Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(36)

He realised he was staring into space, or rather, out of the window of the tiny cabin he owned near the lake, but seeing nothing that was in front of him. He didn’t realise how he was torturing the brush with his free hand, flexing and forcing it, until it gave with a sudden sharp snap, sending droplets of burnt umber across his painting.

He let out a breath with a hiss, dabbing at the paper with a tissue, but it was too late. The picture was ruined. He picked up the end of the brush with the bristles attached and realised something worse. It was his favourite, the smallest he possessed: size 000, perfect for fine work. Now it was useless. He would have to go into town before he could hope to paint the birds again.


Arnold got ready, changing his worn and paint-spattered T-shirt for a clean one, his filthy trousers for faded blue jeans. He looked at himself in the mirror before he went out. The effect, he knew, was not good. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. His hair was never anything but lank, looking almost black where it was slicked down over his forehead. His skin was pale and yellowish, and his eyes were a little too small.

He took a deep breath and picked up the keys to his dirty Land Rover. The nearest art shop was in Windermere, a good thirty minutes away, if the little roads weren’t clogged with tourist traffic. He pulled a face at himself in the mirror before he set off, twisting his florid red lips.


The sun had come out after all, sparkling off the wide blue expanse of Windermere Lake, and it had brought with it large numbers of people. The rowing boat hire, in a little inlet at the roadside, was busy. Stick-thin boys and girls lined up on the pebbly shore with their mothers and fathers and there was noise, lots of it: the hollow wooden sound of oars in rowlocks, the endlessly passing cars, a motor boat chugging somewhere out on the water. And always, there was the talk: chirping and clucking and squawking.

Arnold parked opposite. He had been lucky that someone was just leaving, so that he could nudge into the narrow space they’d left behind. As he closed the door he turned to see a small child—a girl, long hair, snub nose, blue eyes, freckles, frock—licking at an ice cream as she watched him. She gave a sly smirk before her mother said something sharp and she turned away, forgetting him instantly.

He edged around a couple of bare-chested young lads, their shoulders burnt to cadmium red, smelling of beer. He ignored the slurred cry of “Hey, mate . . .”

Across the road, a family was waiting to cross: boy, girl, mum, dad, flowery shirts, beach bag, sunglasses. He felt the father’s stare through his lamp-black lenses as Arnold walked rapidly past them and towards the shops. He kept his stride sure. He knew that was the only way. He couldn’t let them see how his heart was beating so rapidly. He had to quell the instinct to turn and run, to throw himself into the clear blue water, to swim and swim until no one could see him any longer; until no one could scrutinise him and find him wanting.

Hey, mate . . .

Look at his hair!

He’s got no mum! No wonder he’s . . .

Oi, Spotty! What you looking at, Spotty?

He paused on the corner, breathing hard, leaning against an old slate wall. The voices around him had changed. He couldn’t see the speakers’ faces, but he knew who they were. The first had been Batty Briggs, the lad with sticky-out ears. People called him Batty and it was not his name, but they did it in a way that made everybody laugh. It was different to the way they called Arnold Spotty, or worse.

He hated Batty Briggs. He always had, ever since the first day when Arnold had been shown into class and introduced and the boy had burst out laughing, as if the teacher had just told a fine joke.

Batty’s friends were Scott Williams and Dale Carter. They always laughed when Batty did, though never quite as loud. Scott and Dale always noticed every little thing that was wrong with Arnold’s clothes. They would laugh, now, at his T-shirt. He hadn’t seen any of them for ten years, not since he’d been in school, but he could hear them all the same.

“Watch out . . .”

Arnold pressed himself back against the wall as an arm brushed against his. He looked up. It was not Batty or Scott or Dale. A couple had come around the corner, a man he didn’t know with a beer belly and a woman with harshly bleached hair, brown at the roots. Her strappy top revealed a tattoo of a cobalt and rose madder butterfly just above her right breast.

Arnold’s mouth opened and closed as they went by. He couldn’t seem to pull the air into his lungs. He felt as if he was drowning, and he knew that in a way, he was. It had always been like that: out of place, out of step. Out of his element. He longed, suddenly and deeply, for the grey lake where nobody came. That was where he belonged, in the water, content with the dark and the slime and the mud, with all the creatures that slithered and flapped and did not speak.

He forced himself to start walking, more quickly than before. This medium was strange to him—he could not flourish here, did not know how to be—but it would not kill him. The sooner he had finished, the sooner he could escape.

He reached the art shop without catching anyone’s eye. He made his purchase, throwing in some extra tubes of paint so that he would not have to visit again too soon. The shopkeeper tried to make conversation, telling him about some new papers that had just come in, and he simply nodded and took his change. Then he hurried away, his head bowed, his legs moving rapidly, like a sanderling rushing along the shore.


When he got home and closed the door behind him, Arnold took out one of the books he had illustrated. It was his favourite. Although the pictures were rather small, they were printed neatly in little boxes, each with the bird’s classification and habitat and geographical spread marked next to it. He began to breathe more deeply as he looked at it. He didn’t take in any words in particular—he had seen them all already—but the images, along with the little charts and maps, comforted him. The pages didn’t turn easily because of the photographs that were thrust between them, the thicker paper impeding the flow of the book. Arnold wasn’t ready to look at them but after a while he was, and he let one fall, randomly, into his lap. He had seen it before but he studied it anyway. It showed a son and his father in a rubber dinghy, wearing blue trunks and identical grins, plastic oars clutched in their fists.