The Wrong Message

The Cousin Delivers the Message

By midday the Jacks had turned Gary’s sentence into a matter of punctuation. Mr Jack Daw said punctuation was not the problem. His cousin offered to settle the matter by delivering the sentence to Stirling himself.

“You will do no such thing,” said Mr Jack Daw.

“Then how is he to know what Gary said?”

“He could ask Gary.”

This suggestion was treated as impractical by the entire Oak.

The Square lay bright and still. Jay hurried through on an autumn errand, the Smiths watched everybody without admitting to it, and a loose party of long-tailed tits swept across the branches with no interest in the family’s debate. The cousin watched the paths below instead.

When Stirling’s squad appeared, he went to meet them. By the time Mr Jack Daw reached the lower branches, the cousin had finished speaking. Stirling looked towards the Oak, gave no sign of what he made of the report, and led his squirrels away.

“What did you tell him?” Mr Jack Daw demanded.

“That Gary took the thing before the other Magpie ever saw it.”

“That is not what Gary said.”

“It is considerably shorter.”

Gary Corrects the Cousin

Gary arrived after the squad had gone. Mr Jack Daw told him at once. For a moment Gary did not look angry. He looked like a bird checking the ground beneath a branch he had trusted.

“I said it was mine before that bird saw it,” he told the cousin. “You have told Stirling I took it.”

“But did you not—”

“No.” Gary’s answer was so sharp that even Batman Smith, listening from the hedge, refrained from completing the question for him.

Mr Jack Daw sent his cousin to the far side of the Oak with strict instructions to say nothing more. The cousin obeyed by explaining to six relatives why he could not comment.

Enough to Go Looking

Through the afternoon Jay made another secretive pass and the Jacks grew louder. Gary came and went among them, always too late or too early for the squirrels. A siskin paused briefly in the trees. Later Stirling’s squad returned while Gary was away, and Mr Jack Daw watched his cousin with the expression of a bird guarding a cupboard full of explosives.

“Would a correction help?” the cousin whispered.

“From you?”

“I could use the precise words.”

“You could try silence.”

The cousin considered this as a novel and faintly insulting communication strategy.

Toward evening Gary found Mr Jack Daw alone enough to speak plainly. Below them, the Robins were making a great deal of the last light. Mildred moved beneath the hedge. Nobody came from the Vegetable Garden.

“Stirling heard the wrong thing,” Gary said.

“We do not know what he heard. He gave your cousin no answer.”

“He heard enough to go looking for the rest.”

Mr Jack Daw could not argue with that. Gary watched the Summerhouse for a while, then left the Oak before darkness swallowed the path to it.

Marjorie Returns to the Boundary

Marjorie took over the night. She had told Marlboro she was proud of her, but the admission had not made either garden peaceful. She came as far as the boundary, turned back and resumed a private quarrel with all the things she might have said differently. Later she returned to the same stretch of trees. Nobody answered. She carried on anyway.

The sky cleared, and the cold deepened. Marjorie kept her distance from Marlboro’s place, yet she could not seem to leave it out of her thoughts. When she appeared again in the small hours, even the Pine offered no interruption. At last she fell quiet.

I Heard You Both

Before dawn Harold arrived. He waited until Marjorie acknowledged him, a husband experienced enough to know that surprising her was rarely worth the effort.

“You told her,” he said.

“I did.”

“And?”

“She said I was late.”

Harold took longer over that than he usually took over an answer.

“She was right,” Marjorie said before he could try to rescue her.

“I might have said it too.”

“You might still.”

He looked towards their daughter’s trees. “She is not asking to hear it from me.”

“She was not asking to hear it from me either.”

They argued then, not about whether Marlboro should have gone, but about all the tenderness they had managed to hide behind being certain. Marjorie moved along the boundary. Harold followed, then stopped, then answered her from where he stood. Neither made the other apologise. Neither left quickly.

When their exchange finally ended, Marlboro spoke from next door. Her parents offered no reply. Perhaps she had waited for silence; perhaps she simply preferred to have the last word in her own garden.

“I heard you,” she said. “Both of you.”

She did not thank them. Instead she made it perfectly clear that her new place was not a monument to their excellent parenting. She had built a life there because it was hers. By the time dawn began to show, she was still insisting on the point. The Square woke around her.

What Stirling Thinks

The morning was cold and bright. Steve and Mrs Steve worked the lawn while Batman and the Smiths investigated everyone’s business. Derek climbed where Batman disliked him climbing. Gary arrived briefly, left, and returned later to find the Jacks busier than ever.

Stirling’s squad passed through after Gary had gone. The cousin stayed on his high branch and did not volunteer an amendment. Mr Jack Daw was nearly proud of him.

By late morning Gary came back. Stirling had already withdrawn. A small siskin slipped through the trees as the Jacks shifted to make space for him.

“Did he say anything?” Gary asked.

“Not to us,” said Mr Jack Daw.

Gary looked at the Summerhouse. “Then I shall have to find out what he thinks I said.”

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