by Anna Taylor
Up close its feathers smelt slightly sweet, like freshly dug earth. There was a strange smoothness to them, the rise of bones somewhere deep under all that downiness, under the flesh. Its chest was against his, and far off he could feel a pounding, though it could have just been him, his own heart. It beat its wing against his shoulder. He moved his hands to hold it tighter, and as he did his fingers sank into a patch where the feathers were gone, sliding right inside, touching something that felt like bone. It felt so hot in there, as if it should be steaming. Tim cried out and stumbled, and felt something cool move up around his feet, into his shoes, sucking up his trouser legs.
It was the lake.
The suddenness of its being upon him made his knees give way. He felt his body fold down into the water like someone into prayer. The bird fell soundlessly out of his arms, sliding across his stomach, into the lake. It was still for a moment, seemingly resting on the surface, and then the water started to draw it down. It pounded its wing against Tim’s torso, arching its body towards him, its neck curling in the dark; a sound came out its beak that was hardly a sound at all, more like a far-off squealing, so faint and desperate it seemed to Tim it was simply inside his own head. He pressed his hands against its feathers, pushed its body firmly under, pushed until he felt it grate the bottom. The water was up to his elbows, and up to his stomach, and all round his legs, a part of his shoes. There was a soft heaving against his palms, faint as a pulse. The water quaked.
Tim turned his head away, scanning for the car.
Bella hadn’t moved, the soft fog of drizzle surrounding her, and it looked to him as if she was floating up there in that ball of light, like a plastic figure in a toy plane.
Go to her, the voice said again, but he turned his head away, shaking it slightly; turned to look out across the lake.
Far off, on the other shore, he could see lights, a whole gaggle of them, a powdery yellow in the mist. They seemed to be blinking, winking even. And he blinked back, the fever in his throat beginning to slide down, out of reach, back into the water. There were lights on either side of him—Bella in the car, the town in the distance; him in the dark, surrounded, holding the hawk’s body down. He would stay there a little longer, he thought, right there inside the lake, the water moving round the edges of him, where it met the air. And when he was ready he would let it go, that mound of wet feathers beneath his hands. He would lift himself out of the lake. He would watch as the hawk’s body came rising up through the soft water to meet him.
The Beekeeper
A True Story
When she was seventeen, my mother saved her own life just by walking across the lawn to the washing line.
It was summer. She was woken that morning by the heat, she says—and by the phone, ringing downstairs. She was home for her university holidays. When she picked up the receiver there was a voice on the line that she’d never heard before. A young man’s voice—shaky—asking her to meet him outside the movie theatre on Main Street. Who’s this? she said to him. Who’s this? He refused to say. My mother, light-heartedly, laughing it off, said, No.
It was an ordinary weekday morning, perhaps a Tuesday, and the whole family—except for my mother—had gone away. They lived in Stark Street, up on the hill, in an old house overlooking the town, and the river, and the bare hills rolling towards the sky. My mother tells me that you could see mountains to the north and the west from the windows in the upstairs bedrooms. But when I try to picture those bedrooms, and the windows, and the mountains, I can’t. All I can see is the verandahs all the way round, upstairs and down, and the plants hanging in crocheted baskets from the ceiling, and the staircase, long and dark and curving. My grandfather chasing me up it on his hands and knees. Pretending to be a bear.
There is a lawn too. It is a bright soft green and it is wide and slightly curved, dipping down over the hill. There is a dirt path leading down the side of a bank in steep loops, and a tangle of nasturtiums. And then nothing. Nothing in my head, that is. Strange how memory works, how you can be so in something you can almost taste it, and then one step further and bang! You’re over a cliff with your eyes closed. Nothing.
I can see that lawn, though. It’s big and wide, stretching out in every direction. My mother is on that lawn. She is young, wild-eyed, and moving across it so rapidly in her smooth bare feet. She is running faster than she’s ever run before; her heart, pumping in time with her feet; her feet, pounding the earth.
My mother is in the house, in an upstairs bedroom, when she hears the front door open and then shut again. It is nearly 10 a.m. She has just showered and her hair is dripping down her back and down her front, a wet clump of it heavy against her neck. Hello? she calls into the morning. Hello-o? There is no answer. She walks out of her room and down the hall and begins to move, slowly, down the staircase. Her hand on the banister. Hello?
Perhaps she senses him there before she gets to the bottom, before she turns into the dimness of the hallway. That’s why she’s moving slowly, I guess. Cautiously. Feeling each step with her feet. Who’s there? she says. Who’s there?
He is. The man from the phone. She is sure of that as soon as she sees him there.
He’s standing stock still near the end of the hallway, and he doesn’t say, Me, or, I am, or, Hello back. He just stands there, looking foolish, a bandana tied over his face, just his eyes showing, his damp forehead, and a black-handled knife in his hand.
My mother comes to an abrupt halt. They stand facing each other, perhaps a metre apart. His hand with the knife moves, just a touch, but everything else is still.
Her whole body seems to fill with air, a great rush of it. She could float away right there; she is that light. She tries to smile without showing any sign of alarm, to smile without showing her teeth.
Don’t be silly, she says fluidly. Do you want a cup of tea?
*
My grandparents were great fans of bottling. They had wallpapered the rooms of the house in large seventies prints, and the front garden was filled with fruit trees. An enormous flowering plum drooped over the front gate and dripped plums and juice all over the footpath. There were more plums than anyone could eat. My grandparents grew resourceful. They filled buckets with fruit from the garden and made their own wine—thick liquors that looked like sugar syrup. They did this for a decade, maybe two, storing the wine, and dusty jars of bottled peaches and plums, apricots and nectarines, in a large cupboard in that downstairs hallway.
My mother thought, briefly, about trying to hide in there. She stood in the hallway with her arms crossed over her chest, trying to hide the shape of her skin under the light fabric. Wanting to hide her whole self. Get in the cupboard.
No, too late now.
The cupboard, or the back door, or the living-room window. Surely she could get out of there; she had opened it that very morning.
It’s just like people say, apparently. You’re half in, and you’re half out. You sort of slow down and speed up at the same time. You’re just raw animal, absorbing each second. Every thought, she says, was like a drop of water falling into a glass. Tink, tink. Crystal clear and achingly steady. No wild rambling in there. Just a thought. Tink. And then another. Tink.
*
The man with the knife is waving his arm around, almost in slow motion, like it’s a flag and he’s surrendering. Her whole body is pumping blood; her heart is working double time. She is filled up with her own life. Do not show the whites of your eyes, she tells herself. Do not show you are afraid. She offers him that cup of tea, calmly, kindly, keeping it light, and he says, no. Of course. No, that’s not what he wants at all.
From somewhere outside she hears a sound, far off, the groan of machinery, perhaps a lawn mower. The sound could come closer, she thinks. Could it come through the gate and up the path and into the hallway, flashing its loud blades? She listens hard, but it dies away. Clack clack clack.
She can smell sweat when the man moves his arms about, which he’s beginning to do mo
re frantically. Jolting around like fish caught on a line. He’s starting to pant, and his breathing seems to propel him forward, his feet stepping across the carpet towards her. She can tell that he’s not much older than her—maybe nineteen, twenty at the most. He holds the knife out in front of him. He’ll use it, he says. The knife. If she doesn’t do exactly what he tells her to. She nods. Yes, yes, she says, I understand.
He leads her into the living room.
Let’s just sit down for a minute, she says. Okay? Let’s just sit down.
They do. Side by side on the couch. She tries not to look at him, but she catches a flash of his forehead, which is dripping wet, and an awful scaly red round its edges. The smell of his skin, and of his tucked-in beige shirt, is right beside her now. His cuffs are tightly buttoned, done up tight around his wrists, like bandages. A breeze is coming in the open window, but he’s right there with the knife, holding it stiffly in his hand, and it’s clear she’s not going anywhere without him. The sun is innocently filling the room with light. A thought comes into her head—tink—and then slides out again. Tink.
I know you, I know you—this is what he says to her, over and over again. I know you.
But she has never seen him before in her life. It’s hard to tell, I guess, with the bandana over his face, but she can feel that she doesn’t know him. His rough blond hair. His panting voice. They’re ringing no bells. No bells here.
He moves closer to her and starts clawing at her nightie. He’s pulling so hard on it that it feels like it will just rip right open, right there. She tries to take his hand in hers and hold it still, but he’s stronger than her, of course, and he breaks away, back onto the fabric, back onto her skin.
My mother realises that maybe there’s nothing she can do. This realisation comes to her almost quietly; it is as if she hears it from a distance. It does not come with the sort of weight she might have expected. I can’t get away, she thinks to herself, and she hears only the words, not what they mean. She is sweating too, her hands hot and prickly, drips sliding down from under her arms. Her hair feels slimy against her neck. She looks at a picture on the opposite wall. She looks at the wallpaper with its coloured squares. She talks, all the while, like her mother might to her younger siblings, who are all still little, school aged, somewhere in a car, somewhere with her parents. She talks in a voice, and with a tone, in a way she has never talked before.
Everything’s okay, she says to the man with the knife. Let’s just sit here a little longer.
But he says, No. No, no, no! And he starts saying these terrible things to her, how he wants to hurt her, and how he’s going to have her, whether she likes it or not. He sort of laughs as he says it, but he is shaking a lot, she sees, his hands and his knife, sweat sliding down his face onto the fabric of his bandana. His voice is shaking too.
My mother makes a sudden decision. She needs to get outside. She knows she can’t escape from him, but if she can get outside it will all be okay. This is what she tells herself. Get out.
She slows her voice right down and she says to the man, I need to get the washing in.
This is the best she can think of. It has been out for an hour and a half at most. It will still be dripping. She doesn’t care.
I need to get the washing in, she says. Calmly, persistently. You can do whatever you want to me, but first I need to get the washing in.
He’s getting confused. It’s not going to plan. She can tell this. He has not rehearsed for this scene. He waves his knife around.
You’ll scream, he says.
No I won’t, she says. How can I? You’ve got a knife.
One of his feet is tapping against the carpet. He looks as if he might wriggle out of his own skin. You’ll scream, he says again.
No I won’t, my mother repeats, in exactly the same tone. I promise you, she says.
He goes still. His neck becomes quite limp, drooping towards his chest. She realises it’s a nod, or a half nod, slow and pronounced. He mumbles a reply. Something like, Hurry then, be quick.
He stands up before her and they walk out through the french doors together, like a couple heading out to enjoy the sun, the fresh morning air. If someone had been over on the opposite hill, watching, they would have thought them quite happy, quite calm, my mother and this man, moving down across the deck, onto the grass, his hand close to her back.
*
When I was small I loved bees. I would carry them round in my hands. What’s that? my mother used to say—what’s that you’ve got in there?—before prising my fingers open to reveal pulsing wings, a sharply pointed little back. I made coffins out of matchboxes—coffins filled with cotton wool—when I found their little curled bodies closed in on themselves, and dried up, on the footpath. I had a stack of them, these cardboard tombs, in my room.
My mother’s feet—pale and smooth, moving across the grass—must have called to them that day. To the bees. They must have. Because a bee came and slipped its body under her. Arching its back up towards her skin.
She feels the sting dart right up through her foot, into her leg. The flailing, bumbling wings on the grass. She cries out, and the man with the knife grabs her lips with his fingers to silence her. But she has been stung, he can see that; her foot begins to swell, redder and fatter every second. She starts to cry.
I’m allergic, she sobs. You have to help me, I’m allergic.
The man with the knife shifts from foot to foot, and wipes the sweat off his brow, and breathes fast and high, like a panting dog.
My mother’s thoughts are rapid now. It is as if a window has opened in the world for her to slip through.
You must get me some vinegar, she cries. From the kitchen. The pantry. Please, I’m allergic. Please.
You’ll run away, he says. No! You’ll run away!
But down on the grass, cradling her fat shiny foot, she cries even harder.
How can I? she says. I can’t even walk. You must help me!
He takes a few steps, then turns to look at her, and takes a few more and turns again. The knife dangles in his hand. He strides, half runs, across the length of the grass, up onto the deck. Inside.
She is off the ground and onto her feet in one liquid movement. She runs towards the fence, feet hardly touching the ground she’s moving so fast. Over a fence.
Bang! Bang! on the neighbour’s door. Nobody home. Over another fence. Bang! bang! Nobody home. And another. And one more.
The fourth house my mother went to that morning was not empty.
She banged on the door with the sides of her fists and her elbows and her knees. She could see a figure coming down the hallway, moving slowly, blurry in the yellow tempered glass. The door opened, and she slipped through it, back into her life.
*
There are no photos of my mother from around this time. There are the school ones, of course—row upon row of straight-backed girls, uniforms on, expressionless. And there are two creased black and white shots showing her and a group of friends fooling around on the school field. She has long plaits that have been caught mid-sway, curving upwards in the air. She is laughing, her mouth wide open.
And then there is a gap of years. In the next photo she must be twenty-one, maybe even twenty-two. It is in colour, but faded, so that everything, even the blue of her high-waisted flared jeans, has a slightly sepia tone. Her rust-red hair looks as if it’s been mixed with milk. She and a friend stand on a concrete step, the weatherboard of the house behind them only faintly there. Neither of them is smiling at all.
*
The carpet is a dusky floral in the house my mother bursts into. She slams the door shut behind her, and the carpet rises up, its bouquets apricot-coloured, sage green. Really it is just her legs giving way, the sudden swoop of the flowers coming to meet her. The man who has opened the door wears a white suit from head to toe, and smells faintly of smoke. He stands over her, his face weary-looking with astonishment, listening to the sounds her tongue is making, the words not com
ing out straight, not even in the right order. The light in there is dim—not just in the hallway, but in the living room, which he leads her into, calling for his wife.
We were outside, he says to my mother. In the garden. When I heard you knocking. I was doing the bees.
He is wearing gloves, she notices then, and carries a netting hat in one hand.
His wife appears, and stops in the doorway when she sees her, this girl in a transparent nightie, her whole body shuddering on the couch. The woman has curlers in her hair, but she must think to herself that it doesn’t matter now—she must think this when she sees my mother, her breasts showing through.
They move around the house, then, this man and his wife. The locks on the doors going click click click. The dialing of the phone. The clattering of tea cups in the kitchen. The rumble of the man’s voice, talking to the police.
He had moved down the hallway so slowly through that yellow glass; moving towards her in his stark suit, the gauze covering his face. Sitting there, with her limbs still jolting all over the place, she sees it over and over, as if on repeat: the white of his overalls crackling softly, his great masked face, moving towards her like an astronaut, heaving himself across the surface of the moon.
___
They took him away, the man with the knife.
He fetched the vinegar from the pantry for my mother, just as she’d asked. He took it out onto the deck for her.
The police found the bottle sitting out in the morning sun. They fingerprinted it, and they found him and took him away.
That was the end. And then there was the beginning, with him opening the kitchen door, and slipping inside, and pacing through the house, looking for her. She must have looked so pale when she appeared before him in the hallway, her breath catching in her throat—so pale and so clean, like something that could save him.
