The Taxidermist's Daughter Read Free

it would be preserved at one dazzling moment in time. Eternal, forever poised for flight, as if it might at any moment come back to life and soar up into the sky.
     
    *
     
    Pushing everything else from her mind, Connie lined up the scalpel, and cut.
    At first, a gentle shifting, nothing more. Then the tip of the blade pierced the skin and the point slipped in. The flesh seemed to sigh as it unfolded, as if the bird was relieved the waiting was over. The journey from death back to life had begun. A leaking of liquid and the distinctive coppery smell of meat. The feathers held within them a scent of dust and old clothes, like a parlour left unaired.
    The cloudy eyes of the bird stared up at her. When Connie was done, its eyes would be ivory again. Glass, not jelly, shining as brightly as they had in life. It was hard to find a good match for a jackdaw’s eyes. Pale blue when young, like jays, then shifting through dark to light.
    Connie let her shoulders drop and allowed her muscles to relax, then began to peel the skin from the flesh with her fingers. Cutting, pulling back, cutting again. The deep red of the breast, the colour of quince jelly; the silver sheen of the wings. She took care to keep the intestines, lungs, kidneys, and heart intact in the abdominal sac, so she could use the body as a guide for the shaping to come.
    She worked slowly and methodically, wiping the tiny pieces of tissue, feathers, blood and cartilage from the point of the blade on to the newspaper as she went. Rushing, the tiniest slip, might make the difference between a clean job and a possibility ruined.
    Connie allowed two days for a carrion bird – a jackdaw like this, or a magpie, rook or crow. Once begun, it was important to work fast, before the natural processes of decay took hold. If all the fat was not scraped from the bones, there was a risk of maggots destroying the bird from within. The first day was spent skinning, washing and preparing; the second, stuffing and positioning.
    Each task was mirrored left and right; she followed the same sequence each time. Either side of the breastbone, the left wing and then the right, the left leg and the right. It was a dance, with steps learnt through trial and error and, in time, perfected.
    Connie reached for her pliers from their hook and noticed that she would have to order some more wire for mounting. She started to loosen the leg bones. Twisting back and forth, the scraping of the side of the scalpel as the flesh came loose, then the snap of a knee joint.
    They knew each other now, Connie and this bird.
    When she had finished, she placed everything she did not need – tissue, stray feathers, damp scraps of newspaper – into the pail at her feet, then turned the bird over and moved on to work on the spine.
    The sun climbed higher in the sky.
    Eventually, when her muscles were too cramped to continue, Connie folded the bird’s wings and head in on itself to prevent the skin from drying out, then stretched her arms. She rolled her neck and shoulders, flexed her fingers, feeling satisfied with her morning’s work. Then she went out through the side door into the garden and sat in the wicker chair on the terrace.
    From the roof of the ice house, the colony of jackdaws continued to jabber and call. A requiem for their fallen comrade.

 
     
    Chapter 2
     
     
    North Street
    Chichester
     
    Harry Woolston stood back and looked at the partially finished painting.
    Everything was technically correct – the colour, the line of the nose, the hint of dissatisfaction in the lines around the mouth – yet it was not a good likeness. The face, put simply, had no life in it.
    He wiped the oil from his brush with a cloth and considered the portrait from another angle. The problem was that his subject was flat on the canvas, as if he had sketched her from a photograph rather than from a living, breathing woman. They had worked late into the grey, wet night, then Harry sent her home and continued on his