The Burying Beetle (9 page)

I dreamt once I was blind. That must be worse than being dead, I think. I would hate to be blind. Though I suppose I would still be able to hear the sea, and stroke Charlie’s soft fur and hear her purr.

And I could listen to great music and perhaps I could become an expert on recognising birdsongs. Miss Kezia Stevens, the world-famous birdsong expert. They could take me to a rainforest and I could tell them which birds were there in the high canopy where no one could see them.

Perhaps I could be a famous detective who always gets her man because she can hear things that seeing detectives can’t hear. I remember when I was little I used to walk along with my eyes closed pretending I was blind and seeing how long I could go without falling over something.

When I was staying with Grandma and Grandpop I was allowed to go to the seafront shelter near their bungalow and sit with the blind man who always sat there in the mornings. They knew him, so it was all right to talk to him. I used to tell him all about what was going on around him. I never used the verb to see though, in case it upset him. It was very difficult sometimes, knowing what to say and what not to say. For example, there was this very beautiful dog – a Dalmatian – and I described it to him: a tall dog with short hair, white with black spots. But did he know white? He knew black. Or when you’re blind is everything a white mist? Sometimes, when I concentrate, and close my eyes, I can see amoeba-like blotches of colour pass over my eyeball, red usually. Maybe blind people get patterns and things they can sort of see.

Rambo just had a sniff of something disgusting on my shoe. Cats open their mouths as if to say Ugh when they smell something they don’t like – I read that and then I noticed it’s absolutely true. He’s so funny – he started sneezing violently.

I can’t see or smell anything on the shoe.

Rambo has eyes like gold marbles – you can see the round ball-ness of them, the pupils thin vertical pillars of unfathomable black. His eyes remind me of lava lamps. He’s a very beautiful short-haired tabby with longer fur in his ears and long spurs on his front paws and he stretches out like a lion. He has black paw-pads unlike the other two cats, who’re black and white and who have pink paw-pads, except they’re rather soiled and grubby. I remember Charlie’s kitten paw-pads before she ever went outside and dirtied them – like unripe raspberries.

I do love cats. I’m so glad we have sullen, stealthy, silent, elegant pussy-cats whose only sound is a deep purring, and not stupid dogs who want adoration all the time and go
love me, love me, love me, yap yap woof
with their eyes and tongues, and fall over themselves, and thump their tails on the furniture, and you have to clean up after them when they poo. Cats bury their shit.

Mum always says lavatory, not toilet. But once when we were in Spain with friends of theirs they had a discussion about the
word for going to the loo, and she insisted she only used the
word lavatory, and then Daddy called out to her later and she shouted back, ‘I’m on the bog!’ We all fell about laughing. She was furious.

There’s a big book here called
Roget’s Thesaurus
. I thought it might be about prehistoric animals. But it’s better than that. All about words. Cool.

I hear a new bird song – not a song, an anxious shout –
dit dit, da da, dit dit dit
– like an urgent Morse Code message. SOS. Find bins, take off glasses, look in direction of sound of bird. Poodlebums and buggering Nora – can’t see a thing. It’s more difficult than it looks, this bird-watching, bird-identification lark (not a deliberate pun). Grandpop used to make the most awful puns. He thought he was being very amusing and we had to laugh each time he did it. Grandma said we shouldn’t encourage him. She never did.

I have written a poem about Charlie, called ‘A Cat is a Poem’.

A Cat is a Poem

My black and white cat is a poem

Purring, leaning to my arm,

Butting her head on mine,

Her arsehole a pursed mouth,

Her antennae in touch with my head,

Her pink toes stretch in ecstasy,

Her fur smells of leaf mould, bonfires,

Damp sphagnum moss, and green tea.

I don’t actually know what green tea smells like but I needed a word to rhyme with leaf and ecstasy. It can’t be very good because it was too easy. Mind you, I did have to use the dictionary a lot for the difficult words, like sphagnum and ecstasy and antennae.

I have the feeling that even simple poems are difficult to get right. And am I allowed to use
arsehole
in a poem? There’s a book here by a poet who uses
fuck
in a poem, so it must be OK.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad
. His words, not mine.

The more I read, the more I realise how little I know, and the more I want to learn it all, or as much as I have time for. It’s quite exciting, really, knowing you are probably going to die before you grow old. It means there is no time to waste.

THE
BLUE
HANG
-
GLIDER is back, and it’s hanging right over the spot where the peregrine falcons have their nest. I’ve looked through the binoculars but I can see no sign of the birds at the nest,
or in the sky. I can’t see the nest from here anyway. I have to go onto the coast path to see it. The man is wearing goggles and a black and orange wetsuit sort of thing. He’s looking down. He’s trying to hover like a kestrel. These binoculars are brilliant. They make me feel as if I am there with him, hanging over the edge of the cliff. But he’s much too close to the peregrine nest. They must be frightened by this huge bird thing like a pterodactyl hovering over them. It would serve him right if he fell and hurt himself. I get the camera and take some pictures of him, showing where he is in relation to the nesting ledge. Ginnie will be interested.

Oh my God! What’s he doing? He’s gone onto the cliff. I can’t see him. Is he after the young bird? No, he’s dropped! He’s lost control and fallen like a stone, his glider like a broken kite crumpled on a ledge on the cliff. He’s half hidden under the billowing blue fabric. He’s not moving. There’s no one else in sight. I’ll have to call for help. 

‘Hello, an accident
– ambulance please, air ambulance. Me? Augusta Stevens, Peregrine Cottage, Peregrine Point, near St Ives. Yes, an accident. A hang-glider. He’s fallen and is on a cliff edge. On the cliff below the railway track at Peregrine Point, near St Ives. It’s difficult to find. No, there’s no road. Just the railway line. The branch line. You can see him from here though, yes, Peregrine Cottage. OK, OK. Yes, I’ll be here. OK. Thanks, goodbye.’

The hang-glider wing is torn and flapping in the wind. It’s blowing over the cliff edge, but the man’s not moving. What can I do to help? Maybe he wasn’t trying to harm the peregrine at all, maybe he was just curious. The wing is tearing more and now some of it has ripped off completely and is being whisked away by the wind. Should I do something? What? I can’t get to him, even if I walk along the railway track. And I said I’d wait here, anyway. And the trains are running. God, I wonder if he’s dead.

It’s terrible not being able to do anything. Ten minutes go by very slowly. Still no bird. I am taking photographs of the torn sail as it drifts down the cliff. It has snagged on a bush and is stuck there. There are several men in orange jackets on the railway line. They are hurrying towards where the man fell. And here comes a helicopter. It’s huge. It’s the Navy rescue helicopter. The noise is tremendous. The house is shaking. The men are signalling. The noise is awful. The helicopter is hovering right next to the cliff, our cliff, just behind our trees. Now there are coastguards, firemen, police, paramedics, ambulance people, all sorts of people running along the railway line. They must have stopped the train. They are climbing down to the hurt man, carrying something. There’s two people, I think. They’re scrambling down by rope to get to him and now they’re trying to get him onto a stretcher. That’s what they were carrying. The helicopter is dropping a line to them. The wind is very gusty and the helicopter has to get in extremely close to the cliff. It looks so dangerous. Here’s another helicopter, the small air ambulance. It has gone over the top of the cliff, the hilltop above us, where the farm land is and has settled there. The paramedics are attaching the stretcher to the line. The man is wrapped up like a mummy and strapped onto the stretcher and he’s being lifted into the air. One of the paramedics is hoisted up with the injured man. They are safely in the helicopter and it speeds away over the bay towards Truro and the hospital. I’m still taking pictures.

It’s like a very noisy action movie. Mum will be so cross she’s missed it all.

The doorbell rings and it’s Ginnie.

‘Have you come to see if the peregrine’s OK?’ I ask her. I feel guilty that I hadn’t thought to phone her and tell her what was happening.

‘Yes, I’m going to climb up the cliff and see that the nest is still there. Are you all right? Was it you who phoned for the ambulance?’

‘Yes, it was. I’ve been keeping an eye on the nest, but I haven’t seen the birds today at all.’

‘If they survive that racket, they’ll survive anything,’ says Ginnie.

I quickly take a picture of her, before she can complain. I’ve covered the whole event from start to finish and need her portrait to complete the story. She laughs.

‘You better give me the film when you’ve finished it and I’ll get it processed for you.’

‘It’s finished now.’ I rewind the film and take it out of its sprockets and give it to her.

She says, ‘I’m going to climb up the cliff to get to the nest.’

‘It looks very dangerous,’ I say.

‘I’m a mountaineer, don’t worry.’

‘Cool,’ I say, and she leaves.

Then a policeman calls and thanks me for telephoning so promptly. He says the man has two broken legs and rib damage, but his spine seems to be undamaged.

‘He was lucky. If you hadn’t seen the accident happen he could have been there all night, or until someone noticed he was missing. He could have died of exposure or something. Well done, Miss.’

I feel my head swelling as he speaks.

Another man comes to the door. It’s a journalist from the local newspaper. The policeman knows him. He asks me tell the story o
f what happened, and what I saw. I tell him I took pictures and that Ginnie has the film. He even takes a photo of me, standing on the deck with the cliff in the background. I don’t even notice the height, much. It’s so exciting, all this coming and going. I love it.

Ginnie climbs the steep and rocky cliff and has a good look. She is coming down again, safe, onto the beach.

Now, she has gone and so have all the coastguards, policemen, firemen, paramedics, the journalist, everyone.

Back to silence, apart from the sea and the wind, of course.

When Mum comes home, she is totally amazed at the story I give her. She thinks I’m inventing it.

Then on Friday, when the local paper is printed and Mum has collected it from the shop, we see my photographs on the front page, the
‘before and after’ photos, the hang-glider soaring and hovering, then the broken wing. There’s even a picture of me and some of the story as I told it. Mum goes straight back to the shop and buys several more copies. One for Daddy, one for Summer and two for us.

Note: A badger came to visit last night. Mum woke me at about midnight to tell me to come very quietly to the back door. There was a big badger eating the cats’ leftover food and some old cheese. He was eating very carefully from the metal dish, nibbling neatly and slowly, not like a dog eats
– wolfing the food
–
but eating politely. We had the light on in the kitchen so we could see the badger just outside the door. When he had finished he turned round and went bustling off, his big bum wobbling like a spaniel’s. It was so exciting. I’ve only ever seen a dead one before, squashed on the road. It was much bigger than I expected, but its head was narrow and small, with lovely black and white stripes. I hope he comes again tonight. It could have been a female, of course. I wonder if they look different. I’ll look them up.

Another sunny night. Lots of stars
–
don’t have the faintest idea what stars are up there.

DADDY
USED
TO
drive us to see Grandpop and Grandma on Sundays sometimes. He always liked Grandpop and Grandma. Probably because he was an orphan. He was quite old when his parents died, so he wasn’t a child orphan. I think he was about twenty. I wish I could have met them. He used to tell me about them, though. His dad sold cars and smoked cigars and his mother wore corsets with bones in them. He says it was like cuddling a tree. And her hair was tight white curls, but sometimes they were mauve, sometimes pink. She used to iron his dad’s shirts and take half an hour over each one. A perfectionist. How boring. Mum doesn’t ever iron anything. Life’s Too Short. Grandpop ironed his own shirts. Grandma, like Mum, was always too busy to iron things.

We always had fun on those journeys to see them in Essex. Mum used to say that we weren’t allowed to use swear words when we were at their house, because they were of a Shockable Generation, so we used to get rid of all our day’s worth of swear words on the way there. Mum would say, ‘
fuck and shit, fuck and shit’ about a hundred times, and we would fall about laughing.