The Elusive Language of Ducks (23 page)

Hannah took the photo to her mother and watched as she stared and stared, her eyes drinking in the faces one by one.

There's you, and Dad and me and Margaret, Hannah told her, pointing at each person.

Her mother gave her a dismissive glance, then went back to studying the photo. Hannah would have loved to peep into the reel of images running through her head. Were her thought processes intact enough to be able to enter the past, to recall all the nuances of the relationships that had been entangled through her life? As if she'd read her thoughts, her mother suddenly lifted her head and looked directly at Hannah: Hannah, dear, you have been the most wonderful daughter I could ever have had, you truly have, and that's not just words.

Hannah, overwhelmed, bent to press her lips on her cool cheek. She had the urge to say that she loved her, but the words had the ring of a cheap
retort. They smiled at each other then. It seemed she was surfacing from some sort of sludge in her mind to become lucid again. The splendour of that nearly empty box of chocolates. What had she actually seen? What was that glistening gold translating itself into?

And then her mother said, He is not your father, you know.

What do you mean? Don't be silly, Mum.

He is not your father. Have I not told you that before?

Of course he is. What makes you say that?

Because I know. I was there. I am telling you this.

And Maggie?

Yes, Margaret; but not you.

So who
is
my father, then?

At that moment the rest-home chaplain came into the room. Ah, he was
so
delighted to catch her mother awake,
and
in her room.

Hannah had wanted to turn him around and march him out again, especially as her mother had never had much time for him. In Hawke's Bay she would go to church, and later, when she couldn't, the minister would come to her to give her communion. But not here. She'd either lost her faith, or she just did not like this minister, a cherry-faced man of about sixty with rheumy eyes magnified behind crooked yellowing glasses. His ever-ready smile was full of teeth . . . The wolf who already had eaten the grandmother and was now looking for another one.

But her mother, always the lady, introduced Hannah to him as her wonderful daughter.

He said, No doubt you have been a wonderful mother, too. Isn't it good to have your daughter by your side?

Then her mother had announced quite meaningfully: It won't be long now.

The minister pulled at his shirt collar and glanced at Hannah, checking to see how she was taking this. He was a man accustomed to moulding his words to fit the occasion.

She repeated her statement. I said, it won't be long now.

He then said, No. No, but you'll be going to that lovely place where Jesus is waiting for you, and you will never be alone and your daughter will always carry you in her heart.

Then he asked if he could say a prayer, and Hannah, who was still
spinning from her mother's revelation, whether true or false, reluctantly agreed, thinking of her mother kneeling at her bedside every night when she was a child to recite their prayer.
God bless Mummy and Daddy and Hannah and wee Margaret and save us from illness and accidents and fires and earthquakes and death, and may we love each other forever and ever. Amen.

The minister had his own words up his sleeve, and he pulled them out like an unravelling old sock. He rambled on about passing to that other place and how Jesus Christ Our Lord would be with her forever more and how she had been a wonderful mother, for Jesus Christ's sake, amen. He had his hand, bloated and crusty, on her mother's forehead, and held Hannah's hand with the other. His spherical face held the all-teeth smile he wore all day long as he sidled up to vulnerable people and told them that they would be passing into the hands of Jesus. For Christ's sake. And that he, only he, could do the deed if they opened their hearts to him, as he was the desperate one, the one snivelling around in search of forgiveness and deference from half-wits who thought he was their father or brother or the long-dead grocer from up the road and who nodded to anything he told them, and if he dropped the ball it had nothing to do with him. Amen.

When he had finished, he unfolded a woman's cotton handkerchief from his shirt pocket, wiping his hands, dabbing his brow. The handkerchief had a rose, like a droplet of blood, embroidered in the corner. He looked at it uncertainly, his eyes down as if still in prayer. Then Hannah's mother surprised them both.

I'm not going to go alone, you know.

The minister looked puzzled and Hannah laughed uncomfortably.

Oh, is this a private thing between the two of you? he said, glancing at Hannah, stuffing the handkerchief into his trouser pocket. He lifted his hand and placed a fingertip at a corner of his lips, where a rogue nerve had started its busy dance. Her mother then repeated that she wasn't going to go alone and that she was going to take Hannah with her.

Oh yes, Hannah's coming too.

Am I, Mum? Hannah had said. I'm not so sure about that, actually.

And you, too, she said to the minister. It won't be long for you, either.

This was too much for him. He closed his twitching mouth over his
teeth and left the room. After he'd gone, her mother said, He shouldn't have done that. I didn't want him to do that, Hannah.

I'm sorry, Mum, she said. I didn't realise that.

Oh well, her mother said resignedly. We'll look out for him next time.

But you were telling me about Dad?

Her mother searched her face earnestly. She had the wide-eyed look of a child at a fairground, overwhelmed by the complexity of life. Within her tiny body, there was still the person who was aware and knowing. When she surfaced, these gems, or fossils, emerged.

Outside, the cicadas were singing after all those years of being white fat grubs in the earth. Maybe her mother had had a little sing that morning as she crawled to a top branch before lift-off?

Mum? Dad. You were telling me about Dad.

But her mother had slumped back into her silent, slumbering, distant self.

At the time, as she stood watching by the bed before leaving her mother, now asleep, Hannah's mind had twirled around the helix of memories and shared genes. Although she would try to broach the question of her father again, her mother seemed unable or disinclined to enlighten her. There was no one else to ask. She had to assume that it was untrue, but, even so, a bothersome stone lurked under her foot.

She'd walked from the room, and down the pastel corridor, past the rooms where other waiting people sat in armchairs, or in their beds, alone. Except for one. There was the wolf, leaning over a grey-skinned cadaverous woman, her mouth open like a cave. He raised his head as Hannah went by, and their eyes locked. He was chewing, his smile temporarily clamped shut by stolen toffee.

She felt confident that her mother would never have a visit from him again.

Her father had been a moderate man. He'd been a moderate gambler. He'd buy a weekly ticket in the Golden Kiwi Lottery. He'd put money on the horses. Sometimes he won and sometimes he lost. If he won he'd arrive home with presents and flowers and laughter. If he lost he'd go straight to his study and close the door and they weren't allowed to disturb him. Her parents didn't fight often, but on these days her mother would be tight-lipped and grim. He'd died before casinos came to New Zealand, otherwise he probably would have tipped a moderate amount of money down that drain.

He drank moderately and smoked half a packet a day and had a moderate respect for God.

He was a high-school English teacher. He wrote poetry that he'd read out to whoever was there at Christmas.

When she was little, Hannah would sit on his knee while he told her stories of magic and malice, wrapping his deep resonating voice like a cloak around her. And then when Maggie was old enough, Hannah would balance on the fat arm of the easy chair and savour the stories in their different versions all over again.

He would sing old songs with his own lyrics. He had black sweeping hair and a dimple in his chin.

He'd fantasise about setting off and sailing alone around the coast of New Zealand. He'd build boats in the garage which he would launch but never take far out to sea, building another, always bigger, model, as if the pursuit of the dream was more satisfying than the playing out of the waking reality.

This was the man she'd always regarded, without question, as her father.

Chapter 18

Hannah received a text from Simon:
Hi. Good to hear from you. Thinking deeply and searchingly. Have a contract in Christchurch . . . with aftershocks. You OK?

She told him she was OK, thank you. She didn't ask when he was coming back, but she had to admit to herself that she was relieved to hear from him, despite feeling betrayed. Had he allowed himself to be swallowed up by her sister? She considered that they might be having an affair, but dismissed it. Simon wasn't cool enough. He was an engineer, a pedant, wore tweed jackets and black skivvies, beige woollen jerseys pulled over the pockets of baggy trousers. He liked to bike and walk along bushy tracks. He didn't smoke, but if he did choose anything these days, it would probably be a sweet tobacco pipe, and he'd gnaw it contemplatively down to the bone. But no. He was far too kind and deep and ponderous for Maggie. She was attracted to musicians, artists, wordsmiths and wayward adventurers. People on cliff-tops, searching the horizon for the mast of a foreign ship.

Hannah packed away her doubts like putty into the jagged cracks of her reasoning.

Time passed. So many things had happened and yet nothing had happened at all. The world must have swung with the New Year into a different playground. The duck no longer made the woman laugh. The tufty feathers around his head had been falling out and his skin was now exposed, a crimson shiny hide, growing malignantly until it was too big for itself, cracking into a mosaic of bulges. A black stain spread almost symmetrically through the redness. From the top of his beak, the glossy knobble that had been sprouting there was swelling into a cherry tomato. He looked furious, embarrassed.

Ugly.

And his behaviour towards her was continuing to change. She was wary of him. If she went to the garden she'd carry a wide leaf rake for protection.

The urgent baby-duckling cheeping had stopped. When had it stopped? He now made a variety of other noises, as if, finally questioning what he might be, he was experimenting with a range of animal expressions to see which one suited him best. He was a tui, picking up all sounds of the world around him, even though the tui was black and sleek and elegant with its curly ruffle of beard, flitting through high branches and gorging itself on kahikatea berries; the duck in comparison was whitish, shaggy and cumbersome, with his angry face and warty growth, waddling around like a bewildered old man. Sometimes he stood alert and whinnied like a head-tossing horse. He could hiss like a snake. He made an attempt at a coo, like a grizzly pigeon. And when she came near him, he shuddered like a swimmer emerging from an icy pond. He wagged his tail and whined or panted like a dog. He also had a guttural strangled grunt, not unlike the noise her mother made when she was close to death.

Along these lines, something more alarming had happened. The duck had changed his eating habits. Snails had become abhorrent to him. He might take one in his beak, but would spit it out as if it were poison. She thought at first that the particular snails she offered had been eating something which rendered them unappetising, or that their shells were difficult to crack (so she smashed them, shuddering with repulsion, with
a brick). He'd eagerly pick up the mashed viscera, but then would drop them, tossing his head vigorously to rid himself of the very memory of them. Even tiny soft-shelled baby snails had the same effect.

Not only that, he no longer would eat his mash. He'd touch it with his beak and move away. She'd hold it under his beak, this way and that, as he turned away, that way and this. Finally he'd hiss and give her an admonishing nip, a warning.