The Bearded Tit Part 15

A big tut from Kramer, a dramatic headshake and exit with door-slam.

I took my towel and toiletries down to the bas.e.m.e.nt where the baths were kept. My bath should be just right by now.

The cubicle door was locked.

I don't believe this.

I heard singing.

b.u.g.g.e.r. Someone had sneaked in and stolen my bath.

I banged on the door. 'Oi, that's my bathwater, you know!'

'Oh, terribly sorry, I'll leave it in for you!' The voice was distinctive and instantly recognizable. A third-year English student who was a big noise in the university theatre and in Footlights.

'Clean the bath after you and fill it up again,' I shouted at the door. 't.o.s.s.e.r,' I added quietly.

'It's still warm.'

'I don't want your filthy water, Griff. Get a move on!'

'I'm not all that dirty,' he said.

'No, but I'm very very dirty,' said a mischievous girl's voice after some playful splas.h.i.+ng. dirty,' said a mischievous girl's voice after some playful splas.h.i.+ng.

'So am I,' giggled another.

By Monday morning I was sufficiently clean to go and meet JJ for her 10.30 a.m. coffee-break. Unfortunately this coincided with the last fifteen minutes of a supervision on 'Symbolism in Lorca'. Having postponed this session every week for nine weeks, this was my last chance of the term and I had to attend. I'd even done the essay. My first of the term. It wasn't a great piece of work: too short and lacking things like insight, facts, comment, thought, originality and decent punctuation, but it was finished and handed in on time finished and handed in on time.

Eventually.

The supervisor for twentieth-century Spanish literature was Dr Clarkson, who was known to be 'fond of a small sherry'. I had my fingers crossed for a 'no-show'. He'd been at Rex the Chaplain's drinks do the night before and had looked destined for a sick-note.

The door to his rooms rather disappointingly did not have a note pinned to it saying, 'Dr Clarkson apologizes, but due to illness he is unable to supervise today.'

'Ah good morning, McGrath.' He swept up the stairs behind and into his rooms, beckoning me to follow.

d.a.m.n. Now I'd have to think of some ruse to get out of there early.

'Nice to see you bang on time, Mr McGrath. No ill effects from Rex's sherry, I hope.'

Bingo.

'Er...actually, Dr Clarkson, funny you should say that but I' do feel distinctly queasy. Obviously I couldn't miss the supervision but I hope you'll forgive me if I make an unseemly dash for the lavatory at any moment.'

'Of course.'

'Say about ten-twentyish,' I said under my breath.

He looked at me, frowned then laughed. 'Come to think of it, you do look pretty d.a.m.ned awful, if I may say so!'

Cheeky b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I felt great. And I looked looked great. Well, as great as I could. I certainly looked better than he did. He began pouring himself a coffee and took a nibble of biscuit. great. Well, as great as I could. I certainly looked better than he did. He began pouring himself a coffee and took a nibble of biscuit.

'I'm afraid I felt your essay lacked a certain something, Mr McGrath,' he said, spitting crumbs in my direction.

'What, sir?'

'Well: ideas, thought, originality. That sort of thing. In fact-' He stopped suddenly and went disturbingly pale. 'Oh my G.o.d!' He put hand to his mouth. 'I think I'm...' He stood up gingerly.

'Look, I'm sorry, can we call it a day, I'm...oh no!' His dash from the study was as welcome as it was unseemly and within a minute I was walking out of college towards Blackwaters.

My main worry as I approached the shop, giddy with nerves, was how, after the tender heights and erotic depths of Friday night, JJ and I were going to manage to slip back into polite tea-shop normality, sipping our drinks, holding hands, talking inconsequentially of humdrum things, chaperoned by a workaday, drizzly, city-centre Monday morning.

Well, we had the rest of our lives together to solve that problem, I suppose.

Critchley aimed a nervous nod in my direction from the front desk of the natural history department.

'Morning,' he said through a weak smile.

'Morning. Is JJ around?'

He took his gla.s.ses off, rubbed his eyes and squinted at me.

'Oh come on, you know where JJ is today. She's away. On her honeymoon. She got married on Sat.u.r.day.'

DEATH IN THE SKY.

A punch in the back of the neck. No karate chop this, but an eternity of pain squeezed tightly into a fist of feathers. Approaching at two hundred miles an hour from nowhere. First there is serenity; there are the everyday things that every day brings in an everyday sort of way; you are going about your humdrum business or, perhaps, you are grasping the day with expectation and joy, perhaps you are even flying, then BANG! punch in the back of the neck. No karate chop this, but an eternity of pain squeezed tightly into a fist of feathers. Approaching at two hundred miles an hour from nowhere. First there is serenity; there are the everyday things that every day brings in an everyday sort of way; you are going about your humdrum business or, perhaps, you are grasping the day with expectation and joy, perhaps you are even flying, then BANG!

Pain.

And blackness.

Maybe just blackness. Pain would be a luxury. Pain means you still feel. Pain is a message from your brain to say that you are still alive. Yes, pain means life.

The cliff-dwelling pigeon may feel nothing at all. There is wind, there is sea, there is sky, there is a huge expanse of light and sound, then nothing. But you don't feel nothing. You can't feel 'nothing'. You just stop feeling something. But, then, you can't stop feeling something, because that implies you can feel the feeling stopping. Death is not part of your life. There is your life and then there is death. There is no in between.

But let us think about the peregrine falcon. One of the world's fastest birds. But it's only fast with the powerful hand of gravity behind it. It could not catch a spine-tailed swift in level flight. But its deadly mastery of the sky deserves more than a little consideration and respect. Pigeons are very fast fliers, but they don't manoeuvre in a particularly agile way. The peregrine requires much skill and some very specialist equipment to hunt and kill in its unique style.

Alt.i.tude. That's its first weapon. It needs to be high enough not only to effect its lightning dive, but to be unseen. You surely do not expect an insignificant dark grey dot in the white sky to blossom within a few seconds into your bright red death.

Its victims cannot easily cover the sky above them. They can't fly upside-down. So the falcon has to gain alt.i.tude. For this, of course, the bird uses its wings. But it has virtually two sets of wings. Low-alt.i.tude wings and high-alt.i.tude wings. It has two broad wings with feathers spread wide, quickly and robustly flapped by its pugnacious breast till it reaches the desired height, and then its wings change. They become narrow and pointed. The commercial cargo plane becomes the jetfighter. It starts its descent, swimming downwards with gravity, gaining speed and then...No wings at all. It is now plummeting vertically in what is known as a 'stoop' and the wings are tucked back out of the way. It has what it needs now. The required speed and the required target.

This is all very well. But it's easy to overlook a few essentials in this stunning piece of aerobatics. The bird has to see. It has to keep its eyes focused on the target until it strikes and after. It has to breathe. This is a high-fuel operation; the bird can't hold its breath till the deed is done.

We would find it impossible without goggles and visor to travel through the air at that speed. Evolution has provided the peregrine with an 'extra' eyelid bathed with thick, viscous, transparent tears which don't evaporate. At such high speeds it would be impossible for us to breathe: the air trapped in our nostrils would prevent any other air from entering. The peregrine's nostril contains a coneshaped structure that causes air flowing past it to spin and thus be sucked in.

And one more thing we could not do is to pull out of a dive of two hundred miles an hour and go gently off in another direction. The G-forces would mash our insides. The peregrine is built to withstand these G-forces. Everything about this bird is minutely and perfectly designed for its purpose. And its purpose is to be a peregrine falcon. G.o.d would have been very excited about this one. I bet he couldn't wait to show his mates this one.

And what a great case in favour of birdwatching the peregrine falcon is! Why do you go birdwatching, people ask. Isn't it boring? At times it may be, but if once, just once will do, you see a peregrine take a pigeon in mid-air, you'll know it's all been worth it.

In the Middle Ages, such a bird was the glitzy fas.h.i.+on accessory of the rich and the aristocratic. No n.o.bleman could be without his falcon. What a sleek status symbol it is too. A Ferrari perhaps, or something more deadly to show off to your peers: a gun.

Now, the peregrine, and indeed many other falcons, has a habit that is very fortunate for the falconer. When a falcon 'downs' a bird, it tends to stand over it with its wings outspread as if protecting its quarry from others. This is called 'mantling'-which, for you etymology fans, comes from the Latin mantellum mantellum, meaning a napkin, towel, blanket or cloak. And while the falcon s.h.i.+elds its victim in a feathery cloak, it devours its favourite bit: the head, especially the choice t.i.tbits of brain and eyes. Precisely the bits of a game bird the falconer, the butchers, and you and me, have no interest in.

And this bird is not just a bird of the wilderness. Its territory is much closer to home than the remote moorland and the lofty difftops. I have seen one several times-or rather caught out of the corner of my eye the streamlined anchor shape-along the edges of Cornish cliffs. There is a place called Symond's Yat in Herefords.h.i.+re where the picturesque river Wye makes a voluptuous bend through a limestone gorge and where it is almost impossible not not to see a peregrine. And I've seen one take a pigeon from its perch on Tyne Bridge in the heart of Newcastle. In fact, in many ways, the heart of the city is to see a peregrine. And I've seen one take a pigeon from its perch on Tyne Bridge in the heart of Newcastle. In fact, in many ways, the heart of the city is the the habitat. It has two perfect ingredients: lots of high places to nest and keep watch, and lots of pigeons. habitat. It has two perfect ingredients: lots of high places to nest and keep watch, and lots of pigeons.

The city falcon is such a beautiful example of man and nature side by side. And I mean nature nature, the old 'red-in-tooth-and-claw' nature, raw nature rubbing shoulders with bankers and secretaries eating their lunchtime sandwiches on the roof terrace. You don't have to know anything about birds, but you see this one in the middle of the city and you just know from some distant folk memory, from some dim instinct, that this is more than just a bird.

I remember seeing out of the corner of my eye a bird perched openly on a bare tree in the middle of Cambridge city centre and thinking, wow, this is something. Anyone, just anyone, I'm convinced, would have noticed it and thought the same thing. Not a pigeon, no-a kestrel? No, wait, wait, wait. Stop. It's too chunky. Kestrels have a slim delicacy. A sparrowhawk? No, those markings aren't 'sparrowhawk'.

This is a peregrine. The falconer's falcon. Perhaps, even, the falcon's falcon. I stared at it. Its body was solid with power, its yellow feet squeezing the branch. The whole bird bird looked like a trap, a deadly trap poised and ready to snap. It returned my stare with full raptor intensity. Did it know? Did it know that I knew? looked like a trap, a deadly trap poised and ready to snap. It returned my stare with full raptor intensity. Did it know? Did it know that I knew?

That I knew it was special, not a kestrel or a sparrowhawk? Did it know that I was a wors.h.i.+pper? That I'd stopped at its feet to pay homage. Did it know that for those few moments I was numb with awe?

No, it didn't give a s.h.i.+t. As far as I know, it hadn't even bothered separating me from the gloomy November background. After a few seconds, it flew away. With hardly a flap, it slunk sideways with such indifference to me it seemed like a yawn on wings slanting down into the shrubby shadows.

Was it like that? Whenever I think about it, I feel there was something more. The way it flew away without flying. Perhaps its mastery of the air was such that it didn't fly. It just let go of the branch it was perched on. It unhooked its golden claws and let go. It stayed where it was and everything else moved: the branch, the tree, the garden, the city, the world just rolled away into the void, leaving falcon alone in the universe, the Master of s.p.a.ce.

FLEDGLING.

Our children are beautiful. We want to protect them. We want to protect them so that they will grow up to live happy and productive lives. They will have children. Their children will be beautiful and they will want to protect them so that they will live happy and productive lives.

And so on.

That's it.

That's all there is.

Everything else is vanity.

Art, science, music, business, technology, shopping, barbecues, third-division celebrities eating millipedes in the jungle, the Ryder Cup, flying to the moon, robbing a post office at knifepoint and learning the Latin names for birds are just vanity, rococo baubles stuck haphazardly on the urge to have children, to survive, not to die. Now that we have lost G.o.d, there is only survival. G.o.d could have cured us of our mortality but we spurned Him, we spurned the doctor and he has abandoned us and taken the medicine with him. We are alone in eternity with nothing to do but try to cling desperately on to life with increasingly fragile fingernails. The child is the best way. A child affords you the taste of eternity more than writing a poem, painting a masterpiece or winning a war.

Our children, therefore, will always be beautiful because they are an incarnation of our desire to be immortal; a personification of our eternity; a living symbol of a triumph over death.

And so all children are beautiful. Not just the beautiful ones.

The ugly, the spotty, the gawky, the unlovely, the selfish, the vain, the ginger, the violent, the deformed and the sick. Adored by their parents; they're adorable. Human activities, the invention of the soul, the wors.h.i.+p of the mind, the obedience to the heart, have obscured the message from nature to man. Somewhere scribbled in a jumble of ma.s.s and energy is the big, inescapable message, scrawled in gigantic letters on sub-microscopic particles, the message of life: your life won't last, pa.s.s it on.

Human culture and civilization has smudged this message but for the birds it's much more sharply focused. The breathless fever with which the adult bird attends to its offspring may seem inhumanly mechanical, but the message is the same.

Look at that baby-isn't she cute?

Ah, look, a baby seal-gorgeous eyes!

Look, a newborn calf- sweet!

Mummy, look, kittens-can I have one?

Wow, baby bunnies, where's my camera?

But there aren't many cute baby birds.

Young girls don't flock around the sparrow's nest to see her babies. They don't 'coo' and 'aah' at the youngsters inside.

Look into a bird's nest in the spring and recoil at the abomination inside. A troubling and troubled Jura.s.sic shadow. Baby bird: a saggy-skinned, hairy-feathered, translucent trembling bag of shrieks; a dagger-faced abortion; a body like a severed s.c.r.o.t.u.m with a blank, gawping, bug-eyed head.

But beautiful, of course.

See how the parents labour to feed this gaping mutant. See how they fuss over their mini-dinosaur. See how they want to pa.s.s life on!

And in these ugly bundles, the message is written in ruthless capitals. The strongest, largest chick gets another message from deep within its maze of molecules. It learns that it is the strongest, largest chick and it learns what that means. In a contest for food and survival, it has an advantage. It looks around at the compet.i.tion. Its brother and sisters. Weaker by an hour maybe, lighter by a milligram. That's enough. No longer family, but enemy. A few stabs and the fight is over. And then, no longer dead brother, but food. Free food. More advantage. More chance of pa.s.sing down my genes to eternity.

And so the surviving chick fledges. To the human eye, a pathetic no-man's land between baby and adult, between dependence and freedom, between nest and sky. Bigger than the adult but still helpless. In human terms, an adolescent. A student. A second-year undergraduate, maybe. Awkward, uncool, knowing everything and nothing at the same time, c.o.c.ky and prepared to take some risks; prepared to learn to fly by learning to fall. It ruffles its feathers on the rim of the nest, stretches its puny wings, and flaps. This is its life for a few weeks now: stretching and flapping, punctuated with pitiful yelps for food.

Then one day, its flaps, its strength and the wind combine to free it from the nest and it glides a few feet till it reaches another branch-if it's skilful; or lucky. More likely it hits a wall; or the ground, where it will sit motionless and panting till the urge to fly hits again. But this a dangerous time. There is a banner in the sky: a huge advert written in fireworks, bra.s.s bands and tickertape, foghorns and mortars, perceptible only to animals, announcing that there is a fledgling on the ground, in the open. Cat, dog, fox, weasel, crow, magpie, kestrel, sparrowhawk, peregrine and gull will be on the scene in seconds. For the baby bird, it is down to luck or skill as somewhere the dice are being shaken for the biggest game of chance available.

So often you see them. March, April and May. In the gutter. Nuzzled by pa.s.sing, dogs and cats to a.s.sess their edibility. Pecked half-heartedly by crows. A little feathery pouch that once contained a lifetime's potential and now contains maggots. Ready for the earth; never ready enough for the sky. A long way from home. A sodden bundle that leapt, too soon, off the ledge into the unknown.

Is it a sad truth that for the sake of the species a child has to die?

Is dying all part of growing up?

It seemed to me that I had fledged successfully but that part of me had died leaving the nest.

But it was a long, long time ago...

And, I think, on a different planet.

FEATHERED MEMENTOES.

I somehow dragged my body out of the bookshop and manhandled myself back to college. Oblivious to aggressive words and gestures as I b.u.mped my way through the crowded streets; oblivious, too, to Branfield, soaking wet, wearing just his underpants and some pond-weed, trudging back to his room; oblivious even to Kramer's sympathetic offer of chicken soup. somehow dragged my body out of the bookshop and manhandled myself back to college. Oblivious to aggressive words and gestures as I b.u.mped my way through the crowded streets; oblivious, too, to Branfield, soaking wet, wearing just his underpants and some pond-weed, trudging back to his room; oblivious even to Kramer's sympathetic offer of chicken soup.

JJ went on a honeymoon and never returned to the shop. Kramer's lugubrious but vague predictions were right; though he claimed, of course, that it gave him nothing but anguish to be right yet again.

It wouldn't have happened nowadays. Mobile phones would have made this episode in my life, so huge then, so tiny now, an impossibility. But mobile phones had not been invented and neither had 'closure'.

In those days instead of closure I had to make do with confusion and bewilderment. And tears. In a little over three months, I'd discovered what I most wanted in the world: what seemed like the only thing I'd ever wanted and the only thing I would ever want. And not only that, but I had actually attained it. For just a few hours. Then I'd lost it.

I'd also rather oddly attained a deep knowledge, a keen interest and a strange affection for birds. The knowledge seemed bizarre and meaningless now. It was as if I had been burgled. I had been robbed of all my possessions, of everything that was dear to me, but the burglars had left behind the b.u.mper Book of British Birds b.u.mper Book of British Birds, fully ill.u.s.trated with colour photos and a note saying, 'Enjoy!'

The problem with birds, though, is that they are public. They're there. Visible. In the sky. In your face. Loud. Brightly coloured. Ever-present. In all weathers, all seasons. But that's the joy of birds too! But no good if you don't want reminding of a loss.