The Bearded Tit Part 11

'Hey, I've got to get to Blackwaters before it shuts.' I stood up decisively. She stood up too and grabbed my arm. 'Me too. I'll come with you and then we can go out for a drink. Or three! Ha ha ha!'

'But...'

'And we'll see if our evening can have a different ending this time.'

'I'm sure it will.' My pessimism was undisguised.

I walked slowly back towards the bookshop to give her time to change her mind and disappear. Or just change her mind. Or, even better, just disappear. She showed no inclination to do any of these things.

'Hey, listen, why don't I do what I have to in the bookshop, and maybe we could meet later. After six thirty, maybe? Er...six thirty-one, perhaps?'

'I don't want to let you out of my sight, young man! Hey, we better stop dawdling; that shop's going to be shut!'

It was five twenty-five and the bookshop was in view. I had no idea what to do. I was slowing down, Brigid was speeding up. And pulling me by the arm. Just at that moment, JJ appeared at the main door of the shop. She was looking at her watch and turned away from us to look up the street, then started turning in our direction. I grabbed Brigjd and dragged her into an alleyway about three shops away from Blackwaters.

'Let's not bother with the bookshop,' I said. The narrowness of the alleyway crammed us up against each other. She needed no further invitation.

'Oh, Rory.'

We kissed rather incontinently for five twenty-five on an autumn evening. 'I love your impetuousness...your spur-of-the-momentness-maybe you are the devil! I love it.'

I was overwhelmed again by the giant freckled sucker, and coming up briefly for air, I suggested we moved further down the alleyway from the street.

Oh JJ, I'm so, so sorry. What could I do? I couldn't go and meet her like this. I was covered in lipstick. Worse than that, I was covered in a large, ginger South African girl. I had to get this girl away from Trinity Street.

'Let's go for a drink.'

'OK, where?'

'The Moon and Sixpence.'

'That sounds nice; where's that?'

'Newmarket Road. It's a bit of a walk but worth it.'

'Have they got nooky holes?'

What an alarming question. Nooky holes? I hoped that was some sort of South African pub game.

'They've got bar billiards.'

'You're funny. No, I mean cosy little recesses where two people can get to know each other a little bit better.'

'Oh yes, that's why I'm suggesting it.' That, and because it's miles from the centre of town and no self-respecting person, least of all JJ, would turn up there. 'It's where the dead drink,' I'd heard it described. When I first went there I discovered the dead actually served there as well. Spit and sawdust would have been most welcome in this place. They would have been luxurious extras; as would beer, hygiene and a complete roof.

But by the time we got there JJ would be on her bus home. Thinking what? What would she make of my non-appearance? That perhaps I had some important work to finish? That perhaps a lecture or supervision had overrun? No, I'd given her no reason to suppose my studies would ever prevent me seeing her.

That perhaps I'd found someone else? No, she wouldn't think that, would she? That's out of the question. There is no one else. How could she possibly think that?

That maybe I got drunk at some college society drinks do and crashed out in my room? Yes, I don't mind you thinking that, JJ, my lovely. What if she thought that and came to my room to check? Oh no, what if she came to my room and I wasn't there? Well, it would be the first time she's ever come as far as my room. That would be a plus. Or would it? Perhaps I crashed out in somebody else's room. Yes, that's more like it. What if she thought I was dead? What if she really thought I had died, that death would be the only thing to make me miss my appointment with her?

But that's true, JJ. Death is the only thing that would keep me from you. Death or a buxom, overbearing South African girl. In fact, what was was keeping me from seeing JJ? It wasn't death or Brigid. It was fear and guilt. It never crossed my mind to say, 'I can't see you now, Brigid, because I'm meeting my new girlfriend. keeping me from seeing JJ? It wasn't death or Brigid. It was fear and guilt. It never crossed my mind to say, 'I can't see you now, Brigid, because I'm meeting my new girlfriend.

Or the girl who soon will be my new girlfriend when we get to know each other better.' Why didn't I say that? Why didn't I turn up to meet JJ and say, with total innocence, 'Hey, JJ, this is Brigid, an old mate of mine from my first year. She just wanted to say h.e.l.lo to my special new friend. Right, let's go, JJ. See you around, Brigid.' Now it all seems so very easy. Back then, there was fear and guilt. Guilt about the desires I once had for Brigid, and fear of offending JJ, of hurting JJ, of losing her.

'Hey, this pub's closed down,' said Brigid as we arrived at the Moon and Sixpence. 'Look, it's all boarded up and there's a hole in the roof.'

'No, it's always like that,' I a.s.sured her. 'Let's go in. You'll like the landlady. She's a lovely person. A great sense of humour for someone who's decomposing.'

We went in and Brigid sniffed the dank air.

'I'm not drinking here; let's go somewhere decent like the Elm Tree or the Blue or the Free Press.'

I looked at my watch. It was six forty-five. It didn't matter any more where we drank. JJ wouldn't be walking in on us. She'd be on her bus home having serious doubts about our relations.h.i.+p. If we still had one. I'm so sorry to have hurt you, JJ. You were my whole life and now you're gone. Thank you for caring about me. But wait, what if she didn't care? A new fear flooded my soul. What if she didn't care that I didn't turn up? What if she found it a bit of a relief that I stood her up. What if she thought, thank G.o.d he's not here, I can catch an earlier bus home. Or go out for a drink with a mate from work. Or, it gets worse. Supposing she thought, I can use his not turning up as an excuse to finish this silly non-event of a relations.h.i.+p, which, let's face it, is only based on our common interest in birds. And I'm not convinced he actually cares much about birds anyway; he was probably just infatuated with me in that embarra.s.sing, virginal student way. He was probably just pretending to be interested in birds so he could hang around the shop all day and chat me up like that sad loser he is. I was mortified by this thought.

A searing pain seemed to dart out all over my body starting with my crotch.

'h.e.l.lo, are you there?'

Brigid had grabbed my b.a.l.l.s really tight and was squeezing them in what she claimed was an affectionate manner.

'Where are you? What do I have to do to get your attention, handsome?'

'Oh, sorry, I was miles away.'

'Why don't we just get a bottle of wine and go back to your room?' she asked insistently.

Because I don't like you, I don't want you, I'm madly in love with a special girl whom I'm letting down badly by being with you and I certainly don't want to be alone in the confines of my room with you!

Was the correct answer, but somehow I came out with a rather pompous, and bizarre, alternative.

'Because this country has the most outmoded and repressive licensing laws of anywhere in the world, based on First World War legislation and wholly inappropriate to the nineteen-seventies, so I don't intend to waste any second that a pub is actually open and serving alcohol by not being in a pub!'

'Well said!' She gave me an undeserved hug. 'We'll go back to yours after the pubs shut.'

I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to 'explain' everything to JJ when I saw her, in whatever way I could find most acceptable, and hope that it hadn't spoiled what we had.

'So, what is it that you have?' I could imagine Kramer saying. 'You have nothing to spoil.'

We had a lot to spoil.

I knew it.

JJ knew it....Didn't she?

I wasn't going to shake Brigid off easily and I was really anxious about ending up in bed with her so I thought I'd cut my losses and just try to have a convivial night's drinking. We could do several pubs, then the college bar; she would be ill and have to go home. We'd certainly be too drunk to even attempt anything vaguely carnal-well, maybe a doner kebab from Dodgy Ahmed's later on. The plan, of course, would only work if I could stay one step ahead of (that is, a few drinks behind) Brigid. She was a formidable drinker, but as she would almost certainly insist that I buy the drinks all night, I would retain some control.

The Free Press, Elm Tree, the Cricketers, the Clarendon, the Fountain, the Castle; things were going according to plan. Brigid was significantly tipsier than I. Then we went to the Maypole, where hunchback Harry refused to serve us, and then barred us after some South African expletives. Next on the itinerary was the Bun Shop. Then the Cambridge Arms and then the Maypole, from where, hunchback Harry reminded us, we'd been barred half an hour earlier. Next was the...er...then the...oh, dear I can't seem to remember where we went after that.

Oh dear. At some point in the evening things must have stopped going according to plan.

ALARM.

Birds get up early. Birds react to light. The slightest glimmer of dawn rouses them. In the summer, this can be as early as three thirty in the morning. On a cold, cloudy winter's day it can be as late as seven thirty. I record, not with a great sense of pride, that I have observed this mainly by having hangovers. A hangover is a great way to learn how early birds sing. And how loud. Before I got into birdwatching and caught them off guard by actually being up before they started singing, the birds whose songs I knew best were those early morning ones: the song thrush (t.u.r.dus deafeningus), the blackbird (t.u.r.dus headacheus), the wren (Troglodytes shutthef.u.c.kuppus), and, when I was back in Cornwall, the herring gull (Larus die-for-G.o.d's-sakeus) and the droning out-of-tune cuckooing of the collared dove (Streptopelia tedius).

I didn't know what birds they were then; I just knew their singing. Staggering home a couple of times I remember looking behind me just in case they were there, following me. Or maybe just peeping out from their roosts at me and thinking, 'Aha, look at the state of him; early chorus tomorrow, everyone!' And they'd stalk me all the way home to find out which window ledge was my bedroom so they'd know where to perch at 5 a.m.

For years I couldn't have identified the alarm call of the blackbird, so strident and insistent. But once it was pointed out to me, I realized the sound had been with me all my life. Late in the evening, early in the morning, it's the bird sound I've heard most. You will have heard it a thousand times. Since everything in the world seems to alarm the blackbird, its call is extremely easy to hear. The morning after my pub crawl with Brigid I heard a blackbird (unseen and, then, unnamed) loud and clear. It is a beautiful, fruity, flutey song, with trills and warbles. It's peaceful, but melancholy. That's what I think now. Back then it was invasive and mocking. It was one of G.o.d's creatures wagging a finger in my hungover Catholic direction. I turned over and felt my brains slos.h.i.+ng around and banging against the sides of my skull.

My room backed on to the bus station. I had eventually got used to the grinding, grunting, shuddering and spluttering of diesel engines. It had taken a while. In the first few weeks I could work out the time of day (or night) from the buses. The night bus to Bedford. The first of the city centre buses at 5 a.m. The six o'clock to Royston, the six thirty to Haverhill via Hospital.

Over the years, different things take over your early morning. Milk floats. Do they still exist? The faint hum of their battery-powered electric motors. The chirpy whistle of the milkman which, he thinks, says, 'G.o.d, what a lovely time of day this is to be up and about. It makes me so happy I want to whistle a happy tune.' But we know it really means: 'I'm up at this time while you lucky lot sleep so I'll whistle an annoyingly chirpy tune. Not only that, but I'll whistle it slightly incorrectly so it'll get on your nerves even more.'

And bin men who have to shout to each other, 'Oi, Dave, move the f.u.c.kin' thing over here,' and clang as many bin lids as they can to remind people what a dirty yet vital job they perform in the early morning as we sleep.

But that night I was lying in bed with a headache, feeling guilty that I'd let down JJ and probably ruined the best relations.h.i.+p I'd ever had (if I actually had it), and there was that insistent alarm. And a drumming on wood. A woodp.e.c.k.e.r? Not here surely. The park is close; there are woodp.e.c.k.e.rs there. No, this is a tapping. Is it a thrush banging a snail sh.e.l.l against a rock? That's what they do, isn't it, thrushes? Everybody knows that. It's one of the primary-school facts about birds: thrushes eat snails and using a rock as an anvil they smash the sh.e.l.ls to free the juicy snail inside. Magpies steal s.h.i.+ny things; that's another nursery myth about birds. The thieving magpie. Robins have red b.r.e.a.s.t.s and appear on Christmas cards because that's the only time you see robins, isn't it? Blue t.i.ts steal cream from the tops of the milk. They peck open the silver tops of milk bottles that have been left in the very early morning by the chirpy, whistling, angry milkman and suck all the cream out. What do blue t.i.ts do now that milk comes in cartons, I wonder. What do milkmen do now that everyone buys milk from petrol stations?

And come to think of it, I was lying earlier about collared doves waking me up in Cornwall. There were no collared doves in Cornwall when I was a boy. Now, you can't move for them, but back then, there were none.

How strange memory is: what spoils it most is not the things you forget but the things you keep adding to it, the things you keep rewriting, embellis.h.i.+ng and streamlining.

But one thing I'm sure of from that morning, I was lying in a fug of night-before beer and guilt, woken by the alarm call of a blackbird, when I heard a faint tapping on wood.

VISITING THE SICK.

I opened my eyes. JJ was standing over my bed. opened my eyes. JJ was standing over my bed.

'The door was open...I hope you didn't mind. I did knock.'

Panic. Sheer panic. Why was JJ was in my room? I was in bed feeling terrible and a skull-splitting alarm was going off in my head. My brain had to go from zero to 120 miles an hour on a freezing morning in less than one second. A tough call. Working backwards: drinking with Brigid, the South African waitress; miss meeting with JJ; b.u.mped into Brigid on way to meet JJ; just bought a cuddly, singing long-tailed t.i.t for JJ.

'I was just wondering what happened last night?' she asked gently and, I think, with genuine concern.

My reply was instant and delivered with all the insouciance I could manage, 'Er...I...Er...'

It was not one of my smoothest lines. I sat up in bed gripped with fear. I looked round the room, clammy with apprehension. Was Brigid still here? No, there was no sign of her. That was a start.

'I'm really sorry,' I said, 'but the thing is...'

JJ waited benignly. She was clearly keen to hear my explanation.

So was I.

I got out of bed and sat next to JJ. I realized I was fully clothed.

'You've still got your clothes on.'

That was a good sign. That seemed to indicate that if Brigid had come back to my room last night, nothing s.e.xual had taken place. I looked at the clock. 08.30. My memory hadn't reported in for work yet.

'I was worried when you didn't turn up last night.'

She seemed so genuinely upset that my self-hatred quickly went up a notch to self-loathing. Why couldn't I just have told Brigid the truth? And JJ? Why had I been so cowardly? Now I had jeopardized everything we had. I didn't know what it was exactly that we had but I knew it was precious and I knew it was fragile and I knew that I was close to blowing it all-if I hadn't already.

'I was torturing myself with all sorts of fantasies,' she said, putting her hand on my thigh and stroking it. That was the most actively physical thing she'd ever done. I put my hand on hers expecting her to pull it away. She didn't.

'I a.s.sumed,' she said, 'that you'd got fed up with me, you know, stringing you along, keeping you at arm's length. Not spending more time with you. I presumed you'd found another girl and decided to have a proper relations.h.i.+p.'

'Not at all!'

'I wouldn't have blamed you.'

'No, there's no other girl!'

'I thought I'd blown everything we've got.' It was heavenly to hear her say the words that made me realize she felt the same as I did. 'I don't know what it is exactly that we've got,' she continued, 'but I know it's very precious to me and I know it's very fragile and I don't want to lose it.'

We hugged.

'I'm so sorry about last night. Nothing's changed between us,' I said.

She clearly felt the same way about our relations.h.i.+p as I did so I felt confident enough to tell her what exactly happened. 'There was this drinks do at Rex the Chaplain's and I-'

'Look, there's no need to explain. I'm not asking for an excuse or an explanation, let's just leave it.'

Did she know I was telling her a lie and was giving me the opportunity not to? She was sensitive enough to know that genuinely nothing had changed between us whatever happened last night, so why discuss it. Having nothing to feel guilty about didn't stop me feeling guilty and I was desperate to explain.

'Yes, there was a party at Rex the Chaplain's and I think I must have had a few too many gla.s.ses of the college sherry, or Wrecks the Chaplain, as it's known, ha, and lost track of the time. When I looked at the time I realized that you would already have got your bus and gone home and I had no way of contacting you.'

'I waited a bit longer for you. I missed my usual bus just in case.'

In my mind the swamp of guilt gurgled louder. Bubbles of poison gas came to the surface and popped. The stench was unbearable.

'Are you alright?'

'Oh yes, I'm just really sorry I didn't come over to the shop in case you were still there.'

'It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter.'

What a superb girl she was. She was bright, fragrant and sunny sitting next to me on my bed. And I, sweating in my clothes and a cloud of alcoholic vapours, was dark, dank and sleazy, crippled with fear and shame.

Then, on my desk, I saw it. The fluffy, twittering long-tailed-t.i.t. This could be a great help.

'Hey, wait. I've got something for you. Close your eyes.' I went over to the desk and picked up the bird. As I did so I noticed that on its fluffy white breast was an imprint in blaring pink lipstick of Brigid's outrageously plump lips. I couldn't give this to JJ.

'Can I open my eyes yet?'