Feather Boy (16 page)

“I don’t understand.”

“This story comes from the Cree, from the Iroquois. But also from the lips of everyone who’s ever told it and the ears of those who have heard.” She looks at me strangely. “Who’s telling your story, Robert?”

“Mrs Sorrel.”

“Well, then.”

“You mean I have to ask her?”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“No.” I reach for the Sainsbury’s bag, begin to fold away the coat of feathers.

“What’s that?” Catherine asks.

“Nothing.”

“It’s a pile of chicken shit,” says Niker.

“Let me see,” says Catherine.

“No.”

“Show her,” says Kate.

“No.”

“Please,” says Catherine and she comes forward and her hands reach too. So I let her touch. Watch the ripple of the feathers under her fingers.

“Did you make it?”

“Yes. But it’s not finished.”

“It’s quite extraordinary,” she says, “It seems…”

“Real,” says Kate.

“Yes,” says Catherine. “Almost.” Then she asks me: “Is it part of your story?”

“Yes. Mine and Mrs Sorrel’s.”

“Ah – so you’re telling the story too?”

“Maybe.”

She nods and then returns her attention to the coat. “It’s a quite exceptional piece of work. The quality of the stitching, the design, the whole look and feel of it.”

“In fact,” says Niker, “Robert is a genius.”

“Yes,” says Catherine, “yes, I think so. Oh we must include this, don’t you think Jonathan? Two suits of feathers, why not?”

“Because the story only has one,” Niker says.

“Ah, but whose story?” says Catherine.

“And it’s a gold suit,” says Niker. “A suit of
golden
feathers.”

“But then you have to ask what’s gold?” says Catherine. “What’s golden? Except brilliant things, excellent things, precious things.”

“Right,” says Niker. “So I guess that excludes a pile of chicken feathers.”

“Come on, Jonathan,” says Catherine. “You’ve got a good eye. Look.”

“I’m looking,” says Niker. “It’s filthy. It smells. It’s made of dead things. I don’t think it’s going to pass Health and Safety. Let alone Matron.”

“If it smells of anything,” I say, “it will be rose geranium. But don’t worry, Niker. I’m not competing. You’re welcome to the centre panel, centre stage and your picture in the paper for all I care. There’s no way this coat of feathers is getting stuck down anywhere.”

“Hang on a minute,” says Catherine. “If you and Mrs Sorrel have made the work, if it’s project work, then…”

“No,” I say, pushing the coat too quickly inside the Sainsbury’s bag. “Sorry.” I can hear the need in my voice and so can Niker.

Unerringly he’s on to it – on to me. “Come on Norbe, quality piece of work like that, work of genius. Should be seen. Am I right or am I right?”

“Sorry,” I say. I shouldn’t have baited him. Why did I have to say that about “centre stage”, why did I have to let on that the one thing I want least in the world is for the coat of feathers to be stuck down? “I mean, it’s not finished yet.”

“It’s really only the back that needs some attention,” says Catherine.

“Yeah,” says Niker. “And that doesn’t matter, ‘cos that’s the bit that’s gonna get glue on. Right?” He picks up the large pot of paste.

“No!” He’s blocking my exit, standing between me and the door. “Kate? Catherine!”

“Leave it, Niker,” says Kate.

“What?” says Niker, advancing. “Let Norbert here hide his light under a bushel? Deny the world’s media their next Leonardo? Come on Norbe, hand over the goods.”

“I don’t think Robert needs to be forced,” says Catherine.

“Too right,” continues Niker, with menacing glee. “He’s gonna share, isn’t he? That’s what these pieces of work are being made for, aren’t they Catherine? For the Sharing.” He’s brandishing the glue brush. “So I’d say Chicken Shit here is going to share.”

It’s then that I decide to make a run for it. He’s between me and the door so I scramble up on one of the tables, thinking I can get behind him that way. But, quick as a whip, he’s up too. He swaggers towards me, grinning from ear to ear. The truth is, he’s bigger than me and he’s faster than me. But I’m the one with something to lose. I have two choices, track backward until I hit the wall – or jump.

I jump.

A huge pirouette in the air, right over the fairy-tale triptych to land, with a degree of grace, at Catherine’s feet. She lets out a little gasp, and I stop to say “sorry”, which is a mistake. Because anywhere I can jump, Niker can jump too. And he does. Right on top of me. Catherine gasps again. Niker does not say “sorry”, he grabs for the Sainsbury’s bag.

“Give it!” he says.

No way.

“I said
give
it, Feather Boy.”

Together we barge Catherine who says, quietly and ineffectually, “Stop it you two. Stop it at once.”

Niker’s pulling and I’m resisting. The plastic bag rips. And then he has his hand on the coat. He pulls that. He pulls Mrs Sorrel’s coat of feathers. Then I find something. It’s anger.

“Don’t you dare,” I scream.

He laughs. Pulls harder. He hasn’t got a proper grip. Or that’s what I think, not a grip on the whole coat, just a finger round one of the feathers. One of the white ones, the pure white one I found on the beach. The one I stitched on top of the grey Chance House feather. And I know that my stitches are strong, he cannot dislodge either of my feathers. He cannot. I think one tug may make the coat mine again. I tug. But he’s caught the feather below now. Somehow got both hands round it and I hear the snap.

“I’ll kill you!” I yell.

He thinks he’s got it now, but he hasn’t. The quills are resisting him, bent but not broken. So he twists, he twists where the downy part of the flight is, and I should let go, I should just give the coat to him, but I
can’t and I won’t, and so he twists and he twists and the flights break. The white seagull feather and the Chance House feather are both in his hands.

That’s when I hit him. You know me well by now and I am not strong and I am not violent but I hit him like I was a rock and he was a piece of rubber. The more he bounces back the more I hit him. I hit his rubber head and his rubber neck and his rubber breast and his rubber arms and I kick his rubber legs. And I keep on hitting and kicking him until he doesn’t bounce back any more. He just lies on the floor. Totally still.

There is blood coming from his nose. Or his forehead. Or maybe it’s his eye. Somewhere in the room, someone is crying. It’s Kate. There are tears streaming down her face. I look about me. The room is mayhem, chairs upturned, five or six of them all in the wrong places. The steel leg of one has gone through the central panel of the fairy-tale triptych. Someone must have thrown it there. I don’t think it can have been me. But, from the look on Catherine’s face, maybe it was. She’s standing in the doorway with Miss Raynham. Both of them look too shocked to speak.

But Miss Raynham does speak. “Get an ambulance,” she says to Catherine. Then she strides across the room and picks me bodily off the floor. “Whatever explanation you have,” she says, “it’s not going to be good enough.”

Then she takes away the coat of feathers.

They don’t get an ambulance for Niker. Turns out he can stand after all. But he does have to go to Casualty on account of the gash above his right eye. Niker’s dad arrives to collect him. His
dad
. At the hospital they clean him up and put on those butterfly sutures they use these days instead of stitches. The nurse who sticks him together is Irene Watson. I know this because Irene Watson is a friend of my mother’s. When Niker tells Irene, by way of conversation, that he’s been duffed up by a maniac called Robert Nobel, Irene tells my mum. Naturally enough, Mum calls Niker a liar and informs Irene that there is no way her son would hit anyone, least of all a boy like Jonathan Niker. She is in mid-flow apparently (she has had enough of that
Jonathan Niker, is going to go into school and sort out the situation once and for all), when someone finally brings her the message: your son’s school called, they have him in cold storage, perhaps you’d care to go and collect him?

You’d expect her to be angry. I expect her to be angry. What I’m not expecting is what I actually see on her face when she arrives: terror. It is as though some deep part of her believes that, this time, her son really has lost it. It’s that look, that fear, that finally puts my brain back inside my body. Up until this moment I’ve been drifting. Sitting in the room they call ‘The Chiller’, a bleak little place next to the Headmaster’s study, and listening to the talk. And they’ve all been talking: Mr Orde, Head of Pastoral Care; Mr Blacket, Headmaster; Miss Raynham; even Catherine. All of them talking and discussing and being reasonable. And if they’ve asked me questions, and they have, I’ve answered them, but only in the way you do when the question isn’t really very important. Regret and remorse are words that have been bandied about. And I think I’ve been asked if I feel either of these things. But the truth is I’ve had very little in the way of feelings for the last couple of
hours, either for myself or for Niker. But the moment I see my mum’s face I want to say sorry.

“Sorry, Mum.”

I see some of her fear drain away then. She walks over to where I’m standing alone and puts her arms about me. Then she says, lioness-fierce: “Things haven’t been easy for Robert at home. If it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine.”

The Head of Pastoral Care ahems and then Mr Blacket starts a speech about how he knows it’s a first offence but in the light of the severity of the physical attack, not to mention the damage to school property, they have no option but to exclude me. We will be receiving a letter about how long the exclusion will be for, but it is unlikely to be for less than a week. There’s some more discussion and Mr Orde mentions “counselling” more than once. Finally, Mum says: “Robert looks exhausted. May I take him home now?”

It’s the middle of the afternoon but she makes me hot milk and puts me to bed. I sleep. When I wake at 8pm she asks me no questions except what I’d like in my sandwiches. Then I sleep again until the morning.

At breakfast, she sits with me, which she doesn’t always, and says:

“Now would you like to tell me what all this is really about?”

Afterwards, I realise she must have been asking me for a different story. But of course there isn’t a different story. There’s only the truth and when I try and tell it she exclaims: “That wretched coat!” And when I say how that wretched coat could save Mrs Sorrel’s life and how Niker was tearing it, breaking it, and so maybe breaking Mrs Sorrel’s life, all that happens is that the fear comes back into her eyes.

“I’m going to ring your father,” she says and puts the phone on speaker.

It’s 7.50am and she gets Dad’s new wife on the line. “I need to talk to Nigel,” Mum announces. Jo huffs and even we can hear the morning commotion as she hands over the phone.

“This is not a convenient time,” says Dad.

“It’s never a convenient time for you,” says Mum. “It wasn’t a particularly convenient time for me yesterday afternoon when I was called at the hospital by your son’s school and told to collect him because he was being excluded for beating up another child.”

“What!” says Dad.

“You heard. And if you want to hear more, perhaps you’d care to make a visit.”

“This really isn’t fair, Annie. You know perfectly well that the earliest time I can visit is Friday and that’s when Robert has his… thing.”

‘Not any more he doesn’t,” says Mum. “No school. No Sharing. So Friday will be a fine time. See you then.” She puts down the phone.

“What!” I say.

“He’s coming Friday.”

“But the Sharing! No-one’s said anything about me being excluded from the Sharing.”

“Since the flashpoint for the fight, as I understand it,” says Mum grimly, “was work for the Sharing, I hardly think they’re going to invite you back to run amok in the Home, do you?”

“But I have to be there!”

“Sorry, Robert. No.”

“But they haven’t said anything about the Sharing. No-one’s mentioned it!”

“Well, I’m mentioning it. You’re not only excluded, you are grounded, young man. So even if they do say you can go, I say you can’t. Finito. End of
story. Right now it’s more important for you to see your dad.”

“Not to me, it isn’t. Not to Mrs Sorrel!”

“Robert, look at me…”

I look at her.

“In less than five minutes I have to leave for work. If I don’t leave, and I’ve thought about not leaving, then I will probably lose my job as well as my mind. If I lose my job, neither of us will be able to eat. So you have to promise me, Robert, not to leave the house. Not to go anywhere near the school. Not to go near the Home. In short, not to go out, Robert. Do you understand me?”

“I understand you.”

“So promise.”

“I…”

“Do it.”

“I promise not to go… near the school.”

“Robert?”

“Yes, yes, I said it didn’t I?”

She puts on her coat. “You’ve got your work sheets, haven’t you?”

“Yes. Ten pages of maths. Can’t wait.”

“Well, I want to see all of it done by the time I get back.”

“What time will you be back?”

“What do you take me for? A fool? I could be back any time,” she announces. “Bye now. And Robert?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“Yes, Mum.”

I watch her go. I’m not such a fool either. Most of her shifts are eight hours, and the journey to the hospital adds at least three-quarters of an hour each way, longer if she’s returning home between four and five. So I reckon I have plenty of time, which is good, because I need plenty of time. I have to get into school and find the coat. I have to retrieve the two feathers Niker broke and get more feathers from the graveyard and the beach. And, most important of all, I have to get to Mrs Sorrel. Check she’s all right. I promised Ernest. “Don’t leave it too long before you come again,” he said. And I said: “I promise.” Surely this promise, made first, takes precedence over the promise I made Mum? Especially as I also promised Mrs Sorrel I’d make the coat. And in any case, a promise to save someone’s life has to be more important than a promise to abide by some rule and regulation made up by a school. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it!

So how come every time I try to put my jacket on I hesitate? It’s 8.15 and I’m still dithering by the front door, jacket half on half off, when the bell rings. It makes me jump. Mum says I should never open the door without looking through the spyhole first. I open the door without looking through the spyhole. It’s Kate.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hello.”

“Can I come in?”

I am not allowed into the outside world, but no-one has said anything about the outside world coming into my home. “Sure,” I say and stand aside. Kate Barber, she of the irresistible dimple, walks into my hall.

“I was just on my way to school,” she says (which as we know from the relative geography of her house and mine cannot be true), “and I thought I’d stop by. To see how you are.”

“To see how I am?” I motion the angel into the kitchen. She sits down at the kitchen table. “I’m fine.” Anyone would be fine whose dimpled angel had finally consented to come into their house and sit at their kitchen table.

She raises an eyebrow.

“I’ve been excluded,” I add.

“Yes, I heard.”

There’s a pause.

“How’s Niker?” I ask.

“I went to see him last night.”

“Oh?” A surge of disappointment. She visited him too. And first.

“He’s OK. Physically all right, that is. But I think he’s quite shocked.”

There’s a silence. Then I ask the thing that’s been troubling me. “Why didn’t he hit me back?”

“He did.” She looks at me curiously. “Or tried to. Don’t you remember?”

“Not exactly.” And I don’t remember exactly. The events of the afternoon have congealed into a red blur.

“He just couldn’t connect. You were too strong for him.”

“Too strong for Niker?”

“Yes. You got bigger. Right in front of my eyes. You grew.”

“That’s what Mrs Sorrel said. She said I’d got bigger. But I think she meant inside.”

“But it was sort of inside. As though there was
something or someone inside you doing the fighting. A Hercules. A superman. Whatever Niker did, he couldn’t have won. It was as if you had the moral right of the whole world on your side.”

“Hitting people is wrong,” I mention.

“Oh, I know. And it was horrible too. Seeing you pound him like that. And part of me kept thinking, it’s not his fault, leave him alone…” She trails off and then she pulls something from her bag. “Here, I brought you something.”

It is the coat of feathers.

“Oh thank you, Kate. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I gather the coat to me. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

“Yes, I do,” she say. “That’s it really, that’s what I saw yesterday. This isn’t just a piece of art or a bunch of feathers, is it? It’s something else. Something bigger.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Can you tell me?”

“It’s… it’s Mrs Sorrel’s life,” I say. Kate doesn’t laugh. “That’s what I was fighting for. Her life.” Kate’s face does not fill with fear. I tell her everything. Pour it out, overwhelmed with gratitude to be able to talk to someone who is prepared to listen. “So you see,” I
conclude, “I have to finish the coat and I have to go to the Sharing.”

She nods.

“How did you get the coat anyway?” I ask.

“Told Miss Raynham that Catherine needed it, that she’d asked me to fetch it.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You already have. Now – what else can I do?”

“I need more feathers. From the graveyard. Pigeon feathers. Or from the beach. As many as you can. I have to finish the coat quickly. And I also need those feathers Niker broke. At least the grey one. The Chance House feather. That triggered Mrs Sorrel, that started her desire for the coat. I need that feather back, Kate.”

Again she nods. Then she says: “Robert?”

“Yes?”

“What really happened to Niker in Chance House?”

“Nothing.” His being scared doesn’t seem so important any more.

“OK,” she persists, “what happened to you then? What changed you?”

I shrug.

“It’s like you found something there.”

“I did.”

“What?”

“The feather. Three feathers actually.”

“Seriously, Robert.”

“Seriously, Kate. Three feathers and… some confidence maybe.” I look at her angel face. “Courage even. And do you know what? I sometimes think that’s exactly what Mrs Sorrel sent me there to find. So you see, I reserve my right to remain a tiny bit bonkers after all.”

“I like you bonkers,” Kate says and smiles. And this time the dimple is especially and only for me. And I am at last my own dream, a boy standing on the edge of a lake throwing stones and watching as the water radiates dimples. “I’ll find that Chance House feather for you,” Kate continues, “and the white one.”

“They may just be on the Art Room floor,” I say. “Or chucked in the bin.”

“I’ll check. And I’ll ask Niker. And after school I’ll go to the beach and the graveyard. I’ll get those feathers. As many as you need.”

“Thank you. Thank you for ever.”

“I have to go now. But I’ll be back. You’ll see.”

When she goes a light seems to go out of the house. I fret. I want to visit Mrs Sorrel now,
immediately. But I have to be careful and I have to be wise. The most important thing is to finish the coat and now, with Kate’s help, I can do that without leaving the house. If I’m caught away from home now, then Mum’s tenuous trust in me will be broken. And my only hope of getting to the Sharing is if Mum still has confidence in me, believes that I’ll stay put. Otherwise she’ll stay put. Sit in the house with me.

But what’s to stop me phoning? Making contact that way? Mayfield has one of those wheelie phones they have in hospitals. I’ve seen it. They can just wheel it to Mrs Sorrel’s bed and then I’ll tell her everything. I’ll tell her to hang on, that the coat is coming, that everything will be all right.