by Judith White
One day you’ll discover that the sky is very big, she said, and she intended the statement to sound unkind. What do you plan to do when you get up there?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not planning anything.
Every morning, as soon as I let you out of your cage, you test your wings. You’re practising. One day you’re going to leave me, too.
Don’t be ridiculous. Where would I go?
It was true. He hadn’t been anywhere. And his place of birth was a tragic place. He was delivered to her in a plastic carry-bag. Where would he go? He knew nothing of the world. She hadn’t taught him anything. But then she remembered the overnight educator. What secret knowledge had been imparted behind her back? And where did her mother go? She had flown from her body with a magical ease, as if the hoisting from her physical old self was deliberate and planned.
And where was Simon?
JUST THE SHIRT ON HIS BACK
Before she went to bed that night, she opened Simon’s drawers one by one, checking to see how much he had taken. As far as she could ascertain, everything was as it always had been, but she started hauling all his clothes out into a heap on the floor, then vacuuming and wiping the gritty detritus from each drawer. She knelt on the floor where she folded his T-shirts and singlets into a pile to return to a clean drawer. One of the singlets had a faded stain from a red biro that had leaked in the pocket of a favourite creamy olive shirt. It had happened at a barbeque. They’d both rushed to the hosts’ bathroom, where he’d removed his shirt so she could scrub soap into the ink under the running tap, red juice flooding the handbasin. When he put the shirt on again, a red wet patch flowered across his chest. Oh well, he said, kissing her, and they laughed. Crikey, did she shoot you in the heart? some joker had said when they eventually emerged from the bathroom.
Now Hannah held the singlet to her face, breathing in the residue of forgotten intimacy. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Shoving it back, she closed that drawer, and went on with the task of folding his underwear and tucking his socks into pairs before tidying them away. She stood up then, and opened the wardrobe with the intention of culling some of his old shirts, but these were the ones he used to wear tramping, or in the garden, when they’d spent their happiest times with each other. And look, here was the creamy olive one with its splodge of red. These shirts he loved the best, the comfortable ones he would miss most if she disposed of them. She held them out one by one, then hung them up again, brushing them down as she slid each shirt amongst the others, feeling the emptiness of them.
NEW SKIN
The next day she drove to the hardware shop and bought paint. As Simon had pointed out, it was not her cup of tea, but she spoke to the retailer, an Indian man who guided her in a matter-of-fact manner, with none of the derision she anticipated, as to what to do and what to buy. Sugar soap. Filler, undercoat. A roller and tray. Sandpaper, several grades. Paintbrushes. And satin acrylic paint. White. She didn’t know there were so many shades of white. She chose the whitest. Arctic fox.
Back home, she dragged the ladder from the basement and up to their bedroom. It was a project they had been talking about for years as they lay together in bed, idly chatting, their eyes darting around the tired walls with chipped and marked corners. It was a bedraggled bedroom, shedding skin. It had absorbed too much of their dreary life together and had had enough.
For the next few days she climbed up and down and up and down the ladder, peering at instructions on tins before washing, filling dents, sanding, painting, painting and painting. She grew a membrane of paint up to her elbow, over her clothes, in her hair, on her face. She stopped only when she was incapable of working anymore because she’d forgotten to eat. And while she worked, she thought. She thought until her head was bursting. She thought about her husband, and she thought about her mother, and she thought about her sister, and she thought about Toby and all the things they might have talked about, should they have had longer together. She thought about Eric, the man next door who used to be her friend, and she thought about his grandchildren. And she thought about the duck.
As she rolled the sticky paint over the walls, and the chest of drawers and the wardrobe doors, it seemed as though her life was becoming a blank empty thing and it was all of her doing.
Each evening she put the duck, complaining, into his cage with a cob of corn and a bunch of lettuce leaves just in case he hadn’t found enough greens for himself during the day. Then she laboured late into the night, in the relentless heat and humidity. Outside the open window, the dark fused with the electric light that spilt from her bedroom. Beetles and mosquitoes flew in, clambering through the wet paint. She plucked them out with tweezers and painted over the damage.
Finally the job was done. She pulled up the sheet from the polished wooden floor and hauled all the tins and equipment outside. The walls and ceiling were a dazzle of white.
She made herself tea and toast and gulped them down as she sat on the bottom step under the deck. The duck waddled across the grass towards her. She ripped up a piece of toast and threw the bits to him. He gobbled them up and tapped the ground, his motley beak like the demanding forefinger of an old matron.
This is the fourth day without a snail, he informed her.
This is the fourth day without my husband, she replied.
SLEEP IN
The following day Hannah slept in. She was aching all over. She pulled the duvet over her head. It felt as though the new paint was too harsh for her eyes. But she hadn’t finished yet.
She soaked in a bath, scrubbing at the paint engrained in her skin, lathering up her hair, picking out scabs of paint. She dried herself and dressed in clean clothes. It was only then that she remembered the duck. She rushed down to the bottom of the garden and lifted the cage door upward to release him.
He marched out and strutted around the pond, his tail feathers splayed in a stiff fan.
Sorry, Ducko, she said, chuckling at his haughty demeanour. I have other things on my mind.
She shifted the cage, turned on the hose and squirted down the night’s poo from the grass, leaving the hose still gushing to water the garden. She bent down to sprinkle dried maize into his dish. Suddenly there was a loud whacking of wings and he was upon her back, clenching a lump of flesh in his beak. She jumped to her feet and shook herself, but for a moment he clung to her, his claws scratching through her shirt, before tumbling to the ground. He rushed towards her again, but she grabbed the hose and directed the water at his chest. The force knocked him back, but he braced his feet and stood ogling her for a second. Then he scurried away.
What did you do that for? she yelled after him.
She turned off the hose and raced inside.
Twisting her back at the bathroom mirror, she lifted her shirt. Already there was the heavy imprint of purple bruise.
DINOSAUR
He was enormous. His head was as big as the duckling that had first arrived. He was a dinosaur with an eye at the end of his thin neck, and a beak pulled out from the end of it. He was a mush of snails and half her mother cloaked in feathers all balanced on tree-trunk legs. Did He who made the lamb make thee? Did He who made the tiger make thee? Her cats certainly were asking themselves the same question, giving him a wide and respectful berth as they passed.
While the duck was preening, his wings hung like lopsided doors dangling from loose hinges as he dipped his beak into the secret downy-lined cupboard beneath them. They were almost as long as he was. Sometimes he lolloped around the pond, the raceway around which she used to run as he waddled in pursuit when he was a little clown duckling. He still ran the same course, in the same direction, his wings flapping, those little chicken wing delicacies now the magnificent wings of an angel, whether Gabriel or Lucifer she had no idea.
He was one of the Wright Brothers, or Richard Pearse, cranking up a large machine and trying to make it airborne.
BLANK CANVAS
Once again she headed out in the car. She bough
t white sheets. She bought a new white duvet cover. She bought a white woollen rug for beside the bed. She bought white cotton fabric, a white wooden picture frame. She bought a white cotton nightdress.
At home she washed the new sheets and duvet cover, threw them in the drier, put them on the stripped bed. She tucked the new nightdress under the pillow. Meanwhile she’d dusted off the sewing machine. She sewed curtains.
It used to be that she made all the curtains for the house, until her enthusiasm for any renovations waned. Although she and Simon had worked hard on their home when they were young, they’d decorated the house to a certain point of satisfaction and then, blinkered to its natural decline, neglected it.
Finally she hammered a picture hook into the pristine wall above the bed. Her intention had been to place in the frame a favourite photo of herself and Simon together, but she also experimented with a particularly charming and seductively quizzical photo of the duck. It looked fitting there on the white wall above their bed. In the end, she chose to leave the frame around a blank white canvas.
She hadn’t heard from Simon since he left, nor had she tried to contact him.
GETTING UNDER HER SKIN
That night she collected a few of her clothes from their bedroom and closed the door. Downstairs, she stuffed them into the empty drawers of the spare room, her mother’s old bedroom. She undressed and climbed between the cold sheets, lying on her back, her head upon the same pillows that had cushioned her mother’s dreams. She looked around the flesh-pink room with its misty floral wallpaper, and at the door. This had been her mother’s territory, her outlook, before moving to Primrose Hill.
Hannah pulled the sheet over her face and closed her eyes. She could hear her mother’s voice saying to her, You know, your blood flows gently through your body and then it comes to . . . it comes to . . . The following words were elusive, but she knew Hannah understood.
How still she had become and how peculiar not to have the steady course of breath in and out of her body. Her blood was seeping from its customary highways and byways, drawn by gravity to the grave, collecting like ballast beneath her. She was aware of Hannah moving in the surrounding space. She could feel the presence of Simon there, too. One or the other touched her head, fiddled with her hair. But mainly it was the walking around her head, backwards and forwards. Her daughter, her little girl, Hannah. Simon standing back. He had been a caring, patient son-in-law. He was a good man. For that she had been lucky. Where was Margaret? Busy? She always had such important things to do.
There was no emotion anymore. No sadness. No fear. No anger. Just awareness. Aware that her life had been spent and that she had loved and had been loved. Aware of time squeezing itself into itself as she left them. Aware of the colour gone.
Chapter 17
FLIGHT
From the stairs to the bottom of the garden, heaving himself along a few feet from the ground, the duck flew, his wings thwacking the air. He came to a halt alongside her, his neck craning, his feet skidding in the stones by the pond.
Wow, Ducko, you clever boy!
She was so proud of him.
You did it!
He cocked his head at her as if to say, So what? She picked him up for a congratulatory cuddle, but he wriggled wildly, his feet clawing at her arm, until he landed heavily on the grass.
Baby’s first steps, and it felt as though he was moving away from her.
DREAMS OF THE AFTERLIFE
And her mother was undeniably a part of him now. The residue of her body was in the process of infusing with the elements of his own composition. Each day a couple of teaspoons gobbled up with his mash. And one day he would take her soaring, high above the world, free, as a bird, just as she longed for in her living dreams.
FIGHT
One morning Hannah was in the garden dreamily picking up cabbage tree leaves when a feathered monster ambushed her, intent on eating her toes, her ankles, her legs. She fled, springing over the pond and onto the bridge, through plants to the other side. In vain. It was still tearing at her feet, a pterodactyl with wings spread.
She darted behind a chair on the lawn, using it to shield herself. Her pursuer changed tack. She dropped the chair. Lunged to catch the snapping beast, but it twisted its serpent neck and ripped at her hand. She hurled the thing off.
It gathered itself. Gripped the hem of her jeans. They spun. Whirling dervishes. Feathers, white blur. Dancing, fighting, courting. Whatever. She didn’t know.
They froze for a second, staring at each other before it rushed in for the kill again. She dived, grabbing its beak shut, but it tugged away. The strength of it! It flew at her, chomped at her hopping feet. And then suddenly it stopped and sidled away.
She watched him, panting.
It was over.
Ducko.
She gingerly picked him up and, sure enough, he allowed her to place him on her knee. They sat passively on the grass as her heart and breathing settled. She examined her wounds. Her arms and feet marked with red and purple welts. Her hand bleeding.
Was this something ducks did? Were all waddly old plodders host to nasty nimble ninjas? Was he a Trojan duck? She rubbed her fingers deep into the feathers over his chest. Flakes of duck dandruff floated to her clothes, to the grass. He craned his neck, pulled his head back.
She gently placed her hand around his beak. It was feverishly hot. The minuscule feathers around his face were moulting, to reveal a red wartiness, a thumping raw skin of blush.
Ducko. What’s going on? We could have really hurt each other.
Even amidst the ferocity of it all, she’d been anxious that she might step on his head, or any part of him.
It happened again a few days later. She had just covered his hutch with the tarpaulin as she did now each evening, and was preparing his food. Once again he went for her feet, his wings flattened. She grabbed his beak shut and yelled at him. NO! He yanked his head away, snatching at the skin of her hand. She picked him up and threw him into the cage, but he was out before she could swing the door closed. Again she managed to get him in, and this time closed the door, but the next second he’d barged through and was upon her. He was a wing-beating devil. She flung him with force to the end of the cage and thrust the door down with a spade shoved against it, then a large stone. All was still. She stood gasping, listening until she heard a movement. He was eating.
Back up at the house, she inspected the new bruises. She tried to analyse what might be triggering these attacks. Not enough snails? Not enough foraging? Lack of attention? Did he hate her? Was she feeding him the ashes of a maniac, and not her mother at all?
All the following day she kept away from him, apart from cautiously letting him out of his cage in the morning. For a while she watched him silently from the top deck as he listlessly pecked at a piece of straw on the lawn. Then he cocked his head and stared at her. Neither said a thing, but she felt he was unfriendly. She was relieved when she was able to put him to bed without a hitch.
The next day he appeared cordial and calm, darting at beetles and crickets exposed as she pulled a few weeds from the garden.
This is better, Ducko, said the woman. We’re friends again.
What are you talking about? We’ve always been friends.
Come on, she said. Those attacks. What’s going on in your head?
He tapped his chest several times with his beak. He wasn’t going to answer the question. She didn’t expect him to. It was unfathomable. The answer lay in the treatises of animal behaviourists. It was nothing to do with love or betrayal. This, at least, was the counsel she gave herself. He plodded away from her, scooping his beak into the loose soil, sucking up water collected on a large yellow leaf.
The next time it occurred, just as she was beginning to relax with him, he was even more determined. She was bringing in the washing and he made his way towards her from under the deck. He pecked in a casual manner around the clothes in the wash basket. Then he leapt up to perch cockily upon the pile of c
lothes.
King of the castle, eh Ducko? she said. But I’d rather you got off my clean washing.
She was unpegging a white towel. He flew from the clothes and started to have a go at the towel that hung from her hands. She dipped the towel to cover her legs, but he pushed through to her feet, tugging at the sandals she was wearing. Then he struck her toes. Viciously.
NO!
She flicked the towel at him.
NO! Stop it!
He paused. His wings were extended ominously. Then he charged again. She thrashed the towel in the air towards his face, but this only made him more furious, attacking her feet, her legs, flying at her arms. They were two wild things.
He stopped, his feet apart, and eyed her.
Ducko, she panted. No, no, not this. Let’s stop. Good boy.
At last he’d come to his senses. She was his kind and loving foster mother, his fellow forager, his soul-mate.
He sprang upwards and flew at her face, his claws scratching at her neck. She could smell the hot muskiness of his body as a wing whacked her temple, bone on bone. She reeled, shoving him away with her forearm. When he came at her again she flung the towel over him, felt for his wings folded against his body and held him down, struggling, on the grass. She couldn’t believe his strength. His head was motoring maniacally beneath the towel. She tucked the cloth beneath his belly, wrapping him up loosely. She grasped him firmly against the ground, careful not to injure him, and then released her grip and ran. Looking back, she could see him still dealing with the towel before she escaped into the house.
She was a battered thing. Her arms and feet were like an old woman’s, her skin covering patches of tamarillo flesh. There was already a painful lump by her eye. She dabbed disinfectant then antibiotic cream over the deep scratch down the side of her throat. If the duck was her mother, she wanted her dead, there was no doubt about that. If the duck was just a duck, it was not the duck she used to know. The tadpole was metamorphosing into Mr Hyde. The kitten was now a tiger.