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Susannah HarrisonTHE BIRDWOMAN OF THE OLD STEINEI saw the Birdwoman one Friday evening as I walked home from work. The first thing I noticed was a very large number of gulls on the grass opposite the Pavilion just by the monument of Queen Victoria. Then I saw the figure standing in their midst. The Birdwoman wore a finely patterned trilby hat, a dirty navy raincoat and some dark blue flared trousers. Her skin was brown and weathered and her knuckles knobbly with arthritis. It was these hands, strong and worn, the edentulous lower jaw and her upper set of dentures that slipped when she smiled that betrayed her age. She bent over a pram with a black and white checked cover and from deep inside pulled out a selection of prepacked meals.  I stood beside a tree, where others had gathered to watch her. I spoke to the couple. They were visitors to Brighton and were taking pictures of the Birdwoman. I guessed they were in their late teens or early twenties, studenty, but maybe older. They had come down from Maidstone for a party that weekend. The girl had very long black hair, streaked through with red. She told me that the Birdwoman had even given the birds smoked salmon. We speculated on her background. “She’s probably a millionaire really,” said the girl....She'd fed the birds every day for sixty-seven years... The Birdwoman stood in the middle of a flock of gulls. There were several grey and speckled juveniles amongst the many adult birds. When she threw them the food they dived towards it forming a flapping, jabbing mess of feathers and sharp yellow beaks. They called and squawked; they hovered around her face. She cried out, she was euphoric. “They love me,” she screamed, “some people think I’m mad, but you understand.” The girl with the black hair was striding towards her. I followed. The Birdwoman extended her hand towards us.The Birdwoman was seventy-nine. She’d fed the birds every day on the beach for sixty-seven years, normally at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, she told us. When the food ran out she collected all the packaging from the grass, packed it up in her pram and pushed it away. She was stooped as she walked, like an elderly grandmother with a baby. I left to walk home. At the other side of the grass I met the young couple. There the girl told me that the Birdwoman used to be given out of date food from supermarkets. When they stopped doing that she collected the food herself from the skip. How unfair it was to make an old lady go through a skip for food to feed the birds! One day recently she went to the skip and found that it had been locked. Now she’d have to go somewhere else for the food. The couple left and headed off towards the town and their party. I continued my journey home. I’ve been to look for her on the beach since then, admittedly I’ve rarely been there at 4 o’clock, but now and then I’ve got there on time. But it was normally the weekend when I could get there so early and on sunny days the pebbles are covered with tourists. Later on in the day the beach is quieter and I’ve walked alone by the edge of the sea. Amongst the pebbles are lengths of brown strap-like seaweed, chalky cuttlefish bones, a hair bobble or a diamanté flip-flop. The gulls walk across the beach or circle above the pier, grey like ribbon ghosts in the fading evening light, but I’ve never seen the Birdwoman again. Susannah Harrison is a doctor and former Brighton resident. She sent her last piece to Un-Made-Up back in June. She is, she admits, no longer 29. You don't often find a photograph that's this exact a match for the story, but Clive Andrews kindly supplied the very thing. Susannah has another in the pipeline, coming soon. 7:30 AM - 18/11/2006 - post comment
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