the birdwoman

For as long as anybody could remember she had been known as the Birdwoman. Barely had she screamed her way into the world when the midwife described her to a nurse on the maternity ward as that poor little bird thing. Since then few people had ever troubled to call her by her real name.

During her first morning at infant school, the teachers gathered in the staff room and talked in low whispers about that poor bird girl. They shook their heads and worried about her future in a world unsympathetic to the unusual. The teachers' worst fears were soon realised when a group of parents signed a petition demanding that that dreadful bird child should be withdrawn from the school because she frightened the other pupils. After some deliberation it was agreed that it would probably be best for her to be transferred to a school for children with special needs.

Shortly after that, concerned relatives suggested to the Birdwoman's mother the possibility of cosmetic surgery. But her mother, who had never once considered her child as anything but beautiful, would not hear of it. The relatives conceded privately that cosmetic surgery was, perhaps, after all, the privilege of those whose marriageable good looks had provided them with the wealth to afford it. It was not for the poor and ugly, unless, of course, they had been disfigured by some accident involving a car and a brick wall or an exploding gas cylinder or a saucepan of hot fat or the like.

The Birdwoman hadn't been in any accident. She was just plain ugly. Her ugliness even once killed a woman. The unfortunate woman was so startled by the adolescent Birdwoman's appearance that she didn't look where she was going and walked into the path of a bus.

The Birdwoman's father had died when she was very young. She didn't really have any memory of him, other than as a sad man who was always grasping a bottle or a glass and sometimes shouted and broke things. Although it had been a difficult birth for her mother (owing to the rather odd shape of the Birdwoman's head) she was overjoyed with her child and quite blind to its disturbing ugliness. Not so her father. He vowed never to have another child and booked himself into a clinic for an immediate vasectomy.

From the afternoon he left that clinic he never stopped drinking. One night, after a particularly heavy vodka binge, he choked to death on his own vomit. They found him sprawled in a gutter - literally drowned in his sorrow. After that, friends and family had withdrawn from the Birdwoman and her mother as if the child's ugliness and the trouble it had caused might be contagious.

The Birdwoman and her mother had lived together in their house for several years until her mother died that cold spring. After a mild December, the cold had crept sudden and silent from Siberia across the country blanketing the town deep in snow. The birdwoman had nursed her mother through the cold days. As the days warmed, and the first bulbs started to push green shoots up through the melting snow she seemed to get better slightly. But before the crocuses on the back lawn had time to flower, one morning she died.

The Birdwoman sat on a low chair in the bedroom, wearing a blue nylon sweater. The fingers of her hand bent inwards forming an inflexible claw, with which she pincered a pink plastic comb. She combed her greasy, black hair tight back over her bulbous skull - so tight, in fact, it looked as if it had been painted on in black, non-drip vinyl. Although the Birdwoman could never really have disguised her looks with anything less than a large paper bag, she might well have benefited from a long fringe or a bushy perm - the severity of her chosen hairstyle serving only to emphasise the strangeness of her face.

The Birdwoman's eyes were as bulbous as her forehead and widely separated, sprouting from the sides of her face like Ping-Pong balls, with tiny irises, deep brown in colour. The Birdwoman was almost neckless and her minimal jaw seemed to merge into her chest. The effect was accentuated by her shoulders, which hunched upwards as if her head had been knocked into her body with a large hammer. Her ears resembled tiny dried apricots and her mouth was merely a thin pink line of flesh, that looked as if it had been painted onto her diminutive chin in a single brush stroke. Her nose was the final insult; long and hooked, a real beak. Alone, any of her features might have been unpleasant to bear, but together they made her look like something dreamt up deep in the imagination of a sick-minded Halloween mask designer.

When she had finished combing her hair, the Birdwoman slipped her feet into her fluffy slippers. She shuffled across the blue and crimson Axminster to the bedroom window. The flimsy curtains, still drawn across the window, were patterned with imaginary birds which dipped impossibly long beaks into fantastic flowers on stems of feathery leaves that intermingled with their elaborate plumage. For a while the Birdwoman stood and admired the colours of the birds and flowers made so bright by the light streaming through them. Then she drew back the curtains and perched on the wide window sill, basking in the sun with a smile like a tiny, pink horseshoe stamped on her chin.

Downstairs, the Birdwoman began to put on her blue anorak, the one she always wore. Several minutes later, when she'd finally managed to get both arms in and zip it up, she unlocked the front door and went outside, tutting at a couple of beer cans and a large cat turd which had appeared overnight on her front lawn. Then, carefully closing the door behind her, she made her way slowly down the steps to the street and headed towards the shops.

The Birdwoman bought all her food and stuff from a parade of shops about ten minute's walk from her house. People stared too much if she went into town. But in the parade most of the shop keepers knew her and some of them would even spend time chatting to her. The parade included a small newsagent and post office, a mini supermarket run by an Indian family, a small and smelly fishmongers and a bakery which called itself a partisserie. There was also a bank that had once been robbed by a man armed with a cucumber in a plastic bag, which he pretended was a gun, and the Scope Shop which sold second hand clothes.

When she reached the parade, first of all the Birdwoman went to the bank to collect her weekly spending money; the interest on her mother's life insurance pay-out. She had a hole-in-the-wall card, but she didn't trust it, so she went inside to cash a cheque. She had already filled out the cheque at home, as she found it difficult to write with her clawlike hands. She didn't like it if people queuing behind her got all impatient and nasty as she painstakingly formed the words. At the counter she signed the cheque in her shaky scrawl. Then she dropped it into the metal money scoop in the counter and the girl flipped it across to her side of the glass security screen.

"Thanks," said the girl and smiled pleasantly. She was pretty, thought the Birdwoman, like the girl in that magic show on the telly. A badge with the girl's name, Mrs Marion Baxter, was attached to her blouse. She seemed to the Birdwoman very young to be married.

"How would you like the money," asked the girl cheerfully.

"Fife tins," croaked the Birdwoman.

"Five tens?" asked the girl.

"Yis plis," croaked the Birdwoman.

The girl took a wodge of notes from the drawer beside her. She wetted the tip of her finger, counted out five tens and dropped them into the metal money scoop.

"Yo do za vehe kwakla," croaked the Birdwoman.

"Sorry?" said the girl, and moved her head closer to the security glass that separated them.

"Yo vehe kwak," repeated the Birdwoman.

"Oh, very quick," said the girl. She nodded and smiled. "Yes, I've had plenty of practice."

The Birdwoman cackled with satisfaction, simply delighted that the girl had understood what she'd said.

"Goodbye," said the girl, as the Birdwoman carefully stowed away the ten pound notes in the bottom of her shopping bag.

"Goo-ba," croaked the Birdwoman, and smiled her tiny horseshoe smile.

In the mini supermarket where the Birdwoman did her weekly shopping, everything smelt slightly spicy. The scent of oranges in the fruit and veg section, the aroma of mature cheddar and smoked ham that wafted from beneath the glass of the delicatessen counter, the smell of freshly baked loaves in racks by the check-outs, were all shrouded by a haze of aromatic seasonings. But the Birdwoman didn't mind. She had grown used to the spicy atmosphere, and found comfort in its familiarity.

One of the things the Birdwoman liked best about the spicy supermarket was that it sold such a fine selection of nuts. Nuts were her favourite kind of food. How she loved to crunch them; dry roasted peanuts, macadamias, cashews, pistachios, walnuts and Brazils. The Birdwoman didn't need a nutcracker for she had exceedingly powerful jaws. She would just pop a hazelnut into the tiny opening of her mouth and deftly manoeuvre it with her tongue to between her molars. In an instant, she would crush open the shell, then spit the bits into a little pine bowl she had bought especially for that purpose. Then she would chew the soft kernel to a pulp, savouring its nuttiness on her tongue before tipping back her head and gulping it down in one go. Oh, how she loved to chew nuts!

That day, the Birdwoman was delighted to discover the supermarket had just received a consignment of unsalted almonds. These were normally quite hard to get hold of so the Birdwoman treated herself to three large bags.

The manager's wife was serving at the checkout. She wore a pale blue sari, similar in colour to the Birdwoman's sweater.

"Hello," she said with a pleasant smile.

"Heyo," squawked the Birdwoman.

"And how are you today?" asked the manager's wife.

"Goog," croaked the Birdwoman. "Iks a nissa day."

"Yes it's certainly a lovely day," said the manager's wife. "A very nice day."

One of the manager's surly teenage sons, the older one with a little black moustache and wiry arms, silently packed the Birdwoman's groceries into her shopping bag. The Birdwoman paid for her shopping with two ten pound notes. She dropped the change into her bag and then hooked it up in her clawlike hand. The surly son held the door open for her as she shuffled out of the shop. The Birdwoman bought most of her clothes from the Scope Shop, except for knickers and vests and tights which she ordered from a catalogue of clothes for larger woman called 'Generous Designs'.

Because of her claw like hands and hunched shoulders it took her quite a long time to get dressed and undressed. She tended to get flustered in large department stores. Sometimes she got stuck in clothes that were the wrong size or had fiddly buttons. When her mother was alive it had been OK. She'd acted as the Birdwoman's hands and voice. But since her mother had died the Birdwoman had nightmares about becoming trapped inside a changing cubicle, straight-jacketed in a floral frock with out being able to ask for help. So she preferred to get her clothes from Scope, where Mrs Dixon would help her try things on.

The Birdwoman was not searching for anything special when she visited the Scope Shop, but something special was what she found. There, in the window, was the most wonderful dress she had ever seen. It was a wedding dress; not a sugar-white satin affair, all bows and silk flowers, but a simple, cream-coloured gown with a stitched design on the front, puffy sleeves and a delicate lace collar.

As the Birdwoman stood in front of the window admiring the dress, an urge started to well up inside her. It grew gradually like bread dough rising in a bowl on a radiator, until it filled her up and made her feel slightly sick with excitement. She had never seen, let alone worn, anything quite so beautiful in her whole life. She wondered, just wondered, if Mrs Dixon might let her try it on.

Stop being so silly, she told herself. Me? Wear a dress like that? What a ridiculous idea. Then somewhere inside her a voice spoke. The voice was not her normal incomprehensible croak but lucid and lilting and slightly posh, like the voice of the lady who read the six o'clock news on the BBC.

"Go in and ask if you can try it on," said the voice. "Why not? There's no harm in asking. Go on. What have you got to lose? Go in and ask her."

"Don't be so stupid," she told herself. "Me wear that dress? Imagine how everyone would laugh. Besides, I'd probably tear it, then it would be ruined!"

But the little voice persisted.

"Does it matter? You could easily pay for it. It's only thirty pounds. You could buy it and pretend it was a present for a niece. Who would ever know. Then you could take it home and try it on."

"Only thirty pounds? Only thirty pounds? I can't afford that. There's the milkman needs paying on Thursday. I'd have no money left. And what if it didn't fit? What a waste that would be."

"You could always take it back. You might never get another chance to wear such a thing. Anyway, why not just go in the shop and look at it. There's no harm in that."

"It would seem silly. Me looking at a dress like that."

"Nonsense! Anyone might admire such a splendid thing. Go on. Go and have a look at it. There's no fee for looking."

"Well I suppose that might be OK. It might be all right just to look at it, I suppose"

"Well that's settled then."

Close to, the dress looked even more beautiful. The Birdwoman reached out her clawlike hand and felt the lace collar. It was so delicate and fine.

"Its a wonderful dress, isn't it?"

The Birdwoman guiltily let go of the collar. She turned. There stood Mrs Dixon, wearing a dark green hand-knitted cardigan and a sensible pleated skirt. She peered at the Birdwoman over her half-moon spectacles.

"Quite wonderful," she repeated.

The Birdwoman nodded.

"Wongerful," she croaked.

"We have some nice tops in at the moment," said Mrs Dixon, taking the Birdwoman by the arm and steering her away from the dress. "This pink one's almost new. And the stain should come out quite easily if you give it a good scrubbing." Mrs Dixon saw the disappointment in the Birdwoman's face. "You don't like that then?" she asked.

The Birdwoman shook her head. She shuffled back over to the beautiful dress. She pointed to it.

"Coug I tri tha un plis?" she asked.

Mrs Dixon looked slightly confused.

"Yes its a beautiful dress isn't it," she said.

"Coug I tri tha un plis?" repeated the Birdwoman.

"Pardon?" said Mrs Dixon.

The Birdwoman sighed with exasperation.

"I'm sorry," said Mrs Dixon. "For a moment then I thought you'd ask me if you could try the wedding dress on. Of all the absurd things." She laughed shrilly and nervously patted her slightly purple perm. "Actually, I've got just the thing for you - a nice big dress that someone brought in yesterday. It's quite old, but it's got rather lovely flowers on it. I'm sure you'd like that." And so saying, she disappeared into the store room at the back of the shop.

As the Birdwoman stood and stared wistfully at the wedding dress, the voice inside her piped up again.

"Patronising old cuttlefish! Why shouldn't you try the dress on? Why not?"

"She probably didn't understand what I said," thought the Birdwoman compliantly.

"Oh she understood all right," snapped the voice. "She just though it was too good for you. The old trout."

"She was probably right," thought the Birdwoman.

"Rubbish. She pretends to be all lah de dah and nice. But you know what she really thinks of you. She thinks you're stupid and ugly. Otherwise she would have let you try the dress on."

"Maybe she thought I was too big for it."

"Too big? Too big? They'd sell it to any fat old cow who came in if she had a nice face and a proper voice."

"Perhaps she thought I couldn't afford it."

"Of course you could. You've got the money right there in your bag. Why should that hoity-toity old mackerel stop you from buying it just because she doesn't like the way you look eh? Just look at that disgusting pink cardigan with the stain she offered you. That just shows what she thinks of you, the crusty old mollusc."

"It doesn't matter now anyway," thought the Birdwoman. "She's not going to let me have the dress."

"Why not just take it then?" said the voice.

"I couldn't do that."

"Why not? I bet the prickly old sea urchin takes all the best stuff for herself. I bet she does. And what does she give you when you come in? All the old rubbish that no one else wants. Because she thinks you're so ugly it doesn't matter what you wear. So go on, just take it."

"No, that would be wrong."

"So what? When has anyone ever treated you rightly."

"Mother did."

"Would she have got you the dress if you'd wanted it?"

"Of course she would."

"She'd be upset to think that you couldn't have it, wouldn't she?"

"Yes, she would."

"So take it for her sake. Quick before the old crab comes back."

"Oh, I don't know."

"Just think of all the money you've spent on clothes here. And what have you got to show for it? A pile of horrid old rags. You deserve that dress. You're the shop's best customer. By rights it should be yours. Just think how upset mother would be to know the bilious old barnacle wouldn't let you have it. Now quickly, quickly take it, take it, take it before it's too late."

And before she knew what she had done, the Birdwoman had taken the wonderful dress from its hanger in the window and stuffed it into her shopping bag and hurriedly shuffled out of the shop and off down the street.

The Birdwoman sat glumly in the darkness watching the ballroom dance championships on TV. Usually she enjoyed watching the dancing. Usually it made her smile. But, then again, usually she wasn't stuck tight in a stolen, second-hand wedding dress.

Originally, she'd intended to just quickly try the dress on and then return it to the Scope shop that evening when there was no one about. She'd thought it would be all right if she popped it anonymously through the letter box, together with some money to compensate for having taken it without asking. But things hadn't quite turned out as planned.

The Birdwoman had spent the best part of an hour squeezing herself into the dress, and although it was more than a little tight on her and her flesh bulged out of it in places, it was quite lovely to wear. She had found a dusty mirror among her mother's things in the cupboard under the stairs. She had polished the mirror off and then placed it on the floor leaning at an angle against the wall, so that if she stood on the other side of the room she could just about see the dress full length in it.

She had spent quite some time admiring the dress from this angle and from that until reluctantly she had decided it was time to take it off. That was when she discovered that she was stuck. No matter how she struggled, it was impossible for her to get out of the dress. She couldn't even reach the clasps at the back to undo it.

When it had started to grow dark, the Birdwoman had gone and sat in the front room with the curtains drawn and the lights off, so that it would look as if she were not at home. Every time a car passed or parked in the street outside, her heart raced. She kept thinking she could hear someone knocking at the front door, and pictured a van load of burly policeman stood outside accompanied by an agitated Mrs Dixon. She trembled, hardly daring to breath, imagining that if she answered the door, Mrs Dixon would glare at her over those half-moon spectacles and say, "That's her! That's the dirty dress thief!" And then the policeman would drag her away and put her in prison.

The Birdwoman reached her clawlike hand behind her back once again and tried to open the clasps that secured the dress upon her. But it was no use. She was well and truly trapped. Oh why did I take it, she thought miserably? What can I do? Even if I find someone to help me take it off, they will ask me where it came from. They will find out that I have stolen it and I shall be sent to prison.

She sat and nervously munched the almonds she had bought from the spicy supermarket. She shovelled mouthful after mouthful of the nuts down her gullet. They had a strange bitter taste. But she didn't care. She just kept on eating them and hoping that the policemen would put her in a cell with some nice people when she was sent to prison for stealing the dress. It would be nice to have some company, she comforted herself, as long as they weren't too rough.

As soon as the Birdwoman had finished one big bag of almonds, straight away she tore open the next. She ate another huge handful of the bitter nuts. She was beginning to feel slightly dizzy. She watched the dancers on the television spinning round and round. How beautiful they were. How beautiful their dresses were and all those handsome young men. Lovely, lovely dresses. Such bright colours. They seemed to come out of the screen at her, spinning and spinning. All those lovely colours.

It was probably watching the television in the dark, she supposed, that made her feel so dizzy, so very dizzy. She swallowed another mouthful of the bitter almonds. The colours spun faster. Then all of a sudden she was dancing, floating in the air in the arms of that handsome young man with the white, silk cummerbund and the matching shoes. Round and round she whirled, up in the air, faster and faster. She felt so very light-headed and faint, quite breathless from all the dancing. She danced and whirled and whirled and danced and she was inside the colours all pinks and yellows and green.

Round and round and round she went, faster and faster and faster still. The colours grew brighter. Her breath came in short gasps. So dizzy. Floating round. The colours became so bright they seemed almost white. It was so hard to breath. She was choking and spluttering. And a virginal whiteness was all around her. Then, at last, thank God she could breath. Her head cleared and she was floating. She opened her eyes and she was surrounded by darkness, stars and clouds. And there far, far below her was the town.

That week in the Westing Chronicle, a few pages after the Birdwoman's obituary, a rather unusual news story appeared....

BIG SHOT FARMER IN
RARE BIRD MYSTERY

A Westingshire farmer could hardly believe his eyes when he saw what he had shot when out scaring birds on his 200 acre farm this Tuesday.

For, Mr Arthur Webley, 43, of Drey Down Farm, shot down a pure white crow that had been circling a field of newly-sown winter wheat with several of its commoner black cousins.

Mr Webley said, "Normally I just fire my shot gun in the air to scare them off. But this bird looked so bizarre I decided to take a pot at it and see if I could get a closer look."

"I lined it up in my sights, pulled the trigger, and down it came," said Mr Webley. "I couldn't really miss a target that size," he joked.

The farmer took the huge white bird to town museum curator, Dr Tony Fritter, 47, a keen ornithologist, who confirmed that it was indeed an albino crow.

"Although they are rare," explained Dr Fritter. "They are not unheard of." But the eminent bird expert was unable to explain where the mysterious white bird had come from.

"I've contacted local groups of bird watchers, but none of their members could recall ever seeing it before, which is rather strange" he said. "I have to confess that I'm baffled."

Dr Fritter was keen to add the white crow to the museum's collection of stuffed local wildlife. Sadly, local taxidermist, Mr Barry Bannister, 27, of Gleebe Crescent, was unable to do anything with the remains of the bird. It had been too badly damaged by shot and Mr Webley's Golden Labrador bitch, Pippa.

Mr Webley said, "One wing was blasted apart when I shot it. And Pippa chewed its head a bit." But the bird will not go to waste. Now it is to take pride of place on the menu of farmer's wife and cooking enthusiast, Mrs Sandra Webley, 42.

"We're having some friends round for a bit of a barbecue this weekend," said Mrs Webley. "It's quite a nice sized bird and there's some good meat on it. Most of the breast and the other wing was undamaged, so I've salvaged them and popped them in the freezer ready for the weekend. I think I'll make white crow kebabs."

And what does white crow meat taste of?

"It was quite strange," said Mrs Webley. "I fried up a piece just to see what it was like. It tasted a little bit like Pigeon, only slightly bitter. And it had a funny smell about it, sort of like almonds....."