by Inga Simpson
He scuttled away, loud through leaves, and ascended the rear of a tallowwood, sending bark particles flying; he had a bit to learn about stealth if he wanted to pinch anybody’s eggs.
Jen turned the basket, resting it on its front. She continued weaving the canes, having to stretch over the belly of the ball in a kind of hug. The pile of bamboo was disappearing fast, but there would be enough to complete this layer. She stretched her neck and flexed her hands. Dappled light danced over leaves. Robins and fantails fussed about nearby, as if recognising what was beginning to take shape.
She set off with her water bottle straight after breakfast. The nest was lying where she had left it, on its side among grasses. It was still cool in the shade, the sun yet to reach through the canopy. She started the day’s work gathering long slender sticks, preferably with a bit of bend left in them. When she had an armload she wandered back and began weaving them into the spaces around the bamboo.
Her hands and forearms were sore this morning, their muscles unaccustomed to nest building. She alternated gathering and weaving, all punctuated with watching birds. She had heard a new call, in the canopy, and was determined to identify it. It was parrot-like, igniting her fantasy of discovering the Coxen’s fig parrot in her forest.
Sometimes a stick would snap as she was weaving and she would fall forward with the sudden loss of tension, but she was making good progress. The smooth green of the bamboo was disappearing, dropping into the background, replaced by rough browns.
She lay back to rest, arms above her head, watching the light sifting in: magic beams in her enchanted forest. A pair of robins gripped the fibrous trunk of a tallowwood and peered down, their yellow chests aglow.
She sat up and sipped her water. On its side the basket looked a little like a bloated fish trap. All that had been caught inside were a few flies, buzzing against the canes. It was warmer now, and she slipped out of her shirt to work in her singlet. She had to go further afield for the last round of sticks, one eye on the canopy for the owner of the new voice. A rose gum offered up a handful of long slender twigs ideal for trimming around the opening, and she could begin to imagine finishing. Perhaps that explained the nervous feeling she had been carrying all morning, as if something was about to happen. As if enough hadn’t happened already.
She had already gathered a wheelbarrow load of bark, and was now hunting for vines – at last, a good use for velcro creeper. She cut them off at the base and poisoned the root while she was at it: creative gardening.
She alternated bark and vine where she could, threading and poking through any remaining gaps to build texture and colour, as much for camouflage as aesthetics. A good nest should not be visible from the ground.
The birds had grown used to her, and the monster nest, sing-songing all around and darting down to take insects she disturbed. The rope had bothered them for a while, resembling a super-long snake. She gathered it up now, and fed one end through the great steel ring at the top of the nest, knotting it off according to the instructions she had written out. She ran the other end through the pulley, and tossed it over the branch. She raised the nest, hand over hand. The nest’s shape was almost as she had imagined, drawn and planned. She looped the end of the rope around her log, as if securing a horse.
Her stomach was complaining about lunch but all she grabbed from the house was the camera. She forced herself to walk on the way back, lest she trip and damage the gear. Her first decent camera had gone missing in the Nymboida National Park when she had become distracted, following a bowerbird to its nest. When she returned to her lunch spot, the camera and case were gone. It had glinted blue-black in the sun and she had always suspected the bird, and his less showy mate, of tricking her for the prize. Ten years later she had learned little, dropping a thousand-dollar telephoto lens from a tree when she saw her first lyrebird.
Today she had both feet on the ground and her wits about her. She photographed the nest from all angles. Warm and round, a little rough, and already almost at home in its environment.
She took the camera back up to the house and sat it next to her laptop for later, put an apple in her pocket, and carried down an old feather doona and pillow to line the nest with for now, until she came up with something more durable. She pushed the bedding through the hole and climbed after it, nestling in.
She raised herself with the rope. It was just like the treeboat – only vertical and roomy. No synthetics in sight. The nest swung, and she swung free inside. Weightless as a bird.
The view was, as she had hoped, perfect. A glimpse through leaves out to the coast.
She snuggled deeper into her feathers, hummed a tune, all the while listening to the song around her, the wind in the leaves, birds gossiping about the installation of a giant nest in their woods. That’s what it was, she supposed: an installation. A hide.
Michael
The phone was ringing. She had forgotten to unplug it while she was sketching a better design for her knots and pulleys. Today something made her put down her pencil and answer it.
‘Um, it’s Henry.’
‘Hi, Henry.’ His mother said something in the background and the radio was on at their place, making it difficult for Jen to focus on his voice.
‘You need to listen to the news today.’
‘I do?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They … they’ve identified those bones. It’s Michael.’
She let out a breath.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No. It was very thoughtful of you to tell me.’
‘Okay. Well, I’d better go.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘And Henry …’
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’
She put the phone down. The sun was out, and scrubwrens chirruped in the grevilleas by the side of the house. A gumnut plonked on the roof and rattled down the slope and off the edge. Into the abyss.
She stood, filled the kettle, and fired up the gas. Waited for it to boil. She rinsed out a mug, a gift from her mother with a botanical print. Quite pretty, really. She took her time drying it, watching a cuckoo dove trying to land on the edge of the birdbath.
The kettle boiled. She turned off the gas, poured water over the infuser. Inhaled the gingery steam.
It was almost nine. Jen picked up the remote, pointed it at the stereo. The ABC news theme music was already playing. She sat on the arm of the lounge, holding her tea against her chest. It was the lead story. DNA testing had identified the remains found with those of Caitlin Jones as twelve-year-old Michael Wade, missing since June 1977. Police forensics had been able to match samples to those taken from a Wade family member.
There was an interview with Michael’s father, an old man now. He said he had been relieved to finally get the call, but not surprised. The family had been cooperating with the police for several weeks.
The next story was more on the blame game about the floods, as if any of it could have been predicted. Jen turned off the radio and took her tea outside.
Arrest
The day summer finally ended, police arrested a man in his twenties and charged him with the abduction, sexual assault and murder of Caitlin Jones. Another man, believed to be related, had been charged as an accessory. Jen had been supposed to go to a meeting about the proposed new development, but town was the last place she wanted to be.
Jen switched off the radio. She sliced an onion and cubed leftover vegetables for a curry, fried them off in the spices and added tomato and yoghurt. She turned down the heat, and left it to simmer.
The sky was burning red over the mountain, her forest in silhouette. She opened a bottle of wine, which she didn’t often allow herself during the week, and sat out the back with the birds. The arrests didn’t explain what had happened to Michael or quite let her father off the hook, but surely it couldn’t be coincidence that the children’s bodies had been found in the same place.
Jen spooned curry over rice and took her bowl in to watch the news. Another glass
of red, too, which she needed. She turned on the television and flicked through trying to find the ABC. The channel seemed to have dropped off somehow, as if insulted by the scarcity of use. Perhaps it had been taken off the air due to a lack of funding. She fiddled with the buttons on the remote, bringing up every menu on screen except the one for tuning in channels. It was almost seven, and it was bound to be the lead story.
She found it. Three layers down; she had to select digital. Now it tuned itself, with a low hum, running through the whole frequency range. It was taking its time.
The ABC was back. She sat on the floor, cross-legged in front of the screen, as the lead-in music ended.
Mathew Fergusson was twenty-two and had lived in the neighbouring town with his uncle, Callum Fergusson, fifty-nine. Mathew had left the area shortly after Caitlin disappeared. That should have been a red flag. The presenter cut to a journalist outside the courtroom, with the news that the uncle had not only been charged as an accessory to Caitlin’s murder but for the murder of Michael Wade. The picture they showed on screen was Michael’s last school photo, his grin almost as silly as her own that year. Michael had always been able to make her laugh, but not now. She wiped her face on her napkin. Of course he was dead, she had known that for most of her life – but now something else filled the space once occupied by hope. Grey over yellow.
Jen sipped her wine. She muted the sound for the rest of the news, staring at the blur of faces and places going by.
The more in-depth coverage on the 7.30 Report said the Fergussons had been attached, for a time, to one of the Brethren communities in the hills. The uncle had had a relationship with a woman there, with whom he had a child, and dropped off the grid for several years after Michael’s disappearance. Another red flag. He had later left the community, raising his nephew after his sister had died, while his own son had stayed on with his mother and the Brethren. None of it made any sense. There was no mention of previous convictions, police suspicions. Would the nephew have gone down the same path if he had chosen to stay with his own father?
She switched the television off. It would be months, at least, before all those questions were answered. She sat for a moment staring at the blank screen, feeling the sudden quiet. Emptiness. A boobook called, so loud it must have been perched on the gutter.
She padded out to the kitchen, filled the kettle, returned it to the hob and flicked the gas. Insects threw themselves at the light. She must have left a window ajar somewhere. She leaned on the kitchen bench, watching the undersides of moths, and bumping beetles, waiting for the water to boil. She considered, for a moment, calling Henry, but decided against it.
It was still outside, as if a blanket of relief had been thrown over her forest. She chose a Sleepytime Tea from the box, removed its paper seal, and hung the little sack over the edge of the mug. She was tired enough, but her mind was turning circles all the same.
Memorial
Glen had offered to pick her up and she had accepted. He was bringing Phil, too, who was up from Sydney. There was to be a bit of a gathering, Glen said. They wanted Jen to go, but she wasn’t sure about the idea of an impromptu school reunion tacked onto the memorial.
Michael’s father’s family was to fly in from Tasmania, but she hadn’t heard anything about his mother.
A thrush sang for her from the rose gum outside the bathroom, an aria of notes and intonations delivered with some volume. She wiped away a tear at the joy the bird delivered through song. Tears would not do if she was to wear the make-up she had dug out. She patted her eyes with a tissue.
She had washed her hair, and forced a comb through it, delivering a handful of grey and brown to the bin. She pulled it back, off her head, and tied it up with a band almost out of stretch.
It was going to turn out a nice day, the cloud drifting off and sun slanting in. She tried to think of Michael as she had known him, without sadness.
The service lacked the immediate grief of a funeral. There was not much black; it was a warm day, after all. Nor was there the organised colour coding of Caitlin’s memorial. Jen hadn’t recognised many of her classmates at first, and those she did she thought much changed. Time was unkind; most of them grey and heavy. But as they came up one by one and spoke to her, the years seemed to drop away, and they were the people she had always known. Older, sure, and with adult children and second marriages and jobs she may not necessarily have anticipated, but the same people. By this age, life had thrown most people a curve ball or two, so there was not the jostling for most successful or best preserved.
In some ways, they knew each other better than anyone, growing up together in this place. They had all been through this thing, this defining thing, together.
She had recognised Glen’s wife, Karen, straightaway, and his daughter. Sarah looked exactly as Karen had at her age. Glen’s genes hadn’t had much of a look-in.
The big surprise was Phil. He had never been anything special, looks-wise, and had cruised along doing the minimum. Until she had left in grade nine, anyway. In maths, he had always sat behind her, his long legs reaching under her chair. Always chatting and joking. In the end he had become a bit annoying, or she had thought so at the time. All he really did was stay steady, while she was intent on her own private shipwreck.
He had matured into a handsome older man, tall and still slim. He had a way of looking right at you, while you spoke, though he had to bend his head down a little to do so. His eyes, behind round glasses, reminded her of those of a robin – much larger, of course. But perhaps it was just the yellow in his checked shirt, and the neat grey of his jacket.
Henry was there, too, with Kay. Wearing his suit. He made his way through the crowd. ‘Hey.’
‘Henry, this is Phil,’ she said. ‘We went to school together.’
Henry shook Phil’s hand, nodded.
‘Pleased to meet you, Henry,’ Phil said. ‘I hear it’s been a tough year.’
Henry shrugged.
Jen put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Henry’s going to St Albans next year, to do their arts program,’ she said.
‘That’s quite hard to get into,’ Phil said.
Henry grinned. ‘Jen helped me,’ he said. ‘She’s helped me a lot.’
The music from inside the church swelled, the doors opened and people began to file in.
‘Should we?’ Phil said, and offered her his arm.
Jen smiled. He hadn’t learned those manners around town. Glen had said he was a widower now, but she hadn’t wanted to ask any questions. She sat in the second row, behind Michael’s family, and between Phil and Glen. They each gave her plenty of space on the pew, not moving even when people started pushing up along the rows. Michael’s mother turned and smiled. Jen did her best to smile back.
Aunt Sophie turned up just in time, on Maeve’s arm. They tottered to seats on the other side of the church.
The minister had a pleasant voice, for which she was thankful, because he spoke a lot. Michael’s father, in a suit rather tight about the middle, acknowledged the community for its support, the police, his family. Someone read a poem by Wilfred Owen, the war poet. No one had approached her to see if she would like to speak. Although she would probably have refused, it would have been nice to have been asked. Perhaps she could have recited a few quotes from Rocky, and made people laugh, but more likely it would all have fallen flat. Or she would have fallen flat herself.
The light came in all colours through the stained glass. At the end they stood, as one, to say a prayer for Michael and missing children everywhere. All down the rows, they held hands, schoolchildren again. The words, and the warmth of the men beside her, were too much and she cried. For Michael.
Aunt Sophie found Jen afterwards and wrapped her in a parent’s embrace.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Jen said.
‘I wouldn’t have missed it,’ Aunt Sophie said. ‘It was a lovely service, don’t you think?’
‘It was,’ Jen said.
Glen made his wa
y through the crowd. ‘We’re going up to the hotel for a drink,’ he said. ‘Maybe a meal. Would you like to join us?’
Jen looked at Aunt Sophie.
‘Karen can drop you both home if you prefer,’ Glen said.
‘You should go, Jenny,’ Aunt Sophie said. ‘Maeve’s cooked us something, and she and I have some catching up to do.’
‘Okay,’ Jen said.
Glen smiled. ‘That’s sorted then.’
Aunt Sophie leaned in to kiss Jen’s cheek. ‘I might drop in on my way home tomorrow?’
‘Do,’ Jen said. ‘I’ll bake something.’
The sun was shining, scrubwrens chirruping in the church hedges. Mowers hummed all over town, reining in the summer’s growth now that it had slowed.
Phil was leaning on the open door of the ute, watching a flight of black cockatoos lope pass. He turned and smiled. ‘I’ve missed those,’ he said.
She slid onto the bench seat, between the two of them again.
‘Whoa,’ Phil said, at first sight of the pub. ‘That’s quite an upgrade.’
‘Three mill,’ Glen said, and reversed into a shady park. ‘They have proper bands there now and everything.’
She let the men lead the way into the bar, where ten or fifteen of their classmates were already clumped together.
Phil turned. ‘Can I get you a drink, Jen?’
‘Schooner of Gold, please.’
A slight shift of his eyebrows suggested surprise. What should she have ordered? A glass of white wine?
‘Glen?’
‘Schooner,’ he said.
Jen scanned the crowd. ‘Karen’s not coming up?’
Glen shook his head. ‘Taking Sarah home. She’ll come and get us later.’
‘What did you think of the service?’ she said.