The Elusive Language of Ducks (37 page)

And your mother, added the duck, thinks it's atrocious. She's extremely disappointed in you. She feels betrayed by you. As do I.

There was another stile at the bottom of the paddock. Toby was waiting for her and helped her climb over.

Hannah, he said in her ear. Don't cry. Please. He pulled her to his side and kissed her head. Sssh.

She tried to wipe her wet cheeks with her shoulder. Then she lifted the duck and swept her face across that place between his wings. Into his musky earthy smell.

For heaven's sake, grunted the duck, recoiling. I
hate
it when you touch the back of my neck.

Well, called Bob, closing a gate to the henhouse. Sorted now, are we? He dug a finger into his ear, fervently, as if he might be tunnelling deeply for a thought that lay there. Well I never, he said good-heartedly as they approached. You wouldn't get any of my ducks in my arms like that.

He's feeling a bit overwhelmed, Hannah told Bob.

When I was a kid, I had a pet lamb, ‘Bluebird' its name was, because it made me happy. Bob lifted his leathery hand to stroke the duck, which bit him fiercely, yanking a pyramid of skin from the back of his hand. You
do
get attached. One day I came home from school and the lamb was gone. My mother told me it'd been chosen to join a travelling circus because it was so tame. A week later a man in a van arrived to fill our freezer with neatly parcelled sausages, roasts, racks, stewing chops and so on . . . Fortunately, I didn't put two and two together. I always thought that one day the circus might come to town and that the famous Bluebird would recognise me, galloping across the ring in the middle of the show, picking me out from the audience.

His hand dived under his shirt, rubbing at his chest. Come on, he said, let's get this duck into its pen. It's one I use when I need to separate an aggressive bird from the rest, or for mothers and their chicks, or whatever.

Toby, could you please get me his pillows and towels from the car?

I didn't hear
pillow,
did I? said Bob, as Toby set off. The light of the day was quickly fading. Bob opened a high gate into a three-by-two metre stretch of dry mud surrounded by a wire-mesh fence. Hannah felt her heart sinking slowly, a dead leaf making its lonely way from a tree.

There you are, Duckie, she said brightly, as he continued to complain gruffly. Just while you get used to things.

Bob had already left a dollop of mash on a lid making do as a plate, and a scattering of pellets on the ground. In a corner was a rusty forty-four-gallon drum, overturned to form a gaping cave. How will he know, thought Hannah, that this is where he should sleep? She lowered the duck to the ground. Again that gruff grunting, as he pumped his head. Lifting his feet tentatively, as though the very ground might crack open. She could see, she knew him enough to know that, despite his apparent calm, he was petrified. Here was Toby arriving with two pillows, the plastic-covered sleeping one and Annabel. There was enough room for both in the drum. She stuffed Annabel into the back, just in case it rained in the night, and also to help compensate for the peeling scabs of rust in the walls around. The other pillow, she covered in one of the towels Toby held out for her.

Glory be, said Bob, watching in the gloom with his arms folded upon the cushion of his belly. You'll be wanting a bedside lamp next.

And yes, indeed, already the shadows were closing in. She could feel the air tightening with cold, the night creeping up her legs and sneaking its way through her hair and down her neck. The duck went to the stream and drank, the water gurgling like a brook down his throat, his eye on hers. He squirted an empty splat that soaked into the dirt, then he drank more, his beak lifting skyward as if crooning an inaudible lament for all those ducks that had been betrayed by the ones they loved and had trusted. He stopped drinking and moved away, watching her, dropping his head, bowing, bowing over and over, thank you, thank you for the good times we've had, thank you for looking after me so well, for all that cleaning of my muck and the effort to find the right food. Thank you for your company. I've made things difficult for you at times and I regret that now. Yes, regret: we laughed about that word once. It is a word I now understand. I will accept my fate with dignity, as a wiser duck.

Ducko.

She squatted and slid her open hand under his belly. He hopped onto her arm while she supported him with the other hand. The movement so familiar to both of them.

Now take me away from here, he houghed.

Duckie, I'm sorry, she whispered. I'll see you in the morning. She manoeuvred him over to the drum and into the wide ravenous mouth. He backed out, snorting. She patted the pillow. Bed, Duckie. She picked him up again, his legs paddling paddling paddling to escape, so that when she placed him inside, tail-first this time, he propelled himself back into the open.

Leave him, said a voice behind her. He'll be fine. Don't worry. He's just a duck after all.

She'd forgotten the figures, waiting, watching in the dusk. Toby and Bob. Simon. Maggie. Her mother.

She stepped back. There was a sudden burst of large wings thrashing in the branches above. Then. Then, Bob held open the gate and they filed out, Toby's fingers in the flesh of her upper arm, as they picked their way over the rumpled ground. She looked back and he was a white ghost, a blur of nothing, motionless, but she knew his eye was fixed upon her, drilling into her, as she moved away from him, until the dark enclosed him, until the dark absorbed her, until neither of them existed anymore.

Chapter 28

This time, she was driving. The day was sombre. Toby next to her, drifting off to sleep, his head between the head-rest and the window.

How quickly a car can create distance between a person and a loved one, she thought. There was something unnatural about the speed of not only the actual departure but the moving away. She could feel the unravelling of that bond that had been so tightly bound in her heart spinning spinning spinning as they travelled further from him. What would he be doing now, in that pen with the drake running curiously up and down on the other side of the wire netting? And it was raining.

She'd woken up to splattering against the window, the sound of swaying trees filling the air. She had a headache. People were up and moving in the house, and the smell of coffee hung in the air. She decided she was too ill to move. If she stayed in bed, they would have to stay. She would have to stay with the duck another day. It would be better not to rush this. Toby, she was sure, would be sleeping, too.

As he was now as they drove away, away, away. The duck would be waiting for her to come back, just as he had been when she'd appeared from the house this morning, rain on her raincoat falling in loud drops from the trees. He spotted her, came scurrying to the fence to greet her. She had returned! He had survived the night and she had returned. He let her pick him up.

Ducko, she said softly. Hello.

He didn't reply, but sat calmly without scrabbling to escape as he normally had done of late. Her arms were the lifeboat, and they were going back home.

She carried him from the pen and walked about. Appealing little muscovy ducks, much daintier than the drakes, scattered away in fright. Their faces were a soft cherry pink, pretty costume eye-masks streaking from their beaks.

They passed another enclosure in which two gentle ducks with their broods of ducklings watched him nervously, emitting an uneasy purring of chirps. The same stream ran through their pen. One of the pom-poms was floating down the stream, hopping out and then skittering over the
mud for half a metre to repeat the action over and over. Like a child on a slide at a playground.

Do you remember being so tiny, Ducko? Look how cute and fluffy they are. No wonder I fell in love with you.

She'd made her way over to the main covered pen, slipping and sliding over muddy clay. The rain belting down. Another female in the pen continually darted up and down alongside her mate, running outside the netting. This drake's caruncle was just a knobble at the base of its beak, just a bump compared with
her
duck's well-defined cherry.

And when he noticed the drake he struggled urgently to clamber from her arm. She set him down. He hurried unabashedly towards the drake. The drake stopped, turned and faced him, whinnying. Not the horse neigh of her duck but a refined sweet trill. Its wings were flattened, she noticed with alarm. Her duck, too, read the signal, and sidled away. The drake stepped up beside him, wings still splayed, as if marching him off the property. Both heads were pumping, tails waggling. The pace increasing. Crests flaring. Striding faster and faster, alongside each other. Finally her duck broke away, dived into a stretch of straggly weeds growing along a fence. His head thrust through a tear in the fence, but the hole wasn't large enough to let him through. The other drake was bearing down on him. Enough! Hannah scooped up her duck, shooed loudly at the aggressor, which persisted, following them, still pumping and posturing.

Bob emerged from his shed with a basket of eggs, water pooling from the end of his nose. I saw that, he said, laughing. A bit of one-upmanship going on.

It's not safe for him here, she said.

They'll settle down. Once he gets used to what he is. He's a fine specimen. Bigger than my birds, look at that caruncle. You've come at a good time. That one's just a young drake, same age as yours. The others are moulting, hiding. They have no wing feathers so they keep out of trouble. He'll be able to look after himself. See those little chicks, he said, pointing out the skittering ducklings. One day they'll be his harem. He'll be in muscovy Heaven. Don't you worry, now.

Hannah looked at her duck. And if not? she asked. What then? A travelling circus?

Come on now, we have to get up to the house. Claire will have breakfast waiting for us. Leave him in his pen.

Can I place a female in his cage with him, just to see what he'll do?

Sure, sure.

While Hannah took her duck to his pen, easing him to the ground, Bob sloshed his way into the main pen and grabbed one of the females, locking his big weathered hands around its wings to bring it into the arena.

Her duck stood, his face boiling red. His eye. On her as always.

What are you doing? he grumped. This is so embarrassing. Are you wanting to humiliate me?

Bob dropped the female into the enclosure. It was white and downy, with a triangular dash of red around nervy eyes. It hurled itself against the netting, then squeezed behind the drum in panic. Her duck ignored it. He was oblivious. This intruder was like the turtle dove, the sparrows, the blackbirds and the starlings that hung around the food dish on the deck at home. He only had eyes for Hannah. He found a puddle, slurped into it and drank. Bob opened the gate and let the female out before closing it again.

Come on, he said. Breakfast.

The wet road flying beneath them.

It was amazing, she said to Toby, how he actually recognised something about the drake as being familiar. He went up to it, to greet it, to say hello. I'm sure there was no aggression intended. He went up to it eagerly, as if at last he had an inkling as to what he was. It was a pity that the drake reacted in such an unfriendly way. He felt threatened, of course.

Ah, hmmmm, yeah, whaa? said Toby.

But the females meant nothing to him. There was no reaction at all.

And it was too wet for her to leave Annabel out. When she'd tried to explain to Bob, he looked at her with an exaggerated air of disbelief. And when she'd presented him with a pile of fresh dry towels for the bedding, he'd shaken his head.

No promises, he said, albeit kindly, taking the towels to throw onto a bench in his shed. He emerged scratching his head. But honestly, the longer we pamper him, the longer it'll be before he acclimatises.

Don't you have a hose, she'd pleaded. It's just a matter of hosing down
the overnight towels in the morning, and hanging them on a tree or something to dry.