Birdman's Wife

by Melissa Ashley

  ‘I don’t think I can stand another.’ I motioned for Daisy to help me to my feet.

  ‘Take my arm, ma’am,’ she said.

  She led me over to where we had left our shoes, lined up in pairs. Willows draped their feathery green boughs along the shore. An ancient, triple-forked specimen drew us over. Behind its dangling lower limb was a nook into which I could crawl, the black bark concealing me as Daisy warmed my flesh with towels and helped me into my high-collared dress.

  At the river’s edge, Louisa and Lizzie had transformed the water pail of torture back into a plain wooden bucket. They had moved downstream and were casting nets in the shallows for fish, the hems of their holiday skirts brown with river silt. The skin of their bare feet seemed to thicken by the day, a pebble-resistant carapace forming on their soles. They spread river stones and molluscs on their open palms, comparing whorls and mineral veins. The impressive specimens were stowed in their pockets; the others, imperfect, were returned without regret to the river.

  The sun’s rays imprinted a shadow of the pelican’s body on the water’s surface, the jet fingers of its wingtips, the spread of its webbed feet riveted to the task of landing. With barely a ripple, the great bird joined with its reflection, sailing upstream for several yards and then suddenly changing direction like a fisherman putting in the oar. It swam to the foreshore and, when the water spread too thin, emerged on its feet, clambering up the bank with a wobbling gait like a man carrying too much flesh – though still confident, swaggering almost, its wings pinned back, lead-blue feet leaf-printing the silt. Up close, the feathers framing the pelican’s face were like an old man’s hair; the ridge of its upper mandible bone grey, a lemon-yellow ring encircling its eye. It regarded me, the pale iris and flat pupil penetrating mine.

  The pelican then turned its gaze on my daughters, curious about the fish in their wooden bucket. The pelican stopped before Lizzie. Her hand reached into the pail and brought out a flopping fish. The pelican seemed to will her to give it over. Gingerly, Lizzie dangled the bait by the tail. The pelican, darting its eyes left and right, as if questioning the safety of responding to the offer, opened its stupendous beak. A thick hook – the mandibular nail – gleamed at the tip of its bill, the pink, black-spotted pouch distending into a trumpet-shaped balloon. Lizzie’s fish slid into the membranous sac, which deflated as the poles of the bill clacked shut. The pelican scissored its mandibles, holding ground until Lizzie had parted with all of the fish in her pail, collected for her father and brothers to use as bait.

  We had formed a semicircle around Lizzie and the pelican, not daring to speak lest we break the spell of the encounter. It was as if the pelican occupied a space between tame and wild. The species was a vagrant to these parts, though I wondered if this particular individual was a familiar sight to Egham’s villagers – if it had learned to interact with visitors to the town in order to obtain food. I could never forget the fable of the pelican’s sacrifice, the fierce anger of the creature that, like God, had smote its young in punishment for their ingratitude. But then, regretting its display of temper, pecked open the skin of its breast and released its life-restoring blood.

  But this pelican was no fool. Realising we had no more fish to supply, it waddled back to the river’s edge. Like a cutter pulling its oar, it settled on the water and, with a few flaps of its feet, paddled off to another bend in the river.

  Though the boys failed to land the legendary trout, they did manage to capture several fat pike. Pails swinging, we trudged to the top of the bank. The trek to the cottage followed ancient hedgerows of buckthorn and ash, hawthorn and field maple, in which we discovered the nests of chiffchaffs and a blackcap, wedged in secret hollows in the densely threaded branches.

  A stand of wild blackberry vines fringed the meadow near our cottage.

  ‘Can we pick some?’ asked Henry. ‘Papa, please?’

  ‘We’ll be ever so fast,’ said Charlie.

  The children stood eagerly before us, holding their hands together in mock prayer, making angelic faces. John glanced in my direction. I nodded acquiescence, the break from walking welcome. I leaned my hand against my aching lower back.

  ‘We’ll help with the chickens,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘We’ll shell peas all afternoon,’ said Louisa.

  ‘A quarter of an hour,’ said John. He transferred the fishing tackle into a string bag and passed Henry the empty pail.

  Daisy arranged a blanket and set down the wicker chair while the children scampered over the meadow grasses to the spiky brown plant, laden with plump fruit. Bristling vines shot out in every direction. John helped me lower myself onto the chair. The field spread around me like a thrown quilt, embroidered with cowslip and bellflower, cranesbill and knapweed, the petals like lolling tongues, seeking sun and water among the meadow barley and crested dog’s tail. Scores of butterflies flittered about our faces. The children had captured several varieties in their nets already – meadow browns, gatekeepers, common blue, orange tips and ringlets – which they would pin on boards at the cottage, writing out their common and scientific names.

  In the distance I made out the thatched roof of our holiday cottage, smoke chuffing from the stone chimney. Mother had stayed behind with little Frank, seeing to the rising of the dough to make bread for luncheon. The children and I had arrived at our Surrey summer retreat in May. John stopped by on most weekends, returning to London for the working week.

  Our city-bred offspring were delighted by the coop of chickens in the cottage’s yard and the vegetable garden, dug and sown by the previous occupants. We tended the seedlings with water and expelled the weeds. We were almost ready to reap our first harvest of carrots and beans. The chickens ate our kitchen scraps in exchange for producing four fine brown eggs of a morning, which Louisa and Lizzie took turns collecting. The hens’ dirt-bathing and the rooster’s prancing provided the girls with no end of amusement, as did picking sprays of herbs and wildflowers from the laneways, not to mention the rusty caws of the resident raven.

  John chewed a blade of grass and watched the children plucking berries, half of which they pressed into their mouths. He asked how my mistletoebird sketch was coming along.

  Each week, John brought work for me from London: corrections to faulty lithographs, queries from the colourists, skins to paint anew. I was more than ready to stop drawing but I needed to complete a series of botanical sketches made in Yarrundi and Hobarton. On the kitchen table where I worked was a folder of the chalk and watercolour impressions I had produced of the colonies’ native flora.

  One day John had delivered into my hands three red, black and white bird skins, nestled in melaleuca bark. I inspected the specimen marked female, her tiny legs crossed and tied with the finest twine, field tags dangling. I stroked her soft black back, hardly able to comprehend her size, for she was no larger than my finger, her head smaller than my thumbnail. How on earth did my husband manage to make a skin from such a small creature? Along with the three bodies was a nest, small enough to cradle in my palm, like the casing on a chestnut. Five tiny eggs were tucked inside, water-smoothed pebbles, their shells so thin I worried that handling them might cause their surfaces to fracture. The sturdy nest was made from leaves, spider’s web and lichens, lined inside with soft seed heads.

  Now I listened to the birds calling in the meadow, a treat we were not given in London. The hour of mending nests had arrived. A warbler balanced on a bulrush and announced the call to work. His head was thrown back in song, his vibrating syrinx plucking a string of jaunty notes.

  ‘I may have an idea,’ I told John.

  I recalled a mistletoebird I had come across at Yarrundi during a morning stroll alongside Stephen’s brook. It gave out a high-pitched, energetic call, flying at heights it strained my eyes to follow. The species favoured the mistletoe that sprouted on casuarinas and she-oaks, darting from one shrub to another to eat the fruits.

  ‘If we were to lithograph that warbler,’ I said, ‘we wo
uld present it in association with the plant it forages from, yes? To show it otherwise would seem a mistake to those familiar with the countryside, let alone the collector who prides himself on his eye for fine detail.’

  ‘Go on,’ said John.

  I had sketched a casuarina, with its sprays of needle-like leaves, draped like a Christmas tree in sprigs of mistletoe. I recalled an opening near the base of the lower branch. I could place the mistletoebird’s nest there. Above, in the upper bough, there was another space in which I could perch an adult subject.

  ‘Staying in the countryside,’ I continued, ‘it seems logical to depict a species with the plant upon which it dwells, to connect it with the materials it builds its nest from. It would be misrepresenting nature not to make the effort to pair a species with its correct plant life.’

  In Australia, I had filled many an afternoon pressing and sketching my cuttings of the native flora. Acacia flowers, delicate clumps of yellow balanced on silvery leaves, samples of which I clipped with my knife, sniffing the sharp perfume of the leaves’ oily resin before fixing them between sheets of waxed paper. I collected the gumnut, the filamented flowers hidden inside tough woody cases; I drew the casuarina needle with its cypress-smelling oils. On Mosquito Island, I sketched the melaleuca tea tree, its resins staining the water brown. I made studies of the she-oak, currajong, wonga wonga vine, the common heath Epacris impressa, sprays of Loranthus linifolius, leptospermums, banksias and eucalypts. I would colour the leaves and flowers immediately before they faded with the drying process. It was not incomparable to drawing the soft parts of a bird, whose wattles and eye rings paled in death.

  In secret I had started experimenting with foregrounding Australia’s native flora. I was disobeying the injunctions of Lear, who downplayed the foliage in his lithographs to better highlight his avian subjects’ plumages. He was fond of contrasting bright feathering, eye detail, a glorious beak or tough claws with the barest of props – a stump, a flicker of leaf. Occasionally he threw in a curl of ivy, but he believed that embellishing the background and perch detracted from the arrangement of the lines and curves of his centrepieces, from moving his viewer’s eye along the creature’s extraordinary form.

  ‘I think the botanical productions of the colonies are as appealing to the eye of the English viewer as their feathered compatriots. The host plants that species feed from are unique and fascinating to those who have never seen them before. And your field notes argue for the importance of acquiring knowledge about the lived environment of each species,’ I said.

  ‘You may have something there, Eliza.’

  ‘It will add to the value of our publication. While Lear’s parrots were kept in cages, far from their native origins, our visit to Australia has given us the potential to accurately represent the real habitats of the colonies’ species.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more – I’ll be interested to see what you do.’

  ‘And I’m more than happy to share.’ I smiled, relieved that he approved of my suggestion.

  John put his fingers between his lips, took in a breath of air and released a loud whistle, a signal for the children to return. In a few moments, there was a scampering of feet, a breathless giggle. Lizzie leaned over me, her bonnet blocking out the sun. Her lips and cheeks were stained purple with blackberry juice. ‘Would you like some?’ She dangled her half-filled pail over my lap.

  ‘Very well done, miss.’ John laughed, scooping a handful of berries into his mouth, making a performance of enjoying their sweetness. Purple juice flecked his shirt.

  ‘Mama?’ asked Lizzie, offering her treat to me. Her gold-rimmed irises glowed with the hope I would accept her gift. Her hair coiled around her neck, a braid of countryside health. How could I deny her pleasure?

  ‘We’ll have Grandmama fix us a berry pie for pudding,’ I said, ‘with custard and cream.’

  I wanted with all my heart to gorge on the sweet fruits. I smelled them, knowing they were forbidden. My stomach, unfilled with breakfast, rumbled painfully. But according to the advice of Dr Bull, whose book I kept at my bedside, I should not indulge my passions for berry-coloured fruits lest my unborn be delivered with stained cheeks, a birthmark on the back of his neck or across his nose.

  On impulse, Lizzie tipped half the load from her bucket onto my lap. My dress would be ruined, was the thought that came. We could soak it in the tub, I told myself. It did not matter in the larger scheme of things. What was important seemed to be my acceptance of this morning, the appreciation of its numerous gifts. Plucking up the courage to defy superstition, I reached down to grasp a handful of the glistening berries.

  I was more than prepared for the needs of my condition. To Egham I had brought an array of items: one horsehair pillow, one horsehair cushion; Columba, Epsom and Cheltenham salts for bathing; camomile heads, spearmint leaves and lemon peel for soothing tea; linen bandages and straps to support my abdomen. I had packed rough flannels, sponges and a tin bath for my evening wash. Measuring spoons and flasks for medicine, a bottle of lavender oil for calm and my ladies’ syringe for cleanliness. And for emergencies I had stowed a quart of brandy and tincture of laudanum, fresh from the apothecary.

  We cooked the pike in butter and parsley for breakfast, with yesterday’s bread toasted over the fire. After the meal, I worked at the oak table, my pencil whisking across the paper. As I slowly brought the mistletoebird to life on its casuarina branch, I was transported back to Dart Mouth, each stroke of the pencil conjuring the subtle hues and nuances of its wattles and eucalypts. How completely the settlement’s flora had charmed me: unique in its forms, never flashy or dazzling but hardy and at once delicate, understated, its muted majesty gradually revealed.

  No sooner had I completed the sketch than my pains returned. Each morning I awoke to make the vow that on that day I would put away my pencils. While I had enjoyed my first months staying in the cottage, as my confinement drew near I had found myself giving over to small worries. I would awaken several times in the night, unable to resume sleep, the bedding rucked and twisted around my middle. My body ached in every part: my back and legs, my feet and neck, even my wrists twinged in discomfort. Sometimes the only avenue of escaping the stirrings wrought by my condition was to light a candle and set back to work. During the moment of correcting a mistake or improving a composition my suffering was forgotten – though once I was finished, the aches reappeared, their intensity strengthening.

  Daisy had piled too many logs on the fire and I felt stifled by the room’s heat. The linen straps of the belt under my stomach dug into me. Sweat ran along the sides of my cheeks and the skin above my lips prickled. I had a vague intuition that something was amiss. When I had experienced similar pains in London they were eased by resting on my horsehair mattress. I yearned for the oblivion of sleep, if only I could find a comfortable position in which to lie. But there was a list of corrections to add to several lithograph prints and we were running to deadline. I mustered all of my strength to concentrate on my work, while picturing the time when our new family member would arrive.

  There was a dark straining low in my back. My stomach ached, deep and long, a novel sensation.

  John worked opposite me, marking up the text for the plate of the purple-crowned parakeet.

  ‘I feel terribly unwell,’ I said.

  Depositing his pen in the ink well, John asked what was wrong – where did I perceive the greatest pain and discomfort? Before I had the chance to formulate an answer, he had walked to my side of the table and lifted my hands into his. He led me to the sofa and arranged the cushions for me to sit. ‘I’ll track down Daisy.’

  Charlie and Henry had just come in from outside, hungry for food. John, an edge to his voice, sent them to search for my maid.

  Stars drifted about my forehead. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again I was lying on my bed upstairs. The curtains had been drawn. Daisy sat on a chair beside me, sweeping a fan back and forth across my face. I had been placed on my b
ack, which was uncomfortable, and I strained to move onto my side.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, ma’am,’ said Daisy softly.

  I tried to explain how discomforted I felt but the words would not come. Attuned to my needs, Daisy folded her fan and came to my side. Gripping her arms under my shoulders, she helped me turn my heavy form. She straightened the sheets and held a glass to my lips so I could take water, assuring me the physician had been called.

  Four fat leeches wriggled on my stomach, the physician securing them beneath a gauze bandage soaked in laudanum, which he placed over my middle. Blood ran from the wound and stained the wet cloth pink. I felt strange inside, my thoughts wandering back to the pelican we had encountered earlier in the day. I remembered that Lear’s bleeding lungs had driven him from London. I recalled his Dalmatian pelican, lithographed for The Birds of Europe, its canary-yellow lower mandible. As I thought on the creature, I saw it change before my eyes. My fevered brain placed welts of blood on the animal’s white breast. At its huge feet lay its withered, twin young, still in death. It was then I became aware of my lower back, burning darkly warm and then cool as ice. The room seemed wreathed in a furry mist. John, seated at my right, had glistening eyes and red lips. He cut a dashing figure, I thought. With her calm attendance, Daisy was like a heroine from a girl’s novel. On the table beside my bed sat a tray of unguents and droppers. I remembered Daisy undressing me and rubbing me with a large flannel. I recalled being questioned by the physician about my seven earlier births. He had enquired after my mental state. The fire was banked and the windows closed. John clutched my fingers as if I were on the verge of perishing.