Charlie & The Robin A moving story

Among the soil and the plants, an unlikely friendship took hold

It was as he was bending over to remove a large flint-stone from the ground he was preparing for planting his shallots that the robin came and sat on the handle of the old man’s gardening fork.

“Hello,” he said. “And who might you be, young man?”

The robin chirruped, cocked its head to one side and looked at him. “Oh, I see, it’s young lady, is it?” The bird chirruped again. “Oh excuse me!” he continued. “But Robin’s a girl’s as well as a boy’s name and if you will insist on wearing identical plumage how am I supposed to know which sex you are?”

The robin hopped down from the handle onto the freshly dug soil, searched it for a few moments then looked up at the old man and twittered again.

“Well I’ll be!” he chuckled. “You want me to turn over more soil, is that it?”

The bird hopped towards him a little and then stopped.

“OK,” said the old man. “Seein’ as ’ow you asked so nicely.”

The robin moved out of his way as the man turned over several more feet of his tiny allotment.

“There you go then,” he panted from his efforts. “See what you can find in there.”

The small bird examined the freshly dug soil and began pecking up earwigs, tiny earthworms and insects, some so small the old man couldn’t see them from where he stood. After several beakfulls it turned around, looked up at the man again and chirruped loudly.

“Why, you cheeky blighter!” he laughed reaching for his fork. “I’m not doing this just for your benefit you know! I grow shallots and red cabbage for pickling and spuds and other veggies for eating, not bugs and insects for you.”

The bird flew back onto the fork’s handle and onto the back of his hand.

“I see,” said the man. “So it’s time for introductions is it? Well my name’s Charlie, Charlie Harper. What’s yours?” The robin remained silent. “Tell you what,” Charlie continued turning his hand so that the bird perched on his right forefinger. “I’m going to call you Rob. That way it won’t matter whether you’re a boy or a girl.”

The robin spotted a crane fly grub wriggling in the weed-filled wheelbarrow, jumped into it and swallowed it whole.

“Beth would have liked you,” Charlie confided as he stooped down to pull out some more weeds with his bare hands. “She was fond of nature… ’specially birds. You’d have loved her too, Rob. Everyone did. She was a pretty lass.”

The robin returned to the handle of the fork and watched the old man with its big brown eyes.

“Would you like to hear about her, Rob?” Charlie asked as he painfully stood up. “Shall I tell you all about my Beth and the forty one happy years we spent together?”

The robin cheeped and then flew onto his shoulder.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Charlie grinned. “But you’ll have to hang on tight ’cause I want to finish planting these shallots before tea-time.”

As if it understood, the robin gripped the collar of his blue shirt tightly to prevent it falling off.

“We first met in a coffee bar when I was seventeen and she two years younger,” Charlie said as he resumed his digging. “I bought her an espresso that she insisted on calling a frothy coffee.

“She enjoyed it so much I got her a second cup and ended up walking home because that money was meant to be my bus fare.” The robin silently nuzzled against Charlie’s neck.

“The following weekend we went to the pictures to see TheSoundofMusic and I held her hand as we walked from the bus stop to the theatre, and kissed her so many times during the show in the back row that, years later when we watched it on the telly, neither of us could remember seeing it!”

And so the somewhat one-sided dialogue continued between Charlie and the small robin. Anyone passing by might be forgiven for wondering and questioning the old man’s sanity, especially when the bird was foraging among the freshly dug soil and he appeared to be talking to himself. He didn’t care, though. He was lonely and the robin was both a good companion and listener.

“BETH would have LIKED you. She was fond of NATURE”

She didn’t die suddenly, Rob,” he said one day as the sun began to flex its solar muscles in preparation for the summer. “It was what we humans call Alzheimer’s. D’you birds have that I wonder? Do you have an incurable

THE ROBIN leaped from his shoulder and snapped up a tiny CRICKET

disease that gradually turns a brain to mush, and the personality of the one you love the most slowly disintegrates until you find yourself wishing that God would hurry up and get it over with? And then when he does you feel guilty because you got exactly what you wished for?”

Charlie wiped the sweat from his brow with a well-used handkerchief then searched for its cleanest corner and blew his nose loudly.

The robin returned to his shoulder and pecked at his ear.

The old man laughed. “What was that for?” he said. “Was it a kiss or did you think my lug-hole was an insect?”

The robin settled itself down and closed its eyes. Charlie returned to his digging. “After she’d gone I started to come back out here and work the allotment every day,” he continued. “I tell you it was a real mess because with Beth having been so poorly for five years I’d rarely had time to garden, and the groundsel, dandelions and chickweed had pretty much taken over.”

The robin leaped from his shoulder and snapped up a tiny cricket that Charlie’s fork had disturbed.

“Are you listening?” the old man said tersely. The bird cocked its head before continuing to scavenge.

Charlie had grown used to Rob’s company but didn’t realise it until two days passed without its showing up. He missed the little bird and enjoyed talking to it and helping in its seemingly never ending quest for food.

After a week had passed by he assumed that it had either flown away or fallen victim to the ginger tom that was the nemesis of all the local gardeners in the allotment. He sadly resigned himself to being alone once more.

It was almost a month after his last conversation with Rob and his attention was totally focused on his vegetable patch when he caught site of the red-breasted bird staring at him from the ground a few feet to his left.

“Oh, so you’ve decided to come back then, have you?” he said in a scolding voice that masked the relief he felt at the bird’s return. “You’re a dirty-little-stop-out as my mother used to say, and now you’ve finally come home and expect me to make you breakfast. What d’you think this place is, eh – a hotel?”

The robin eyed the old man rather suspiciously.

“Oh, come on then,” Charlie acquiesced. “You know I didn’t really mean it. Come and sit on my finger and tell me what you’ve been up to. I’ve

missed you, you little blighter.”

Charlie stepped towards the robin but at his second pace it flew away into a nearby hawthorn.

“Well, there’s no need to sulk Rob,” Charlie continued extending his hand towards the timorous bird. “We’re mates, remember? Hey! There’s a huge chunk of sod I’ve purposely left. I bet there are a million juicy thingummies under it just waiting for you to snaffle them up.”

A sudden fluttering from behind momentarily startled the old man as a second robin came and settled on his outstretched finger.

Turning itself around it looked directly into his eyes and chirruped several times.

Charlie moved his hand and the robin close to his face. “Well I’ll be!” he said to it. “So who’s that in the bush?”

Rob flew off his index finger and into the hawthorn. After several minutes of constant twittering he returned to Charlie’s shoulder then immediately hopped down onto the un-dug soil.

Charlie watched in amazed amusement as the bird repeated its circuit and performance several times, a constant stream of melodic sounds emanating from its tiny form.

Finally, as it perched on an old root that protruded from just behind where Charlie’s red cabbages were beginning to show, the other robin hesitantly joined it from out of the bush… five speckled fledglings in its wake.

“Well I’ll be darned!” the old man said as the seven birds huddled together all looking at him. “So you’re a daddy – or a mummy – then, are you?”

Rob flew onto the handle of Charlie’s fork then back to its family twittering songfully. After a moment’s hesitation it repeated the flight.

“So you do want your breakfast then, do you?” the old man asked rhetorically reaching for his fork. “Well then, tell your family to get out of the way and let’s see what’s under that sod I told your mate about.”

Obediently the seven birds hopped several feet clear of his fork and Charlie lifted the stubborn lump of grass that he’d been saving and placed it upside down beside the hole that remained.

He stepped back, plunged the fork deep into the ground and leaned forward upon it.

As he did so the family of robins fluttered over to the freshly exposed dirt and the myriad of insects and grubs that had suddenly been revealed.

The two adult robins quickly began picking up the various creepy-crawlies while the five babies stood close by flapping their wings and squawking, their mouths wide open. Instinctively the parent birds began feeding their seemingly insatiable offspring.

Charlie continued to watch the family of seven as they rummaged about in the dirt seemingly oblivious to his presence.

He smiled at the red-breasted birds, and then at the babies in their brown, mottled plumage.

How soon would the young ones grow up, he wondered, and no longer need their mother and father? And how long had it been now since he’d last seen Jane and her kids? Was it a year? Two years? Longer?

Time seemed to pass by so quickly as you got older without you realising it. Before long your own kid had not only flown the nest but also had a husband and babes of her own.

“Did I ever tell you about Jane, Rob?” he said, taking hold of his fork and wriggling it free from the ground. “She’s the spitting image of her mother – that’s my Beth – right down to the dimples on her cheeks.”

He plunged the fork hard into the soil and tamped it down with his right boot.

“She’s not at home of course, not any more,” he went on as the birds scurried over to see what fresh food his efforts would reveal. “She finished university, got married and lives in Scotland these days with Brian and the twins.”

He paused from his efforts and sighed proudly. “You should see those boys at football, Rob,” he confided. “Especially little Tony, I swear he’ll be playing for Scotland some day. Andrew’s OK, but he doesn’t have quite the same…” The old man continued to chat as he worked tending his vegetables. At his feet, in and around his wheelbarrow, the robins scoured for food.

Maybe they listened to him relating the stories of his life in a language they could not comprehend – or maybe not. In the end it didn’t matter because he was going to tell them regardless.

Soon the baby birds would leave their parents and fly away to start lives of their own.

Maybe some day they would come back and visit the solitary gardener in his allotment – or perhaps they wouldn’t.

One thing was for sure though, Charlie thought – there would always be a robin for him to chat to. And later, some time in the future when his time had come and gone, there would almost certainly be another lonely old man or woman here for a curious and hungry bird to befriend.

Time passed so QUICKLY as you got OLDER without you realising it