by Judith White
Well! she sang. Mr and Mrs Muscovy-Heron, huh?
Mind your own business, said the duck, and with that he started to preen every feather.
They never saw the heron again, but there was other feathered company. The duck often had a scattering of birds around him, mainly sparrows and a blackbird or two. There was also a turtle dove, dressed in hues of powder-pink and purple with a collar of brown spots. Her wings were a cloak of soft browns overlapping, the scales of a fish on a sky-swimmer.
The turtle dove would be perched on the fence waiting for the duck when Hannah let him out of his cage in the mornings. The attraction was food, wheat or maize left in his cage from the night before. But there was some sort of camaraderie between the duck and the dove. Perhaps they loved each other. Turtle doves were monogamous and paired for life. He certainly tolerated her as she strutted and cooed around him during the course of the day. She’d rush at the marauding sparrows until they lifted into the air out of her way, dropping again as she turned her back.
The sparrows increased in number and the turtle dove grew round and fat. Hannah was sure that if she patted the bird, it would bounce up and down like a ball.
Each day Hannah would leave a corn cob in the water bowl under the deck; the duck would tear at it hungrily, slurping and tossing it around until most of the kernels were gone. The sparrows and dove would finish it off, efficiently pecking into the cavities where he’d left juicy titbits.
Then the cobs started to mysteriously disappear. Hannah tied them onto a decking post with string cutting deeply through the kernels. Still the cobs were moved, dangling at the far reaches of the string. The duck now avoided the corn. Something was frightening him.
She brought out an electronic trap from the basement and left it under the deck. For three days nothing happened. Then within two days she had two plump shiny-coated electrocuted rats. Once upon a time, her cats would have done this job.
The following day, a sparrow lay dead in the trap. Another day, another rat. And then the turtle dove.
Hannah felt sick. She turned her back on the duck and held the limp dove in her cupped hands, studying the perfect symmetry of the markings of its feathers. It lay so peacefully, so unaccusingly. She put the trap away. The creatures she killed these days, either directly or indirectly, on behalf of her duck.
Finally, she forced herself to go for a reconnoitre to the man-made lake in the city where she knew other ducks would be. She parked the car and ambled over the grassy hillocks and down to the water’s edge. She pulled the plastic bag full of bread from her bag and sat on the rocky bank, her feet hanging over the side. From across the lake, swarms of birds streaked towards her.
Hannah hadn’t been near ducks since the arrival of her duckling. Now she was surrounded by black swans, honking and squeaking, with their supercilious necks and crimson faces spreading into scarlet beaks, their wings a fluster of ruffles and frills. They looked as if they’d been sitting at a mirror with lipstick and hairspray, preparing themselves for a ball. The lake was chopped up from paddling feet. Busy little black ducks — with short white beaks, white legs and feet — flipped upside-down to disappear disconcertingly under the water, until they popped up some distance away. Eels lurked around the rocks. Sparrows fluttered like leaves from the trees onto the grass behind her. Haughty geese waddled around a planting of flax to join the crowd. Pigeons strutted their stuff. They all joined in the feeding frenzy around her torn-up bread. None showed any interest whatsoever in her toes dabbling over the side.
She stared at the quacking mallards, so tiny in comparison to the draught horse of a duck that waited for her at home. There were no muscovy ducks. None of the ducks were shaking and shuddering as her own duck had been greeting her recently. It must use so much energy to do this. He was an overgrown humming bird grounded in a muddy paddock. He was a mangrove humming dog.
How would he fare if she brought him here, walked away, and never came back?
But how could she? What about dogs? Traffic? Other aggressive ducks?
And what about this warning she had read somewhere: Do not set a tame bird free. It can only lead to death or trouble or misunderstanding.
And then there was the most compelling reason. How could she release the duck anywhere now? How could she, now that her mother was irrefutably a part of him? A part of her mother at least. There were moments when she had to ask herself: What have I done? As her mother would say, whatever in the name of Heaven had got into her head?
Chapter 19
NIGHT VISITOR
Sometimes the night is a different place. For a person alone in a house, the night becomes another territory, teeming with all the secrets and lies and fears and regrets that have accumulated in that person’s life up until that moment. The night can whisper and thump, whack against windows, scratch and skitter above the ceiling. Depending on how you are at the time, you can listen, take note, be influenced. Or you can ignore the busy conference of the dark, let it chatter on without your attention.
On this particular evening, Hannah was ignoring the night as she worked, editing at the table by the heater where normally Simon would be working convivially nearby. The cold had forced all the outside noises into shelter, all the birds looped into knots, and the trees holding themselves motionless for fear that a shiver might start their leaves dropping one by one to the ground and so risk exposure to the approaching autumn.
Alongside the table, the blind over the narrow window was up. When she heard the crunching of twigs on the ground outside and glanced over without concern, all she could see was her own reflection. She returned to her work. The sound surfaced again, so she stood up from her chair and pressed her nose and forehead against the cold pane, just in time to see Eric standing there. The light from the window fell over his hairy chest, his milky white stomach and, as he turned, the folds of his back, his buttocks, his thin ballerina legs. He was an albino chimpanzee, escaped from the zoo of his mind, lumbering through the foliage of the garden. She unlatched the window and whispered into the still air.
Hey, Eric! Eric, are you all right?
She grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and rushed through the house to open the front door. Light from the hallway spilled into the garden beyond.
Eric?
Jungle smashing. A thud, then silence.
Tentatively she ventured outside, towards the crash.
Eric.
She picked her way through the bromeliads, the ferns, the trees to where lay the tangled white mound of him, tugging to free his foot from the root that had brought him down. She knelt alongside him, placed her hand on his cold damp shoulder. As he picked his head up from the mud, she caught a white flash of swivelling eye, an animal rearing from its tether.
Ssssh, she said to the father of the little worm that had made its way underground to sea, so long ago now.
She plonked herself down and draped the blanket over his back.
Eric. What’s wrong? Please stop this. Talk to me. What is going on? Where are your clothes, for starters?
She was tiring of pleading so stupidly. Lifting her nose in the air, she sniffed for evidence of alcohol. There was none.
He finally extricated his foot from the root and hoisted himself onto his hands and knees to crawl away from her, crushing ferns and mashing delicate groundcover with his ploughing shins. The chimp had become a caveman with his deerskins trawling each side of him through the undergrowth.
I would like an explanation.
How arch this sounded to her ears, but she needed to feel less helpless.
Then he stopped, collapsed himself into a noisy heap of blue blanket. Was he crying or laughing? He was a heaving, snorting buffoon and he didn’t belong in her garden. He was destroying her plants, crashing uninvited through her evening. After all this time of bewildering silence, to arrive like this! She was shivering now, and angry. She had work to do. She wanted him off her territory.
Nonetheless, she tried one more time.
Would you like a milky Milo? I could bring one out to you, or you could come inside if you prefer?
He sat up, clutching the blanket under his chin, his face a pathetic mask of hopelessness.
All right, he said.
Oh? Oh good. OK then. Outside or inside?
Out here’ll be fine, thanks. Sorry, sorry, he mumbled.
She jumped up and sprang through the foliage onto the lawn and inside. Quickly she prepared the Milo. Four heaped teaspoons in a large cup with sugar, and up to the top with milk. Two minutes in the microwave. She tested it. Just right. She took it out to him. He was gone. She called. No answer. From his house, his bathroom window flooded with light. Off again. Then the room next door on. Off. Then upstairs to his bedroom. Bugger him.
Trembling, she took the Milo inside, drank a mouthful, then filled it to the top with a good dollop of brandy. She sipped as she continued her work.
OBSESSION, ATTACHMENT AND ADDICTION
The following day was infiltrated with images of Eric lumbering about in her garden. She couldn’t concentrate on her work. His behaviour was irrational. If she’d known the contact details for his daughter, Sheila, she might have rung her. Why was he naked and had he been spying on her through the window as she worked? If he had only knocked on the door, she would have invited him inside.
But now, as she was walking along the waterfront, she felt that this pretty day held a message for her. The sea was sucking out to expose normally submerged rocks, a deeply inhaled tidal breath revealing the craggy bones of the Earth. She was flooded with questions and this day was trying to reveal something to her.
It had started with spotting a mother with a baby, in the company of an older couple all sitting in the sun on the stone wall by the path. The young woman had fat florid cheeks. Her eyes were big and moist, her lips thick and flaccid as they slurped kisses onto the bald head of the baby she clutched against her chest. She was tender with her devotion and more than generous with her kisses. And then Hannah realised with a degree of discomfort that the floppy baby was a life-sized doll.
As she continued to walk, she passed a woman with long grey wispy hair pushing a pram. Children and their parents had gathered around the pram, and Hannah peeped past them to see a perky lap-dog tucked under a grubby knitted blanket.
Looking around, she saw all the families lazily strolling by the beach. Parents clutching chubby hands, hugging babies, anxiously chasing toddlers as they wobbled through the sand towards the sea. Lovers pressed into each other. A teenage girl leaned over a stylish old lady in a wheelchair who curled a purple sea slug tongue around an ice cream. The girl gently readjusted a towel across the old lady’s chest, dabbing at a milky drool hanging from her chin.
And again Hannah couldn’t help but wonder about the chemistry, supplied by Nature, which made for attachment between one person and another, a person and another object, a person and a dog. A man and another man’s wife. A man and his cello. A person and her mother, her dead mother. An alcoholic and drink, a drug addict and his drug. A woman and her duck.
All these people clearly were attached in one degree or another to the object of their affections. But love. What was love and what was it all about? Was it all interconnected? Was it the same chemistry? Was love just chemistry, was addiction love? What was the nature of it all?
She thought of Simon and the intensity of feeling between them when they first met. And the long years they had lived alongside each other, their skin loosening into miniature folds around their eyes. She wondered where he was now and what he was doing.
And last night. Was that chemistry or chaos?
Hannah was mystified as to what might have burned so fiercely between herself and Eric so many years ago. She couldn’t evoke the man she knew then from the Eric of now. Did age bring its own brand of metamorphosis, from hot dog to curmudgeonly, heavy, slobbery old dog?
Then she recalled the time she’d lifted Max into her arms.
Oooof, she’d groaned, you are getting so heavy!
Max replied: Poppa’s stronger than you. Poppa’s a gorilla.
Well, she thought now, there you go.
REASONS (EXCUSES) FOR INFIDELITY
Because he had pushed her off the tight-rope. Because he’d made her laugh. Because he’d strung a love song through her heart. Because his chest felt like a landing place for her weary head. Because she didn’t have to stand on tiptoes to kiss him. Because the storm made her do it. Because he made her suddenly feel lonely. Because the smooth skin of her life had bulged like a cherry balloon. Because he looked sexy in black. Because it felt like fun. Because it was fun. Because he teased her. Because he was there. Because he told her that if she let him fiddle, he’d be her beau. Because her husband was so far away it didn’t seem to matter. Because once she opened the door and there he was, holding an empty picture frame around his head. You’re driving me up the wall, he’d said. Would you like to come to my place and hang around with me?
And then it was over. They avoided each other. She wanted to close all the windows in her house, pull all the curtains and sew them securely with rope, shift furniture against them to block out any sound, any stray sigh of his that might be floating by. But she didn’t, of course. And she needn’t have worried. There was no more music from the house next door. Just like that. It was as if a tree full of birds had been cut down.
When Simon arrived home from Uganda, that first night in bed she was paralysed. The world was silent as it strained to listen for every sound, every breath she took. Simon held her in his arms and waited for her. Finally she wept. She wept because she had missed him, and because she was missing Eric. She wept because she had lost a baby. She wept because she felt like a traitor. Simon held her gently and asked her why she was weeping. She cried more. He held her until eventually she was able to turn to him. He presumed it had been just because she’d missed him. But all the birds in that chopped-down tree knew there was more to it than that.
Quite a few months later, Eric met a woman who moved in with him. Suzie.
One day Simon said, We haven’t seen Eric for a while. Why don’t we invite them over for a drink?
Hannah said, Oh, I think he’s pretty involved with his new girlfriend. We should let them be.
But he invited them anyway. Suzie shoved aside all awkwardness with relentless cheery chatter. Gradually all the taut cords of longing between the two houses began to sag, then shed their scabby crusts before falling to the ground. The music started up again for a while. Hannah could hear Suzie’s strident singing along with his fiddle and she didn’t care. The woman couldn’t sing in tune anyway.
Not long after Suzie returned to her old boyfriend in Darwin, The Eketa Hoons went on their last tour. The singer developed nodules on his larynx and called it a day, and the drummer beat it to Nelson. By this time the hedge had grown, but until recently they’d always kept a natural gap as they popped backwards and forwards.
Chapter 20
SENTINEL
Now that the duck could fly, he spent quite a bit of time on the fat limbs of the magnolia tree winding across the deck. On the wide wooden railing, she’d left a water dish that was really a plastic cat-litter tray — one of several she’d bought and placed here and there around the place. As she worked she could watch through the window when he washed. She loved to see him slapping around in the water, beating his wings, his feathers shimmying and shivering, his body surrounded by an aura of mist against the sky. He’d dive his beak into his uropygial gland, plastering dobs of yellow through his feathers. Or he’d pace up and down along the tree limbs, moving from the shade of the magnolia leaves to the open railing, where the whole world lay before him.
She was amazed at his sense of balance . . . he was a poem whose multiple components each shifted and flowed in accordance with the position of the others as they vied for equilibrium, as he wrapped his rubber feet round the edge of his water tray, or stood on the deck railing, or a shaking branch. On a sq
ually day, he was a ship with an ugly red prow and a sail full of gusto, adjusting to every blast of wind buffeting around him. His tail would lift and drop to meet each wave, his body modifying its stance in micro-twitches to shift up down, up down.
Whenever she came into his view, his crest would lift in a stiff mohawk, his whole body charged with excitement. He’d turn to stand and stare at her as she moved inside the house, always searching for that eye-to-eye connection.
If she kept still as she worked, as long as she was within his line of vision, he’d pull up one leg deep into his feathers under his wing, and balance on the other, like a stork, ostensibly asleep with his white furry eyelids folded over his eyes — two fluffy mounds looking out of place in the boiling red of his face. Occasionally he would drop himself onto his belly and tuck his head into the feathers of his wing, and this was the stance she loved the best, because it suggested he was relaxed and at peace, and, despite his recent unnerving behaviour, that was all she wanted for him.
WHITE RAG TO A DUCK
Reasons. If only she could understand the reasons for the unprovoked attacks against her. She sifted through all the incidents she could remember, searching for a common theme or clues or triggers that might unravel the mystery.
She was thinking of the time, a while ago now, when she left a heap of leftover rice on the grass, with the idea that the duck might like to nibble at it, and should he not, she knew that other birds would wolf it up. But the duck acted warily, waddling sideways past the mound. She persisted, picking him up and placing him by the rice with his beak hovering over the top of it, but still he shied away, whining fearfully.
Then she noticed how he liked to attack the white plastic-covered cushions used for his night-time roosting in the cage. There was a pattern to the way he pecked at them, grabbing a piece in his beak and thrusting, before jumping on top to repeat the pecking once more.