The Cockatoos

by Patrick White

  Well-meaning people would call to her over the front fence, ‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Natwick?’ They spoke with a restrained horror, as though she had been suffering from an incurable disease.

  But she called back proud and slow, ‘I’m under sedation.’

  ‘Arrr!’ They nodded thoughtfully. ‘What’s ’e given yer?’

  She shook her head. ‘Pills,’ she called back. ‘They say they’re the ones the actress died of.’

  The people walked on, impressed.

  As the evenings grew longer and heavier she sat later on the front veranda watching the traffic of the Parramatta Road, its flow becoming syrupy and almost benign: big bulbous sedate buses, chrysalis cars still without a life of their own, clinging in line to the back of their host-articulator, trucks loaded for distances, empty loose-sounding jolly lorries. Sometimes women, looking out from the cabins of trucks from beside their men, shared her lack of curiosity. The light was so fluid nobody lasted long enough. You would never have thought boys could kick a person to death, seeing their long soft hair floating behind their sports models.

  Every evening she watched the cream Holden pass. And looked at her watch. It was like Royal was sitting beside her. Once she heard herself, ‘Thought he was gunner look round tonight, in our direction.’ How could a person feel lonely?

  She was, though. She came face to face with it walking through the wreckage of her garden in the long slow steamy late summer. The Holden didn’t pass of course of a Saturday or Sunday. Something, something had tricked her, not the pills, before the pills. She couldn’t blame anybody, probably only herself. Everything depended on yourself. Take the garden. It was a shambles. She would have liked to protest, but began to cough from running her head against some powdery mildew. She could only blunder at first, like a cow, or runty starved heifer, on breaking into a garden. She had lost her old wiriness. She shambled, snapping dead stems, uprooting. Along the bleached palings there was a fretwork of hollyhock, the brown fur of rotting sunflower. She rushed at a praying mantis, a big pale one, and deliberately broke its back, and was sorry afterwards for what was done so easy and thoughtless.

  As she stood panting in her black, finally yawning, she saw all she had to repair. The thought of the seasons piling up ahead made her feel tired but necessary, and she went in to bathe her face. Royal’s denture in a tumbler on top of the medicine cabinet, she ought to move, or give to the Sallies. In the meantime she changed the water. She never forgot it. The teeth looked amazingly alive.

  All that autumn, winter, she was continually amazed, at the dust she had let gather in the house, at old photographs, books, clothes. There was a feather she couldn’t remember wearing, a scarlet feather, she can’t have worn, and gloves with little fussy ruffles at the wrists, silver piping, like a snail had laid its trail round the edges. There was, she knew, funny things she had bought at times, and never worn, but she couldn’t remember the gloves or the feather. And books. She had collected a few, though never a reader herself. Old people liked to give old books, and you took them so as not to hurt anybody’s feelings. Hubert’s Crusade, for instance. Lovely golden curls. Could have been Royal’s father’s book. Everybody was a child once. And almost everybody had one. At least if she had had a child she would have known it wasn’t a white turnip, more of a praying mantis, which snaps too easy.

  In the same box she had put away a coloured picture, Cities of the Plain, she couldn’t remember seeing it before. The people escaping from the burning cities had committed some sin or other nobody ever thought, let alone talked, about. As they hurried between rocks, through what must have been the ‘desert places’, their faces looked long and wooden. All they had recently experienced could have shocked the expression out of them. She was fascinated by what made her shiver. And the couples with their arms still around one another. Well, if you were damned, better hang on to your sin. She didn’t blame them.

  She put the box away. Its inlay as well as its contents made it something secret and precious.

  The autumn was still and golden, the winter vicious only in fits. It was what you could call a good winter. The cold floods of air and more concentrated streams of dark-green light poured along the shady side of the house where her cinerarias had massed. She had never seen such cinerarias: some of the spired ones reached almost as high as her chin, the solid heads of others waited in the tunnel of dark light to club you with their colours, of purple and drenching blue, and what they called ‘wine’. She couldn’t believe wine would have made her drunker.

  Just as she would sit every evening watching the traffic, evening was the time she liked best to visit the cinerarias, when the icy cold seemed to make the flowers burn their deepest, purest. So it was again evening when her two objects converged: for some blissfully confident reason she hadn’t bothered to ask herself whether she had seen the car pass, till here was this figure coming towards her along the tunnel. She knew at once who it was, although she had never seen him on his feet; she had never seen him full-face, but knew from the funny shape of his head as Royal had been the first to notice. He was not at all an impressive man, not much taller than herself, but broad. His footsteps on the brickwork sounded purposeful.

  ‘Will you let me use your phone, please, madam?’ he asked in a prepared voice. ‘I’m having trouble with the Holden.’

  This was the situation she had always been expecting: somebody asking to use the phone as a way to afterwards murdering you. Now that it might be about to happen she couldn’t care.

  She said yes. She thought her voice sounded muzzy. Perhaps he would think she was drunk.

  She went on looking at him, at his eyes. His nose, like the shape of his head, wasn’t up to much, but his eyes, his eyes, she dared to think, were filled with kindness.

  ‘Cold, eh? but clean cold!’ He laughed friendly, shuffling on the brick paving because she was keeping him waiting.

  Only then she noticed his mouth. He had a hare-lip, there was no mistaking, although it was well sewn. She felt so calm in the circumstances. She would have even liked to touch it.

  But said, ‘Why, yes – the telephone,’ she said, ‘it’s this way,’ she said, ‘it’s just off the kitchen – because that’s where you spend most of your life. Or in bed,’ she ended.

  She wished she hadn’t added that. For the first time since they had been together she felt upset, thinking he might suspect her of wrong intentions.

  But he laughed and said, ‘That’s correct! You got something there!’ It sounded manly rather than educated.

  She realized he was still waiting, and took him to the telephone.

  While he was phoning she didn’t listen. She never listened when other people were talking on the phone. The sight of her own kitchen surprised her. While his familiar voice went on. It was the voice she had held conversations with.

  But he was ugly, real ugly, deformed. If it wasn’t for the voice, the eyes. She couldn’t remember the eyes, but seemed to know about them.

  Then she heard him laying the coins beside the phone, extra loud, to show.

  He came back into the kitchen smiling and looking. She could smell him now, and he had the smell of a clean man.

  She became embarrassed at herself, and took him quickly out.

  ‘Fair bit of garden you got.’ He stood with his calves curved through his trousers. A cocky little chap, but nice.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘this’, she said, angrily almost, ‘is nothing. You oughter see it. There’s sunflower and hollyhock all along the palings. I’m famous for me hollyhocks!’ She had never boasted in her life. ‘But not now – it isn’t the season. And I let it go. Mr Natwick passed on. You should’uv seen the cassia this autumn. Now it’s only sticks, of course. And hibiscus. There’s cream, gold, cerise, scarlet – double and single.’

  She was dressing in them for him, revolving on high heels and changing frilly skirts.

  He said, ‘Gardening’s not in my line,’ turning his head to hide something, perh
aps he was ashamed of his hare-lip.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not everybody’s a gardener.’

  ‘But like a garden.’

  ‘My husband didn’t even like it. He didn’t have to tell me,’ she added.

  As they moved across the wintry grass, past the empty clothesline, the man looked at his watch, and said, ‘I was reckoning on visiting somebody in hospital tonight. Looks like I shan’t make it if the N.R.M.A. takes as long as usual.’

  ‘Do they?’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘It isn’t somebody close, I hope? The sick person?’

  Yes he said they was close.

  ‘Nothing serious?’ she almost bellowed.

  He said it was serious.

  Oh she nearly burst out laughing at the bandaged figure they were sitting beside particularly at the bandaged face. She would have laughed at a brain tumour.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I understand. Mr Natwick was for many years an invalid.’

  Those teeth in the tumbler on top of the medicine cabinet. Looking at her. Teeth can look, worse than eyes. But she couldn’t help it, she meant everything she said, and thought.

  At this moment they were pressing inside the dark-green tunnel, her sleeve rubbing his, as the crimson-to-purple light was dying.

  ‘These are the cinerarias,’ she said.

  ‘The what?’ He didn’t know, any more than Royal.

  As she was about to explain she got switched to another language. Her throat became a long palpitating funnel through which the words she expected to use were poured out in a stream of almost formless agonized sound.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, touching her.

  If it had happened to herself she would have felt frightened, it occurred to her, but he didn’t seem to be.

  ‘What is it?’ he kept repeating in his familiar voice, touching, even holding her.

  And for answer, in the new language, she was holding him. They were holding each other, his hard body against her eider-downy one. As the silence closed round them again, inside the tunnel of light, his face, to which she was very close, seemed to be unlocking, the wound of his mouth, which should have been more horrible, struggling to open. She could see he had recognized her.

  She kissed above his mouth. She kissed as though she might never succeed in healing all the wounds they had ever suffered.

  How long they stood together she wasn’t interested in knowing. Outside them the river of traffic continued to flow between its brick and concrete banks. Even if it overflowed it couldn’t have drowned them.

  When the man said in his gentlest voice, ‘Better go out in front. The N.R.M.A. might have come.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘The N.R.M.A.’

  So they shuffled, still holding each other, along the narrow path. She imagined how long and wooden their faces must look. She wouldn’t look at him now, though, just as she wouldn’t look back at the still faintly smouldering joys they had experienced together in the past.

  When they came out, apart, and into the night, there was the N.R.M.A., his pointed ruby of a light burning on top of the cabin.

  ‘When will you come?’ she asked.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow. You’ll stay to tea.’

  He couldn’t stay.

  ‘I’ll make you a pot of tea?’

  But he didn’t drink it.

  ‘Coffee, then?’

  He said, ‘I like a nice cup of coffee.’

  Going down the path he didn’t look back, or opening the gate. She would not let herself think of reasons or possibilities, she would not think, but stood planted in the path, swayed slightly by the motion of the night.

  Mrs Dolan said, ‘You bring the saucepan to the boil. You got that?’

  ‘Yeeehs.’ Mrs Natwick had never been a dab at coffee.

  ‘Then you throw in some cold water. That’s what sends the gravel to the bottom.’ This morning Mrs Dolan had to laugh at her own jokes.

  ‘That’s the part that frightens me,’ Mrs Natwick admitted.

  ‘Well, you just do it, and see,’ said Mrs Dolan; she was too busy.

  After she had bought the coffee Mrs Natwick stayed in the city to muck around. If she had stayed at home her nerves might have wound themselves tighter, waiting for evening to come. Though mucking around only irritated in the end. She had never been an idle woman. So she stopped at the cosmetics as though she didn’t have to decide, this was her purpose, and said to the young lady lounging behind one of the counters, ‘I’m thinking of investing in a lipstick, dear. Can you please advise me?’

  As a concession to the girl she tried to make it a laughing matter, but the young person was bored, she didn’t bat a silver eyelid. ‘Elderly ladies’, she said, ‘go for the brighter stuff.’

  Mrs Natwick (‘my little Ella’) had never felt so meek. Mum must be turning in her grave.

  ‘This is a favourite.’ With a flick of her long fingers the girl exposed the weapon. It looked too slippery-pointed, crimson-purple, out of its golden sheath.

  Mrs Natwick’s knees were shaking. ‘Isn’t it a bit noticeable?’ she asked, again trying to make it a joke.

  But the white-haired girl gave a serious laugh. ‘What’s wrong with noticeable?’

  As Mrs Natwick tried it out on the back of her hand the way she had seen others do, the girl was jogging from foot to foot behind the counter. She was humming between her teeth, behind her white-smeared lips, probably thinking about a lover. Mrs Natwick blushed. What if she couldn’t learn to get the tip of her lipstick back inside its sheath?

  She might have gone quickly away without another word if the young lady hadn’t been so professional and bored. Still humming, she brought out a little pack of rouge.

  ‘Never saw myself with mauve cheeks!’ It was at least dry, and easy to handle.

  ‘It’s what they wear.’

  Mrs Natwick didn’t dare refuse. She watched the long fingers with their silver nails doing up the parcel. The fingers looked as though they might resent touching anything but cosmetics; a lover was probably beneath contempt.

  The girl gave her the change, and she went away without counting it.

  She wasn’t quiet, though, not a bit, booming and clanging in front of the toilet mirror. She tried to make a thin line, but her mouth exploded into a purple flower. She dabbed the dry-feeling pad on either cheek, and thick, mauve-scented shadows fell. She could hear and feel her heart behaving like a squeezed, rubber ball as she stood looking. Then she got at the lipstick again, still unsheathed. Her mouth was becoming enormous, so thick with grease she could hardly close her own lips underneath. A visible dew was gathering round the purple shadows on her cheeks.

  She began to retch like, but dry, and rub, over the basin, scrubbing with the nailbrush. More than likely some would stay behind in the pores and be seen. Though you didn’t have to see, to see.

  There were Royal’s teeth in the tumbler on top of the medicine cabinet. Ought to hide the teeth. What if somebody wanted to use the toilet? She must move the teeth. But didn’t. In the present circumstances she couldn’t have raised her arms that high.

  Around five she made the coffee, throwing in the cold water at the end with a gesture copied from Mrs Dolan. If the gravel hadn’t sunk to the bottom he wouldn’t notice the first time. provided the coffee was hot. She could warm up the made coffee in a jiffy.

  As she sat on the veranda waiting, the cane chair shifted and squealed under her. If it hadn’t been for her weight it might have run away across the tiles, like one of those old planchette boards, writing the answers to questions.

  There was an accident this evening down at the intersection. A head-on collision. Bodies were carried out of the crumpled cars, and she remembered a past occasion when she had run with blankets, and Hazel’s Onkaparinka, and a pillow from their own bed. She had been so grateful to the victim. She could not give him enough, or receive enough of the warm blood. She had come back, she remembered, sprinkled.

  This even
ing she had to save herself up. Kept on looking at her watch. The old cane chair squealing, ready to write the answers if she let it. Was he hurt? Was he killed, then? Was he – what?

  Mrs Dolan it was, sticking her head over the palings. ‘Don’t like the accidents, Mrs Natwick. It’s the blood. The blood turns me up.’

  Mrs Natwick averted her face. Though unmoved by present blood. If only the squealing chair would stop trying to buck her off.

  ‘Did your friend enjoy the coffee?’ Mrs Dolan shouted; nothing nasty in her: Mrs Dolan was sincere.

  ‘Hasn’t been yet,’ Mrs Natwick mumbled from glancing at her watch. ‘Got held up.’

  ‘It’s the traffic. The traffic at this time of evenun.’

  ‘Always on the dot before.’

  ‘Working back. Or made a mistake over the day.’

  Could you make a mistake? Mrs Natwick contemplated. Tomorrow had always meant tomorrow.

  ‘Or he could’uv,’ Mrs Dolan shouted, but didn’t say it. ‘I better go inside,’ she said instead. ‘They’ll be wonderun where I am.’

  Down at the intersection the bodies were lying wrapped in someone else’s blankets, looking like the grey parcels of mice cats sometimes vomit up.

  It was long past five-twenty, not all that long really, but drawing in. The sky was heaped with cold fire. Her city was burning.

  She got up finally, and the chair escaped with a last squeal, writing its answer on the tiles.

  No, it wasn’t lust, not if the Royal God Almighty with bared teeth should strike her down. Or yes, though, it was. She was lusting after the expression of eyes she could hardly remember for seeing so briefly.

  In the effort to see, she drove her memory wildly, while her body stumbled around and around the paths of the burning city there was now no point in escaping. You would shrivel up in time along with the polyanthers and out-of-season hibiscus. All the randy mouths would be stopped sooner or later with black.

  The cinerarias seemed to have grown so luxuriant she had to force her way past them, down the narrow brick path. When she heard the latch click, and saw him coming towards her.