Albatross (2 page)

Clare’s skin was much fuller, and her frame more curvy and feminine and attractive, whilst Jen’s seemed weakened by something that long sapped at the strength and the soul.

And while behind Jen’s eyes there was a deep rooted sadness, there was nothing of the sort behind Clare’s, and her gaze was filled with such life and love that it seemed quite incredulous.

“It can’t be…?” Jen questioned, furrowing her brow and glancing briefly between the glorious bird and her older sister.

“It is, Jenny.” Clare replied confidently, and Jen was instantly convinced.

“How do you know?” Jen asked her sister then, looking across again at Clare, stood a ways away on the dull grey sand.

Even just stood there, against the dreary backdrop, Clare looked more vibrant and full of life than Jen could ever possibly hope to be. But it didn’t bring her down in the slightest. In fact, Jen didn’t even really notice.

The albatross looked up at them both and its gaze seemed somehow knowing, and even more saddened than before, as if it saw some terrible truth that they could not.

Jen was confused by the sight, and frowned again slightly, deep in thought.

She glanced over to her sister once more, but Clare’s expression was much more understanding, and agreeing even, as if she somehow knew exactly what the beautiful, enormous creature was thinking.

Jen didn’t ask however, and deliberately so, for some reason, entirely and purposefully ignoring what had seemed to pass between Clare and the albatross.

Then, since he saw that Jen was going to intentionally ignore what he was trying to tell her, the albatross sighed sorrowfully and regretfully, if that were even possible, and spread his vast wings as wide as they would go.

With only the slightest of movements, he caught the snapping breeze and lifted his perfect white body, outstanding so clearly against the greyness all around, effortlessly ascending into the air.

Watching as in seemingly seconds the albatross disappeared off into the distance, carried at terrifying speed by the wind, Jen felt as though she should have listened.

But still, knowing what she would hear, she firmly refused to do so.

She looked across to Clare, asking for forgiveness merely with her gaze, and of course her sister gave it to her, though she had a strange, whimsical look painted across her face.

They watched the magical bird disappear towards the horizon, far in the distance. The line dividing the sea and the sky was barely even visible as the grey of the water and the grey of the dim skies merged together, virtually into one.

Jen felt a strange connection to the mysterious creature as it floated away, alone, lost in this bleak, solitary place.

The only real difference between them, she thought in that moment, was that she could not simply spread her wings and fly away, and escape from all of this. And all of a sudden, overwhelmed by grief, young Jen Williams longed for nothing more than that: to merely spread her wings and vanish into the distance.

Keepers Cottage

              “An albatross?” Dyra asked, her tone disbelieving. “Are you sure, Jennifer?”

              “Yes mom!” Jen replied almost absently as she frantically searched online through thousands of pictures of different birds, looking for the closest image to the one she had seen.

              “How do you know?” Her mother asked then.

              Dyra’s hair was long and dark, as were her eyes, but her gaze was not touched with flashes of grey in the way her hair was. She looked so much like her two daughters that it was quite uncanny, and the pictures of the three of them that were dotted all about the house showed that quite evidently.

              “Clare told me.” Jen replied automatically, as if her older sister’s word was gospel. “She was sure of it.”

              “Jennifer…” Her mother exhaled then, her spirit drowning suddenly, but her youngest daughter interrupted her before she could finish.

              “Please, don’t call me that, mom…” Jen asked on a whim, still frantically scrolling through webpages and search engines, looking for the perfect picture to match what she had seen. “You’re the only one that calls me Jennifer…” She continued absently. “Everyone else calls me Jen. Except Clare. She calls me Jenny…”

              Dyra sighed deeply, giving up on what she was saying before she’d even begun.

              She knew her daughter wouldn’t hear her.

              Not yet.

              Though from the outside their home looked like rather an old building, verging almost even on an archaic cottage, Dyra much preferred to refer to it as antique, rather than old, and besides, on the inside it was quite different.

Wooden beams that supported the ceiling were cut perfectly square and with a modern, polished finish. The surfaces were marble and cut smooth and precisely, dark and grey and set upon solid oak cupboards and worktops.

The table at which Jen sat in the kitchen, fingers tapping the laptop in a frenzy, was a heavy, dark oak; very old, but in immaculate condition. Aside from the table, the kitchen was modernised and orderly, with utensils all either tidied away into draws, or sat upright in labelled, metal pots.

There were white, crock pots of tea and coffee and sugar too, all lined up in neat rows along the counter, and each container had inscribed upon it the contents in thick, black letters.

In the living room, just across the hallway, with the front door on one side and the stairs on the other, statues and ornaments were scattered around of all sorts of different animals and figures.

There were miniature wooden giraffes and elephants that marched across sideboards, and even a small ceramic Buddha that perched above the wood burning fireplace, set back a ways beneath the chimney breast and plated with highly polished steel.

              Also, regardless of what room you were in, the walls were lined with pictures and memories, and the sideboards scattered intermittently between the herds with upright frames.

              Mostly they were pictures of Jen and Clare, the two of them so similar. And then, here and there, you would see a picture of all three of them: Jen, Clare, and their mother, Dyra.

              Some were small and just taken on a whim, in a back garden or out for the evening. Whilst others, much larger and more prominent, had been taken at more momentous occasions.

              The day they’d moved in here, for example, just over a year ago, was one such occasion. They had planned to stay here indefinitely, and that picture of the three of them, stood in front of the cottage, had pride and place up on the stairwell.

              Another was the picture of the three of them at the lake they’d visited at the end of the summer, only just after they’d moved in. They’d managed to catch a warm, sunny day towards the end of September, and spent it messing around and having fun on the water; a day that was one of their fondest memories.

              As for the cottage itself, the front of the house faced inland, opening out past their narrow front garden onto Shortberry Lane, while the back of the house faced the shoreline, not really all that far in the distance.

              “Here! This one!” Jen suddenly exclaimed.

              Her mother didn’t really like to humour this; Jennifer had promised her after all.

However, this was the most excited she’d seen her youngest daughter in a long while: weeks, months, probably even the whole year.

Perhaps it was a turning point.

She turned to look at the image Jen had pulled up and enlarged on the screen of the laptop.

“Is that what you saw?” Dyra asked, her voice laced intricately with dubiousness.

The picture Jennifer was showing her was indeed an albatross. Its long yellow beak was tipped with orange so bright that it was practically luminous, and its wingspan was impressive to the point of being excessive.

It was indeed a magnificent creature, but not the sort of animal that regularly patrolled the Welsh coastline.

“Yes!” Jen replied, absolutely certain. “That exactly!”

“I’ve never seen anything like that…” Her mother, Dyra, commented. “How did Clare know what it was?” She asked, her tone shifting slightly as she swallowed hard.

But Jen only shrugged.

Scrolling through the endless reams of information on the screen, pages and pages flitted by much too quickly for Dyra to keep up with, and Jen’s eyes darted left and right and up and down as she read.

“It must be here somewhere…” She muttered to herself as she scrolled.

By this point Dyra was lost amidst the infinite webpages and paragraphs. She had never really got on with computers.

She much preferred a book to a screen.

Dyra stood up for a moment and sighed, pursing her lips mournfully and resting her hands on her hips.

“Ah!” Jen suddenly cried, apparently having found what she had been looking for.

“What is it?” Dyra asked, but almost even before she could speak Jen began reading from the screen.

“They range widely in the Southern Ocean and North Pacific…” She recited. “But are absent from the North Atlantic…”

Jen paused then and her brow furrowed in thought, confused. She read on silently, her eyes flitting at an unbelievable speed. Then she checked and double checked that she hadn’t missed anything, before finally conceding.

It seemed, according to this at least, that there were no exceptions.

There should not be any albatross here.

“Where is your sister anyway?” Dyra asked suddenly then, seeming to change the subject entirely. Jen’s mother glanced round briefly as she spoke, though for no real reason in particular.

“She’s gone out to work, mom…” Jen replied absently, stealing a quick glance out of the window at the slowly darkening sky as if that had been obvious.

“Oh, right…” Dyra replied then, her tone dropping again. “Of course…” She moved away from the computer and returned to tending distractedly to the cleaning of worktops in the kitchen.

Jen filched another glance from the computer screen, except this time it was to follow her mother’s movements from across the room with a steely gaze, as she nipped through into the living room.

“Do you have work tonight, honey?” Dyra called back through after a few moments.

“Yeah. I’m going in a minute.” Jen replied, her tone very level.

She dragged her chair slowly back and the legs scraped loudly on the tile floor. Rising to her feet, in a flurry of movement Jen closed all that she had been looking at on the laptop and darted from her seat.

“Oh, right…” Dyra started, ceasing her cleaning and stepping back through to the kitchen at the sound of Jen’s sudden haste. “It’s just that Mandy said she wanted to pop in to see you today…”

“Oh…” Her daughter uttered. “Sorry, I’ve got to go now…” Jen apologised, though by her tone it was obvious that the idea of a visit from Mandy was not something that overly enthralled her.

“Ok sweetheart, don’t worry.” Her mother replied with a slight smile, kind and understanding, as mothers are supposed to be. “I’ll phone her and ask her to come another day.”

“Thank you mom.” Jen replied simply, returning the smile and hugging Dyra quickly before rummaging beneath the table for her rucksack.

Within barely minutes Jen had collected all of her things for work, which consisted really of little more than a jacket and some morsels of food, and she was on her way out of the door.

“I’ll be back later mom!” The young girl called over her shoulder as she pulled the front door open, painted a thick, rich red colour, a door handle and letterbox set in its very centre, one above the other.

And then above the both of them, hung upon a rusty nail, driven into the wooden face of the door, was a sign scrawled upon with fine black paint.

Keepers Cottage

“Be careful please!” Dyra called back automatically.

“Don’t worry!” Jen replied as she pulled the door to behind her. “I’m meeting Clare after work! We’ll walk home together!”

And with that Jen was gone.

She closed the door behind her and it clicked firmly into place. She was soon down the short garden path, crossing the evenly set stones ditched into the grass on slightly uneven angles, framed by flowers on either side, and out onto Shortberry Lane.

Her mother, Dyra, remained, standing alone in the hallway, looking longingly after her youngest daughter.

Her arms hung limply at her sides, her one hand clutching a rag, and thick tears stood heavily in her eyes, as they often did nowadays.

The Rusty Oak

The day darkened more quickly as Jen walked briskly down the winding lanes towards The Rusty Oak.

The lanes were narrow, in quite a few places wide enough for only one car to pass, and frequently drivers trying to come through were forced to reverse up to a crossing place to allow others to get by.

Jen knew these roads in and out by now though, even after just barely twelve months of living here, and she regularly cut through the bush here and there to miss out the biggest loops in the winding tongue of tarmac that sliced so abhorrently through the countryside. She saved an awful lot of time in the process, and a journey that would have taken her nearly an hour, had she stuck to the roads, took her barely half that time nipping through the undergrowth.

Sometimes though, after heavy downpours in the colder, wetter months, the months that were so rapidly encroaching now, her shortcuts were simply too wet and too boggy to be of any use whatsoever, and she was forced to stick to the road.

Passing by houses and cottages as she walked, more often than not named instead of numbered, like their own, Jen glanced quickly over at each of them in turn.

The names varied greatly, and some were original and quirky, whilst others were most definitely not.

The Old Police House

It was a long, low building with many thin, evenly set windows. The roof was made of black, steeply slanted tile, overlapping the walls so that rainfall ran straight to the ground. Hung between each of the ground floor windows was a lantern framed by iron and glass.

In years gone by the lanterns had been filled with oil and lit, but now they served merely as ornaments and reminders of years gone by.

              As so many things do.

Next, hidden between the trees to her left, still just about visible in the dimming light, Jen knew which one was coming up.

Thatcher’s Retreat

              Easily Jen’s favourite, this cottage was well hidden away behind the greenery and, as the name suggested, was one of the only remaining houses in the area that still had a genuine thatched roof.

              The rest of the cottage was relatively unremarkable, to be honest, but it was its quaint nature that Jen loved so, and its ability to be so unique, and yet so unknown, all at once.

              A plain wooden door, cracked and split here and there, faced out between the trees, and marked the entrance to the Thatcher’s Retreat. Two square windows sat either side, flickering dimly from within: short, squat, and entirely content with themselves.

There were many more houses and cottages and retreats of all shapes and sizes and designs that Jen knew of, for the most part, off by heart, but the cold was getting to her now as the temperature dropped. The chill bit at her considerably and she slung her rucksack round onto one shoulder and pulled a different hoody from within it.

This one zipped up the front and she pulled it on hastily and did it all the way up to her chin. It was a deep burgundy colour, though it was old and ragged, and she buried her hands in the pockets on its front, rubbing them against the soft material to fight off the cold.

She was nearly there anyway.

All of a sudden, hearing a low, clunking rumble approaching behind her, Jen turned to look, only to be blinded by a set of ridiculously bright headlights, pointing off in slightly skewed directions. Forced to shield her eyes from the beams, she moved off to the side of the road and, as the car’s horn honked, strained her eyes, squinting, to see who it was.

Tensing up, her breath caught in her throat and she slunk slowly towards the shadows, gripped by fear.

Her mind screamed at her to run, but even as she reached the shadow of the nearest treeline, she found that as the car pulled closer, she could no longer move. Her body froze in terror, and her legs remained rooted to the ground.

Then, once the car came into view more clearly, the rust spots upon the matt black bonnet became clear, and the extremely faded red paint that covered the rest of the car, looking pinkish in the poor light, were a dead giveaway.

She recognised it.

It was one of the chefs she worked with.

“Jen!” A gruff voice called from the grubby driver’s window, wound halfway down.

“Hello Geoff.” She replied meekly, trying to regain her breath and her composure, greeting the portly, greying chap grinning at her through the murky glass of his windscreen.

“Need a lift?” He asked her, jabbing one fat thumb towards the passenger seat in a lazy gesture. He revved his engine as he did so, though it sounded less like a car and more like a rickety old microwave, years past due replacing.

“Thanks.” Jen replied, sidling round the front of the death trap of a car, opening the passenger door and sliding in beside her most definitely oversized colleague.

He was already in his chef whites and, not surprisingly, they were already spotted here and there. They were perhaps tighter than they should have been too, but that didn’t appear to be because they were too small, but instead rather because he was too large. Though, of course, Jen never mentioned that observation.

It was, perchance, an occupational hazard, and oddly enough perhaps one that inspired trust in his ability above all else.

Regardless, Geoff was a lovely man and always very friendly.

He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

“Good day?” He asked then, as if on cue, grinding and churning his poor car back into first gear as he spoke.

“Yes, thank you.” Jen replied, though still a little meekly. “You?”

“Awful!” He declared quite refreshingly, and with a seemingly misplaced laugh as the car lurched forward. He forced it almost immediately into second gear and it groaned and chugged despairingly.

The almost imperceptible sidelong glance that he cast his young colleague, however, betrayed the fact that he’d noticed her immediate withdrawal.

It was nothing new.

Nonetheless, he changed tact slightly.

“How’s your mother?” He asked then, pausing for a moment on his words, as if he’d wanted to say more.

“Fine, thank you.” Jen replied.

“And Clare?” Geoff asked then.

“Very well, thank you.” Jen responded, her mood shifting instantly.

She seemed to rise several feet in her seat as she exploded from her shell and drew a deep breath.

“You’ll never guess what we saw at the beach today!” She blurted unexpectedly, enthusiasm suddenly oozing from her every pore, infecting the air all around her.

Geoff smiled, though the bright look in his eyes was dampened somewhat.

“What did you see?” He asked.

And though his eyes betrayed his true feelings, it was too dark for Jen to see them; his tone did not reveal a thing, and he matched her enthusiasm almost exactly.

He had always been very good at reading people.

To him, Jen was easy to read, but recently a lot of people had strayed from her, and more and more often he had found her confiding in him in many subtle little ways.

This was just yet another example.

“We saw an albatross!” She exclaimed, gesturing with her hands across the dashboard. “It was huge!”

“What!?” Geoff replied, shocked, gripped now with genuine curiosity. “Really!?”

“Really!” Jen confirmed, opening up much more now. “I didn’t know what it was at first. It was Clare that knew it was an albatross!”

“How did she know?” Geoff asked carefully then.

“You know how smart she’s always been!” Jen declared, as if that explained everything. “I just can’t believe we saw it!”

“I know…” Geoff agreed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing here in my life…” He continued, but hard as he tried, his tone dropped noticeably with his words.

Jen sensed his hesitance, knowing exactly what he was thinking, and within seconds she felt her deep set melancholy returning.

The car clunked on and the gears ground continuously as they drove, now the only noise besides the occasional barking in the distance that could be heard over the trees.

Not a moment too soon The Rusty Oak came into view, illuminated amidst the darkness in a way that always seemed so inviting. The base of its triangular, slated roof faced the road upon approach, and was lined with yellow fairy lights, and on each corner a spotlight cast light like moonbeams across the entrance and front terrace.

Geoff ground his car to a juddering halt, but before it had even come to a complete stop, Jen was out of the door.

“Thanks Geoff…” She called quietly to him as she stepped out and closed the door gently behind her, making immediately for the wooden doors filled with coloured glass set above a single black, metal letterbox. Even upon brief first glance it was clear that inside the pub it was already busy, but even so, Geoff paused for a moment before he got out.

Sighing deeply, he sat back and ran his shovel like hands through his greying hair, receding on both sides. He watched Jen disappear inside, slipping through the doors like a ghost, and a sullen mixture of sorrow, regret and pity swelled inside of him, as he thought on what he saw.

Perhaps the best phrase to describe The Rusty Oak, above all others, would have been old fashioned. And in turn, undoubtedly the best word to describe it, would have been rustic.

The pub’s history was very English, and naturally, in turn, very cruel and very sad.

At the back of the large building, constructed itself from huge blocks all painted white, set here and there with square, wooden framed windows, and capped with a slate roof, lay varnished decking that stretched out for almost two dozen feet. Ideal for summer’s evenings spent with friends and family, sipping cold drinks and watching life go by.

However, beyond the decking, set apart from everything else, stood the single figure of an enormous oak tree; solitary and timeless.

Where once the tree had been made of bark and branches and leaves and the very essence of life itself, now, instead, the tree that stood in its place was made of iron, pulled reluctantly from the earth and bent to the will of man.

Over time the iron had rusted, as is its nature, and the tree that stood there now was a strange mixture of black and grey and red and copper, all at once.

Once upon a time, on this very spot, just as they still did to this day, friends and family had indeed flocked here on warm summer’s evenings, sipped cold drinks and laughed and joked, as a bear was tied to the tree and baited with savage dogs.

Always, inhumane bloodlust ensued.

But the cruelty of entertainment such as this is sadly all too often lost on most people, for we are indeed a violent and primitive race.

Either the bear would claim victory, killing every animal the handlers could throw at it, and live to fight another day, only to be carted away to the next inn to suffer the same fate. Or, the poor beast would succumb, overwhelmed by numbers and a lifetime of injuries and suffering, as is more often than not the case, in many more ways than just one.

Naturally, the baiters would do their best to avoid the latter. Their livelihoods, and indeed the lives of their families, oddly enough, depended on the bear, and they needed it to suffer for as long as physically possible for the amusement of man.

One day though, or so the story goes, enraged so by the dogs attacking it, the bear rose to its full, terrifying height, and roared with dreadful anger and sadness, much to the delight of the inn’s onlookers.

But then, to everyone’s disbelief, and shortly after, terror, the poor monster hauled forward with all its might and ripped the vast oak tree from the very ground, roots and all.

Charging blindly and unstoppably, the frightened beast pummelled three massive dogs into the dirt, and promptly ate its handlers.

Now, whether a little, or perchance a lot, of artistic license was employed in the embellishment of that story, perhaps we’ll never know. But, nonetheless, the oak tree was replaced with an identical iron one, in memory of the poor brute, which, incidentally, or so the story goes, was stoned to death shortly afterwards.

Hopefully needless to say, bears were never baited at The Rusty Oak again.

Immediately Geoff was busy, dashing here and there, his giant hands working in a frenzy and his step seemingly far too quick for a man of his generous dimensions. There was little time to talk as orders rushed in constantly, but the more orders that came in, the faster Geoff seemed to move, feeding off the relentless pace endlessly.

He loved it, smiling and humming to himself as he worked.

Jen too moved quickly, flitting about as she always seemed to in the bustling kitchen.

Like a ghost.

Like she wasn’t even there.

And, since it seems to be the time for stories of the past, she too once upon a time used to smile and hum as she worked. On occasion even, on days when humming simply wasn’t enough, she used to sing too.