Veronica was back in her favourite city. The serviced apartment was ideal. A garden flat in York Place close to Clifton Village, Brandon Hill and Park Street. The landlord had shown her round and explained the dish-washer. He was well manicured. Nice shoes. Nice shirt. Nice manners. A younger version of her Dad she thought. The flat was well appointed. Chunky furniture. Limestone bathroom and two bedrooms. The fridge and kitchen cupboards stacked with goodies including a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon. Fresh Bread in the bread bin and a large bowl of fruit. The living/dining room had French doors opening on to a secluded walled garden. Huge wooden table and chairs enough to seat ten people and a separate space beyond which was in shadow from a monumental copper beech. A rustic pizza oven in the corner.
She had been collected from Temple Meads in the morning and had met everyone she was to be heading in the new office just along from where the Blairs bought their son a flat when he came to Bristol Uni.The newly assembled team seemed a bright bunch. Focussed and keen. The word thrusting came to mind.She tried her hardest to appear confident. She should be, after all, with her first from Oxford and her reputation so far. But she had those niggling doubts. That little bird that sat on her shoulder twittering misgivings and yes-but-maybes.
She liked birds and when she first saw the garden she thought of getting a bird-feeder. Bristol was full of cats and that was probably why the bird population was limited. Unfortunately cats tend not to catch and eat seagulls which nest high up on all the roof-tops away from predatory cats anyway. So the city has become a bit of a seagull sanctuary.
Veronica was born here and grew up here. Junior school at St Werburgs and Secondary at Backwell. Starred A's and success followed and now here she was. The wheel had turned full circle. She had spent an hour or so with Dan, her controller. Control freak and computer geek and he was exercised about passwords for all the software. She had been faintly annoyed. She was well versed in randomness and secrecy and her ability in this area should be beyond questioning. But she had been disappointed with his attitude and it had cast a slight shadow over her day. She had been so excited and happy at this new opportunity and everyone else had been so friendly and up-beat with the new office. The views across the city to the Watershed and the docks and all the new harbourside development spread out like a landscape painting in sharp detail from the South-facing office windows. Dundry Hill in the distance.
The password thoughts stayed with her into the evening. The idiot who tapped into the American military gained access by typing the word "password" into the password box. FFS. All her password thoughts she kept compartmentalised inside her head and she shared them with no-one not even George, who was away in Florida for a fortnight. There are two words in the English language that contain all the vowels in order. Facetious was one and she just couldn't retrieve the other one from recesses of her mind. She wouldn't be using words anyway. The passwords would be safely secreted as with all companies of this size.
She would cook herself a nice meal which she intended to eat alfresco in the garden. The spring sunshine just beginning to fade and a blackbird now singing in the still evening air. Her best friend Gemma had a facebook page and had blogged about a restaurant in Hong Kong and there were mouthwatering pictures of Vietnamese dishes one of which was river fish cooked in turmeric and dill. She had been to the deli in Clifton and had just begun to pan fry when she was overcome with an unnerving intuitive feeling that something was amiss. She put down the spatula, took the pan off the heat and went into the living/dining room. She stood and listened and looked around straining her senses to try and fathom what was giving her this sense of unease.
She new the front door was chubbed. She new the front windows were closed. She new the garden had high brick walls. But she had this shivery feeling that something was not as it should be and as she stood in the dimming light of the dining room she caught sight of the bird for the first time. It was perched on a print frame. It was a Trevor Price print of lovers on a sofa. She couldn't see what sort of bird it was so she switched on the light. She hadn't heard it fly in and it made no sound. It was smaller than a blackbird, just smaller than a robin maybe. Grey brown with dark bars on its wings a little like you see on a pigeon. A spring-time fledgling maybe. They are often difficult identify. But this appeared adult.She might not have noticed it at all had she not felt that creepy sensation. It just perched there like an ornament on a shelf. It slowly rotated its head rather like an owl might. This intruder seemed to her on a similar level as finding a mouse or a rat in the room and she instinctively didn't like it. She closed the door to the hallway and kitchen and wondered what she might use to swish the bird out through the garden doors. She didn't want it to fly further into the apartment.
She also didn't want it to crap in the apartment. There would be a broom somewhere but she didn't want to harm the bird. Just encourage it to leave. Wierd that she couldn't recognise what it was. She knew the difference between a coal tit and a great tit. It was neither. And certainly not a finch with that beak. It just perched there and it's silence and its very presence she found sinister for some odd reason.It unnerved her. Come on Veronica she thought. This is silly. Just get rid of the thing. She grabbed a cushion from the sofa and went towards it but as she approached it flew across the room onto a print frame over the fireplace. Another Trevor Price print "Rain-Dance". It flew with a mechanical fluttering as though it was a fledgling with a tentative uncertain unpracticed action. But it made it across the room OK and onto the print frame.
She thought of the silly joke she had heard on "Live at the Apollo". What do you do if a bird craps on your car? Don't invite her out again! She wished that she hadn't had that thought because she wasn't finding this funny. The way this thing was just suddenly in her serviced apartment and there on that print frame. The first time she saw it gave her a jolt. Like suddenly being aware that someone was in your bedroom in the middle of the night. Like finding a spider in the bath. And why would it be a breed of bird she had never seen before. If it were a robin or a sparrow or anything recognisable she wouldn't be feeling the way she was about this uninvited guest. This unwelcomed gate-crasher into her private, personal space and now she just wanted to get rid of it even if it meant killing the thing. The way you would kill a spider.
But she didn't want to kill it. Just because she couldn't recognise it didn't mean it was dangerous in any way and she liked birds. She loved the dawn chorus and the company of birds in gardens, parks and countryside and was surprised at her response to this particular creature.
She was going to take a picture of it with her phone but went and fetched her Samsung camera from her back-pack instead. She would send a pic to George. He would know what it was. The laptop was already set up on the table in the corner and when she tapped the enter button the screen came alive and the bird immediately flew from the print frame to the top of the big wooden-framed mirror on the wall opposite the fire-place, almost as though it wanted to get a better view of the screen. She smiled to herself at the thought and wondered if this little chap might be friend and not foe. Rather like having a budgie or a canary.
She emailed the picture to George with a quick message. Told herself that she was being a little ridiculous about this. If she left the garden door open it would soon fly out so she went back to cooking.
www.thebristolchinacompany.co.uk
.jpg)
