by Judith White
She and Simon had laboured over the soil, digging in compost, and buying native trees, flaxes and ferns to attract birds. It was a project they’d enjoyed, quietly working alongside each other, often until dark when their tools and the weeds dissolved into shadows. In the early days, they’d kick off their shoes and fumble their way inside, laughing, without switching on electric lights. They’d fling off their grubby clothes to sink into a hot bath together, their skin stinging from the sun, the water muddying from their shared toils. They sipped wine or smoked a joint, ate previously prepared delicacies, and looked at each other in flickering candlelight from each end of the bath.
Over the years, the garden was developed to a point where it needed less attention. From time to time they’d revisit it with the same fervour, spending full weekends doing maintenance: weeding and pruning, planting and feeding the soil. But basically it looked after itself. The trees grew into a lush barrier from the rest of the world. It was only from the deck that they could look over and beyond to the neighbours’ backyards, and over to the other side of the valley where houses and apartments were continually being crammed into any available space.
After her mother came to live with them, Hannah finished teaching and took on editing work that she mostly could do from home. Her mother’s stay also coincided with Simon shifting from a solid day-job into semi-retirement. He took on engineering work that he could do from home, or which alternatively led him away for days or weeks at a time to other cities, sometimes other countries, on contract. Although they were spending more time in the house together, they spent less time nurturing each other. Hannah could see this clearly now. She’d been involved in the care for her mother. The garden became a shell that locked them against the world, into themselves. And their connection through their computers into separate domains left them trudging through different ethereal wastelands, and somewhere along the way they had become disconnected, their fingers seldom touching, moving onwards from a perspective that had once met, along parallel paths that steered them into an infinity apart.
And after her mother arrived, neither Hannah nor Simon had ventured into the undergrowth of the garden, neither of them pulled weeds or re-planted. Neither of them spent days or hours labouring until their muscles ached. On warmer days, Hannah had helped her mother outside onto the garden seat, with her handbag of course, bundled up in a bright crocheted blanket. She’d entertained her with readings from Shakespeare, absurdly shouting the Elizabethan language to be heard, not only by her mother, but all the neighbours and passersby, as well as triggering a nearby dog to soulfully howl the part of an unsolicited extra.
Meanwhile, the neighbourhood cats had moved in. Now Hannah anxiously shooed them away. She could spot their eyes glinting like malevolent creatures from a Rousseau jungle. Her own old cats skulked close by as well, displeased by this newcomer, a bird what’s more, competing for her attention.
DREAMS
At night, the duckling slept in the bathroom, still in the same plastic carrier. Each morning she cleaned out the straw where his poos collected, all the plump worms of his dreams spurted from the night for her to see.
Her own dreams of late were to do with him. Foraging dreams. Losing dreams. And then, a truly distressing dream.
The day before, she’d heard a radio interview with a chef banging on about the exquisite flavour and texture of pâté de foie gras. He was exuberantly sharing a recipe for tender juicy duck breast, cooked slowly with juniper berries and brown sugar.
Later, an email from a listener was read on-air. Were people aware of the cruelty behind the production of pâté de foie gras? How ducks were force-fed five kilograms of mashed corn a day, pumped through long pipes thrust down their throats? The torture lasted over two to three weeks, swelling their livers up to ten times the normal size.
That night, she dreamt that she was pulling a roasting dish from the hot oven. Amongst a rocky landscape of potatoes, pumpkin and parsnips, the duckling lay sprawled, gazing up at her weakly. His crusty fluff was pressed against goosebumpy skin.
She quickly retrieved his little carcass from the roasting dish, pleading with him not to die. But his eyes were milky white. There was a hopeful shimmer of black in the centre, until even that closed, like the last bubble popping from quicksand. His head quivered then flopped onto the palm of her hand.
She woke, crying into her pillow in that peculiar condensed way of dreams. Simon’s comforting hand was on her back.
Are you OK? he asked into the darkness.
The duck, she replied. I dreamt . . . that the duckling was . . . dead.
Oh, he muttered. The duck!
I . . . betrayed him.
For goodness’ sake. I thought it must have been about your mother.
He rolled over, and already he was asleep again, his back a wall towering above her.
She lay with the ache of the dream still sitting like a brick on her chest.
She was thinking of those days of her childhood when all the breathing in and out was a stitching together of moments and moments and moments. Her fear of the night, and her fiercely beating heart as she stood shivering in the dark by her parents’ bed until her mother eventually shifted over to let her in. She could still recall the sense of the delicious plunge into sleep once she felt safe.
And now her mind turned to the funeral parlour, with that organic smell hitting the back of her throat. An enormous wall clock whacked out the minutes, a clock from a busy railway station, where trains with no timetable arrived and departed on a whim. Her mother was already rotting on the board, though she wore lipstick, her cheeks were rouged and her hair was swept up as if her final journey had been on a motorbike. When Hannah curiously drew the blanket aside, she could see her mother’s blood, black and pooling under her bones, only just held within her skin.
TALKING ABOUT LOVE
The woman’s cats associated her with food. When they saw her, they sat upright with their ears pricked straight. Once they’d eaten their prime minced meat, they ignored her, unless it was cold or wet and they wanted to come inside. Their interest in her was self-serving.
When the duck saw her, all he wanted was to be with her. Whether or not his bowl was full of mash, his greens were piled around him or his water dish was replenished, he wanted only to sit on her lap or push his beak under the wing of her arm, or if not that, at least to sit contentedly at her feet.
She wondered whether this was a duck version of love.
One evening alone, before settling him down to sleep, she found herself sitting on the heated tiles of the bathroom with a glass of red wine by her side, musing out loud to him. She told him that the world was full of people who loved each other, or loved someone who didn’t love them, or were loved by someone who was not the one they truly loved. Or worse, people who didn’t love anyone, or who were loved by nobody at all. Everyone — she said, gulping more wine — could be defined by whom they loved, or didn’t love, and whether that love was reciprocated. Everyone formed themselves around the quality of love they had within them. And that was who they were.
That’s a bit obvious, the duckling replied. He said that he was sure his mother and father would have loved each other forever if tragedy had not intervened.
She told him that after her father died, so many years ago, her mother had tended to her own wizened mother, who clung to life as though it were a galloping horse, her white-haired head resting on its mane, fingers clasped into its gums like a bridle. Finally the horse had flung her off. After that, Hannah’s mother had lived alone.
When she went on to mention, in a somewhat maudlin tone by now, that some people were very difficult to love, oh yes they were, the duck asked her why she’d bother loving them at all.
Surely you just love them, or not?
It’s not that easy, she replied, spinning the tip of her finger around the rim of her glass. She told him that loving her sister, for example, was like loving a bee trapped in a jar, if he could imagine that.
You’re frightened to take the lid off because you don’t know whether she’s going to sting you or fly away. On the other hand there’s the honey side of her, but it’s seldom experienced.
The woman recounted how her sister had arrived from Christchurch, straight from the plane, on the morning of their mother’s funeral just a few months ago, dressed in black tights, short black skirt, professional jacket. Black sleek hair in a short bob, red lipstick. Heels that clipped noisily as she hurried about, apologising that her husband Toby couldn’t come, kissing the cousins and Simon’s relations and friends she’d met and never met, the hobbly uncle and the smelly old guy no one knew, and the celebrant — everyone — on the cheek. Everyone at the funeral was branded with a smudge of red along the continuum between ear and mouth: intimacy was determined according to the proximity of the lipstick to the lips. During the service she read a poem she had written. Even people who hadn’t met her mother dabbed their eyes. At the reception in the hall afterwards, people came to Hannah and remarked about its poignancy.
While Hannah hung back, exhausted by the event of her mother’s death and years of lack of sleep, Maggie spoke to everyone, her hand resting on arms, her eyes meeting theirs, babbling like a motor boat and pulling out their own stories as if she were sifting strings of weed from a lake. After the club sandwiches, asparagus rolls, little meat pies and cup cakes in the hall alongside the chapel, they traipsed back home, Hannah and Simon, and Maggie. Auntie Claire and Bob had a cup of tea and left soon after for Te Awamutu.
That night they lit a fire for the first time that winter. Maggie got stuck into the gin. Simon and Hannah opened a bottle of champagne. Hannah had a glass of bubbly and a leftover club sandwich and went to bed, leaving Simon still drinking. He had finished the bubbly, and Maggie had persuaded him to have a gin. The fire had settled down and was glowing like an angry fist.
A couple of hours later Hannah woke up. Simon wasn’t in bed. She got up to go to the bathroom, and found Maggie lying on the couch, her arms and body curled around the framed photo of their mother, the one that had been propped against the coffin. Simon was squatting at her head, his hand on her shoulder. Hannah saw that he was holding a bucket. He looked up as Hannah peered around the door.
What’s going on? she asked.
Your sister isn’t feeling well. His voice was thick. Maggie turned her head in a delayed, jerky kind of way. Her face was as wet as winter. Her lips were pale. The ink pad had run out. The gin bottle was on the floor, nearly empty.
We’re talking about Mum, said Maggie. Your mother and my mother. And your darling husband is telling me things. Aren’t you, Simon, you sweet man? And she shoved her fingers backwards through his hair and over his face and into his beard, lingering over his mouth. He tugged away.
Maggie is upset, he explained to Hannah.
I know I am, and he’s right, he’s as right as rain, the dear man, but my mother has just expired. Dead. Would you believe it? My mother. And my whole life, trying to live up to expectorations, expectations, ex marks the spot and now she’s gone, and I will never know whether I made it. She didn’t give me the test results. Did I pass? All that time, and where is she now? I don’t even know whether she liked me.
She did, said Hannah. She missed you terribly.
Maggie hoisted herself up from the couch, sat up, tore at her hair, then flopped back down again before continuing.
I rang her once at her place, before you kidnapped her, and she thought the kids were with her — the kids who have been in London with their father for years. She told me that she could see them, and she complained that she cooked for them and, not only would they not eat her food, but they didn’t help with the dishes afterwards. She was away with the fairies.
That was the medication, said Hannah. She had episodes like that, hallucinations. You would have caught her on a bad day.
Yes, darling, but what was the point? In the end, what could we say that was real? Nothing.
She was proud of you, said Hannah. And Toby, she liked Toby, too. After all the divorce trouble, she was pleased you found someone who was more suited to you.
She never told me. Honestly. Would’ve been nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
Her words mushy, running into each other, slow.
She ached for you. She’d tell everyone about you, your job, so important. My daughter, in advertising . . .
Everybody except me. You’ve no idea how hard it has been for me. Toby’s not all fun and games, you know. People think I’m strong, but it’s all a mouth. A myth. Huh. It’s all word of myth. You’ve no idea what my life’s like. What I have to put up with. No idea. Nobody. Simon has though, now, don’t you, sweetie? How tough it’s been for me?
Simon by now was sitting back in his armchair, drumming his fingers, yawning and shuffling his feet over the carpet. He glanced at Hannah, then fixated on fiercely flicking at crumbs on the arm of the chair. Maggie attempted to sit up again, swinging her legs around to the floor, groaning, still clutching the photo.
I’m armour-plated because I’ve had to be, and if only you knew how heavy all that stuff is to carry around. Hauling it around, clanking and jangling in the dungeons, OK, OK, bucket, quick Simon, sweetie, give me the bucket, here here here.
Simon leapt over and pressed the bucket at her chest, under her chin.
She dropped the photo and threw her arms around the bucket.
God. Oh God.
Her voice echoing in the bucket. She retched and heaved violently and fruitlessly, before pushing the bucket away.
God. I’m gonna die on the day of my mother’s funeral.
Come on, Maggie, said Simon. No, you’re not.
Hannah was leaning against the door, amazed but not surprised that her sister could flip the occasion of her mother’s death into a means to seek attention for herself. Simon stared at Hannah for help. She went over and helped prop Maggie’s head onto a cushion. Together, they bundled her, moaning like a cow in labour, onto her side. Simon lifted her feet onto the couch again. He went to the linen cupboard and pulled out a crocheted blanket and a towel. He spread the blanket over Maggie, arranged the towel under her chin over the couch, and left the bucket within easy reach.
You’re a good man, Simon, she murmured, her eyes blinking, her hand waving like seaweed in an attempt to grasp his.
By the time Hannah returned to bed, after making sure the fire was safe and picking up bottles and glasses, the good man was snoring on top of the duvet, still in his clothes, the eye of his navel winking at her between shirt buttons.
In the morning Maggie had left, her taxi arriving on schedule at six-thirty. Only a waft of her perfume floated in the room to suggest that she’d been there at all.
Hannah glanced down at the duck on her lap. He’d shoved his head up into her sleeve and by his breathing she could tell he was asleep. When she moved, though, his head was out and alert again.
Oh, I’ve been miles away, said the woman. Sorry.
It’s been interesting, said the duck. That Maggie, she’s a one all right. And the man. What about him?
What do you mean, what about him?
You love him?
And she realised that she felt awkward about answering this question. It seemed complicated. A little acidic spot of infidelity etching its way through the shiny paintwork. Guilt, like rust, never sleeps.
Of course I do, was the easiest thing to say, and that’s what she did say, and of course she did, but she didn’t like the feeling of discomfort that hovered.
Chapter 2
IN THE UNDERGROWTH
The duckling was becoming more gangly and straggly. An undergrowth of white down was sprouting amongst the yellow. Also, on top of his tail, hidden by fluff, there was a round plug of sunny yellow tufts. Hannah examined it with her fingertip; it was soft and sensual, resembling in appearance and touch the centre of a dandelion flower. And it felt significant, like a storehouse for a fountain of feathers, fizzing to b
urst into a fanned display.
Look at this, she said to Simon, who was sitting at the kitchen table, working on his computer. She held the duckling in the crux of her arm and rummaged through the tail fluff to display the golden plug. She knew Simon didn’t care much for the duck, but he also had a tendency to be pedantic. He peered over his glasses and said, Hmmm. Looks like a gland of some sort.
Shortly afterwards he told her exactly what it was, as if he’d known all along.
It’s a uropygial gland, he read from the screen of his computer. It produces oil to spread over the feathers to make them water-repellent. It’s strongly developed in waterfowl such as ducks, and not all birds have them. Emus, ostriches and bustards don’t. Hmmm, no, wait a minute . . . What you’re looking at is the uropygial wick, under which is a single narrow nipple-like papilla, producing vitamin D precursors, extruded cells, ester waxes, fatty acids, fat and sudanophilic secretory granules.
What’s a bustard, wondered Hannah, and what’s a sudanophilic secretory granule? But she didn’t dare ask.
Ducks are more buoyant than they would be if their feathers absorbed water, continued Simon. And they have hollow bones. If ducks die at sea, say after an oil spill, ninety per cent of them float for at least two weeks.
Hannah looked at the duckling with its hollow bones and uropygial wick.
Well, she said. Well, we have learnt something.
SOMETHING TO TELL HER
Simon had always relied on knowledge or information as a means of communication.
The first time he’d asked her out, rather casually, one cold Easter, to a university tramping club get-together, there’d been a bonfire. Baked potatoes encrusted with thick charcoal, sausages, white bread, tomato sauce, mulled wine, laughing camaraderie. After eating, everybody sat on logs around the fire and hollered out rude songs into the chilly night. She’ll be coming round the mountains when she comes. The hair on her dikydido hung down to her knees.
