Flight

by Lauren Hill

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Nella hated the new extension. The builders had rolled their digger right over the grass and the daisies and taken over her garden. When they dug the foundations, she’d run out with her red plastic beach bucket and tried to collect all of the worms, beetles and spiders that had been so cruelly uprooted from their homes. That really set Mum off, finding her out there, crawling about in the dirt. She made Nella throw the bucket away and scrub her hands raw, convinced she’d catch some bacterial infection from the mud.

Her broken swing was the last straw. Nella came home from school to find it tossed into the skip, its wooden frame snapped. She got that swing for her sixth birthday last summer. As Nella took it all in – the swing lying broken, her precious garden now a mudbath strewn with tarpaulin and stray bricks – she felt a heat rising from her belly to her chest. Hot tears stung her eyes as she broke into sobs, her small body shaking with the effort of each breath. She knew that when Dad came home, he would lose it. The swing had been his idea. Nella had begged and begged for a trampoline, but Mum’s mind was too flooded with Facebook horror stories of broken collarbones and snapped wrists to ever allow it.

A swing was a fair trade, much safer, Dad had promised. He and Albie had built it for her with their bare hands. They’d argued the whole time they were building. Albie wasn’t holding the frame steady enough, and Dad’s hammer had slipped and whacked his thumb. Nella remembered the howl of pain, the way Albie had whisked her off her feet and run for cover, how they’d crouched giggling in the thick green of the rhododendron.

Nella remembered how, later, Dad and Albie took turns pushing her on her new swing. Higher and higher they pushed until she was almost upside down. Her knees had looked especially white and knobbly up against the blue sky. Nella hadn’t been scared. She knew if she’d let go, she’d have launched into the air and flown over England, over the sea to Africa like the swallows do.

She started practising swinging herself. For hours after school, Nella would try to will herself high enough to kick the branches of her garden’s beech tree. Free as a bird, Albie used to call her; she couldn’t have felt further away from that now.

Nella was shaken from her rage by the sudden feeling that she wasn’t alone. Through her watery vision, she made out the shape of a man standing in the breeze-block beginnings of the kitchen. He was youngish, with a scruffy beard and clothes covered in cement dust. One of the builders. Nella turned her face towards him, cheeks red and swollen from her tears. The man tilted his head, as if taken aback. He didn’t stride over and take her by the hand like her teachers or parents would. Instead, the man hesitated, as though he too were waiting for instruction from an adult. Finally, he sighed. Nella shrank backwards as the man walked over. He was a good meter taller than her. Too shy to look into his face, Nella fixated instead on the hands which fidgeted at his sides. They must have been the size of her head, dust-covered and calloused like the surface of the moon.

“Hey, you’re Nella, aren’t you?” said the man, bending down as he did so. Nella nodded, wiping the snot away from her upper lip with the corner of her sleeve. “My name’s Cal. Where’s your mum?” Nella gestured back to the house. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asked. Nella shook her head. “So what’s up?”

“You–you broke my swing, so now I can’t practise flying.”

“Ah, I’m sorry about that. We had to clear a path. Your Dad said it could go.” Nella’s breath caught in the back of her throat. It had to be a lie. Her upper lip began to tremble again. Cal’s expression softened. He told Nella he was sure Mum and Dad were planning to buy her an even nicer swing once the work was finished. He didn’t understand.

She took in Cal’s appearance. His wiry beard reminded her of a sponge. Even though he was a lot younger than Mum, he had dark circles under his eyes like hers, but she didn’t point them out because that was rude. His face seemed kind, though, maybe he wasn’t a liar, and this was all a mistake. Cal ruffled her hair, getting it dusty, but she didn’t mind. As he walked back to the extension, he called to Nella.

“I guess you’ll have to come up with a new way to practise flying until the work’s done.” That got Nella thinking.

***

The next day, Nella couldn’t wait to get home from school. She’d had an idea for a new project. She didn’t even pester Mum for a playdate, happily squirrelling herself away in her bedroom instead. Nella realised she’d need to get supplies from the garden. Her project required feathers. She hurried out and began gathering as many as she could find. Then, she spotted Cal sitting on the damp grass under the beech tree, a half-eaten sandwich on his lap. Nella noticed he was smoking, so she held her breath. Cal gestured to the feathers in her hands.

“You don’t want those ones,” he said.

“Why?” She asked.

“They’re feral pigeon feathers. Vermin. Like rats with wings,” said Cal. Rats gave Nella the creeps. She dropped the feathers. Cal scoured the base of the tree and picked up a different feather. This one was a lighter brown colour than the others, fluffier and more delicate too. “You want this one. It’s from a wood pigeon.” He held it out to her. She took it quickly – her face was bright red from holding her breath for so long, and he was starting to get a little blurry. “What’s up with you?” The smoke was still swirling around her head, the tar smell tickling her nostrils. She pointed at his cigarette. He dropped it and stamped it out. “Sorry, sorry. What’re all the feathers for?” He said.

“They’re for my project.”

“I see, what project is that? Is it for school?”

“No, it’s a secret. You can’t see it till it’s ready.” Cal laughed then. That got on Nella’s nerves. Albie was like that all the time, too, laughing at things she said that weren’t funny. “Don’t you know that smoking’s bad for you?” She asked.

“Oh, I know, don’t ever do it. Once you start, it’s hard to stop.” As if to prove a point, Cal rummaged in his pocket for a packet of thin white papers. Nella knew she shouldn’t like it, but there was something transfixing about the way he packed the paper neatly with a line of dry brown tobacco. His giant fingers rolled the paper delicately and quickly, sealing the cigarette with a flash of his tongue.

“Maybe you should pray on it,” she said. Cal laughed again.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll give that a go. Is that what your family does, pray?” he asked.

“Not Albie. He’s my brother. He doesn’t like Church.”

“I haven’t seen him yet.”

“He doesn’t live here anymore.” Cal went quiet then. Nella felt bad. Her parents didn’t like her talking about Albie – Dad said it made people uncomfortable.

All of a sudden, though, Cal’s face broke into a wide grin. Nella thought he was laughing at her again, but he pointed at the branches of the beech tree above them. There were three of them, teetering on the highest branch and bristling their lime green feathers – the ones Nella loved the most.

“Parakeets!” She was pleased that she already knew their name.

“That’s right. Ring-necked parakeets. In London, God help them.”

“My Mum says they must have escaped from the zoo.”

Cal cupped his hands to his mouth and started making a chirping noise. It sounded to Nella like a finger rubbing on the glass of the car window. The parakeets sang back to him. It made her giggle.

“Nella?” Mum was leaning through the flap where the back door was going to be. She kept her frayed pink slippers firmly planted in the new kitchen. Mum never went into the garden if she could help it. Nella thought that was probably why she didn’t mind the builders digging it up. Mum didn’t laugh at the parakeets. She didn’t smile at Cal either. “What are you doing? Come inside.” Cal’s smile had disappeared, too. He started packing up his lunch. Nella gathered her feathers. “Leave the feathers,” said Mum.

“But I need them for my project.”

“Feathers don’t belong inside. Do you have any idea about the number of diseases birds carry?”

***

Nella woke the next morning to a glorious Saturday – a whole day to work on her project without being disturbed. The theme tune of Mum’s favourite weekend breakfast show drifted up the stairs. Dad was away at another conference. He’d return late tomorrow with a furrowed brow, shirt sweaty as he bent to give her a goodnight kiss. She could tell from the van doors slamming and boots stomping over gravel down below that the builders were there again – Nella wondered if Cal was too. She hadn’t spoken to him when the other builders were around; the garden got too noisy, plus the shrill cry of the power drills scared the birds away.

“Late one more time, and you’re off this site.” The voice in the garden boomed so loud that Nella heard it from her bedroom. She recognised the voice, and thought the man it belonged to must be Cal’s boss – when the builders first arrived, he’d shaken Dad’s hand and unrolled a big piece of paper with all the plans for the house on it. Peeking through her window to investigate, Nella saw two men standing in the garden below. One with his back to her, wearing blue jeans and a checked shirt that stretched across his back, was indeed the boss – the other was Cal.

Nella thought it was strange, looking down at him from this height, Cal looked almost small. His boss practically towered over him, arms folded. Cal’s boss said something else to him that Nella couldn’t make out. Her stomach squirmed. Cal had looked tired before, but today he was bone-white. There was something off about the expression on his face, like he was searching for something. He shifted from one foot to the other until his boss strode away. He had an audience. The rest of the builders had downed tools to watch. Cal didn’t seem bothered. He pulled out his phone and stared at it intently before chucking it away and putting his head in his hands.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Cal.

The word took Nella aback. She shouldn’t know it, but she did. Once, at the dinner table, Dad had told Albie off for wearing his nails painted black to school. There’d been a letter home and everything, Dad had called Albie an “embarrassment” and Albie had told Dad to “fuck off”. Dad got really angry then; he threw his pint at the wall and it smashed, spraying beer and broken glass everywhere. That had been in the old kitchen, before the extension. Nella didn’t hear what happened next because Mum sent her to her room, but she remembered worrying that Dad wouldn’t let Albie paint her nails anymore either. He used to take her to Boots and let her choose any colour she wanted. Nella’s favourite was duck egg blue. Albie left soon after that argument, and now, Nella began to worry that Cal might have to leave as well.

***

That afternoon, however, Cal seemed in a better mood. Nella had seen him eating his lunch on the scaffolding boards outside her bedroom and hovered, unsure whether or not to make her presence known. Cal noticed her. He was still pale, his eyes sunk into the grey of their sockets, but he’d greeted Nella enthusiastically, and she climbed out of the window to join him, pleased he’d cheered up.

“I forgot, I brought this for you, Nella. Thought you could use it for your project,” said Cal, rummaging in his backpack, his hand trembling a little. Cal pulled out a long black feather and handed it to Nella. She’d collected a number of black feathers from her garden already, thanks to the crows, but this feather was different. Halfway down, it had white splodges that made a pattern like thin clouds stretched across the sky.

“What is it?”

“That’s a capercaillie feather. They’re very rare. You can only find them in the Highlands, where the Cairngorms lie. They live in the pine woods up there.”

“cap-er-cai-llie” Nella repeated the word several times, relishing the way it bounced off her tongue. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Yeah, with my grandad, when I was a kid, only a little older than you, maybe. We went in the winter, that’s when the capercaillie move into the woods to feed. The snow was up to my knees, and I wasn’t wearing my overalls, so my trousers were soaked. You can’t complain to my grandad, though, he’d just say it was my fault for not wearing overalls.”

“Do you miss your family?” said Nella.

“I don’t know, do you miss your brother?” Cal replied. Nella’s heart started beating double time as she calculated her answer.

“Hey, it’s ok, I’m sorry – we don’t have to talk about it,” said Cal. “ And yeah, I would love to go back to Scotland, take my son camping like my grandad took me.”

“You have a son?”

“Yeah, back in Glasgow.”

Nella tried to imagine Cal as a dad, dropping her off at the school gates. Maybe he would tell her friends all about the different species of trees in their field, pointing out which ones grew conkers in the Autumn or blossomed in Spring.

“Why doesn’t he live with you?” Nella asked. Cal sighed and stood up. He fiddled with the edge of the scaffolding’s plastic banner that had come loose and started flapping in the wind.

“I’ve got some work to do, Nella, before I can go back and live with him again.”

“Like building work?” she said. Cal let out a laugh.

“I wish,” he said, but his face looked tired. As usual, Nella couldn’t work out what was funny.

***

When Cal went back to work, Nella scurried to her bedroom, clutching the capercaillie feather. Finally, she could finish her project. Her own set of wings – much better than a swing. She’d used a cardboard box for their frame, tracing a pair of dress-up fairy wings to get the right shape before glueing on all the feathers she’d painstakingly collected. Only the most beautiful made the cut. Cal’s black and white capercaillie feather was the perfect final touch. Nella secured the wings to her back by poking two holes in the middle and threading her dressing gown rope through, tying it across her waist.

Nella waited until she heard the sounds of the others shout goodbye and the van crawling off the drive. She peeked through the curtains. Cal was alone, sweeping up and down below.

As lightly as she could – she wanted it to be a surprise – Nella climbed out of her window and scampered across the scaffolding boards to the far end directly above Cal. He didn’t look up. Not even when Nella clipped the metal scaffolding pole as she ducked underneath it, and a twanging sound rang out. Her heart hammered in her chest. Teetering on the edge, Nella summoned her courage. She saw herself taking off, soaring above all of London’s glass and the concrete to see Cal’s mountains for herself. She’d pick up Albie, too. He would be so surprised to see her.

“Nella!” Cal had noticed. She saw him standing alert, his face twisted in panic. She didn’t want him to be scared.

Nella jumped.

Her stomach plummeted through her feet. The ground rose up at her in a great green wave. A shape came out of nowhere. Her body made contact with something – the crook of an elbow.

Pain shot through Nella’s right arm as she and Cal hit the dirt. She felt it snap. She smacked her lips, her mouth heavy with the metallic taste of blood. Cal untangled himself from her, panting.

“You’re all right, lucky I caught you. Silly salmon, you nearly took us both out”.

She started to cry. Her eyes were only half open. Someone (Mum?) came sprinting. Nella felt her collapse over her. Mum took her in her arms and started to rock, wailing like a wild animal caught in a trap. Another set of footsteps came thundering out of the house. She opened her eyes fully and saw Dad’s brown leather shoes by her head, and Cal’s muddy boots, facing them.

“What have you done to my daughter?”

“She jumped; I couldn’t stop her. I tried catching her and–.”

Nella strained her neck to see Dad’s fist balled into a punch. He lunged at Cal. Dad’s knuckles smacked Cal’s jaw. Cal’s boots stumbled backwards.

“What the fuck?”

“You’re not coming near my family again. I’m gonna have you fired. Tell me why I shouldn’t call the police,” said Dad. Nella tried calling out, tried to tell him that it wasn’t Cal’s fault. It was her project, not his; they didn’t have to send him away. Mum stroked her forehead, shushing her.

“It’s ok, baby, you’re ok.” The pain in her arm overwhelmed her. Nella choked on her sobs. If Albie were there, he would have helped her find the words.

“Don’t bother,” said Cal. “Fuck this. Nella, I hope you feel better.”

Nella watched as Cal’s boots turned and walked away. When he disappeared, she rolled her head back, turning her face upwards to the sky. A couple of sparrows flitted above her, just out of reach.