25. Wren
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WREN
In Kyoto, there are streets with rivers running between them.
The occasional small bridge connects both sides, but otherwise you pick one and walk along it.
If it is quiet enough, you can hear the trickling of water.
At night, streetlamps glow and reflect back on the surface, like large fireflies.
The air smells of food, and locals and tourists alike are walking along, choosing where to enjoy their evening.
There are no goldfinches in Kyoto.
I don’t know this for sure; I have looked it up online, and while there are other finches, I am assured that gold is one that is not native.
That would be a relief.
“Miss.”
I would not need much space—a studio. A tiny kitchen. As long as I have my books and my view of the river. As long as I step outside and I am not here. Because right now I am not in Kyoto walking those streets.
“Miss!”
I am an English teacher in a comprehensive school only ten minutes’ drive down the road from the one I attended as a pupil.
And my students are trying to get my attention.
“Yes?” I say, shaking all thoughts of Kyoto away. “What is it?”
“We finished the worksheet, like, ages ago.” This is Melanie, the spokesperson for a class of Year Nines who are more silent than most.
A quick glance at my computer tells me there are still fifteen minutes left of the lesson. Too long to begin packing away. Too short for something completely new.
“Right then.” Macbeth is our topic for the term; there is not the same anguish and agony I remember from when I studied it. Cuckoo reading out Lady Macbeth in her dramatic style and yet making it so real, and then Goldie and her powerful Macbeth—
Well. It is not like that here. The words are read stilted and unsure; they stumble in most parts; they don’t understand where to place emphasis.
The power of passages becomes limp, and the characters refuse to leap from the page.
When Macbeth did the dreaded deed, there was no reaction, their eyes following along the script with as much enthusiasm as for any other moment, as if they weren’t really reading at all.
“How do we feel about their different responses to the murder of their king?” I ask. “Macbeth was reluctant, and now triumphant. Lady Macbeth was the one pushing him to do it, and now suffers the most guilt.”
Crow would be all over this. I picture her at the front of the class, exercise book crammed with notes, worksheet neatly filled in with far too much detail, her hand waving aggressively in the air.
Cuckoo would wait for her answer, then stick her hand up for an immediate rebuttal whether she believed in it or not.
Starling would join the debate then, adding some particularly gruesome angle.
I’d stay quiet, dutifully noting all of their good points down, following along with my own argument in my head.
And Goldie would only join in if provoked, then say the smartest point of all.
Stop it. That’s twice Goldie has come into my head today. And now the others too.
“What do we think?” I press when no one volunteers an answer.
They are a class of wrens, peering up at me, fear in their eyes that they might be chosen for a response.
Melanie cautiously raises her hand.
“Yes, Melanie?”
“This wasn’t on the worksheet,” she says, and I deflate.
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t. Why don’t we go through those questions instead?”
Later, when the class has gone and the day is done and I am at my desk answering emails, there is a knock at my door.
Shelley, second in the department, comes bump-first into my room.
She is due at the end of the month, but looks ready to pop any minute.
She’s nice enough, but I can’t help bracing myself for whatever she has to say.
When I first arrived, I didn’t think I’d be here long, didn’t make much of an effort with the rest of the staff, and it’s meant I’m often left to my own devices.
Don’t join them for lunch or break, don’t work in their rooms after school where more conversation is done than marking.
After three years, it’s become too awkward to mend.
I am polite, they are polite, but we are not friends.
“Before you go,” she says, “I wanted to say what a great job you’ve been doing this year. Maggie and I are really happy with your progress.”
Maggie, Head of Department. Rarely seen without a cup of coffee in hand and always rushing about.
She teaches like she’s late for something, all hands and gestures and words pouring out of her mouth at speed, but she gets great results.
The idea of the two of them sitting and discussing me fills me with dread, even more so because it’s positive.
Three years. Fully qualified. What am I doing?
“Anyway,” Shelley says, “that’s all for now. Keep up the good work. Have a nice evening!”
She’s gone as quickly as she arrived, door clicking shut behind her.
I close my eyes and imagine rivers, trickling water, night sky.
I open them and spy tinsel falling down from where it has been pinned on the whiteboard and correct it.
Outside the windows it is four o’clock and already dark.
My face in the reflection is too solemn; my lips stretch into a smile.
Christmas soon. Another year gone. Another year without her.
Without all of them, really.
The windscreen is iced over when I reach my car, and I have to sit for ages with the engine running.
The low petrol light is on, which means I’ll have to top up another tenner on the way home, and the masking tape holding up the glove compartment has peeled off, making it hang loose, some of the contents fallen into the foot space below.
But I force my smile back on when another teacher gives me a wave as they walk past, only letting it drop when they’ve driven away, unaffected by the frost.
As if to add a cherry on top, my phone starts ringing and it is my mother.
I could ignore it, but she will call again. And again. I would be delaying the inevitable.
“Mum,” I say when I answer her. “Hello.”
“Hello.”
A pause, as if she expects me to talk, as if I am the one who called her. I know her games though, so I wait her out.
“How was school?”
“Good. My second in department praised me today.”
“I should think so. You’re a Cambridge graduate. You’re wasted at a place like that. I still think you should at least apply for that job going at the grammar.”
Two minutes, that’s all it took. Two minutes and here is the Cambridge degree and what a failure I am for working at a local comprehensive.
“I already told you, they’re looking for people with PhDs.”
“You could get a PhD. Go back to Cambridge, and—”
“Is this why you’ve called? To talk about that job?”
“No, as a matter of fact. It’s about Bishop’s House.”
Bishop’s House, Bishop’s House, Bishop’s House.
I am instantly transported. Thick, dark nights, creaking floors, sparkling wallpaper, rocking chairs, china dolls, old newspapers.
Laughter and whispers and dares and thrills.
Focus on that, focus on nothing else. But of course, it is impossible.
There is despair and tears and pain and that scream—that scream is the worst—and there are dirty nails, there is mud and dirt and aching arms and sore backs and shovels and a body, her body, down in the ground among the gnarled trees.
Our haunted nest.
We never returned. We were never together again. Crow and Starling and I went to university, and Cuckoo went to work. We couldn’t face each other because in each of our eyes we saw her. And we wanted to forget. Desperately wanted to not be reminded of her.
It hasn’t worked. For me at least. Perhaps the others are leading full, enriched lives.
Perhaps they don’t see Goldie in fragments.
Ten steps ahead, or turned away from me, or in the corner of my eye, or passing me by through shadows and mirrors, her long, golden hair all I can see, as she never shows me her face.
I find her in shopping centers, girls with blonde hair who blink, startled at me when I dart in front of them to prove to myself it isn’t her, women in the street who clutch their handbags tighter at my frantic expression. But of course none of them are Goldie.
She is dead.
Mocking me, she walks by the defrosting windscreen, too blurred to be seen properly.
“What’s happened to Bishop’s House?” I say. “Why would I care about that place?”
“No need to be snippy. You seemed to care the last time it almost sold.”
“Almost sold?” I repeat, heart pounding.
Not again. Not again.
She draws in a long breath. “You’ll be happy to know, after so many years, that your mother has finally sold it!
I cinched the deal. I’ll be getting a big commission.
This time, I waited until keys were exchanged before celebrating.
Isn’t that fantastic? And it’s indeed getting completely demolished and rebuilt. ”
My heart is so loud I turn to look at my driver’s-side window in case someone is there, rapping at it to get my attention. But I am alone; it is the thundering of my chest. My mouth is sucked dry. I am glad to be sitting down as otherwise I would fall.
“Isn’t that brilliant?” Mum continues. “I thought after what happened last time, after Hugo Fletcher went missing, the place was cursed. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
I confronted her when it came out later that Hugo and his wife had been the prospective buyers of Bishop’s House, when she was in front of the television and saw his face on the news.
Her disappointment that the sale was off.
And I said to her: You realize who that was? That you were selling the house to?
Of course, she said. But I’m not his friend. It’s just business.
“Congratulations,” I whisper. You have ruined me.
I will have to tell them. Call them up, hope they have the same numbers. Speak to them after seven years. Intrude on their lives with the worst thing we ever did.
And bring us together again.
Goldie, I am sure, would find this hilarious.