Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(100)

I sit in a traffic queue, radio on, but all I hear is Elsa’s voice.

“Julie, it’s Elsa. From Fenby.”

As if I could forget the woman who brought us birthday presents, collected us from school, and who told me about bras, periods, and contraception (albeit in the sketchiest terms) when Dad was too squeamish for the task.

“Julie, you need to come home. I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just come out with it. Your dad’s dead.” She paused. “He collapsed in the garden this morning. I’ll stay with Pippa until you get here.”

“Thank you.”

“You will come, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

Ten years and they jerk me back with one phone call.

The journey takes an hour longer than I expected. Oh, England, my sceptred and congested isle. I’m not sure if I’m glad of the delay or it’s making my dread worse.

The lane is in dire need of resurfacing so I have to slow down to navigate the potholes. I turn into the drive. It’s lined by overgrown bushes. I stop out of view of the house and walk the rest of the way. I’m not ready for Pip and Elsa yet.

The Beeches should be handsome. It’s crying out for love. Someone should chip off the salmon-pink stucco and take it back to its original red brick. The garden wraps around it on three sides, widest at the rear. I head there first.

The crow palace is the altar of the childhood rituals that bound us. It looks like Dad’s lavished more love on it than the house. New levels have been added and parts of it replaced.

I stoop to pick something up from the ground. I frown as I turn it over and read the label. It’s an empty syringe wrapper. Evidence of the paramedics’ labours. The grass, which needs mowing, is trampled down. I think I can see where Dad lay.

A crow lands on the palace at my eye level. It struts back and forth with a long, confident stride as it inspects me. Its back is all the colours of the night. It raises its head and opens its beak wide.

Caw caw caw.

It’s only then that the patio doors open and Elsa runs out, arms outstretched.

Job done, the crow takes flight.


Elsa fusses and clucks over me, fetching sweet tea, “For shock.”

“What happened to him?”

“They think it was a heart attack. The coroner’s officer wants to speak to you. I’ve left the number by the phone.”

“How can they be sure? Don’t they need to do a post-mortem?”

“They think it’s likely. He’s had two in the last three years.”

“I didn’t know.”

“He wouldn’t let me phone you.” I don’t know if I’m annoyed that she didn’t call or relieved that she doesn’t say Perhaps, if you’d bothered to call him he might have told you himself. “Your dad was a terrible patient. They told him he should have an operation to clear his arteries but he refused.”

Elsa opens one of the kitchen cupboards. “Look.”

I take out some of the boxes, shake them, read the leaflets. There’s twelve months of medication here. Dad never took any of it. Aspirin, statins, nitrates, ace-inhibitors. Wonder drugs to unblock his stodgy arteries and keep his blood flowing through them.

I slam the door shut, making Elsa jump. It’s the gesture of a petulant teenager. I can’t help it. Dad’s self neglect is a good excuse to be angry at him for dying.

“We used to have terrible rows over it. I think it was his way of punishing himself.” Elsa doesn’t need to say guilt over your mother. She looks washed out. Her pale eyes, once arresting, look aged. “I don’t think Pippa understands. Don’t be hurt. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”

Pippa had looked at me as I put my bag down in the hall and said, “Julieee,” prolonging the last syllable as she always did when she was excited. Then she slid from the room, leaving me alone with Elsa.

Elsa’s the one who doesn’t understand, despite how long she’s known Pippa.

Pip’s cerebral palsy has damaged the parts of her brain that controls her speech. It’s impaired her balance and muscle tone. It’s robbed her of parts of her intellect but she’s attuned to the world in other ways.

She understands what I feel. She’s waiting for me to be ready, not the other way around.

Perhaps it’s a twin thing.

Pippa stopped speaking for several years when she was a child. It was when she realised that she didn’t sound like other children. That she couldn’t find and shape the words as I did. Her development wasn’t as arrested as everyone supposed. Dad, Elsa and her teachers all underestimated her.

I could’ve tried to help her. I could have acted as an interpreter as I’ve always understood her but I didn’t. Instead, I watched her struggle.

And here she is, as if I’ve called out to her.

Pippa’s small and twisted, muscle spasticity contorting her left side. That she’s grey at the temples shocks me, despite the fact mine’s the same but covered with dye. She’s wearing leggings and a colourful sweatshirt; the sort of clothes Dad always bought for her. That she’s unchanged yet older causes a pang in my chest, which I resent.

Pip looks at the world obliquely, as if scared to face it straight on. She stands in the doorway, weighing me up and then smiles, her pleasure at seeing me plain on her narrow face.