decided to keep a notebook of my observations of Pop and other herring gulls.

I have a lovely new book with a shiny green cover, hardback, with blank pages so I can draw things as well as write notes. It was an extra birthday pressie from Mum. It’s almost too beautiful to spoil with writing in it. And there’s a ribbon so I can go straight to the page I’m working on. And I’ve bought a new pen, especially for my notes. It’s a liquid ink roller and makes my writing look very grown-up.

Mum has started a part-time job with a local estate agent. Just on Saturdays. She reckons that she will be the first to get to know if anything exciting turns up in the way of a suitable house for us to buy, and she’s always been nosy about people’s houses, so this is the ideal job for her. And I can phone her at work if I need her in a hurry.

She lives in the past, but I suppose all adults are like that.

She has this awful habit of speaking in capital letters, like everything she says is vitally important. I usually ignore her. I do talk to the cats. Only Charlie talks back to me. The others are silent. Good listeners though. I have just remembered something about the real Pop – he called Grandma ‘Mate’, and until I was quite grown up I thought that was her name. In their house the floor was always called ‘the deck’ and I learned my port and starboard before I knew left from right.

Today the sea seems bigger than usual. The waves are sort of wintry and… broiling, I think the word is. I don’t think I like the sea very much. It’s just too… big!

Note: There are so many different sorts of gulls and I can’t tell the difference between them really, except I know what a herring gull looks like, because of Pop. He’s a mature male
–
larger than the female
–
you have to see them together to tell that the male is heavier and bigger than his mate. The young ones are brown and speckled. In St Ives they are all over the roofs, making a great racket, all squawking and wheezing and hunching their shoulders like they’ve got asthma, and the very young ones jump up and down flapping their virginal… or is it vestial…
wings? They hang about for weeks being waited on by their parents who regurgitate fish and chips and pasties for them to eat. I wonder if they suffer like humans by eating rubbish? All those E numbers.

Pop hasn’t brought a female to our house to nest. He must be a bachelor or a widower, or maybe he’s gay. I wonder if they have homosexual gulls?

Last year’s young are all flying together and learning stuff from the mature ones. They gather at sunset on our beach and listen to one or two mature gulls and go off together and rise on the thermals. I think they’re learning how to fly and gather food and chase hawks. I’ve seen them go really high.

I
’
M
MUCH
BETTER
today so I’ve got a backpack – very lightweight – with a bottle of water, an orange, a banana, a Mars Bar (yum), and
a pocket book of bird identification. And of course, I’ve got Mr Writer’s binoculars around my neck. And I’m going for a nature walk. Mum is sunbathing in the garden. And I’ve got my new notebook and pen.

I’ve already seen a stonechat, I think it was
–
it makes a noise like a stone scraping on another stone or a chalk on blackboard. Sort of crich, crich!

Last night I read right through
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
in one go. It’s very short. I think it’s about religion really, or maybe just about trying to achieve something special in your life –
a sort of philosophy. It’s about this gull who doesn’t want to be part of the flock, he wants to be the best, fastest flier of all time, and he goes off on his own to do just that, and I think he dies and goes to heaven but I’m not really sure, and then he teaches other extraordinary gulls to do what he has done. Anyway, since I read it I’ve been watching the gulls more carefully, and it’s true, there are gulls who only seem to be with many others in a flock, doing whatever everyone else is doing, whether it’s scavenging in the harbour or flying out to sea to sit on a load of fish, and then there are the unusual gulls who seem to fly on their own, the individualists. Maybe they are more like people than we think.

It’s a very beautiful coast path, this, with pink heather blooming and bright yellowy gold gorse, which smells lovely
– like Ambre Solaire or something. There’s only the sound of the sea.

It makes all sorts of sounds. Like breathing. It’s like a great alive beast, breathing heavily sometimes, and then other times it’s panting, or coughing, or even sneezing and snoring loudly. Mostly it just sighs heavily the way I do when I’m really fed up about something. (Fed up – where does that expression come from? Why does it mean miserable?) But the sighing sound is quite relaxing somehow, and so is the whole background constant sound of moving heaving water. Good for the soul, as Mum says. I like the little waves that have white lace on them and that make pretty patterns on the sand. And I love the bluey, greeny turquoise of the shallow water and the way it turns deep blue, navy blue, and dark jade green as it gets deeper. Not like the horrible brown-grey of the Thames at Shoeburyness where Grandma and Grandpop lived.

I wonder how slowly water has to fall before the sound is a torture? How can the sound of a leaky tap or a drip from a broken gutter drive you mad, but the constant gush of a waterfall be soothing?

And sometimes the sea booms like a drum and huge waves bash the cliffs, crashing into them as if the ocean is trying to move them out of the way so it can carry on into the whole land, take over the countryside, and the villages and towns and cities and make everything into sea, which is a pretty terrifying idea, and might well happen even here, what with global warming.

I should think dying by tsunami must be the most awful way to die. Imagine that giant wall of water coming straight at you. Would you run? You would run, of course you would. How would you feel? Does your whole life really flash before you, when you know you are going to die? Who said that, anyway? How does anyone know that that is what happens when you know you’re going to die? Like that story you used to hear at school. That dream about falling down stairs – if you don’t wake up before you hit the bottom, you die. Well, that’s stupid. How can you know you’re going to die if you don’t wake up? What I mean is – how can someone who wakes up know what will happen if she doesn’t wake up? No one ever dies and comes back to tell us what it was like, do they? Oh, it’s too confusing and stupid.

And think how the poor cats would feel if there was a tidal wave. They hate water, except Charlie, who always comes into the bathroom with me when I go to the loo and sits on my lap, and gets on the edge of the bath when I’m in it and pats my wet head, and drinks from the bath water, leaning right over, only her back legs hanging on the rim of the bath. I know she’ll fall in one day. She’ll scratch me when she panics. She loves me so much, she can’t bear to be away from me, and knows she’s my favourite. Every morning she rushes into the bathroom after breakfast, if I go anywhere near, even if I’m not going in there yet. She’s so funny and sweet.

I think I’ve seen a chaffinch, which has a pink breast, and a pair of stonechats, and I’ve definitely heard a skylark. They go crazy, flying higher and higher, flapping their little wings like mad, and singing all the time. There are more of them here on the sand dunes than further along on the rocky path that runs along the cliff edge.

I like this bit, because I can sit down on the tussocky grassy sand and read, and have a rest. The path further along, nearer the house, is too narrow to sit down on.

I wish I had a dog with me. A dog would chase birds though, and I’d have to pick up the poo and put it in a plastic bag – yuk! Perhaps a dog isn’t such a good idea. If only the cats were brave enough to walk with me. I think Flo might be. Maybe I’ll test her out – try little walks at a time. But if she meets a dog, what could she do? She’d be terrified.

Note: The blackbirds here in Cornwall are not as good at singing as the ones in London. Really, I’ve noticed. They sound sort of wooden and stilted as if they are just beginning to learn to play the piano. I suppose London blackbirds have expensive private education that includes music studies, and are sent, eventually, to the equivalent of the Royal School of Music. And local blackbirds have to learn their music from their parents. So if their parents don’t have very good voices, the young won’t know how to sing properly. Life’s not fair, even for the birds.

Another bird observation: our pigeons, I think they are rock pigeons, but they hang about in our trees, don’t know how to fly. They just think they do. They know what they’re supposed to do, flap like mad and swoop, but they suddenly fold their wings back and sort of stall, like a little paper plane. They drop, flapping their stubby wings like mad trying to gain height until they find a suitable branch or rock to land on. But it’s a very clumsy effort at flying, I must say. Grandpop used to make me paper planes when I was little. I’ve just remembered that.

Note: Found a beautiful little nest on the path, it must have fallen out of a tree in the wind or something. It’s empty
–
no eggs or baby birds, thank goodness. (Does that come from ‘thank God’?) There is a book on nests and eggs here of course, so I’ve looked it up. It’s small and rounded and neat, and made of tiny twigs and hair and fine strands of orange string, and lined with what looks like long fair dog hair, or human hair, and on the outside there are tiny bits of green lichens like pebble dash on walls, and moss woven in. It smells of damp moss, like a florist’s shop. There are o
ne or two tiny feathers inside, so maybe there were babies and they’ve flown. I think it might be a chaffinch nest. Another book says chaffinches are also called pink spink, twinck, and tink, because
of the shrill note of the male bird. And in the autumn it sings ‘tol-de-rol, lol, chickwee-ee-do,’ the first few notes uttered somewhat slowly, then more rapidly, and a final cadenza at the end.

I
WONDER
WHAT
I would have done if there had been babies in the nest, if they were nestlings with no feathers. Would the parents have come back to feed and care for the chicks if the nest fell out the tree? I don’t see how they could really, and a cat could find the babies if it was on the ground. If I found an injured bird, could I ever kill it to put it out of its misery? How would I manage? Do they survive if you try to feed them?

‘Mum, what would you do if you found a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest?’

‘Put it somewhere safe away from cats and hope the parents come to look after it. And keep the cats indoors.’

‘What if it’s got no feathers on?’

‘There’s a bird sanctuary in Mousehole, near Penzance. I’d take it there.’

‘Is there? Can we go there sometime to see it?’

‘Some time. Anyway, Gussie, don’t go Looking for
Problems before you’ve got them. We’ve got Enough Problems already.’

It’s Sunday and Mum always takes me to the local car boot sale on Sundays. It’s a great place to find old books – not that we need any more old books – and homemade marmalade, and clothes that people don’t want any more (but some are very Decent and Cheap), and plants. Mum has started doing more in the garden, since she’s had such success with the herbs, so she’s decided to make her mark on the wilderness, as a thank you to Mr Writer.

There are some very sad people here at the car boot – people who look very poor and sort of crooked and with missing teeth. I’ve never seen so many people with crutches and walking frames and even wheelchairs, and double buggies and dogs, usually very big dogs or Staffordshire bull terriers or Alsatian dogs wearing masks. Muzzles, I mean. Some people bring two or more dogs with them and always stop in the middle of a narrow bit to talk to other people with dogs, so you can’t get by easily. And some of the people speak in such a broad accent I can’t understand anything they say. It’s like a foreign language. And the local men call each other ‘my lover’, or ‘my handsome’, which I think is sweet of them. One old man called me ‘my flower’. I felt all soft and fluffy and feminine. I liked it. It made me feel sad all over again about Grandpop.

Mum has bought three red geraniums in plastic pots and from the same man I bought another very long bird feeder that can hang from the copper beech tree with the other one, and a large bag of sunflower seeds. The birds get through a whole feeder full each day. The man sold trays of mesembryanthemums – which Mum said she used to think were called messy bums when she was young.