Drew Townsend (Fens of East Anglia)
The Bittern, which is found in suitable habitats throughout most of Europe, became extinct as a British breeding bird in the second half of the 19th century and re-colonised East Anglia in the first quarter of the 20th.
The boom of the Bittern, familiar in literature and fable, is the call of the male – a deep, bovine, resonant note, certainly audible for over a mile.
—Birds of the British Isles and their Eggs, T.A. Coward and J.A.G. Barnes
***
He was on the water when he heard it again. Although he had never really heard it before. Only an imitation performed by his grandfather in the old fowling shack that disappeared with the flood of ninety-six.
‘They sort of come out of the air, you almost feel it before yer hear it.’
‘What’s it feel like?’
‘Like a shiver in yer blood.’
‘Does it hurt?’
He laughed.
‘It don’t hurt, don’t worry about that.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘I can’t tell yer.’
‘Why not?’
‘Yer have to see it. Yer can’t describe a bittern. It can only be seen. Yer can’t see one in no picture neither.’
‘What if someone drew one?’
‘They can’t.’
‘How not?’
‘They just can’t. If some artist saw one, when he came to draw it, he would either lose all memory, or it wouldn’t look like one once he was done. It would look like something altogether strange or not of this world.’
But he knew it when he heard it, an inherited knowledge, although he didn’t feel that shiver in the blood at first. The soft boom resonating over the last of the fen this far east. There was nothing else that could make that sound. The pause. Then again.
‘It sounds more like a beast, really. Like some sort of land dwelling thing, like an ox.’
‘Like a cow.’
‘Like a cow, but smarter sounding.’
‘Did they scare people, before they knew what they were?’
‘Maybe. Still used to take me a little by surprise when I heard them.’
And then he did it again, imitated the boom, too hard to translate into written word and pass on in material form.
He pushed his punt further in, deeper amongst the continually golden phragmites. All the fen had changed since his grandfather’s day. The banks had shifted and new passages had been carved by the silted waters, but on top of this the land had been drained, reclaimed and flattened and turned and planted. The fen was shrinking, nearly gone.
‘They keep draining like they are, then yer can forget about seeing a bittern. Yer can forget about seeing any kind of fowl or waterbird.’
‘Where will they go?’
‘Some other place. They’ll be awright, unless they do this in other places an all. It’s us that’ll be gone.’
‘Can’t we live on land.’
‘Us, live on land like everyone else, how we gonna do that?’
‘Well, we sort of do already.’
‘I spend more time on the water than on the earth. And what will I do if I int out here setting my traps, if I int pushing my punt through the reeds?’
‘You could work on the land.’
He laughed at this.
‘You could leave with the birds,’ said the boy.
He smiled kindly.
‘Maybe God will grant me a pair of wings in my sleep.’
Pause again, then boom. A little louder. He ventured deeper into the fen, his ears keen to the sound, guiding him. When it stopped, he stopped.
‘Did yer ever tell my mother the same thing, about the bittern?’
‘I may have done.’
He looked at the boy and adjusted the rabbit skin cap on his head.
‘She liked the water, yer mother.’
The boy nodded.
‘Did my father?’
‘I can’t speak for what he liked.’
‘I don’t even know what he looks like.’
‘You may one day, if not in person, then maybe you’ll see a hint of him looking back at yer from the water, although you’ve got yer mother’s eyes.’
‘What will I do when you go?’
‘I dunno, boy. All I have will be yours, but that int much.’
‘I’ll stay on the water until it’s all gone.’
‘Sounds a plan.’
‘And when it’s gone, I’ll follow the birds. I’ll find the place they go to after here.’
‘Even better.’
‘And if there int no place, and it’s been drained, then maybe I’ll go off on one of those big boats, on the sea, and see where I end up.’
The old man looked at him and wanted to say something but had nothing to say.
He came to a place where the reeds were thick and he rested on the pole of his punt. He heard the little grunts this time that preceded the booming and knew it to be near, and he looked off amongst the reeds but saw nothing, and yet he still felt something calling to him even in its silence, that shiver in the blood, a sensation beyond a sensation, like it came from some channel beyond the silted depths below or the vaulted sky above. Then it boomed again, further off in the distance, and he pushed off once more.
A shortened version of this story was shortlisted for the Flash 500 prize.
Drew Townsend’s inspiration is the land in which he has spent most of his life. His work has previously been published in The Curlew, a literary nature journal, and his story ‘The Outer Edge of Light’ was shortlisted for The Cambridge Short Story Prize 2020 and was published online at TSS Publishing. More recently, his story ‘Children of the Sun’ was published in the fall issue of Exiles Sans Frontières, and his poem ‘Chasing Fieldfares’ is forthcoming in Ariel’s Dream Literary Journal. He is also an alumnus of Edinburgh University’s Creative Writing masters.
