Night Birds Chapter 1
Night Birds
Chapter 1
Harry Williams packed a laptop, a blanket, food and wine into his satchel when he left his backpacker hostel in Thorndon, an affluent, arty Wellington suburb, to walk, think, and then write a press release, in communion with Chuck Parnell. Parnell was a long-dead New Zealand trade unionist, and Harry approved of him, or of his grave. Harry had paid work to do, and he intended to do it in the sun, not in his tiny room.
Bolton Street Cemetery was on a hillside that sloped down towards the motorway that fed cars from the rest of the North Island into Wellington’s traffic. Harry walked at random through rambling, flower-lined paths running between trees and bushes among the graves. It overlooked Bolton Street but couldn’t be seen from it, and it offered a view over and across Wellington city, its blue harbor and the high green hills on the far side of the water.
Harry visited the place often, not because he liked cemeteries but because it was a pretty place and there were seldom anyone else there. He’d walk the paths for a while, thinking of phrases, and when it came time to write he’d usually end up at the grave of Charles Samuel Parnell.
Parnell’s grave wasn’t pretty but, since it was a chunk of 1960s concrete modernism, it was certainly flat. So Harry unslung and unpacked his bag, shook out a blanket, rested his pizza slices and the wine on the concrete, pouring a little wine onto the grass for Parnell, as he always did, leant back against the grave and took out his laptop.
He began to type a press release on Griffiths Paint’s new range: “Green and earth shades that warm your home and keep it light, from Griffiths Eco specialists, were 100% developed in New York for New York conditions. The environmental colors of the Eco range…” Griffiths Paint was based in Beacon in New York state, where Harry lived and wrote press releases for local firms and cajoled newspapers and magazines into publishing them. In another four weeks his New Zealand holiday would be over, and he’d have to go home.
He’d enjoyed his days in Wellington. At night he partied in the many student and backpacker bars of Wellington’s Cuba Street and Chinatown. During the day he watched over the city, often from Parnell’s grave. He thought about Griffith Paint’s Eco color range, trying to come up with something else to say about it. Would people accept that there was such a thing as ‘environmental colors’? He shook his head, faintly ashamed of himself. People probably wouldn’t question it. But then he saw something moving through the foliage below him. Something blue.
It was hair, and as it came nearer he saw it belonged to a girl in a long, modified Victorian dress, all black crinoline and leather straps. Her face was palely pretty, her mouth was lipsticked black, and beneath her blue hair she looked solemn. She’d have reasons, he assumed poetic, gothic ones, for wandering about cemeteries.
She didn’t notice him until she stood almost over him. She said, “Oh! Sorry, you’re quiet!” Then she saw his blanket, food and wine. “You’ve settled in then. Is this a relative?” She tilted her head to indicate Parnell’s grave.
Harry said, “No. He’s my new hero, though.”
“Oh?”
“He was a trade unionist, and in 1840 he fought for and won the forty-hour week for the Carpenters’ Union. The inscription says he led the first union to win an eight-hour working day, anywhere in the world.”
“Oh.” She nodded, trying to look impressed. Then she looked, again and with meaning, at his wine.
Harry scrambled up. She was taller than him, though that might not be true if she took her enormous boots off. “Hi. I’m Harry.”
She looked at him, considering, and smiled suddenly. Her talcum-white face transformed. Below them a bee poked its body into the whorled cup of a fuchsia. “You’re American! Lily,” she said.
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
She considered him, and the prettiness of the grass and flowers there, and sat down, taking half his blanket. “Please. If you’ve got enough.”
“I’m sure I have. We have. Here.” He took another plastic glass from his satchel and poured her a helping. She accepted it and was about to drink when he said, “No. Sam Parnell, I think he’s a red wine man. You have to spill a little onto the ground, before you drink yourself.”
Lily studied him, to see if he was teasing her. But she shook her head slightly, and turned away to give Parnell his libation. “Your accent … American, obviously. But … New York?”
He nodded. “Beacon, New York, born and bred. Not there just now, thank all and any gods. Pleased to meet you.”
She smiled, and drank, so he drank with her, making it a social occasion. She nodded at his laptop. “The great American novel?”
“Bullshit about paint. For money. I’m a hack. What do you do?”
“Oh! I’m trying to be an actor. I just auditioned for A Doll’s House at Bats Theatre. Don’t know if I got the part. Not sure I want it, or why they’d even want to put it on. Anyway, for now I’m doing stand-up. At the Cavern. In Chinatown.”
Harry’s eyebrows lifted. “Goth stand-up?”
“Everybody else makes jokes about us. I make some back.”
“Fair enough.” Harry wore white shorts, a red shirt and hiking books. There was only one person with style here. It wasn’t him, and he had no right to mock her. “I haven’t seen your show advertised.”
“I’m Lilliput, for theatrical purposes. The Cavern wanted me to be Lilith, but even a Goth girl can’t be doing with that. Lilliput Dharma.”
“Yeah, that rings a bell,” lied Harry. “Dahmer as in Serial Killer Dahmer?”
“That’s a subtext. But it’s spelt like Buddhist dharma. Doing the right thing. But the Jeffrey Dahmer echo makes it funny.”
Harry suspected, then, that her comedy might not be very good. But he poured her more wine. “Vegetarian pizza? Or anchovies?”
“Oh, anchovies. Vegetarians are the worst.”
He agreed, but let her have the anchovy slice and took the mushroom and artichoke piece for himself. “No, the real worst are the people who order vegetarian so they look cool, then eat all the meaty pizza.”
She nodded. “Faux vegetarians are the worst then.” Then she frowned. “You said your hero got the forty-hour week in 1840. But he couldn’t have been buried under something like this.”
“He found himself a modest little grave, when he died in 1890. In the 1960s the union dug him up and put him under this thing. A monument.”
“Some honor!” She pulled a child’s vomiting face. “It’s hideous.”
“Well, it’s pretty here, so long as you’ve got your back to it.”
“True.” Lily moved a little closer to him. Her left arm and thigh touched him and the contact held. He knew it meant nothing, but a pretty woman was touching him in two places. He was counting.
She drank. “I’m going to get tipsy. No, I am a little. Harry, right?”
“Is my name. Lily.”
She looked at him earnestly. “You write about paint, yes? That’s very boring, Harry. I don’t think I know any boring people. Apart from you.”
He tried to think of something that wouldn’t be boring. Eventually, instead, he said, “I’m just me. We all try to make ourselves seem as good as we can. But I don’t put up a big … front. I guess I’m too busy.”
He hoped she wouldn’t be offended. But Lily only smiled to show she’d heard what he’d said, and she was impervious. “Well, even if you think this is a big front, it’s not. It’s just me. Listen!” But she made no sound; instead she wiped the make-up away from her right eye. “Ok, boring man: why’ve I got a black eye?”
He stared. Without makeup, the eye had a black halo like a racoon’s. He said, vehemently, “Because you know an absolute asshole, and you should leave him now. Right now!”
She smiled. “Would you fight him for me?”
“Well, I’d have the cops there while you packed. But if I had to I would.”
She nodded. “Good, except you’ve got it completely wrong. I don’t have a boyfriend. Not even a bad one. That shiner’s from the trees round here. I was walking here last night, and a tree branch just whacked me.”
Harry swallowed. That seemed odd. He said, “But it can’t do that. Was there someone else there? You know, holding it and letting it go?”
Lily smiled, with just a trace of bitterness. “Not a soul. No, there was a soul. My mother. She blamed me for my father leaving her. I mean they still lived together, but he’d gone away. Gone inside himself. She died two years ago.”
He thought about that. Ghost moms don’t exist, because ghosts don’t exist. But he said, “Well, I’d fight a tree for you.”
She studied him, and, though he was trying to keep a straight face, suddenly laughed. He put his arm round her shoulders. “Is that ok?” When she nodded he pulled her closer. The sun set early there, because of the hills. It was getting colder.
They spent hours cuddling, talking about family, lovers, and music they felt guilty for liking. They didn’t talk about her eye. Eventually she complained that the earth under her was colder than was endurable and lay on top of him, while he put his arms round her back and she wore most of the blanket. But mist closed in on them, swirling, multi-shaped.
