The Cockatoos

by Patrick White

  Miss Le Cornu was the one. Mrs Davoren often wondered how She was coping with her grief.

  As Busby Le Cornu lay in her bed watching the moon netted in the araucarias she was not coping: she had taken the lot, the stimulants, the sedatives. But would never – she had to laugh – die.

  She wondered about the yellow woman down the street, not interminably, because there were times when they got together, and that removed the necessity.

  Mrs Davoren would walk in. ‘How are you keeping, dear?’ was what she was bound to say.

  ‘Not so bad, thanks. And how’s yourself?’ Busby Le Cornu did not give the expected answer; because almost nothing is altogether expected.

  They are leading each other upstairs. Olive’s hand has a rough palm, though the bone structure is fine enough.

  Olive says, ‘You’ll have to fill in with what you remember scribbled on walls.’

  ‘Oh?’ Busby does not say.

  Ohhh – euhh Olive has begun to whimper.

  Knees planted on either side of the skinny body, Busby stoops to lick with strong, regular, vertical strokes, the yellow belly. In particular, the scar in it.

  Of course in actual fact they are seated in the garden below, in the shade of Figgis’s fully clothed magnolia tree. Busby has dragged out the record player. She is waiting to play it, not so much for Olive as for their historic cockatoos.

  Olive gets up and goes in, probably to the loo, from the look on her face when she returns: a pawnbroker’s genteel daughter.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, picking up the record-sleeve, ‘I would have thought so.’

  Though it is plain, from the expression on her face, that Olive has always been wondering which music you have in common.

  ‘Such a glorious work!’ She sighs with the resignation she has learnt to adopt for any surrender to ecstasy or martyrdom.

  Pish!

  Busby sets it off – to turn them on.

  ‘Mi tradì, quell’ alma ingrata,

  Infelice, o Dio, mi fa …’

  it has begun to sing, but the voice is a different one today, and there is no descent of cockatoos.

  O Dio! Olive is sitting forward in her deck-chair, holding back a grief she may let fall if you are unlucky enough.

  ‘Quando sento il mio tormento,

  Di vendetta il cor favella,

  Ma se guardo il suo cimento,

  Palpitando il cor mi va …’

  Busby switches it off: today she could not have borne the Don, and never the Commendatore.

  Presently Olive leaves. Which is what Busby has been hoping for.

  Mrs Davoren had heard that Miss Le Cornu ‘adored’ music. Lying alone in her bed, she wondered whether they would dare discuss the subject of their common adoration. For her part, she did not think she would wish to. She had never been what you could call religious, but there are certain things you can’t even write on a pad and leave on the kitchen table for somebody else to read.

  For a moment she thought she heard Him bumping around in the next room. It must have been her own heart.

  At moments his heart beat thunderously, at others it chugged like suffocating felt. None of these people asleep in the houses would rise from their beds to rescue him from the terrors in store. Which by now he couldn’t feel he had chosen to face: they were chosen for him. As far as he could see it was like that day or night You couldn’t call not even to your mother and father in the next room: they were too busy discussing the price of meat, or whether the rates would go up, or the Gas Company mend the leak, or accusing each other, or fucking together.

  He slid, thin and sick, between the railings, back inside the park. (If he had been just that bit fatter, he wouldn’t have fitted, and might have cried off.)

  He went first in the direction of the lake where the coot were shrieking. At least it was a sign of life. But wasn’t it the thought of finding life which was frightening him stiff – the alkies and freaks and pervs and old women with stockings halfdown and scabs on their faces?

  The moon was streaming light around him. It should have given him courage. Instead, everything looked less escapable. Trees were brandishing themselves. Along the lake’s edge flashed the steely blades of reeds. All had a perverse truth you recognized from thoughts you could scarcely say you thought: it was more as if they were slipped uninvited into your head. Of cruelty. And death.

  He wouldn’t think. He began humming to himself, but stopped. Somebody ‘undesirable’ might hear.

  The lake he knew by day as a placid, brown, and finally boring stretch of water was tingling with moonlight; it almost looked like frost. He put his hands in his pockets, and was glad to find the knife there. The moon became temporarily wrapped in a shred of cloud, which turned the water leaden. The – body? Yes, a naked one at that, was floating face-down, hidden, though not enough, by a screen of reeds. He whimpered down his nose and revolved twice on the spot where he was standing. Big and bulging, the corpse must be a woman’s, which would make it worse.

  He had only once seen a woman’s body, and then it was Buz Le Cornu walking starkers down the garden path the evening he climbed into Figgis’s magnolia watching for cockatoos. Anyone who could walk naked in the garden only a couple of steps from the street might get herself murdered. Or go bonkers enough to do herself in. Busby Le Cornu!

  Of course he needn’t let on about what he had found. Nobody would know he had seen it. But he ought to have a look at least. He got a stick and prodded at one of the bulges. It felt neither one thing nor another; but dead. As the cloud slipped past the moon, the body looked so green it must have spent some time in the water.

  He prodded again and the thing bobbed. It slid out from amongst the reeds: an old li-lo somebody must have had no further use for, or couldn’t be bothered to fish out.

  He was so relieved he let out a drop or two of piss. He was glad to feel the warmth in his pants.

  If he had felt afraid it was because it happened at night when everything looks exaggerated. He hadn’t been afraid at the real thing the evening Figgis murdered Davoren and the cockatoos. It was the mystery of it which made him almost let out a howl at the time. For a conjuring trick which was real.

  He walked on. There was a man sitting in the shadow of a clump of flax. ‘Hi, sonny, what do they call yer?’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘Come ’ere, Tom,’ the man said. ‘I got a surprise for yer.’

  ‘What?’

  He wasn’t going to be surprised; he walked on, and the man cursed for quite a while.

  He walked and came to a couple of women who had made themselves comfortable for the night wrapped in sheets of newspaper. Their carrier bags standing around them made fat shadows on the grass.

  ‘Come on over, Dick,’ one of the women invited. ‘We’ve got room for a nice little bolster between us. We’ll all sleep the cosier for squeezin’ up together.’

  The second woman laughed. Their faces were so tanned the moonlight made them look black.

  ‘Nah. I got a long way ter go.’

  Even at a distance he could smell their smell: of bodies and spirits.

  The first woman advised, ‘Fuck off then and get fucked.’

  He could hear them hitting or resettling their newspapers, and grumbling, after he had left.

  He roamed around. For something to do, he started jumping up and down on a rock, and his shadow, like the goat it was, jumped beside him in the moonlit grass.

  He felt foolish, then fed up. He might be getting sleepy, without a murder, not even a rape, to keep him awake. He flopped down beside some paperbarks, wondering whether he might catch rheumatic fever, that Uncle Kev nearly died of. At Noraville.

  He’s real sick they’re telling him to He quiet and let the snow they’ve plastered on his forehead take effect otherwise he might die but I won’t Sister I can’t I’m alive aren’t I criminals must expect the consequences but I’m not a crim I only tapped out messages without even knowing the code they got the message all right
but I’m innocent like Mr Davoren who was murdered for being innocent not even Mr Davoren himself can tell you can ask him if you’re foolish enough it’s visiting hour and he’s come to see what’s left of the criminal patient I’m not Mr Dav am I or am I worse than Davoren can’t speak he is bandaged up he is one big white bandage except for the light-coloured eyes which perhaps can’t see you for being unless you also I can see can’t I so I’m not yet Davoren can only make these creaking noises through his bandages can’t pass on the message perhaps he doesn’t understand the code he is already leaving the crim’s bedside stomping sideways backwards past the beds the lockers to avoid trampling cockatoos there is a grassful.

  Sparkling.

  There must have been a heavy dew. The morning was rustling with moisture and small birds. Firetails: he recognized them from the book Mum and Dad had given at Christmas. The finches were picking at something invisible on the underneath of the paperbark leaves. They took him for granted until, in spite of stiffness, numbness, he jumped up. The birds were flicked in all directions.

  To throw off whatever was still clinging to him from his nightmare, he ran full tilt at light. It was spinning round him. Above him the whirligig of whirligigs. Under his feet the earth thundered, but held firm. He might have thrown his arms around someone if anybody had showed up – even one of those leathery women of last night, or the man who wanted to show his prick. And run away before complications arose. Today he was fast as light. Zingg! He might have sung if he could have thought what.

  In the end he only sang out his name, and it was broken up, to add to the shimmer of the morning.

  He was nine years old, he remembered just before catching sight of IT, in the ragged grass, in the paperbark scrub, beside the lake. He thudded to a stop.

  It was a cockatoo. Which first screeched, then let out a few rusty squawks, from age perhaps, and dragging through wet grass. Had he been abandoned by the mob? Or couldn’t the others run the risk of further human treachery by staying to support what must be an old or sick bird? At any rate, the loner had survived a winter after the mob had flown.

  Tim Goodenough made the noises his mother produced for age and sickness, for the ‘poor old cockie’, when suddenly and unexpectedly, desire spurted in him. He jumped high enough to swing on and bring down a small bough. After a bit of a wrestling match, he succeeded in twisting it free.

  All the time the cockatoo was eyeing him, beak half open, one wing trailing.

  There was no need to pretend: the bird might have been offering himself.

  The boy looked round before swiping. The bird squawked once, less in fear or pain, it seemed, than because it was expected of him, and huddled himself against the grass.

  Tim hit and hit. It was soon over. The bird’s head lolled when he picked it up; the eyes were hidden behind their shutters of grey skin.

  The boy looked round again before taking out his knife to scalp the cockatoo in the way he had read Indians do to whites. Very little blood flowed from under the dry skin, before the yellow tuft was lying in the palm of his hand.

  He made off, but remembered, and returned, and took the corpse, and pitched it into the waters of the lake, which were beginning to blaze and steam.

  He loped. He trotted. He loped. The yellow tuft he was carrying blew around and threatened to escape. He had to close his hand.

  He would have liked to throw the thing away, but it sort of stuck to him now that he’d got it. Blowing inside the half-opened cage of his hand, whenever he dared glance, it made his heart beat, his breath whimper.

  His talisman!

  After running just a little farther, he came out through the park gate. If he hadn’t gone in, he might never have discovered what was waiting to burst out of him.

  Miss Le Cornu was leaning on her gate. If she had been more like those who lead ordered lives, she supposed she might have fetched a broom and swept the pavement in front of her. But for the moment, leaning in the sun, she was inclined to congratulate herself on being what that kind of person considers unstable. Habits were not in her line; though you do crave for one on and off.

  Out of one of Miss Le Cornu’s eyes trickled a tear. She rubbed it off, because down the street she could see the Goodenough boy coming from the park, and from the other direction Her approaching.

  Since the event in their lives Miss Le Cornu had watched Mrs Davoren, and had sometimes been on the verge of speaking. Then she hadn’t, remembering the touch of hands, and the grief they had briefly shared. Besides, Mrs Davoren seemed to be enjoying her widowhood. That winter she had bought herself a mini-car and learnt to drive it. She had bought the sealskin coat. It was much as if Mrs Davoren had inherited money from her late husband, when everyone knew the money had always been hers.

  At any rate, here she was, a widow in a sealskin coat, but this morning she had left her mini-car in the garage.

  Miss Le Cornu clenched her somewhat grubby hands. She was only too aware that her jeans were split (and at the crutch).

  ‘Lovely day, Mrs Davoren,’ Miss Le Cornu said; after all, why not celebrate the fact that you are neighbours?

  Mrs Davoren admitted that it was, indeed, a lovely day.

  To meet Miss Le Cornu in the flesh as opposed to conversing together in her thoughts was unnerving Mrs Davoren. She had often thought that if she did come face to face with Her she would introduce the subject of music, and now this idea came into her head, but fortunately she saved herself in time.

  ‘It’ll warm up later, though.’ Mrs Davoren was quite firm about it.

  ‘Won’t you find a fur coat a bit too much?’ Miss Le Cornu couldn’t resist.

  Mrs Davoren hadn’t expected that. ‘Yes,’ she gasped, ‘but the weight,’ and in her confusion the spit flew out, ‘the weight is a comfort – even if hot.’

  Mrs Davoren was so embarrassed, and Miss Le Cornu grinning her head off. (You had to remember that Busby Le Cornu was mad.)

  ‘Nicely matched skins – altogether beaut,’ she complimented her widowed neighbour; only the grace of God prevented Miss Le Cornu adding, ‘if it wasn’t for the slaughter of the seals.’

  But Mrs Davoren might have heard just that, for the pain showed in her sallow face and transferred itself to Miss Le Cornu’s throat, which had knotted itself almost as if she had a goitre.

  For a mere instant. Then their eyes cleared. The light was beating gloriously around them. The relief was tremendous.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Davoren said, ‘I’m off to the city. Thought I’d start early. Walk. Look round the shops while they’re still empty.’

  She did this at least once a week, picking up things and putting them down again.

  ‘Have a good time,’ Miss Le Cornu recommended.

  Mrs Davoren left on accepting this advice, and Miss Le Cornu had no opportunity for shouting more, because here was the Goodenough boy.

  ‘Why, Tim,’ she blared, ‘what have you been up to? Look at your shoes!’

  ‘The grass,’ he muttered. ‘It’s wet.’

  Just his luck to run into old Buz Le Cornu.

  Miss Le Cornu had left off her moccasins this morning. She liked the feel of moss beneath her bare feet. She would have liked to hang on to the Goodenough boy and show him something; she would have to think what.

  But Tim Goodenough barged on. His left shoulder must be looking out of joint because of what he was carrying so carefully in his hand, which no one must guess at, let alone see.

  He could still have thrown the thing away, but by now it felt as much a part of him as his guilt.

  At Davorens’ the blinds were down, which meant nothing; they always were.

  On the only occasion he could remember speaking to the dead man, Davoren had just picked up his paper from the path, and was standing reading it at the gate. He said a war had broken out.

  ‘I used to think that if ever another war broke out I would wanter be in ut.’ He spoke in the tone of voice he would have used on any passer-by. ‘A war brings people c
loser, you know.’

  ‘Oh?’ Yourself left out of the Irishman’s thoughts, your voice sounded such a bleat. ‘Did you ever kill a man, Mr Davoren – in the war you was in?’

  ‘Eh?’ He couldn’t very well help looking at you, but only after a fashion. ‘Perhaps – yes – a few. “Kill” is what you’d call ut, I reckon.’

  Around the two of you the morning was trembling, or so it seemed.

  Now on this similar morning of delicate balance, he went straight round to the garage when he got home, climbed behind the Feltex and wire-netting, and opened the door of the wormy old medicine cupboard. He shoved the limp wisp of a crest in amongst the darkness. He did not bother to feel whether his other ‘talismans’ were there. He slammed the door. Probably wouldn’t open it again. It would open, though; it was already opening, of its own accord, in his mind.

  A gust of breakfast and other things came at him as soon as he entered the kitchen.

  ‘It’s early for you, isn’t it? And what’s come over you, Tim, to have brushed your hair so nice?’

  He had, it was true, wet it a bit, and given it a bash or two with the brush; he could feel the wad of wet hair he had slicked across his forehead.

  ‘It isn’t for your birthday, is it?’ She, too, was coming at him. ‘Nine! Fancy! Who’d believe it!’

  She grabbed him to her apron. He hated this sort of thing: his cheek squashed; his shoulder would be looking more than disjointed – deformed. As she held him, practically suffocated, and him not supposed to resist, any vision he may have imagined having, ever, was splodged into one great, white blur, at the centre of it a smear of sulphur.

  When she was at last satisfied, she let him go. ‘Dad’s running late. We’ll have the present when he’s finished shaving. He went to no end of trouble getting it. You don’t realize, Tim, what you mean to your father. He’s that proud of you.’

  He sat down, and ate his porridge lumps and all this morning before his misery returned. He was hard put to it not to blubber when she stooped and opened the oven door, and let out a blast of half-baked cake. He did, in fact, start to blubber, but managed to turn it into a bubble or two.