Magpie Hall

by Rachael King

  Tess called me a weirdo. She bad-mouthed Grandpa behind his back, making fun of his false teeth, his untidiness, his obsession with dead animals. She never came into the workroom, and I saw her scuttle past the birds in the living room, averting her eyes, as if afraid they might come alive and fly at her. Grandpa seemed unsure how to talk to her. He and I shared the language of taxidermy, but he and Tess had only a chasm of years between them. It made me mad, the way she talked about him, how her face screwed up as she brushed the dog hair from her clothes. I just wanted her to go, to leave us to our work.

  One night, we were gathered in the kitchen for dinner. The dining hall was way too big and formal and too hard to heat. Gram was standing at the kitchen bench, helping Mrs G, when she made an irritated growl at the back of her throat.

  ‘Who’s that out there? Percy, there’s someone out in the garden. Go and see who it is.’ She shook her head, making her pearls rattle. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘he’s just standing there looking in, like a lost mutt.’

  Grandpa went out the door and reappeared a few minutes later with the farmhand, Josh. The old man was shaking his head and talking: ‘… won’t hear another word. It’s not much warmer in here, but the food will take off the chill.’

  Josh hung his head and shrugged.

  Gram folded her arms. ‘Well, what did you think you were doing out there, boy?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Summers. I was passing and I just liked the look of you all there in the kitchen. I didn’t mean to snoop.’

  Mrs G laid another place at the table and sat him down with a pat on the shoulders. ‘Nonsense, Josh,’ she said, ‘you’re most welcome. I expect you haven’t had a decent home-cooked meal for a while.’

  ‘Baked beans,’ was all he said. He took up more than his share of room at that table; he couldn’t help it. Over six feet tall and built like a brick shithouse as Grandpa would have said, out of Gram’s hearing, of course. He made me feel small just looking at him and I shrank into my seat. Having a stranger at the table — a stranger to me, anyway — changed the dynamic and we all ate quietly, apart from Charlie, who tried to impress Josh with some terrible jokes he’d collected from somewhere, jiggling his legs as he ate and talking in funny voices. I groaned inwardly. Josh laughed politely. Tess picked at her peas and tossed some meat on the floor for the dog. She stared openly at Josh. After a while, he began to return the look.

  ‘Who do you live with up there?’ she asked suddenly. Startled, Josh was caught with a mouthful of food, which he attempted to swallow before answering.

  ‘Just me and sometimes a couple of the other blokes,’ he said. ‘Shearers.’

  ‘Don’t you get bored up there?’ Tess ignored Gram’s glares. It was one thing to have the help in her kitchen, interrogating them was another.

  ‘Not really. I guess.’

  ‘Do you have parties?’

  Josh looked at Grandpa, as if the old man had laid a trap for him. ‘Nah … sometimes.’ He wiped his black hair away from his forehead, revealing the thick bushes of his eyebrows. ‘Just a few beers. Nothing much.’

  ‘It’s all right, son,’ said Grandpa. ‘You’re entitled to your fun. Lord knows it’s lonely enough up there, and you all work hard. I appreciate it.’ He smiled, and I wondered if I was the only one to notice that his false teeth wobbled in his mouth.

  After dinner, Grandpa unpacked the game of Trivial Pursuit that we had played so many times we had memorised the answers. ‘Will you stay?’ he asked Josh.

  Gram huffed and left the room, clutching her pack of cigarillos, while Mrs G pottered around with the dishes.

  ‘I’d better be getting back,’ Josh said. ‘Early start and all that. Thanks, though, Mr Summers, it was real nice.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Grandpa. ‘You know, Josh —’

  At the door, Josh turned to look at him as he shoved his feet into his gumboots.

  ‘I’m keeping an eye on you. You’re doing a great job. Keep it up. I’ve got plans for you, son.’

  Josh coloured as much as his swarthy cheeks would let him. He nodded his thanks, took a last look at my sister, slouching in her seat, twisting her long dark hair, and he was gone.

  ‘Terrible business,’ said Grandpa as he sat down. ‘Both his parents dead. He doesn’t talk much, but I think he’s a good boy.’

  Looking back now, I remember being puzzled by Grandpa’s referring to Josh as a boy. He was in his twenties. Now I see it for what it was — a casual reference to class that someone of Grandpa’s status and generation wouldn’t have given a second thought.

  The following school holidays, in August, was when it all happened. August was when lambing began, and Grandpa wasn’t around much. He took us all out with him one morning, and I remember being surprised that Tess was so willing to go. It was raining and we all donned raincoats and gumboots. Tess’s eyeliner ran. Charlie was quiet and a bit pale as we rode the back of the Landrover with the dogs, and for once his running banter was absent. I stood up and held onto the bars, riding the bumps in the road like a surfer, letting the rain fall on my face.

  Josh stood over a ewe that was moving weakly, ready to give up. Tess ran over to him as soon as the Landrover stopped and they exchanged a few words before she stepped away and made room for Grandpa, who crouched down beside the distressed animal.

  ‘We’re going to lose her,’ he said. He moved down her body, to where a purple blob was emerging from her rear end. Charlie stood with his mouth hanging open, then turned and ran back to the truck, which he climbed inside, and refused to look any further. Tess also just stood there, face hidden by the huge hood of her raincoat, fiddling with the silver rings she wore on most of her fingers.

  I crouched down beside Grandpa to get as close a look as I could. He grabbed hold of the blob and pulled. With a sucking sound, like mud, the lamb fell onto the grass in a mess of blood and umbilical cord. The ewe gave a last sigh and then was still.

  ‘But what will happen to the lamb?’ Tess asked. Her eyes had become red. Josh moved quickly to stand beside her and she leant against his big body. A hand patted her on the back, but when Josh noticed Grandpa looking he stepped away, causing Tess to stumble a moment. The rain kept coming and all I could hear was the sound of it on the hood of my raincoat, incessant.

  In the end, the lamb was saved. It was given to a ewe that had lost its own lamb. For a while it was touch and go whether she would accept it, but the desire to mother something must have been too great, and she was soon licking the foster lamb and encouraging it to feed from her.

  When it was time to return to the house, Grandpa told Tess to ride in the front with him. I don’t know what they talked about, but I could guess. I watched them through the back window. Grandpa did most of the talking. He gesticulated as he spoke. Tess sat hunched in her seat with her arms crossed. She raised her voice at one point, said, ‘All right! I get it,’ and after that, it seemed, nothing more was said. She stared out the window beside her, and Grandpa reached over once to pat her arm. When we pulled up, Tess jumped out and ran straight to her room, where she stayed for the rest of the day while Grandpa drove back up the hill and I continued to work on a stoat that one of the dogs had brought home.

  One afternoon a couple of days later, I emerged from the workroom and found the house empty. I walked through the rooms, looking for my family, but the house wasn’t giving them up. Even Mrs G wasn’t in the kitchen. A quick look outside told me she’d taken her car and must have gone to town, but where was everyone else? Even Tess wasn’t in her room or the library, and I had no idea where to start to look for her outside.

  The tower was the best place to go to find out. There I could see in one glance whether Charlie was out with the other kids on their horses, and Grandpa up at the paddocks. The rain from the previous days had disappeared, and even though the clouds still hung thick and uncertain, Gram was likely to be tending to the spring flowers that had emerged to brighten the garden.

  The staircase to the towe
r was as muffled and dark as ever, and my small socked feet felt their way on each step, slowly, slowly. I was sure that one day I would slip and fall and be found in a heap at the bottom, so I trod as carefully as I could.

  When I opened the door I was surprised to find that all the blinds were down. As I crossed to the nearest window, to let in the dull light, I heard a small sound in the air, a swallow and a breath, barely audible, not even a sigh. I turned towards it.

  I saw a pale shape emerging from the shadow, a surprising shape, with blossoming hips and a narrow waist. Long dark hair piled loosely, and below, a picture, drawn onto the skin. A bird, curving with the shoulders, a long arched beak and claws curled around a thin branch. Wings stretched out. Below this, another shape: a large brown hand resting in the small of the back as her body rose and fell, full of concentration. But this shape was no tattoo. It made a tiny movement, a caress.

  I stood there for only a few seconds, deciphering what it was I was seeing. I must have made my presence felt, because the figure turned her face towards me, twisting her whole body so I could make out the edge of her bare breast before her eyes found mine. Beyond her, and beneath her, the large shape of Josh, lying as still as possible, trying to make himself invisible.

  ‘Get out, Rosemary,’ was all Tess said. ‘Get out now.’

  I don’t know why I was so upset. Whether it was the shock of seeing Tess naked with Josh, or the shock of seeing her with that huge tattoo over her back. Perhaps it was simply the realisation that she wasn’t a kid any more. Where my body had only recently begun to change, hers had embraced full-blown womanhood. I began to understand more later, when I picked up the books she had been reading. She was so fully immersed in Wuthering Heights that May, that Josh’s appearance in the garden, and later at the dinner table, must have seemed to Tess like the delivery of her very own Heathcliff. And just as with those star-crossed lovers, her romance with Josh was not to be allowed, so it was furtive, with stolen moments in the tower while everybody was out. Everybody except me.

  She soon came and found me.

  ‘You can’t tell,’ she said.

  I huddled in the corner of my bed, trying to keep the cold from my bones. Tess was warm; I could see it in her flushed cheeks.

  ‘About what?’ I asked. ‘The tattoo or you and Josh doing it?’

  She sat heavily on my bed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re still just a baby.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. But next to her, that was exactly how I felt. Her eyes were heavy with mascara; each ear had multiple silver rings, like her fingers. I was still cutting my hair short to keep it out of the way and was in staunch denial that the time would soon come to wear a bra. And there was her tattoo. I couldn’t imagine ever feeling so sure about anything that I would invite its permanence onto my body. I thought about the way she mocked Grandpa and avoided his stuffed birds, and yet here she was with one on her back. She didn’t deserve to be here.

  When Grandpa came home, I told him. I will never forget the look he gave me. His face collapsed. All the happiness he carried around with him dissolved in that one moment. Although he said nothing, just listened to what I had to say, he suddenly looked as if he would like to hit me. I backed away quickly and ran upstairs. Tess’s shouts echoed up to where I sat, hugging myself and crying. Doors slammed. Footsteps thundered down the hallway and stopped outside my room.

  ‘You’re a fucking bitch, Rosemary,’ she screamed through the door. ‘I hate you forever.’

  She didn’t come down for dinner, and we ate in near silence. Even Charlie was quiet. He looked from one of us to the other. He knew something was up, but he also knew not to ask. At the end, Grandpa wiped his mouth and stood.

  ‘Tess is on the first bus home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Who would like to join her?’

  Charlie and I sat there without speaking, but my stomach started twisting in knots. Not me, I said again and again in my head. Satisfied, Grandpa left the room.

  The blame I feel is multi-layered. If I had ridden Lily more often instead of locking myself away trying to bring dead animals to life, then she wouldn’t have been so wild on the spring grass; she wouldn’t have been spooked in the paddock that morning and tried to jump the fence. If I had just kept my mouth shut, Tess wouldn’t have got in trouble with Grandpa and wouldn’t have been booked on the morning bus back to the city. She wouldn’t have risen at first light to go to Josh, to say goodbye, probably to tell him that she had been betrayed by her little sister.

  I try to piece together what I didn’t see that morning. I knew Tess spent a restless night. I heard her in the next room, tossing and shuddering up against the wall. Crying. I fell asleep and dreamed of her naked back and the mysterious bird taking flight and diving at me until I retreated down the tower stairs, tripped and fell.

  She gets out of bed as soon as the streak of silver appears on the horizon, dresses in woolly layers and pulls a soft hat over her ears. She creeps to the bathroom, only to go to the toilet and to fix her ever-present eyeliner — her pillow is thick with it. She lets herself out the back door, checking that Mrs G isn’t up already to light the stove, and chooses a pair of Gram’s long gumboots because she doesn’t have any of her own. Outside, the mist is thick and the birds in the poplars are starting up their morning sounds. She goes to the stable to grab a bridle, but she has forgotten a carrot to entice one of the horses. They all wait for her to get close before turning around and fleeing with a kick. Only Lily allows her to approach, sweet, gentle Lily, and so it is Lily who has the bridle slipped over her chestnut head, and is led to the stile so Tess can climb onto her bare back. I don’t know why Tess doesn’t lead her out the gate before mounting her. I can only think that she doesn’t want to go that way, that she is worried about the sound of Lily’s hooves on the gravel waking everyone. She should know that Grandpa will be getting up around now, that working on a farm is not about sleeping until midday, but about rising with the rooster that has started crowing its head off by the kitchen door.

  Does she decide to go out of her way to the gate at the far end of the paddock, by the river? Is this when Lily is startled, takes the bit in her mouth and rushes for the fence? Or is it Tess herself who aims for it, a fence too high for such a little pony, who is accustomed only to jumping small fallen logs? Whatever the reason, Lily attempts the jump, but fails. She collides with the fence, her front legs becoming tangled in the wires, her weight crashing down onto her back legs. And with nothing but Lily’s bare hide to cling to, Tess is thrown over her shoulder, where her head connects with a rock.

  I know I have told this story before, the one about Lily’s death. I know I left out an important detail — the fact of Tess lying on the other side of that fence, dead. But how could I relive it in all its horror, when it was my fault that she was out that morning? It is bad enough that the sound of Lily’s hoof on the wire has haunted me all these years, never letting me forget.

  I don’t know whether Josh ever knew that Tess was due to leave that morning, or that I had revealed their secret. Certainly Grandpa didn’t acknowledge that the farmhand might be feeling a loss too, only set him the task of burying Lily while the family gathered together. I saw the grief in Josh’s shoulders that afternoon, the slow way he went about his task, the revenge he took on Lily. Or was it me he was taking revenge on, knowing how much I cherished her?

  Grandpa blamed himself; I know he did. And when we stopped visiting — I think my mother wanted to punish him somehow — all the life seeped out of Magpie Hall, just as those bright Super-8 films had stopped. I missed it. I missed the house; I missed Grandpa and I missed the taxidermy, which I think is why I drifted back into it when I left school. And I missed Tess, which is why that first tattoo was for her — her name beneath the horseshoe that my mother had found so offensive. I couldn’t bring Lily or Tess back to life, the way I had with the magpie that first time, the way I have with countless other creatures, so the tattoo was my way
of keeping them both alive. My memento mori. I know that Tess would have approved, just as she would have approved of the way I turned out: the tattoos, the books, the lovers. I have spent my whole life since then trying to make it so.

  Magpies. He has slaughtered every last one of the wretches. He cared little about preserving them, so some are ripped and bloody, while others look as if they have merely closed their eyes and folded their bodies in sleep. But still they come. It doesn’t matter how many he shoots, within days new ones will come to take their place, to claim their territory. Usurpers. They were never meant to be here in the first place — just like the rabbits and every other creature that has arrived uninvited by the native birds and animals. They have murder in their hearts.

  Dora lies on the high table. Her clothes have dried now, but her hair still has a damp curl about it and her skin is as blue as a robin’s egg. He has an urge to cover her in a blanket, to warm her up, to cushion the hard wood beneath her, but he knows that she is best left in this room, with the fire unlit and the door locked. With the cold, he has bought himself some time.

  He is unable to drag his gaze away from her. It is as if every shape in his peripheral vision is also turned towards her — every mammal, reptile, bird has its glass eyes fixed on his wife, waiting to see what will happen.

  Taking his scissors and, starting at the hem, he begins to cut open her dress. The blades slice easily through the thick cotton, over her legs to her waist, continuing on through the bodice. Here he must apply more pressure to the shears to cut the intricate smocking that gives the dress its shape, but soon he is through and can peel the garment back.