The Elusive Language of Ducks (24 page)

Ducko, she said, you can't just eat half my mother. You can't just take half of her soaring high above the world. What about the other half, left behind, yearning for freedom. Yearning for the other part of herself. Please. Just a little bit each day.

But no. Day after day, she would coax him but the duck would eat no more snails, no more mash, with or without her mother. Crickets, cockroaches, worms, baby slugs, wheat and fresh corn on the cob, thank you very much.

A drop of sauvignon blanc with that, Ducko? she asked sarcastically, leaning on the leaf rake. Oh? Only champagne? We'll see what we can do.

The duck had a deliberate, haughty way of ignoring her when he wanted to. She was sure his demeanour was intended to be infuriating.

One day the duck was resting on the deck when a white-faced heron dropped from the sky and landed on the railing. Hannah was working at the table inside. She hardly dared to breathe as the two birds examined each other. The duck lifted one leg after the other, in a deliberate hesitant way, cocking his head towards the heron. And the heron was angling its head to look at the duck. The heron in contrast to the duck was tall and grey, elegant and slim with yellow stilt-like legs, a thin curling neck and a sharp black beak. They were each fascinated by the other and, apart from the duck's on-the-spot stepping, both held themselves rigidly as they stared. After a while, the heron's curiosity seemed to be satisfied. He was just a fat cumbersome duck after all. It launched itself into the air, making a graunching cry of farewell. The duck lifted his eye heavenward.

Hannah went outside. It was the first time in all the years they had lived there that she had seen a heron on their property. How many times had it flown by, observing the strange duck below, reminding itself that it must pop down for a visit some time?

Well! she sang. Mr and Mrs Muscovy-Heron, huh?

Mind your own business, said the duck, and with that he started to preen every feather.

They never saw the heron again, but there was other feathered company. The duck often had a scattering of birds around him, mainly sparrows and a blackbird or two. There was also a turtle dove, dressed in hues of powder-pink and purple with a collar of brown spots. Her wings were a cloak of soft browns overlapping, the scales of a fish on a sky-swimmer.

The turtle dove would be perched on the fence waiting for the duck when Hannah let him out of his cage in the mornings. The attraction was food, wheat or maize left in his cage from the night before. But there was some sort of camaraderie between the duck and the dove. Perhaps they loved each other. Turtle doves were monogamous and paired for life. He certainly tolerated her as she strutted and cooed around him during the course of the day. She'd rush at the marauding sparrows until they lifted into the air out of her way, dropping again as she turned her back.

The sparrows increased in number and the turtle dove grew round and fat. Hannah was sure that if she patted the bird, it would bounce up and down like a ball.

Each day Hannah would leave a corn cob in the water bowl under the deck; the duck would tear at it hungrily, slurping and tossing it around until most of the kernels were gone. The sparrows and dove would finish it off, efficiently pecking into the cavities where he'd left juicy titbits.

Then the cobs started to mysteriously disappear. Hannah tied them onto a decking post with string cutting deeply through the kernels. Still the cobs were moved, dangling at the far reaches of the string. The duck now avoided the corn. Something was frightening him.

She brought out an electronic trap from the basement and left it under the deck. For three days nothing happened. Then within two days she had two plump shiny-coated electrocuted rats. Once upon a time, her cats would have done this job.

The following day, a sparrow lay dead in the trap. Another day, another rat. And then the turtle dove.

Hannah felt sick. She turned her back on the duck and held the limp dove in her cupped hands, studying the perfect symmetry of the markings of its feathers. It lay so peacefully, so unaccusingly. She put the trap away. The creatures she killed these days, either directly or indirectly, on behalf of her duck.

Finally, she forced herself to go for a reconnoitre to the man-made lake in the city where she knew other ducks would be. She parked the car and ambled over the grassy hillocks and down to the water's edge. She pulled the plastic bag full of bread from her bag and sat on the rocky bank, her feet hanging over the side. From across the lake, swarms of birds streaked towards her.

Hannah hadn't been near ducks since the arrival of her duckling. Now she was surrounded by black swans, honking and squeaking, with their supercilious necks and crimson faces spreading into scarlet beaks, their wings a fluster of ruffles and frills. They looked as if they'd been sitting at a mirror with lipstick and hairspray, preparing themselves for a ball. The lake was chopped up from paddling feet. Busy little black ducks — with short white beaks, white legs and feet — flipped upside-down to
disappear disconcertingly under the water, until they popped up some distance away. Eels lurked around the rocks. Sparrows fluttered like leaves from the trees onto the grass behind her. Haughty geese waddled around a planting of flax to join the crowd. Pigeons strutted their stuff. They all joined in the feeding frenzy around her torn-up bread. None showed any interest whatsoever in her toes dabbling over the side.

She stared at the quacking mallards, so tiny in comparison to the draught horse of a duck that waited for her at home. There were no muscovy ducks. None of the ducks were shaking and shuddering as her own duck had been greeting her recently. It must use so much energy to do this. He was an overgrown humming bird grounded in a muddy paddock. He was a mangrove humming dog.

How would he fare if she brought him here, walked away, and never came back?

But how could she? What about dogs? Traffic? Other aggressive ducks?

And what about this warning she had read somewhere: Do not set a tame bird free. It can only lead to death or trouble or misunderstanding.

And then there was the most compelling reason. How could she release the duck anywhere now? How could she, now that her mother was irrefutably a part of him? A part of her mother at least. There were moments when she had to ask herself: What have I done? As her mother would say, whatever in the name of Heaven had got into her head?

Chapter 19

Sometimes the night is a different place. For a person alone in a house, the night becomes another territory, teeming with all the secrets and lies and fears and regrets that have accumulated in that person's life up until that moment. The night can whisper and thump, whack against windows, scratch and skitter above the ceiling. Depending on how you are at the time, you can listen, take note, be influenced. Or you can ignore the busy conference of the dark, let it chatter on without your attention.

On this particular evening, Hannah was ignoring the night as she worked, editing at the table by the heater where normally Simon would be working convivially nearby. The cold had forced all the outside noises into shelter, all the birds looped into knots, and the trees holding themselves motionless for fear that a shiver might start their leaves dropping one by one to the ground and so risk exposure to the approaching autumn.

Alongside the table, the blind over the narrow window was up. When she heard the crunching of twigs on the ground outside and glanced over without concern, all she could see was her own reflection. She returned to her work. The sound surfaced again, so she stood up from her chair and pressed her nose and forehead against the cold pane, just in time to see Eric standing there. The light from the window fell over his hairy chest, his milky white stomach and, as he turned, the folds of his back, his buttocks, his thin ballerina legs. He was an albino chimpanzee, escaped from the zoo of his mind, lumbering through the foliage of the garden. She unlatched the window and whispered into the still air.

Hey, Eric! Eric, are you all right?

She grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and rushed through the house to open the front door. Light from the hallway spilled into the garden beyond.

Eric?

Jungle smashing. A thud, then silence.

Tentatively she ventured outside, towards the crash.

Eric.

She picked her way through the bromeliads, the ferns, the trees to where lay the tangled white mound of him, tugging to free his foot from
the root that had brought him down. She knelt alongside him, placed her hand on his cold damp shoulder. As he picked his head up from the mud, she caught a white flash of swivelling eye, an animal rearing from its tether.

Ssssh, she said to the father of the little worm that had made its way underground to sea, so long ago now.

She plonked herself down and draped the blanket over his back.

Eric. What's wrong? Please stop this. Talk to me. What is going on? Where are your clothes, for starters?

She was tiring of pleading so stupidly. Lifting her nose in the air, she sniffed for evidence of alcohol. There was none.

He finally extricated his foot from the root and hoisted himself onto his hands and knees to crawl away from her, crushing ferns and mashing delicate groundcover with his ploughing shins. The chimp had become a caveman with his deerskins trawling each side of him through the undergrowth.

I would like an explanation.

How arch this sounded to her ears, but she needed to feel less helpless.

Then he stopped, collapsed himself into a noisy heap of blue blanket. Was he crying or laughing? He was a heaving, snorting buffoon and he didn't belong in her garden. He was destroying her plants, crashing uninvited through her evening. After all this time of bewildering silence, to arrive like this! She was shivering now, and angry. She had work to do. She wanted him off her territory.

Nonetheless, she tried one more time.

Would you like a milky Milo? I could bring one out to you, or you could come inside if you prefer?

He sat up, clutching the blanket under his chin, his face a pathetic mask of hopelessness.

All right, he said.

Oh? Oh good. OK then. Outside or inside?

Out here'll be fine, thanks. Sorry, sorry, he mumbled.

She jumped up and sprang through the foliage onto the lawn and inside. Quickly she prepared the Milo. Four heaped teaspoons in a large cup with sugar, and up to the top with milk. Two minutes in the microwave. She tested it. Just right. She took it out to him. He was gone.
She called. No answer. From his house, his bathroom window flooded with light. Off again. Then the room next door on. Off. Then upstairs to his bedroom. Bugger him.

Trembling, she took the Milo inside, drank a mouthful, then filled it to the top with a good dollop of brandy. She sipped as she continued her work.

The following day was infiltrated with images of Eric lumbering about in her garden. She couldn't concentrate on her work. His behaviour was irrational. If she'd known the contact details for his daughter, Sheila, she might have rung her. Why was he naked and had he been spying on her through the window as she worked? If he had only knocked on the door, she would have invited him inside.

But now, as she was walking along the waterfront, she felt that this pretty day held a message for her. The sea was sucking out to expose normally submerged rocks, a deeply inhaled tidal breath revealing the craggy bones of the Earth. She was flooded with questions and this day was trying to reveal something to her.

It had started with spotting a mother with a baby, in the company of an older couple all sitting in the sun on the stone wall by the path. The young woman had fat florid cheeks. Her eyes were big and moist, her lips thick and flaccid as they slurped kisses onto the bald head of the baby she clutched against her chest. She was tender with her devotion and more than generous with her kisses. And then Hannah realised with a degree of discomfort that the floppy baby was a life-sized doll.