The straw scratched her leg as Jane climbed a hay bale, three bales from the ground. This was the only way up to the loft where the pigeons roosted. As always, her stomach twitched as she grabbed the old wooden beam just above her head. There was a seven-inch gap between the pile of bales and the wood and bird dropping floor of the loft, and Jane always felt that if she didn’t hang on to something her feet would drop through. One foot at a time she stepped from one surface to the other.
Steady again, she made her breath shallow. She hated the smell up here; it made her a bit nauseous.
Jane walked over to the far corner of the loft to a nest.
She liked to touch the eggs. It felt dangerous to be so close to life, so close to causing death. The lightest touch of cool fingers on warmth. There were three in the nest. The parents were nearby, but more afraid of cats and foxes. Jane’s fingers shook a bit with the effort to be very gentle.
Smooth, warm, curved, hard, but so thin.
Her legs started to cramp. Jane stood slowly, for the benefit of her limbs, and so she wouldn’t startle the birds. She touched the bridge of her nose to a knot in the wall, fresh air was coming through a hole in the wood. It was hard to maintain wonder too long with the smell of layers of pigeon shit choking her.
On her way back to the loft’s edge, she peered at another nest, looking at the ugly naked hatchlings with their bruise-coloured skin. She kind of liked them, the way you like the grotesque face of a gargoyle on a building.
There was the gap again. It was worse this way, but she was over it soon enough and on her way toward the barn door. She’d had enough of the rustic atmosphere for now, and was getting hungry.
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