A Bird on My Shoulder

by Lucy Palmer

  ‘This could be very distressing for you,’ they said. ‘There are things we have to do and it would be better if you weren’t here.’

  I went outside and sat alone on the grass in our hopeful orchard. Under the shade of a blossoming apple tree and through its hesitant, budding branches, I watched with wonder the slow passing of indifferent clouds.

  The branch nearest to my face was finely smothered in a soft, green lichen which fanned itself out into bold and intricate lacy patterns. In the grass under my hand, I could feel a papery object of decay. Squinting, I held it up against the grey sky and saw the skeleton of a leaf, dried and discarded.

  I am being plucked out of my life by a guiding, unseen hand, the unknown path I know I have to follow.

  Its deepest imprint looked like a thumb. I imagined that at one time this leaf might have bent, drooping as I had so often done, to shoulder unexpected rains. Under a summer sun it might have curled like a cat, heavy with heat. But in these softer, shaded moments, as we waited for Julian to be taken away, it simply lay open in the palm of my hand.

  •••

  The men appeared on the front steps, pushing and pulling a shape on a stretcher to the waiting car; Julian was completely enclosed in a zipped white bag.

  I think they spoke to me. Something about the visiting hours and then being asked if I had any special requests.

  What are these people talking about?

  I went upstairs, avoiding the rumpled, empty bed, and scurried around looking for the death certificate they needed. I might have signed a piece of paper. I don’t remember. I returned to the sanctuary of the orchard.

  Finally, there was the sound of a heavy car straining to gain traction, digging deep into the gravel drive. It drove past me amid a slow cloud of dirt.

  •••

  The love that Julian’s older boys had for our children was something I never doubted, not for a moment. I, on the other hand, had long been insecure about my place in the family, even though I knew the boys had a high regard for me and appreciated how I had cared for Julian.

  Despite this, I still felt the quiet agony of the outsider. Over the years, I had witnessed the boys’ joy around the children and, with enormous goodwill on all our parts, we had weathered many storms together. I loved my stepchildren but I had to be realistic – they were young men who I had only known for a relatively short time and they still had lives and adventures to follow elsewhere. Without Julian, this new, uncharted landscape of family life stretched out before me, leaving me empty and fearful.

  Without Julian, I reasoned, perhaps I would not be tolerated anymore? And if I was to be cast out, what would this mean for the children? There was no logical basis for this feeling – but I had a very strong, almost visceral intuition that my place in the family was under threat from a force I could neither see nor understand.

  As if drawn by the clamouring voices in my head, Oliver found me in the orchard and sat down beside me.

  We talked about possible arrangements for Julian’s funeral and the plans we had for the next few days. ML was flying over from the Solomon Islands as soon as she could get a flight and her parents, Joan and Michael, were cancelling all their plans so they could drive up to the farm from Melbourne and help in any way they could.

  ‘I would hate to think that we won’t see you guys anymore,’ I said abruptly.

  Oliver looked genuinely surprised. It was clear the thought had not entered his mind. Like Julian, he was reserved and rarely expressed his deeper emotions – he was simply always consistent and honest. He looked at me directly, his sad eyes full of kindness.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he said.

  •••

  Last impressions count.

  The middle-aged woman at the funeral home was squeezed into a black suit. She greeted Mary-Louise and I with a fixed, sympathetic smile and gestured towards the open door.

  ‘Mr Thirlwall has been prepared for you and is in the viewing room.’

  I remember a door closing and the sound of retreating shoes squeaking on a padded carpet. ML, who had just flown in from the Solomons, was bundled into one of my warm winter coats. The lighting in the room was dulled by orange lampshades, and the air smelled slightly of industrial cleaner. ML put her arm through mine, a deeply comforting presence that neither held me back nor urged me forward.

  The world seemed to hover at a distance as I digested the unnatural scene. I had been adamant that I should come and say my last goodbyes, in part because I feared that I might regret it if I did not, but also because I had such a strong desire to see Julian again.

  I could feel ML’s breathing, long and heavy; life moving slowly in the presence of death.

  As we moved towards the coffin, there was Julian in his familiar clothes: a blue-and-white-checked shirt, green corduroy trousers, brown leather brogues and his wedding ring. A discordant thought flew into my mind. He was normally so fastidious. Why was he lying down with his shoes on?

  For a moment I debated whether to ask if they might be removed. I thought of his long, bony toes with the rounded toenails, of the drugs he took which made it too painful for him to walk on bare feet; the eight pairs of identical unworn shoes from England that sat in pristine boxes under the stairs.

  A telephone rang in another room, another life. ML squeezed my arm.

  I was transfixed by the absurdity of it all; the quietness, the awful piped music, the contrived stillness. I wanted Julian to wake up, to open his eyes and speak to me. ‘Hello, darling, how was your day?’

  I scattered onto his chest a bowl of wax petals that George had made the day after Julian died. Our small boy had been hunched for hours in fervent concentration as he dipped his fingers into the multicoloured candles that had filled the house, peeling the wax from his fingertips into a bowl when it had cooled. Around him, the air had swirled with visitors, voices, tears, flowers and phone calls. Later that morning, when Julian’s body was driven away, George continued to make his petals and did not look up.

  I put a handwritten letter by Julian’s side and drawings from the children. I had asked them that morning if they wanted to come with me – no, they did not. Perhaps, I suggested, they would like to send a letter to Dad? They should tell me what they wanted to say and I would write it down.

  Dear Dad,

  Are you comfortable in your box? I found your magnifying glass. What’s your favourite thing in the whole wide world? Is it your yummy lollies, your polo or is it me? That’s all I want to say now.

  Sleep, love, dream.

  George

  Charlotte. Charlotte Barlotte. Charlotte is beautiful. Charlotte is beautiful to Mum. Daddy is so beautiful. Daddy loves me so much and had a lot of medicine. xxxxxxx

  Dad,

  I love you, you’re a good man.

  Meg xxxxx

  Before we left, I paused to look at Julian again, still unconvinced, and steeled myself to touch his hand for the last time. A stone on a windswept beach. As I closed the door behind me and stepped out with ML into the brisk October air, the chasm of a cold new world, alone now with three small children, so far away from my family, quietly opened at my feet.

  •••

  Early the next morning, I woke up to the sound of the phone and heard the familiar, faint and quavering voice of my grandmother calling from England.

  Already in her nineties and plagued by bad knees, she confessed she had partially crawled across her living room just so that she could call me, something she had never done in all the years I had been away.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said.

  The line began to hiss and crackle.

  ‘Hello? Granberry? Can you hear me?’

  ‘I just wanted to know, love. How are you really?’ Her voice sounded hollow, cored like an apple.

  ‘Not great,’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it, Luce? Terrible.’ The line went quiet again. ‘How old are you now, love?�
��

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It was the same for me too. Oh, love.’

  Granberry had rarely spoken about the loss of her husband John, a bus driver who had a heart attack in his early forties. If she ever talked about him, it was only to speak about how deeply affected my mother had been, as she was only a teenager when she found him dead.

  When we were young, Libby and I would often go and stay with her, and be subject to her strict and sometimes bizarre rules: only one sheet of toilet paper to be used after a wee, no pulling on the cord above the double bed we shared as it would cause the house to explode, and no entering alone into the most treasured room of all, the dusty attic full of family treasures. There was to be no picking damsons off the tree before they were ripe, and no-one was permitted to place more than one lump of coal into the tiny grate she called a fire.

  Libby was definitely her favourite child: quiet, polite and helpful. Granberry made it very clear that she did not like me very much at all. I used too much lavatory paper, I was cheeky, I complained, I kicked too many footballs near the windows, I ate the forbidden damsons off the tree and gave myself a well-deserved stomach ache. Furthermore, I secretly climbed the fence into the neighbouring garden to steal their fruit, causing mild suburban annoyance.

  When she put us to bed at night, she would come up the stairs like a shrunken ghost in a long white nightgown, minus her daytime wig and the set of dentures she had worn since gum disease destroyed all her teeth as a teenager.

  ‘No monkey business,’ was all she ever said.

  One night, as Libby and I lay in my mother’s old double bed with its unbearably hard bolster pillow, I said I was going to pull the forbidden cord.

  ‘Please don’t,’ Libby pleaded. ‘We’ll die.’

  I weighed up the risk. At the age of seven I had already grasped the frequent absurdity of adult logic. If this piece of string would destroy the house, why was it even there? Who in their right mind would tie a bomb to their own bed?

  I sat up in the dark and fumbled behind the headboard. ‘There’s a plastic end!’ I whispered.

  Libby started moaning and pulled the covers over her head.

  I took a breath then pulled – the overhead light, something we were never permitted to use ourselves, came on.

  ‘Look! It’s just the light! Ha!’ Within seconds, I heard the bottom of the stairs start to creak and hastily pulled the cord again and we lay, trembling in the darkness, waiting for the wrath to descend. I could sense Granberry waiting and then, after a few agonising moments, retreating to her room where she slept with Monster, her similarly toothless and ancient poodle.

  The next morning, she buttered our pieces of Weetabix and sprinkled them with sugar, her mouth tight with disapproval.

  ‘Little monkey,’ she said, glaring at me.

  Granberry had a very unforgiving and Victorian view of children, believing they should be seen and not heard. She was not a particularly affectionate person, but by the time I was around the age of fourteen and she had moved into a small flat near our home in Kidderminster, I began to earn her love and approval by helping her with her shopping and calling in to see her whenever I could. It took many years for us to make our peace, but once achieved, we became extremely close.

  ‘I don’t suppose you feel like fetching us some roe and chips, Luce?’ she would ask.

  So I would either walk or cycle to the tight little row of terraced houses in nearby Lorne Street to collect our dinner from Magg’s fish-and-chip shop. By the time I returned to the flat, she had laid a small table with beautiful plates.

  I never saw my grandmother as boring or provincial, even though she had rarely left the town or had much of a career apart from working in a printing factory and as a dinner lady in a local school. I was drawn to her stability and quiet courage; she became a wonderful refuge during my turbulent teenage years and a living example of deep acceptance, healthy cynicism and wry pronouncements on the shortcomings of others.

  We spoke for a few minutes more; her face, etched with lines, so familiar and loved, appeared in my mind as she might have been all those years ago, a widow, devastated and alone with two elderly parents and a young child.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  ‘I love you too,’ I replied.

  ‘Put the phone down then.’

  ‘No, you go first.’

  Our echoing laughter filled the distance between us as we hung up.

  When she died just a few months after Julian, I often thought of her as a small but brightly burning candle; not glamorous or extraordinary but, in the best sense, very ordinary and simple and true. In the brief few minutes that we spoke, I had the strongest feeling that she was telling me – without saying a word – that whatever must be done, I could do it and she would lead the way.

  20

  Wreaths of gaudy flowers are piled up against a

  small white wooden cross in the late afternoon sun,

  in the dirt. The children play hide-and-seek among

  the gravestones. Now you see me, now you don’t.

  I had never realised the extraordinary amount of administration involved in organising a funeral: the lists, phone calls and family consultations; choosing a coffin, working out who to notify and how, newspaper announcements, arranging who would speak and what music should be played. Family friends in Port Moresby rang to say they were organising a memorial service in the Anglican cathedral to be held at the same time as the mass and burial in Australia. So we would all be together.

  Over the next few days and weeks we received many letters, cards and faxes. I particularly loved the ones from the children we knew, their bluntness so liberating and sincere.

  Don’t you cry because your father’s dead. God will look after him in heaven.

  Caitlin.

  I am sorry that your dad died but his spirit will always be with you. My cousin’s mother died from cancer but her spirit guided her and now she is a teacher at my school so I think your father will guide you too.

  Erin xxx

  I also loved people’s recollections of their friendship with Julian: his generosity as a host, his treatment of people, his reserve, his humour and eccentricities. Julian’s physical energy was an aspect of his life I was fully aware of, but it was not until he died that friends told me stories of just how reckless he had been as a younger man. Simon Leigh, a poet living in Canada, sent a brief and affectionate portrait.

  I first met him in 1956 when I happened to be climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the north side (over the barbed-wire cage and up the metal supports) and on reaching the upper span, quite pleased with myself, I met a chap strolling towards me from the other end, and that was Jules.

  Soon after we went skiing to Guthega in a uni group and on arrival it was dark and the steep, icy road outside the hut was lit by a single streetlight, and I can still see Jules, taking his first-ever run, on hickory skis with a pine-tar base and rattrap bindings, wearing army pants and a beret, rattling down the road. The guy was fearless. When I told my wife, we both cried for Jules. Of all people he seemed indestructible.

  •••

  A condolence letter from my somewhat eccentric uncle, Terry, opened by telling me that he had been impressed by Julian during their brief meeting, adding with his usual tact: as I would be by anyone who took you on. He urged me to:

  . . . grieve, don’t bottle it in; give yourself time and think of how honoured and happy you have been to have known him.

  One always feels terribly useless on these occasions, which one is, but we send our love. You’ll survive.

  Somewhat brutal, perhaps, but amid the sea of well-meaning flower and angel cards, there was something rather comforting about his lack of saccharine sentiment.

  •••

  The night before the funeral, ML, her father Michael and mother Joan and I sat up after dinner, talking and threading deep navy ribbon through the funeral booklets. We had the same emblem
on the book – a small bird – and the same PNG basket which we had also used for our wedding and both christenings. Still tied to the handles were the remnants of yellowing cream ribbons from happier days.

  I was in good company. There was nothing I had to hide, nothing I could not say. A small fire crackled in the grate as we talked late into the night.

  •••

  St Peter’s Catholic Church in Burrawang stood alone in its own timeless space on the edge of the village. The long weatherboard building, originally built over a hundred years before with shutters and a shingle roof, was simple and unadorned both inside and out. Behind, in the graveyard, carved headstones were covered in moss and lichen, some weathered beyond recognition.

  This, the most English of Australian landscapes, overlooking green, slumbering hills, was where Julian had wanted to be.

  The village itself was quiet on that seemingly ordinary Friday morning as cars made their way to the church; people were walking their dogs, the pub sign was on the pavement as usual. It was just another day. I left George, Meg and Charlotte in the car with ML and raced into the small grocer’s shop.

  The shop, just opposite the pub, also doubled as a post office. A bell tinkled when I opened the door, and the owner heaved himself off a wooden stool with an odd air of resignation. Yellowing ceilings were obscured by bundles of garlic, large orange gourds and clumps of fading lavender.

  ‘Nice day for it,’ he said, with no realisation of the irony of his remark.

  ‘A packet of mints, please,’ I said. This was a last-minute idea I’d had in case of emergency – a way to distract the children during the service if they began to get restless.

  The hearse was drawing up to the front steps of the church as we found a parking place on the grass. We sat for a moment – I wanted to wait for the coffin to be taken inside. Then, accompanied by friends and family, the children and I entered the church as Joan, accompanied by a cello, violin and flute, continued the opening hymn, Psalm 23. As I passed each pew, I gratefully drank in each loving, familiar face.