by Anne Howkins
and the end-of-working-week hubbub seeps towards our balcony table. The river meanders beneath us and in the bar a singer’s testing the mike. I’m chatting to my husband Jim about anything but the letter brooding on the table between us and beginning to run out of words. The sound of a narrowboat chugging underneath us fills the space. Its trailed wake reminds me of the cream frosting a slurped pint of Guinness inevitably deposits on Jim’s moustache. A few people shout greetings to the boat’s skipper; Jim says don’t look back. I think he means stay in the present, he usually does, or maybe risk thinking about the future. I raise my glass, say no more tests, no more jumping through hoops.
A little girl brushes past me and a missed heartbeat twitches my hand; I almost reach out to claim her. Instead, I push my fingers towards the letter, allow them to trace across the words defining our future. Jim’s lips begin to move, then his eyebrows scrunch, and he strokes his beard, drops his head and stares into his pint — I think he’s scared too. History tells me it’ll be a while before he surfaces from his thoughts. I sip my wine and watch the gulp of landing-jetty cormorants across the river arrowing silently into the water. They emerge, nacre-glistened, to push wriggling silver slivers into their chicks’ gaping mouths. One pair stands apart from the group, delicately grooming each other. I wonder why they don’t have a chick, if the hen didn’t lay, if birds simply accept empty nests, just follow the flock regardless.
Jim turns his head towards the clatter, as the girl’s bracelets collide with the metal balustrades, and his hand covers mine. The startled birds stand tall, spreading their wings over their young, bills open wide but silent, mouthing a silent alarm call. He says stay still; they’ll dive again if you’re quiet in a voice that could be singing a lullaby. Then he says Can you see the babies? She’s wary, this wide-eyed child with mother-of-pearl bracelets jingling at her wrists, as she surveys my six and a half feet husband, looking like a fairytale giant with his jet-black bushy beard and untameable hair. Then Jim’s eyebrows widen into a smile, and he tells her they’re cormorants and they’re giving their babies a fish supper. She says cormants and turns away to watch the birds glowing pink and orange under the scarlet sunset. The sky melts into a pale darkness, a folk song floats over our heads into the night, and I’m not sure if the jag in my chest is the birth of hope we’ve chased too often or the fear that my failed womb means I’m not cut out for motherhood — that I’ve just gone down this path so Jim won’t drift away.
A man appears, hoists the girl onto his shoulders, says thanks mate, she won’t listen to me. She waves goodbye to Jim; there’s a lull in the music and her nine-to-the-dozen chattering about cormants ebbs away. The alcohol has melted me, filling my veins with just enough Dutch courage to let me dip below the surface. She liked you I say, you’ll be a great dad. How are we going to do this, he says, what if we mess it up? I point my glass at the birds, say we’re like them, we’ve been in the depths, but we’re coming up for air. I can’t tell him I’m still navigating the silted debris, the sudden lurching into parenting a stranger’s child. Then I think of the twitch in my heart and how easily a small voice saying cormants unknotted Jim’s eyebrows.
Anne mainly writes flash, but sometimes manages a short story. Recent stories have appeared at WestWord, Flash 500, Free Flash Fiction, National Flash Fiction Day, Bulb Culture Collective, The Hoolets Nook and TrashCatLit. When not writing, Anne looks after the finances of a charity, tries to keep fit and spends as much time as possible with her adored grandson.
Photo by Zeynep Kahraman: https://www.pexels.com/photo/cormorant-spreading-wings-over-water-35497293/
