She calls them pig-oons instead of pigeons. “Look at the pig-oons!” Does it with a little sly smile every time, waiting to be asked why. She’s scattering seed all over the place, all over the lawn, so next year it’ll be sprouting thick-shafted wheat and barley in amongst the grass. Not much of it, though—the birds clean up a lot of what she drops and her hands aren’t very big.
It’s the sixth day of feeding the birds, crack of dawn. Safe enough to have her in the garden at that time. I’m putting the big bag of mealworms back in the shed and she’s crouched by the door, watching the pig-oons and a couple of rock doves at the feeders, burbling to herself. I finally crack.
“You know they’re called pigeons.”
She doesn’t turn her head, just rolls her eyes to look at me. “Yeah.”
“Why you keep calling them pig-oons then?”
“Cause they’re pigs. They eat all the food.” She looks gleeful, revelling in her own cleverness.
“Right.” Not much I can say to that. “In we go then.”
“Can I stay out and watch them?”
“No, pet, you’ll keep the others scared off if you sit out here.” I stand her on the kitchen counter instead, and she watches the blackbirds come out, and the sparrows, and the goldfinches. Bobby Robin nips in as well. She’s delighted.
Then you come in. You’ve the noise-cancelling headphones on, even though you hate them and they don’t do much. They leak. I can make out the steel drum band clattering and clanging. You kick off at me about feet on the counter tops, an angry mutter that Libby barely clocks. I lift Libby down, her squalling to see the starlings, the whole flock of them glittering on the feeders. A racket inside and out. You tell me to take Libby upstairs. Your head is hurting with the effort of not hearing her. We’re still half up the steps when you turn the stereo full blast.
My head is hurting too, but now is not the time for me to complain.
Upstairs we play the den game, wrapped up under blankets. I bring her up a pan and a wooden spoon and she plays along to the drums blaring through the floorboards until you get bored of them and switch to a gentle piano sonata, and Libby falls asleep to it.
That night, in the park, Libby is on the monkey bars, on the climbing frame, up the ropes, more excited about standing at the top of the slide than she is about going down it. I keep the torch trained on her, like a spotlight. No one out at this time. No worry that she’ll be seen, or me. Everyone knows, but it’s important to be discreet. Libby throws her head back and squarks.
“Like the birds!” she calls to me.
“Stop posing and come down!” I call back, but not too bossy. I’ve learned by now, taking a harsh tone with her just means tears or stubbornness or both.
She slithers down the slide and when she reaches the bottom she runs over and tells me she’s ready to go home now.
“We can’t yet,” I tell her. “Best stay out here for a bit.”
“Am I living with you forever?” she asks.
“A little while longer,” I tell her. She’s that young that even a little while must seem like forever. Certainly the rest of her life. I check my watch. I figure you’ve probably washed the counter top a few times over now, and had a cup of tea. You’ll be settling down, fiddling with the radio again—like an old person. You don’t do Spotify. You say the algorithm just plays you exactly what you already like, which is no way to live.
“We can walk for a bit,” I tell Libby.
“Can I play on your phone?” she asks.
“Maybe when we get home.” I’ve run out of ways to amuse her. We don’t have colouring-in stuff or toys round our house. They aren’t normally this old, and neither of us very arty, and obviously her mam didn’t drop much off with her. Just a coat, for some reason. She’s wearing one of my old t-shirts now. Her clothes got smelly. “How about, when we get back, we dig out a bit of garden just for you? I’ve got some seeds. You could grow some plants. Your own lettuce.”
“I hate lettuce,” she says.
“I’ll eat it then. Or could plant some flowers, if you want.”
She shrugs. Kicks the ground. She does that a lot. I’m sure her shoes weren’t that scuffed when she arrived.
“Tell you what, when we do the digging though, Bobby Robin’ll come looking for worms.”
“Whatever.”
How is she only four and already so scathing? She’s right to be though. Bobby Robin won’t be looking for worms. He only does that with the proper gardening. In daylight.
At home you’ve gone to sleep in your chair with your blanket tucked up and the radio still going. Some classical channel. Me and Libby sweep into the house on a wave of frenetic violins and blaring horns. Dunno how you can sleep through it, except you’re always tired now. It’s been a couple of months since the last one, so you’re always tired, always blaming me. The tiredness is my fault, somehow. As though I carried it through the door to you, like I had a choice. I have no choice about what I carry into this house.
“Shhh,” I say to Libby.
“Shhhh,” she says back and laughs, but she scuttles quietly past you, out through the back door to the garden.
You can sleep through a jangle of vibraphone and cello, but the shushing rouses you.
“Quiet,” you say, but without much heat to it. You’re mostly asleep still. I turn the radio up a bit, and you huddle back into your blanket. “Is she still here, that one?”
“Can you hear her?” I ask, which isn’t an answer. “I’m going out back for a bit.”
“Now?” Now you’re more awake, more alert. “Still here, isn’t she? You’ve kept her around for too long. It’s been eight days.” I know. I’ve been counting too. You reach out and touch my wrist. You are even colder than I am. “Time to be rid. Please.”
“I’m getting a start in the garden now. She’s out there.”
“We can’t keep her. Don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say, and kiss your hand.
“Don’t, though,” you say. “It’s been over a week, and you know the rules, poor strays.”
I know the rules.
Libby has a trowel and I have a shovel, and we’re turning over the long rectangle of dirt, or I am. I dig deeper than I should for lettuce. Libby doesn’t know the difference. I’m exhausted.
“Like a bed,” she says to me. She’s right, it is. Long and rectangle, and with the mud all broken and mashed, somehow fluffier and more comfortable than the mattress she’s been on. That makes me feel a bit better.
“It’s nearly time for bed,” I say. Libby jabs the trowel deeper into the mud I’ve just turned. It catches against something, so she does it again, the jabbing, and then peers at what’s in the mud.
“Stone,” she says. “Can I keep it?”
I’m doing calculations in my head, rapid fire: where the last dig was, how close we are. Did I go off track somehow? Might just be a stone. Better not to risk her looking.
“No,” I say. “Time to go in. But quiet; really really quiet. And I’ll make you a special drink.”
“Like you have?”
A bit like that, yeah. She drinks the lot, doesn’t even complain that it’s bitter. I tuck her well in, roll her in blankets so she’s deep and warm and immobile, and she mutters to me about pig-oons and gives me that sly half smile again. Demands a kiss goodnight, and god help me, I give one.
I wonder if that sly little smile was enough for her mam to hand her over and not change her mind, not take us up on the five-day grace. So many do use it—they change their minds. The guilt over-rides tradition and belief—especially with the older children, and Libby is one of the oldest we’ve had. What was so terrible about her that she was given up to this, when she should surely have long been safe?
You’re playing an opera, one I recognise. A woman’s voice soars through the floorboards, singing Libby down. I follow the thread of song back down the stairs. You’re in your chair, turned to face the stairwell. You’re pale, like a painted wall. Your eyes are open, and they are pale too. The moonlight sheen is on them. The sheen that only happens when it’s been too long, and the music isn’t soothing anymore. My guilt this—I’ve held her from you. You’ve suffered longer than needed, only so I could live my own sweet pain for a while.
“Maybe something modern tonight,” I suggest. “Bit of rock. Bit of grime.”
“Only gets me riled up,” you say. You peer at me with your moon eyes. “Not fair on any of us. Have you done it?”
“I’ve done it,” I say. I’m very very bone tired, and my head hurts, and your eyes are like a spotlight making my eyes hurt too. “She’s sleeping now, and soon she’ll be gone.”
You lean over to the radio and nod your little nod at me, too far gone to even offer me a word of comfort. I take my seat on the sofa and do what you’ve taught me to do. Slow my breathing, slow my heart. The quietest beats, barely alive, barely pumping my blood, so as not to tug at all the little nerves in your skin that hear it. I am so very cold. If I was brave, if I loved you more, I would move now. I would stand and dance, and my blood would call you to me. If I loved you less, I would have made Libby run for the door and maybe gone with her.
But.
You turn off the radio and the silence is absolute for half a second. There’s the gentle shh of the wind outside, and the creak of your chair, and my own heart beat, thudud. I will it to slow for both our sakes.
You wince at the call of my heart, then tilt your head and listen up, swivelling your satellite ears. I can’t hear a thing from above us, but I can see from the blue-green pulse of the vein in your forehead and the shine of your eyes that you can hear sleeping Libby, and you are counting down, readying yourself for the effort you must make to leave your chair and climb the stairs before she slips away.
That is our agreement. It cannot happen down here.
We each of us must be deaf to the things we cannot bear, so when you do take your hesitant careful steps out of the room, silver liquid drooling from your mouth and onto the floor, I turn back to the radio and increase the volume.
A symphony of some sort, now. It reminds me of an old film, the emotion crashing through it. There is passion and loss and embrace in this music. There is fight, and broken will. There are kisses. The kisses makes me think of you upstairs, lowering your mouth now, and as always I push the guilt down down into my aching stomach, and think, instead, of you after. Of how your moon eyes will become stars, and how you will be rosy and smiling, and we will have our few hours of joy together, so precious.
I will myself to feel our connection: you are up there now, hearing the same music I am, and the warmth of the feed will be flooding your system. You described this time to me once, at the start, before I knew what the truth of our life would be. You described it with the same fervour as an addict describing a hit, and I fell in love.
The symphony goes on and in the rise and swell of flute and violin I hear the cry that always comes. I’ve never asked whether it comes from you or them, and I never will. I sit on the sofa and the music plays. The music plays. The music plays, and I wait for you to come back to me. The you I live for. You, the listener, on a heavenly trip.
