Free Closed at Dusk by Monica Dickens Page A

undergrowth up there with his binoculars trained on not one but a pair of little brown nightingales darting in and out among the nettles and brambles with leaves and grass in their tiny sharp beaks, and shreds of sheep’s wool to line their home.
    No one must know. They must not even know he was a bird man. His Leitz binoculars were concealed in the green shoulder bag one of the children had used to take sandwiches to school centuries ago. He could tell no one, not even Roger, his trusted friend, because ornithologists could not always keep a secret, and if the news leaked out, all the twitchers would come to tick it off on their Must list, and you couldn’t be safe from the egg thieves – that gang from Southampton who would flog them illegally, or try raising the chicks to sell to sleazy exhibitions in unpleasant pleasure parks.
    He certainly would not tell Faye, who wouldn’t care anyway. She didn’t mind him birdwatching as long as she didn’t want the car. Indeed she was glad to have him out of the house, since the thought of him leaving tea bags in the sink and laying out his photographs on the dining-room table was just as irritating to her whether she was at home or not. But she understood nothing of the subtleties of the hobby, and might, with or without malice, let loose a story to one of her cynical pals, entitled, ‘Frank’s Obsession’.
    The Sanctuary was only twenty minutes away from Frank’s scrupulous red-brick house, with a sodium street lamp that glared into the front bedrooms, where he and Faye had brought up their children in fear of the main road, before the motorway rose behind them to deafen them with safety.
    Faye was often busy – bending down four-square from her elephant’s rump in the garden, into which beer bottles andhamburger containers sailed from time to time, or doing afternoons on the hospital switchboard, where she gave the third degree to enquirers from behind the desk in the highly polished entrance hall, a skating rink for dithery old ladies. So Frank was able to come to The Sanctuary often. Sometimes he saw the nightingales, sometimes he didn’t. It was getting too expensive to come in by the visitors’ entrance, but reconnoitring farther up the hill, he had found a gap in the crumbling boundary wall and a farm track where he could leave the car hidden behind a disused storage shed.
    Under pretence of going to a meeting of his local branch of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, he was even able to sneak in here one night, his heart on tiptoe, and lie silently on a bed of bracken to hear the bubbling clicks of the ‘Chook-chook-chook’ rise to the intoxicating crescendo, ‘Piu, piu, piu,’ as if the bird would never stop. One down for you, Faye, with your church choir and your all-girl hand-bells. Only the male can do this.
    One afternoon Frank scrambled over the wall to discover the best treat of all – the male bird with half a worm in its beak, nipping across the open space between two bushes as if there were a sniper in the trees. So the old lady was on her eggs. It was all going according to nature’s plan, and Frank’s summer was made. Because his hiding place must be twenty or thirty yards away, he would never set eyes on the nest itself. But she was sitting, that was sure. The old man would not be out doing the shopping unless she was employed. You and me both, mate.
    It was a bit chilly today and raining on and off, so he stole out of his hide. Too early to collect Faye. He would drop down the hill, heel and toe with elbows going to warm up, and have a reviving cup of tea in Mr William Taylor’s delightful tea-room.
    He knew the nice comfortable woman with soft brown hair and amber glasses, but not this younger, quicker one with black hair and a dark Mediterranean glance who filled his teapot from the urn.
    â€˜Where’s Ruth today?’ he asked.
    â€˜Taken a bit of time