Читать книгу Keeping Faith - Roger Averill - Страница 18

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Mrs Potter tried to make me feel good about taking her canaries, as if it were me doing the favour. ‘Just think, I’ll never have to sweep up bird seed again!’ She took the tubular water dispensers from the cages and emptied them under the rhododendron by the gate. ‘Make sure you fill them when you get home — they don’t work so well without water.’

She kept a straight face while I smiled. Carrying the cages out to the car, I copied her: one hand holding the wire handle on top, the other supporting the base, waiter-style, as if the cages were enormous cakes.

Mum propped them against each other on the back seat and Mrs Potter handed her a blanket, saying, ‘Pop this over them; they travel better blind.’ She stepped back onto the footpath and shoved a hand into the pocket of her apron. ‘Well, Happy Birthday, Josh.’

I turned and gave her a hug and she kissed me on the cheek, which was something she hadn’t done since I was a small boy.

‘I hope you enjoy them,’ she said.

I kissed her in return. Her skin was soft and dry like flour. ‘I’ll take care of them, I promise.’

Having wound down my window, Mrs Potter poked her head in and said, ‘If they won’t whistle, play them Frank Sinatra; they love old Frankie.’ Talking to Mum now, being cheeky, she added, ‘Whoops, I forgot! You don’t play that kind of music, do you? I’m not sure how they’ll go with hymns.’

Mrs Potter looked so alone as we pulled away from the kerb; sad, now that she could no longer make jokes to hide her feelings. Driving home, Mum began to cry. I don’t know why, but I pretended not to notice and didn’t try to comfort her in any way. Instead, I looked at the houses and the little groups of shops sliding by, every now and then turning to check the birds were all right, that the cages were riding upright, the blanket still in place.

A week later, the birds looked content in their new home. I had finished feeding them and was playing football in the backyard; pretending to be the whole team, commentating as well. As a backman, I had just kicked a raking torpedo out of defence. I was about to mark it as a high flying centre half-forward when Old Mr Capello clambered onto the side fence.

‘Heh, come, come.’ One arm clutched the fence top, the other waved me over.

I took my eye off the ball and got a fright when it hit the ground beside me. Picking it up, I took it to the fence for security, bouncing it once as I walked.

‘Soccer, you play?’ Mr Capello pointed at the ball.

I shook my head, smoothing a hand along its oval curve.

The Capellos had moved next door when I was seven. Mum and Dad treated them like they did everyone else in our street — smiled when they saw them, said hello, wished them a Merry Christmas each year. Old Mr Capello was Mr Capello’s father, grandfather to the Capello kids. He was short and brick brown. Though old, somewhere in his seventies, he still looked strong. ‘Built like a barrel,’ Dad had once said. He made his own wine in their garage, drank it sitting on a kitchen chair on the patio, in the dappled shade of the vine. In summer he wore baggy shorts and a white singlet and, on hot nights, carried a mattress outside and slept on their front porch. He had white hair and whiskers and brown eyes set so far back in his head that on sunny days you couldn’t see them for the shadow of his brow.

‘Uccello,’ he said, and started whistling and pointing to the aviary.

‘Canaries,’ I said.

He smiled. His teeth were all the same height, yellowed, worn away.

‘Uccello … you procreare? No?’

I shrugged my shoulders and told him I didn’t understand. Raising a hand, he said, ‘Stay. Momento,’ and lowered himself from the fence.

Fingering the laces of the football, running a fingernail along its grooved seams, I listened to Old Mr Capello call to someone in Italian. A girl’s voice answered and the wire door at the back of their house creaked open, slammed shut.

His granddaughter appeared next to him on the fence. Christina was a couple of years older than me and went to Our Lady’s, the Catholic school for girls. She had long, wavy hair which she usually wore tied back, but that day it was wet and glistened in the sun. Her skin was the colour of a walnut shell, except smooth and pink around the cheeks.

‘Hi,’ she said, still adjusting herself on the rail, pressing her body into the palings. ‘He wants me to tell you what he’s saying.’

The old man started speaking to her in Italian. I kept my eyes on Christina, watching her gently nod her head, biting her lip as she listened. Old Mr Capello went silent and they both looked back at me.

‘He wants me to tell you that he bred birds back in Italy. Pigeons, racers.’

‘Premio vincitores.’

‘Prize winners.’ Christina smiled. ‘They were prize winners.’

‘Tell him my birds are canaries.’

It felt strange giving her orders, but she did as I said and then listened for her grandfather’s response.

‘He says he knows; that he’s heard them whistle.’

He spoke to her again, forcefully, tilting his head in my direction. Christina paused, started to speak, then stopped. She checked a word with the old man, blushing when he nodded.

‘What he really wanted to tell you …’ She bit her lip. ‘He says if you want the birds to mate, it’s best to keep the cock birds in separate cages.’

Old Mr Capello began talking to me directly.

‘Separato, separato.’ He used his hands to demonstrate, placing them together, pulling them apart. ‘Cock burds … more … disperato.’

‘More desperate,’ explained Christina.