Rafael and the Space Between Notes

Rafael’s first words at Mill Pond were lost beneath Pip’s welcome.

It was a considerable welcome. Pip had seen the big black-and-white duck coming down the feeder stream and decided that anyone arriving on such a cold morning deserved to know exactly how pleased the pond was to see him.

“Hello! Welcome! Mind the root! That is not our usual entrance, but our usual entrance has a branch in it, which is a longer story, and—”

Rafael stopped beside the root.

“Thank you,” he said.

“—if you are looking for breakfast, Nell knows the shallows, and if you are looking for Gideon, look up.”

The Grey Heron looked down.

“Some mornings,” he said, “I consider looking elsewhere.”

Nell swam towards the visitor.

“Good morning. I am Nell.”

She waited.

“Rafael.”

His voice was low and breathy. Nell heard it because, for once, nobody was saying anything else.

A place in the morning

Rafael was larger than either Mallard, broad across the chest, with white patches among his glossy dark feathers. Red skin wrinkled around his eyes and the base of his pinkish bill. Pip had never met anyone who looked quite like him.

“Muscovy,” Rafael said, in answer to the question Pip was trying not to ask. “I live at the smallholding upstream.”

He pointed towards the feeder stream. Beyond the trees, a narrow path led to a green gate and a sheltered yard. He had come down in daylight to look at the pond; he would go home before evening.

Pip showed him the landing.

The brass bell stood on its broad stump, red cord curled around the base. Above it, the bent iron hook held nothing. Frost had silvered the wood without quite reaching the moving water below.

“Nell rings that on the first morning of winter,” Pip said. “Everyone comes. Some complain about the cold. Gideon complains about the complaints. Then we have breakfast.”

“An accurate account of a fine tradition,” said Gideon.

“It is tomorrow,” Nell told Rafael. “You would be welcome.”

He looked towards the open water, then the little space beside the stump.

“Do visitors have to do anything?”

“Be visitors,” said Nell.

“We could have a proper welcome,” Pip added. “A winter welcome. With everyone’s voice.”

Rafael made a small sound, a soft puff of air.

Pip leaned closer. “What?”

“I said that sounds kind.”

“Then it is settled. We will make sure the whole pond hears you.”

Rafael did not answer immediately.

Pip was already imagining it: Nell’s clear call, the neighbours joining in, Gideon’s splendidly rough voice over the top. And Rafael, who would discover how warmly Mill Pond welcomed somebody new.

It seemed an excellent thing to imagine.

He did not notice that he was imagining Rafael’s part for him.

The loudest kind of kindness

By late morning, Pip had persuaded three neighbours to practise.

They gathered in open water near the landing. Rafael waited beside Nell, his broad body making a dark reflection that trembled whenever a ripple passed.

“We begin with a greeting,” Pip explained. “One each, then everyone together.”

One of the brown ducks asked whether everyone together would still count as one each.

Pip said they would discover that during practice.

They discovered that it did not.

The first duck called. The second thought it was her turn before the first had finished. Pip joined early to encourage Rafael, which made the third join because she thought everyone had begun.

A glorious racket went bouncing across the water.

When it stopped, Pip looked at Rafael.

“I did not hear you.”

“I know.”

“Perhaps stand nearer the front.”

Rafael moved nearer.

This time Pip waited until it was certainly Rafael’s turn. The big duck lifted his head and made his soft, breathy sound.

A gust rattled the last dry leaves in the willow. Water slapped a landing post.

“Was that it?” Pip asked.

Rafael lowered his head.

Nell turned towards Pip. “Yes.”

He heard the warning in her voice, but he misunderstood what it was warning him about.

“I know a better place,” he said quickly. “The mill wall sends sounds back. We could try there.”

Rafael glanced at Nell.

“We do not have to,” she said.

“One try,” he answered.

They went to the broad water below the stone wall, away from the dark channel mouth. Pip demonstrated with a loud call. A smaller call came back from the stones.

“There!” he said. “It gives you another voice.”

Rafael tried.

The water below the wheel was louder here. His quiet sound disappeared into its constant rush.

Pip moved his head from side to side, trying to catch an echo that had not arrived.

“Again?”

“No,” Rafael said.

It was not loud.

Everyone heard it.

The invitation that grew teeth

Rafael paddled away from the wall.

Pip followed.

“The wind is wrong. Tomorrow we could—”

“Pip.”

He stopped.

Rafael looked at the landing, the neighbours and the little path upstream.

“You invited me to your pond.”

“Yes.”

“I thought that meant I could come as I am.”

Pip felt something small go cold beneath his breast feathers.

“It does.”

“Then why do we keep moving me until I sound different?”

There were answers Pip could have given. He had been trying to help. He had wanted Rafael to have a part. He had wanted nobody to be left out.

All of them were true. None of them answered the question.

Rafael went towards the feeder stream.

“I shall miss the loud welcome tomorrow,” he said. “Thank you for showing me the pond.”

Nell let him pass without blocking his way or telling him how sorry Pip was.

That made Pip want to say something even more urgently.

She shook her head.

“Let him finish leaving.”

They watched the big duck round the root. The feeder stream carried a fallen leaf past him. Beyond the trees, the green gate stood in a small square of winter light.

The neighbours drifted back towards the shallows.

“We were only trying,” Pip said at last.

“I know,” Nell replied.

“That does not sound like you agree.”

“I agreed to one try at the wall. I wish I had asked him what he wanted before we started.”

Pip stared at her. He had been preparing to be the only bird who had done something wrong. Her answer made the whole morning feel less like a trial and more like something they could still change.

“What if he wants nothing to do with us now?”

“Then we listen to that too.”

Gideon settled on his post.

“May I offer a suggestion?” he asked.

Pip nodded.

“Ask fewer birds to speak for Rafael.”

“Does that include you?”

“Particularly me.”

A question beside the gate

Pip found Rafael where the narrow path left the stream.

He stopped several body-lengths away. The big duck could go on towards home without having to squeeze past him.

For once, Pip had arrived with a sentence prepared.

“I am sorry I made your voice into a problem you had not asked me to solve.”

Rafael watched him.

It was such a complete sentence that Pip was tempted to add several more. He closed his bill instead.

Water moved over a stone. Somewhere beyond the hedge, a gate latch clicked.

“I wanted to meet your neighbours,” Rafael said.

“You still can.”

“Without another try at the wall?”

“Without another try anywhere.”

Rafael lowered himself onto the short grass. After a moment, Pip settled too.

“What would make tomorrow a good morning for you?” Pip asked.

The question was much smaller than a promise to the whole pond. It was also harder to ask, because Pip did not know the answer in advance.

“I would like to know who everyone is,” Rafael said. “I would like to hear them properly. I would rather not stand alone while everyone waits for me to do something.”

Pip considered the open water, where every voice had competed with wind and distance.

“Under the willow?”

“Perhaps. Closer together.”

“A greeting each?”

“If they want.”

Pip turned that over.

“And if somebody wants to say nothing?”

Rafael looked at him.

“They would still be there.”

It was an unexpectedly large answer.

They stayed on the grass while the last of the afternoon warmed the hedge. Pip described Nell’s talent for questions that were difficult to escape. Rafael described the smallholding’s hen, who believed every fallen apple belonged to her personally.

“Even the apples she has not seen?”

“Especially those.”

Pip laughed. Rafael’s quiet reply reached him easily.

There was no wall giving it back. There was simply nobody speaking over it.

Before they parted, Pip asked whether he could tell the others Rafael’s suggestions.

Rafael nodded.

“Show me the bank first,” he said.

They went back as far as the willow. Pip chose a patch beside a thick root, pleased with its shelter. Rafael tried it and found that the root pressed uncomfortably against his broad chest.

“A little farther along?” he asked.

Pip moved with him.

There, the grass widened. They could sit close enough to hear without standing bill to bill, and Rafael could reach the water without passing through the middle of the group.

Nell came over to see what they were doing.

“This part of the bank?” she asked Rafael.

“If it is free.”

“It is.”

He looked around once more, testing the place with his own feet. Pip realised how much of the morning he had spent pointing Rafael towards things, and how little of it Rafael had spent choosing.

“Tell them I may come.”

May was smaller than will. Pip carried it home carefully.

The morning they made room

The first morning of winter came pale and clear.

Nell stood beside the bell. Pip had explained the new plan to the neighbours: the bell first, as always; then a gathering under the willow for anyone who wanted to join.

“No rehearsal?” one asked.

“No rehearsal,” Pip said.

“A relief,” Gideon murmured.

Rafael had not arrived when Nell took the faded red cord.

Pip looked towards the feeder stream. He wanted to call. He wanted to go and fetch him, to explain that everything was different now.

Instead, he made sure the bank beside the willow had room.

Nell braced one foot and pulled the cord sideways. The bell tipped against its stump and sent a clear note across the cold water.

From beyond the root came a soft splash.

Rafael rounded the bend.

Pip lifted his head. For a moment the old enormous welcome gathered in his chest.

He let out a warm, ordinary greeting.

“You came.”

“I did.”

They went under the willow together.

Nell introduced herself first. One neighbour said her name. Another told Rafael where she liked to feed when the pond was quiet. The third admitted she had joined yesterday’s chorus without knowing what they were practising.

“So did I, in places,” Pip said.

That made them laugh.

Gideon offered the information that he had occupied his post longer than anyone had occupied the landing.

“He means good morning,” Nell explained.

“I mean precisely what I said.”

Then the group grew quiet.

Pip felt the space open. Yesterday he would have filled it with a question, an instruction or a joke. He looked at Rafael, then looked away so that waiting would not become another kind of staring.

A dry willow leaf turned on its stem.

“At home,” Rafael began, “there is a hen who owns the apples.”

The nearest neighbour leaned a little closer.

He told them about the hen and the apple she had tried to guard from her own reflection in a water trough.

His voice stayed soft. Now and then, a gust took a word. Once Nell asked him to repeat something.

He repeated it.

Nobody moved him to a better wall.

Afterwards, another neighbour told a story. Then Nell suggested breakfast. The group loosened into pairs and small conversations, and the pond filled with the ordinary untidiness of birds getting to know one another.

There was no final chorus.

Pip found that he did not miss it.

A voice that stayed his own

Rafael stayed until the light began to soften.

He grazed beside a neighbour, watched the slow turning of leaves in the deep pool, and asked Gideon whether the far bank always caught the last sun.

“Usually,” said Gideon. “The sun does not consult me.”

When it was time to go home, Pip swam with him to the feeder stream.

“Was it a good morning?” he asked.

Rafael considered this.

“It was a good day.”

Pip felt himself brighten.

“I have another idea for next time. We could—”

He stopped.

Rafael waited.

“Would you like to come again?” Pip asked.

“Yes.”

“Then we can decide what to do when you get here.”

The big duck gave his soft, breathy reply. Pip did not hear every part of it over the stream.

“Sorry?”

“I said I would like that.”

Rafael took the path towards the green gate. His white shoulder patches flashed once between the dark stems, then disappeared.

Pip returned to the landing. The bell was still on its stump, Nell was still at the shallows, and Gideon had become a long grey shape against the sky.

The morning’s gathering had not made Rafael louder. It had not even made the pond especially quiet.

But Pip could remember the hen, the apples and the sound of the laugh beside him.

He climbed onto the landing and listened.

Between the water and the willow, there was room for a sound he had not heard before.