by Inga Simpson
She perched, eyes closed, listening. Whipbirds cracked along the creek bed, a powerful owl who-whooed. Sound stayed inside the forest, like a secret.
A stillness had fallen, whether it was her mood, or the forest overhearing her thoughts. She watched the play of light dappling the trunks around her. The earth was damp, the memory of those trees that had already lived and died and fallen rich in the humus.
There was a fresh beer bottle inside the stump’s missing core, which burst her bubble.
She climbed down and lay on her back, staring up at the canopy. The rustling and chirruping and gentle shift of the leaves smoothed her, until she was breathing with the forest. She was forest.
She laboured up the steep slope back to the road, carrying the beer bottle. Fourex, of course. Red-browed finches danced from shrub to shrub all about her. They were such chirpy birds that she couldn’t help but smile.
A car roared past on the road. Jen crouched down and waited until it was quiet again to climb onto the verge and cross over. She cleared the advertising out of her mailbox and dumped it in the recycling bin with the bottle. The robins were flitting about the orchard, darting down to snap up insects.
She slid out of her boots and stepped inside the shade of the house, then stopped. It had cooled down nicely, a breeze running through, but that wasn’t it. There was someone inside. ‘Hello?’
She padded through to the lounge and stopped again. There were five wompoo fruit-doves resting in the rafters, their great white heads bobbing over violet breasts. For a moment, she felt herself in the wrong place. A stranger.
The doves were fond of the red berries on the palms just by the high windows – but there were no berries inside.
‘Wom-poo,’ said a dove.
‘Hello,’ she said.
They took flight, in one ringing uplift, and exited via the open bay windows as weirdly as they had come. No sign of distress, or having flown in the wrong door to the wrong place, or fled the coop. As if her home really was just a bird house, another tree.
‘I still live here, you know,’ she said, to no one. ‘I wasn’t gone that long.’
She hung her hat in the laundry, poured a glass of water and sat on the back steps to drink it. Thoreau wrote that a house should be as open as a bird’s nest, delaying caulking the walls of his own cabin in the woods as long as he could to enjoy the breeze running through. He soon sealed it up when winter came, though, and hadn’t lasted long out there on his own.
The idea of a house was interesting to think about, if you could set yourself apart from it. The cottage had been someone else’s home before it was hers. A family’s. Before that there was no house, no clearing – just trees. Home to birds, possums, koalas, wallabies, bandicoots and goodness knows what. And for so long before that, home to the first people, who did not need to own or destroy to live in a place, or belong. Everything had been clear-felled for her benefit, however she looked at it.
Jen already shared the house with the geckos and native mice, the occasional snake. The final act of the character in My Birds had been to bequeath his property to the birds – his will stipulating that the house be torn down and the block let run wild. It was an idea that appealed, especially with no one to leave her ‘assets’ to. Not that her house would need tearing down in this climate – it would soon rot and fall and begin its own journey back into the forest.
Hanging
‘They’re not as heavy as they look,’ Henry said.
‘No, just awkward.’
They had decided to unpack all of the pieces from the ute first, to get them inside. There were showers forecast. Although the approach of the exhibition had kept her awake every night, she had no real plan for how to hang the works.
The two larger pieces went last, requiring four arms to transport them. Henry flipped the final one over, exposing her to the world.
‘Whoa,’ he said.
They manoeuvred around the reception desk and leaned it against the foyer wall.
‘Is it you?’
‘What do you think?’ Jen said.
‘It kinda reminds me of you,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘What’s it called?’
‘Flightless Bird.’
He frowned.
Had he not noticed the stumps of wings, the feathers around her mouth? The old, claw-like feet. Of course, she was not only flightless but childless and mateless.
‘Would that be your superpower?’
‘Sorry?’
‘To fly,’ he said. ‘If I could have one superpower, it’d be to swim underwater without needing to breathe. Like a fish. Or surf through the air like the Silver Surfer.’ He crouched, goofy-footed.
‘That would be good, too.’
‘Are you going to hang them both here?’
The paintings were the same size, and the foyer was probably the best place for them, allowing for a long view on approach. ‘Let’s prop them here for the moment and think about it.’
There were canvases everywhere, pieces she had long forgotten. Henry ran around turning them all outwards, like some sort of alarming TV game show: This Was Your Life or This Was Your Art.
The gallery’s rooms were now full of birds, which was a vast improvement on the guns and penises displayed on her previous visit. More appropriate for her young assistant, too. She and Henry had decided to arrange her pieces chronologically, showing her development, such as it was. Regression, really. It was all rather revealing.
She had put Henry in charge of hanging the smaller pieces and talking with the lighting fellow to get them right. He was being a good sport, showing Henry how the tracks were adjusted and how to set a piece off perfectly, even accounting for all the variations of natural light. She needn’t have worried about Henry handling the works – he was more careful than she was. The piece they were hanging, a rosella beside its dead mate on the side of the road, was getting more attention than it deserved. It had come from Phil, apparently, requiring considerable sweet-talking from Maureen. Or so she said.
Looking at it now, she wasn’t sure if it was the best choice for the exhibition, or to get Henry to focus on. She placed her hands on either side of the ladder, as much to steady herself as the boy.
‘Dad says she’s dead.’
‘He said that to you?’
‘I heard him say it to Mum.’
‘He’s home, then?’
Henry nodded. ‘For five days.’
The boy, like all children, had big ears, but the man could have been a little more careful. He had taken work in the mines, which had eased their financial problems but not improved his parenting skills. ‘None of us really know what’s happened yet,’ she said.
‘How long did you think Michael might come back?’
She gripped the ladder a little tighter. ‘I don’t know. For a long time. That’s what’s hard, yeah?’
He leaned back to inspect his work. ‘Is it straight?’
‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Now come down and let’s go get some lunch. Do you like burgers?’
To hang the last two pieces they had to work together. Henry had taken to calling them Bird Man and Bird Woman, which reminded her of a silly event they used to run in Canberra during summer: the Birdman Rally. Men, and even some women, jumped off a bizarre temporary tower set up in Lake Burley Griffin to launch various homemade contraptions into the air with the intent of flying. The distance travelled – usually a disappointing downward arc into the water – was measured, and a winner awarded. There had been a consolation prize for best outfit, which was usually the most birdlike.
‘You okay with that?’ Best not to send the boy home with a wrenched shoulder.
‘All good,’ he said. ‘You’ve found the hook?’
‘Got it.’
He dusted off his hands and stood back, nodding: already an expert. The lighting fellow was waiting up the ladder. Together they fiddled about trying to set the pictures off for maximum impact on entrance.
&n
bsp; Maureen was floating around in her silks with a serene smile, sticking the notes for each picture on the walls. ‘Lovely!’ she said, at every painting.
Jen winked at Henry.
He rolled his eyes.
A white ibis fossicked through the garden bed outside. The light was getting away.
‘I just love these two,’ Maureen said. ‘A match made in heaven.’
Henry smirked.
‘Are you pleased?’ Maureen asked. ‘It’s going to be such a great show.’
‘It’s come together well. Thank you.’
‘And Henry, what a great job you’ve done!’ Maureen said. ‘First time, too, I hear? I would never have guessed.’
‘Thanks,’ Henry said.
‘We should probably head home soon,’ Jen said. ‘If you don’t need us anymore?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Maureen said. ‘Now, I have your list here, Jen, but will you just go around for me and check what’s for sale and what’s not? I’d hate to get that wrong.’
‘Sure,’ Jen said.
‘Back in a sec,’ Henry said.
Jen needed to visit the bathroom herself, but took the opportunity to take one last walk around on her own.
Opening
Jen had hoped to get there before the crowd but the traffic had been worse than she expected. It was already difficult to find a park. She eventually found a spot between a truck and a van, almost down to the main street, which didn’t help her stay in the calm space she had carried from home.
People milled about the gallery entrance in a clump, forcing her to approach side on. She should be pleased; there could be no launch without people, and she hadn’t really invited anyone except Henry. Aunt Sophie had been too ill to travel, in the end. Jen suspected it was less about the unsightly scabs on her face from the latest skin cancer treatments and more about the unsightly subject that had arisen between them.
She collected a glass of sparkling on her way past the reception desk and wandered the rooms, trying to see her work as others did. It was difficult to avoid overhearing the comments, even standing back, as if long-sighted.
‘There you are,’ Maureen said, and took hold of Jen’s elbow, as if she might take flight at any moment. ‘Come and meet the mayor; he’s launching you.’
Jen let Maureen lead her through the crowd.
‘His mistress and his wife are here,’ Maureen said. ‘So he’s sweating already.’
‘Where will I stand?’ Jen said.
‘I thought in front of Flightless Bird,’ she said. ‘Everyone loves it, and it’s big enough to get picked up in the photos.’
Henry was in the foyer, with Kay and Montana, smart in his new graduation suit jacket. He gave her a thumbs up.
Jen managed a weak wave.
‘Mayor Jardine,’ Maureen said, ‘may I introduce you to Jen Anderson.’
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonderful exhibition.’ His handshake was warm and soft.
She attempted a smile.
‘Everyone just loves your work, Jen,’ he said. ‘And one of our own returning to the coast is a good news story and a half.’ He sipped his mineral water. ‘We need all the good news we can get at the moment,’ he said. ‘I have my eye on a few pieces for the meeting room of the new council chambers.’
His eye was actually fixed on a young blonde, but he was welcome to buy up as much as he liked.
‘You right to start in a few minutes, Jen?’ Maureen said.
Jen nodded through the blood roaring in her ears. While Maureen handed the mayor his speech and set him up at the lectern, Jen slipped a beta-blocker under her tongue.
She had no speech prepared and few to thank. Just Maureen and Henry, the council for their sponsorship. The little anecdote about yellow robins and colour she had composed on the drive up seemed silly now, among all these suits.
She could tell the story about her first exhibition, as a student, which had the right level of self-deprecation and humour. And appropriate, perhaps, given that some of those works were hung here today. The Canberra twitchers’ association had been her biggest fans, turning up late on the Sunday, still with binoculars around their necks. One reviewer had quipped that that was just as well, given how small some of the pieces were, and suggested it was work that would please the enthusiasts despite its ‘lack of artistic mastery’.
Not many art school graduates demonstrated mastery, except perhaps at eking out a living and throwing a party on a shoestring. The words had stung nonetheless.
Or she could tell the story of her last exhibition, when she had drunk too much champagne. The former National Gallery Director had done a lovely job of the launch, but Jen had stumbled through her speech, put off by Craig’s late arrival. She had thanked him for his support, nonetheless, hoping he would grow into the role.
The crowd was clapping and Maureen was waving her up, the mayor grinning. He had said something about a life’s work, which grabbed her attention. It was her life’s work – and there was no one to tell her it shouldn’t be. She downed the rest of her bubbles, a little warm and flat now, and took a deep breath.
Swinging
She had dreamt that the roof blew off the house and the rain poured in, filling it up to the windows before spilling out over the sills in great cascades. She had not been in the place when it went, but looking down from above, as if it were an architect’s model. At the point at which she woke, she had decided to hand the wreck of the place over to the birds, only to see it break loose and float off downhill, like a houseboat.
For a moment, it seemed real enough – her face and pillow were wet, and she felt herself adrift. But it was just a mist blown in from the windows behind the bed that she hadn’t bothered to shut, despite the forecast.
She sat up, groggy. She hadn’t been able to wind down after all the hoo-ha of the opening and had taken a sleeping tablet that was still hanging over her eyes like a heavy fog. The shrink disapproved of the sleeping tablets, but sometimes her mind wound itself up so tight that Sleepytime Tea didn’t have a hope of fetching it back.
The roof was still on, though again littered with branches and sticks. The back lawn, too, was a mess, hidden by a green throw of leaves, the broad shape belonging to the brush box, predominantly pale underside up.
She lay listening to the roar of her creek, taking all that water from the ridge and moving it on downstream.
The deck was soaked, and the table and chairs. She stood, leaning on a post with her tea, amid the mist. Every leaf dripped, vibrant green, plumped with moisture and warmth. The birds had reappeared a little after sun-up, as if not quite trusting that the rain had ceased at first, or perhaps they, too, had been washed out of their routines. Where they went when it stormed she still hadn’t worked out, but they didn’t look at all bedraggled, celebrating with song. Their knowledge of the seasons was passed down with a strength and certainty that belied their hollow bones and tiny hearts.
The opening had gone well, everyone said. She hadn’t embarrassed herself too much – but it had left her stretched thin.
She reached into the shed, pulling her treeboat from its hook. And a coil of rope. She marched down past the house, past the end of the garden, into her forest. She knew the tree already – the big old bloodwood with a high crown. Her tallest. She stood at its base and placed her hands on the warm trunk. Asking permission. It was intrusive, she was sure, to have a human clambering among your limbs, ropes rubbing away at your skin. She trusted the bloodwood to help her, because it would bleed if she hurt it; it could express its pain.
She threw the lead rope over the branch she had picked out, and missed. She tried again. And missed. Craig had always refused to climb when he was angry or upset; he said that’s when you made mistakes. They had fought once, on a trip, the night before they were to climb the back of Mount Buffalo. Something silly about who would cook dinner or who forgot to pack the tea. He refused to climb the next morning, so they had sat at camp and read books and pl
ayed cards until they were laughing together again.
When his brother had been arrested the second time they had cancelled a trip altogether. She had thought climbing mountain ash forests would be just what he needed, but they had walked Mornington Peninsula instead.
She finally landed the rope where she wanted it on the fourth go and pulled it over the limb. She rigged the treeboat, climbed in, and hauled herself up. If only she could wheel herself in and out of the world in the same way.
Jen hung, suspended, out of sight of the house, the neighbours, any visitors: everything. She had a clear view of the mountain, the sun setting behind it. The cicadas headed into crescendo, their final orchestra for the day, competing with the birds. A treeclimber hopped up up up the trunk, piping above the din.
The sky burned orange and then red. She watched until all colour and light were gone and the stars started winking. A boobook called from down in the gully and bats chittered and squealed as they fed. The tree rocked her to sleep.
She woke to raindrops on her face. Not from the sky, but from the tree, passed from leaf to leaf. She should move, get down from the tree and pack up her gear before it became too damp. Instead, she lay still, swinging free. The tree was whispering.
It was a moment that approached, a shift in time. She stared up at the tree’s dead heart while she listened, and at last she understood. She carried something dead inside her, too.
The rain was only mist, and the distilled drip from the leaves gentle. She struggled at the thought of letting go, as if standing on the edge of a high diving board. But she took the stone, shells and glass trinkets – the artefacts of Craig – from her pockets, and let them fall, one by one. They made a sound as they hit the ground, though not as loud as she might have imagined. The tree’s rain washed any tears away.
Yellow robins perched and dived beneath her, baring their yellow rumps as they fetched their breakfast.
