Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

‘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.

STEPHANIE WAS OVER FIFTEEN minutes late. Jane sat in a window-seat and read her paperback (bought for exactly this kind of occasion), intermittently sipping her half pint of lager.

They had arranged to meet in the Red Lion at seven o’clock. Jane hated sitting in pubs alone, she felt conspicuous, although in fact she was no more conspicuous than any woman who sat in a pub alone might be. She was reading an early Jilly Cooper which she had bought second-hand from a book stall outside the Festival Hall during the previous summer.

In general (since her ‘A’ levels) she had preferred to read magazines rather than novels, but in certain situations she felt that magazines created an unnecessarily promiscuous impression. Girls on the tube who read them often had long, painted fingernails, smart shoes and sheer tights. Magazines represented a disposable lifestyle; Jane preferred the idea of an indispensable lifestyle: at twenty-four, she worked in a bank and was rather conservative.

She looked up from her novel and stared momentarily out of the window—through a pair of yellowy nets—hoping to catch a glimpse of Stephanie trotting down the road towards her, but instead, all she saw was the reflection of a nearby street-light in the glass of the window, a bleary, streaky, visual sludge. Her eyes returned to the words on the page.

The pub was empty apart from two men slouching at the bar, a young couple, who seemed to be recovering from a recent argument, sitting in an alcove, and over towards the door a pensioner who was reading a late edition of the Evening Standard. Someone had put some money into the juke box, which was playing ‘Suspicious Minds.’ Jane imagined that it might have been the male half of the young couple.

As her eyes sped across the page, Jane thought for a moment about her boyfriend Mitch and Stephanie’s boyfriend Chris. She wondered what they were doing. Maybe they were watching the football on television, or maybe they were playing snooker.

The pub’s doors swung open. Everybody turned towards them. Jane had earlier been engaged in a heated debate with herself about how to react when the doors opened. Initially she had decided that it was best if she ignored the various comings and goings around her. She had endeavoured to create the impression of calculated indifference, preoccupation, oblivion. Later, however, she had decided that it might be appropriate to look up fleetingly from her book towards the door so that people who might be looking at her would know immediately that the only reason for her continuing presence in the pub was the fact that she was waiting for someone. She was expecting someone. It made her feel less vulnerable, also less approachable.

On this occasion she was glad she had looked up. Stephanie stood in the doorway, looking ruffled and indecisive. Jane waved at her and smiled. Stephanie caught her eye, smiled back, relieved, then pointed her finger towards the bar. Jane nodded. Stephanie then pointed a finger towards Jane’s drink. Jane shook her head and placed a prim, flat hand over the top of her glass. Stephanie walked to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic.

Jane watched her, at last relaxing in the pub’s worn, red velvet environs, putting down her book and leaning back in her chair. She watched Stephanie as she waited for her drink and then paid for it. Stephanie was still wearing her uniform—she worked in John Lewis, the Oxford Street branch—and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She looked young for twenty-four. Jane thought it must be the way that she had tied back her hair. As Stephanie approached her Jane said ironically, ‘I’m surprised the barman served you, Steph, you don’t look eighteen with your hair tied back like that.’

Stephanie put her spirits glass down and squeezed in between the table and the seat. As she sat down she touched her hair with a free hand and looked unnecessarily self-conscious, then said, ‘I think the barman’d serve a large squirrel if it appeared at the counter and asked for a pint of lager. He doesn’t look too discriminating.’

Jane shrugged. Stephanie pointed towards Jane’s book. ‘Jilly Cooper. Good?’

Jane picked up the book and put it into her bag. ‘Something to read. It’s not like you to be late.’

Stephanie frowned, ‘I know. I’ve had a bit of a strange day. Sorry.’

Jane raised her eyebrows, professionally interested. ‘Busy?’

Stephanie shrugged. ‘Not too bad. You?’

Jane shook her head. ‘So so.’

They both picked up their drinks and took a sip. On returning her glass to the table Stephanie put her hands to the back of her head and pulled her hairband out. She then shook free her hair which fell about her shoulders in semi-curls. Jane watched her as she did this and couldn’t help thinking that Stephanie was looking particularly well, strangely spruce, as though she had just had a shower, an odd post-swimming clean-washed look. She sniffed the air for a trace of chlorine but could smell none. ‘You haven’t been swimming, have you? Marshall Street pool?’

Stephanie looked guilty, ‘No. Well, yes. Well, I had a shower, that’s all.’

Jane frowned. ‘Where’s your towel? Why did you have a shower? That’s odd. Are you wearing any make-up? Why did you have a shower?’