Hummingbird, peonies and key on an upper arm

You will not believe what Mr Vaughan won off the Kerry man at Ashby. Not money, a bird. A hummingbird, smaller than my thumb, kept in a cage of spun wire that he carries in a hatbox because the damp gets into the joints. Mother Greaves says a sailor left it with her years ago and never came back for it. I say she has told fortunes so long she believes her own sums. Either way it perches on a twig I cut from the hedge behind the dodgems and drinks sugar water off a teaspoon, and it has the reddest throat you ever saw, like someone dipped it in cherry jam.

Mother Greaves wears a string of wooden beads that she says her mother wore, with a grey skull charm at the bottom that knocks against the caravan step when she climbs in. She keeps the bird's cage key on the same string, a little silver thing with two loops, though the lock is long gone and she will not say where. Vaughan wants the bird sold at Michaelmas for forty pounds. He has painted two pink peonies on the lid of his trunk to make it look grander, and he has been practising his escape from it every night behind the tent, sweating through his waistcoat.

Last Tuesday the wind got into the caravan and the cage door swung open, and the bird sat on the teaspoon as if it had been waiting for permission. Mother Greaves saw it first and said nothing, only lifted the beaded string over her head and held it out to me. I tried the key in the cage hinge and it fitted, which I still cannot account for.

We stood on the wet grass while the bird went up over the peony beds and the dark hedge, small as a seed, and then it was gone over the tops of the cars. Mother Greaves put the skull back round her neck and told me the sea would be pleased. Vaughan is still looking for his key. I have not told him where it went.

Yours ever, Ida