The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  As soon I was in the safety of its walls, I slammed the door shut and secured the lock and wedged a chair beneath the handle just in case. If I’d had a knife in my grasp, would I have used it? Billy had set those objects around me, laid me in his bed like a wren in his house, a sacrifice to his desires. How long had he used me? How long had he planned his revolting seduction?

  The lyrebird’s eye peeked out from under his wing, glinting in the dim light before, with a swoosh of his tail, he returned to sleep. If Billy followed I would let him have more of what I had given him already, but in a greater dose. In the shed were rakes, hoes and shovels – if he touched me again I would do more than leave six little berries on his cheek.

  What had I expected by trying to talk to the dead as if it was some sort of trick? My father was in my thoughts every day. I didn’t need Billy or any man to tune me in. My father was in my blood, just like all my ancestors were, each travelling through my veins. The gift of my life had come through him. I didn’t need to talk to the dead; they talked to me through every pulsation of my heart. I was the message. There was no question I needed anyone else to answer. There was no question I couldn’t answer by looking to myself.

  I sat down on the cold bed and the room spun around me. The tail of whatever poison Billy had given me still coursed through my system. I looked around me. At the bottom of the stack of Ari’s things was a book I hadn’t seen before. I pulled it out, the papers crackling with newspaper cuttings – Houdini’s name stamped in black type across each one. I flicked through the dates 1910 to 1929. From Houdini’s arrival to the Houdini hoax. I could barely believe my eyes. I blinked but the words remained. HOUDINI SPEAKS had been a hoax? I read the whole article, my eyes moving fast across the page, afraid to take a breath. Bess Houdini had confirmed that the medium must have known the code that she thought had been hers alone – Houdini had not spoken to her beyond the grave. Her grief had blinded her. Her longing for reunion had made her clutch at whatever remnant hope of him came close.

  Bess had been pushed into the background as Houdini’s star had risen. Did she miss the applause of her early days, when she had been more than just a wife or an assistant, her name sharing the headlines with the man she loved? Her name, after all, was shaped in the same lights, they shared the same stage and the same bed as they metamorphosed and merged into each other night after night. Perhaps all dear Bess wanted was to be the magician herself, to believe one more time that she could step through time and find things as they had been before he went away.

  Somewhere in the house I heard a door slam, making me start to my feet. I grasped a metal rake and laid it across my lap and waited, but no other sounds followed. The currawong swivelled up her tail like a question mark. Sitting on Ari’s bed I watched the shadows grow and lengthen as the sun crossed the sky. I listened, alert, but still Billy didn’t come.

  The parrot stepped from one foot to the next agitatedly and swooped down and landed on my shoulder, chattering in my ear. I took some seeds and offered them to him from my palm, but he kept leaning over to my mouth, preferring to nibble for them on my lip, a parrot’s kiss.

  With the parrot running his beak through my hair, a thought came to me. Here I had everything I needed. On Ari’s bed were the costumes I had placed there what seemed days ago but what must have been just yesterday. Miss du Maurier’s father’s old morning suit, so similar to my father’s wedding clothes, sat draped in the arms of the old bridal gown, a ghostly embrace. I peeled off my torn trousers and slid on the pair that belonged to Ari’s costume. The cloth was an icy slip up my legs and I gasped as I shakily fastened the buttons. There was no time to lose. I didn’t know what Billy had told Clay, but it was nothing I couldn’t undo. If Billy showed his face again at the theatre I would have him named for what he was; there would be no escaping the power of my accusation. If I walked fast I could make it. I transferred the letter that I had written to my mother, but had failed to send from the old trousers to the new. It was no longer flat, but curved to the shape of my thigh, the print no longer fresh, but to my mother the news would be.

  My father had asked me to take care of her, and I had tried. Working at the petrol service station to cover our expenses, making sure the cutlery drawers held only blunt butter knives. I tried to keep her angry Lord away. But leaving with no word? I owed her that. I would not be responsible for the chasm of her grief opening wider, but neither was I going to fall into the chasm that my father’s death had created. He would have wanted me to fly, in any direction that I could.

  I gathered up all I needed and hesitated at the door, peering through the window to make sure Billy was not waiting for me there. I rushed out into the late afternoon and slipped out through the back gate and into the lane, a birdcage in each hand, the swan cape streaming behind me. There was still time.

  I went straight around to the side entrance; some of the performers were already arriving for the first show of the evening. Their eyes widened when they saw me. A cleaner walked up the red-carpeted aisle with the vacuum bellowing where my torch had shone. Mr Clay was running through the programme with his secretary when I entered. The cord caught in my feet and was liberated from the socket, the noise stopped and I had my first solo audience of three.

  ‘I do apologise, Mr Clay, but there will be a change to the act tonight. I am not sure what Billy Little told you …’

  Clay removed the cigarette from his lips, his bemused expression at my awkward entrance vanishing like smoke. ‘If you left a message with Little I didn’t get it and probably never will, since he no longer works here. He has missed too many shifts. Head along backstage, we’ll fit you in.’

  I did not have time to think through the machinations of Billy Little; all I knew was that I had found a hole in his net and I had been lucky to wriggle through.

  The dressing room was empty except for the birds and me and my quickstep heart. I felt Ari’s absence in its quiet. He would be back, I knew it now, but would he even consider staying? I let the birds out of their cages; the parrot flew to the dressing table and looked admiringly at his new mate in the mirror. The currawong flipped her tail and swooped to the rack of clothes, a note curdled in her throat. The lyrebird stepped daintily over the edge of the cage door, his tail sweeping around him. I pulled off my shirt and cape and put on the suit jacket, the tails dipping like my own wings, the cape my feathers. I heard voices come through the wall of the neighbouring dressing room; others were gathering.

  ‘Thirty-minute call,’ the stage manager called, knocking on each door along the cramped corridor, which sent the thrill of goose bumps up my spine. When he arrived at my dressing room, I called out to him, and he looked surprised to see me on my own. I explained the last-minute changes. ‘Good luck, Miss del Mar,’ he winked at me and I felt the boldness of my plan begin to unfold.

  In the mirror, the parrot’s chalky green tail grew white from brushing at a puddle of spilled face powder. I rubbed two blushes of rouge into my cheeks and ringed my lips with red. I was almost ready. The fifteen-minute call came, the stage manager’s voice booming down the hallway, the audience already starting to fill the auditorium. My reflection in Ari’s costume looked back at me blankly. Something was missing. I found the trunk and pulled it open. The top hat gleamed like the black shellac of a gramophone record. I set it atop my head with a tap. I lifted the lyrebird into my arms, his tail feathers melting into mine. Together we looked like a silky note, a treble clef, the herald of a new start. The parrot came at a whistle and sat on my shoulder, the currawong came at a click of my tongue.

  When I stepped onto the stage, the audience was like a mountain in front of me, the curved mass of them on either side of the aisle leading up from the orchestra pit. The spotlight swelled like the sun and the lyrebird dropped from my arms and flicked down his tail – his notes and my voice a duet. When he swished his tail, I swirled my cape, a mirrored reflection of each other as we danced, his throat bobbing with the sound of Ari’s violin, the te
ars in my eyes making prisms of light. The currawong sang her chortled prayer. The lyrebird chortled with the currawongs voice, a reply.

  I asked for three volunteers, and all across the audience people rose up. The birds swooped over their heads, the currawong leading the way in her black and white glide. The lyrebird followed close behind, his tail hanging low, brushing the hair of the heads just below, a benediction of feathers. The parrot took his roost upon the plentiful nests of hair – the audience all achatter until I spoke.

  ‘Please rise,’ I motioned with hands to the trio that had the birds upon their heads. A man with the parrot atop of his head coughed and the parrot screeched. The lyrebird coughed and screeched in an echoed reply and the audience applauded. The lyrebird made the sound of a hundred hands clapping, reducing the audience to a superstitious hush. The currawong’s whip and soar song bubbled out and the lyrebird matched it with unequalled joy. The woman whose head the lyrebird had landed upon quivered, feeling the trembling flick of those tail feathers creep from her back and radiate out in front of her face, a fern’s fronds of feathers. The lyrebird sung out then, starting quietly with the tinny notes of the wireless, before falling into the first few bars of an ecstatic symphony.

  ‘My little sisters, the birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, for He hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere,’ the words rose out of me like smoke. The words on the back of the Sunday school card, Saint Francis’s sermon to the birds, shivered through me.

  I whistled and the parrot returned to my outstretched arm and together we vanished into the trunk, the light turning to a slit before it was gone beneath closed the lid. A stagehand pulled a screen across to conceal me and counted to three.

  I had disappeared, but the parrot remained.

  The stagehand opened the box and out flew the green blur to the rim of the trunk.

  Abracadabra, Shekinah, Mizpah

  Shekinah, Abracadabra, Mizpah

  Mizpah, Shekinah, Abracadabra.

  The parrot spoke then shot like a bullet over the audience and up above the stage, the spot man racing to follow, the light illuminating the bird like the Holy Spirit. Then the parrot flew with a swallow’s speed into the trapdoor of the stage and was gone. There was only silence – and then the thunder started, or so it seemed, but it was the sound of one hand meeting another, a communion of applause. The curtain swelled and closed and then I was up on the stage among the birds, my feathered cape streaming behind me in the gush of air that the curtain made as it drew open. I took the top hat from my head and ran the satin brim through my fingers before I bowed. This, after all, was where I belonged. Before the curtain closed I heard my father’s voice in my ears for me alone, the parrot on my shoulder covering me with his kisses.

  As I exited the stage, my fellow performers were clapping for me in the wings, Mr Clay among them. He patted me on the back, his encouragement muffled by the changing of the set. I was not a mark of my mother’s sin, I didn’t feel strange or exposed or anything other than myself, but how I wished Ari could have been with me, even though I had proved that I could do this by myself. The longing I had to see him made my heart bloom. Where was he now?

  The street was dark except for the glint of the quartz chips in the road, like shy stars in the Milky Way. As I walked home in my costume, the currawong and parrot on each shoulder, the lyrebird in my arms, I must have looked a strange sight, but it didn’t matter, for those I passed were to my mind wearing stranger costumes than mine.

  Walking towards the Oddfellows Hall in my direction were two rows of men, silent except for the crackle and flare of the scrub torches that lit up their green-tinged faces and their beards tied with ribbons and bells. Each of them held a staff. When we came to the point on the path where one party would have to give way, they lifted their torches, the heat from the fire blowing across my face and ruffling the birds’ feathers. Alert, the birds sank their talons through the cloth of my jacket right into my flesh, uncertain as to what danger there was. The men lifted their staffs, each crossing the other until an arch was made for me to pass under, their eyes following me as I moved through. The birds’ tails all fanned, ready to alight, but I was unafraid. After I had passed through, the men walked single file into the gate of the Oddfellows Hall, the firelight making the painted eye in the sun at the top window twinkle. All this time I had never noticed it, never having seen it lit. Shivers washed over me. Affixed to the wall was a sign – Annual Meeting of the Ancient Order of Druids Friendly Society – and I laughed.

  I laughed until tears swelled in my eyes and the lyrebird let out his kookaburra imitation in response to my own. I felt in my pocket for the envelope that I had carried for so long and shot it into the mouth of a passing letterbox, my long overdue message to my mother.

  FORTY-THREE

  Billy

  I froze at the sight of my own blood, afraid to touch my own skin, to feel the sticky damage the sharp teeth of the comb had done to my face. I hadn’t thought her capable of such violence, or that the opium would prove so ineffective. I stood up from the bed, shuddering. I never could abide the sight of blood – why else had I fled the field of battle? – it revolted me, its red spurt and ooze, its stink of iron, its filthy spread.

  I tore open the curtains to let in a mere trickle of dawn light and peered in the shaving mirror hung on a nail from the back of the door. The damage was minimal, a lovebite from a mouse, a pinprick, but still my stomach turned. She was less pliable, less chaste than I thought, the sharp-toothed little fox. I would catch her yet. Below, the street was quiet except for the screech of fruit bats gliding through the tops of the fig trees that lined the street, dropping their leaves and sap, making the street as sticky as a licked postage stamp. Where was she now? She had displeased me, I would seek her out. She couldn’t have gone far; she would be reined in by the dose I had given her.

  Outside the window, a dark shadow flapped close. Another bat? But then it swooped down again, drawing my eyes with it. I could not make it out against the sky, not until it alighted on the lace of the cast-iron balustrade, cocked its head and peered in through the glass to take a better look at me. Then it hopped down and pecked rapidly like a telegraph, three times upon the glass.

  It was that infernal bird, the craven crow that would pluck out someone’s eyes at the first opportunity. It was not going to have mine. I had seen them gorge themselves on the battlefield, supping on the slain, sending dread into the marrow of both sides. The stones we threw could not disturb them from their human feast. This bird would tear at me too. My fingers twitched. My knives were on the mantle, but with a quick swipe I had one back in my hand, the other a reassuring weight in my belt loop. The damnable creature might be quick, but surely my blades were quicker.

  However, that bird was only a harbinger for my true target, for below, down the street, came the bloody Star of David, traipsing up to the steps of his old abode. How dare he return? I had expected the mountains to erase all trace of him and his uncle. Why the hell was he back? He wasn’t going to have what was mine. The blood in my body hummed and the handle of the blade rattled in my hand, wanting to be free. He was the persistent stone in my shoe and I would shake him out. It was because of him that Lily harboured her resistance, that all my treasures now lay scattered and broken, all those precious things I had gathered and struggled so to retrieve – every one a little memory come to life, the thrill of sensation as each succumbed in her turn to my own particular and passionate persuasion.

  It was the blue hour. I was grateful that there was still some cover of darkness as I opened the front door. I would seek Lily out soon enough; she could not be far away, she would not resist a second time, her punishment my pleasure. But first the Jewboy need to be hobbled. In my pocket I had her braid and I fingered it for luck. The infernal bird was nowhere to be seen, night-shade pestilence that it was, though I could feel its pale blue blink observe my every move. I would not chance a blade on its carrion skin now. The Jew h
ad gone into the house; it was only a matter of time before he came out again, sniffing around for what I had already claimed, though he had no right to even breathe the same air as her, my Queen of Heaven.

  The sky changed above me, black to the darkest blue; dawn would be flashing her wares soon enough. But the blanket of night was still my servant, and my fingers were ready to do their work without detection. I stepped back into the shadows.

  I heard the door open, the complaint of the hinges in need of oil. I was ready, but the sound of the shoe as it struck the footpath rang wrong: it was the clack of a lady’s heel. I let the shadows swallow me again.

  ‘Will you be long, my boychick?’ It was the aunt, her voice strained. The Jewboy was in the doorway; her body obscured my target.

  ‘As long as it takes, Aunt Hephzibah,’ her replied. My, how he stood firm! He had come back for Lily, that was clear. ‘Uncle Israel is in the doctor’s good hands. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’