The Essential Bird

by Carmel Bird

  When Old Missus died her son sold the house, which then had a succession of rather careless owners, one of whom put an Alsation in the fowl-house instead of hens. Sadder and sadder grew the house as it waited for Wendy. Would she never come? Somebody, inspired perhaps by the trees on the other side of the fence, planted the jacaranda that was going to be there when Wendy arrived and signed the contract to buy the house.

  ‘It’s very run-down,’ said her friends.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wendy, ‘but I’m going to do it up.’

  Although no cow had ever roamed the front hall of the house, there seemed to be some faint melody which sang in Wendy’s heart the memory of her granny. The lino in the front parlour was pink and green, and nearly the same as that which had been in Buttercup’s domain. If Wendy changed this house, made it smell of paint and disinfectant, would she change the fact that her granny had lived with a cow? If she tidied the house, she might tidy the memory.

  Before the jacaranda was planted, when Wendy was at high school, and was the prettiest girl in town, she went around with the boy who was the best tennis player, for his age, in the state. He was called Michael—a boy with ice-blue eyes and a very attractive laugh. Michael and Wendy went together to school dances, to which he wore a white sports coat with a pink carnation, and she wore an orange skirt beneath which undulated a vast white petticoat edged with rope. They went together to school picnics, and to the pictures on Saturdays. In school plays, she was Portia to his Shylock, Eliza to his Higgins.

  The legend said that he spent every second night, just about, in her bedroom at the back of the house on Windmill Hill. However, the truth is that he went there once, and they were both so terrified of being discovered by her father that they didn’t enjoy themselves at all, except for when Wendy got some licorice straps out of a drawer and they ate them. He did not go to her bedroom again. Instead, he would borrow his father’s car and take Wendy to the drive-in. The car was a big black Chevrolet that had cost, said the legend, well over eleven hundred pounds. The back seat was fairly comfortable. Naturally, the legend said that they went all the way in the back of the Chev, but that isn’t true either.

  They left school, and the end of the chapter came when Wendy was a deb. Michael, wearing a dinner suit, was her partner, and they were the most beautiful couple on the floor. Wendy’s dress was made by old Mrs Winter, the local maker of debs’ dresses. Three times a week for four weeks, Wendy stood on Mrs Winter’s dining-room table in a trance as Mrs Winter took pins from her mouth and made them go ‘tuck tuck’ in the white silk. Wendy wanted to look like the most fabulous fairy on the top of the most incredible Christmas tree. And she did.

  Then, after that, Michael went to Hobart to study the Law, and Wendy went to Kew—oh, distant and foreign land of Australia where people ate ravioli—to train to be a kindergarten teacher. She had pastel twin-sets and pleated skirts; smart blazers and pearls. She was a good student, and strove to look like a model from Seventeen. She forgot Buttercup for the time being, keeping her thoughts fixed on respectability, a certificate in kindergarten teaching, and marriage to the right man. And so Michael receded. It had not taken much, just a strip of water, to sever the bonds between Michael and Wendy. Michael continued to play tennis, seduced the professor’s daughter, failed first year, and crashed his father’s car.

  Legend suggested that if Michael had stayed with Wendy, he might have been all right. As it was, he went into his father’s firm and developed an interest in racing. Before long he was in debt to the bookmakers, stole money from his father, and ended up in prison, his ice-blue eyes staring at a window through which he could not see the sky. Prison did not improve him, however, and when he was released, he set about stealing some more money, and went back to gaol. He seemed to have set himself a pattern for life.

  Wendy, in due course, became the director of a kindergarten. It was in a fashionable and wealthy suburb, where the parents and children were happy with Wendy, and Wendy was happy with them. When she read to the children stories about cows called Daisy or Buttercup, she no longer thought of her granny. She would take the children to farmyards, and occasionally the huge brown eyes of a solemn cow would bring back to her a picture of the pink-and-green lino, and of her granny’s fingers as they stroked Buttercup’s ears. But this was rare. She had left it all behind her; she was a career woman. Once upon a time, in the days of the pastel twin-sets, one of her aims had been to marry. To marry the right man. Ah, but alas, she had not met the right man. The ambition faded; she had love affairs, some happy, some sad.

  It was a renovator’s opportunity with an original fireplace, the house in Kew. Wendy hired a truck and took the fowl-house and the contents of the attic, as well as some cupboards that smelt of vomit, and an ice-chest full of spiders, to the tip. Then, with the help of a builder and a plumber and a painter, she began the renovations. Most of the floor she covered with carpet, thick and royal blue. Even the little stairs that wound up to the attic were blue, woolly under Wendy’s bare feet. It was up this little winding staircase that the secret lover crept.

  Wendy had not seen Michael for twenty years when he escaped from prison and found her in her back garden, sitting underneath the jacaranda with her bare feet in the grass.

  Pause and picture that.

  One Sunday afternoon, Miss Wendy Trull is reading The White Hotel on the grass at the back of her place, when a tired man with ice-blue eyes and a dirty T-shirt comes up the path. She shuts her book, flicks a blue blossom from her skirt, and invites the man into the kitchen for a drink. He has a shower, and is never seen again.

  It was, in many ways, quite a good arrangement for both of them. Michael, seeking, it would seem, one kind of prison or another, had found one to his taste.

  Wendy was quite used to making rules for her kindergarten, and so she easily drew up the rules of the attic. There would be no light allowed between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. The cupboard must remain in front of the window. Michael must never come downstairs unless Wendy came to get him. The gate to the back garden was blocked off so that anybody who came to the house had to ring the front doorbell. Michael knew that when the bell rang, he must stay quiet until Wendy came to say that the visitor had gone. Wendy bought an exercise bike and another TV.

  And so, in their attic dreamland, where they made love in the afternoons and early mornings, and where they ate delicious snacks and licorice straps, they lived happily ever after, the prettiest girl in Tasmania and her childhood sweetheart.

  Wendy used to think about the reality of the ‘ever after’. Would he die first? Would they commit suicide? When? How did people decide those things? Would the headlines in cheap newspapers say:

  ATTIC PRISONER KINDERGARTEN TEACHER SUICIDE or CHILDHOOD SWEETHEARTS DIE IN PACT

  As she thought about how it would be, life went on as usual. The biggest difference to Wendy’s life, outside the attic that is, was the fact that she could never go away for holidays. She felt, however, no need of holidays, having as she did such an interesting home-life.

  ‘But when are you going to Venice?’ they said. ‘You always told us you were going to go to Venice.’

  In summer, the jacaranda bloomed. Soft-blue blossoms with no perfume, against a harsh blue sky. The branches were dark like ink, scratched in twisted twig patterns. And around the branches, in clouds like moths, hovered the jacaranda flowers, blue and blue and blue.

  The Enlargement of Bethany

  Harry Stone the optometrist stood behind the window of his shop. The window was frosted and on the outside was painted a large pair of golden spectacles. The lenses of these were of clear glass which Harry polished on both sides every morning so that the surfaces were as clean and sterile, Harry liked to think, as the human cornea. Harry was standing behind one of the lenses looking into the street. Plenty of people in the street were wearing spectacles, and most of these had been made by Harry. It was a small town; Harry was prosperous; and he knew the distance in centimetres between the corners of
the eyes of most of the population of Woodpecker Point. He knew the state of their retinas and the names of their grandchildren. Prosperous also, and also knowledgeable, was the undertaker who had the shop next door. His window too was frosted, bearing the words ‘Lawrence Usher—Undertaker’, a simple statement of fact in ornate gold lettering. Here there were no lenses to be used as peepholes. Laurie Usher’s son, Robert, was courting Lisa Harrison who was Harry’s receptionist. Harry found it distasteful that Lisa and Robert sometimes went out to dances in Robert’s father’s hearse, but he said nothing as Laurie was a very old friend and Lisa was a fairly good receptionist. Harry was thinking about some of these things when he saw, through the lens of his window, Bethany Grey.

  Every morning Bethany straightened and dusted the display in the window of the Orchid Frock shop. This window was of clear glass, decorated at the top with graceful lozenges of green and gold and an occasional amethyst disc. Between the bottom of the window and the pavement there were seven rows of shiny amber tiles. This morning Bethany took the hats and wigs off the three plaster dummies. Then she removed their arms with a clever twist, pulled their dresses over their heads, and left them standing there smooth, creamy-white naked, armless, while she hung up their dresses to be ironed. Harry fancied a look of embarrassment crossed the dummies’ faces as they stood in the window without their clothes, looking into the street full of busy people wearing spectacles.

  Bethany lived in the flat upstairs from the Orchid Frock shop. She had wall-to-wall floral carpet on the stairs, in the hall, the bedroom, the lounge. The bathroom was black, black and shiny, with gold taps and a gilded mirror. Beside the mirror grew a dark pink orchid in a black pot. Bethany liked to lie in the black bath all covered in bubbles and pretend she was glamorous and beautiful. She was not. Harry knew none of these things about her or her house, but he imagined some of them with reasonable accuracy.

  ‘When he isn’t testing people’s eyes,’ said Lisa to Robert, ‘he gets behind those glasses in the window and just waits for girls to go past. Or else he watches Bethany Grey.’

  As Harry watched, scraps of transparent green paper fluttered in the street against the tiles at the bottom of the window of the Orchid Frock shop. The lonely naked dummies stared blankly into space. The reflections of cars slid between them and the world.

  ‘I am leaving to get married,’ said Lisa. ‘Robert and I are getting married in six weeks.’

  Bethany came back with three new dresses for the dummies. These were silk ones, green like the cellophane that blew, ruffled and crumpled in the street. She slipped the rippling silk over their heads, down their bodies, placed their arms in the sleeves, adjusted them in artistic poses, and stood back to admire them. She flicked their skirts with her hand. She gave them fashionable wigs.

  ‘Congratulations.’ Harry did not look at Lisa who sat behind a bowl of fresh flowers on his right. She was efficient, pretty, young, and in love with the son of the undertaker. Harry was in love with Bethany Grey, who nearly always wore a white linen collar on her dress and didn’t need glasses. Harry was waiting for the day when Bethany would step out of the Orchid Frock shop, look both ways before crossing the street (her shoes were nearly always navy blue, Italian), glance at the huge golden spectacles on the window, push open the door, smile at Lisa through the fresh flowers in the bowl and make an appointment.

  ‘What did he say?’ Harry asked Lisa.

  ‘I beg yours?’

  ‘What did he say when he asked you to marry him? He did ask you to marry him, didn’t he? Well, what did he say?’

  Mr Stone must be thirty-five and very experienced. He had travelled to London, Paris, Berlin, New York, in search of spectacle frames in the latest styles. Whatever was he getting at? Why was he asking her this? She answered obediently.

  ‘He said, “I’m going into the firm. Do you want to get married?”’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  Harry Stone was still watching Bethany as she shifted the pieces of costume jewellery around the floor of her display window.

  ‘I said—I can’t remember what I said.’

  ‘You must have said yes.’

  ‘I suppose I must have.’

  ‘I am going into the firm. Do you want to get married?’ He said it softly.

  ‘I beg yours?’ said Lisa.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing, Lisa.’

  Bethany had gone from her window. The dummies stood in their artistic poses, their green silk dresses elegantly draped about their plaster bodies.

  Then suddenly Bethany was standing (white collar, blue dress, navy shoes) in the doorway of the Orchid. The wind stirred the pieces of green paper in the street and ruffled Bethany’s brown hair. She looked both ways and began to cross the road. Harry turned swiftly from the window and went into his consulting room.

  On the wall was a chart that showed a colourful diagram of a cross-section of the human eye. There was a leather chair, more comfortable than the one at the dentist’s, and lights, screens, instruments, a reading chart, the satisfying perfume of darkness and science. It was all ready for Bethany to come in and settle into the chair saying, perhaps, ‘I have been subject to mild headaches,’ or ‘I can no longer see to thread a needle.’

  But of course she would be making her appointment. Lisa would be flicking the pages of the appointment book, running her fingernail down the times. Bethany would be looking from the parting in Lisa’s blonde hair to the petals of the chrysanthemums in the bowl to the ruled-off sections in the book. Perhaps there was a cancellation this afternoon. The Brigadier unable to make it. Suffering from gout.

  ‘I have come,’ Bethany would be saying, ‘to make an appointment with Mr Stone.’

  ‘Would two-thirty suit?’ Lisa would answer. ‘We have a cancellation.’

  Harry opened the door of the consulting room. He looked down at his shoes. There was rich-brown carpet like furry chocolate on the floor. Silence. His shoes were black and shiny. For a moment he thought he should photograph them against the carpet. Some of his best subjects came to him like this in times of emotional stress. He caught the tail end of what Bethany was saying:

  ‘…be very happy.’

  It was an odd way to talk about an appointment, but perhaps she was as excited about it as he was. She had waited for years before making the time. It must mean a lot to her. What sort of condition would her eyes be in? He looked down at his shoes again. He would bring the camera in tomorrow. A rustle and the thud of the front door. Bethany was gone. Harry emerged from the consulting room. Lisa, like some pale sweet angel, sat behind the gold chrysanthemums staring into space, a space occupied by her dreams of Robert Usher and the block of land they were buying out past the Bluff, not far from the old toy factory.

  ‘We are going to build,’ said Lisa. But Harry was not listening. He was looking down at the appointment book. Looking for the name Bethany Grey, or B. Grey, or Miss B. Grey. There was a Black, a Miss Black.

  ‘That,’ said Harry. ‘Who is that at three-fifteen?’

  ‘A lady rang up. Said she was an old patient. I found her card. She’s really old.’

  ‘Theodosia Black. I know. Never mind.’ Then he couldn’t stop himself from saying, ‘What about Miss Grey?’

  ‘Miss Grey?’

  ‘Miss—er—Bethany Grey from the Orchid Frock shop. When is her appointment?’

  ‘Oh no. She only came in to congratulate me. She was very sweet. She said she knew Robert when he was a baby. I didn’t know she was a patient. She isn’t a patient, is she? She’s going to do my dress. And the bridesmaids’. I’m having two. Jenny and Ruth. Do you think they’re too pretty? I don’t want to be overshadowed.’

  ‘She didn’t make an appointment.’

  ‘No. Can I have twenty minutes extra at lunch, please, Mr Stone? I need to go to the Morning Glory to see about the cake. For the wedding.’

  During the afternoon of astigmatism, myopia and long sight, Harry began to recover from Bethany’s rejection
. By the time he went home to the Edwardian villa left to him by his late mother he was back to his old self. He thought he would offer to take the photographs at Lisa’s wedding. Photography was his hobby.

  Under the stairs at the back of the house he had built a dark room. He derived intense delight from seeing the images appear. The pictures he took of his shoes on the consulting-room carpet were, however, rather disappointing.

  Lisa’s mother had for years nurtured a desire to engage a professional photographer for an occasion. So when Lisa and Robert announced their engagement one of the first things Mary Harrison thought of was booking Prism Studies, known for their artistic and flattering work.

  ‘What would Harry Stone know about wedding photos anyway?’ she said.

  But Lisa assured her he would be very good, and said it was so sweet of him to offer. Mary moaned about it for a few days, then concentrated instead on the flowers and the music, the cake, the reception, the invitations, the bridesmaids’ health, the cars, the hairdresser. There was plenty to do. She bought her own frock from the Orchid Frock shop. As it happened, it was one of the green silk ones, and she bought new silver shoes.

  Harry became alarmed when he was seated next to Bethany at the reception. He had very little conversation at the best of times.

  ‘Call me Beth,’ she said. He couldn’t. He seemed to be taking an incredible number of photographs. Mary Harrison was pleased and just hoped they were good.

  Through Harry’s mind from time to time went Robert’s fateful words to Lisa: ‘I’m going into the firm. Do you want to get married?’ He would try substituting other words to fit the circumstances: ‘I am expanding the business. Do you want to get married? I’m going to buy a car. Do you want to come for a drive? I have some new frames from Paris. Do you need glasses?’