The Bearded Tit Part 3

'I love long-tailed t.i.ts. They're my favourite. Probably my favourite of all birds.'

'Really? Aren't they a bit sweet and girly?'

'Yes!' she said rather sharply and left me floundering.

'It's one of those words though, isn't it?' I said, hoping to regain my unconvincing coolness. 't.i.ts, you know, easy gag!'

'Well, there're a few bird names like that. s.h.a.g. What about a s.h.a.g?' She laughed and mockingly put her hand over her mouth. 'So to speak!'

'Yeah, it's like a cormorant, isn't it? Greener though.' I was lost but struggled on. 'But I've never seen one in colour. Only black and white.'

She looked puzzled but went on, 'Chough is another one.'

'Oh yes,' I said. 'It's not spelled c-h-u-f-f, though, is it?'

'Have you ever seen a chough?'

'No.'

'I could show you one.'

I'd now lost track of the conversation, I was too busy being besotted. My mesmerizedness was full so I'd moved on to being besotted. Besotted with this spiky, feisty, cheeky, bright and beautiful thing who knew about all things bright and beautiful.

'You could show me a chough?'

'Not now though. We'd have to go to a clifftop in Wales.'

'You should ask for a longer lunch break. Oh and there's ruff.'

'Oh yes,' she said and then added in a silly c.o.c.kney accent with which I was, needless to say, besotted, 'Yer, like a nice bit of ruff.'

'Yes, a few rude birds around, aren't there? t.i.ts, chough, ruff, s.h.a.g, and what about the purple-headed ox-p.e.c.k.e.r!?'

She laughed out loud at this. I would have been in big trouble if she hadn't. She looked at me kindly. 'You like that humour, don't you? You do it a lot.'

'What?'

'Going one step further. Going slightly too far with an innuendo. Turning the innuendo on its head.'

'If you say so.'

'Oooh look,' she said, pointing at a robin that was boldly hopping by our feet pecking at the billions of tomato seeds we'd dropped, 'Erithacus rubecula.'

'Oh, so you know the scientific names as well?'

'A few. You just pick them up.'

'Are you into birdwatching then?'

'No, I'm into walking in the countryside and looking at things and wanting to know what they are.'

'Here's one for you,' I said, desperately trying to think of a Latin bird name. 'Pa.s.ser domesticus?

'House sparrow. That's just about the easiest one. What about Puffinus puffinus Puffinus puffinus?'

Well, that's dead easy too. Puffin, of course.'

'No, Rory,' she said, like a disappointed schoolteacher. 'Manx shearwater, I'm afraid. Easy mistake to make.'

This irritated me. And besotted me. She hadn't finished exposing my ignorance.

'What about Emberiza citrinella Emberiza citrinella?'

'Er...citrinella... sounds a bit fruity.' sounds a bit fruity.'

'Well, you're on the right lines.'

'Something lemony?'

'Keep going.'

'Er...is it lemon meringue pie?'

'It's a bird, stupid!'

'Oh, lemon meringue mag-pie.'

'Ha ha.' She mocked. 'No. Yellowhammer.'

Of course, yellowhammer. The bird of my childhood. A small bird with a lemon-coloured breast. I loved talking to this girl. I loved being with her. I was hooked. There was no escape. She was in my bloodstream. A tiny creature had sneaked into my veins and was about to multiply and take over my whole body, my whole life. And we hadn't even touched each other.

All too soon the hour was over and we were walking back up the high street towards the shop.

'See you again, then?' I said as neutrally as I could.

Teah, be nice,' she said back, neutrally. But I felt that her 'neutral' was really 'neutral'. My 'neutral' was 'pretend neutral'.

'Next time I need a bird book I'll call in the shop and see you.'

'When will that be?'

'In about half an hour.'

She laughed. 'See you!' She turned her back on me and went into the shop.

Occasionally in your life you think: something big has happened. You don't always realize it, though. This time I had. If only skipping gleefully hadn't been so uncool in the seventies, I would have skipped gleefully back to college. Instead I slouched back with a moody frown...but in a gleeful skipping kind of way.

And I'd made a decision. I was going to go straight back to my room and learn the scientific names for all British birds.

Puffinus puffinus: Manx shearwater, indeed.

YELLOWHAMMER.

Yellow was different back then. Back then was before the intensive planting of oilseed rape. Now the countryside is chequered with unearthly slabs of sulphur, the landscape glows with a radioactive yellow mist and a sweat-scented cloud of allergy creeps across the fields. The yellow of my Cornish childhood summers was the yellow of dandelions, b.u.t.tercups, celandines, cowslips, broom and, of course, gorse. Ah yes, gorse. Every clifftop hedge was topped with this dark spiky shrub, its small yellow pea-like flowers stunning against the impossible blue background of sea and sky. And on every other gorse bush was a bird. A lemon-yellow bird. A yellowhammer. A small bird, streaked brown on the back and wings and with a bright yellow head and breast. The thin, tinkling song, with its unmistakable drawn-out final note, falling and rising, carried for miles through the strawy heat-haze of Cornish farmland.

This bird, which, I was later to learn, is Emberiza citrinella Emberiza citrinella, became part of my life one particular summer. I was fifteen and I'd made a discovery. A big discovery. Like most children that age I'd discovered what was wrong with the world. People. That That was what was wrong with the world. More specifically, other people. Yes, they were the problem. Actually, even more specifically, the other people in your family. Yes, they were the root of the world's problems. If it weren't for them, the world would be perfect. was what was wrong with the world. More specifically, other people. Yes, they were the problem. Actually, even more specifically, the other people in your family. Yes, they were the root of the world's problems. If it weren't for them, the world would be perfect.

There were six in my family. Myself plus two brothers, one sister and two parents. And, in the comforting simplicity of those days, we were the children of the same two parents. One of whom was our mother and one of whom was our father. It was neat. As we all grew up I realized that the house was not really big enough for six people. Whichever room you went into, there'd be somebody else there already or arriving just after you. That was so annoying. But at that age everything was annoying. Everyone was annoying. And if people chanced not to be annoying briefly, you'd be annoyed anyway. Sometimes a parent would liken our house to 'Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour'. This expression baffled us Cornish youngsters, who had no concept of a 'rush hour' or of Piccadilly Circus, which we presumed was a travelling show.

It was apparently a substantial misfortune to be an only child. Like Eric down the road.

'Poor Eric. So lonely. And spoilt. Well, only child, you see!'

It was hard for me to grasp what was so unfortunate about Eric or what was so sad about being spoilt. 'Spoilt' seemed to mean you got what you wanted. You never had to have the 'which TV channel', 'which music', 'how much food' and 'how long are you going to be in the bathroom and don't leave a smell' discussions and their attendant punch-ups.

Birds, of course, do things differently. Overcrowded or not, brothers and sisters have reason to be afraid. The brown pelican, for example, has a chick. It is happy and well fed and grows strong for a while. Then, what's this? Another egg appears. And it hatches and, lo and behold, there is another chick. A compet.i.tor for food and attention. But a small, weak compet.i.tor for food; one that can quite easily be forced out of the nest into the river of waiting crocodiles. The same for the next chick and the next. What a ruthlessly black-and-white world they live in. A frightening and seductive simplicity. Not something I was about to propose as a solution to overcrowding in my nest. Not as a weedy second-born, anyway.

As the summer of that year approached, I took to leaving the house and going for long walks on my own. Particularly on Sundays when tempers were always a bit frayed from having been forced to go to church and when the weekly blockbuster roast lunch had put people into a tetchy stupor. St Agnes was about seven miles from our house. A small town with a pretty beach. A great walk on a spring day along the coast road lined with gorse bushes, every few yards a male yellowhammer singing. And most important, I was on my own. And going nowhere in particular. After a few weeks, people began to ask questions, of course. Why would you choose to walk fourteen miles for no particular reason? 'I want to be alone' is always going to sound ludicrous and melodramatic whoever says it, an ageing filmstar or a fifteen-year-old schoolboy.

Eventually I told them I was visiting a girl. That was the easiest excuse, and it meant I had a part of my life that was just my own and n.o.body else's. And the girl herself was perfect. Quiet when necessary; chatty when necessary. She was funny and serious, energetic and peaceful. She was tall, small, thin, plump, blue-eyed, brown-eyed and, best of all, non-existent. I have had some fine relationships with girls in my life, and I have few complaints, but I learnt early there's something very special about a non-existent girl. They are who you want them to be, they do what you want them to do and you don't have to explain the rules of Rugby Union to them.

I did this long and, mercifully, lonely walk about a dozen times, and other than the ecstatic moments spent with my non-existent girl, whom I had christened Nema, from the Latin for a female n.o.body, my most vivid memory of those times was the yellowham-mer and his song. This is a series of fast and high repeated notes followed by two longer notes at the end, rising and falling, 'Ti ti ti ti ti ti ti ti ti tyeeeuuuw.' The traditional country rendition of this is 'a little bit of bread and no cheese'. I have repeated 'a little bit of bread and no cheese' to myself a hundred times and have yet to make it sound anything like the tinkling song of the yellowhammer. I would love to meet, and have some severe words with, the slightly deaf man who decided that the yellowhammer was singing 'a little bit of bread and no cheese'. But this energetic bird starts its song in early spring and goes on daily into late autumn. It may not be a great song but it was always there in the warm fields, meadows and clifftops of my growing up. So many Cornish summers of my teens can be shrunk down into the faint, metallic, fragile and persistent song of a yellowhammer, perching on a branch of gorse, starkly bright, lemon-yellow against the infinite blue.

KRAMER VERSUS McGRATH 'What the f.u.c.k are you doing in here?' Kramer was lying on my bed, reading one of my bird books. 'Give that to me!'

Kramer shook his head and tutted. He was playing the part of the village elder about to impart a nugget of wisdom to an impetuous youngster.

'You're up to something. I don't know what it is. You disappear at strange but regular times each day and you have a load of bird books in your room. It'll end in tears, my child,' he intoned rabbinically. 'No good will come of it, whatever it is.'

'You're turning into a parody of a lugubrious Jew!' I said, trying to hide my irritation.

'Turning into? How dare you! I was born a parody of a lugubrious Jew. My parents are parodies of lugubrious Jews, my-'

'Yeah, yeah. I don't like you snooping around my room.' My anger had subsided but I had already revealed too much. I was studying languages; I had eleven bird books. I had snapped. I'd given too much away. We were always in each other's rooms. I'd once turned his upside-down looking for the Razzle Readers' Wives Christmas Special Razzle Readers' Wives Christmas Special. I couldn't find it, but he was eaten away with embarra.s.sment when I'd found stuffed under his bed a four-gallon catering pack of powdered chicken soup; a present from Aunty Sadie.

'So what has changed about the teaching of Spanish, French, linguistics and phonetics that they are concentrating on the birds of Britain and Northern Europe?'

'I'm interested in birds.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, are you. Is there a girl at the bottom of this?'

'None of your business!'

'Aha! Tell me about her!'

I tried to wrong-foot him, 'How's Miranda?' In below-the-belt-ness, this comment was subterranean. Miranda had been the love of Kramer's first few months at college who after one night of pa.s.sion with him had gone off with the captain of the ladies' rugby team.

Kramer paused so he could lower his downtrodden-ness a notch. A deep breath, then, 'Such cruelty, my son, betrays desperate tactics. So defensive!'

'Well, what's anything got to do with you?'

'I care about you, my friend. And you are in danger!'

'You know nothing.'

'OK, let's think about this.'

Carl Kramer was my closest friend at college. His room was directly below mine on N staircase. The other six occupants of N were, bizarrely, all members of the Christian Union. Kramer and I were regarded with suspicion on weekdays and contempt on Sundays. Branfield, Kramer's neighbour, and the rest of the flock held a prayer-breakfast on Sundays before chapel. Kramer and I were not invited. Branfield had ill-advisedly referred to Sunday as the Sabbath, which had given Carl a juicy opportunity to lecture him on Judaeo-Christian history and the Hebrew language. Branfield was reading divinity and had hoped to join the clergy. 'I intend to be a man of the cloth,' he told Kramer.

'Hey, what a coincidence,' Kramer had said. 'My family were tailors in Pozen!'

But Kramer was always going to be a barrister and missed no opportunity to snap into character. 'So, Mr McGrath, the modern language student, is defensive about the eleven expensive bird books by his bed. Is he involved, do we think, with a young lady who works in the natural history department of a bookshop and needs various excuses to hang around there during the day and perhaps arrange his timetable around her tea-breaks?'

I decided to tell him a little. 'She's lovely and she's interested in birds and so am I!'

'Since when have you been interested in birds?'

'A long time, as a matter of fact.'

'What do you know about her?'

'She's stunning.'

A tut. 'What's her name?'

'JJ.'

Another tut. 'What does that stand for?'

I didn't actually know. I didn't know anything about her really. Except that she was phenomenal and I would probably be hopelessly in love with her soon and she was called JJ.

'I don't know what JJ stands for!'

'So, you're not even on first-name terms with her. Has she got a boyfriend? Husband? Girlfriend? Children? Terminal illness?'

'Next time I see her I'll give her the questionnaire.'

'Have you kissed her?'

'There's just me and her. I know it. I feel it. I've never been so sure.'

'But have you kissed her?'

'None of your business.'