The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  ‘We did it,’ I gasped. The feel of the light on my bare skin, the sound of the audience’s collective held breath, Ari’s seeing me – the warmth of it curled around us and sliced through the cool night air. Ari twirled me under his arm, there on the footpath outside the theatre, in the puddle of the streetlight, before he pulled me closer.

  ‘Let’s celebrate. If we hurry we could make the last tram to Bondi,’ he said, his feet already gathering speed and with them mine at the thrilling thought of it. I had never seen the sea. ‘We can collect the birds in the morning.’

  Quickly we filled the birds’ water and seed trays and rushed out into the street. The night was cold but the scent of the wine-scented magnolias was a promise that this short winter would soon give way to spring.

  The tram came to an incline and then went down a slight hill. For a moment I could see the ocean, the moon a fully veiled bride illuminating the white tips and ridges of the waves, then the tram dipped and we could see it no more. A gust of salty breeze rushed in. I didn’t think my lungs could breathe so deep; I was a human sail ready to take the ocean and call it my own.

  The tram slipped fast down to the beach, and for a moment I caught a teasing glimpse, a white crescent of sand in the moonlight, our descent seeming quicker than a slide down a slippery dip. As we crested another rise, Ari grinned and covered my eyes from the view, but I could hear the waves thrashing against the shore and my heart pounded in my chest. Slowly he unfurled his fingers from my face, offering to me the ocean, the big white curve of the beach and the galloping waves. I closed my eyes and opened them again, as if trying to fix my first sighting to memory.

  I stood on the esplanade dumbfounded. I could not take it in.

  ‘Take off your shoes,’ Ari coaxed, steadying me as I balanced to slip them off, then putting them in his satchel. The sand squeezed up between my toes with each step down, but trickled like silk as my foot rose.

  Ari laughed at my hesitant, cat-footed step. ‘My uncle was the same when we first came down to the shore, as if somehow the sand was a trick someone was playing with him. He was casting sidewise glances to see if anyone was laughing at his expense. My aunt sat on the esplanade wall and watched us, hesitant to have her feet on show for all to see.’

  There was no one foolish enough to be on the beach this late but ourselves.

  ‘Me, I tore toward the waterline and splashed in it before I could feel the waves retreat back. For a moment I thought I could swim back home.’

  ‘What happened to your parents that you ended up here?’ I asked.

  Ari’s feet slowed, his toes dug into the sand, and the moonlight cast a blue tint over his face. ‘I never met my father. I don’t think my parents were married,’ he said, his voice hesitant, the sea’s pounding carrying the rest away.

  ‘Well, they must have loved each other to have had you.’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  The spray blew up onto our faces. Ari grinned as he gathered up my hand in his and we moved forward to the ocean together.

  The sea was upon us, its big dark tongue plunging at our feet, the spittle of the foam erasing the daylight’s stamped footprints. The waters rushed towards us, a kiss from the mouth of life.

  The waves flowed around my feet, my legs. The water was cold, but the salty swell made my feet tingle, and the wave tore past our legs and was away before coming right back at us again.

  ‘To life!’ I shouted.

  The tide engulfed us again, the hem of my trousers dragging around my legs, a wet sail.

  ‘L’chaim. Remember us to Life, O King who desires Life, and inscribes us in the Book of Life, for Your sake O living G_d,’ said Ari as his hand wrapped around my waist and drew me in, his lips damp and salty against mine.

  I ran my fingers up through his hair and I kissed him back. A catherine-wheel went off in my chest, illuminating the places where no light had ever dared fall. The wind began whispering at our clothes and tormenting the caps of the waves scudding across the beach and tossing sand like malicious confetti. We ran back to the safety of the promenade, the tide cold on our heels. I sat on the stone wall and Ari gently picked up each foot, knocked off the clinging sand and eased my shoes back on. A tram rattled down to the beach, the actual last tram to Bondi, but the driver happily agreed to take us to the interchange, as he had to go that way himself. It was good to be out of the wind as I sat close to Ari, his body my shelter. He opened his satchel and handed me something wrapped in newspaper with a ribbon rosette.

  ‘For you,’ he smiled and I held the present close to my chest, wanting to kiss Ari again, the salt from his lips mingling with mine, but I could feel the gaze of the tram driver upon us and held back. But Ari’s hand still secretly encased mine.

  By the time we got back to L’Avenue, the street was strangely quiet, as if the wind had blown everyone else indoors. Ari’s eyes flicked up to his old room out of habit: all was dark, but Miss du Maurier’s house opposite crackled with electricity. We walked inside and the wind slammed the door petulantly behind us. Every bulb was on. The voices reached us before I could see who they came from. Ari released my hand and it fell limp to my side. We walked into the sitting room, and there sat Miss du Maurier with Billy playing mother, pouring tea from a steaming pot. Next to him was the woman I knew to be Ari’s aunt. She stood up shakily from her chair upon seeing Ari, her eyes puffed, her face still damp with tears.

  ‘Ari. He’s gone. Your uncle has gone,’ was all she could say before she crumpled like a handkerchief into his arms.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Billy

  The rumour ran through the theatre that my little neighbour, my Lily of the Valley, might just be, believe it or not, removing her clothes. I didn’t believe it. I was an all-consuming fire, each added whisper that ran past the ticketing window just adding more fuel. I wanted to stop up my ears, it was surely a furphy.

  Hurriedly, I put up the Closed sign, for I had calculated from the programme when their act would be. I ran to the auditorium, just in time. The Jew played his infernal violin and the satanic crow hopped onto Lily’s outstretched arm. I wanted to ring its bloody neck. I wanted it all to stop. I could see it all unfolding and, as infuriated as I was, there was nothing I could do. All I could do was taste my own bile and wish time to stop. It was all his damned fault.

  The bird’s beak plucked at some bows on her garments and I could do nothing, I couldn’t stop her defilement, all those eyes drinking her in as if she were some common whore. Then, for an instant, my rage faltered, for my Lily burned pure and naked before me and I struggled to take her all in, every last snowy part of her.

  Her skin was like water for a man dying of thirst. The swell of her hip, the curve of her breast, the little patch of blossom between her thighs. I tried to moisten my mouth with my own tongue, but I was a desert to which she alone could bring the rains. I wanted to protect her, to cover her. She was in the altogether and all alone. I would have concealed her if I could, from all the eyes that burned her precious skin. Then Lily disappeared and the parrot spoke in its singsong scrape, warped words.

  My rage consumed me again. The past roared in my ears and made me want to scream and tear my hair and rip my clothes. Merle’s face loomed in my mind – I wanted to gouge out her eyes, cut out her deceptive tongue. Crisp too. I would have drawn and quartered him, cut his flesh into tiny pieces, made meat for dogs out of both of them.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Crisp’s Elixir du Jour Medicine Show. If you have an ailment the Elixir du Jour is your remedy,’ Crisp began his oratory to the country folk, revelling in their wide-eyed reverence of his knowledge from the big smoke. Merle and I would stand on either side of the charlatan healer, holding up the bottles, with only a mere example displayed on the table, so there would be a stampede for them later.

  ‘Before I release the elixir for sale, at its more than affordable price, we shall hear testimony from those it has saved from the very pit of death. Step forth, Willi
am.’ I felt my blood simmer. William, William – the only man who ever called me William was my father. ‘William, when he first came to see me, was suffering from the effects of the war, which afflict so many of our brave boys. He was listless, depressed, seeing things that were not there, believing things that didn’t exist. William approached me outside my healing establishment, his eyes bloodshot, his hands quivering. He couldn’t even hold a pencil to write his name. Immediately I prescribed him a dose of Elixir du Jour and since then he has recovered his old talent with the blade, which soon, with his newly steady hand, he shall demonstrate.’

  I felt my emotions buck within me. How easy it would be to miss the red and white spiral painted on a bale of hay, have that knife sing into his bone. A simple accident, a tiny slip of the hand – who would blame me, survivor of shell-shock and the Battle of the Somme. But I threw a set of blades, each one arrow-true, to the target’s painted heart, just as he bade me do.

  ‘This is Merle, my adopted daughter. I found her wandering the water’s edge, peering down to the swell of the ferries, looking for her mother who had drowned. She had nothing and no one. She put her little hand in mine and there it stayed.’

  I didn’t know whether to believe Crisp or not, for he had a way of taking a seed of fact and growing it into a tree of falsehood, and we were all charged with tending to it.

  ‘Merle,’ Crisp continued, ‘displayed at an early age the rare and frightening ability to converse with those who have passed on.’ At that a dozen hands shot up in the air.

  Our research was ready. Most of the questions were pitifully easy to answer. When Merle was drawing her answers to a close, she would announce in her hoarse, otherworldly voice that with Crisp’s Elixir du Jour they would be able to communicate with the dead in their dreams. Crisp’s bottles of Elixir du Jour sold as fast as if they contained the tears of sweet baby Jesus, and Crisp grinned like a cat with a bird’s fragile bones between his teeth.

  In the last town, while Crisp went to see to the rooms, Merle drew me aside and kissed me with all her might. She pressed the span of my palm to the curve of her belly and whispered a surprising suggestive something in my ear. Then she smiled at me like I was the greenest of virgins, before she blinked demurely and waited for her father to escort her inside. After all this time, I was in thrall. Perhaps I had done my penance and the time had come when I could dip into her body again and be renewed. That first startling touch since we were back in Sydney gave me a fool’s deluded hope, for it was just a means of keeping me blinkered.

  The next day I woke at first light. The morning was clear, the blue spilling over the dry light of dawn, and despite the hay nesting in my hair, I felt as if the whole world was suddenly in my lap. All I need do was reach out and it would be mine. Merle would come to me where I lay, in kingly luxury with my coat over my shoulders, a piece of hay between my teeth, chewing it as if I had not a care in my kingdom. I waited for her footsteps on the gravel. But Merle didn’t come.

  I rose and splashed water on my face from the cracked enamel basin, then stepped out into the hotel courtyard. I went to the desk and lolled about, waiting for the clerk until I could stand it no longer, my finger hitting the bell with a staccato rhythm as urgent as Morse code. The smell of spitting bacon came unbidden, and then the clerk appeared, grease-stained napkin tucked around his neck, chewing before he spoke.

  ‘Yes?’ he said impatiently, not sure where to put his brandished fork.

  ‘I am here to wake up Doctor Crisp and his daughter Merle.’ The clerk looked at me like I was a madman. ‘At their express request to be woken at this hour and for no other,’ I added. Crisp had taught me well, or so I thought.

  The clerk threw a cursory glance at his guestbook before he gave me a shrug, his hand reaching for the telephone. ‘There is no one on the list of that name, sir,’ he said to me.

  What on earth did he mean? We had arrived all together; as usual I had carried their bags in. The same clerk had seen me do all this just yesterday. With the telephone clutched to his chest, he pressed down on the receiver, praying for the operator to speak.

  ‘Don’t you remember seeing me yesterday? I arrived with them.’ His finger was caught in the dialling wheel, but I didn’t care, I pulled the cord from the wall and watched as the wooden box of the phone splintered on the floor. That got his attention. He shrank back against the wall, his eyes wide at the trusty blade that I had strapped to my waistcoat. Now it had caught his eye, it was only fair that they should have an introduction.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me, please,’ he whined.

  I hopped over the counter. I had no intention of laying a finger on him; he was as pliable as a rubber band already. ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know who you are talking about!’ He was snivelling now, snot erupting from his nostrils.

  I pulled the register over and scanned the names. Of course Crisp would not use his own name: under last night’s date were only two guests.

  The bloody clerk had been well and truly Crisped. There they were, brazen as day, Mr J. H. Christ and Mrs M. Magdalene. My cup fucking boileth over. It was time for a crucifixion. I ran up the stairs to the room that had been theirs, as if I would find some trace of them still. I kicked open the door. There was just a mauve chenille bedspread tumbled onto the floor. They had obviously shared this bed: there was the unmistakable onion-skin stain of dried semen on the sheet.

  At first my mind leaped to the thought of incest and I wanted to slice Crisp’s bollocks off for doing such a thing to his daughter, but then it all fell into place. That bed was a taunt. Merle had been Crisp’s puppet; they had both played me as if I was nothing but a little lead soldier lined up before a marble cannon. Months of slavery and obedience, for what?

  My knife vibrated in my hand, speaking its revenge before I could even form the thoughts. Oh, my steadfast blade, she hummed in my fingers as she pierced the mattress, slashing it until it oozed feathers. But she wanted more, my silver point, sharp as a star, and who was I to deny her? She sang her cutting song through the pillows, jagging down the curtains, plunging in and out of the space where Merle’s heart would have rested, where Crisp’s flaccid penis would have been spent. A snow of down fell through the air, blanketing everything, attempting to erase their crime against me. Then a little willy-willy spiralled over the wastepaper basket, circling and circling, until it drew my attention. It was surely a sign.

  I plunged my hand into the bin and felt the touch of something slimy, and my stomach lurched. Piece by piece I pulled out the debris of Crisp and Merle: a half-eaten chicken leg, a broken bottle, a bundle of rags with a bloodstain – all curious enough. But it was the crumpled piece of newspaper that stuck to the side that drew my eye. I smoothed it, the black coming off on my hand. I scanned the page to find a clue, the broadsheet crammed with the news of the city. The suburbs’ names read like the names of friends – Stanmore, Darlinghurst, Chippendale, Surry Hills, Haymarket.

  THE ROCKS: A MYSTERIOUS DEATH

  The body of a man has been found outside his building from an apparent fall. It is not known at this stage whether the fall was an accident or suicide. The police have released the name of the deceased to the press in hope that his family may come forward, as he recently was the recipient of a deceased estate worth quite an estimable sum, which was deposited around his rented rooms. If anyone has any knowledge of the whereabouts of the son of Mr William Little, Senior, please contact the Argyle Street Police Station.

  He was dead and that was how I learned it. The words were smudged and dated the day after we left Sydney. Was this why Crisp had packed up shop and taken me hostage on the road? I’d been his captive and I hadn’t known it. He had known my father’s fate and had led me as if I had a ring in my nose, and I, compliant dumb beast that I had become, had followed. Now I was shipwrecked in the middle of dry nowhere with Buckley’s chance of getting back, with only dust for currency, while Crisp and Merle would claim the money and make merry on
what should have been my fortune. All this flashed through my mind before I could even dust off the feather down that had settled on my clothes.

  If I had believed one could talk to the dead, I would have asked my father all those questions I longed to have answers for. Who was my mother? Had I really made his luck run out? Was he pushed or did he fly? And the thousand-pound question, how did he get so much money? Could the old bastard have been squirrelling it away for years, smug in the knowledge that now I was apprenticed it wouldn’t be long until I flew the coop and he would be free to live like the lord he always presumed himself to be?

  He was gone, my father was no more. I couldn’t quite understand it – every time I thought of him it came with the fresh slap of remembering. I wanted to confront the son of a bitch for dying on me, cuff him about the ears and rain down every expletive upon his head. He may have not been the best of fathers, but he was mine.

  There was a clatter of applause like gunfire and it snapped me back to myself, banishing them all, Crisp, Merle and my father, from my mind. My hurt was a thing that had been nursed enough. I returned to the ticket booth, a strategy taking shape in my mind, until finally the crowds dribbled out and old Clay came for the money, his eyes like saucers at the sight of the swollen till – traitor money, her flesh sold into slavery, for coin. I would liberate her yet.

  I slid around the back to the stage door. There were more waiting there than usual, all stage-door johnnys for my Lily of the Valley. Let crows pluck out their eyes! They had the scent of her flesh and would not relinquish it. Blackbirds pluck off their noses!

  I slipped back around to the entrance and made my way into the theatre where the usherettes were harvesting the sweets that had rolled down the aisles. A cleaner was sweeping the stage, the tiny feathers that had drifted from Lily’s cape swirling into his dustpan. Where was she? Ducking behind the curtains, I found backstage deserted.