Birdkill Read online

  ‘Like a meme.’

  ‘Of course. When someone coins a word, they give a concept or thing a label. If that label is widely accepted, it becomes a de facto reference for that thing, concept or state. We all understand what is meant, because we have all accepted the label. That’s why language lives, why twerking is now part of our lexicon, or fapping.’

  ‘Fapping, Miss?’

  She affected weariness. ‘Simon, I won’t fall for it if you don’t admit to it.’ Laughter.

  Robyn took the plunge. ‘So what we have is a way of encoding our experiences. We are born inchoate, we learn to distinguish colours and shades and then we start to learn the labels our parents teach us. As our learning increases, we learn standards of behaviour and social norms and so as we all know, our ego forms a hard carapace of behaviours that mask our fundamental unchecked desires, our id. And you could argue our id is made up of labels.’

  There was a rustle in the room, eye contact between the kids. She could already sense discomfort in this new direction.

  ‘Our first label is usually mama or ma or a variation, also dada or papa. That’s when we finally manage to enunciate our understanding of a concept with meaning. Our parents give us meaning. John, what’s your view?’

  John Appleby was staring at his hands, clenched in his lap. He rocked as his mouth worked. She had never seen him so afflicted. ‘I… I can’t say. I have. I do. I mean. I have so much. I have different meanings in my memory to that. I felt, I feel more liberated by my exploration of intellect than I do trying to explore my formless past. I drive and strive for the future and build on my now rather than getting mired in concepts and explorations that are behind me now.’ He was almost shouting, there was spittle on his lips. ‘I am me, of the future, of the ahead. I am on a road and if I look back I’ll crash because I need to move, to progress not regress.’

  ‘Okay, okay. That’s good, let that out but take it easy, John, calm a little. We’re good and your point is really, really valid. It’s the future that matters most, it’s the future where we are made and make our mark.’

  He calmed but the room was palpably wary, the atmosphere electric. She couldn’t quite believe it. She had to be sure. It felt too dangerous to go there again, but Robyn wanted more than anything else to prove Emily Gray wrong in something so she could doubt everything the woman had told her.

  ‘Okay, so let’s look at some labels.’ She picked up her marker pen and strode over to the whiteboard she had never used until now. Facing the board, pen uncapped with a flourish, she called out. ‘Let’s look at some names. What are your mum’s names?’

  The silence turned her. They looked at her, all of them, with the same expression of helplessness and horror on their faces. Alone of them, Martin was smiling and she felt his hot rage radiating against her like heat from a three bar fire, searing so she wanted to draw her face back. The others looked bereft, confused and betrayed. Impelled by her own momentum, she smiled and glanced around the classroom. ‘Anyone?’

  Jenny Wilson started to cry, her sobs the only sound in the classroom until Simon Dillon’s chair scraped the floor and his shouldered rucksack rustled. He led the exodus. She checked her watch. Thirty minutes to the bell.

  Only Martin stayed behind. ‘Nice one, teacher. Now they all hate you.’

  ‘They’re scared. Of their pasts. Why?’

  His contempt battered her. ‘So are you of yours. Why do you think you have the right to intrude on theirs?’

  ‘It’s no intrusion. I just asked them.’

  Martin kicked back from his chair. ‘They liked you. I couldn’t work with them when they liked you. Now they hate you, I’d not want to be in your shoes. You are going to regret the day your mother gave you a name, because their mothers never enjoyed even that little pleasure.’

  She fought against the weight pressing the air out of her lungs. ‘Yours did, though, Martin. What made her so special? That she was allowed to live? Pamela?’

  Again, he recoiled as if she had slapped him. She felt the familiar wash of shame at lashing out against a child. The weight on her chest lifted as he turned away from her and ran from the classroom. The sense of foreboding she felt as she scanned the empty room, the disarrayed chairs all part of the wreckage of her career teaching at the Hamilton Institute, made her want to be sick.

  Robyn heaved at the door to her apartment as if it were made of granite. She leaned back against it and felt the reverberation of its lock snap against her taut back muscles. Her apartment was warm and familiar; kitchenette to her left, fireplace and cushions to her right, the window beyond, the curtains still drawn. The washing up hadn’t been done. She slumped against the door. A drink wasn’t a good idea. She’d been drinking too much. No coffee, either. Maybe she’d just sleep, but then there was the Void to worry about. To be so weary and fearful of sleep was ridiculous, yet Robyn couldn’t welcome the possibility of more dreams, not right now. She was scared enough as it was.

  She slid down the door to sit with her back pressing it, her wrists on her knees. Her hand was trembling. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the cool wood. The dull thud flicked her lids open. Again, a concussion. Against the window? She faced it, a shadow against the curtains and another thump. Let it go, she thought. Leave it thumping. And yet she was drawn.

  Another. She knew the sound. Leave it, reason cautioned her. She twisted to her feet, stepping across the room towards the window as it shook with the repeated beating from outside, the shadow in the curtains like a small explosion each time, fading in and out with each blow. Her breathing was shallow, fear pricking her. She tore the curtain aside to reveal glass stained with moisture from the small fluttering brown body attacking it repeatedly, flying into the barrier with its wings beating frantically. She saw with dawning horror that the bird was trying to fly away from the window, was actually desperately striving to flee the force battering it against the glass. A vicious blow squashed the tiny brown head with its charcoal beak and white feathered chest against the window. Drawing away, its head lolled and the straining wings stilled.

  The limp body slammed against the window once more with such force she thought the glass must surely shatter. It left a trail of crimson amongst spattered trace works of grease from the impacts of filigree feathers.

  Curled up on the orange cushions, Robyn stared at the Swedish fireplace, cold grey ashes inside. She hadn’t bothered clearing it out. She was dully aware of the sunlight deepening to orange, of the shadows lengthening.

  It none of it mattered. She tried to define a tether, a rock she could grab hold of that would give her a purpose, a future beyond this place and the increasing certainty that she was losing her mind. And she failed.

  The doorbell rang and she ignored it. Just a sound, just a label. An insistent label, but it didn’t matter. It was in the past each time it rang. Her mobile started ringing, the two forming a cacophony that finally forced her from her cushions. She tottered to the mobile. Mariam.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Answer the bloody door, we’re freezing down here.’

  ‘Fine, fine. Hang on.’

  She delved into her bag for her purse with the card key in it and wrenched open her apartment door. She was halfway down the carpeted corridor before she realised she was barefoot and by then, well, fuck it anyway. She slapped down the wooden stairs and waved the card at the sensor. Outside Mariam was hunched alongside a fit looking guy in a brown corduroy jacket and jeans. He had cropped hair.

  Mariam burst through the door. ‘Christ, Robyn, we’ve been ringing for like ten minutes.’

  ‘Come on up. I’m in.’

  She hauled herself back up the stairs, catching them whispering behind her and wondering in an oddly dispassionate way if Mariam was screwing Mr Hunky.

  He reminded her vaguely of someone. The guy in a whisky ad, that sort of thing. She left the door open for them behind her and went into the kitchenette to make some tea or something.

  Mariam
stood by her at the sink. ‘Robyn, are you okay?’

  She stared at the glittering stream of water that dropped from the tap, a miracle of gravity, its cool freshness tumbling to drain into that little stainless steel-lined maw. She could dive into it and be taken, tumbling in the icy stream, down to the vast, comforting expanse of the sea where she could swim and splash around the brilliant coral heads.

  ‘Robyn!’ Mariam’s hand was on her shoulder. Robyn jumped at the touch. ‘Are you alright?’

  She smiled to reassure Mariam. She didn’t like to see her friend so worried. ‘What’s new, babe?’

  Mariam led Robyn over to the seating around the fireplace. ‘We’re worried. About you. This place isn’t good for you.’

  Robyn couldn’t help but laugh. Mariam’s expression sobered her. She brushed her hand across her brow. ‘Look, I appreciate your concern, but I really don’t think you have the faintest idea of what’s going on here. This place is wrong at every level. Not good for me? It’s hardly good for the kids here. Lawrence Hamilton is running a full-on breeding programme here. These kids are all orphans, they all lost their mothers in childbirth. And they were all born in the same maternity hospital, owned by a gentleman called Lawrence Hamilton. He killed their mums and they don’t know it.’

  Clive Warren craned forward. ‘That’s a pretty sweeping accusation.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’ Robyn shrugged.

  ‘Martin Oakley’s mum survived childbirth. She’s still alive.’

  ‘She’s the only one, or one of a very few. One of the teachers was let go because she was asking questions. She looked into the background of the kids in her class and found out about their mums and the maternity unit, a place called the Mayview Clinic or something like that. I sent you the files. I didn’t believe her until this afternoon, until I tested it on my own class.’ Mariam took her hand, but Robyn pressed on. ‘They went into a funk when I started talking about parents. Not one could name their mother. They walked out on me. The whole class.’

  ‘Can you still access those files?’ Warren was urgent. ‘Can we look them up and check this out?’

  Robyn shrugged. ‘I guess.’ She leaned down to prise her notebook from the floor, pulling out the charging cable and swiping the screen to type her password. She logged into the network, pulled up Jenny Wilson’s record and tapped the protected folder. She keyed 12345 and passed the notebook to Warren. He scanned the screen, pulled open folders and swiped through documents.

  ‘Shit!’ He recoiled from the screen. ‘Access revoked. We’ve just been busted.’

  ‘I guess that’s game over for Robyn Shaw, at any rate.’ Robyn took the machine from Warren. ‘Did you find what you wanted?’

  ‘I should have copied the folder first, I’m an idiot. But yes, her mother died in childbirth at the Mayview Clinic. It doesn’t mean to say all their mums died the same way.’

  Robyn caught Mariam’s enquiring glance at Warren and his almost imperceptible nod in answer. Mariam’s voice softened. ‘Robyn, we’ve been looking into things from our end, too. There’s a lot to put together in this jigsaw, but we’ve been investigating a military operation that Hamilton’s involved in. It’s linked back to here in some way, he’s just secured a massive round of funding for the Institute backed by the US military. His people conducted field trials for a battlefield drug called Odin. In Lebanon.’

  Robyn felt a terrible black apprehension hit her. She willed Mariam to stop, was in the act of pulling her hands back to block her when the words came to her, seemingly through a mist of cotton wool. Mariam’s voice was muffled. ‘Do you have any memory of soldiers?’

  The Void slammed into her like a tsunami, took her away and bore her up on its mad, black tide only to smash her broken body down on the beach. She couldn’t breathe, the blackness reaching into her soul and leaching away her very sense of self and place in its nihilistic tide.

  Flies tickle your raped cunt.

  She fought to stay alive, to draw breath but her body was wrapped in an appalling lassitude, borne up by the warm darkness, offered up to be broken again, mewling and beyond any thought of defence or resistance.

  Robyn came to, lying on the rug spread across the wooden floor of her apartment, her head in Mariam’s lap. Her friend was sponging her face with a moist flannel. She had been sick, the acrid tang in the air and her teeth furred.

  ‘What happened?’ She croaked.

  ‘You blacked out, babe. It was my fault, I’m truly sorry. I tried to take you back to remembering Zahlé.’

  ‘I don’t recall it. Just looking up Jenny Wilson and Clive getting blocked out.’

  ‘It’s okay, you had some sort of seizure. I think we should call an ambulance.’

  Robyn shook her head. ‘No. No way. Leave it. I’m fine.’ She struggled to raise herself to sit, throwing out an arm to stop herself falling sideways. She had been crying, her eyes felt puffy and she felt somehow removed from it all, a sort of Pethidine feeling.

  Something nagged at her, an insistent clangour. She realised it was her doorbell. ‘I’ll answer the door.’

  ‘No, leave it.’ She wasn’t sure if Mariam was trying to support her or hold her back, but she shrugged herself free. She tottered toward the door and fumbled the lock, leaning against the door to walk it open. Sort of like opening a lock on a canal, she thought and started to giggle.

  Simon Archer looked furious. Robyn stared at him. ‘Simon. Well, hello.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on? You were screaming the house down.’

  ‘Come in,’ she threw at his back as he brushed past her.’

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ He stood facing Mariam and Warren.

  Mariam’s hands were on her hips. ‘We’ve met before, actually’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

  ‘My name is Clive Warren. And I’d thank you to keep a civil tongue—’

  ‘Get out. Both of you. You’ve no right to be here and I’ll have security remove you if you don’t leave immediately.’

  Warren advanced, his hands up in supplication. ‘Come on, chap, chill out.’

  Archer stepped aside and gestured at the open apartment door Robyn was clutching. ‘The hell I will. I don’t know what you’ve been up to here, but Robyn’s clearly distraught and our network security systems are screaming blue murder. You’re lucky I don’t call the police.’

  Warren tensed and Mariam put a hand on his sleeve. ‘No. Let’s go now. There’s nothing more we can do.’

  Warren threw her a perplexed look, but nodded and made for the door. Mariam embraced Robyn, whispering. ‘Babe, please take it easy. Hang on in there and I’ll be back for you really soon. Just keep a handle on things, use the coping techniques we both learned, you hear me?’

  Robyn nodded and watched them both walk away down the corridor, filled with an all-consuming sadness. She turned to find Archer still in her apartment. The door was propping her up and she didn’t feel like leaving it just yet. She was growing quite fond of it, with its nice wood grain and the way the brushed steel handle reflected the light as a diffuse glow rather than anything nasty, harsh and glinty. She smiled at Archer, somehow feeling it might look a little wobblier than she intended, but reckoning it was a smile all the same.

  ‘Robyn, are you sure you’re okay?’

  She was beginning to wonder if that’s all anyone had to say to her. No, Simon, I’m not. There’s a sense of death inside me and I can’t quite place where it comes from but it creeps out at night and gnaws at my heart, leaving me drained and worthless every morning when I wake up.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m tired. Thanks, Simon, for looking after me.’

  ‘What did they want? What did they do that scared you so badly?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Just some history, some stuff I didn’t really deal with very well. It’s fine. Look, thanks, truly, but I’m knackered. I think I’ll turn in.’

  ‘You’re not joining us for the staff drinks tonight?’

 
She didn’t know how she kept a lid on it, how she managed not to laugh her contempt until she died laughing so hard she forgot to breathe. ‘Not tonight, Simon. I’m going to turn in.’

  ‘Okay,’ he flashed her an avuncular look. ‘If you’re sure you’re fine.’

  ‘Never,’ she averred, hanging on to the door as he passed her into the corridor, ‘better.’

  She closed the door behind him, leaning back against it and shutting out the world. She fought the urge to laugh; the hysteria bubbled under.

  Robyn took refuge in normalcy. She sat for a little while and gathered herself, then forced herself up to clean up the little puddle of puke. She cleaned out and remade the fire, lighting it and letting the umber warmth flood the room. She took the half-drunk red from the fridge and poured herself a wide-bottomed glass, enjoying the cool fruitiness and the warm rounded aftertaste. It lulled her and she sat on the cushion holding her glass and gazing into the flickering flames.

  Robyn woke filled with a sense of evil. Something called to her, drew her and yet she felt no need to move towards the source of the badness. She knew all she had to do was stay still, act normally and the wrong would come to her and intrude.

  Invade.

  She wasn’t in her bed. The momentary disorientation of waking caught her, she wasn’t even in her apartment. She staggered, propping herself up with her hand against the trunk of a tree, the bark rough against her palm. Her other hand found the trunk, traced the craggy skin.

  A tree. She was standing at the edge of the woods looking out onto the downs and the shape of the white tower on the headland reflected in the waning moonlight. She could hear the rhythm of the sea against the beach and, further away, splashing against the cliffs. The trees rustling behind her. She was cold. Christ, she was barefoot. Wearing a dressing gown. She clawed at the bark in an attempt to make some sense of this.