Read Online The Birds of the Innocent Wood by Deirdre Madden - Free Book Online

fried egg. Jane would not eat, but sat with her eyes fixed subversively on the salt while her food grew cold and congealed before her. The woman bustled back and forth with tea and toast, chattering to James as she did so. Jane resisted all attempts by her husband to draw her into the conversation, and remained in stubborn silence. As she removed Jane’s untouched plate the woman made a light remark, saying that she ought to eat better, that she needed to ‘keep her strength up’. At this, Jane raised her head and fixed the woman with a cold, steady stare, full of outrage. The woman was deeply embarrassed at the idea of having given offence to the little girl on her honeymoon; and she apologized profusely. And as James accepted these apologies, ‘Of course we know that you meant no offence,’ Jane lifted her eyes and gave him a look which demanded that he choose sides. He fell silent. When they left the table Jane was the only one who felt any degree of satisfaction. Secretly she was proud of how, without uttering a single word, she had bested the maternal woman. The incident had shaken James too: she was glad of that.
    Later that day, they went walking along the cliff top. They knelt down and saw far below them the gulls squatting on their untidy nests in cleft rocks of the cliff face. Over their heads more gulls wheeled, mean-eyed birds with stiff pink legs and plump white bodies. Caught between the sea below and the sky above; the white foam of one and the white clouds of the other; the sound of the waves below and the cries of the birds above, Jane felt a strange sense of disembodiment. She felt lonely too, and realized then that she wanted to heighten this sensation ratherthan defeat it. Far below them there was a little ledge. It was extremely narrow, and was accessible only by a beaten path which wound down dangerously from where they were sitting. ‘I’m going down there,’ she said suddenly, and as she moved to go James put his hand on her arm, tried to restrain her. She pushed him away.
    Gingerly she made her way to the ledge, and she heard James calling to her to come back. She ignored him: knowing that he would be too afraid to follow her was ultimately what had made her go down the path. If her only escape that day had lain within a ring of fire, she would have stepped into it without a backward glance.
    On reaching the ledge she sat down. A stiff salt breeze blew her hair across her face, she pushed it aside and looked out to the west, saw a beach: a long pale sickle of sand separating the green sea from the green land, and she thought, I’ll always remember this . She knew then that in this thought was the significance of the scene before her. Things had once happened of which she now had no memory, but what was known could never be unknown: it could only be forgotten. As a child she had wept for the want of memories, but now she saw that they could be a curse, chaining her to the past. If only she could forget all those years of longing to remember! Now she wished passionately that she could be like a thing which had burst ignorant from an egg a second before; a thing that would live and at once forget and so be always new. What alternative was there? She raised her head and glanced up at the sun; was blinded and looked away. Perhaps to be like that: to be hidden in brightness, to be bright as God, living for eternity in unapproachable light. She wished that she could stop believing still that her parents lived in such a light. They above all were what she wanted to forget; and yet now they seemed to be everywhere, as they had been when she was a child. That presence had then been a comfort, but it was no comfort now to feel her mother’s eye in the hot sun above her, or to sense her in the sea breeze or in the musty smell which emanated from the hotel’s dank cupboards and clung to her clothes. Look, then, thought Jane fiercely. Just look at me, I’ve made a life for myself after all. I’m going