She turned off the hose and went to sit beside Alan on the back verandah. It was even too warm for him to be moving around; his hair was sweaty and matted against the back of the armchair. She had brought out a bird identification book from the bookshelf inside. It was old, from the 1980s, and her fingers were grimy with dust from the cover. She would never have called them ‘birdwatchers’ but, on occasion, she and Alan had liked to take out the heavy book and thumb through it, sitting close together, looking up to check the watercolour paintings of birds against the real ones in their garden. Now, as had become the norm, they sat with a gap between their chairs. They were both watching the cockatoos.
‘Glossy black cockatoos only breed every two years,’ she read from the book on her lap.
‘Black,’ Alan began. ‘What …’ He pointed a finger towards the trees, his lips rounded.
‘Yes,’ she said, patting his arm. ‘I see them. Cockatoos.’
She recalled the day out in Murrungowar – at the release they’d attended – the way everyone had leant forward a little as the cockatoos had taken off into the wild for the first time. How it had felt as if they were all on the brink of something beautiful and larger than themselves. She closed the bird book and placed it on the table in front of them. They could be the same birds, or at least some of them. She hoped they were.
The early afternoon shimmered as though the air was liquid; the heat made it seem semi-solid and viscous. The casuarina fronds danced on the breeze.
‘Fire weather,’ she murmured to herself and wondered whether the locks on the gates would be considered a hazard. In the last couple of weeks, she’d put a child safety lock on the passenger door of their ute so that when they arrived home, she could jump out, open the driveway gate and return to the driver’s seat knowing that Alan wouldn’t be able to make the most of his chance to escape. Once inside the fence, she’d walk back to lock the gate again behind them before opening his door and helping him out of the passenger seat. Sometimes if she’d been out by herself, she just parked across the driveway, on the other side of the gate. Occasionally she’d sit out there in the driver’s seat for ages, cherishing the enclosed silence of the car.
Turning to Alan, she said, ‘You took your shoes off again.’
He had picked up the bird book and opened it to the middle. He bent forward slowly and placed it over his bare foot.
She got up, went over to him and took it from his hands. ‘Alan, you can’t wear it on your foot.’
He let it go and sat back up, put his hand onto his pocket and squeezed something: the bloody cricket ball again. It’d been sitting on the laundry shelf since she’d removed it from his trousers ages ago, but somehow today he’d managed to find it.
Can’t remember where the toilet is but can somehow find that fucking cricket ball, she thought.
‘Ow,’ he said.
‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘Ow, ow, ow.’ His face was all twists and folds and loose tears. ‘Snakes,’ he said, beating at his legs. ‘Snakes.’
She sighed and lifted up each leg by the ankle, brushed down the chair beneath, shook his pants legs out. The cricket ball fell from his trousers and clunked against the boards.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘There’s no snakes.’
‘There are.’
‘There are no snakes.’
His face trembled like a child’s.
I didn’t choose this. She picked up the ball and gave it back to him. He held its scratched, red surface in both hands and then lay it in his lap. She went to move away, but he put a hand up and cupped her hip. His fingers hooked the material of her shirt. It was a touch so unprompted, so unfamiliar now, that she didn’t quite know how to respond.
‘Oh,’ she said.
Alan smiled halfway. She put her hands on his shoulders, turned to face him and steeled herself for the change. You bitch. But he drew his forehead closer until it was touching her stomach; she could feel the heat of his brow.
‘Do you like me?’ he asked.
‘Well, much, much more than that,’ she said.
His fingers dug into her hips a little. Not pain but pressure. There was meaning behind their grip; there was something other than dust and cinders. The cockatoos called.
‘You’re taking care of me?’ he asked.
She could feel his eyelashes blinking against her stomach. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. Light, inconsequential things like butterflies or moths.
‘Yes,’ she said, so softly it seemed the trees leant in to hear. ‘I am.’
‘You’ll take care of me?’
He thinks I’m his mother again. He doesn’t know it’s me.
The cockatoos screeched in the branches. Grief-stricken, heartbroken.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
A little while later, Lil brought around a sixpack, and now she and Lil were sitting in the swelter of the afternoon sun on the back verandah, Alan haunting the garden below. A couple of cockatoos were sitting quietly atop the bird feeders.
‘How much of him is still here?’ Lil asked.
‘Thirty per cent, maybe. I mean, all of it is still in there.’ She tapped her head. ‘All those memories.’
Lil turned to her, raised her eyebrows.
Pina smarted. ‘Well, he’s forgetting things, but it’s all still there. It must be.’
Alan paced back and forth along the back fence beside the casuarina grove.
‘It’ll be Christmas before we know it,’ Lil said.
She nodded. It was only a couple of weeks away, but she’d made no attempt to get ready.
‘You going to do anything?’ Lil asked.
‘It’s a bit hard. I’m not sure what the point is if he can’t …’ She let her sentence trail off. The beer sat wet and heavy in her fingers, condensation sliding over them. There was a hot slap to the air.
‘You know,’ Lil said, ‘I spoke to Harley’s grandmother the other day.’
‘Yeah.’
‘She’s had those health problems. Said she was worried about what might happen with Harley when she goes.’ She waited for her friend to elaborate. ‘I mean, he’s almost eighteen now. I’m not sure he’ll need a guardian.’
‘Would you like to be his guardian?’ She knew Lil had wanted kids; they’d just never happened.
‘I don’t know.’
On the wind, the far-off sound of truck horns. Her beer was warming fast. The cockatoos on the bird feeders took flight and joined the rest of the flock in the trees. The wind changed direction, and the smell hit them almost immediately.
‘Smoke,’ Lil said.
The air was thick and dusty, laced with something. The sun was bright orange through the gum branches despite it being nowhere near sunset. Clouds billowed across the sky.
‘Back-burning?’ she asked Lil, surprised.
‘If someone’s been burning off, they’ll get themselves killed. On a day like this.’
‘Surely no one would be that stupid.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
Alan wandered past the verandah following the path his steps had worn into the grass.
‘Hi, Alan,’ Lil called.
He turned towards her voice but didn’t quite get his gaze all the way up to her eyes.
‘It’s Lil,’ Pina told him. ‘You know Lil.’
He twisted his hands together. His mouth twitched, shaped itself around no sound. He blinked rapidly; he did that a lot more these days – blink, blink, blink.
They both watched him move away again, aimless, down towards the hakea plants halfway between the verandah and the back fence. His feet only just lifted from the ground.
Lil shifted in her seat. The wind was picking up.
‘Do you want another?’ Pina asked, gesturing at Lil’s beer bottle.
‘Is the Pope Catholic?’
She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge door.
Lil followed her inside. ‘I have to tell you something,’ she said. ‘Earl asked me out for
dinner.’
‘On a date?’
‘I think so.’ Lil scrunched her mouth. ‘Or … I don’t know. But maybe.’
‘How would you feel if it was a date?’
‘Ok, I think. Good.’
She held a beer out to her friend. ‘Well, good then.’ She couldn’t hide the smile on her face.
26
LEAVING THE MURRUNGOWAR forest, Arianna and Tim drove towards town, searching for the birds’ signal. It was already late afternoon, and her sweat was making the vinyl seat beneath her knees slippery.
When Tim turned the Land Cruiser onto Pearl Point Track, a spindle-legged beast raced across the road in front of them and off into the scrub.
‘Shit.’ Tim slammed on the brakes.
The back tyres slid on the gravel, and the white tail of the deer flashed between the trees.
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I told you there were deer out here.’
The dirt kicked up from their skidding tyres washed back over the car, leaving a film of dust on the windows. Tim drove more carefully after that.
Her mobile rang in her pocket, but she ignored it.
They hit the outskirts of the western side of Boney Point, where Pearl Point Track turned into the main street and, as the four-wheel drive went past the Boney Point Hotel, she heard the faintest transmission, an almost imperceptible bip, bip in amongst the static and the hiss.
She glanced at the radio transmitter. There was a white heat in the centre of her chest. The signal was pointed roughly east, out towards Wallangamba Road.
‘That way,’ she said, indicating to the right.
Tim turned the Land Cruiser onto Wallangamba Road and lowered his foot hard onto the accelerator. She was pressed back into her seat; her seatbelt cut into her chest, and she looped her hand beneath it to lift it away from her body until it loosened again.
The houses thinned out and were more dilapidated the further they drove from the centre of town – sprawled low to the ground, the dirt yards sprouting car parts and chicken wire. As they drove out of town once more, she noticed someone had strung tinsel and lights around an unruly tickbush on the side of the road. A figure of Santa made from clothes stuffed with grass sat beneath it, one arm raised in a wave.
‘Creepy,’ Tim said, laughing.
She knew he would want to leave soon to go back to Canberra for Christmas – he’d already mentioned it. He would be away from the day before Christmas Eve, returning the day after Boxing Day. He’d been shocked when she’d told him she would be staying in Murrungowar.
‘What about your family?’ he’d asked.
She had ignored the question.
It was getting late in the day, the sunset was all oranges and neon reds, but it was still hot. She took off her cap, let the air run across the sweat-slicked edge of her hair. Her phone rang again.
‘Jesus,’ Tim said. ‘If you’re not going to answer it put it on silent.’
They followed the receiver’s signal past the Toongabbie Nursery with its green shade cloth. The trees built up again, along with paddocks of hay bales and cattle. The signal was getting stronger, drowning out the static.
When she finally spotted the bird, it was sitting on a fence post, right out there in the open, nothing else around but an old weatherboard house. She slapped Tim’s arm and pointed. The car rattled across the loose gravel as he slid to a stop. The male (red, blue, red) from the eighth nesting pair cocked his head at them, clicked his beak. He opened his wings and took off into the forest behind the house.
‘Little prick,’ she said to the windscreen in front of her.
She got out, clutching the antenna. Walked beside the waist-high fence of the house in the direction the bird had flown. The grass was tall on the verge, up to her knees. Snakes. She stamped the ground a couple of times.
‘Oi,’ Tim called. ‘You going to wait for me or what?’
The air was hazy and, briefly, she thought she could smell smoke.
As she followed the fence around, she noticed that the back garden was well established. Many plants hung over the boundary, as though there was no separation between it and the wild on the other side. Twisting and jagged native plants, low-lying ground covers and grasses ran all the way up to the house verandah. Wattlebirds and honeyeaters flitted around the flowering bushes. There were two or three bird feeders – gnarly-looking platforms. She could only tell that’s what they were by the small fairy-wrens pecking at seed left on top of them. Clouds of insects hummed and swayed, catching the late-afternoon sun on their wings and shiny bodies.
This was all cultivated, she thought, even though it was made to look as though it wasn’t.
Tim appeared beside her, puffing lightly from jogging to catch up. They stood together, taking in the way the plants tumbled over the fence as if they were trying to make a break for the bush.
They pushed further through the long grass until they were standing on the edge of the casuarina grove behind the house.
‘Can you hear that?’ he asked.
A tuneless whistling was coming from over the back fence. She glanced up to see a man standing at the bottom of the garden. He was tall, but his skin hung a little too loose around his shoulders. He was staring right at her. She froze, her arm half up, the antenna clutched in her hand.
‘Are we on your property?’ Tim called out. ‘Sorry, mate.’
The man’s gaze slid off Arianna’s face, his vacant expression passing over her as though she were insubstantial. He turned and moved away amongst the plants.
She’d seen that look before, the same kind of emptiness, but twisted, mean around the edges. Where everything was ice and sharpness. A flashing memory, eyes in the darkness. You bald bitch, where will you go? With these useless, ugly brats? No one will have any of you – I’m the only one.
Arianna’s father had seemed so big. Immovable. She felt an electric current through her entire body, and set off away from Tim, deeper into the casuarina grove.
‘Hey,’ he called. ‘I don’t know that we should go much further, not until we work out if we’re on someone’s property.’
But she could already see them up ahead. It was a sizeable grove – about twenty metres across – with trees thick-trunked and straight. Her boots rolled over discarded seed pods as she walked.
She almost didn’t need to lift her antenna towards the treetops; her birds were right there.
I’m the only one.
A flock of cockatoos; their flock. Chewed seed pods and flakes of bark drifted down onto her upturned face. The birds clucked happily.
She had a seething fury in her chest. I’m the only one who’ll want you.
She tuned the transmitter to the first tagged pair, thrust the antenna skywards. The signal was loud enough to rebound against the trunks. It was then that the frenzy, the panic, overwhelmed her. She checked the tuning for the next nesting pair, 210 26588 2, raised the antenna. The signal, again. Fiddled with the receiver, thrust it up. Again. Checked the code. Again. 210 26588 4. Again. 210 26588 6. Again, again.
Pina walked Lil to the front gate. The sun was lingering just above the edge of the horizon. Alan was whistling to himself somewhere nearby. Like birdsong or insect hum, he blended into the background now. She could see that down the road the tickbushes had begun to bloom. Heavy sprays of white flowers erupted across each plant like fireworks. She knew the flowers would be gone by the new year; they only hung around for December.
She let Lil out through the gate, pulled it quickly closed, and Lil turned back towards her. She didn’t consider herself a sentimental person – someone who read too much into things – but she couldn’t avoid the symbolism in that fence.
‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Lil asked, gesturing down the road.
Parked on the grass verge was a dirt-streaked, white four-wheel drive. It leant a little into the ditch. Since their house sat at the end of the road, with only a dirt track beyond that led into the state forest, they rarely saw passing traffic
. Only the occasional tourist and sometimes hunters. The nearest property – Bruce Holloway’s – lay back up the road, across an endless paddock of baled hay.
‘Nope.’
‘Probably just bushwalkers,’ Lil said. ‘I’ll be off. Give me a call in the next couple of days.’
She waved to her friend as she left, then stood in the hazy light looking at the four-wheel drive. The thought of Earl and Lil on a date was still making her happy. Lil had always told her that it was complicated; Earl was her ex-husband’s cousin. But all that had been so long ago now.
As she walked down the side of the house around to the back, she noticed movement beyond their boundary. Two people were standing between the trees just beyond their back fence.
The woman was several steps further into the grove than the man. Her ponytail was dark and dull, poking out from beneath a navy-coloured cap. She was staring upwards, then, with an aggressive movement, lifted what appeared to be an antenna above her head and pointed it at the trees. Brought her right arm down to fiddle with something at her belt and then thrust the antenna upwards again. A strange bip, bip, bip sound scattered through the air.
Behind her, she heard whistling and turned to see Alan running his hands up and down the verandah post, jerky, tentative movements. He watched her come towards him the way a stray cat did, with trepidation.
‘We should get you inside,’ she said.
His face immediately twisted in on itself. ‘You slag,’ he screamed at her. ‘You can’t do this to me, you stupid, stupid slut.’
She let the words fall like hailstones on her skin. If only I were those things, she thought. At least then I’d be having a bit of fun.
Alan continued to yell insults. She glanced behind her. The figures had paused what they were doing, and were turned towards her and Alan. She felt her face flush.
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