Too Cold For Snow

eager to see. Kenny asked Ryan if he could ring her with the news. When he spoke to her on the radio telephone he could swear that she was as pleased to talk to him as he was to speak to her. They left it that she would try to cadge a lift with the helicopter that was bringing Trinity House engineers out to clean the light. Kenny hoped the little skulking bird would stay, or survive that long.
    When the helicopter landed on the pad in the lee of the lighthouse the two girls were on board, laughing uproariously because they’d just been told a ribald joke by the pilot. Ryan was the one who suggested having a dinner to welcome their guests and bid farewell to the island after more than a few hefty tokes of Moroccan head scrambler which the girls had passed round in an ornate hookah. He suggested they all have a grand dinner the next night, cook up some of the birds that had fallen to ground the previous evening.
    In the meantime they tried to relocate the warbler, which required all their skills. As it transpired the bird was in the observatory garden and they all saw it before breakfast. It really wasn’t much to look at, but it had travelled a very long way to pick late midges around the fuchsias.
    The warden had been up since dawn and had taken two bin sacks with him to pick up bird bodies at the base of the light. He also took a big gunney sack for the big bird, which was to be his surprise ingredient. It could have been a dinner depicted by the brush of an Old Master: watchers and two engineers, sitting in the light of the Tilley paraffin lamps, surrounded by various dead birds. They had a starter of lightly grilled breast meats from redwings, so fat with Russian berries that it was as if they’d already been marinaded with redcurrants. They then had game birds – two woodcock, four snipes and a redshank – barbecued outside by Ryan, who handed round a bottle of sloe gin which they all drank out of observatory mugs.
    They say Richard the Lionheart was the first to bring the mute swan to Britain, one of the spoils of the Crusades. It was the biggest bird ever to fly into Bardsey light and Ryan had done well to hide it from his diners and to squeeze it in to the oven. As he presented the dish, to a spontaneous burst of delighted applause, Ryan told them how the only person who was officially allowed to eat swan was the Queen, but reasoned that no-one on the island was afraid to break protocol. The Trinity House guys had loved the redwing starters and the thoroughly smoked wader-kebabs. The youngsters couldn’t give a hoot.
    To make the two American visitors actually feel like royalty Ryan had made cardboard crowns which they wore to great effect, causing all the dinner guests to guffaw at the way they donned them at rakish angles. Sharon said the swan looked liked the biggest thanksgiving turkey they had ever seen . It took up most of the table and even then its long neck lolled over one edge. A warm miasma of conversation had settled in, and they were all heady with the effects of drink.
    ‘Shall I carve?’ asked Kenny, running the blade of a carving knife against a whetstone. Twm had suggested he do the honours as he was the one with the knife skills, an in-joke based on some of the stories Kenny’d told him about gang life, and about the way they sometimes duelled with Kitchen Devils. Ryan was now on his feet.
    ‘By Royal command, I give my subjects consent to eat a mute swan. And have some potatoes while you’re at it.’
    Kenny looked at Twm and at Karen as if he was torn between which of them warranted the most of his love, but as he chewed on the breast meat of the enormous bird he knew that he had enough to go around. Twm excused himself as he needed to pack his stuff while he was still able to think – he’d swigged back the sloe gin as if there was no tomorrow and was more than slightly befuddled from the drugs. The flesh of the stately bird was plentiful, if tough, and the remaining diners munched through it doggedly.
    Taking the air outside Kenny and Karen listened to the plaintive sound of the last of the summer’s shearwaters. Cocklolly, it cried as it wheeled over the island in the dark before turning its elegant wings for Uruguay, to shear its way across the tempestuous South Atlantic. Cocklolly , said the spirit guide, departing. Kenny knew he could find his own way home now. His hands interlaced with Karen’s, his eyes straining to see the retreating bird in the absorbent dark. The