Feather Boy

“Kate Barber,” notes Miss Raynham. “Thank you.”

Kate’s friend Lucy then puts her hand up and the spell seems to break. Oliver, Tom and Mai and a couple of others volunteer. Only Derek continues to haver.

“Right,” says Miss Raynham, doing a quick count-up. “I make that eight. So, if we add in young Wesley Parr and Mr Niker here, I think we have a full complement.”

So that’s how, the following Wednesday, I find myself at the Mayfield Rest Home, starting a project that’s going to change my life for ever.

2 (#ulink_5a8734a5-e571-53cf-9c36-891e32d63bd7)

The Mayfield lounge is like a dentist’s waiting room; green chairs lined up against the walls and that dull, limbo feeling of time having moved elsewhere. On top of the television set in the far corner is a crochet mat and, on the windowsill, some fake flowers in white plastic pots. We arrive after lunch and the residents are already seated. Some are in the green chairs perched on plastic cushions, others have brightly-coloured patchwork blankets tucked around their knees and a walking stick or zimmer frame near by. Some are sunk in wheelchairs.

Their hush seems to fall on us as we enter the room. A disconsolate, decrepit hush. And all of a sudden the ten of us are trying to huddle behind Catherine as though we’re embarrassed for being so full of life. Some of the residents peer at us, others ignore us, or maybe they just don’t see us. Niker shifts from foot to foot. I concentrate on the floor. The carpet is gold and swirly. If Miss Raynham were here she’d take charge, but Miss Raynham is not here. As we wait – and wait – for Catherine to do something, a wheelchair suddenly shrieks: “I think I’m in the wrong place!”

“Join the club,” says Niker.

“Now, now,” says Matron. “Mavis.”

Mavis is a chicken in a dress. At once bony and fleshy, her plucked yellow skin springs with coarse hair. At some stage her neck must have been chopped out and her head stuck straight back on to her shoulders.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“It’s The Project,” says Matron, enunciating loudly and clearly as though talking to a foreigner or an imbecile, “with the children.”

“Oh,” says Mavis. “When’s tea?”

“Hello,” says Catherine, finally arriving at the television set, the room’s focal point. Then she adds, in her rather faltering way, “I’m Catherine.”

“Two of my family died in this place,” says Mavis.

“No, they didn’t,” says Matron briskly. “Now children, why don’t you all sit down?”

Gratefully we sit. The residents shuffle and cough and peer.

“Hello,” says a relatively normal and fit-looking man, leaning down towards me. “Who’s this then?”

“Robert,” I whisper.

“Oh aye,” he says. “What yer doing here, Robert?”

Catherine begins to explain. Because she’s standing and we’re all sitting, she’s just about big enough to command attention. She talks briefly about the project and then suggests we work in pairs.

“Just space yourselves out a bit,” she tells the class, “that’s right, into a ring. Now, introduce yourself to whoever you’re closest to. That person will be your main partner. Though, of course, we’ll all be sharing ideas later on.”

As chance would have it, I’m still closest to Mr Relatively Normal. Niker, however, is sitting at Mavis’s feet.

“I’m Robert,” I repeat quickly, to establish my claim.

“So yer said,” he replies. “I’m Albert. Robert and Albert. Bert and Bert. Do they call you Bert?”

“No.”

“Oh aye,” Albert says.

There’s a pause and then he says, “I were a ladies’ man. Once.” And he sighs. The sigh is sad and resigned but it’s only a moment before he leans down and smiles at me. “Eh up, lad.”

There’s something tender in his look, not a tenderness for me of course, just something misty about his past, and in that moment I indulge a few warm thoughts of my own about my grandfather, Grandpa Cutting, who used to call me “lad” and take me boating before he died of a heart attack hanging a garage door. And I’m just thinking maybe Albert will be all right and perhaps the Nobel luck is going to change when a voice chisels through the room:

“I don’t want this one.”

Everyone turns to the speaker. She is tall (even seated), white-haired, ram-rod-backed and her perfectly still right index finger is pointing down at Kate.

“Well,” flusters Liz Finch, the student teacher who, up until this point, might have been a sheet of wallpaper, “perhaps you’d like to swop with Kate, Lucy. Lucy?”

Lucy isn’t moving.

“Lucy?”

“No,” says Ram-Rod. “I don’t want a girl.” The index finger lifts, it moves. “I want a boy. In fact,” the finger stops mid-swing, “I want him.” She’s pointing at me.

Now, you know those team games where there are two captains and they each pick someone to be on their side, turn after turn, until there’s only one person left? And no matter whether there are ten or twenty players that last person is always the same? The one who is never chosen, whatever the game? Well, that person’s me.

“Robert, isn’t it?” says Catherine.

And all the times I’ve prayed, I’ve pleaded, I’ve begged to be chosen and God’s ignored me? And now—

“Norbert,” says Niker. “She wants Norbert!”

Niker’s jeering does not deter Ram-Rod. She beckons me and I just know I’m going to have to go.

“Norbert,” repeats Albert, meditatively.

Kate is already halfway across the room. I stand up.

“Sorry,” I say as we pass like a substituted football players at the edge of the pitch.

“You’re joking,” she says.

A moment later I’m face to face with Ram-Rod. Close to, she looks surprisingly frail. Her body so thin and bloodless, she must, I think, be sitting upright by force of will alone.

“I’m Robert,” I say, extending a polite hand.

“Edith,” she replies, ignoring the hand. “Edith Sorrel.”

My arm drops uselessly and me with it. I’m back on the floor.

Then, like the cavalry, the tea trolley arrives. It comes with clink and clatter and shout and “Thank God” from Albert. Catherine, obviously taken aback that tea can be so early, suggests we all use the time to get “better acquainted”. We know what this means because Liz Finch briefed us on the bus.

“Remember your Elder may be deaf,” she said. “Just ask short, simple questions. Do you have children? Grandchildren? A husband/wife? What job did you use to do? And speak up.”