Pulse by Julian Barnes Page A

magpies. He didn’t know what it meant, or what was the cause. Pollution, slug pellets, global warming? Maybe that sly old thing called evolution. There’d also been an increase in parrots – unless they were parakeets – in many of London’s parks. Some breeding pair had escaped and multiplied, managing to survive the mild English winters. Now they were screaming from the tops of plane trees; he’d even noticed one clamped to a neighbour’s bird-feeder.
    ‘Why are those birds so bloody noisy?’ He asked in a ruminative, fake-complaining way.
    ‘They’re blackbirds.’
    ‘Is that an answer to my question?’
    ‘Yes,’ she replied.
    ‘Care to explain to a mere country lad? Why they need to be so bloody loud?’
    ‘It’s territorial.’
    ‘Can’t you be territorial without being noisy?’
    ‘Not if you’re a blackbird.’
    ‘Hmm.’
    Still, he supposed, humans were territorial too, and had tools and machinery to make the noises for them. He’d repointed the brickwork where the mortar had crumbled away, and put up trellises which heightened the party walls. He’d fixed rustic, woven-wood partitions between the various sections of the garden. He’d even paid someone to lay a winding flagged path and run an electric cable to the place where, at the turn of a switch, water would gush over large oval stones imported from some distant Scottish beach.
    Also that spring he improved the soil as and where indicated. He dug where Martha asked him to dig. He beganwhat promised to be a long campaign against ground elder. He wondered if he loved Martha just as much as ever, or if he was merely performing a husbandly routine from which others were invited to deduce how much he loved her. He was informed that he was third in the queue for an allotment. He did vocal imitations of the experts on Gardeners’ Question Time until Martha told him it really wasn’t funny any more.
    He was disturbed by a knocking close to his ear. He opened his eyes. Martha had wheeled her yellow plastic wagon, stacked to the gunnels, down to the car park.
    ‘I even tried you on your mobile …’
    ‘Sorry, love. Didn’t bring it. Miles away. Have you paid?’
    Martha merely nodded. She wasn’t exactly cross. She half-expected his head to go AWOL as soon as they drew into a garden centre. Ken got out of the car and eagerly took over loading the boot. Nothing too herniating this time, anyway, he thought.
    Martha considered barbecues a bit vulgar. She didn’t use the word, but didn’t need to. Ken liked nothing more than the smell of meat cooking over whitened coals. She liked neither the event nor the equipment. He had suggested getting one of those small numbers – what were they called? – yes, hibachis, and actually, weren’t they Japanese inventions, and therefore appropriate to this little plot of God’s earth? Martha was faintly amused by yet another of his Japanese jokes, but unpersuaded. Eventually she allowed the acquisition of a sleek little terracotta item shaped like a miniature barrel standing on end; it was some kind of ethnic oven on special offer from the Guardian . Ken had to promise never to use barbecue lighter fuel with it.
    Now that summer had come, they were repaying hospitality received when the house had been in chaos. The sky was still light at eight when Marion and Alex and Nick andAnne arrived, but the day’s heat, never extreme to begin with, was already beginning to disappear. The two women guests immediately wished they’d worn tights and not overdone the summery look, thinking it unhostly of Martha to have knowingly dressed against the evening’s chill. But since they’d been invited to eat outside, eat outside was what they would do. There were jokes about mulled wine and the Blitz spirit, and Alex pretended to warm his hands on the terracotta oven, nearly knocking it over in the process.
    While Ken fiddled with the chicken thighs, jabbing with a skewer to see if the juices ran clear, Martha gave