Heneghan Birdeye

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78463-327-1
Verlag: Salt
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 0, 272 Seiten

Reihe: Salt Modern Fiction

One chilly April morning a stranger shows up at a commune in the Catskill Mountains, upstate New York. Conor is greeted by Liv, sixty-seven years old, mother, cancer survivor and founder of the once pilgrimage-worthy Birdeye Colony, now well past its heyday. Liv lets him stay, unaware that her two oldest friends are about to make a devastating announcement. Conor seems to offer a lifeline, but who is he really? As truths masked by free spirit push their way into the open, Liv must reassess what she asks of those she loves most. Birdeye is a novel about tolerance, the choices we make in good faith, and, ultimately, what they cost. Praise for Birdeye 'With luminous prose, infinite humanity and exceptional storytelling, Heneghan shows us family - whether chosen or given - in all its fascinating complexity. Evocative, haunting, masterful.' -Claire Fuller An emotive, twisty read that explores the strength and choices of women determined to create a better world - make your next read a journey of passion, buy your copy now!

Judith Heneghan is a writer and editor. She spent several years in Ukraine and Russia with her young family in the 1990s and now teaches creative writing at the University of Winchester. She has four grown up children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Heneghan, Judith

Leseproben

PEACE AND LOVE PEOPLE
He was probably just a hiker. Liv Ferrars hadn’t noticed him as she walked through the trees, but when she turned away from the river, his bright blue jacket caught her eye. He was standing on the bridge a couple of hundred yards downstream, between the struts, near the public information sign. Young, she guessed, by the way he raised his arm. He wasn’t waving at her; he was taking a selfie. Liv didn’t wait to see if he would cross over to her side, or head back into the town. Instead, she continued up the slope towards the dead end of Dutchman’s Road, where a track climbed between still-bare beeches to the old house, her home, snug and safe from rising floodwater. Run-off could still cause problems though, after heavy rain, or during the spring thaw. Sonny had asked her to check the drain beneath the road, so when Liv reached the outlet pipe, she peered in. Immediately she put a hand over her nose. The matted fur of a dead racoon showed through a mesh of twigs and other debris. They’d need the gaff pole to clear it. She winced as she straightened up, out here where Sonny couldn’t see her. Her limbs were sinewy after decades of hiking, but arthritis was taking its toll. Numb fingers fumbled with the blister pack of Advil in her pocket. Gunther, her German Shepherd, regarded her from a few yards away with pale, reproachful eyes. ‘I know,’ she said, raising her voice over the rush of the river below them. ‘Do you lay down and die, or wait for breakfast?’ The dog lifted his tail, once, then picked his way across the fallen leaves towards her. The leaves had been compressed by almost five months of snow, and now, where Gunther’s paws had disturbed them, they sloughed up like flakes of dry skin. Liv tugged gently on one of his ears and looked around. The trunks that rose about her seemed like a veil, mournful, as befitted the back end of winter. The light between the mountains was subdued and still, washing everything in a palette of fawn and slate and rust. High up on Sher­idan and North Dome the snow lingered among the conifers, while down the valley a few vestiges clung on in clefts and the corners of backyards. The only thing that moved was the river, gushing and spilling towards Apollonia and the reservoir beyond. At this time of year its waters were muddied by silt and its wide, winding course was littered with brush and fallen branches. No pokes of skunk cabbage yet, no hint of spring green, if you didn’t count the dark sludge of the spruce firs, or that hiker – she could see him more clearly now – making his way along the narrow road towards her. His khaki backpack, too cumbersome for a day tripper, made him stoop a little. Another one, then. This was how they came, hopping off the Trailways bus or hitching up from Poughkeepsie. She tipped her head back and swallowed her pill. ‘Hello!’ The young man took a step towards the edge of the asphalt and stared down at Liv. ‘I’m looking for Birdeye – the Birdeye Colony?’ His accent was from the city. Gunther raised his head and sniffed. ‘Poor old Gunth,’ said Liv, pushing up her glasses with the back of her hand. She took in the stranger’s formal-looking chinos and heavy, unyielding boots, and wondered what they said about his intentions. ‘He hopes that someday his real owner will step out of the trees and take him home to a bowlful of meat.’ ‘Oh.’ The young man looked at the dog. ‘Been with me for ten years, and still resents our veggie ways. You like dogs?’ ‘Yeah, but I don’t have one. I think it’s cruel in the city. Yours has all the space he wants up here.’ Liv smiled, warming to him. ‘Well, this is Birdeye. Did you call ahead? We’re not expecting anybody.’ The young man shifted his feet and nudged a couple of small stones off the asphalt. His black hair lay flat against his scalp, and his clean-shaven skin was so white it was almost blue. ‘No, I didn’t call – I hope that’s okay. I mean, I couldn’t find a website. I read The Attentive Heart – you’re Olivia Ferrars, right? I’m Conor. Conor Gleeson.’ ‘Hello, Conor. Call me Liv, please.’ He bent down to shake the hand she offered, and his grip was soft, as if he didn’t know what to do. He looked tired, too; his eyelids were grey and puffy. Maybe he hadn’t slept in a while. ‘We don’t see many visitors this early in the season,’ she went on, ‘but if you’re hungry we can find you some breakfast. First, though, I’m going to need some help.’ Conor’s gaze faltered. As always it was a question of trust, and trust cut both ways. She raised her arm again, ignoring the pinch in her shoulder. ‘Haul me up there, will you?’ ‘Sure!’ He sounded relieved, and pulled firmly, without yanking. Liv led the way across the road, then walked alongside him as they started up the track that led to the house. Conor kept glancing over his shoulder to where Gunther had stopped beside a paper birch. ‘Your dog seems kind of sad,’ he said. Liv nodded. ‘He’s pining.’ ‘What for?’ ‘Well, his pal Pinto died of a stroke a couple of days back. The whole night, Gunther lay beside her.’ She paused, once again assailed by loss: Pinto’s brindled coat, the brush of white down her nose, her cloudy, cataracted eyes that never dimmed her yapping. The little dog had appeared on the porch during the dark days of Liv’s mastectomies a decade before. ‘People drive up from the city, their dogs go crazy after squirrels and that’s it. They’re gone. Owners should tag them, or microchip. I’ve had dogs for thirty years, and each one came off the mountain, dehydrated, half starved.’ ‘So it’s not just people you fix, huh?’ Conor’s tone wasn’t flippant, but Liv had dealt with this before – a cynicism, often unconscious, usually to hide the longing. Visitors came to Birdeye for all sorts of reasons, bringing their problems, their pain and loneliness, hoping to be mended, made whole. Some still expected a loved-up summer camp with herself as an earth-mother messiah. In recent years, several visitors had wondered openly why they’d bothered to make the trip to such a hokey Catskills backwater. Go pick some peas in Mishti’s garden, Liv would tell them. Take a hike up the mountain or sit with Rose in the yard. Then they started to unfold. ‘We don’t fix anything,’ she said, letting Conor down gently. ‘There’s no cure here. Just listening and accepting.’ ‘That’s what I read,’ he said. ‘In your book.’ They had reached the bend in the track, and Conor raised his head. Liv looked too, as she sometimes did – a sort of dry-eyed reckoning of the old place with its peeling purple clapboards above the deep, old-fashioned porch that wrapped itself around two walls and shored up the drooping south-east corner. The circular attic window that had given the house its name was set high in the steep-angled front gable; someone had spray-painted a sooty outline, like smudged kohl, a good twenty years back, then picked out the surrounding shingles in rainbow colours. The wide stretch of back­yard was hidden, mainly, to the rear, but to the left, an eight-foot-high scrap metal sculpture of the goddess Artemis giving birth to twins squatted in front of Mishti’s winter-wasted veggie garden. To the right of the house hunkered the donkey barn, where visitors used to sleep in bunk beds and hammocks, sun-kissed limbs akimbo. Nowadays the metal legs of the swing-set stuck out like shin bones through the unglazed window, and a string of Tibetan prayer flags hung limply from the chimney. ‘Awesome.’ Conor’s face twisted momentarily, as if he were wistful, or disappointed. Before Liv could ask, he walked on, then stopped beside the tan pickup parked near the steps with his head tilted to one side. ‘Who’s that?’ A figure hovered on the porch above them, behind the stack of shelves that Mishti used for seedlings in the spring. The see-through plastic covering was blotched with mildew, but Liv could still make out an angular nose that mirrored her own, fading copper hair cut short, and a long, flapping hand. ‘Hey, Birdie,’ she said, using an old nickname. ‘Were you waiting for us? This is Conor. Conor, this is my daughter, Rose.’ Conor seemed to hesitate as Rose moved into view. Rose would be forty-nine soon, and she was tall, like Liv. Her sweatpants and cardigan only partially disguised her thin frame; she put her arms behind her back and clasped her fingers in a way that pushed her shoulders forward and made her chin jut out. Like a heron, Liv often thought – her Argus-eyed child. ‘Great...