by Judith White
The woman yelled at him.
This is the last straw!
As she strode towards him she caught him accidentally on her foot, propelling him out into the hallway, where, to her astonishment, he spun a full circle, a feathery top spinning. He then stood motionless, his yellow feet splayed on the wooden floor, his eye black and piercing. He was measuring her, wondering whether she was a thing to be wary of. Until that moment, he had accepted her unquestioningly.
What did you do that for?
I’m tired.
What did I do?
You got out of your box. Over and over.
I wanted to be with you.
Well, she said, I don’t want to be with you.
The duck let go of his legs and flopped into his nest of self. The woman plonked herself down on the bathroom stool. The duck in the hallway, the woman in the bathroom.
I’m tired. The crows. So much work to do. And now you. It is like having my mother here all over again.
Your mother is dead.
How do you know that?
You told me. But even if you hadn’t told me, I would have known. It’s in your eyes, in your blood.
The woman sighed. All I want is for you to be in your box. Now. Like a good duck. Please.
He cocked his head at her. Then he stood up, waddled into the bathroom and over to her feet. She scooped him up.
Bed, she said. Bed, or else.
Or else what?
Eat.
Eat?
Christmas dinner. Yum. Cranberry sauce. Drumsticks. Hmmmm . . .
The duck said nothing. She cradled him, feeling his warmth spread through her body. Even his feet on her arms were warm. Even her heart felt warmed by him. He was a warm machine. He was a hot-water duckle.
Be a good boy, she said.
I am, he said, uncomplaining now as she placed him back in his box.
NIGHT TERRORS
Later, Hannah thought about the duck’s reluctance to go to bed. In the mornings he was quite content to sit in his box, greeting her with his mouth open, cheeping gratefully as he snapped up the strips of leaves she offered. He’d then wait patiently while she did her chores. If she popped into the bathroom they’d have a hello, but there was never any frenetic scrambling to escape. She was thankful that he gave her this precious time in the mornings before having to clean out his box and head outside.
Before her mother had moved into Primrose Hill, caregivers provided by the government would march into the house each morning to bathe her and prepare her for the day ahead. Hannah eventually resigned herself to the fact that strangers had the run of the house downstairs, strangers who would sneak her mother’s make-up and perfume and creams for themselves. Although she didn’t like this, she didn’t complain; she was grateful for that small amount of time to herself. She also felt a nudge of guilt that she wasn’t continuing to attend to her mother’s ablutions herself.
When she questioned the duck the next day about this anomaly between his morning and night-time behaviour, he told her that in the mornings he was happy because he knew it was just a matter of waiting and that she would come because that was what happened. She would come and then together they’d go out into the garden and look for food. He would wait for her all day, he said.
So, why are you such a pain about going back to bed at the end of the day, then?
Because it’s the night and you go away.
But you’re safe here. Nothing can happen to you, truly. It’s nice and cosy in our bathroom, with the heated tiles and the door that closes, and a curtain over the window. The worst thing that could happen is that you spill your water.
I know all that.
So what’s your problem?
Well. You might not come back.
Me? Oh, Duckie, of course I’ll come back.
Don’t laugh, he said. There are slinking evil things out there. Sometimes I hear the front door close. I hear your footsteps up the path. You and the man go out and you don’t come back until the night is half over.
Going to the movies or out for a meal occasionally hardly takes up half the night. But in any case, I do come back and I always will, she said.
But sometimes things happen, he said enigmatically. Bad things. In the night. Bad things that might stop you returning. When you leave me in the night, I’m left not knowing whether I’ll ever see you again. Why don’t you sleep with me?
I sleep with the man in a bed upstairs, she told him.
Can I sleep with you in your bed, then?
Hmmm, I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t think the man would like that, she said. But I could ask him.
The woman thought of her pillows and duvet stuffed with feathers. How many ducks had died to make them? How did they die? She pictured peasant fingers yanking at the breasts of limp or — worse still — squealing ducks. Should she ever bring her duck to her bed, she suspected that he might see her as a traitor.
TMI
The first plucking generally yields about sixty grams and the second, about six weeks later, a hundred to two hundred grams. Animal welfare groups find this repeated plucking cruel, as it is painful. Dead ducks can be plucked by scalding them in water at around sixty-five degrees centigrade for a couple of minutes. Down is removed by a plucking machine or by hand. The feathers are dried in a drier.
Sometimes information is too readily available, Hannah thought, as she closed her laptop.
DOWN TIME
That night Hannah was lying in bed with Simon, just back from his conference. He was reading his iPad, holding it propped upright on his chest. His other hand lay open alongside his body, and her hand, resting in his warm palm, felt like a contented duck in a summer pond. And, she couldn’t help noticing, recently so many of her musings were skewed in relation to ducks.
Simon, she said.
Hmmm?
Do you ever feel uncomfortable about sleeping under a feather duvet and on feather pillows?
No, he replied dozily. I feel very comfy, thank you. It’s nice to be back in my own bed. Hotel bedding is unwelcoming and sterile.
No, I mean, when you think about it. I was looking it up today. Some down feathers are actually plucked while the ducks are still alive, over and over, every six weeks or so, as soon as they’ve grown more. It’d be like some monster pulling out our hair.
That’s not totally true, he said, and she knew he was going to give her a lecture. Not all, he continued. They’re also plucked from the dead birds after they’re killed for their meat. So don’t worry. And the eider down is taken from the lining of the nests after the hatchlings have left. That’s pretty well controlled these days.
So you do feel uneasy about it. You’ve obviously been doing some research yourself.
Only a couple of years ago, when we were choosing the new duvet. I was looking for the best down. And did you know, he added, that some dinosaurs grew down as well? In France they found down feathers from the dinosaur era, preserved in amber. And a decade or so ago, 124-million-year-old fossilised feathers from theropod dinosaurs were found in a place called Liaoning in China. We never think of dinosaurs as fluffy things, do we? Think of how many duvets they’d make.
I’m serious. It doesn’t feel right.
I am, too. In actual fact, he added, it’s commonly accepted in certain scientific circles that all birds have evolved from the aforementioned theropod dinosaurs, and are in fact dinosaurs themselves.
Don’t twist everything I say into scientific twaddle. You’re such a pedant. You’re trying to avoid reality.
Speaking of which, he said, I’ve been thinking, too. It’s four months since your mother died. For the first time in years, we are free. You’re tired, truly — you need a break. Let’s go somewhere. Somewhere nice, a cottage by a beach, or in the bush. Over to Waiheke. Or anywhere you choose. Hop on a ferry or a plane, and off we go.
She pulled her hand out from his, the old duck panicking, taking flight.
We can’t. How can we? We can’t.
Why not?
Well. Who would look after . . .?
Who would look after . . .?
He made her say it.
Who would look after the duck?
He hauled himself up from the sheets and stretched back against the wooden bed-head. He was doing those annoying neck exercises that prepared him for something difficult to say. She turned and peered up at him. His ruffled mix of grey-black hair. His conniving eyes squinting at her. His beard sleekly wrapped over his chin, every hair a silver strand feeding into the loom of his mouth. What thoughts were weaving through the words of this fabricated conversation?
And here it came:
That’s another thing. I’ve got another meeting down in Hamilton next week. He pulled his bottom lip out and over his moustache. I’ll take the duck down to Te Awamutu. Back to its pond, with other ducks, where it should be. You’ve done a very fine job of looking after it, but it needs to be rehabilitated with its own kind. And, he added, so do you.
She noticed his rumpled skin, and the soft flesh of his arms. In a few years he’d be sixty. One day, she thought, we will both die, and who will go first?
I can’t have a break, she told him. With Christmas coming up. Everyone coming to stay. There’s so much to do. And I’ve got another editing job coming up. It’s not the time to go away.
Well, after Christmas then. There’s a possibility of a contract in Christchurch for a while. We could both go.
Christchurch! What about the earthquake?
They’ve had the earthquake. It’s over. OK, apart from a few aftershocks. We could stay with Maggie and Toby. But, anyway, the duck. I’ll take the duck down to Te Awamutu next week.
The duck’s not ready.
She climbed out of bed.
Where are you going?
Toilet, she said.
But down in the bathroom she sat on a stool in the dark by the duck, sleeping in his box. When she finally returned, the light was off and the man was asleep. If I die first, she thought as she lay floating aimlessly through the night, on and on with her hollow bones and her chest aching with grief, who will look after the duck?
But if the man died first, she at least would have the duck to look after her.
PREMONITION
A darkened room, a long time ago. Thick curtains pulled over the window by the bed.
She was staying at her grandmother’s and had just awakened from an afternoon nap. Mad cries of seagulls outside. She was sitting up, surrounded by a whole country of double bed, with the rolling hills and valleys and fissures of a silk-covered eiderdown. Her chubby fingers picked at a tiny stalk protruding from one corner, tugging at it until it slid out of the hole to reveal . . . a feather! Unfurling itself to dance in her breath, like smoke on a stick.
Later, her grandmother came into the room and held her over the chamber pot from under the bed. She didn’t manage to pee, but when she was removed, they both peered into the dry pot. A soft feather lay curled there.
‘Look, Nana, I done a feather,’ she said.
‘Oh, you little poppet!’ her grandmother had cried, hugging her tightly. And then the story moved from that room into other rooms, and other places. It was related over and over, and always the reaction was laughter. From this, Hannah as a child experienced and understood the pleasure of being funny.
And now, Hannah was thinking that it had taken a feather from a duck to give her this realisation, and how, many years later, a whole living shimmy of feathers on legs was still able to amuse her.
Chapter 4
THE WOMAN GETS ANALYTICAL
The duck was just a duck, just a bloomin’ duck, a generic duck that began as a yellow pom-pom like every other duck of its type. Its fluff was gradually being replaced by down and feathers in a schedule that was preordained. Even though she had never taught it anything of significance, it had learnt to snap at mosquitoes, preen itself, and to shiver its beak into the mud and earth looking for worms. She had been imprinted on it, just as any person or any animal would for any other duck that had become stranded without its own kind.
So the bond between them was nothing special at all: it was a common old garden one. The anxious cheeping whenever she went away, or came back into view, had provoked or triggered a response from her that made her feel protective towards it. Nature had set it up very nicely. As every grandmother or mother felt towards her grandchild or child, there was the ingrained sense of love, or whatever it was, to save the next generation from harm.
How cute, how gorgeous, each and every baby creature was for most normal mothers on the planet. So common, that those words had become clichés in that sense. Love was just a biochemical or electromagnetic response. It was probably measurable in all its differing intensities in the endocrine system. Or the blood. Or the air between them.
And so with her duckling. She had been duped by Nature, been pulled in, drawn deeply down into the sloppy sloshy scheme of things.
As measles ran its course (or the common cold, or a stomach bug, or Parkinson’s disease), the signs and symptoms — the process of the onset, the duration, the aftermath, etc — were normally predictable, with varying degrees of severity and side effects according to the individual. The variation depended on the state of the victim at the time. All were ailments that progressed in more or less the same way. They all consisted of a list of stages, to one degree of intensity or another, dependent on the host.
She was the host to the duck, that was for sure. She’d been afflicted by a duck. It was an ailment that wasn’t in her medical books, and she was uncertain as to what stage she was at with it now, or whether it was terminal. And the side-effects were unknown.
PARKINSON’S
Her mother was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. Over the years her body had lost its lively suppleness, her fingers stiffened, her handwriting became minuscule, and she couldn’t do up her buttons. And she’d had more and more of a struggle to paint freely. At first, although they commiserated with her, neither Hannah nor her mother’s friends had really understood the difficulty.
Their coaxing was well-meaning: Don’t give yourself negative messages. Just do it.
But it won’t happen, her mother would reply. I can put the paintbrush onto the canvas, but there’s something happening between my brain and the paper. I simply can’t paint the way I used to.
In the end it was the constant falling over that brought her reluctantly from living independently in her own home in Hawke’s Bay to living in Auckland with Hannah and Simon. A night of lying on the floor of the bathroom, like a wounded gull with the tide rising, as the handbasin overflowed unceasingly through the night, spewing water around her and out into the living room carpet. Her head was resting on a sodden towel which she’d either fortuitously landed on or had managed to pull under her head. In the morning she was discovered by the caregiver arriving to give her a shower, and was taken to hospital in an ambulance, bruised and shivering, and later developing pneumonia. She never returned to live at her home, and resented this.
Take me to the sea, she’d say to Hannah. Just take me to the sea and let me walk and walk and walk out into it. I mean it. It will be better for everyone.
Or: Just take me to a nice place in the bush and leave me there. Truly, dear, I’ll be happy to go, surrounded by Nature.
But instead she had to leave her friends from her hometown and live another three years, in a body battened down as it flailed to be free, like a stunned and trussed insect, packaged up for devouring later.
I just can’t think properly, she would say. I think I’m going mad. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Hannah? You would, wouldn’t you?
Of course I would, Hannah would assure her with a hug, but you’re not mad, not at all.
And she wasn’t.
Sometimes, Hannah would arrive at Primrose Hill to see her mother’s face hanging cocked, her mouth open and her eyes as dead as the flowers that wilted in the Agee jars on the locked piano. Or, at other times,
her face was puffy with anxiety, her eyes searching for familiarity. Around her in the lounge, other old people sat in chairs and bucket seats, either resigned to isolation or, in an act of solidarity, their dry old voices quacking like hungry mallards across a pond. Help, help, heeeelp.
But when Hannah marched in, greeting them jovially one by one, all of those faces perked up as she called each one of them by name. That was the label around the handle of the suitcase of their own lives, and that was who they were, and they were happy to be reminded. That was the call they had responded to from the time they were babies, from their teachers, whispering lovers, enemies, roll calls, and this name would be the identifying tag around their toes. Only their own children didn’t use their name. To their children, they were universally Mummy, Mama, Daddy, or Papa, but that, too, defined who they were beyond any given name, defined a status and connection that, above all, was unique and permanent.
And Hannah’s own mother’s face came alive when she saw her, because she was the link to all the known things. Her caregivers had no idea what she was talking about when she mentioned a person she had once known; or a spontaneous recounting of an incident from her past, as if assuming the caregiver had been privy to her train of thought leading up to it. When Hannah arrived, all the obscure off-beat comments that wafted like leaves from an old tree upon the people who’d never known her, now had value. These leaves became meaningful, because Hannah knew the twigs and branches from which they fell; she had embraced the now-bending trunk of her mother’s life.