Mateship With Birds

by Carrie Tiffany

  Harry gets up to make himself a Milo. He shakes the kettle to check the water level. Sykes’s Bag Balm is very good for burns; he has some in the dairy. Vera is so small he could easily carry her if the paddocks are too rough underfoot. And he can cut up Eva’s food with the knife from the pouch on his belt. He sees picnics in the shade and perhaps swimming in the irrigation channel in the evenings – Harry floating like a log in the middle of the channel for Vera and her sister to hold on to if they lose their grip on the bank – if they become frightened in the deeper water. The water would cause the girls’ blouses to cling to them, outlining the curves of their chests. Harry picks up his mug and goes to stand by the window in the front room. He can’t see any lights coming from Betty’s house, or from Mues’s. He sucks the scum from the top of his drink and turns off the light.

  Harry is riding down Saleyards Road on the Waratah when he sees Betty driving towards him. She’s coming home from work. They pull up, shoulder to shoulder on the bitumen, and she winds her window down. She’s wearing a spearmint-coloured cardigan he hasn’t seen before.

  ‘How’s the herd?’ Harry says.

  Betty has to shout so her voice can be heard over the chug of the motorcycle. ‘Same as always. It’s hard being old. They live in their memories.’

  Harry nods.

  ‘You must have the odd memory yourself?’ Betty says teasingly. ‘Even a young chap like you must have a memory or two?’

  They don’t come with active remembering. But every so often one pushes through. Harry saves it up for her, a little awkward, a little shy in the retelling.

  ‘Slipping into a pit of muddy water near the dam wearing a new yellow jumper …’

  ‘My grandfather standing at the window and waving us goodbye. Up close I didn’t like how his beard grew around his lips. I didn’t want to sit on his knee. They laughed at me when I put my hand over his mouth. I didn’t want anyone to see his lips. But through the window he looked fine and tall. He looked like God …’

  ‘A horse with a white stripe running along its nostril. It put its head down to me and sniffed my face and hair. It seemed to be showing me where the milk went – that it drank milk up its nose. I thought if I was ever on my own, if my mother and father were dead, I should go to that horse …’

  ‘Standing in the bedroom of a house – maybe an uncle or aunt’s house. The beds were pushed together to make a double. The bedspread was too small to cover both beds and I could see the sheets poking out underneath. The sheets were yellow. I chundered on the floor …’

  ‘Winning on a daily double at the Bendigo races then losing the betting ticket in the gents …’

  ‘My wife on the day we got married. Edna on our wedding day …’

  Every night after tea – always an early tea – Edna asked Harry if he’d had enough to eat.

  ‘I’m full up to Dolly’s wax,’ Harry would say, patting his neck.

  She warmed her hands on his belly in winter. She squeezed the pimples on his back. He fell asleep with his hand in her bush. Sometimes, just as he was getting out of the bath, she took his cock in her mouth.

  There was no baby, month after month. And then she didn’t like the farm. She said it wasn’t the farm she didn’t like, it was the shit. They were surrounded by shit. She could see it splattered across the paddocks out of every window of the house.

  Monday, Wednesday, Friday: honey on toast. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: jam on toast. Sunday: eggs. Harry tried to be nice. It made things worse. He yelled at her; she called him a mean article. She slammed the bedroom door on him and told him to go and sleep with the shitty cows. In hindsight that was the end of it – Harry jackknifed on the couch, Edna alone in the bed. Family life …

  Harry read about a campout for the bird observers’ club at Echuca, a weekend of mateship with birds. Edna said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ But they borrowed a tent from her brother and lined Mues up to do the milking. On the morning they were leaving, Mues didn’t arrive and Harry couldn’t raise him at his house. Edna was disappointed, angry, close to tears. Harry gave her the keys to the Dodge and told her to go on her own. He took his good binoculars out of his bag and his copy of Neville Cayley’s What Bird is That? and put them on the passenger’s seat. Edna hesitated for a few minutes. She walked around the car. The cows watched them from the fence. They were agitated and started to bellow.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Why bloody shouldn’t I go on my own?’

  In dairy country it gets dark from the ground up. The pasture, the mud on the laneways, the wetness of the land, rise to meet the linen skies. The daylight fades; then it fades again. The trees drip their black leaves; the last screech of the cockatoos. Harry stayed outside as long as he could, until the ground was murky and his feet were no longer visible. He walked cautiously in case he stumbled; his weight held back at the ankle. The kitchen door shutting behind him; his socks on the lino; water clattering into the kettle; a match struck to touch the gas … He took a Sao and ate it dry just to put something in his mouth, just to hear the sound of it breaking rudely in his head – like kindling; like words.

  Edna didn’t look at the birds. She followed Alec Gedge around taking notes for him and holding his camera. The letters started when she got home. He used the official stamp on the envelopes: Mr A. Gedge, President, Birds Observers’ Club of Victoria, with a fantail underneath, its feet trembling because of the ink. Two months later Gedge came and collected her. Harry walked out into the paddocks when he heard the car on the road. His tongue tasted curdled in his mouth. The cows were surprised to see him out among them then, at lunchtime. She told him she needed to be on her own for a while, to develop herself and her interests. She left an address in her maiden name: Edna Orchard. Harry didn’t write – except to sign the papers.

  A year later, in The Emu:

  A PAIRING OF INTEREST

  A social event of significance took place last month when our popular and energetic Secretary of the Bird Observers’ Club, Edna Orchard, was married to another of our esteemed members, Mr Alec Gedge. We extend our hearty congratulations to the newly minted couple and wish them many happy years on the nest together. At the wedding breakfast a series of Kodachrome slides were shown of the Easter campout at Rosebud. The slides showed an unsuccessful operation to remove tangled fishing line from the head and neck of a little tern and the autopsy of several terns that had ingested fishing line.

  At dawn Michael is pulling the tinny up the Gunbower, feeling the cold water heavy around the oars. He rows from sharply hinged elbows, his belly and shoulders held still against the wind, his slim hands folded around the oars – pressing in, pressing out, pressing back. He doesn’t need to look over his shoulder; the creek ahead can be judged by the creek behind. The same thick race of water held in by a fringe of gum trees on each bank and the cumbungi dense beneath them. He edges the boat into a patch of reeds. The knife, the rod, the net and the bucket are scattered at his feet. He rinses the knife blade in the water, dries it on his shorts, pushes it into the skin of his forearm, pushes again, makes himself wait for the moment in between the slap, slap of the water against the side of the boat before the final cut. Blood leaps behind the blade. His heart flushes to attention, he feels the pain in his chest before his arm so he is able to look right into the wound; to see the softness of the flesh and the way it accepts the blade – like fruit, or cheese – like anything soft and wet that can be cut. He binds the cut with his handkerchief, leans back and rests his neck against the prow of the boat. The light is coming up quickly and with it the whine of mosquitoes moving just above the water. He closes his eyes. Iris Glassop’s heavy globes bouncing, bouncing as she shoots for goal; Noreen Bird’s peaked volcanoes stretching her sweater, staring straight at you as you pay for your chewing gum. The spill of flesh around Dora’s armpits; the hair there, too, floating on the water when they are swimming. The twin rolls that jiggle over the top of the music teacher’s bra. His sister’s fried eggs. The dark outline
of his mother’s nipples through her nightie.

  There’s a clenching at the base of his cock. He braces his knees against the sides of the boat to steady himself.

  The bicycle is painted black. Coming home from school Michael rides in the middle of the road as if it has been made for this purpose. He crouches low over the racing handlebars. The grey road slips away fast beneath him. Primary school finishes half an hour earlier than high school and if Little Hazel has made good time she waits for him at the intersection and asks for a dink. Sometimes he says yes. Sometimes he says no, and by the time she gets home he’ll have changed and prowled around the kitchen getting something to eat and headed off to the creek or to Harry’s.

  Louie is curled up on the edge of the verandah. However casually cruel Michael might be to his sister, he leans down to scratch the cat under her chin and says her name as she blinks her yellow eye at him. There’s wood for him to chop and the vegetable garden to weed and water, but he’ll do that later – just before Betty gets home. Right now Michael likes to move through the empty house on his own. He likes the smells of the family; the stale milk in their bowls on the sink, the crumbs on the table, the jasmine that has died and dried out in its jam-jar vase. He likes the calendar from the co-op hanging on the back of the kitchen door with each square crossed out in black showing how much of the month is behind and how much is in front. With three pikelets in his hand he moves through the quiet rooms and out the back door where he pisses by the step and chews at the same time. His mouth gets so full up with the clammy dough he has to take in extra breaths to get it swallowed. He heads out across Foot Foot’s paddock towards Harry’s and has the sensation that he’s walking back into himself. That the day at school – lining up on the asphalt quadrangle, scuffing his shoes on the wooden floors, leaning against the concrete toilet block to smoke at lunchtime – has been a kind of skimming across surfaces; that he’s moved through the day without ever putting his weight down. Here, walking across the paddock, he feels his ankles soften to take account of the uneven ground. He picks his way through the clumps of cape weed and over the mounds of dirt left by the plough. There’s a rhythm to it. A way of placing your feet so they are receptive to the ground beneath.

  In two years’ time he’ll have a bitter argument with his mother about a clerical traineeship in Swan Hill and he won’t be able to explain to her why it is he wants to farm.

  Harry is in the machine room adjusting his new Baltic Simplex. It doesn’t require lubrication. It is fitted with a control tap to suit individual cows, and an unbreakable glass observation bowl with a hygienic removable plug. The natural action of the cups supersedes all others. A free book is available by writing to: The Man in Charge, Baltic Simplex Machinery Co, 446–450 Flinders Street, Melbourne. The Simplex breaks down, on average, every fourth milking. The rubber inflations, the part that fits over the udder, require constant tensioning and repair. They crack and wear out. So if it isn’t the motor or the vacuum or the lines, one of the cows will spring a leak at the peak of her let-down, causing milk to froth out of the cups and piss all over the floor. Harry has written to The Man in Charge several times since purchasing the machine, most recently in plain language. He has received three copies of the free book. The books are all the same – promotional pap. They talk the machine up and don’t countenance that it might ever break down.

  Michael is already in Harry’s kitchen when Harry gives up and heads in. Harry has his house provisioned for all of Michael’s likes. In the cupboard is Michael’s special Promite, his favourite blue plate sits on the draining board, the kitchen table is stacked with books on farming, birds and cricket. Harry is surprised to find Michael standing at the draining board. He has a copy of Woman and Home open in his left hand. The big flat page is starting to fold over under its own weight. Harry can see it is open to ‘A Hard Choice for Vera’ – the page with the drawing of Vera trying on a tennis dress and looking at herself waist-up in the mirror, cheerfully unaware of how the dress pulls across her plump breasts. The top button of Michael’s school shorts is undone and his right hand is down the front of his underpants. His jaw is clamped and the muscles in his neck are taut and stringy. When he hears Harry at the fly-wire door he bends over, grabbing at the front of his shorts. Harry says, ‘Oh dear!’ Michael drops the magazine. Harry lowers his eyes and backs quickly out of the door, noticing, along the way, that the floor is due for a sweep.

  Ten minutes pass. Michael finds Harry sitting in a patch of sun on the verandah pretending to read the latest issue of the Dairy Journal.

  ‘The bloody New Zealanders have got there first,’ Harry says, stabbing the journal with his finger.

  Michael sits down next to him and picks up the binoculars from where they are resting on top of the milk ledger. ‘Where first?’

  ‘All the biggies – all the most important questions of our time: milking speeds, rotary pumps, stripping. Years of stripping every udder after every milking, meetings and circulars and standing orders on ruddy stripping, and according to the Kiwis it makes no difference at all. No increase in mastitis, no loss in butterfat production.’ Harry reaches into his pocket for his pipe.

  ‘Isn’t Jones on Saleyards Road a Kiwi?’ Michael asks.

  ‘Too right he is and I’ve never rated him.’

  Michael lifts the binoculars to his face and scans the tree-tops down by the channel. Harry taps out his pipe. It is easier not to have the boy’s eyes on him.

  ‘I’ve noticed you’ve been a bit different lately, with Dora around and that.’

  Michael says, ‘Mmm,’ but doesn’t lower the binoculars.

  Harry strikes a match against the timber boards. ‘Do you need an explanation of things – of things with girls? Of … details of the workings?’

  Michael swallows loudly and sucks his lips. Harry takes it as a yes. They are both relieved to be alerted to a rustling in the bundy box behind the outhouse. Club-Toe is hopping around frantically; she’s just dropped a skink and can’t see where it has got away.

  The whole family flies in formation

  across the stubble of the lucerne as it burns.

  A crack clean-up squadron

  expertly trained, perfectly equipped

  to eliminate every mouse,

  skink,

  beetle,

  locust,

  larvae,

  that the fire flushes out.

  I’ve been planning

  to time the evening chorus

  – when they start and how long they perform.

  I’m usually in the house

  and putting the kettle on.

  Not sure though if I reach for the kettle

  when I hear the first note,

  or I just register it while I’m at the tap?

  Perhaps they’ve trained me?

  Perhaps I’m Pavlov’s dog –

  can’t have my tea until I hear them sing?

  I heard a squeal behind the dairy.

  Club-Toe was on the ground with

  a half-grown rat

  by the neck.

  She dragged it over to the fence

  and bashed it senseless

  against an upright.

  For the next ten minutes I watched

  as she ran it through her beak

  – until the rat was soup inside its skin –

  then she swallowed it,

  in two swift gulps.

  Three small beaks;

  two whole,

  one partial,

  inside the pellet this morning.

  Wagtail nestlings,

  or maybe fantails.

  Useful kinds of birds,

  when they are alive.

  I farm the land,

  they farm the air.

  We share roughly the same boundaries.

  I buy my ground with money,

  they hold their air with voice and flight.

  Tiny and Club-Toe fly trapeze

  between the sugar gums along the front fe
nce.

  They fly a fat line – swerving into the territory

  of the scruff-headed family from Mues.

  And two of Mues’s birds do the same back.

  Ritually crossing the line somehow marks it

  – reinforces that it exists.

  Just three tonight:

  Mum, Dad, Club-Toe.

  Tiny is missing.

  They sing the evening in regardless,

  bend the sound around the branches,

  finish with an operatic cackle.

  Why the band of dark feathers across Dad’s face?

  It veils the shining eye,

  allows him to look without being seen

  – to act in dim innocence.

  On the banks of the channel I watch Dad

  dive-bomb an ibis from behind.

  He slams his bladed beak

  into the back of ibis skull

  – not to claim that bird

  but so, in the instant of terror and surprise,

  the tongs of the ibis beak open

  and release a frog.

  Dad predicts exactly where the frog will fall,

  beaking it through the belly.

  Why hunt when you can steal?

  Tiny was killed

  by the milk truck yesterday.

  I found her body on the road.

  She’d been cleaning moths

  off the headlamps.

  From a National Geographic at the dentist:

  ‘The lights of a car or motorcycle

  are not so deadly

  as the prevailing lights

  of a lighthouse.

  One night’s casualty list

  at Eddystone, England:

  76 skylarks

  53 starlings

  17 blackbirds

  9 thrushes

  and a few of

  10 other species.’

  It is a feature of many Australian farms

  that timbered paddocks skirt the road.