His Crows
The thing Jeff was most looking forward to about his wife dying was having a religious conversion. Mavis had always been Englishly lukewarm towards that sort of thing – “Godgiddy”, she called it. Not that he was planning to jump bapt-ecstatically into the River Darwen. But a bit of Bible and a spot of Sunday stained glass would go down like his custard creams at Christmas. The idea dawned as deliberately as the idea of Mavis faded. In the end days, Jeff began to walk their beloved lurcher past local churches, wondering which he’d pick (or which would pick him, if such things were divine). The sight of parishioners (mostly cloud-haired) crossing the threshold made him slightly weak at the knees.
Except, when Mavis’ shadow finally passed, Jeff started twitching instead. Physically, he’d always had a double-blink thing going on. Which Mavis had tutted a tad at – though surely the odd spasm wasn’t as embarrassing as a late-aged bloke taking up birdwatching. Ploughing up birdwatching! The fancy came sudden and urgent, like an email from the doctors. Like all hobbyists, in no time, Jeff revered the trinkets, loved the linger of lingo on his tongue – big lens bins, sprawk, spruggie, pied wag, windhover...
Jeff started in the conservatory (the glass room he basically lived in now), then ventured into the garden (he loved tending to his bird feeder – well, his middle name was Francis), before braving field trips (the anticipatory cheese butties became part of the ritual). There were several promising sites close to his house, but Jeff settled on the meadow along the river, just up from St. Martins. Once, passing a christening on the way, he spotted the vicar on the church steps, and must have been birdbrained at the time because Jeff saw the vestments as black and white plumage, like a coot! Perhaps priests have the ultimate hobby, Jeff mused – but the thought was lost in his footsteps towards his blue-green morning.
All this looking and listening was good for the soul – Jeff felt fresh air coursing through his blood, even as he fell asleep in his patchwork armchair at night – but apparently poor for the senses. What seeped into his days as lovely accompaniment – a looping score of birdsong, an evergreen intensity of colour which enriched even the washing up – slowly overtook. Jeff felt as if his contrast had turned up too many notches, like when he distractedly sat on the remote, and as if the blackbirds who pecked at the fat each afternoon were nesting in his ears. When his daughter had visited one Wednesday evening, all Jeff could do was nod and switch on Countryfile (with subtitles).
Jeff still went on his jaunts, armed with his little white book (RSPB), but he got lost easily – whichever way he turned, Jeff ended up in scrubland or a car park or among warehouses, litter and trolleys wherever he wound. It was like a lesson – once you’ve learned to prick your eyes and ears, maybe you can see beauty in anything, because a new affection awakened in Jeff, not for sudden splashes of red or operatic trills but for humble pigeons, magpies, geese. Their monochrome washed his mind. Their squawks, and even the background noise of engines and roller shutters, soothed like ointment.
It didn’t take long for Jeff to get to know every crease of the town and quickly right his path to the meadow. But now (because the landscape was wintering?), all Jeff could pick out along the river was the odd female brown-down of duck and blackbone trees full of plastic-rags and crows. Crows soon became his favourite bird and he devoured books about them, even a Ted Hughes collection though he’d always preferred stories to poetry. For some reason, mystifying to himself, he even handwrote notes on corvids from Mavis’ old encyclopaedia in the study, sometimes copying whole paragraphs. He should apply for Mastermind, Jeff’s daughter had suggested, smiling kindly – at least, that’s what he thought she’d said.
Soon, she seemed to be suggesting other things, her smile tighter – Jeff only caught the chance word: nightingale, specsavers, home. In a blink, Jeff found himself, quite by accident, sat squat in a plaid armchair that smelt like bleach, overlooking a lake. He was relieved when the tiny bright birds which flitted and whistled to and fro revealed themselves to be fledgling crowlings after all. And there was one larger-than-life raven who, without fail, glided through the hall just as Jeff was tucking into his Sunday lunch, a repeat hello he relished.
By now, Jeff’s ears had long rung with caw-caws (tinnitus, the tit with the stethoscope had said). Eventually, Jeff’s soundscape and seescape melded until crowkind were everywhere. In corridors, in uniforms, most definitely behind the canteen hatch. The crows remained the same colour but, gradually, all other objects became blacker, as if the birds were sucking the heart of things into their field. Including Jeff’s eyes. At last, Jeff sat in pitched darkness, waiting. And, with nothing else to do, as he traced the shape of that darkness, crow contours deepening, he saw it. A shadow of arms, outstretching, turning, hands unfolding, holding nothing but what he could just make out as – a flame of phoenix?