Magpie Hall (8 page)

Rosemary

When I think back to childhood holidays at Magpie Hall, the colours are saturated, like the Super-8 films that Grandpa was always shooting. I see myself from the outside, a skinny kid with a pageboy haircut and crooked front teeth, a scattering of freckles, grinning widely at the camera. Charlie follows me around like a toy on a string. In another memory — or perhaps it is a movie — we ride our ponies bareback into the river, looks of concentration on our faces. When I think of those days, they are always silent, with only the ticking of the projector as a soundtrack, and everything is slightly sped up: when we wave for the camera our hands are blurs.

Magpie Hall was a crowded place then, filled with children in swimsuits skidding across the lawn on plastic slides, and birthday parties with pointed hats and kazoos. Parents in shorts and jandals,
holding big bottles of beer. Picnics and horse rides, cavorting dogs and bonfires. We often made family treks up to the limestone caves over the hill. We were warned about playing in them because of the danger of falling rocks, and we imagined they were filled with buried treasure. My grandfather was always there in those days, skirting the edges with his movie camera, recording, never being recorded. Perhaps he had looked at everything through that lens to stop himself experiencing it first hand, so his memories were always sugary and colour bloated, the lows and grey spots edited out. I know I would like to remember my life like that.

The summer of the magpie, when Grandpa started to teach me taxidermy, was one of the times that brought change; when the colours started to soften, no longer crayon bright. I spent most of my time indoors, seeking out the dark corners in the house and throwing myself into the new craft. Learning to mount animals brought out in me a passion I couldn’t explain. I knew it had something to do with the time a yellowhammer got caught in the chicken coop. I cornered it in one of the laying-boxes with the idea of catching it and releasing it. My intentions were benign but I felt the quivering a cat feels when its prey is in its sights, the involuntary shudder that runs through its body. I caught the bird in one hand and when I pulled it out and opened my fist it lay there with its tiny claws curled like unopened flowers and its eyes closed. It had died of fright in my hands.

I buried the bird in the garden, shooing the cats away, and all I could think about was that I had caused its death when I was only trying to help. That my intense desire to be close to it — to have it
love
me somehow — had in the end caused its demise.

Had I known then how to mount it, I probably would have carried that bird around with me forever, but I hadn’t even told Grandpa what had happened; I was too ashamed.

One summer, when I was eleven, I asked him to tell me about the strange bird in the living room, the one with the curved beak and the red wattle and white-tipped tail feathers.

Grandpa went into the library and pulled out a dusty fat book —
A History of the Birds of New Zealand
, it was called, by a man called Walter Buller. It was filled with richly textured drawings and paintings of pairs of birds, all looking as though they were watching and listening. He found the right page and held it out to me.

‘The huia,’ he said. ‘The reason you haven’t seen one, not even in a zoo, is that they are extinct.’

‘Like the dinosaurs?’

‘That’s right. Except it’s our fault that they’re extinct.’

‘Yours and mine?’ Confusion and guilt flittered and were gone.

‘No, humankind. You see, when the settlers came to New Zealand, they brought collectors — men who would catch and kill birds and stuff them, like we do.’

‘But we don’t kill things just to stuff them.’

‘No. But these men took native birds back to England with them, and some of them ended up in museums there, and here, and some in private collections. This man, Buller, who wrote this book, he even said once that because the huia was nearly extinct, he had to try and catch and kill as many as possible before they died out.’

Even I could see the faulty logic in that. ‘But that’s stupid.’

‘Yes, but we have to remember that it was a different time then. They thought differently about conservation. To them, it was all in the name of science. They believed they were doing very important work, and they were, in a way. But the nail in the coffin for the poor huia was when a Maori chief gave a highly prized huia feather to the visiting Prince of Wales, which he put on his hat. Then, everybody wanted one of those feathers and the huia became very expensive, so
anyone who killed one could make a lot of money. Which they did. The last ones died at the beginning of the century.’

I looked at the huia on top of the bookcase and suddenly felt ashamed.

‘So where did that one come from?’

Grandpa sighed. ‘That was caught by your great-great-grandfather, my grandpa. But just remember, things were different back then. He wasn’t to know that they would die out. And I for one am glad that he caught just one, so that we will always have it in the family to remind us of how fragile life is. And to always remember the huia. He made sure it would live forever. I like to think he had a bit more of a conscience than most collectors.’

For three years, in every stretch of school holidays, Grandpa and I worked on the animals. We spent all our spare time together, and I stopped riding so that my pony grew fat on spring grass. When I look back now I can’t help wonder if things might have been different if I had only paid her more attention, ridden her more often; if Grandpa hadn’t been so busy with me he would have taken more notice of what everyone else was doing. After Tess died, Grandpa blamed himself, I think, for not keeping a closer eye on her. People stopped visiting so much after that; kids grew up and moved on, of course, but it was difficult to get comfortable there again. I convinced myself that I was more interested in boys than horses, and that I wanted to spend my summers with my friends, not in some huge house stuffing animals, with only an old man and some dogs for company. I missed it, really, but it just wasn’t the same.

I stood in the red room at the end of the following day, looking out through the tall arched windows at the shadows as they stretched themselves over the paddocks. The sun burned on the horizon through the trees. As I felt the walls breathe around me, I imagined Grandpa out there as he would have liked to be remembered: in his favourite grey jersey and gumboots, bent over to gather walnuts from the tree under the window, looking up only to throw one at me, laughing his false-toothed, throaty laugh.

I had an overwhelming sense of calm when I listened to the house, when I stood in its shadows and its bright spots. I felt his presence in every room. Once the architects and the builders had finished with it, he would be dead. And the menagerie room had more of him in it than any other room. The previous night, skinning the rabbit and laying it to rest with a salt coat to dry it out, I had felt him around me, breathing in my ear and guiding my hands. I had talked to him as I worked, explaining to him the myriad reasons I had come, assuring him that I wasn’t the one who wanted to renovate the house and cast him out forever.

With nobody to collect them, the walnuts were gathering in drifts on the grass, already dampening with the coming dusk. Further on, Sam was making his way slowly up the gravel road on a quad bike. He must have seen me because he stopped and waved. On a whim, I opened the window and leaned out as far as I could.

‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘What time do you knock off?’

‘Soon!’ he shouted back.

‘Come over for a drink!’

He gave me the thumbs up and revved his engine. In seconds he had disappeared up the road, two dogs loping after him. In the distance, smoke poured from the chimneys of the cottages, adding to the haze.

I went back to my desk and looked with satisfaction at the work I had done. I had gone off on a tangent but had been reluctant to stop writing and was surprised when I looked up to find the room darkening. I had done enough for one day. I printed out the new pages and just had time to have a shower and dress before the front door bell rang.

‘I tried the kitchen door but it was locked.’ Sam frowned, as though I had slighted him personally.

‘Yeah, sorry about that. Just taking precautions.’

He sniggered. ‘City girl. Nobody locks their houses out here.’

‘Well, maybe they should.’ I felt a blush bloom on my cheeks.

‘Okay, sorry.’ His hair was wet and he smelled of deodorant. His Swanndri had been replaced by a fleece and he wore sneakers instead of gumboots.

We sat down at the round kitchen table in the bay window. I poured him a beer from the bottle of Lion Red in the fridge and myself a glass of the red wine I had found in the pantry.

Sam and I made idle chit-chat as the shadows deepened, then disappeared with the last of the light. With the sun now gone, the sky moved from light blue to gold to pink. While the room grew darker around us, we made no move to turn the lights on. Behind him, I could see the magpies take a last turn of the lawn, and it was as though they were watching the house, waiting for something. The room was quiet in our pauses, with only the steady hum of the freezer undercutting the silence.

We finished our drinks, poured seconds. We discovered unimportant facts about each other: he had worked there for three years and was now Josh’s right-hand man, with more responsibility, but more freedom, too. He had a chipped tooth from a small accident with the quad bike and when he wasn’t speaking the tip of his tongue
appeared between his lips as it explored the gap. I told him I was there to work on my thesis, but he didn’t ask me about the subject, so I went on to say that I wanted to spend some time here before the house was renovated, to remember it as it was with Grandpa in it.

‘I can understand you wanting to do that,’ he said. ‘Change is hard.’

I asked him if he had spoken to Josh about the farm being sold, and whether Josh had known.

‘Yeah, he knew. Not happy about it, neither.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much.’

Something in his face made me think otherwise, that in fact the manager had had plenty to say. After all, he had started as a farmhand twenty-odd years ago, and worked here most of his adult life; his children were growing up here. What would become of them once the farm was sold? I was dreading bumping into Josh, seeing his accusatory stare. I had no doubt that he would somehow think it was all my fault.

‘Guess I’ll be out of a job soon.’ The darkness I had seen the day before returned to Sam’s face.

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Whoever buys it might still keep all the staff on.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ He drained his half-full glass. ‘I’m young. Don’t wanna stay here forever.’

‘How old are you, anyway?’

‘Twenty-four.’

I smiled and refilled his glass without saying anything. He was beginning to get drunk — two pink patches had appeared on his unshaven cheeks — and so was I. He no longer sat forward in his chair, shoulders tight, but leaned back and regarded me lazily, as if he
was waiting to see where the evening took him.

‘Look, I’m going to make some dinner.’ I stood up from the table. ‘Do you want some?’

He nodded and I busied myself around the kitchen bench, making pasta with a simple jar of shop-bought sauce. Once again, I had forgotten to eat all day. The light had drained completely from the hills behind the house, but the sky was still a deep indigo. I was aware as I worked of Sam staring at me, but when I met his eye he looked out the window, or around the room, pretending to be interested in Gram’s old teapot collection gathering dust on the mantelpiece above the range.

We both ate hungrily. The wine had gone to my head on an empty stomach. Sam held his fork solidly and twirled spaghetti as if stirring a cauldron. We barely spoke until the meal was finished.

‘Not bad for no meat.’ Sam tipped his chair back and put his hands behind his head. ‘Couldn’t do it every meal, though. I’d starve.’

‘Sure, you would,’ I said. I picked up the bowls and dropped them in the sink. ‘Hey, do want to see your rabbit? I’ve started bringing her back to life.’