Trinket

       

 

          The name on her birth certificate read ‘Saffron Walden’, but to Grandpa Zal she had been ‘Trinket’ since she was nine months old. That’s when she started collecting baubles, small shiny objects of interest to her, secreting them in new found pockets of her clothing. Zal picked up on this almost immediately and bought her an ornate music/jewellery box from a fellow market trader.

When Trinket graduated to where she could sustain a conversation, mostly quizzical in nature, Zal retired from the family business and devoted his spare time to her. He’d missed out on a lot of his older grandchildrens’ growing up and determined not to miss a second of Trinket’s.

The garden was their playground, a long time hobby of Zal’s in that he would grow pot plants from seed and sell them on at the weekend market in town. An equal fascination for feathered visitors to his garden was easily passed on to Trinket, who soaked all information up like a large sponge takes in moisture. From an early age she could name them all, tell a weed from a marketable plant and assemble trellis frames for the climbers.

Some days all they did was laugh and kid around, started when Zal placed a couple of earthworms in the dent in the crown of his old pork pie hat when Trinket wasn’t looking. A bold Robin Redbreast, always on hand when Zal was turning soil over, landed on his head and made a meal of the worms.

“Grandpa, Grandpa, there’s a birdie on your head,” proclaimed Trinket excitedly.

“Is it a Seagull?”

Zal didn‘t care for Seagulls much. In fact he called them something else but Trinket knew better than to repeat it in polite company.

“No.”

“Is it one of those pesky Pigeons?”

He had the same disregard for Pigeons.

“No.”

“Don’t say it’s one of those noisy Crows?”

“It’s a little Robin Redbreast and he’s eating your hat.”

“Oh, a Robin Redbreast, that’s OK then, we like Robins don’t we?”

“But he’s eating your hat.”

When Zal was sure the Robin had flown, he took his hat off to inspect it.Trinket had a look too and could find nothing wrong with it.

“Ah,” said Zal,”I think maybe there was a hole in it and the Robin mended it for me. Maybe because we make sure he’s well fed. What d’you think Trinket?”

“You could be right Grandpa,” she replied, although he was sure it was just to humour him.

They spent every waking minute together, right down to a pub lunch at least twice a week where all the men would tell stories and Trinket would commit them to memory. Her appetite for learning was a joy to behold.

When she started school, Trinket could read and write to where she was way out in front of her classmates, all thanks to Zal and his unflagging patience. 

Zal was under orders not to do any work in the garden until she came home to help him. She was also quite an authority on a number of topics, mainly wildlife and propagation but she wasn’t one for showing it off, usually.

With the entire family gathered for some feast or other, one of her older sisters questioned what caused a rainbow to appear and Trinket was able to explain in detail. The room fell silent at that and a proud-as-could-possibly-be Zal, threw her a wink.

A baby Magpie either fell or was pushed from the nest high in the Chestnut tree and Trinket picked it up before next door’s cat could get near it. Zal took it to the shed and bedded it into a seed box lined with old rags he kept there to clean his hands on when he fixed the car, something else Trinket helped with. 

“Will we need to feed it Grandpa?”

“We will, yes Trinket, do you know what Magpies like to eat?”

“You told me they eat anything, remember? You said a Seagull was more picky than a Magpie.”

“Ah yes, I remember now but this little fellow isn’t ready for a varied diet just yet, what d’you think he might be able to eat?”

“Maybe insects, Grandpa, and spiders, there’s lots of them in the shed here.”

Together they collected spiders from the darkest recesses of the shed, slaters and worms from the garden too and coaxed the bird into eating some, he had a good appetite considering he had taken such a fall.

The following day, Zal borrowed the window cleaner’s ladders and, with Trinket holding it steady, he climbed towards the nest with the bird gently clasped in one hand. Thinking their painstakenly assembled home was under assault, the bird’s parents went into attack mode and Zal high tailed it back down.

“What do we do now Grandpa?” asked Trinket, with more than a little worry in her voice.

“Let me think Trinket, just give me a minute.”

Zal went back into the shed and came out a few moments later with a pair of goggles.

“What are you going to do with those?”

“If you noticed, the Magpies only attacked when I wasn’t looking at them. So, if I put these on the wrong way round they’ll think I have eyes in the back of my head. D’you think that’ll work Trinket?”

“We’ll have to give it a try Grandpa. That baby bird really needs his Mummy.”

Zal scaled the ladder again and this time the confused birds kept a reasonable distance. They clacked a lot but they didn’t attack like before. 

Trinket hugged her Grandpa when he descended, the baby Magpie back safely in the nest and the parents now quiet.

“You’re very clever Grandpa. I think you’re the cleverest man in the whole wide world.”

“Maybe the second cleverest Trinket.”

She left it at that. Who was she to argue with the second cleverest man in the whole wide world?

Four weeks later, Zal passed away peacefully in his sleep; he hadn’t even been ill. Trinket couldn’t get her little head around it, she was inconsolable, she was eight years old. 

  She wouldn’t eat for three days, staying in her room and crying and crying and crying. She kept the curtains closed, preferring the darkness, which matched her mood exactly. On the third day she heard something tapping on her window. Usually, she could hear the window cleaner rest his ladders on the sill so she knew it wasn’t him. On opening the curtains there was no one there. The sill was quite deep with the window set into the room. The sun was shining and she saw something glittering, a diamond stud earring no less. But how on Earth did it get there?

She didn’t cry at the funeral, she was all cried out. She went upstairs to change after the service and found a shiny new penny on the window sill. The window cleaner had been at the church so it couldn’t have been him.

Her mum asked her to pick some carrots and peas for the dinner and while she was at the bottom of the garden, something flew close to her head. She sensed it more than saw it but when she looked up, there was a Magpie on her window sill; problem solved, or was it? The Magpie looked fully grown but it could well have been the baby Zal and she had saved.

On inspecting the sill, Trinket found a bright, beaded bracelet.

That same night at the dinner table, Trinket announced that no one was to call her by that name from then on. Everyone nodded in agreement, all just happy to see her tucking into her food at long last.

The name wouldn’t go away. The Magpie continued to bring her gifts and was named Trinket for almost same reason she had. She tended the garden, using her knowledge to good effect and sometimes Trinket sat close by to watch, accepting the odd worm when it was dangled invitingly.

The fighting started about six weeks after Zal’s funeral. Saffron’s parents were having a hard time of it. They parted soon after that and her mum decided they would downsize, the house was far too big now for just the two of them; her sisters had both left home and had families of their own. Saffron railed against the idea, her beautiful garden would suffer neglect, all the birds she spoke to and fed would miss her terribly but alas, her words fell on deaf ears.

She stopped eating again when they moved to the other side of town. The doctor was sent for after four days and still she wouldn’t eat. He said she was depressed.

She took a fever through weakness and dreamt she heard Trinket tapping on her window. When she heard the sound again she was wide awake. On investigating, she saw several shiny baubles on the window sill, Trinket had found her. 

Saffron asked her mum for some soup, she was ready to eat again and soon, ready to tackle that jungle of a garden which bordered the new house.