London Observed

‘There you are, good dog,’ she said in an unhappy voice. A sparrow arrived too close to the Japanese matron and she let out a shout. Still another waiter arrived at the kitchen door and examined the scene like a general. A short, stocky, competent youth, his hair brushed straight up, everything about him neat and clean, he was obviously destined to be running his own firm or at least a department within, at the most, five years. He strode forcefully about, scattering clouds of sparrows by flinging out his arms energetically as if he were doing exercises. He smiled with a nod at the Japanese and went back into the kitchen. The sparrows returned.

A middle-aged couple shining with health and suntan lotion arrived, each holding one austere cup of coffee. They had evidently just come back from a holiday in the blissful sun, and could afford to smile now at where it hid behind a bank of black that covered half the sky. They put their cups on either side of a small lake of rainwater on their table, and sat on the edge of their chairs in a way that told everybody they were about to demolish the distances of the Heath at a dedicated trot.

The middle-aged couple that arrived now couldn’t be more unlike them. They walked cautiously up the steps and came forward, watching how they set down their well-cleaned shoes. Each carried a tray with tea and a single scone and butter. They chose a table at the back, near the little grassy strip.

Behind them was the tall brick wall with its mysterious, always-closed door, like the Secret Garden. The woman sat stirring her tea, while she smiled at the Labrador, then at the banks of bushes and trees on the right, all shades of heavy, lush green, then at the tops of the trees that showed over the palisade on the left, finally looking straight ahead with approval at the long shapely building, a wing of Kenwood House, once a coach house and servants’ quarters, that was now rapidly filling with people having breakfast, tea and lunch. The open upper windows hinted at the satisfactorily interesting lives going on inside, and on the long, low, roof, birds of all kinds, but mostly sparrows and pigeons, carried on their no less interesting affairs. She regarded with particular appreciation the sparrows who crowded a tree just behind them, watching for what might befall them next. Her husband was already leaning forward to consume his scone in the fussy, urgent way of a man who would always attend to whatever was in front of him, finish it, and then wonder why he had been in such a hurry.

A sparrow dropped from the tree and sat on the back of the tilted-forward chair next to the woman. She carefully pushed some crumbs towards it.

‘Hilda, what are you doing!’ expostulated her husband in a low, urgent, peevish voice. ‘It’s not allowed, is it?’ And he craned his neck around to assure himself the Public Health Notice was still safely there.

‘Oh well, but that’s just silly,’ said she serenely, smiling at the sparrow. He glared at her, a piece of scone halfway to his mouth, with the frustrated look of one who did not feel in control of anything. Then, as the sparrow fluttered cheekily towards his hand and the scone, he stuffed it in, swallowed it, and said, ‘They’d steal the food out of your mouth.’

Hilda gently set the tilted chair upright, and then the one next to it. At once sparrows descended to sit on their backs. She put a crumb quite close to her and sat waiting. A seasoned sparrow, one of many summers, a lean hunting bird, grey blotched with chocolate and black, darted in, snatched it, and flew off to the roof of the coach house, with two others in pursuit.

On the back of the chair nearest to her three sparrows sat watching, side by side.

‘Look, Alfred,’ she said, ‘they are babies: look, they’ve still got a bit of their gape left.’

The corners of their beaks were yellow. All three were neat and fresh. New-minted. Their greyish-brown feathers glistened. The man was staring at them with a look of apprehension too strong for the occasion.

From a distance this man seemed younger than he was, a sprightly middle age, being cleaned and brushed and tidy, but from close you could see fresh crumbs on his cardigan, and a new tea stain on his tie. He had a greyish, drained look. His wife was a large full-fleshed woman who sat up straight there beside him, everything about her showing she was in command, her hands kept and capable, hair neatly waved, clothes just so. If she was not much younger than he was, then that was what she seemed.

She laid some crumbs close to the three birds and the boldest hesitated, darted in, and flew off with one. The second fought with himself, took off from the chair-back, but halfway to the crumb, his goal, panic overtook him, and with a swirl and a flutter of wings he turned in mid-air and returned to the chair-back.

‘Go on, be a brave bird,’ she admonished it. Again the hesitant take-off, the mid-air swerve and whirl of wings when for a few seconds it hovered, then retreated. At last this sparrow managed to overcome its fear and resist the need to turn back halfway, and he reached the crumb and showed he would have a successful future because he picked up several, very fast, and flew off somewhere with a full beak to enjoy them.

The remaining sparrow sat on there, alone. He was very new, this little one, with remnants of baby fluff showing here and there. The yellow corners of his beak were bright. He had been sitting watching his fellow ex-fledglings with the calm, round-eyed, detached look of a baby in a pram.

‘Come on, you do it too,’ she said. But the little bird sat on there, watching, not involved at all.

Then a new bird arrived on the table among the crumbs, and pecked as fast as it could. It was an older bird, its feathers no longer fresh and young. And now the little sparrow hopped on to the table, crouched, fluffed out its feathers so that it became a soft ball, and opened its beak.

‘What’s the matter with it?’ demanded the man, as if in a panic. ‘It’s sick.’

‘No, no,’ soothed his wife. ‘Watch.’

The older bird at once responded to the smaller bird’s crouching and fluffing by stuffing crumbs into its gape. This went on, the baby demanding, as if still in its nest, and the parent pushing in crumbs. But then a brigand sparrow came swooping in. The parent sparrow pecked it and the two quarrelling birds flew off together to the roof. The little sparrow, abandoned, stopped cowering and spreading its feathers. It closed its beak, returned to the chair-back and resumed its bland baby pose.

‘But it’s grown-up,’ said the man, full of resentment. ‘It’s grown-up and it expects its parents to feed it.’

‘It was probably still a baby in its nest yesterday,’ she said. ‘This is probably its first day out in the wicked world.’

‘Why isn’t it feeding itself, then? If the parents have pushed it out, then it should be supporting itself.’

She turned her head to give him a wary glance, removed this diagnostic inspection as if she feared his reaction to it, and sat with a bit of scone in her hand, watching the throng of sparrows who were looting the now empty plates and platters of the Japanese trio. The Japanese matron was grumbling loudly about the birds. Her children pacified her, and waved to the indolent waiter with the shock of straw hair, who came across at his leisure, piled up trays, and went off with them, depriving the sparrows of their buffet. They whirled up into the air and the baby sparrow went with them.

The little garden café was filling with people. The sun was again close to the edge of the clouds, and one half of the sky was bright blue. The athletic couple went striding efficiently away. The young male Japanese went back into the building. Surely he wasn’t prepared to tackle even more food? The two elderly ladies sat on, though a waiter had removed their coffeepot and the two empty plates.

The dog lay with its chin on the grass and watched a sparrow hopping about within inches of him.

The baby sparrow returned by itself to sit on the chair-back.

‘Look, it’s back,’ she said, full of tenderness. ‘It’s the baby.’

‘How do you know it’s the same one?’

‘Can’t you see it is?’

‘They all look alike to me.’

She said nothing, but began her game of carefully pushing crumbs nearer and nearer to it, so that it would be tempted but not frightened.

‘I suppose it’s waiting for its father to come and feed it,’ came the grumble which her alert but cautious pose said she had expected.

‘Or perhaps even its mother,’ she said, dry, ironic – but regretted this note as soon as the words were out, for he erupted loudly, ‘Sitting there, just waiting for us to …’

She said carefully, ‘Look, Father, I said this morning, if you don’t want to do it, then you don’t have to.’

‘You’d never let me forget it then, would you!’

She said nothing, but leaned gently to push a crumb closer to the bird.

‘And then if I didn’t I suppose she’d be back home, expecting us to wait on her, buying her food …’

She was counting ten before she spoke. ‘That’s why she wants to leave and get a place of her own.’

‘At our expense.’

‘The money’s only sitting in the bank.’

‘But suppose we wanted it for something. Repairs to the house … the car’s getting old …’

She sighed, not meaning to. ‘I said, if you feel like that about it, then don’t. But it’s only £10,000. That’s not much to put down to begin on getting independent. It’s a very good deal, you said that yourself. She’ll own a bit of something, even if it is only a share of the place.’

‘I don’t see we’ve any choice. Either we have her at home feeding her and all her friends and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, or we have to pay to get her out.’

‘She’s twenty-one,’ said the mother, suddenly exhausted with anger, her voice low and tight. ‘It’s time we did something for her.’

He heard, and was going to retreat, but said first, ‘It’s the legal age, isn’t it? She’s an adult, not a baby.’

She did not reply.

Out came the Japanese young man with yet another tray. More cakes piled with cream and jam, more coffee. As soon as he had set these down before his wife (girlfriend? sister?) and his (her?) mother, the three of them bent over and began eating as if in an eating contest.

‘They aren’t short of what it needs,’ he grumbled.

That peevish old voice: it was the edge of senility. Soon she would be his nurse. She was probably thinking something like this while she smiled, smiled, at the bird.