Nicola Barker - Heading Inland

‘Where? To look at those bloody owls again? I swear you spend more time looking at those owls than at me.’

He left her. She followed him, in her slippers, barely dressed. It was dark out. He ignored her. He went to the owl pens.

In the dark he could hardly see them, only the white ones. He made his way to the pen of his favourite. If he stared and he stared he could make out the pale moon-slip of her beak.

‘What are you doing?’ Iris whispered.

Wesley tried to see the owl more clearly but his eyes weren’t yet adapted. He could hear the others, though. Ghostly trills. Occasional squeals.

‘It’s worse at night, don’t you think?’ he asked. ‘To keep them here?’

‘What?’

‘People watch them during the day and they don’t seem too bad, but at night, that’s their time. That’s when they wake and want to fly.’

Iris crossed her arms over her chest. It was cold out here.

‘I’m haunted,’ Wesley said, eventually, ‘by things that happened in the past.’

‘What things?’ Iris asked. ‘Why won’t you tell me, Wes?’

‘I lost my right hand,’ Wesley said.

‘What?’ Iris was confused now.

‘People kept leaving me. When I was a boy.’

‘Your dad?’ she said, trying to follow him.

‘And all the time,’ he said, ‘I wanted to try and find the thing I’d lost. Searching. Searching. Punishing everyone.’

‘What?’ She was shivering now. It was cold. It was cold.

‘But I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘that I’ve finally realized something. All the time I thought I was punishing others I was actually only punishing myself, but not properly .’

He was trying to see the owl in the darkness. He could make out her shape now.

‘Let’s go in,’ Iris said. ‘Let’s talk inside.’

He turned to face her. ‘I must do something,’ he said, ‘to show you how much I love you.’

‘What?’ He had lost her, completely.

‘For the baby,’ he said.

He stretched open his right hand in front of her face. For a moment she was frightened that he might try to hurt her. He might hit her or smother her with that hand. But then he turned from her and slowly, deliberately, finger by finger, he pushed his hand into the wire mesh of that giant and wakeful emu-owl’s cage.

He could see his white fingers in the darkness, and finally, too, he could see her. She could see him. She was still. She was silent. He heard one of the other birds calling and then she was on him. Ripping and tearing with her beak like a blade.

Iris screamed.

She couldn’t forgive him. On his right hand was left only a thumb. She griped that she’d almost lost their child with the shock of it. He apologized. Over the following months he kept apologizing. He stopped pouting. He couldn’t stop smiling now. Sometimes she’d catch him touching his spoiled hand with his good one, talking to himself, but so softly, like it was a child’s face he was stroking.

On the night their baby was born he left her. An envelope lay on the bed. Her parents found it and brought it to her. Inside was a cheque for several hundred pounds and a note which said only: ‘Heading Inland’. That was all.

Tina was doing Rome on a budget. Her companion was horrible. He was called Ralph. She met him accidentally, and he stuck to her like a burr, like a leech, until he grew bored of her. Then he let go, just as suddenly.

He had, she discovered, over seven different ways of describing the rectum. His favourite was ring which he used and used until it was quite worn out. Ironically — she just knew this was funny — Ralph was actually an arsehole himself. But she was too polite to say anything. He even looked like an arsehole. Not literally, but he wore dark glasses, a furry trilby — right there, on the back of his head, monstrously precarious — and thick-soled loafers. She presumed that he thought his look was, in some way, Italian. She knew better. Even the Italians knew better.

Ralph was staying at a pensione south of Termini. It wasn’t particularly salubrious around there. Tina didn’t like it. She, by contrast, was staying in Old Rome, in the heart of Rome, close to the fruit market, the best piazza, the better cafés.

Tina had met Ralph while she was queueing for the Vatican Museum. It had been a ridiculously long queue, but she presumed that the wait would be worth it. Ralph had joined the queue behind her, had introduced himself, had asked whether she’d mind saving his place for him while he popped off for a minute, then disappeared. An hour later, when she’d nearly reached the front, he reappeared again. She’d completely forgotten about him by then. She almost didn’t recognize him. His glasses were pushed up on to his head. His eyes — bold, empty — stared at her: a mucky brown. Two round hazelnuts. He said he didn’t have quite enough money for the entrance fee — ‘What? You’re kidding! That much?’ — so she paid for him on the understanding that he’d pay her back later.

He never did. Ralph was from Reading. He worked for British Telecom. He had a smattering of Italian. He could order coffee, ice-cream, several flavours of pizza, without even consulting his guidebook.

Tina felt sorry for him. He wore a Lacoste polo shirt, but it wasn’t actually Lacoste because the alligator was facing the wrong way. She knew about these things. She was training to be a buyer at Fenwicks, New Bond Street, London. Ah, yes.

Ralph tried to persuade Tina to have a piece of brightly coloured cotton twine plaited into her hair on the Spanish Steps. Several men, unkempt, like hippies, were offering this service for a small sum.

‘I’d rather not,’ she said, noticing their dirty hands, their tie-dyed shirts. ‘I think I might just climb up to the top of the steps and look at the view.’

Ralph followed her. He was like a naughty spaniel; bored, precocious, snapping at her heels.

The view was fine. When they’d had enough of it, Ralph said, ‘I wanna take you somewhere special. It’s called the Piazza Barberini. It’s not far from here, just down the hill. When she was in Rome, Sophia Loren used to live nearby.’

He took hold of her arm. Tina allowed herself to be led. She followed him obligingly because it was a pretty street, a steep, deep incision into the hillside. Grand houses frowned out on either side of them.

She was too obliging. What kind of girl, after all, takes any trip on her own? A bold girl? A silly girl? Oh, she wanted to be both, for once. Even Ralph, even he was a step in the right direction. A step, and she was on a trip, a voyage. Rome, she knew, held something special just for her: a fresco, a figurine, a shady walkway, an orange tree. If she kept on looking, she would find it.

In the Piazza Barberini she paused for a moment to stare at a fountain.

‘I’ve got fountains,’ Ralph said, contemptuously, ‘spouting out of my brush.’

Close by was a second, smaller fountain which was covered in big carved bees. ‘That,’ Tina said, pausing for a moment, ‘is very sweet.’

‘Yeah.’ Ralph walked on.

‘And if it was in London,’ she said, ‘it would be covered in bird dirt. They don’t seem to have pigeons here, or if they do, they don’t mess nearly as much.’

‘In Rome,’ Ralph said, conversationally, ‘you’re only considered gay if you’re passive during sex. If you screw other men, but aren’t screwed, then you’re not gay.’

Tina scowled. ‘That’s disgusting.’

Ralph grinned. ‘In Italy the men are men and the women are glad of it.’

Tina rolled her eyes. She decided that Ralph had been in Rome for too long. He’d been here a week already. She’d arrived a mere thirty-six hours ago. She was glad that she was staying for only five days. After seven days Ralph was bored. He seemed incapable of seeing the prettiness around him. He was growing cynical. He didn’t appreciate how good the weather was.