Feather Boy

NICKY SINGER

Dedication

For Roland

– inspiration, accomplice, son

– with my love

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Why You’ll Love This Book

Part One: Chance House

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Part Two: The Coat of Feathers

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Why You’ll Love This Book

Why You’ll Love This BookBy David Almond

Like all the best books, Feather Boy can’t be pinned down. You have to read it, to be caught in its spell as thousands of readers have been before.

What’s it about? Robert Nobel is the class squit. He’s trying to deal with Niker, a scary and complex bully. He’s lamenting his departed father and falling in love with Kate. Then Edith, a stern and secretive old woman, picks him out from the crowd, tells him he’s the sort of boy who can fly, and sends him on a perilous quest that will change his whole life.

The story’s set in a very realistic and believable world, and it’s wonderfully fluent and readable and engrossing, but it often feels very strange indeed. It’s about secrets, the search for truth, the dangerous places that exist in the world and in the human heart.

It leads us into the dark and scary Chance House, through the sinister Dog Leg, into a feather-strewn graveyard. It contains one of the most weird and beautiful articles of clothing you’ll ever read about.

It is beautifully written: concise, rhythmical, dramatic, with hardly a wasted word. It’s a book that engages the mind and touches the heart. Read on.

David Almond

David Almond is the author of Skellig, The Savage, Jackdaw Summer, and many other novels, stories and plays. His awards include The Carnegie Medal, two Whitbreads and the Michael L Printz Award.

1

It all began when Catherine came to talk about the Elders’ Project. Of course that’s not what Catherine would say. She’d say it began in a time that is yesterday and tomorrow and eternally present. But then Catherine’s a storyteller. I’m not a storyteller. I’m just the guy it happened to.

Anyway, there we all were in that dead time just after lunch, a little pale sunlight trying to push its way into Class 7R. Miss Raynham had set out a chair for Catherine and patted its seat to make her sit down. She’d said “ahem” and begun to scratch her head. None of us likes it when Miss Raynham scratches her head. Her thin grey hair barely covers her very white scalp. The merest touch of a fingernail on that creepy skull showers her shoulders with dandruff. Niker says if she ever loses her job as a teacher she could earn a living making snowdrifts for the movies. When I told my mum that story (and I made the story mainly about Niker) Mum said: “that’s nothing.” Apparently, when she was at school, they had a teacher called Miss Cathart, who used to spit down the sleeves of her cardigan. Miss Cathart’s cardigans, Mum says, were the crocheted sort. Loosely knitted. With holes in. So the spit ran out.

This is the problem with stories. They run on. So – to begin again: Miss Raynham says: “Ahem.” And then. “This is Catherine. Catherine erm…”

“Deneuve,” says Niker.

“Of Aragon,” says Derek.

“Parr,” says Weasel.

You can see we’ve been learning about Henry VIII. Well, everyone but Niker has.

“Class,” says Miss Raynham and she shifts downwind – fast. She’s big, Miss Raynham, corpulent, a blob on legs. But she moves like a spider. One minute she’s standing at the front of the class with a smile and a piece of chalk and the next thing you know is she’s zigzagged to your desk and the chalk is in your neck. Or Niker’s neck in this case.

“Catherine Fenn,” continues Miss Raynham without a pause, “has come to speak to us about the Elders’ Project. Catherine?”

Attention transfers at once to the front of the class. Catherine is youngish, in her twenties probably, little, dark, and she seems at rather a loss. Her long hair is piled up on her head and held in place with a moon and stars clip. Only the clip isn’t doing a very good job and most of the hair is making a bid for freedom down Catherine’s back. She’s wearing those brightly coloured clothes that look like you’ve dipped them at random in three different vats of dye and – as yet – she hasn’t said anything.

“Catherine,” repeats Miss Raynham with that scratch and that edgy irritation we all know so well.

“Hello,” says Catherine at last.

“Hello, Catherine,” says the class.

She shifts position, as though she’s Goldilocks and she can’t get comfortable in Mummy Bear’s chair. “Thank you for letting me be here.”

“Oh boy,” says Niker, and then seems to choke. Could be the chalk at his throat.

“I…” begins Catherine, but Miss Raynham’s patience is at an end. She strides to the front of the class.

“We’re very fortunate to have the services of Catherine, who is going to lead a project between children from this class and the residents of the Mayfield Rest Home.”

“Is that the barmy bin?” asks Weasel.

“No, Wesley, it is not the barmy bin. And it is partly to counter such ignorant attitudes about the senior members of our society that this project is being undertaken. Now, since we apparently need to return to basics, can anyone tell me what a Rest Home is?”

Niker’s hand goes up. “It’s a vegetable shop,” he says.

“Jonathan Niker. Explain yourself.”

“Well, my Aunt Maisie was there and she was a vegetable.”

“In a time that was yesterday and tomorrow and eternally present,” says Catherine suddenly, “there lived a prince who had been silent for as long as anyone could remember.” Her voice is so low and urgent that even Niker doesn’t say “Fat Chance”. “And,” Catherine continues, “his mother the Queen was heartbroken at her son’s muteness and the King heartbroken at his wife’s grief. So it was, that on the Prince’s eighteenth birthday, the King issued a proclamation saying that any man or woman who could make the Prince speak would receive the richest reward in the kingdom. However, the penalty for those who tried and failed would be instant death.”

“Cool,” says Weasel.

“They tell nursery stories in the nursery,” says Niker, twirling the sharp point of a pencil in the palm of his hand.

“Does that mean,” Catherine asks, faster than Miss Raynham, “you think this class is too grown up for such tales?”

“Yes,” says Niker. “Except,” he scans his fellow pupils, “maybe Norbert there.”

Norbert is the class squit. He’s thin and gangly, his arms and legs like white string loosely knotted at the elbows and knees. His head is too big for his body and, where other people have hair, he has this yellow, fluffy ducks’ down. His eyes are blue, though it’s difficult to see that through the thick glass of his spectacles. If you take his specs off him, and people do, he looks startled. Naked. His real name isn’t Norbert, it’s Robert. Robert Nobel. But I don’t think anyone’s ever called him that. In Kindergarten, when his hair was even more yellow than it is now, they called him “Chick” or “Chickie”. Even Mrs Morgan. But, since Niker arrived in school, it’s been Norbert. Norbert No-Bel. Norbert No-Bells-at-All. Norbert No-Brain. Norbert No-Bottle. I don’t suppose Johnny Niker, who has curly dark hair, green eyes and a fluid, athletic body, has ever imagined what it would be like to look out at the world through Norbert No-Bottle’s spectacles. But I have. Because I am Norbert No-Bottle.

“Personally,” says Catherine, “I think one never grows out of fairy tales. I think fairy tales contain all of the ways we sort experience, good and bad. In fact, I think stories are the most important form of communication we as human beings have.”

“Ahem,” says Miss Raynham.

“What do you think, Jonathan?”

“Johnny,” says Niker.

“I don’t think Johnny is a human being,” says Weasel.

“Right,” says Miss Raynham. “That is quite sufficient, thank you. The purpose of the Elders’ Project is, as Catherine will explain at greater length, to share experiences between young and old. And to learn something. Manners perhaps.”

It’s Norbert No-Bottle that hurts the most. Niker started calling me that after the Grape Incident. Maybe I’ll tell that story later. Right now I can’t even say the word “grape” without feeling sick. And I still get queasy going down the aisles at Sainsbury’s, just in case I encounter any big, fat, green grapes.

“We’re going to be telling stories,” says Catherine. “About our lives and those of the Elders. We might look at their childhood experiences compared with yours. Or their wisdoms and yours. And then we’re going to try to make a piece of work that records the things we find out.”

“What sort of work?” asks Kate.

“I’m not entirely sure yet. Probably some sort of large picture, or pictures, a collage perhaps of writings, paintings, photos, mementoes. I think we should be looking at two pieces of work. One which might eventually hang in the school and one in the Home.”

“Groovy,” says Weasel.

“Naturally,” says Miss Raynham, “not everyone will be able to take part in the project. Working space at Mayfield limits the numbers we can reasonably send.”

“So we’ll be going to the Home?” asks Derek.

“Yes. On Wednesday afternoons. For the next four or five weeks. So,” Miss Raynham chin juts challengingly forward, “I’m looking for about ten volunteers.”

That’s when people look at Niker. Nothing obvious, just a quick glance, a sidelong peek. Is this project going to be for the Cool Gang or the Class Duffers? Is it a good thing or a bad? Will Niker give it his seal of approval? He sits there (I’m looking too, of course) like some Roman Emperor, imperious, disdainful, savouring the lengthening moments during which the rest of us wait to know whether the project lives or dies.

My hand goes up.

“Thank you, Robert. Robert Nobel.” She writes my name on a list.

Niker scowls furiously. I have jumped the gun. Now no-one else will volunteer, because the class pariah is going. This is power of a sort I suppose, to be able to make something untouchable by touching it. In any case there are no more hands.

“Come on, come on.” Miss Raynham is embarrassed, agitated. “Liz will be accompanying the Mayfield group. The rest of you,” she glares, “will be remaining here with me.”

Liz Finch, our student teacher, is bland, harmless and has no known habits. So, normally, this would be a good ploy. But everyone knows that Wednesday afternoon is actually PE (with Mr Burke) and double art (with Mrs Simpson), which is why people continue to roll scraps of paper between fingers and thumb and stare out of windows.

“If there are no more volunteers, I shall be forced to choose.”

“Many brave men and women,” says Catherine, “tried to make the young Prince speak. And as many were beheaded. The King and Queen had all but given up their quest when, from the woods nearby, came one last adventurer…”

Kate’s hand goes up. I might be imagining it but I think I hear the grind of Niker’s teeth. Of all the people he’d want not to go, she’d be top of the list. Not that I think she’s challenging him, it’s just that the project obviously intrigues her and, unlike some other people in the form, Kate has a mind of her own. That’s why I like her. I’d like to say she likes me back. But actually I don’t think she’s any more conscious of me than she might be of a woodlouse. Niker she has noticed, not least because he says “Stylish,” every time she passes. I keep waiting for her to wither him with some remark. But she doesn’t. Sometimes, she even smiles.

“Kate Barber,” notes Miss Raynham. “Thank you.”

Kate’s friend Lucy then puts her hand up and the spell seems to break. Oliver, Tom and Mai and a couple of others volunteer. Only Derek continues to haver.

“Right,” says Miss Raynham, doing a quick count-up. “I make that eight. So, if we add in young Wesley Parr and Mr Niker here, I think we have a full complement.”

So that’s how, the following Wednesday, I find myself at the Mayfield Rest Home, starting a project that’s going to change my life for ever.

2

The Mayfield lounge is like a dentist’s waiting room; green chairs lined up against the walls and that dull, limbo feeling of time having moved elsewhere. On top of the television set in the far corner is a crochet mat and, on the windowsill, some fake flowers in white plastic pots. We arrive after lunch and the residents are already seated. Some are in the green chairs perched on plastic cushions, others have brightly-coloured patchwork blankets tucked around their knees and a walking stick or zimmer frame near by. Some are sunk in wheelchairs.

Their hush seems to fall on us as we enter the room. A disconsolate, decrepit hush. And all of a sudden the ten of us are trying to huddle behind Catherine as though we’re embarrassed for being so full of life. Some of the residents peer at us, others ignore us, or maybe they just don’t see us. Niker shifts from foot to foot. I concentrate on the floor. The carpet is gold and swirly. If Miss Raynham were here she’d take charge, but Miss Raynham is not here. As we wait – and wait – for Catherine to do something, a wheelchair suddenly shrieks: “I think I’m in the wrong place!”

“Join the club,” says Niker.

“Now, now,” says Matron. “Mavis.”

Mavis is a chicken in a dress. At once bony and fleshy, her plucked yellow skin springs with coarse hair. At some stage her neck must have been chopped out and her head stuck straight back on to her shoulders.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“It’s The Project,” says Matron, enunciating loudly and clearly as though talking to a foreigner or an imbecile, “with the children.”

“Oh,” says Mavis. “When’s tea?”

“Hello,” says Catherine, finally arriving at the television set, the room’s focal point. Then she adds, in her rather faltering way, “I’m Catherine.”

“Two of my family died in this place,” says Mavis.

“No, they didn’t,” says Matron briskly. “Now children, why don’t you all sit down?”

Gratefully we sit. The residents shuffle and cough and peer.

“Hello,” says a relatively normal and fit-looking man, leaning down towards me. “Who’s this then?”

“Robert,” I whisper.

“Oh aye,” he says. “What yer doing here, Robert?”

Catherine begins to explain. Because she’s standing and we’re all sitting, she’s just about big enough to command attention. She talks briefly about the project and then suggests we work in pairs.

“Just space yourselves out a bit,” she tells the class, “that’s right, into a ring. Now, introduce yourself to whoever you’re closest to. That person will be your main partner. Though, of course, we’ll all be sharing ideas later on.”

As chance would have it, I’m still closest to Mr Relatively Normal. Niker, however, is sitting at Mavis’s feet.

“I’m Robert,” I repeat quickly, to establish my claim.

“So yer said,” he replies. “I’m Albert. Robert and Albert. Bert and Bert. Do they call you Bert?”

“No.”

“Oh aye,” Albert says.

There’s a pause and then he says, “I were a ladies’ man. Once.” And he sighs. The sigh is sad and resigned but it’s only a moment before he leans down and smiles at me. “Eh up, lad.”

There’s something tender in his look, not a tenderness for me of course, just something misty about his past, and in that moment I indulge a few warm thoughts of my own about my grandfather, Grandpa Cutting, who used to call me “lad” and take me boating before he died of a heart attack hanging a garage door. And I’m just thinking maybe Albert will be all right and perhaps the Nobel luck is going to change when a voice chisels through the room:

“I don’t want this one.”

Everyone turns to the speaker. She is tall (even seated), white-haired, ram-rod-backed and her perfectly still right index finger is pointing down at Kate.

“Well,” flusters Liz Finch, the student teacher who, up until this point, might have been a sheet of wallpaper, “perhaps you’d like to swop with Kate, Lucy. Lucy?”

Lucy isn’t moving.

“Lucy?”

“No,” says Ram-Rod. “I don’t want a girl.” The index finger lifts, it moves. “I want a boy. In fact,” the finger stops mid-swing, “I want him.” She’s pointing at me.

Now, you know those team games where there are two captains and they each pick someone to be on their side, turn after turn, until there’s only one person left? And no matter whether there are ten or twenty players that last person is always the same? The one who is never chosen, whatever the game? Well, that person’s me.

“Robert, isn’t it?” says Catherine.

And all the times I’ve prayed, I’ve pleaded, I’ve begged to be chosen and God’s ignored me? And now—

“Norbert,” says Niker. “She wants Norbert!”

Niker’s jeering does not deter Ram-Rod. She beckons me and I just know I’m going to have to go.

“Norbert,” repeats Albert, meditatively.

Kate is already halfway across the room. I stand up.

“Sorry,” I say as we pass like a substituted football players at the edge of the pitch.

“You’re joking,” she says.

A moment later I’m face to face with Ram-Rod. Close to, she looks surprisingly frail. Her body so thin and bloodless, she must, I think, be sitting upright by force of will alone.

“I’m Robert,” I say, extending a polite hand.

“Edith,” she replies, ignoring the hand. “Edith Sorrel.”

My arm drops uselessly and me with it. I’m back on the floor.

Then, like the cavalry, the tea trolley arrives. It comes with clink and clatter and shout and “Thank God” from Albert. Catherine, obviously taken aback that tea can be so early, suggests we all use the time to get “better acquainted”. We know what this means because Liz Finch briefed us on the bus.

“Remember your Elder may be deaf,” she said. “Just ask short, simple questions. Do you have children? Grandchildren? A husband/wife? What job did you use to do? And speak up.”

“Do you have children?” I ask Edith Sorrel.

“No.”

I pause, leave a gap. This the art of conversation, you know. You say something. They say something. You say something.

Edith says nothing.

“A husband?” I enquire hopefully.

“No.”

Another pause. Longer this time. I watch the trolley coming, so very slowly round towards us.

“Looking forward to tea?”

“No.”

The trolley passes us. The staff obviously know that Edith does not take tea, she does not take biscuits. The biscuits are those oblong ones which say “Nice” on them and are covered in sugar. I watch them go Weasel’s way.

“Did you have a job?”

Behind me I can hear Kate’s Albert. He had a job. He worked “in sawmills” and then “on the building”, he got paid sixpence a day.

“How much is sixpence?” asks Kate.

“Eh?” says Albert.

“Sixpence – how much was it worth?”

“Three loaves of bread, that’s what sixpence were.”

“No,” says Edith Sorrel. “I did not have a job. Young women were not encouraged to have jobs.”

And then I think she’s not really trying and it’s not fair and anyhow I’m cross about the biscuits, so I say: “Any special reason why you didn’t want a girl?”

“No.”

“OK. Any special reason for wanting me?”

She stares at me. Under her gaze, I feel quite transparent. As though she’s looking straight through me and out the other side.

“I mean me,” I persist, “me rather than any other boy?”

“No,” says Edith Sorrel.

“Well,” says Catherine, as the tea trolley finally beats a retreat, “I’d like to tell you all a story.”

“Oh aye,” says Albert.

Edith Sorrel clasps her hands in her lap. And I have this weird sensation that she’s holding herself, trying to comfort herself.

“It’s about a silent prince and the young woman who wants to free him from the curse that has rendered him mute. The Prince’s mother and father, the King and Queen, have promised the riches of their kingdom to anyone who can make the young man speak. But for those who try and fail, the penalty is to be instant death.”

“Is it Neighbours?” asks Mavis.

“You daft brush,” says Albert.

“Well, the young woman knew it would take more than skill or cunning or luck to make the Prince speak, for many had gone before her and as many had lost their lives. So the young woman took herself into the forest where her grandparents lived. And as they sat around the cottage after supper, she told them of her plan.

“‘Oh my beloved,’ cried her grandmother, ‘you know not what you ask.’

“‘Indeed I do, Grandmother,’ said the girl. ‘And that is why I’m here. I have come to listen and to learn. For you and Grandfather have lived long in the forest and understand how it is that night turns into day and winter into spring. And if this were not enough, you have lived long in each other’s hearts and so understand the dark and light of love, and if this were not enough you have read many books and told many stories and so know what makes a beginning and what an end. I beg you, Grandparents, share what you can with me, for I am eager to know what you know and to carry your wisdom to the Prince.’”

“Nurse,” cries Mavis. “Shut the curtains!”

“I’ve nearly finished now,” says Catherine, gently. “If you want to sleep. But you see, the grandparents did tell the girl their wisdom. All night long they spoke and she listened. And I was hoping we could do something similar here.”

“What?” says Albert.

“She wants you to tell the children your secrets,” shouts Matron.

“No I won’t indeed. They’d be shocked.”

“Not secrets,” says Catherine. “Wisdoms. Things you’ve learnt over the years.”

“Not to be nosey,” says Weasel’s Elder. “That’s what. Mind your own business. That’s what. Little piggies have big ears. That’s what.”

“Well, that’s a start,” says Catherine.

“That’s what,” says Weasel emphatically.

“Wesley…” says Liz Finch.

“I’m just repeating the wisdom,” says Weasel. “Learning from Dulcie here. That right, Dulcie?”

“Cheeky little blighter,” says Dulcie.

“Anything you’d share with me,” I say to Edith Sorrel, “if I was going to be beheaded tomorrow?”

“No.”

I put my finger to my throat and make the sound of ripping flesh. “That’s me gone then.”

“What?” For the first time she seems caught off-guard.

“Dead,” I repeat. “I’m dead. Just twelve years old and dead. D.E.A.D. Dead. Finished. Kaput. Head on the carpet.”

“Stop it,” says Edith Sorrel. “Stop it at once.”

“Can’t stop it. Sorry, without The Wisdom, I’m a goner. Didn’t Catherine say? Just one or two old forest truths and I’ll be OK. You can save me. You do want to save me, don’t you?”