Frank Baker Read online

  I stood on the other side of the road looking at it, wondering what the creature reminded me of.

  Then a man came down the steps of the office, hastily opened the door of the taxi, and stepped inside. The bird tittered and poked its head over the side of the roof, looking down towards the window. The driver accelerated his engine. I heard a scream . . .

  So bird and Underwriter were borne away out of my life. And he is another whose fate is unknown to me.

  *

  The second of those three days. That also is clear to me, like a quiet landscape held within the bounds of a slim frame.

  A quiet landscape—— Yes, for all the strange things I have told you, what I have to tell you now is perhaps the strangest; something for which I have never found an adequate explanation. But when you are dealing with supernatural happenings, what explanation will ever suffice? Before I describe the second of those last days I want briefly to recapitulate the events of the preceding weeks. By so doing the extraordinary quality of that quiet day will be seen all the clearer.

  For six or seven weeks, since the beginning of August, from the moment when I had first seen a swarm of strange birds coming in a dense cloud over the river Thames—London had been tormented by winged creatures such as nobody had ever seen before. The advent of these pests had been received with that philosophic resignation so peculiar to the English people. When, however, the creatures began to break up into smaller bodies, to invade our private and public activities, to attack and cause the deaths of hundreds of citizens, they were regarded with increased trepidation. By the middle of September no habitation of man was free of the birds. They had become so general a phenomenon as to be accepted without question. In the last few days almost every person in Lon­don had been shadowed from place to place by a bird; there was no way, apparently, of getting rid of these sinister attendants. Yet even this preposterous situation, so embarrassing and so ominous, could not entirely destroy the stoical temper of the grievously tried people. They still struggled to retain their outward composure and dignity; they would not, on any account, admit the fear they felt in their hearts.

  Meanwhile the whole country was stricken by a drought which had dried up the crops and withered the fruit. No rain had fallen for many months. Sickness fell upon thousands, and famine—that spectral brother—seemed imminent. The Government at Westminster, weary of attempting to maintain peaceful relations in the continent of Europe, had almost abandoned its negotiations with the League of Nations—a league which had by now dwindled to a half-hearted syndicate of small and unimportant powers. Beneath so much oppression the majority of people bore upon their faces the marks of suffering, of long, sleepless nights, of ceaseless worry. The entertainments with which men sought to divert themselves were collapsing through lack of support. Great meet­ings were held in a colossal hall in west London, where journalists, priests, politicians and scientists spoke passionately of the need for a mobilization of the forces of peace. Finally, as you know, a special service of religious intercession was to take place.

  This is a picture, however inadequate, of the utter gloom which pervaded the City that September when the sun rose more fiercely every day in the hard, burning sky. Augment the picture of your own imagination, because the sharper this wretchedness appears to you, the sharper will appear the ensuing gaiety and light-heartedness on the morning of that second day when it was announced from every town in the island, that the birds had vanished back into the mysterious sphere from which they had emerged some six weeks ago. Yes, they had gone. . . .

  The feeling of relief, of freedom, was apparent in every person you met. A laughter which had not been heard for a long time seemed to ripple over the streets. And the disappearance of the birds was not all that gladdened men’s hearts. For as the day continued, a slight breeze awoke and began to stir faintly over the crinkled leaves and dust-heavy flowers. It was barely audible, but it seemed to us like the faint breath of a sick man in whom one had given up all hope.

  What I chiefly remember is the beautiful quietness of that day. I had forgotten how often the air was full of the harsh noise of the birds until London seemed like a rookery, only a hundred times less companionable. Now these sounds had gone, and in their place we heard the soft music of a little wind, sighing gently over the land.

  I had not to go to Leadenhall. Waking up with this thought I could not accustom myself to it at once. I had told Lillian the previous night, and she had not received the news very favourably. She had been in bed most of the day, unwell and irritable. Annie had plagued her with stories of the birds she did not wish to hear. Then my news had added to the burden on her spirit.

  “What are you going to do?” she had asked wearily.

  “I’m going to buy a car, and take you away, a long way, where we can look at our lives and get them straight.”

  “Yes, but what are you going to do? You can’t go on looking at life for ever.”

  In the morning she came down to breakfast, and I first began to realize the changed nature of the day when she told me she had slept well, the first time for many days. She was smiling, full of jokes. I knew that something unusual had happened, and at first I wondered whether she had opened her windows and come out of the ordeal as I had. I questioned her discreetly.

  “Weren’t you—worried in the night?”

  “No,” she said. “No, not once. I expect it was all my eye, don’t you, son? I believe I imagined it. They say you can imagine such things.”

  She seemed a changed woman.

  “I heard of a girl once,” she continued, “who imagined she had swallowed a spider in a glass of milk. She got so ill they actually had to operate on her. Fancy that, now!”

  It struck me that her gaiety was assumed. I went out and was so amazed by the quietness and the change over every­thing that I could do little more than wander about the streets in a half-bewildered delight. It was hard to believe what had happened. I bought a newspaper later and read that the disappearance of the birds was not confined to our neighbourhood. I telephoned my friend Fred, and asked him what it was like in the City. He told me that it was all clear, and that he personally was annoyed with the birds for leaving us before he had had time to examine them properly and arrive at some sane conclusions about them.

  While still in the telephone-box I had a strong inclination to call Olga and ask if I could walk up to Hampstead and see her. But a second thought prompted me not to. It would be better to stay with Lillian to-day, to try to talk to her, and perhaps arrange to bring Olga to see her to-morrow.

  On my way home I passed a small fancy shop and was suddenly reminded of the candles I had wanted for the empty sticks on the bureau. My mother was in such a good humour, so light-hearted, they would please her to-day. So I went into the shop and bought two tall candles, white, with tapering points.

  “There, Mother,” I said, unwrapping them and showing them to her.

  “Why, they’re lovely. They make you think you ought to have a service, don’t they?”

  I laughed and set them in the sticks. With my arm round my mother’s waist, we looked at them and agreed, that they entirely altered the appearance of the dark corner.

  “Shall I light them?” I asked.

  “Oh no, you extravagant boy,” she said. “Besides, it would spoil the look of them.”

  I could not quite understand how lighting candles could spoil the look of them, but I did not argue the point.

  Later, I talked to her and tried to make her see that my leaving Leadenhall was inevitable, and better to come soon than late. “What I plan,” I said, “is that you should have a long holiday with me some­where. Perhaps Wales. We can leave Annie to mind the house.”

  She said I was mad, compared me to her father, sighed, and laughed. It was strange and delightful to have tea with her later in the afternoon, with the windows wide open again. She laughed and joked, and we pla
yed the fool with each other.

  “To-morrow,” I said, “I shall go up to town, see if I can find any old cars——”

  “You’ll break our necks,” she said. “I’m sure you can’t drive. I don’t know how any one does it.”

  “Rubbish!” I scoffed; “it’s as easy as walking.”

  “Well, dear, I don’t find that very easy,” she said.

  We took the newspaper and looked at some advertised cars, dis­cussing what particular make we should have. Looking back, it seems to me that we were figures in an ironic drama, instructed to laugh and be merry by a supreme playwright. And all over London in a thousand homes that evening, I dare say similar scenes were being enacted.

  Towards sunset I took her out. She had been half afraid of going, but I encouraged her. It was her first walk outside the house for several days. We went up to the ridge. Here is the crystallization of that quiet day. The same scene as I set for you earlier in the story: the tennis players, the wooden seats, the lethargic railway, the dis­tant spires and chimneys—and over it all a long feather of wind, so slight as barely to stir a leaf in the plane trees. But wind—wind; a breath from another country.

  We sat and talked a long while. “I want to bring Olga to see you to-morrow night,” I said. “You will love her, and she you.”

  My mother was dubious. “I’m never any good with strangers,” she said. “But bring her if you like, son.”

  The tennis players had left the courts; it was quiet, almost dark. We heard the wind sighing from many miles away, in the west. Where the sun had set there was a barred window of red light left in the sky. We watched its glow fall and fade till there was nothing left.

  “Why, son,” said my mother, “it’ll soon be winter. That sunset reminded me of winter somehow.”

  She murmured half to herself the words of her old hymn:

  “Shadows of the evening,

  Steal across the sky.”

  As we turned to go and surveyed for a moment the long black shape of the Alexandra Palace, there were tears in my eyes.

  When we came back to the house, “Let us light our candles, Mother,” I said.

  But, “Oh no,” she replied, “it would be a shame to waste them.”

  I talked to her in her room.

  “You’ll open your windows to-night, won’t you?”

  “Not to-night,” she replied quickly. “I needn’t yet, need I? Besides, I should catch cold. The wind’s rising. I believe we shall have a storm.”

  I sighed, left her, and walked up and down the street before I went to bed. I noticed then that almost every window in the street was shut, despite the still warmth of the night. Why had they laughed all day, I thought? Why? When they must shut windows at night——

  It was a brilliant starry sky, with no moon. I heard the distant sound of the wind like one long-continued note gradually coming nearer.

  *

  The third day. I rose early, for I had not been able to sleep very well. Incessant during the night had been that distant note of the wind, rising by imperceptible degrees to a long, uneasy moan. It was a sound so strange to us that I could not accustom myself to it. From the west, from over the Atlantic, storm-clouds were being slowly driven towards our island. There should be cause for nothing but rejoicing in that I told myself; and I tried again to sleep. But I could not. Before dawn I rose and switched on the light. I tried to read, but my mind was too full of thoughts. In a mechanical sort of way, hardly knowing why I did it, I began to assemble the few books that were of any value to me.

  Then it suddenly came into my mind—why am I doing this? Thus taking stock of my few possessions as though I stood on the eve of a great change in my life? My practical self assured me, I might very soon be going away somewhere with my mother and Olga. It was as well to decide what books I should take.

  I remembered it was the day fixed for the intercession service in the Cathedral, and I decided I would go. Then I would have lunch with Fred, and ask him to help me in buying a cheap car; he was the sort of person who would know about such things. Later, in a day or so, I would drive my mother away somewhere, perhaps to Wales. If she made any objections, I would just put her in the car and drive off; she would very soon admit that she liked the change. But before all this I had to see Olga and have some definite plan to put before her. I would not bring her to see my mother that evening; I would talk to her first.

  All these half-formulated plans were very well, but recurring in my mind was that practical phrase of Lillian’s, “What are you going to do? Yes, but what are you going to do?”

  I answered it half-heartedly, aware that I contradicted those decisions I had made two weeks ago upon the mountain. I said, “I will write; I will spend my life juggling with words; working out upon paper some clear and philosophic attitude towards exist­ence which is not yet mine.” I heard a milk­man’s cart rattle along and the man whistling some popular tune to himself. Soon the world would be awake. But for a moment I was alone while everybody slept; I was stealing a moment from time. I felt that I had the power to arrest the progress of the sun and keep those blinds drawn so long as I wished.

  I looked up to the sky. Eastward was pure dawn, with a rose-coloured streak lying in the last green vault of night. But westward, a long strip of black cloud pressed low on the horizon. And from there came the wind. I felt it slowly chilling my body until I began to shiver. It was colder than I had known it for weeks. I was reminded of another morning when I had risen early and gone to the swimming-pool and seen the birds thick as ploughed earth on the surface of the water. Barely a month ago, yet it seemed like a different existence. We had been half amused then by a lot of birds. And now they had all gone; the world was returning to normality. I looked all around me, on to roof and into tree. There were no birds.

  I heard the click of the letter-box in the front door; the morning newspaper had been delivered. Wanting to see whether there was any fresh news of the birds, I ran up to get it. By my mother’s door, with the newspaper in my hand, I paused, then knocked.

  “Come in,” she called. Then, as I entered, “Why, how early you are!”

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “No, not very well. I kept hearing the wind and I thought we were going to have thunder.”

  “There’s a bank of cloud coming up from the west,” I told her. “I expect we shall have rain at last.”

  I went to my bedroom with the paper. Spread out in huge black letters were the words, “HAVE THE BIRDS VANISHED?” And a leading article commenced—“These are the words on everybody’s lips.”

  It appeared that all the previous day there had been no sign of the birds. “The proposed gas attack was abandoned,” declared the paper; and added, “It is hoped that such a dangerous measure will never now be found necessary.”

  I saw another column headed “RAIN IN THE WEST.” At a late hour last night a heavy south-west gale had launched itself on the coasts of Cornwall, and rain of exceptional violence had fallen. Little wooden beach-huts had been smashed to pieces by the wind, and somewhere a large-tanker was ashore. Habit compelled me to ask—were we interested? I laughed. They could be as interested as they liked in Leadenhall; it no longer concerned me.

  At breakfast we spoke about the change in the weather. My mother was still in good spirits, but a little uneasy. She continually rose from the table and crossed to the window, looking out and remarking at intervals that “Regular pea-soup was on the way.”

  “If you go out,” she said, “you had better take a coat. That is, if you’re still bent on this silly idea of yours.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I think I shall go to St. Paul’s.”

  “There doesn’t seem much need to pray for rain, does there?” observed Lillian. “Since it’ll probably come down in bucketfuls before long.”

  I left soon after breakfast. Annie was cleaning the door
-knocker and told me to be back early if it came to rain, as my mother hated a storm.

  “All right, Annie,” I said. And I made some jocular remark. She did not reply, but scowled and rubbed the polish furiously into the brass. I think she bore some grudge against my cheerfulness; I could not encourage her to smile or joke. Poor Annie. . . .

  The service in the Cathedral was at eleven-thirty. By ten when I left the house, the bank of cloud had risen higher in the sky and soon threatened to obscure the sun. There was a breathless silence hanging over everything; a subdued excitement in the patter of people’s feet along the pavement. Men at the station, who two days ago had been heavy-faced and speechless, were standing in groups together, looking up to the sky, pointing to the cloud. “Rain, rain”—the word was on everybody’s lips. “Strange,” remarked somebody, “it should come on the very day of this service in St. Paul’s.”

  In the carriage they talked of the change in the weather with heightened and quick voices.

  “Well, with rain coming and the birds gone,” said a little man who was in the habit of addressing the world at large, “we all return to normal.”

  “I suppose the birds have gone?” came the dubious voice of a thin man with a red, scraggy neck.

  “You bet your life, sir,” replied the little man, nodding his head rapidly and sucking his teeth in a confidential sort of manner. “Y’see,” he explained, “I have a theory; quite simple. They were driven over here by bad weather. We shall find out one day where they came from. Undiscovered island in the Atlantic—mark my words, sir. Couldn’t find their proper home, as you might say. Now here’s this rain coming and—phoosh! Away they go. After the sun, y’see. Can’t bear rain. Felt it coming. Birds always know. Why—you wouldn’t believe——” And he went on at great length to tell us a story about a pet jackdaw he had had as a child; a story which he told so amusingly that we sat and listened to him, hardly noticing how the light slowly darkened outside and the air through the open window seemed to get thin. It was a curious scene. I remember suddenly the long, squalid names of the drab stations we passed—Haggerston, Canonbury—as we drew towards Broad Street.