The Elusive Language of Ducks (21 page)

Chapter 16

On New Year's Day, after a big clean-up, Maggie and Toby flew back to Christchurch. Dennis left with them, as he was going to rent a car from the airport and travel around the country for a couple of weeks' sightseeing. Simon was taking them to the airport.

I'll come, too, said Hannah.

That's OK, said Simon. No need. It'll be a squeeze with all the luggage. I've got stuff to do out that way, so you stay with your duck.

What sort of stuff? It's New Year's Day.

There's a good hardware store near the airport. Not your cup of tea.

And no, it was not. So she stood on the footpath and hugged them goodbye, Simon included. Her sister brushed her powdered cheek against hers, giving a haughty hug before she climbed in the passenger seat, next to Simon. Then Toby. She felt a surge of affection and concern for him. Look after yourself, she said, as he pressed his bony chest against her cheek and kissed her on the head. He looked ghastly, ashen. He folded himself up into the back seat next to Dennis. What a funny lot they all are, thought Hannah as the car drove up the hill and around the corner. She waved to the white hand and the smudge of face in the back window until they were out of sight. Then she walked down the path to the house.

She decided that while no one was home she'd allow the duck to have a bath, while she ironed Simon's shirts in the bathroom. Really, the duck had grown too big for the bath, flooding the bathroom with his enthusiastic swimming. But it would end up with a clean and happy duck and the ironing done. She went upstairs to their bedroom to gather the shirts. The room was a mess. Clothes and books and magazines. Christmas wrapping. The dust of preoccupied neglect. It was the last room in the house she gave her attention to when it came to housework.

On their unmade bed, poking up from the crumpled duvet, was an envelope. She thought nothing of it. She assumed it was a New Year's card, with conciliatory words. She was not in the mood for any kindness from Simon and nearly left it. The envelope was sealed. She tore it open.

The message informed her that he was going away for a while because he felt they needed a break from each other and that she needed to sort
out her priorities and that he needed to think about things. What a cliché! The note was written on a blank card. On the front was a picture of Beatrix Potter's Jemima Puddle-Duck in a nest of feathers, spied upon by an evil-looking fox behind the door.

Lovely.

Happy New Year to you, too, sweetie.

She went outside and plonked herself down on the grass by the duck.

The man's gone, she told the duck. And I don't know where and I don't know when he's coming back.

Oh well, said the duck. He never liked me very much.

He used to like
me,
she replied.

I
like you.

The weird thing is that he was mysterious about it. Why didn't he tell me? Why did he just go, why didn't he let me know?

The duck flitted his beak over her leg, then down to her foot, tugging gently at first, then roughly at her toes. The woman shifted her foot.

That hurts, she said. You know my toes aren't edible. You would eat me, though, wouldn't you, if you could?

She stood up, feeling consumed already. The duck cocked his eye at her.

Any snails?

You don't care. Nobody cares.

I do. I'm just hungry.

Everybody's hungry, she told him. And I'm the one they want to eat.

The duck stood up, too, and flapped his wings. She couldn't believe how large they'd grown. He was prancing around on tiptoes in his fishnet stockings and managed to fly-hop up one step.

One day you'll discover that the sky is very big, she said, and she intended the statement to sound unkind. What do you plan to do when you get up there?

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not planning anything.

Every morning, as soon as I let you out of your cage, you test your wings. You're practising. One day
you're
going to leave me, too.

Don't be ridiculous. Where would I go?

It was true. He hadn't been anywhere. And his place of birth was a tragic place. He was delivered to her in a plastic carry-bag. Where
would
he go? He knew nothing of the world. She hadn't taught him anything. But then she remembered the overnight educator. What secret knowledge had been imparted behind her back? And where did her mother go? She had flown from her body with a magical ease, as if the hoisting from her physical old self was deliberate and planned.

And where was Simon?

Before she went to bed that night, she opened Simon's drawers one by one, checking to see how much he had taken. As far as she could ascertain, everything was as it always had been, but she started hauling all his clothes out into a heap on the floor, then vacuuming and wiping the gritty detritus from each drawer. She knelt on the floor where she folded his T-shirts and singlets into a pile to return to a clean drawer. One of the singlets had a faded stain from a red biro that had leaked in the pocket of a favourite creamy olive shirt. It had happened at a barbeque. They'd both rushed to the hosts' bathroom, where he'd removed his shirt so she could scrub soap into the ink under the running tap, red juice flooding the handbasin. When he put the shirt on again, a red wet patch flowered across his chest. Oh well, he said, kissing her, and they laughed. Crikey, did she shoot you in the heart? some joker had said when they eventually emerged from the bathroom.

Now Hannah held the singlet to her face, breathing in the residue of forgotten intimacy. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Shoving it back, she closed that drawer, and went on with the task of folding his underwear and tucking his socks into pairs before tidying them away. She stood up then, and opened the wardrobe with the intention of culling some of his old shirts, but these were the ones he used to wear tramping, or in the garden, when they'd spent their happiest times with each other. And look, here was the creamy olive one with its splodge of red. These shirts he loved the best, the comfortable ones he would miss most if she disposed of them. She held them out one by one, then hung them up again, brushing them down as she slid each shirt amongst the others, feeling the emptiness of them.

The next day she drove to the hardware shop and bought paint. As Simon had pointed out, it was not her cup of tea, but she spoke to the retailer, an Indian man who guided her in a matter-of-fact manner, with none of the derision she anticipated, as to what to do and what to buy. Sugar soap. Filler, undercoat. A roller and tray. Sandpaper, several grades. Paintbrushes. And satin acrylic paint. White. She didn't know there were so many shades of white. She chose the whitest. Arctic fox.

Back home, she dragged the ladder from the basement and up to their bedroom. It was a project they had been talking about for years as they lay together in bed, idly chatting, their eyes darting around the tired walls with chipped and marked corners. It was a bedraggled bedroom, shedding skin. It had absorbed too much of their dreary life together and had had enough.

For the next few days she climbed up and down and up and down the ladder, peering at instructions on tins before washing, filling dents, sanding, painting, painting and painting. She grew a membrane of paint up to her elbow, over her clothes, in her hair, on her face. She stopped only when she was incapable of working anymore because she'd forgotten to eat. And while she worked, she thought. She thought until her head was bursting. She thought about her husband, and she thought about her mother, and she thought about her sister, and she thought about Toby and all the things they might have talked about, should they have had longer together. She thought about Eric, the man next door who used to be her friend, and she thought about his grandchildren. And she thought about the duck.

As she rolled the sticky paint over the walls, and the chest of drawers and the wardrobe doors, it seemed as though her life was becoming a blank empty thing and it was all of her doing.

Each evening she put the duck, complaining, into his cage with a cob of corn and a bunch of lettuce leaves just in case he hadn't found enough greens for himself during the day. Then she laboured late into the night, in the relentless heat and humidity. Outside the open window, the dark fused with the electric light that spilt from her bedroom. Beetles and
mosquitoes flew in, clambering through the wet paint. She plucked them out with tweezers and painted over the damage.

Finally the job was done. She pulled up the sheet from the polished wooden floor and hauled all the tins and equipment outside. The walls and ceiling were a dazzle of white.

She made herself tea and toast and gulped them down as she sat on the bottom step under the deck. The duck waddled across the grass towards her. She ripped up a piece of toast and threw the bits to him. He gobbled them up and tapped the ground, his motley beak like the demanding forefinger of an old matron.

This is the fourth day without a snail, he informed her.

This is the fourth day without my husband, she replied.

The following day Hannah slept in. She was aching all over. She pulled the duvet over her head. It felt as though the new paint was too harsh for her eyes. But she hadn't finished yet.

She soaked in a bath, scrubbing at the paint engrained in her skin, lathering up her hair, picking out scabs of paint. She dried herself and dressed in clean clothes. It was only then that she remembered the duck. She rushed down to the bottom of the garden and lifted the cage door upward to release him.

He marched out and strutted around the pond, his tail feathers splayed in a stiff fan.

Sorry, Ducko, she said, chuckling at his haughty demeanour. I have other things on my mind.

She shifted the cage, turned on the hose and squirted down the night's poo from the grass, leaving the hose still gushing to water the garden. She bent down to sprinkle dried maize into his dish. Suddenly there was a loud whacking of wings and he was upon her back, clenching a lump of flesh in his beak. She jumped to her feet and shook herself, but for a moment he clung to her, his claws scratching through her shirt, before tumbling to the ground. He rushed towards her again, but she grabbed the hose and directed the water at his chest. The force knocked him back, but he braced his feet and stood ogling her for a second. Then he scurried away.

What did you do that for? she yelled after him.

She turned off the hose and raced inside.

Twisting her back at the bathroom mirror, she lifted her shirt. Already there was the heavy imprint of purple bruise.

He was enormous. His head was as big as the duckling that had first arrived. He was a dinosaur with an eye at the end of his thin neck, and a beak pulled out from the end of it. He was a mush of snails and half her mother cloaked in feathers all balanced on tree-trunk legs. Did He who made the lamb make thee? Did He who made the tiger make thee? Her cats certainly were asking themselves the same question, giving him a wide and respectful berth as they passed.

While the duck was preening, his wings hung like lopsided doors dangling from loose hinges as he dipped his beak into the secret downy-lined cupboard beneath them. They were almost as long as he was. Sometimes he lolloped around the pond, the raceway around which she used to run as he waddled in pursuit when he was a little clown duckling. He still ran the same course, in the same direction, his wings flapping, those little chicken wing delicacies now the magnificent wings of an angel, whether Gabriel or Lucifer she had no idea.

He was one of the Wright Brothers, or Richard Pearse, cranking up a large machine and trying to make it airborne.

Once again she headed out in the car. She bought white sheets. She bought a new white duvet cover. She bought a white woollen rug for beside the bed. She bought white cotton fabric, a white wooden picture frame. She bought a white cotton nightdress.

At home she washed the new sheets and duvet cover, threw them in the drier, put them on the stripped bed. She tucked the new nightdress under the pillow. Meanwhile she'd dusted off the sewing machine. She sewed curtains.

It used to be that she made all the curtains for the house, until her enthusiasm for any renovations waned. Although she and Simon had worked hard on their home when they were young, they'd decorated the house to a certain point of satisfaction and then, blinkered to its natural decline, neglected it.

Finally she hammered a picture hook into the pristine wall above the bed. Her intention had been to place in the frame a favourite photo of herself and Simon together, but she also experimented with a particularly charming and seductively quizzical photo of the duck. It looked fitting there on the white wall above their bed. In the end, she chose to leave the frame around a blank white canvas.

She hadn't heard from Simon since he left, nor had she tried to contact him.