‘True nonetheless, Clemmie,’ father said. ‘And that wasn’t the last of it. It seems things went from bad to worse on Samson after that. With no men left to go fishing or to work up the fields, the women and children soon began to go hungry. All they had to eat was limpets. The Birdman told Charlie that they even had to eat the dogs. It’s true, Gracie, that’s what Charlie told me. Then with the hunger came the fever, and the old folk and the babies began to die. So they left. One by one the families left the island until the Birdman and his mother were alone on Samson.’
Father drew on his pipe again and found it had gone out – his pipe was always going out. ‘And I believe every word Charlie told me, Gracie. I don’t pretend to understand the whys and wherefores; and I tell you straight, I don’t know if it’s him that’s cursed or Samson. All I do know is that it’s better to keep away from the both of them – that’s for sure. So you keep well clear of him, you hear me now?’
I sat silent for some time lost in father’s story, my head full of questions. ‘So he can put spells and curses on people like they say he can?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ said father, tapping his pipe out on the side of the stove. And I shivered as I thought of how close we had been to his cottage that day, and how he must have been watching us on Rushy Bay. Then there were those letters in the sand. Perhaps they were initials, but perhaps they were part of some spell. I wanted to be sure.
‘What about his first name, Father?’ I asked. ‘Do you know his first name?’ But immediately I regretted it for I felt Mother looking at me. I was being over inquisitive, too interested; and she was suspicious.
‘Why all these sudden questions about the Birdman, Gracie?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never shown any interest in him before.’
‘Just saw him today, like I said. Just wondered, that’s all. Daniel and me, we just wondered about him.’
Mother came over and stood in front of me. She took my chin in her hand and pulled it up so that I had to look her in the eyes. She always did this when she thought I’d been up to some mischief and she wanted to get the truth out of me. ‘You haven’t been speaking to him, have you Gracie? You haven’t been over on Heathy Hill, have you? You know you’re not supposed to go there, don’t you?’
‘No, Mother, course I haven’t, honest I haven’t.’ It was just as well I did not have to lie, for Mother would have known. Father I could deceive any time I wanted, but Mother knew me far too well. She looked down at me out of tired kind eyes, a knowing smile on her lips, so knowing that I had to look away.
‘You leave him to his birds, Gracie,’ father said. ‘You keep well away like I said. Promise me now. You be a good girl and stay away.’
‘I promise,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay away.’
And so I did, for a day or so at least. It took only that long for Daniel to persuade me to go with him back to Rushy Bay, that we had been silly to run away in the first place just because we’d heard a donkey braying. I told him everything Father had told me about the Birdman and Samson and Charlie Webber. He listened, but I could see he didn’t really believe any of it. He said he had heard something about the fire before, and that it didn’t matter anyway because we weren’t going to Samson like Charlie Webber did. We were only going to Rushy Bay. And the Birdman might be a bit loony, but what did that matter? He just wanted to make friends, that was all. Why else would he give us back our boat? Why else would he be leaving messages for us in the sand? We didn’t have to go anywhere near him, did we? Perhaps I agreed to go with Daniel because I was half convinced by his arguments, or perhaps I was inquisitive.
When I crawled up over Samson Hill with Daniel that next day I kept flat on my stomach in the heather until I was sure the Birdman was not down there on Rushy Bay waiting for us.
The Birdman was not waiting for us, but something else was. Lying on its side in the sand in almost the same spot we had found our boats the day before was a bird, a cormorant. At first we thought it had been washed up dead, for it lay amongst the flotsam at the high water mark. As we approached I could see it was small even for a young bird, and that the feathers were not oily black as they should have been. I thought it must have been blown off the rocks before it could fly.
Suddenly Daniel caught my arm and pointed further along the beach. A trail of footprints led right to where the cormorant lay and away again. At that moment I would have panicked and run as I had done before, but this time Daniel’s hand was firm on my arm and he led me forward. In the sand above the cormorant, written out in orange shells were the letters I now expected to find: ‘Z.W.’ It was not until we were down on our knees in the sand beside it that I realized the cormorant’s feathers were not stirred by the breeze as they ought to have been, that it was in fact made of wood. Then we noticed the shells. Only a few feet away the shells along the tide-mark had been rearranged to read: ‘Stay and play. Your beach as much as mine.’
We scanned the dunes above us for any sign of the black sou’wester amongst the reeds, but all we could see of the Birdman were his gulls still lined up on the thatch of his cottage watching us. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the chimney pots at each end of the cottage only to be whipped away at once and dissipated by the wind. Daniel reached out and picked up the cormorant. The base of it was carved out as a rock, covered with limpets and barnacles, and the cormorant stood on his great webbed feet, head slightly lifted, almost indignant. He was leaning forward as if balancing himself against the wind. All his feathers were so finely crafted that I expected them to be soft to the touch. Daniel set the bird down in the wet sand facing out over the water to Samson and sat back on his ankles.
‘You ever seen anything like it?’ he said stroking the crown of the bird’s head. ‘Looks as if he could lift off and fly, doesn’t he?’
‘D’you think the Birdman’s watching us?’ I whispered.
‘’Spect so. Don’t mind if he is. Look at this, Gracie. The man who made this isn’t a madman; he just can’t be. And he gave us back our boat, didn’t he? It’s like I told you, Gracie, he’s trying to make friends with us. He likes us being here. I’m going to stay and sail our boats, Gracie just like he said we could, and what’s more I’m going to say thank you to him.’
‘Well I’m not going anywhere near that cottage,’ I said, suddenly cold with fear at the very thought of it. ‘Not in a million years.’
‘We don’t need to, Gracie,’ he said. ‘Look.’ And he wrote in shells beside the Birdman’s message: ‘Thanks. Daniel and Grace.’
‘No,’ I shouted as soon as I saw my name in the sand. ‘You can’t, you can’t! He’ll know who we are if you do that, he’ll come after us and put his curses on us.’ And I lifted my foot and kicked the sand all over Daniel’s writing until I had obliterated every last letter. I was crying in spite of myself. ‘Father says he puts spells on people. We mustn’t talk to him. We’re not supposed to.’
Daniel looked up at me and I could see from the look in his eyes that he was disappointed in me. ‘But we’re not going to talk to him, are we?’ he said. ‘Look, Gracie, it stands to reason. If the Birdman had wanted to put a spell on us he could have done it already, couldn’t he? Well he could, couldn’t he?’ I would not answer him because I hated to be wrong, and I knew well enough in my heart that I was. In my shame and fury I kicked the cormorant over on its side and ran off up the beach towards Samson Hill. Daniel called after me to come back and all my rage at my own humiliating fear burst from me.
‘If you’re so brave, Daniel Pender,’ I screamed at him, ‘then you can sign your silly name; but I’m not coming here again, never, d’you hear me? Never. You can keep your silly boats and your silly cormorant for all I care. I don’t want it and I don’t want ever . . .’, and I would have gone on to say every hurtful thing I could think of, had I not caught sight of the Birdman’s dog plodding purposefully along the beach behind Daniel, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. I tried to call out to Daniel to warn him but my voice would not speak as it should, so I just pointed and ran back down over the sand