Ugly
Eric and I used to meet by the river of a
summer’s evening. He’d have been on the water for most of the day and I’d stroll
along after work and sit dangling my legs over the edge of the quay while we chatted
and watched the people walking by. In fact we often chatted about the
people walking by, and not always in nicest way either. Those entwined
couples and straggling happy family groups marred our companionable time
together by reminding us what we were missing out on and we could be quite bitchy
about it.
We
were, I think, more than averagely aware that appearances can be deceptive. That
encircling arm might feel more like a straight jacket than a tender embrace to
its receiver, the tousle-haired sunny-smiled child clambering on and off his trike
might be abused, the milkman’s son, a mass murderer in the making...or possibly
even all three. But even so watching what passed for normal life passing us by
made us feel left out and bitter and slow to appreciate what we had ourselves. No
one mistook Eric and I for a happy couple, I’m sure. They probably didn’t even realise
we were friends, how much more we had in common than being misfits among our own
kind.
It’s
hard to put into words what was wrong with Eric exactly. He wasn’t obviously
deformed or anything like that. To me he didn’t look that bad at all really as I
don’t think I did to him. But think of all the flattering adjectives that are
usually applied to swans. Now think of their opposites. That was Eric: inelegant,
unlovely, asymmetric. And a swan’s raisin d’être is to be beautiful after all, to glide along gracefully...and
to procreate of course.
It’s
a common misconception that swans always mate for life. I believed they did until
Eric told me some stories that would have made the Sunday papers if the wildfowl
world produced them. Mostly they stay together it’s true, that’s their intention
when they’re courting and they usually stick it out especially if they’ve raised
a brood or two. A bit like a human Catholic marriage I suppose. But the lady
swans they used to look at Eric and go ‘uhuh’ in their shapely heads like the
sound on Family Fortunes when someone guesses wrong. They didn’t fancy a permanent
relationship with a partner who looked like Eric. ‘Wouldn’t want to wake up to
that every morning for the rest of my life,’ they thought. ‘Best not go there.’
It was so unfair. If he was human he’d have a chance of a shag now and then if
someone was drunk enough or desperate. I get my share. There’s always some guy thinks
an ugly bird might be grateful and truth be told she often is.
‘If this
was a fairy story’ said Eric that fateful day, ‘you’d climb on my back and we’d
fly away somewhere and…and…’ He faltered, began a bit of embarrassed preening. I
don’t know if he’d been going to say I’d change into a swan or he’d become
human and we’d live happily ever after or what.
‘It’s
not a fairy story, though is It Eric?’ I said gently. ‘If I climbed on your
back I’d squash you and neither of us would get anywhere.’
We
sat in silence for a while reflecting on our reflections, but he was hatching a
plot in lieu of an egg. 'I know' he said, 'Maybe we should get the bastards.' And
he began to outline a scheme for retaliation.
He
was coming up five years old that summer and that’s a bit late for swans to
start pairing off, rather like me hitting thirty, the old body-clock-ticking-away
cliché. I guess all that unfocussed testosterone (or whatever it is swans have)
must have been needing an outlet because his idea was to sneak up on his drowsy
nest--sitting peers in the late evening gloom and rough them up a bit, ruffle their
feathers, remind them not to be so smug. It sounded simple enough but the
thought of it obviously gave him great pleasure and he got quite smug himself
talking about it. So that was him sorted but what about me? I’m small and
skinny and wouldn’t say boo to a goose and some of those big beautiful girls in
the office that make me feel so inadequate, they are scary. Like
Williams sisters, like lions.
It
was a summer of ridiculously impractical shoes. I didn’t really notice at first,
I don’t read magazines, or hang out in the kind of venues where small town fashionistas
show off the latest frivolities. I just kept my head down, eyes on the rubber
toecaps of my Converse All-stars as usual and it was Eric who spotted the trend
developing from his water-borne bird’s eye view of the towpath and pointed it
out to me.
Girls,
even women old enough to know better, were wearing flip-flops on platforms with
the straps or thongs or whatever you call the bits that go between the toes
covered in flowers and beads and dangly chains and charms and fluff and glitter
and everything else you can possibly think of that females might be drawn to. Honestly, some of them looked as if they’d stepped
in something inappropriate that had stuck to their feet – small shrubs perhaps,
a pair of misplaced bridal bouquets.
Eric’s
scheme for me involved these shoes and a tripwire made of fishing line which he
brought along to show me (swans have rather more access to angling items than
they would prefer). I’d never seen any close to before. It looked kind of whitish
clear but there were other colours in it if it caught the light at a certain
angle. Eric said it made it harder for fish to spot. Swans too presumably. He described
the knots to me and I tried to follow his instructions. I might not be
ornamental but I’m not much practical use either and it took a while to get the
hang of them. To begin with I did it down on the river bank so he could keep an
eye on me but to understand how it was going to work in the office I had to practise
at home.
Eric
kept asking for progress reports, egging me on. He’d already started his
campaign and said it felt great so finally when I’d tried the tripwire out on
myself without the actual shoes or the falling over I had to bite the bullet
and try it out for real at work. I wasn’t as hard as you might imagine setting
it up. Mostly I’m stuck in a corner on my own near where the flooring changes
from carpet to lino so a likely place to lose your footing and good camouflage
for the line. The others gossip away - new clothes, new boyfriends, new best
friends, how drunk they were on Saturday night and who said what to who. I
can’t join in with all that, and because I’m usually on the phone instead of
Facebook my productivity’s better than everyone else’s doesn’t go down too well
either. Honestly I could tie my knickers to a chair leg and I don’t think
anyone would notice.
I didn’t
mean anyone any real harm. I didn’t want them to suffer permanent damage or
broken limbs, just a bruise or a graze or a cut or two. I wanted them to look in
the mirror and not see perfection for a while. I wanted them to be self conscious
not self assured, self obsessed. I did worry they might go down like trees, smashing
face down on the floor but Eric said no, the shoe straps or the fishing line
would break before that and he was right. There were no major injuries and I
could rush and remove the evidence in the commotion afterwards whilst seeming
to search for the contents of tumbling handbags strewn across the floor.
It
was a good plan really. The trouble was I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it when
they fell or how I felt afterwards. The first time I thought it was probably nerves,
the fear of getting caught taking the edge off the satisfaction I was supposed
to gain. There was no way of knowing
who’d be next to want to go to the loo or the coffee machine and walk into my
trap. The first girl was slim and big busted and always looked as if she might
topple over but seeing the dismay on her face when she actually did made me
want to rush up and try to catch her but of course I just sat still and tried
to look surprised. She came into work
next day with a dark bruise coming up where the desk edge had caught the flesh
of her arm. I couldn’t look at it. A few days later I set things up again and
caught a girl I thought was kind of nice because she’d sent me a birthday card
once. She cried after she tripped up, not from pain but about her ruined shoes,
and I felt awful. Eric wasn’t at all sympathetic. He said he bet she sent cards
to everyone and I thought about it and she did, even the cross-eyed girl who had
to be sacked for stealing.
‘Have
another go,’ he said ‘Go on, you’ll get to like it.’ So I tried again and this
time the victim was an older woman who could be very caustic in her remarks and
there was no reason on earth why I should have minded what happened to her but
when she hit the ground it was me who burst into tears and the manager sent me
home saying to take a few days off as I was overstressed.
I
didn’t know what to do with myself. Before I’d have gone down the park and hung
out with Eric but I wanted to avoid him and his awkward questions. It was mad
hot and I didn’t want to stay in my flat watching TV so I got one of those
weekly bus tickets and went to the coast every day. It’s only a few miles down
the river to the sea but it’s a different world there. I’d walk right to the
end of the beach where all the shops and most of the tourists ran out and find
a little spot among the rocks and put headphones and sunscreen on and lie down
and try not to think.
It
was on the way back on the bus one day that I saw the headline on one of those boards
they have outside newsagents to try to get you to buy the local paper. It said
‘another swan found dead’ and I went all cold. You know if you know someone in
Australia say and you hear there are bush fires somewhere and you wonder if
they’re are ok even though it’s in a completely different part of the country?
Well I felt like that although deep inside of me I was perfectly sure Eric was
alive and well.
When
I got home I went straight on the internet and found the article and it said the
bodies of five birds had been found dead along our stretch of river within the
last month. It said they had drowned which I thought sounded a bit odd for a
swan so I looked that up too and discovered that one can drown another by
climbing on its back and holding its head under the water with its beak. And then
I knew what he’d been doing and how he’d got away with it. There are no CCTV
cameras trained on the river and if anyone had seen anything in the dusk they
would have thought it was mating not murder. And he hadn’t been grassed up by
those who knew better. Well swans can’t talk, can they?
It
was a dog that got him in the end. You know what dogs are like – always poking their
noses in where they’re not required. I think it must have heard the flapping
and splashing one night when Eric was wreaking his revenge on his peers and
muscled in on the fight. A crutch-sniffing dog would have known it wasn’t sex.
The police
were there. They’d put bright orange netting round part of the bank like they
do when there’s a nest site too close to the footpath. Two young officers were lifting
his remains from the water’s edge and an older one stood facing away from the river. He pushed his blue serge breast out, spreading
his arms slightly back and down to discourage the small crowd from peering past
him. It was like when you pass a road accident or come to a frightening part in
a film, you want to see something a bit horrific but not worse than you can
stand. I turned my head sideways and slid my eyes round to look. For a long time I’d thought Eric was my best friend
in the world but now I wasn’t sure I’d known him at all and he was just a pile
of bloodstained feathers resting in a policeman’s arms. One of those cosy middle
aged couples Eric and I used to grimace about was turning towards me back up
the bank, the man guiding the woman away with a protective hand on her shoulder.
'It's pretty ugly,’ I heard him say.
