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“If making one feel homely isn’t a skill, it’s a rare and precious gift.”
There are no degrees with life. You are or you’re not, and once it’s gone it doesn’t return.
Two magpies perched on a twisted branch, one bowing to the other, a glittering ring in its beak.
“What I meant to say, well, your work downstairs, it makes me want to see the animals alive. It makes me think of how they’re beautiful, and what they do, and how they’d look moving, and what it means that they’re dead. And it’s interesting in the way anatomists’ pictures are, too. To see them in detail as you can’t do when they’re alive. It’s about…showing what things really look like.” “Yes,” Mr. Green said, a single, intense syllable. “Whereas this badger, or the kittens playing cards, that’s an insult to the animal. It’s turning them into a joke and taking away their, their dignity by
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Mr. Green paused a moment, taking time to think. Clem loved those pauses. I’m making sure I get it right, and I expect you to wait, they said, without apology.
And there were few things so lonely as being the only man in a crowd of laughing people who didn’t get the joke.
Good Lord, those eyes, so impossibly, richly brown. It was a long time since Rowley had wanted to be a fool for a fine pair of eyes,
Fortunately, it would be easier to get round the Cape of Good Hope in a dinghy than to get round Polly,
“That’s exactly it. I can’t make life, or save it, but I want to preserve something of it. To snatch something from the wreckage, to keep something back from the worms. And I know it’s no more than a pale shadow of what birds are—” “It’s a bright shadow,” Clem said with fierce intensity,
Clem was not a man you could read like a book, or if you could, the book was in an unfamiliar typeface, with no page numbers.
Very few men would admit to being squeamish, just as many women felt it necessary to claim they were, and all in the teeth of the evidence.
“Well, as it happens, I have been thinking about starting another such piece,” Rowley said, entirely inaccurately. The last one hadn’t sold and probably never would, but it brought people into the shop. He could justify making another to himself if it would interest Clem. “I haven’t got so far as putting anything together yet, or even planning really, but if you’re interested, I’d very much enjoy discussing it with you.” The look in Clem’s eyes was worth a far bigger lie.
Ordinary birds are beautiful too, he’d said, and Rowley could only nod.
As if the world needed more people like all the people it already had.
to crown it all, the blasted badger was off the premises, with its ghastly winged helmet and the paper scroll clutched in its mangy fist, and had left him a magnificent four pounds to the good. Four pounds for a thing he’d happily have burned. There really was no accounting for taste.
“Most people think that nobody should make a fuss until it’s their own comfort at stake, at which point they will bring the roof down shrieking about it.”
“I know, I know. But when you see something like that, so beautiful and temporary, with no way to capture it for posterity or see it again…” “I pluck the rose,” Clem said. “And love it more than tongue can speak— Then the good minute goes.”
“But not my work.” “Well, no. I don’t think so. I think it can do a lot of interesting things, but it can’t capture fleeting things. Not the joy as it flies.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever taken my work seriously enough to quote poetry and consider its limitations.
But you have such…” He paused, considering. He never seemed to feel bad about looking for a word, or to expect anyone to shout at him to spit it out. “Such a gift for people, for friendship. I wish I had your heart.” Clem didn’t think he’d ever blushed so hard. “I don’t think I do anything special.” “I dare say you don’t,” Rowley said. “I think you’re quite exceptional.
one thing I’ve learned is that a scientific diagram of a bird is all very well, but it isn’t the reality of a bird, not at all. The plumage, the musculature, the development, it all comes out different every time. Nature doesn’t create according to a rule book, no matter what the authorities tell us. Honestly, I’ve seen a two-headed cat that could drink milk and mew with both mouths. We are as we are.”
“Rowley, there are lots of people who think I’m worth looking at. Not so many who think I’m worth listening to. Not like you.”
He hadn’t shown it to Clem before, since he’d been a little nervous to think what his lover would make of this sort of stitched-together creation, but anything was better than talking about fire and blood and fear. “It’s a wolpertinger.” “A what?” “A German word for invented beasts made out of various parts. We call them composites in English but I like the German.
He’d spent his life carefully not looking into an abyss of rage like the pit of hellfire he’d so often been told awaited pagans, because if he ever really looked, he feared he might be angry forever.
It was like looking at an elephant close up, through a magnifying glass; he could see what was in front of him but it didn’t form a meaningful shape.
‘What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.’ ”
“I’ll stay as long as you want me,” Rowley said. “However long that is. There’s nowhere else in the world I want to be while you want me to be here.” “That might be a very long time,” Clem said. “If you leave it up to me, it might not be far from always.” “Well, you know me.” Rowley looked up at him with the faintest shadow of a smile. “I like to wait.”
But at least he was alone with Rowley. At least Rowley could hold him and tell him he was safe, and wonderful, and beloved. It was all they had against the darkness, and maybe it was enough.
