Читать книгу The Cliff House - Amanda Jennings - Страница 15

CHAPTER SIX

Present Day

‘Are you still scared of ravens?’

My hands instinctively ball tightly. Where did that question come from?

I check my rear-view mirror, indicate, turn the wheel. The back seat of the car is piled up with shopping bags. She sits in the passenger seat. Her hands rest on her lap, motionless, ankles crossed, skirt risen above her knees. Her legs are blemish-free; nothing, not even a freckle marks them. It’s as if she’s been airbrushed.

We skirt Hayle. Drive past the mudflats revealed by the tide. Sea birds pick over the exposed silt in search of razor clams and worms and the remains of dead fish.

‘I remember how you were back then. Terrified, weren’t you?’

I don’t answer. I can’t. The familiar dread gathers in my stomach like a sponge soaking up tar. I glance at her. She’s staring at me, eyes fixed, challenging me. She won’t let this go. She’ll push and push. I have no choice but to answer.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Because of the one you saw the day he died?’

I don’t reply.

‘Tell me.’

‘You know.’

‘Tell me again.’ Her voice has dropped to a low angry rumble and my stomach tightens.

‘It was on the path,’ I whisper. Tears prick the backs of my eyes. I don’t want to think about it. ‘Black all over. Calm. It had eyes like tiny lacquered marbles. The sky was getting darker and darker, pressing down on us. In its beak…’ My voice is choked by a knot of emotion. ‘Long thin strands. Like spaghetti. I grabbed his hand. “It’s just a raven,” he said. Granfer says ravens make bad things happen, I whispered. He saw one at the mine once and the next day the tunnel collapsed and two men were crushed.’

I see my father’s face then. He’s laughing at me. Telling me not to believe such superstitious nonsense. I try hard to recall the sound of his laughter but it’s elusive. If only I’d known it would be the last time I’d hear that noise I’d have listened harder, sucked the sound of it right into myself, etched it on to my brain forever.

‘Don’t be daft, Tam, he said. Granfer’s an old fool. Ravens are just birds. Species genus Corvus. He’s trying to scare you. Too much of the Hitchcock in that one. Don’t you worry.’

‘But you were right to worry.’

‘Yes.’

We round the bend and I slow to a halt to let a farmer cross with his cows. Their underbellies swing as they walk, hip bones pushing against black-and-white hides, tails chasing away the flies. The farmer raises his hand in thanks. Then he does a double take. Stares. Brow furrowed in vague – or perhaps judgemental – recognition.

I put the car into gear and drive onwards. The farmer lifts the iron gate into place, stick resting against the dry-stone wall, his fleeting interest in me gone.

‘What was in the raven’s beak?’

I recall how I pressed myself tight into my father, wary eyes bolted on to the bird, my body flooding with building horror.

‘A chick,’ I say softly. My hands grip the steering wheel. Knuckles white. ‘The entrails of a dead chick.’

Flashes of that small pink body batter me. Flecked with newly emerging feathers. Sodden and bloodied. Its stomach ripped open. Entrails, tiny and thin, spewing from the ragged hole. Its baby head twisted unnaturally, spindly legs broken, wings spread-eagled. One eye bulging beneath a translucent membrane. The other pecked out.

‘A kittiwake. A day or two old, Dad said.’

Then without warning the raven had taken flight. Startled me so I squeezed my father tighter. The bird beat the air with powerful wings, dark feathers outstretched, body rising like a phoenix into the bruising sky.

I take a breath and shift my weight as I change gear. I glance out of the window to my right. The sea is silver today. Touched white in places where the wind annoys it. Foreboding wraps around me like a cloak. I pull in to a lay-by. A caravan passes, its driver red-faced, stressed as he negotiates the narrow Cornish lanes and unforgiving locals who speed around corners primed and ready to shake their fists at the tourists.

‘You saw a raven the day I left, didn’t you?’

I look across at her. She is staring straight ahead. My breathing grows tight as if my lungs are silting up. A gull cries and the shadow of a cloud passes over us.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw a raven that day too.’