Rain Birds

by Harriet McKnight

  Through the silence came a clucking sound. She opened her eyes: two black cockatoos, huddled together on the thicker mid-branches. Feathers as bright as beetles’ shells.

  ‘Harley,’ she called. ‘Come over here. Look.’

  40

  A WEEK AFTER SHE’D left Boney Point, Arianna was sitting in a waiting room in Canberra Hospital, distractedly watching the television. It was showing a twenty-four-hour news channel: the same few minutes of footage repeating every fifteen minutes or so.

  ‘Do you want me to change the channel?’ a nurse asked.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t sure how it had got around the nursing staff that she’d been out there. Everyone was still talking about the fire. The media had dubbed them the ‘Gippsland New Year’s Fires’.

  There was a strange comfort in watching the images; it proved it’d really happened. The news showed the wide expanse of Murrungowar from the air – from a rescue chopper – stalagmites of smoke reaching up from the ground. Cut to the town, the crumbled buildings, the warped tin, the heat-rippled surface of the bitumen. Cut to the clusters of people gathered around what was left of their homes, to emergency vehicles with their flashing lights against the smoke haze. Nothing looked as it had when she had arrived in Boney Point back in winter. A woman was shown crying amongst ruins. A man stood alone staring out across a burnt paddock as tears slid down his cheeks.

  She’d been sitting in the uncomfortable chairs of the maternity-ward waiting area for the last seven hours because Caro had gone into labour. She hadn’t asked to accompany her sister into the birthing room, and Caro hadn’t offered – they had a way to go in terms of rebuilding their relationship.

  Through the large window at the end of the room, she could see the rain hitting the glass. A cool front had moved through a couple of days after the bushfire and doused the remaining spot fires in the area. Emergency services were crediting it with their ability to get the flames under control.

  Rain birds. She liked to think the wet weather was a sign that some of her cockatoos had survived, that it was evidence they’d escaped the flames. She ran her hand across her head. Already it had grown out past the spiky stage and was soft and fuzzed like a peach. Caro had stared in shock when she first saw her. You look like Mum.

  She wasn’t unaware of the parallels of her situation. The last time she’d been in a hospital waiting room, her mother had been lying lifeless. Now she was waiting for her mother’s granddaughter to arrive.

  A nurse came towards her and said softly, ‘Your sister’s had her baby – a little girl. Mum and bub are doing really well.’ The nurse smiled. ‘You’re an aunty.’

  ‘When will I be able to go in?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Ok?’

  The news was once again showing pictures of Boney Point burning. When the nurse left the room, Arianna started to cry.

  Doctor Nash had pulled some strings and secured Alan a room at the nursing home in Paynesville called Happy Waters.

  ‘It’s very straightforward,’ Doctor Nash had told her on the phone. ‘Alan’s pension should cover the costs.’

  Paynesville was further away from Boney Point than she had wanted – almost two hours’ drive – but she knew she didn’t have much choice. Most places had long waiting lists, and Alan needed to be discharged from hospital.

  Just over a week after he’d been admitted to Bairnsdale Hospital, she borrowed Lil’s truck to collect him and drive him to Paynesville. As they arrived at Happy Waters, she noted the manicured garden with its concrete birdbath – bone dry due to the water restrictions. The facility was set up on a hill overlooking the ocean, with coastal forest behind it. To Pina it all seemed so removed from the rubble she’d left behind in Boney Point.

  Once she got Alan inside and signed his paperwork, some of the aged-care nurses looked after him in the shared lounge area, while she carried his bag to his new, small room. She could almost jump from one side to the other if she tried. But it did have a big window that faced right out onto the bush.

  A nurse came in and started making up Alan’s bed. ‘I’m Shelley,’ she said. ‘I just met your husband in the lounge. Don’t mind me – keep doing what you need to do. Pretend I’m not even here.’

  That was an almost impossible task given the limited amount of space, but she moved about the room unpacking the few things she’d rustled together. They’d lost everything in the fire. She’d heard stories of other people hunting through the wreckage of their homes and finding treasures hidden beneath the ash: jewellery, even photos. But there had been nothing left in their rubble. She hung a few pieces of donated clothing in Alan’s wardrobe, although it was hardly enough to last him a week, given the frequency of bathroom accidents. More would have to be bought with the insurance money when it came through.

  She saw Shelley watching her and suddenly felt inadequate. ‘This is all we had left.’

  ‘There’s always spare clothing in the office if we run out,’ Shelley told her, finishing up making the bed. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of him.’

  He’d had his cricket ball in his pocket when the ambulance dropped him at Bairnsdale Hospital. Now she placed it on top of the dresser beside the door of his ensuite.

  ‘Is he a cricket lover?’ the nurse asked.

  ‘He was a player. Just local teams but he played almost all his life.’

  Shelley smiled. ‘You know what, you can even tell that about him. He’s got the shoulders of a batsman.’

  ‘Not so much now.’ He was a slip fielder.

  ‘You can still tell,’ Shelley said. She turned to leave then stopped. ‘We’re going to look after him well,’ she added, before walking out the door.

  Alone in the room again, Pina remembered how a nurse had asked her, when they first arrived and she was signing paperwork, if she had any photos to leave with him.

  ‘It helps sometimes,’ she’d said. ‘We can point to family members and talk about you with him when you’re not here.’

  The only photo she had left was the one she’d taken from the frame in their hallway that was now folded in her wallet: she and Alan in front of the wheat with the endless West Australian sky above them; their edges blurred by the low light. Alan, white-shirted and blinding in his beauty. Her, slim-waisted, smiling as if she had no control over her cheeks. Both longing for Boney Point and their life there, relieved to be on their way back. She thought she could maybe copy that photo, bring it back later, but for now she wanted to keep it with her.

  At dinnertime, she watched the nurses make a fuss over her husband: introducing him to the other residents, putting his food down in front of him with a flourish. They jokingly shoved each other in a fight to be the one to help him eat. Alan watched the commotion as though it were all happening very far away and not right next to him. She thought about how he once would have enjoyed the attention more than he cared to admit.

  The dining room was still decked out with tinsel and a banner that read Happy New Year.

  Another nurse, not Shelley, appeared beside her. ‘He’s going to be popular around here,’ she said.

  ‘He’s always been a loveable guy.’

  ‘You must be exhausted,’ the nurse said, ‘with all that you’ve been through. We’ll look after him.’

  What do you all think I was doing before? she wanted to scream.

  While Alan ate, she left the dining room and wandered the corridors. The nursing home was divided into four colour-coded wings. The colours must be significant to the nurses, though why she wasn’t sure yet. The only thing she knew: yellow wing meant dementia. She moved down past the sun-coloured walls and peeked into some of the open doors. In one room, a tiny woman lay in bed with Essendon Football Club paraphernalia plastered all across her walls; in another, a man sat with a feather boa wrapped around his shoulders. Most rooms were empty because their occupants were in the dining room.

  Somewhere down the end of the wing, there was screaming but,
when she reached that room, the door was closed.

  Doctor Nash’s words echoed through her head: You’re still young; others had said it, too. She knew what she was: in limbo, that’s what.

  She let Shelley and another nurse lead Alan back to his room after he’d eaten, and followed behind. They sat him on the bed, and she sat in the chair beside it and stroked his hand. The space felt cramped with four people in it.

  ‘We’ll start his bedtime routine soon,’ Shelley told her. ‘You can stay as long as you want to. But you can also leave as soon as you’re ready. There’s no right or wrong thing to do.’

  She stood up and looped her bag over her shoulder. She felt the urge to reclaim him, to remind them she was there.

  ‘He doesn’t like the shower on too hard,’ she said. ‘Sometimes he prefers a bed bath. He’s not a big fan of loud noises and in the afternoons he likes to sit where he can feel the breeze on his skin.’

  ‘Thank you for telling us,’ said the other nurse. ‘It’s good for us to know all this.’

  ‘Alan, your wife is heading off,’ Shelley said. ‘It’s time to say goodnight.’

  In the middle of it all, he sat on the edge of his bed, his eyes drifting back and forth between the voices. She stood in front of him, took his hand in hers once more.

  ‘Night,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right, goodnight,’ Shelley echoed.

  They were all a little too chirpy for her liking. But Alan was smiling. There seemed to be no room left for her anymore.

  ‘You can come and visit any time you want,’ Shelley told her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’ll take really good care of him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Night,’ Alan said again, his face soft.

  The skin on his hand felt like paperbark: powdery, tissue-thin. She squeezed his palm, pressed the pads of her forefingers against him. A flinch rippled across his face, and she let go.

  ‘Ok, my love,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to say goodbye soon.’

  And she was. In a moment she was going to leave his tiny, new room that was just his and she didn’t share. In a moment she was going to walk down the corn-coloured corridor lined with identical doors and push the green release button on the locked front doors. She was going to walk to the car park and find Lil’s truck. Notice how beautiful the colours of the evening sky were this close to the ocean. Dig around in her handbag for the keys, unlock the car. Swing herself up into the driver’s seat and cry until her sides ached.

  In a moment she was going to do all that.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book was put together with a lot of helping hands and a lot of different types of inspiration. To my family, especially my mother – for setting me on this journey and supporting it the whole way. To my grandmother, Shirley Catherine McKnight. To the people who were my first and most generous readers: Lauren Aimee Curtis, Amarlie Foster, Amanda Robinson, Alby McKnight, and Robert Skinner.

  Special and deepest thanks to my most constant sounding board, Susie Thatcher – thank you for going on this journey with me and for letting me be a part of yours. To my guide through the world of science and conservation: Alice Blackwood. Your wisdom made all the difference.

  To Dana Kinter, for a cover painting I could have only dreamt of. To Radiolab, for sowing the seeds of this story. To Susan Healey – thank you for the laughs, the cups of tea, and for giving me a home to write this book in. To my sisters by blood and by love: Lucy McKnight, Leith Maguire, Eve Walton-Healey, Amarlie Foster and Susie Thatcher.

  To the faith-keepers: Murray Broadhead, Jack McKnight and Melanie Joosten. Thank you for the unexpected and much appreciated support. To my Darwin family: Rob Lewis, Sharon Greenoff, Michael Massingham and the Garadji, Amital, Dixon and Brock families.

  Heartfelt thanks to Aviva Tuffield for seeing something in this tale from the very beginning, and for pushing and encouraging me to create something better than I could have alone. Thanks also to Rebecca Bauert, Kate Nash and Elisabeth Young for sending this book out into the world with such generous spirits, and huge thanks to the entire Black Inc. team.

  Most of all, to Nick, who read the most, cheered the loudest, and was my biggest support. This book is for – and because of – you.