Millie and the Night Heron

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘What’s that got to do with The Project?’ I asked. Sometimes The Boyfriend was exasperating.

  ‘Just humour me here,’ Tom said, smiling at me.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘You like going there, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the birds. You know that.’

  ‘Ah, the birds. Birds seem to be a bit special to you, aren’t they?’

  ‘Not until we came here,’ I started, and then stopped. ‘Oh.’

  Tom nodded, clearly pleased with himself. ‘So what I’m thinking,’ he said, ‘and honestly, Millie, this is my only suggestion. If you don’t want to do this, you’ll have to work out what you can do by yourself, okay?’

  ‘It sounds great already,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t heard me yet.’ Tom looked at me and shook his head, ‘So, we go to this place I know, a proper wetlands reserve, with the camera gear. You can use my digital camera and one of the 35mm cameras. We’ll take tripods. We’ll get your project done the only way I know how. And it will be fun, or it could be. How does that sound?’

  We spent the whole morning at the wetlands. Tom showed me how to use his digi camera, how to mount it on the tripod, how to use the menu and the zoom. He let me take a roll of film on one of his 35mm cameras. He took photos, too – some of the birds, some of me and some of Pavlov. I could tell when he was happy because he’d make this little chuckly sound, or say, ‘Well, well,’ in a pleased voice.

  We got home really hungry and finally nuked one of Mum’s frozen dinners. It was really a dinner dinner but we were so hungry that Tom said it didn’t matter. He got everything together to take to his place, while I set the table and made him more coffee.

  When we got to his place, after lunch, Tom said, ‘You’ve helped me before, but you haven’t done it from the beginning, have you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘First thing you have to do is to rewind your film, but not so far the film strip goes right back into the cannister, because then we’ll have to open the cannister with a bottle opener, which is a pain in the...’

  ‘Butt,’ I supplied helpfully.

  ‘Right. So press that little button in and rotate that lever. When you feel the slightest resistance, you have to stop.’

  ‘You mean me? I have to do it?’

  ‘Of course, Millie, it’s your project. You’re going to do everything.’

  ‘What if I get it wrong?’

  ‘Well, if you get this bit wrong, we’ll just open the cannister with a bottle opener. You won’t get it wrong though. You’ll be fine.’

  I didn’t get it wrong. I didn’t get anything wrong. I did exactly what Tom told me to do and I did everything as carefully as if I were a scientist working in a laboratory.

  I mixed up the developer and agitated the developing tank. Then I fixed the negatives. I washed and washed the film and rinsed it with wetting agent so there wouldn’t be any marks from the water drying. Finally we hung the negatives on the little line to dry. We did three rolls of film like that.

  While the film dried, we downloaded the digi photos on to Tom’s computer.

  ‘There’s procedure and method here, too,’ Tom said. ‘You’ve got to be really methodical about photography. It’s 5 per cent inspiration, 15 per cent timing and 80 per cent method. I think that’s so with all art, really.’

  We looked at my photos, one by one.

  ‘Well, well,’ Tom said about some of them, and I knew they were the ones he particularly liked.

  I loved nearly all of them, even the ones that were fuzzily out of focus. There was one of a big pelican opening his beak really wide, and another shot of him fluffing up his wings. There was one of a pair of little Eurasian coots floating on water so smooth it looked as though they were floating on the reflected clouds. There was even a great photo of Tom, one of my sneaky ones, looking just the way he looked before he began to smile at you. He looked startled at the photos of himself.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he said, ‘do I really look like that?’

  ‘A lot of the time,’ I told him. ‘But it’s a good look, Tom. See all those little creasy lines near your eyes? When you smile, they go up and make you look user-friendly.’

  ‘I didn’t realise there were quite so many creasy lines,’ Tom said.

  ‘But they’re good. They make you look soft.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he said with one of his chuckly noises. ‘Soft, eh? You know, Millie, I think you’ve got a good eye for photography.’

  We printed out the best of my bird photographs, the best sneaky shot of Tom and one of the primeval swamp-dog photos of Pavlov.

  ‘Now for the exciting bit,’ Tom said. ‘I bet that film is dry by now.’

  We could only do black-and-white photos, of course, but I like them. They look like the proper photographs in books.

  First we did a contact print, a sheet of all the photographs printed up exactly the same size as the negatives. That was so we could tell which negatives we wanted to enlarge.

  We took our contact sheets out into the lounge room to look at over a cup of coffee (instant) for Tom and a glass of juice for me. It was funny – some of the shots I could remember thinking would be really fantastic weren’t particularly good and others surprised me.

  ‘How many can I do?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got some time constraints,’ Tom said, ‘but I reckon you could do at least three for the project. We can always print up more another day. How does that sound?’

  It was really hard choosing. I knew they had to be project photos, but there was a great one of Tom.

  ‘Could I do that later? Before Mum comes home? I know she’d really like it. It looks like a proper portrait.’

  Tom squinted at it through the magnifying glass. He had one specifically for looking at contact prints.

  ‘You don’t think it makes me look old?’

  ‘No, you look great. It will be a kind of record of what we did when she was away. She’d like that.’

  ‘Yeah, it is good,’ Tom said. ‘Maybe we’ll have a go at it tomorrow night. But today it’s the project. Professional photographers have to prioritise, too, you know. Suppose you’re out taking photos of ... someone’s racehorse ... and you see this great old farmer sitting around. When you get home, you have to do the horse first, even if you think the farmer’s a better photograph. The horse is your bread and butter.’

  We marked the photographs I wanted to enlarge with a special pen and then went back into the darkroom.

  Enlarging was the most fun. I’d watched some of that before but I hadn’t done it myself. It was totally awesome. The blank paper went into the tray, and while we watched, the image floated magically on to the paper.

  The prints looked great. When I saw them all hanging on the line drying, it was as though they no longer were my photos but just real photographs, taken by someone who knew what they were doing.

  ‘That’s my favourite,’ Tom said. ‘I like the composition of that one. The tree in the foreground leads your eye to the group of herons, but they aren’t in the middle of the photograph. A lot of new photographers put their subject matter bang in the middle of the photograph, but you’re better off doing what you’ve done – dividing the image into threes.’

  ‘Can you take photos at night?’ I asked. ‘That would be so cool, to have a couple of shots of the same place tonight.’

  Tom laughed. ‘Well, not really,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t see anything at night. But’ – he checked his watch – ‘it’s earlier than I thought it would be. We could go back for some late-afternoon shots, if you like. You might get some sunset shots. That’s if you’re really keen?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What about your project? There’s more to it than photographs.’

&n
bsp; ‘I can do the information on your computer. I’ll write it up and print it out here. I can do that while the negs are drying.’

  I liked saying ‘negs’, the way Tom did, casually.

  ‘You could, I guess,’ Tom said. ‘You’d just squeak it in. Then you’ll have to mount the photographs.’

  ‘Black card. There’s two big pieces under Mum’s bed. We used it last year for these really neat Christmas cards.’

  ‘I’ve got some special rubber glue you can use. It won’t damage the photos. That way you can just unpeel them when the project’s been marked and we can get a couple of the photographs framed, I reckon. They’ll look good on the wall of your bedroom.’

  There were new birds at the wetlands when we got back. Tom said perhaps they came out only in the evening. They had longish legs, not as long as heron legs, but long for their small bodies, and they were cheep-cheepy.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tom frowned. ‘I kind of want to say sandpipers but I don’t see how they can be. I thought sandpipers were ocean birds. I could be wrong, though. Birds aren’t my specialty. I know the obvious ones, that’s all.’

  I got a couple of sunset shots with the cheepy birds in, although they weren’t exactly close. It was getting dark by the time we packed up all the gear. We were walking back to the car when a strange bird flew over us.

  ‘That’s one I do know,’ Tom said, turning to watch it.

  ‘I don’t. I’ve never seen it before. What is it?’ Birds being my specialty I thought I should know.

  ‘Ah ha. I tell you what, Millie. You find it in the bird book at home and I’ll give you something special. Remember how it flies. That’s your biggest clue.’

  ‘It was all hunkered in on itself.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Tom sounded pleased, although I couldn’t see his face in the dark. ‘They fly as if they haven’t got a neck. Remember that.’

  I had to type up all the project information before I looked at Tom’s bird book. That was prioritising. The book sat on his desk and called me, but I ignored it.

  ‘It’ll be a photo essay,’ Tom said.

  I liked the sound of that so much I used it as a subtitle. My project was called:

  The Wetlands: My Favourite

  Local Environment

  A Photo Essay by Millie Childes

  I remembered what Ms O’Grady had said about it being our own project and I wrote up special bits about why I personally liked the Wetlands and how living in this area had made me more aware of birds. I also wrote up a piece on how I took all the photos and even developed the black and white ones myself. I called this piece

  Technical Notes

  In an exhibition catalogue Tom showed me there was also a section where the exhibiting photographers wrote their personal Mission Statements. That sounded good to me, but I didn’t have a mission statement as a photographer yet. I thought I could do a mission statement about my environment instead.

  Mission Statement

  I’m concerned about my local environment and do my individual best to protect it and keep it the way it should be kept. I do not litter. My mother and I always recycle glass, plastic and paper. We re-use plastic bags. (I even have to take my lunch to school in old bread wrappers, which can be embarrassing.) We own a compost bin and a worm farm.

  My mother believes that everyone should grow some of their own food. She says this gives us a connection with our environment. I personally grow cherry tomatoes, baby squash and lemon thyme.

  It would be tragic if the Wetlands disappeared because we keep cutting down trees, using plastic bags and contributing to the greenhouse gases. Where would the pelicans, the herons and the moor hens live then? Our world would not be as wonderful a place without the birds, frogs, little fish and insects that live in these environments.

  Only when I had finished all that could I look at the bird book. I thought about looking up ‘bird with no neck’ on Google, but Tom had said specifically the bird book and I didn’t want to cheat.

  The bird that flew over us in the dark was a rufous night heron. I found it by

  (a) looking at wetlands birds

  (b) checking out the pictures and trying to remember what our bird had looked like

  (c) reading the descriptions.

  I would have given up but I wanted to prove to Tom that I was up to the challenge. (I was also interested in what the special thing I was going to get was, but that wasn’t the main reason. That was secondary. I really mean that. I thought the special thing was chocolate. It usually is.)

  ‘It was probably a rufous night heron,’ I told Tom triumphantly when he emerged from the darkroom. ‘At least, that’s what I think it was.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ he said, grinning, ‘and I think this is a good photo. What do you reckon?’

  It was a photo of me with Pavlov. We were mooching along by the lake’s edge. I could remember Tom calling out to me and I’d turned around. That’s when he took the photo. I was half turned to the camera. One half of my face was shielded by my hair, the other half was turned towards him. Pavlov had looked too. Behind us the lake was both busy with birds and still.

  I looked at the photo. I wanted to tell him what I liked about it, the way Mum made me talk about her paintings, but it was a photo of me, so it was hard. He was watching me.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Okay, you have to know that when I’m talking about it, I’m not talking about a photo of me. Just a girl and her dog by some water. Is that a deal?’

  ‘That’s a deal.’

  ‘What I like about the whole photo is that she’s just an ordinary girl, the dog’s a shaggy kind of ordinary dog. Nothing special is happening, you know? The girl’s just turned around to look at someone who’s called her, but...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it’s special enough for someone to have taken the photo in the first place, isn’t it? So she must mean something to the person who is taking it. And so we look at her a bit harder, right? Isn’t that the thing with photos?’

  ‘Gee, Millie, sometimes I listen to you and I can just hear the fact that you are your mother’s daughter.’

  I was pleased, even though I was both my mother and my father’s daughter, and myself, but of course Tom didn’t know Patrick so he couldn’t tell which parts were Patrick, which were Mum and which were just me.

  ‘And your father’s daughter,’ Tom said, as though he could read my thoughts. ‘That’s how come you were so good in the darkroom and at procedure. The daughter of an artist and a scientist, and your own interesting self, Millie. What more could you need?’

  I could think of a whole list of things I needed, but I knew what Tom meant so I stayed quiet.

  ‘I owe you something special for the night heron,’ he said, ‘but I have to give this some thought, okay? So can you wait?’

  ‘I didn’t do it for that,’ I said. ‘I did it because I wanted to know.’

  ‘I understand that. Listen, we’d better get home, because you still have to stick everything on your black card and Pavlov has to be fed.’

  (Tom and I had eaten cold baked beans with hot toast. A gourmet delight, Tom said, depending on impact for the difference between the soft, cold, squishy texture of the baked beans and the hot, crunchy texture of the toast, but I knew what Mum would have said!)

  When we got home it was after nine o’clock and the answering machine light was flashing like crazy.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Tom said, checking his watch, ‘your mother had strict school-next-day bedtimes for you and already we’ve flouted them.’

  ‘For a good cause. Do you mind if I go into your room and get the card?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ll play the messages.’

  The first
one was from Mum. My heart flip-flopped hearing her voice.

  ‘Hi, Millie. Hi, Tom. Hope everything is okay and sorry to miss you both. Millie, I know something is happening this week at school. Hope you remember! Tom, dearest, another big thank you for stepping in like this and I do hope everything is okay. I’ll try to ring later but there’s an artists’ dinner on so it might be quite late. If it’s too late I won’t, because you might be ... oops, there’s the battery beep, I have to recharge. Miss you both and lots of love.’

  I looked at Tom. He was smiling at the answering machine in a particularly dopey fashion.

  ‘Hi there, Kate, it’s Sheri. I really need to talk to you. If you’re there, pick up. Kate, pick up. So you’re not there. Well, I don’t know. Where else would you be? Kate, I need you.’

  ‘Mum’s best friend,’ I said to Tom.

  ‘Kate, it’s Sheri. I rang before. I really need to talk to you. Pick up. Just pick up, Kate. I don’t care what you’re doing, stop it and pick up.’

  ‘Kate, it’s been hours and you haven’t rung me or anything and my life is falling apart. Please call me, Kate, please. Mitchell and I need you. You and Millie. We need you both. Our life is falling ... sorry, that should be past tense, our life has fallen apart. Ring us, Kate.’

  ‘Something has happened,’ I said. ‘Something bad, Tom. Sheri wouldn’t normally ring like that.’

  ‘She sounds ... well, I hesitate to say it, but she sounds a little melodramatic.’

  ‘Are you going to ring her back?’

  ‘I don’t think I should.’ Tom looked up and down the hallway as if there was someone else he could call upon. ‘I don’t even know her.’

  ‘She sounds really sad, Tom, and Mum can’t phone her. It’s up to us.’

  ‘I don’t have the number.’

  ‘It’s in Mum’s phone book. Here.’

  ‘Look, Millie, I can’t ring someone I don’t know and ask them why they’re sad. You ring her.’

  ‘Are you sure?’