The Death of the Bird

It was an open casket funeral, and frankly the idea revolted her. The girl had drowned in a lake and it had taken them nearly forty-eight hours to fish her out. True, those two days had been from the middle of the very coldest month of the year, and everyone who was returning from their trip to the casket was saying things like “she could almost be asleep” and “she really was such a beautiful child.” But to Naomi the idea of actually going up to the front of the room and seeing the thing that had once been her cousin filled her with dread. As the cross-country train had carried her here, she could not shake the image from her mind: Madeline’s little body at the bottom of the lake, her hair drifting in the gloom, her blank eyes gazing upwards as those two days passed. Though, it had been so long since she’d visited that Naomi could not even picture her face.

Madeline’s parents—her aunt and uncle—had been in the final stages a bitter divorce, so naturally the girl’s death under her father’s watch on a fishing trip had not brightened the proceedings. There was a frozen atmosphere about the place that she and the other guests did their best to ignore as they milled with their canapés and Champagne. Quite why the parents had chosen a funeral home right on the edge of a lake, given the circumstances, was beyond her, but she had to admit that it was a beautiful place for them to be gathered. There was a clear, wintry sun of the kind that occasionally redeems the usual grey of the English season. It shone on the frosted plants in the terraced flowerbeds that lead down to the lake, infusing everything with a bright crispness that made Naomi, for a moment, almost forget what they were there for.

So wrapped up in these thoughts was she that when another of her little cousins came up to her and asked her a question—an extraordinarily strange question—she had to confess that she had no idea what the little girl had just said. She knelt down, asking girl if she might perhaps be able to repeat herself. The girl did repeat herself, but Naomi still felt she had not caught the meaning.

“Sorry,” Naomi said, “bury the bird—what bird?”

Only then did Naomi noticed the outline of the object within the bundled-up folds of her dress.

“Yes,” the girl said, matter-of-factly. “It’s dead.”

Opening the folds of her petticoat a little Naomi leaned in and saw the creature was, indeed, dead. Its body lay limp and small against the dark fabric of the girl’s dress. A single dark eye stared vacantly up at what in life would have been a wonderful view of the heritage plaster ceiling.

“Come on-n-n-n,” said the girl, as if she were surprised that Naomi was not already out there in the garden, on all fours with the trowel. Naomi looked from the little girl to the flower-covered coffin over on the other side of the room and back again. If she was honest with herself, the prospect of following this girl out into the garden and placating her whim to bury this piece of Great British wildlife, thereby avoiding her obligation to go and look at the thing in the coffin, held a certain degree of appeal.

“You must get that thing out of your dress,” Naomi said, trying for stern-ness. “You have no idea how it died. It could have an awful disease.”

But she could already feel herself being tugged by the hand, weaving between the mute sets of friends and relatives towards the concertina doors that were left slightly ajar on this unseasonably sunny day, and through into the bright garden. Clearly, this cousin of hers, as she had wandered among those hedges, and found this little corpse of a bird—God knows where—had chosen a site for its internment already.

It was a frustration to Naomi that she could not recall her name, though she certainly recognised her face. She had the auburn hair characteristic of their clan, which made her sure she really was one of her numerous small cousins, not a family friend. She had a pretty mole on the right side of her face, just above her cheekbone, perfectly round and dark. It added something to the liveliness of her eyes. No doubt the other little girls in her class teased her about it, calling her “mole-face” or something. She would spend her teenage years coating it in make-up—but later, Naomi thought, as she blossomed into womanhood, she would set it free again, and wear it proudly as the finishing detail of her face, setting her dark eyes and red hair into relief.

They had come down the garden terraces and through the gate that formed little walled off patio by the foreshore, only a few dozen feet from where the dark water lapped against the smooth stones that circled it. With great carefulness the girl kneeled down and allowed the body of the bird to tumble out onto the soil.

“Things look smaller when they die,” said the girl, after a pause.

“Yes,” Naomi said,“they do don’t they.”

Naomi had a sudden strange desire to ask this girl whether she, with her family, had yet taken her turn up to the coffin, and seen what lay within—she had a slightly sour feeling that this girl might be braver than she. It seemed the girl had procured a spade somehow from one of the garden terraces further up towards the house. It was fast becoming clear to Naomi, as the girl waited for her to pick up the trowel, that this little girl saw herself as the director not the actuator of these funerary operations—she would not be doing any digging herself.

“Do you always bury animals that you find?” Naomi asked as she dug.

The girl said nothing. The morning’s sunshine was fast disappearing behind the clouds, and a wind had struck up in their direction, rippling the dark surface of the lake towards them and made the lapping of the water on the silt and stones more vigorous. Naomi shivered. Her patience with this enterprise was not unlimited.

The girl suddenly spoke.

“It wouldn’t want to be lying around with everyone peeping at it all day long, would it? Not till it got all rotten and cold?”

“No,” Naomi said. “I don’t suppose anyone would want that.”

Naomi turned back to the girl and almost jumped. She was smiling down at her—smiling deeply and fully—showing all of her pretty little white teeth. Just as soon as she had seen it the smile had vanished, and the girl’s face was pointed and sullen as it had been before.

“Where will it go, now it’s dead?” the girl asked.

“Somewhere better, I expect,” Naomi said. “Somewhere—somewhere really nice.”

“How will it go there, when it’s still here?”

“Oh,” Naomi said, looking down at the little body on the sand. It was frail and limp. It looked—just like the girl had said—small. “Well it's not this part of it that goes. It’s the other part. The part that makes him him.”

Not receiving a reply, she went on.

“All the other birds will be there—the ones that left before him, and they’ll all be lovely to each other, because there won’t be any need to be mean to each other now they don’t need food or nests or anything anymore. Yes, he’ll be somewhere much better.”

“But I don’t think you believe that,” the girl said.

Naomi looked at her. There was something cold and strange in her eyes. The wind was becoming icy now and the girl’s dark dress and hair flapped in it as she stood above her. Naomi shook her head. Surely the hole was deep enough now.

“Do you think you might want to finish this up?” Naomi asked. “Now that the hole is dug. They’re going to want all the adults back—”

She was cut off by the sound of the whine of metal upon metal that took her a moment to identify. The iron gate that they had passed through on their way down from the home was swinging slowly shut. It closed with a thud and a clutter of the latch.

“No,” the girl whispered quietly, leaning over Naomi as she knelt beside the hole with the spade. “We mustn’t go back yet.”

Perhaps it was the change of the light, but Naomi couldn’t help but notice how much paler the girl looked than she had before. She looked cold—but not just cold, her face looked sunken with a blank, matte, look in her eyes that—she looked down at the little corpse of the bird—reminded her of it.

“Well,” Naomi said. “Shall we say something?”

“Put it in the ground,” the girl said. “It’s dead and rotten. Nobody wants to see it.”

Naomi could feel herself beginning to sweat now. She did not want to touch the revolting creature. She prodded it with the point of the trowel until its little body slumped into the grave. At this the girl’s whole attitude changed and she seemed thrilled with excitement.

“It’s dead, dead, dead!” she chanted, stomping her foot. “Put it in and close up the ground!”

“Yes, just a minute,” Naomi said, moving to scrape the little pile of earth that had accumulated beside the hole back into it.

“Make sure you pat the earth down,” drifted the girl’s voice from inches behind her as she used the back of the trowel to press the first layer of dirt over the little body of the bird. The breeze from across the lake had become an icy gale now and Naomi had to keep herself from shivering. They must go back soon.

“There,” Naomi said. “We’re finished now.”

She turned to find the girl’s tiny face inches from hers, so close that she could feel the icy cold of her breath down the collar of her dress, prickling the skin underneath. Her face was pale and sunken, and her lips were an awful shade of blue.

“You’ll catch your death!” Naomi said. “Take my coat.”

The girl cocked her head slightly to one side, so that the dark red mass of her hair tilted to stay vertical. She could see it was matted and wet.

“Goodbye, auntie,” she said, and pressed her tiny hand into Naomi’s cheek.

Her hand was so cold Naomi could almost feel her skin burn in the instant it touched, immobilising her for the split second it took the little girl to turn tail and run—run fast as her little sandals would carry her, dress flapping in the wind, as she splashed into the dark shallows of the lake. Naomi was after her in a moment, screaming for her to come back, but she was a good twenty feet ahead—up to her torso, wading without a flinch. The searing cold of the water made Naomi gasp and double over when it reached her navel.

Already the girl was further in, floating on her back, her petticoats blossoming in the dark water, her dark hair spreading out around her face. Naomi could hardly touch the bottom now. She was shivering uncontrollably but she struck out towards her. For a moment, it was as though the girl floated—perfectly weightless on her back. Then, as if the invisible hands supporting her from below had been whipped away, she sank like a stone.

“Come back!” Naomi screamed—half choked through the icy water as she swam. She dived under the surface. For a moment, through the dark mass of bubbles, saw the echo of the little girl’s face drifting downwards through the gloom.

Naomi was running back, through the gate, up the garden terraces, through the side door at the back of the funeral home—almost passed out from the cold. The door blasted open and she was dimly aware of the collective hush as every face in the room turned to stare at her, sopping wet and covered in mud.

“A girl! I’m so sorry. One of us. I don’t remember her name. She’s just fallen into the lake. I tried to pull her out, but I can’t see her anymore. Please, come quickly!”

There was a stunned silence as the families, arranged in little groups, turned to count their children.

“Please!” She cried again, stepping closer to the casket. She saw Madeline’s mother standing beside it, her face shocked and confused. Why was no-one moving?

“She’s drowning!” Naomi cried, her voice cracking as she stumbled further into the room.

She was beside the casket now. Forgetting herself for a moment, she looked down into it—the flowers, the red velvet, the pale form of Madeline gazing up from the satin pillow within. She saw her petticoats and her red hair all perfectly in place, almost as though she were asleep—and the pretty little mole she had, just above her cheekbone, about which, Naomi realised, she had been entirely wrong. No-one would ever bully her about it, nor desire her for it—though she was, indeed, such a pretty little girl.