For the Forest of a Bird (7 page)

Why should it matter, though? Why should it bother her mother at all? After all, she had driven Nella's father away. If she'd really cared for her husband, if she'd really cared for Nella's father, she would have found a way to get better. Wasn't that right?

But she hadn't, she didn't, which could only mean she hadn't cared enough for him, she hadn't wanted him to stay.

Nella heard herself thinking these things, she heard the words inside her, but somehow the anger that usually accompanied them, that made them real and convincing, was gone. Something was different and just in that moment she glimpsed something behind the practised emotions.

A different way, a new way.

But she dismissed it. No, it wasn't possible. It couldn't be.

She began walking back to her father's. That was the way she should go, that was the way she could always be sure of.

She passed tea-trees with their bark now turned to papery shreds and ready to blow away in the next wind. She stopped at a place that in the midst of winter was water and mud and the frenzy of a thousand wings but now would soon be dust.

One thing turns into another. Winter to spring, anger to understanding.

Her mother loved her father, that was it. Her mother loved her father and she still loved him. She hadn't wanted him to leave but she could not stop him. She had wanted him to stay but she could not keep him.

And Nella loved her father too.

She paused only for a moment before she continued along the only path she'd ever known.

Back to her father's house, back to her father.
What did she expect? She hardly knew. To find the woman there or perhaps her father alone, to discover the door locked or even Matthew newly arrived? Everything seemed possible, but despite the uncertainty of it all – or perhaps because of it – Nella could only keep walking the same way.

Closer and closer to her father.

Further and further along the familiar dusty road.

As she reached his house it looked remarkably the same as it had the day before and, for a moment, Nella thought she might have the chance to start again.

To go back.

There in the frame of the long window was her father's shape and as she walked up the steps of the verandah, she knew he had been waiting for her.

‘Hi,' he said as she came through the door. He was sitting with a blanket on his knees, looking thinner. His bottles of medications were on the small table beside him.

‘Hi,' Nella said.

‘You were gone a while.'

She nodded.

It was like there was a plate of glass between them.

‘I meant to tell you,' he said. ‘About . . .'

‘Yes,' Nella said quickly. She didn't want to hear it said – the situation, the experience, or worst of all the woman's name – since words captured things and made it hard for them to be anything other than what they were.

‘I should have told you myself . . .' her father began again, and this time Nella recognised his words from somewhere before. From the hospital, from the night she had gone to see him.

She covered her face with her hands, perhaps to hide herself away from everything outside her, away from her father.

He was silent. She stayed still within the darkness of her hidden self.

And then she took her hands from her face and her father was still there but the expression on his face had changed. It was as if he was thinking things through, as if he was just realising something himself.

‘Nella,' he said. ‘Come on, come and rest in the sunroom, at least for now.'

He edged himself out of the chair and she followed him to the little room at the back of the house that she always stayed in when she came to visit. Her room. Except now she didn't sit herself down on the comfort of the bed as she usually did. Instead she stayed standing beside its metal frame and she held her arms tight around herself.

And her father paused as if he wanted to say something but then he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Solid, shut, or so it seemed
. It was only when Nella looked more closely that she saw a gap where the wood of the door did not quite fit the frame. She stood for a long time watching the odd sunlight that made its way through the opening – a small determined stream.

She walked slowly over to the door. The house must have shifted. There never had been such a space before; Nella was sure of it. She would have noticed since she knew every inch, every moment of this little room. She put her hand out towards the gap, but before she could reach it she stopped.

Voices were coming from the lounge room.

‘I can't.' It was her father's voice, a near-whisper. ‘I can't, Linda. She's in there.'

A pause.

‘You can go without them, can't you? Anyway, I've seen another pair in the bathroom, above the sink. I'll go and get them for you.'

‘No.'

‘Linda.'

The female voice spoke again. ‘I'm not wearing those, David . . . they don't match this jacket. I'm not going out in those.'

Silence.

‘I'll get them myself then.'

‘No, don't go in there, that is Nella's . . .'

And Nella heard footsteps, distinctly female footsteps, coming towards the room.

She stood staring at the gap and waited for it to widen, for the stream of sunlight to become a flood. She waited.

And waited.

And then a car horn sounded from the road. Once, twice.

‘Shit.' The footsteps stopped.

‘Shit. I'll have to go.' The footsteps turned and went back through the lounge room and straight to the front door. ‘I'll see you later, David.'

Nothing.

‘David . . .?'

But there was no reply, only the eventual noise of a car driving away. And when Nella opened the door, her father was sitting back in his chair looking at her and she was surprised at the warmth of the sudden sunlight.

Full and bright, strong.
Her father looked larger than real in the sun's brightness.

‘No . . . that is Nella's . . . No, don't go in there, that is Nella's . . .'
She heard the words that had made it to her through the sudden gap in the house.
His
words.

Perhaps things were as they always had been. Perhaps this woman was just someone briefly in her father's life – insignificant. Yes, why not? People had friends . . . girlfriends, boyfriends . . . what adults might call partners, but nothing could replace a child, no one could replace your daughter, your only daughter.

It made sense. Beneath all the flux and minutiae, some things – the very essential things – were always returned to, just as the sea returned to shore and the swallows returned to their home by the creek.

Yes, the swallows. Nella had not forgotten them. She knew they would be back now, she knew they would be preparing their nests. And her promise – the one she had made beneath the bridge on her last morning in Melbourne – came back to her. Of course, I will bring him here to the swallows . . . I will bring him back when the young ones fly.

That is what she had said and she looked at her father now and she knew that the promise had never left her.

When he is well, when his heart is completely healed I will take him to the creek, that's what Nella said to herself. We'll stand together and watch the swallows' children. We will watch them with their brand-new feathers, stepping out into sky.

‘Drifting away,' her father said. ‘What are you thinking, Nella-lamb?'

Only her father called her that. It came from the times she would wait eager at the door for him to return home from the shearing sheds, eager to see him, eager to hear of his travels and of the enormous properties, the paddocks of sheep, the tiny bleating lambs.

She smiled at him. She was right; nothing had changed, nothing important.

‘We could sit in the garden,' she said. And suddenly she couldn't help herself and she added, ‘Like we always do.'

He smiled back at her. ‘Yeah . . . like we always do.'

Nella helped her father up from his chair and then they sat, side by side, she next to the old fridge on the verandah and he on his seat closer to the driveway. They'd spent many hours like this over the last few years since her father had moved to the island and it felt to Nella, for many years before that. Forever, if that could be imagined.

While he talked of his travels, she would see lines like magic threads that connected them across the distances. He would tell her of the long journey back and forth across the Nullarbor or up to the outback stations of Queensland and she would imagine that next time she could borrow the swallows' wings to bring him home faster, so she could tell him of school and all the nonsense she was taught. Together the two of them would look out into the garden.

‘Is the leaf-curling spider still up there beneath the eave?' she asked.

Her father looked towards the roof.

‘Probably,' he answered.

‘And the silvereyes. Are they still enjoying their daily baths?'

‘I suppose so. I haven't been here, Nella.'

‘Hmm.'

Nella squinted into the sun, her father shielded his eyes.

‘What about Bluey? Do you think she's out of hibernation yet?'

Bluey was the blue-tongue lizard Nella had found one summer afternoon, pushing through the grass and leaf litter of the front garden. Nella had bent down and marvelled at the reptile's strange patterned skin, at her clear unblinking eyes. She'd knelt beside the creature in awe at the ancient memory that must have linked it to a million secret worlds.

‘Bluey?' her father echoed. ‘I'm not sure, Nella.'

‘Not sure?'

Nella looked out at the garden. She hadn't looked closely at it before, but she should have noticed anyway. How could she have missed it? Large parts of the undergrowth had been cut away. The native grasses and ground cover had been ripped out, the logs and branches that formed shelters and hiding places had been collected and put in a pile by the fence.

‘What's happened to Bluey's home?' she said.

She stared at the bare, neat earth.

Her father shifted awkwardly in his chair.

‘Linda thought it needed tidying up.'

‘Tidying up?' Nella could feel her throat tighten.

‘She thought it was a mess.'

‘A mess?'

That mess was somebody's home, Nella thought.

Her father turned his head to a sound coming along the street. A gear shift, the crushing of stones. A car was heading down the road.

‘Dad.' Nella tried to make herself heard.

The noise of the car was getting louder and louder.

‘Dad,' she said. She was almost yelling.

The car came closer.

‘Dad, it isn't right,' she said. ‘It's . . .'

The car slowed and began to turn into the driveway.

She stood up. ‘I'll tell her,' Nella said. ‘If you won't, I will.'

Nella strode across the verandah to the gravel of the driveway.

The car moved slowly towards her.

It came to a stop.

Inside she saw the figure in the driver's seat lower the passenger window. She readied herself.

A female's voice came out at her.

‘I didn't expect to see you here,' it said.

Nella looked into the interior of the car.

Smiling back at her was the girl from the side of the road.

They stood either side of her; Nella's father on her left, the girl to her right.
And Nella felt, for a moment, a strange kind of vertigo like she was being pulled one way and then the other and then not at all.

‘You came for the gift?' her father said to the girl.

‘Yes, yes . . . it's late, but . . .'

‘It is,' her father said. ‘But Linda wanted it to be perfect.'

‘I'm sure she did.' The girl tightened her mouth just the tiniest bit.

‘Come on,' Nella's father said. ‘Let's go and get it.' He began to turn towards the backyard.

‘Nella . . .' he was hesitant. ‘Do you want to help?'

Nella looked at the side gate that led to the back.

‘I'm Isobel,' the girl said. She touched Nella's arm.

Her father stopped. ‘Oh, I thought you knew each other. It seemed as though . . .' He shrugged. ‘Sorry. Nella, this is Isobel. Isobel is Linda's niece.'

Linda's niece
. Nella felt her whole body stiffen. She wanted suddenly to wrench her arm from Isobel's reach.

‘And Isobel, this is Nella, my daughter.'

‘Your daughter?' Isobel sounded surprised.

Her father continued on, fiddling with the lock of the gate.

Hadn't he spoken of Nella? Hadn't he mentioned his only daughter?

Nella felt herself stop completely.

And Isobel stopped beside her.

‘Come and help,' she said. ‘Please, Nella, your dad's not well enough yet. I need your help.'