The Heron Complex

In our back garden there was this goldfish pond; nobody was fastidious about its upkeep. The decorative plastic rocks and garden-centre ornaments were robed in crawling growth, the water sat like murky aspic, and the fish were grizzled, hard-pressed and slightly weird, like they’d mutated unnaturally to survive against whatever putrid challenges befell them in the watery dungeon they’d been abandoned to. The garden was the size of a shipping container, a cuboid lined with yellowing Rolawn and enclosed on three sides by wooden fences about a head taller than a man, painted rust-brown but starting to green in places. At roughly eye-height in the wooden panels separating our garden from the next was the bored hole through which it was possible to keep an eye on what the neighbours were saying. Cigarette butts carpeted the small square patio directly beneath the master bedroom window of our house, an unimpressive terraced house that cast the little garden into dingy shadow.

One day a virile grey Heron swept down from the aether, unusual on our estate and an especially incongruous sight in our decaying back garden. With long beak it snatched up from the pond each knackered goldfish, choking them down one after another until none were left. After sitting quietly for a moment in gloating contentment up on the fence it was soon away with a rolling clatter of its great wings. I wasn’t there to see the assault, but my father, the custodian of the goldfish pond, relayed to me what had happened, his face growing red as he recalled the bitter slight. He cursed every sorry Heron in our sorry Albion and, stung by new purpose, began the persecution.

For twenty-six days afterwards our house was slowly filled with heron. The first was shot down at the river where it flows out of the outermost limits of the city; it was hung by a small hole in the back of its throat on a nail sticking out of our living-room wall. The second was caught in hand and wrung by the neck, a terrible feat; its wings were splayed and each fastened to the wall with a nail gun, leaving its bulk dangling, its long neck hanging flaccid. My father insisted this was the very Heron that had eaten the goldfish. The ghastly sight of the great bird crucified above the television forced me to tears; my father reassured us that it was only a heron. Three Herons later the neighbours next door began to complain of the smell, for each conquered Heron rotted there where it was displayed, and the house had begun to move with small creatures who wanted to live off of the flesh of the dead Herons, the wallpaper to curl off of the walls in brown strips. Eight Herons later my mother packed up and left our house forever.

On the twenty-seventh day I walked thirteen kilometres, one for each Heron, and ended up at the canal. Just outside the centre of the city the canal split off from the river, twisting itself through a small park and around a children’s playground, along a cycle path and behind a neighbourhood of affluent suburban houses, before rejoining the broad river a few miles upstream, giddy from its brief flirt with independence. There, on a grassy spot on the sloping bank beside the cycle path, watching a narrowboat navigate a lock with some difficulty, I sat and enjoyed the rich metallic smell of the near-stagnant water. Quite suddenly out of the corner of my eye I spotted a hulking shape resting on a lock gate a little further up the canal. I stood, believing myself to have seen a ghost: the shape was grey, and pale, almost ethereal, shrouded as it was in the warm mist rising off of the iron-grey water, but the form was familiar. I was shocked to see a Heron alive so near to our home.

Not only alive, but supremely so. It was rigid, its great neck upright and vigilant, its body poised, its attention total. It watched the water like the water was on the verge of attack, and the water watched back in steely circumspection. The Heron took no notice as I approached. For some time I stared at the creature; of course I was familiar with the body, with the alabaster-cast wings, the glassy eyes, and the sharp yellow beak, piercing, as a harsh ray of sun pierces grey morning clouds, but I’d never seen one alive. For that reason I was all the more startled when the Heron moved; not only moved but flashed, dipping down into the water and up again quicker than I could register. It had caught a small grey fish, a helpless roach, and swallowed the writhing thing whole. The principles of energy transfer dictate a beast such as the Heron be maintained only by the energy contained inside the body and the flesh of the roach, and as such the Heron must dedicate its existence to the wait and the watch, the catch and the kill. I saw this happen and it mesmerised me.

The state of the house grew so harrowing that I started to spend nights at my mother’s new flat, which suited me just fine as it was nearer the canal. I spent hours tracking along the cycle path to find the Heron’s haunt for that day. My father, I knew, felt quite affronted by my flying the nest, and dismayed by the lack of witnesses to his great victory, but the more time I spent by the canal watching the bird practise its slaughter, the blacker the feeling that bubbled up in me when I thought of my father’s butchery. A righteous indignation consumed me when I saw the grace and quiet valour of the Heron’s waged war. The roach, in my eyes, was an enemy deserving of its relentless harrying, a slimy, worthless adversary, certainly no match for the Heron. Every kill was a blessing, for it invigorated the Heron, and thus demeaned that ignominious war my father bitterly waged; every dead roach was a black mark against him.

One day I thrust my hand into the canal, closed my eyes and felt around, my fingers cutting clean through the water, until I hit upon a slick, undulating slab of flesh and brought it up out into the air. It was tiny, slippery, and I had no beak with which to deal with it, so I concentrated all myself into my hand and crushed the sorry roach in my fist, a terrible feat.

I proudly brought what was left of the roach home to my mother’s flat, knowing that she had hated the Heron massacre just as much as I had. While she was away at work I set the body in resin and left my trophy to harden, scarcely able to wait until she came home and saw the small triumph I had won over my father. When she saw the roach displayed on the mantelpiece, though, she collapsed into tears, even as I explained over and over again what a coup my stunt represented, and she didn’t stop crying for the rest of the night.

Perplexed, I reassured her that it was only a roach.