The Bearded Tit Part 31

'What do you mean, 'a merlin'?'

Good, she hadn't noticed I was evading the question.

'The merlin is a small bird of prey; looks like a little pigeon. They're really neat. In the day when the aristocracy hunted, the men had peregrines and the women had merlins. In royal circles, the merlin was the lady's falcon. Anyway, they they eat skylarks. Their favourite prey, and I'll tell you something interesting...' eat skylarks. Their favourite prey, and I'll tell you something interesting...'

'Can't wait!'

'...if the lark stops singing and drops down for cover, the merlin nearly always gets it, but sometimes the lark carries on singing, even louder, and rising as the merlin approaches it, as if to say, 'Don't mess with me, pal!', and then the merlin leaves it alone.'

'Cool,' said Lou, 'So, answer me, would you eat a skylark?'

'Oh h.e.l.l, I suppose so; if there was no other food and I was starving and desperate. G.o.d knows how I'd catch one, though.'

'You could borrow the Queen's merlin!' She smiled and I held her hand. We hurried up a bit and scared a pair of chaffinches off the path in front of us, and Louise listened indulgently as I told her about how chaffinches were hunted and captured for singing contests. The male has a loud song, which it repeats over and over again all day long. In the late nineteenth century, men would catch them and cage them in dingy pubs, place bets on which would sing the longest or repeat its song the most times. The contests produced a lot of money and no little crime. Good singers changed hands for substantial sums. 'It was quite cruel, I should imagine, and it's against the law now to trap birds like chaffinches.'

Louise betrayed the tiniest hint of interest. 'Where do you get all this weird s.h.i.t from?'

'Oh, you know; I read it in books, mainly.'

'So people actually write books about all this birdy stuff? And some people read it?'

'Apparently...Hey, Lou, stop! Keep still.'

We were crossing a small square of park lined with large old trees. The gra.s.s had just been mown. This is the ideal setting for a green woodp.e.c.k.e.r. I have seen them here before and out of habit I always look. And there was one. Just a greenish lump in the distance, unless you knew what you were looking for. Despite their name, the green woodp.e.c.k.e.r spends most of its time on the ground looking for ants, which it scoops up with a long, sticky tongue.

'You wait here,' I said to Louise, leaving her on the path as I tiptoed in long, slow strides towards the bird. The nearer I got, the slower and more precise my movements got. I was near enough to see every detail of the marvellously coloured creature. One tiny move at a time now, I edged closer and closer. I was playing statues as I came within a couple of yards of it as it busily stabbed the neat lawn. One step too many and it yaffled away to the trees, showing off its fine yellow rump.

'Wonderful!' I turned back to my daughter. Two or three pa.s.sers-by had stopped to watch my curious, slo-mo dance, and next to them my gorgeous sixteen-year-old Loulou was twisting and squirming with excruciating embarra.s.sment.

A tour of clothes shops seemed to help her over the trauma of seeing her father behaving like a headcase in the busy broad daylight of a city Sat.u.r.day.

We got back from town to find that Jon, too, had returned from the planet he was on earlier. He seemed very keen and lively.

'Hey, Dad, listen to this!' He picked up the guitar and announced, 'Some birdsong for you.'

His nimble fingers glided effortlessly up and down the fret-board as he played an almost note-perfect version of the Beatles'

'Blackbird'.

'That's amazing, Jon! All it needs is a foot-tap and a real blackbird singing in the background.'

I was impressed but a little miffed. I taught him to play that. And I I can't play it. can't play it.

AT LAST.

Tori was beginning to look intently into the reeds. 'That was something a bit special. Something I've never seen before.'

'It was an LBJ. A little brown jobbie. Or a 'lousy b.l.o.w. .j.o.b' in Danny's words.'

'We should have brought the binoculars.'

The dull bird I had just dismissed suddenly appeared again and perched for a tantalizing instant on a reed stalk.

'That wasn't a warbler.' She seemed quite insistent. 'I can't believe we didn't bring our binoculars.'

'Well, we haven't got our bins because we didn't come here to birdwatch, did we? We came here for Danny.'

She looked away.

'I know, I know. That bird was different, though.'

'Was it an Indian harpy eagle?'

She aimed a reproachful schoolteacher's face in my direction.

'No!'

'A Madagascar firefmch?'

'I'm not playing this game.'

'A construction site crane?'

She put her hands to her ears and shut her eyes tightly.

'A fireside chat? A bit of a lark? A three-point tern?'

'You need Danny here to laugh at your drivel.'

I sighed. 'Oh, what's the point?'

'Well there's not much around. It's summer and the birds aren't up to much, are they?'

'No, I mean what's the point of birdwatching? Death makes you think tilings like that, doesn't it?'

A sudden breeze stroked the reed heads, causing a ripple of light and shade to glide over the marsh.

'There's exactly the same point to birdwatching now as ever. Death has never changed the point of something!'

'So, what is the point of birdwatching?'

Tori sighed. 'What's the point of anything?'

'True; go on, tell me.'

She tutted, but not too unkindly. 'Why don't you ask your kids? Didn't you say that either everything has a point or nothing has a point? And even if everything is pointless, it doesn't mean to say you don't have to do it, or you can't enjoy doing it.'

I looked out across the reed beds to the sea and sky. Yes, I probably had said those things. 'Death is bound to stop you in your tracks and make you think oh, what's the point, we're all going to die.'

'That fact that we're all going to die surely means there's even more of a point to doing anything.' Tori's magical words derailed my train of thought.

'Actually, talking of death, what are we going to do about Danny?'

'What do you mean, what is there to do?'

'Well, we've done our duty, haven't we?'

Tori looked puzzled. 'Explain.'

'Well,' I said, Ve've got rid of his cat, as requested, scattering the ashes in a long, touching and sacred ceremony-which, incidentally, he was too wussy to attend.'

'Well, he was upset.'

'I don't know why. He resented that cat and every penny he spent on its banana sandwiches.'

'No, the thing is this: deep down, he didn't want to lose his last reminder of Diana, the one and only love of his life. He couldn't bear to say goodbye.'

'I think you and me deserve some just you and me time together.'

Tori shook her head. 'We can't just abandon him in Norfolk. Anyway, we're supposed to be having a memorial lunch in the Hoste together. Strictly non-vegetarian.'

'True.'

We headed back to the car park.

'At least the car's not going to reek of f.a.gs,' she said.

'True. He hasn't smoked since he left for the Gambia. He's done well.'

'Nicotine stained fingers crossed.'

'You know what,' I said, putting my arm around her, 'I think I've watched enough birds. Let's do something else. We can always do it now and again. Not every day, every week or whatever. We don't have to upgrade our spotting-scope. We don't have to get on the rare-sighting paging network. Let's just go out for a walk and see what flies across our path. But I don't feel like being a 'keen' anything at the moment.'

'OK, what shall we do instead?' asked Tori. 'I mean, what would you like like to do? What have you never ever done that you'd like to do before you die?' to do? What have you never ever done that you'd like to do before you die?'

'f.u.c.k a black girl.'

'Apart from that? Anything sensible? Any pastimes you fancy? Ballroom dancing?'

'No fear. That is sad!'

'Hey, steady on, Mr Ballroom-Dancing's-Sad. Remember what your children said about birdwatching.'

'Yeah, that's true.'

'And anyway, ballroom dancing's s.e.xy now. Strictly Come Dancing Strictly Come Dancing's a hugely popular show.'

'I hated that.'

'Yeah, but I haven't heard that they've commissioned Strictly Come Bird-watching? Strictly Come Bird-watching?

She was right. Not even Bill Oddie in a gold, sequinned, skintight ballgown was going to sell twitching to the ma.s.ses. No prime ministerial candidate would be clamouring to be photographed birdwatching, instead of shaking hands with babies or having the Arctic Monkeys round for tea. There was no doubt about it that there was something cool-proof, s.e.xy-proof about birdwatching. Perhaps that's why it appealed so much to me. It was so unconnected to the false, glam, empty, tawdry, superficial world of 'cool'. It had just about come within nodding distance of 'right-on' status by clinging to the current mania for things wildlifey, conservationalist and save-the-planety. But joining a local nature club or ornithological group was not going to replace speed-dating as an effective way of meeting potential life-partners.

'Anyway, is birdwatching really our hobby? When did it become a hobby as opposed to just something we'd do occasionally when we were out walking in the countryside?'

'When you bought me the spotting-scope and tripod,' I answered confidently.

'Which we've never used. Apart from dropping it in the water. So it's never really been our hobby then?'

She was right again. I kissed her and said, 'I hate the word 'hobby', anyway. It sounds like what people did in the fifties.'

Tori did mock indignation 'I was still in nappies in the fifties!'

'So was I. Being in nappies was obviously one of the most popular hobbies back then.'

Tori sighed one of those big sighs of life that people who were born in the fifties did a lot of in 2007. We fell silent and surveyed the pretty summer landscape.

As it was a bad time of the year for birdwatching, there were not many twitchers about. No hearty 'good mornings' interrupted our closeness and privacy.

'The trouble with birdwatchers is they're people,' I said as Tori put her hand in mine.

'Well, a lot of them are,' she said, holding me back to look at a little brown jobbie flitting among the reeds.

'It'll be a sedge warbler,' I said, trying to walk on.

'No, this was very different.' She seemed quite certain.

'But look at this. An empty bit of the North Norfolk coast. No people, just land, sea, sky and birds.'

'Well, two people. You and me.'

'One person: you!'

'Eh?'

'Well, I can't see me.'

'Oh, I see, do you want me to go so you can be alone with nature?'

'No, I want you here all the time.'

'Ah, thank you.' She squeezed my hand.

'But just don't stand where I can see you.'

She let go of my hand to point into the reeds. 'There it is again.'