A Thousand Paper Birds Read online

  Back in the marquee, Harry tries to calm himself down by fiddling with a paper doily. He keeps looking back to the graveyard where Jonah’s silhouette is still bent under the sky’s weight. How could I have let him see me? But when the widower returns, Harry guesses that, from his perspective, the mourners’ faces are blurring. Everyone is tired, but they try to smile; yet they aren’t really smiling. It’s more a slight ripping round the edges of their mouths. It reminds Harry of the invisible pain of a paper cut; that day they wear paper-cut smiles.

  Practising Gods

  Chloe Adams sits by the lake, sketching a heron. The bird seems to be the only thing calm this restlessly hot July morning. She should be enjoying these days of freedom, chuffed that she’s earned a First from Goldsmiths, but she doesn’t know how to pay the rent on a bedsit she has seen in Dalston. Her feet are sweating into her Doc Martens.

  She shaved her head last September, her scalp completely naked. But recently she has let the dark down grow, her millimetre pelt as soft as a mole’s. The heavy boots and shorn hair are designed to be her flicked middle finger, but her skinny shoulders are resolutely feminine. Her flimsy tea dress rides up her thighs as she reaches down for a packet of paper.

  Each page is twenty centimetres square, the sheets embellished with ornate Japanese patterns. She picks out one with flowers outlined in gold, a background of peach and emerald, then she looks up again at the heron poised among the reeds. She works out its proportions so the folded bird can stand while bearing the heaviness of its wings.

  She begins with a simple bird base, so basic she could do it in her sleep, but to anyone else it would seem she has conjured a shape in seconds: a magician’s trick. Folding is a meditation, her mind pausing through the repetition of movement. Yoshizawa, the master of modern origami, insisted his students folded in the air. Without the support of a surface, the art requires patience and precision. Chloe calls it Japanese juggling.

  She first learnt how to make a paper aeroplane at an after-school club run for kids of working parents. Her father was absent before her birth, and Chloe wondered if she was the result of an immaculate conception. At her C of E school, she escaped into the magic of a virgin birth, or the trick of turning paper into a boat or a fish. But at 6 p.m. any illusion would be replaced by her mum’s bitter smile, the disappointed slump of weight around her waist.

  They lived under the flight path in Hounslow. Chloe spent her childhood trying to lift her mother’s face, sing sound into her silence. But it was only when Mr Harris moved in that her mum brightened. This ruddy-faced man made Chloe feel like she was photo-bombing the perfect portrait. Chewing her plait ends, she became the pallid girl who made paper aeroplanes. She flew them around the house in an attempt to gain her mother’s attention, then propped her elbows up on the table and scowled under her fringe. She folded a bird with unbalanced wings.

  She left home at sixteen, exchanging creased paper for the crumpled sheets of an older boy’s bed. She hoped that one day she would be able to accept this flat-chested ghost of a girl who wanted to disappear after sex into a puff of smoke, leaving a pile of dust in her wake. The parents of the morose teenage poet were kind enough to let her stay, then she moved on to Gary, the car mechanic, who suggested she apply for an art foundation year at the technical college. By the time she was nineteen, Chloe was creating large canvases in a classroom, the paint thick with rage.

  It took five years to save enough money to embark on an art degree, and by that time she was officially a mature student. She continued to be sponsored by men who were happy to lend her their bathrooms, a mattress. She lived in a squat in Peckham, a flat in Archway, and for a few weeks became homeless. What kept her on the move were the men. As soon as they talked about forever, she would run away.

  Chloe temped during her degree. While folding leaflets she creased the paper in half immaculately. She then remembered how to make a boat and a fish. Later that night she returned to a stoner called Dave, watching a B-movie on television. Shutting herself in the bathroom, she took a stolen ream of printer paper from her bag and cut several sheets into squares. She made one dove, then dozens, until tiny white birds were scattered across the linoleum among Dave’s stray pubic hairs.

  At college, Chloe began to research not only the art but the science. She discovered that paper folds are used to solve mathematical equations that can’t be resolved with a straight edge and compass. But it was the study of patterns that intrigued her most. In origami, thousands of objects are created from the humble square – the challenge is folding anew each time. Discovering the right patterns in the correct order held a symmetry that Leonardo da Vinci explored. As Chloe studied the great masters, she fell in love with the precise geometry. Through Fibonacci and Fujimoto, she hoped to find proof that there was a pattern to existence, rather than a universe that bewildered. Soon she discovered that the Japanese word kami is not only translated as paper but God.

  Chloe had loved the story of creation. As a kid, she was in awe of the vast imagination that made the sea, the fruits and stars – by Friday, a whale. If she were born in His likeness, what else could she desire but to create, like the Great Creator, playing with a paper-sculpted universe and breath? But on this summer’s day, the would-be god is making a mess. The heron topples over.

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’

  She dismantles the bird then tries again, the paper more pliable once broken into. But she soon becomes distracted by a minor fiasco on the other side of the water. Across the lake, a bearded man is directing two gardeners to move a bench on to a concrete platform. It juts out into the water, surrounded by reeds, and the guy is meticulous about the bench’s angle. After the staff leave, he polishes the plaque with his elbow. He then sits down on the bench, smoothing out his trousers. His imposing body looks uncomfortable in tweed.

  Hoping to capture his melancholy, Chloe reaches for a pencil but in doing so knocks over her takeaway coffee. It spills on to a pile of sketches. As she tries to salvage the paper, she is all elbows and drenched knees. A passing man stops to help.

  ‘That’s lovely.’ His office-smooth fingers hold a sketch of a little girl. ‘Is that your daughter?’

  ‘No.’

  His clean-shaven face is so polished he must use moisturiser.

  ‘My name’s Mark. Gorgeous day, isn’t it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Chloe is still trying to clear up the mess. She feels frayed by the heat, the bead of sweat dripping down the inside of her dress.

  He scratches his neck. ‘Are you a member?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just wondered if you come regularly.’

  She isn’t about to tell him how well she knows the lake’s moods, its false serenity. She grabs the sketch, teasingly. ‘Can’t you come up with something more original?’

  Mark smiles at his navel; perhaps he thinks it’s a bashful gesture, something charming. ‘OK, I’m sorry. But any chance I can persuade you to join me at the Orangery? I could replace your drink?’

  ‘I’ve got work to do. Sorry.’

  He remains undefeated. His face is both satisfied and attentive – as if he’s staring at a wicket that he wants to hit, the bails glowing in the afternoon sun.

  ‘Ten minutes won’t hurt.’

  She rakes her fingers across her scalp, trying to work out how to win her fight with the half-folded heron. ‘Now’s not the right time.’

  ‘Well, nice to meet you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As he walks away, she drinks the dregs of her coffee. Then, noting his pert backside, she calls after him, shouting out a series of digits.

  Harry sits on a bench with his journal. On the open page are observations of the giant waterlily, the Victoria cruziana. The leaf now measures seven feet across; she is about to flower. Harry rotates the pencil stub between his fingers, then looks up at the Ruined Arch, one of the Gardens’ follies. A central arch has a smaller archway on each side, creating three tunnels. Perhaps if
he closes his eyes, Audrey will rush through.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. I have a gift for you.’

  In her hands is a rusty-orange scarf, the softest muslin. But there is no sound of her elegant haste, no heels against concrete. Instead a large, fake crack runs through the mock-Roman ruin.

  ‘Audrey?’ he whispers. ‘Au?’

  All morning he has looked for her – at the pagoda, the Palm House. He knows he can’t turn back those crucial seconds, but desperate men cling on to magical thinking. A miracle would make more sense than this, this absence.

  Harry takes out a packet of Montecristos and lights up a cigar. Through the veil of smoke, he peruses the ivy; it scrambles over brickwork that’s pretending to crumble. A stone fragment leans against the wall: a Roman carved relief showing a bearded man and two women. One of them is winged, her body angled in such a way that Harry wonders if she’s waiting or leaving. He returns to his notebook.

  The Victoria is always hungry. Feed her with loam mixed with blood, fish and bone. Mould into feed balls. Leave to dry in the sun.

  ‘Hal! Oi, cloth ears!’

  The slap of plimsolls against concrete, a bowlegged rhythm. A child is running up the path, accidentally dropping flowers in her wake, a trail of fluttering petals. Her mousy hair is in pigtails, her beige cords rolled up beyond her knees. Even from this distance Harry can see the mud stains. As she slows down to a stride, there’s no sway in her hips, no suggestion of a feminine shape. This eight-year-old hasn’t yet realised the difficulties of beauty. Instead she has a boyish, angular bounce, as if, bat in hand, she is stepping up to play rounders.

  When she reaches Harry, her face is flushed from running, and the pleasure of having something to give.

  ‘Milly! I’ve told you not to pick the flowers. A thousand times, I—’

  ‘Thought they’d cheer you up. Ain’t they pretty?’ She searches his gaze, then peers at his feet. ‘They were fallen. I promise.’

  Harry has always found rhododendrons garish, lacking the dignity of the rose, the mystery of an orchid. But Milly is looking up at him with the hope only children can muster. For the last five weeks she has badgered him for details about Audrey’s funeral, but he has only managed to describe the choice of hymns, the pretty napkins: ‘You could see the sea from the church window.’ Milly is still thrusting the rhododendrons towards his chest, as if these petals can make everything better. He can’t bear it. To prevent her from seeing his eyes, he crouches down and rubs out the end of his cigar on the path, saving the rest for later. Still on one knee, he takes the flowers.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing for it, luv, we’ll have to fetch some water.’

  As they walk away from the Ruined Arch, Milly’s plimsolls scuff along the path.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where have you been?’

  ‘Checking on the philadelphus.’

  She looks up eagerly. ‘The ones that smell of orange and jasmine?’

  ‘Correct.’

  She does a little skip to celebrate her success. ‘What are we going to read?’

  ‘How about Swallows and Amazons?’

  A few hours later, Harry puts on his hat and strolls along the streets outside the Gardens. It is a sweet, warm evening. Through the litter and dust, he passes households and habits: a flickering television, a family dinner. As the indigo sky deepens, a man sings in another tongue – a Muslim prayer or incantation. In the distance, there’s the sound of a train, a lorry, then the slash of shouting. A domestic row spills from an open window.

  Five houses down, a boy is practising scales on a piano, a telephone rings, and a ginger cat walks along a brick wall then jumps down into the forecourt of Audrey’s building. Her flat is part of an Edwardian mansion block that overlooks the Gardens. Swiping a fist across his tear-stung eyes, Harry stares at the foot of gravel between the perimeter fence and the building – the window to Audrey’s bathroom.

  He had thought he was a good man; doesn’t everyone? How stupid we all are, he thinks, so occupied with holding our stance that we forget to question our impact, the devastation. ‘Look at the stories we tell ourselves,’ he mutters.

  Behind the wooden slats of a blind, Jonah wrestles with bed sheets. The air is stuffy with his insomnia, his exasperated re-plumping of the pillow. Feet hanging over the edge, he discards the damn cushions, lies on his back, his belly, then stands up and leaves the bedroom. He lumbers from room to room, switching on lights, wearing only a T-shirt. His lower half is naked, as vulnerable as a child’s.

  A couple of hours later, it looks like the flat has been burgled. Audrey would complain that Jonah isn’t separating her shoes from her handbags, the winter clothes from the summer, but finally, he is putting her things into black sacks: the nightie that has been lying on the radiator, the silk dresses and bras, the snakeskin shoes from her mother that she never wore. Ever since the funeral, friends have offered to help, bullying him with kindness, but he has to do this alone. Each item holds a memory – of a night out, a christening, a picnic. Even this jumper . . . it’s still shaped like her, happily slouched on the sofa.

  By three in the morning, Jonah’s grief is a slow underwater dance. Each room feels liquid. In the lounge is a red throw, bartered for on holiday, embroidered with tiny, circular mirrors. When he blinks, Audrey is lying on this sofa, her limbs fragmented and repeated in the glass. In every chair, he sees her sitting naked. Over there, on that white armchair . . . but when he turns there’s only a red-wine stain, spilt by her father at a dinner party in 1999. He’d brought his latest girlfriend with him; was her name Michelle? The piano stool is empty. The sheet music to Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ lies on an upright that is heaving under the weight of newspapers and unopened post. The Boyd London was a gift from Audrey on their fifth wedding anniversary; back then it was much more than a cluttered shelf. Next to that, the corridor leads to her study, where Post-its are still stuck to the desk, her shelves jammed with documents. Jonah has rifled through her personal files, searching for a suicide note or at least some sort of goodbye: a recommendation for a film he hasn’t yet seen, a random snippet to keep their conversation alive. Paint samples are slashed on the wall in shades of pink and lilac. Instead of blocks of colour they tried out the testers by painting words. All of them are names: Bella, Amy, Violet.

  In the bathroom, Jonah fumbles with a box of hairgrips, a little tree of hanging rings, her make-up. Then he notices her dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, a used tissue still in the pocket. As he adds it to the sack in the hall, each sound is louder than it should be: the tap dripping, his feet slapping against the floorboards, the zip on his wife’s moleskin boots.

  ‘Palimpsest.’

  Audrey had woken him to say it.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fourteen across. “A parchment from which writing has been erased to make room for another text.”’ She fluffed up her pillow. ‘I know . . . I’m a genius.’

  ‘It’s three in the morning . . .’

  ‘I just woke up and there it was. Funny thing, the subconscious.’

  She leant across to the box of tissues, blew her nose. ‘Can you remind me that we need to pick up a card for your dad tomorrow. It’s his birthday on Tuesday . . .’

  As Jonah wades through the bin-liners, his calves throb. He has been diagnosed with restless legs syndrome. His muscles spark and short, but he has been refused more sleeping pills, leaving him a foreigner in his body. There have been too many times when he has compiled lesson plans until five in the morning, his knee knocking against the table like a kicking horse.

  Jonah is beginning to understand that becoming a widower requires a physical disentanglement. A mesh, built up through years, is now being ripped apart, the many layers of her separating from his chest, his groin, his fingers. When he finally goes to bed he imagines Audrey’s weight hollowing the mattress. Here is the warmth of her spine curled against his stomach.

  She rolls over and opens one eye. ‘Do you
love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She closes her eye. ‘A cup of tea would be nice.’

  On the bedside table is a photograph of his wife in an olive suede jacket. She knew how to tilt her head, just so, her gaze so incongruent with her tailored clothes that she invited you to move that little bit closer. More than anything Jonah would like to talk. He would like the phone to ring, for them to chat about nothing, just so he could hear his wife’s quiet thoughts. He wishes he had taped her breathing so he could listen to it in the dark. Just the sound of her sleeping, her lungs moving in and out.

  Jonah hauls himself up and turns on the radio. It is 6 a.m. He hopes to be distracted by news but ends up listening to gospel music. ‘Oh Happy Day’. In the corner of his mind he hears the shower running, just on the other side of the wall. He picks at the memory as if it were a scab, knowing it won’t do him any good. Audrey had hoped the cascading water would hide her tears, but still he could hear her. He could visualise her mouth cracked open, her forehead pressed against the tiled wall.

  When the shower stopped running, Jonah tapped gingerly on the door, but she turned on the radio. It was gospel, played at full volume, pitting her tears against the garish hope of the music. All that friggin’ talk about happy days. Audrey must have been smoking – a pile of cigarette stubs gathering outside the window. The smell seeping through the cracks of the bathroom door was making Jonah queasy.