Hidden Depths

Chapter Nineteen

Monday morning Gary woke up to the sound of his pager. He’d set it so it made a noise only when there was a mega alert, when an exceptionally rare bird had been seen somewhere in the country. It was six o’clock, but this time of year and this far north it had already been light for more than an hour. He slept with the pager on the floor next to his bed and scrabbled to reach it, pressed the buttons, screwed up his eyes to read what it said. He didn’t travel all over the country to see rare birds any more, but there was still the rush of adrenaline.

It was a moment before he could take in the information. Marmora’s warbler Deepden Nature Reserve. Northumberland. His patch. The place where he and Clive started ringing with Peter and Samuel. The only place that had provided any retreat from thoughts of Emily. Then there was the intense stab of envy. It should have been me. I should have been the person to find it. And if not me, then one of the others. Really, it should have been Clive, he thought. It mattered to him more than any of us. Clive never really talked about his mother, but you’d been able to tell it was only the weekends at Deepden that had kept him sane. He supported the place long after the rest of them had moved on.

Those thoughts were at the back of his mind, but he was already out of bed with his mobile in his hand. He was the only one with a pager. The others pretended to despise the whole concept. They were into natural history, not ticking rare birds. He dialled Peter’s number first. If they were any sort of gang, Peter Calvert was the leader and, though he pretended to be above keeping a list, he wouldn’t want to miss out on this. He’d been part of the group which had founded Deepden in the sixties.

Peter listened to Gary’s gabbling then swore under his breath. ‘I’ve got a lecture at ten. Still, if it’s showing well and I can get it straight away…’ And Gary knew he would go for it, lecture or not. ‘I’ll phone Sam,’ he went on. ‘He should have time to go for it before work.’ Gary thought Peter was the only one of them to get away with calling the writer Sam.

He ended the call then pressed the button again for Clive’s number. There was no question that Clive would go. He’d throw a sickie if he had to, stay the night at the obs and look again the next morning. But he’d need a lift. By the time Clive answered, whispering, because of his dreadful mother asleep in the next room, Gary had his binoculars round his neck, his scope over his shoulder and he was already down the first flight of stairs.

Gary had heard the tale about the start of the Deepden Observatory hundreds of times. When he was a kid and they’d gone there every weekend, the older observatory members had explained it. Sitting in front of the fire after a day’s ringing, drinking whisky or beer, they’d relived the triumph of raising the money to buy the cottage off the elderly woman who owned the place, the planting of the garden, the digging of the pond, the cutting of mist net rides through the undergrowth. The grand opening of the observatory which had attracted everyone of any importance in the field of natural history. Perhaps once all the work had been done, the excitement had passed, because even then they’d spent more time drinking tea in the cottage than going out into the field. Now a new generation of birders camped out in the two dormitories, staggered back late at night after a lock-in at the Fox and Hounds in Deepden village and found the rare birds.

The four of them had stopped going regularly a few years before. It had been a statement. A stand. Gary was already more attracted to sea watching and had been a sporadic visitor even then. He couldn’t quite remember what the disagreement had been about. Some matter of politics within the Observatory Trust. Or Peter not feeling he’d been treated with the respect he deserved. Peter had resigned as chairman and the other three had supported him. The weekend ritual of staying in the cottage ended abruptly. It was harder on Clive than the others. He had no life at all. Unless he had an alternative existence which he kept quite secret, and Gary wouldn’t have put that past him. They still visited of course, but it was strange to turn up as an outsider.

Clive was already waiting on the pavement outside his mother’s bungalow. ‘We should have gone there yesterday when we left Fox Mill.’ His first words, before even saying hello, before getting into the van. And all the way on the drive north he was tense, hunched up in the passenger seat, his shoulders rigid. Gary talked about Julie, about her lad being killed. They all talked to Clive because they knew he could keep secrets.

‘It must be a nightmare,’ he said. ‘Imagine what it must be like, losing your son like that! And for her daughter. She was asleep in the next room when it all happened.’

Clive didn’t say anything. He only moved when Gary’s pager flashed its red light and then he read out the updated news on the warbler.

The observatory was a quarter of a mile inland, the first patch of cover for migrating birds once they hit the coast. The house was a low bungalow, built before the war as a holiday retreat, with an acre of garden which now formed the reserve. It had been the location that had made it so special. The bungalow itself wouldn’t have been out of place in any seaside town – a squat, rather mean building of brick and white stucco, made a little more attractive now by the clematis which grew around the porch and which was just coming into flower.

They’d driven east from the A1, down a narrow lane, the rising sun in their eyes, through an ugly village and then down a dirt track. The observatory was at the end of the track and when they arrived there were already half a dozen cars pulled into the verge. Gary recognized Peter’s Volvo and the sporty little Volkswagen which Samuel had recently bought. Clive was out of the van before Gary had the engine switched off and was heading through the wooden gate into the garden, leaving him to follow and shut it after them. The garden was an oasis in the flat, bare land which surrounded the house. Inland, there was a vast stretch of open-cast mining, a moonscape of rocky ridges and pits; already huge lorries with fat tyres crawled over it. Between the house and a line of dunes which marked the coast, cattle grazed in a long narrow field.

The garden had been designed to attract birds and insects. They’d dug up the lawn and replaced it with a pond. Now vegetation had grown up all around it and over it, so the water was hardly visible. There were the flat shiny leaves of water lilies, a patch of reeds. Where once there had been herbaceous borders, there were huge spikes of buddleia for the butterflies and bushes which in autumn would produce berries to pull in the thrushes.

The mist nets were unfurled, meaning a group of ringers was staying. They must have found the Marmora on their first round of the nets. Behind the house there was a small orchard which had been planted when the house was built and it was here that the group of birdwatchers stood.

The Marmora’s warbler had been seen on the top of a hawthorn hedge which marked the boundary of the reserve. The birdwatchers stood in the dappled shadow thrown by the apple trees, binoculars raised, looking. From a distance it was impossible to tell if the bird was there or if people were searching for it. By the time Gary arrived Clive had his tripod set up and was staring through the scope.

‘It disappeared into the bushes ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Nobody can tell me exactly where it went in.’ He sounded murderous.

Gary thought they’d all have been talking when the warbler flew off. On the other side of the group he could see Peter and Samuel, smiling and chatting. Once you’d seen a bird there was a release of tension and you relaxed your concentration. He stared into the hedge, felt his guts as a hard knot of anxiety. He didn’t enjoy this sort of birdwatching. It was too stressful waiting, knowing the bird had been there. Not knowing if it still was. Since Emily, he hadn’t been able to handle stress. He preferred sea watching. That was the most relaxing experience he knew, sitting in the watch tower next to the lighthouse. There was nothing you could do to make the birds fly past, so no point getting anxious. Now, as he felt his heart beat faster, he tried to control his breathing and wondered if he’d been right to come.

‘There it is.’ Clive, still bent over the telescope, spoke so quietly that only Gary could hear. ‘About four metres in from the fence, on the bare branch just below the top.’ And then Gary was on to it and it was filling his scope. He could see the inside of the bill when it began to call and the colour of its eye. Mind-blowing. Only the sixth British record and it was here in Deepden. Worth falling out of bed at six in the morning and the tension of the drive.

Around him other people had picked up his excitement and they were looking at it too. Then the bird disappeared behind the hedge again and they were all standing around grinning. Some people started wandering off, talking about bacon sandwiches and work. Clive remained focused, though, and when the bird reappeared, further away on a dead tree by the lane, he was the person to find it.

Peter Calvert was full of it. You’d have thought he’d found the bird himself.

‘Every year we get at least one British Birds rarity. A reserve this small. And when we started they all said we were wasting our time.’ Gary thought with amusement that he was still claiming credit for something that had happened forty years before. It didn’t bother him, but he could see why the man got up some people’s noses.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Peter said. ‘I’m giving a lecture this morning. Can’t disappoint my students. Are you coming, Clive? I can give you a lift into town.’

And though you could tell Clive would have liked a bit longer with the bird, he twisted the legs on his tripod and followed Peter to the car. Peter was still his hero. Gary thought he’d have run into a burning house if Peter had given the order. Outside in the lane cars were still arriving. One of the observatory committee was standing at the gate with a bucket, demanding money before he’d let people in.

Samuel and Gary went into the house. They were still paid-up observatory members, so no one could stop them. Once inside the door, Gary was taken back to the time when they’d been regulars. It still smelled of wood smoke in there, though it must have been months since the fire had been lit. Wood smoke and the waterproofing you rubbed into Barbour jackets and leather boots. They made tea, stole a couple of soft biscuits each from the tin in the cupboard and sat outside on the rusty wrought-iron chairs by the pond.

‘What did you make of that business on Friday night?’ Samuel asked.

It took Gary a moment to realize he was talking about the girl by the lighthouse. ‘That business’ seemed an odd way to describe the discovery of a body.

‘I don’t know. That detective turned up at my flat on Saturday. The big woman who was at Fox Mill. The lad who died in Seaton was Julie’s son. She was with me in town on Wednesday night, then she went home and found him. It must seem a strange coincidence, but she appeared to believe me when I said I didn’t know anything about the girl.’

Samuel took a moment to speak. Gary had read a couple of his stories. It always shocked him that Samuel, so good-humoured, so ordinary, could write stuff like that. Stuff that haunted you, so you’d wake up in the night with the pictures still in your head. It was impressive, but a bit scary.

‘You didn’t know Lily Marsh, did you?’ Samuel said at last.

‘No! I’d never seen her before.’

Samuel seemed pleased by the answer. ‘Perhaps we should start coming back here,’ he said. ‘Show them how it’s done.’

But Gary thought Deepden had too many memories for him, of how he’d nearly lost it when Emily had left him. He’d needed the place then and the three good friends who’d held him together. But now, he thought, it was time to move on. Although he didn’t have to be in the Sage until the afternoon, he told Samuel he had to get off to work. He went back into the house to drop off his mug, then he went to his van. The lane was so jammed with cars that it took him nearly half an hour to turn it round.