The Elusive Language of Ducks (13 page)

Now, armed with a vicious bread knife, secateurs and a red-handled weeder, they made their way to the bottom of the section. Out of sight from the house, beyond a stone wall with a rotting wooden gate, this portion had been abandoned for years. There had been a vegetable garden here once, flourishing with beans and lettuces, tomatoes and corn. Now it was a spongy mattress of kikuyu grass. There was a small bush area where tui used to sup nectar from flax flowers, but the long woody stems were now rotting amongst other tangled foliage. Tree ferns spouted a fountain of dead fronds. Cabbage tree leaves lay thickly-woven underfoot, with fibrous borer-hollowed branches scattered amongst them.

They could be in safari suits, the woman and her trusty duck, slashing through undergrowth, pulling at layers and layers of desiccated leaves and branches, disturbing wetas that aggressively lifted their thorny legs, ready to attack.

The duck was uncertain of the new terrain. As she hacked away, he sat patiently, jumping up to gobble shiny black spiders and wood lice. Mercurial lizards slid into nowhere. Occasionally they came across a pooling of rancid rainwater caught in the base of palm fronds, holding a brew of worms and mucousy slugs.

The woman's face and arms itched as she surged forward, a pile of branches and leaves growing behind her. Finally, they burst through to a small clearing around the old wooden shed, the man's workshop.

Well, here we are, said the woman to the duck. Civilisation at last.

She turned the metal doorknob and tugged. The wooden door was either stuck or locked. She peered through the cobwebby window. She hadn't been down here for years. The shed was crude but neat, with high shelves stacked with books and notebooks. A workbench spanned one wall to the other. There was also a bench seat that ran almost the length of the shed. On the floor were bags of blood and bone, lime and gypsum
stacked against the wall, some spewing their stuff onto the floor. The unlined walls had exposed four by twos, and a few garden tools hung from nails, with various tins along the beams. Cobwebs hung in clouds from the ceiling.

Well, she said to the duck. With a bit of work this could be a nice cosy duck hotel one day.

The duck waddled wistfully behind her as she turned and started back to the house. At the deck, she picked him up. She kicked off her gumboots and stepped inside. Simon was working at his computer. He looked up, his fist wrapped around his beard, his eyebrows dipping to the bridge of his glasses. His eyes resting on the duck.

Hi, she said brightly.

What's going on?

Oh, I was just coming in for a cup of tea. It's so hot out there.

I mean, why are you bringing that thing inside? You are both extremely dirty.

We've been gardening. Oh well — she backed, her enthusiasm imploding — can you pass me out a drink then? Water'll do. Actually, you're right. I'll clean up and come in for lunch. I've got work to do.

Simon's chair scraped loudly across the floor as he stood up to pour her a glass of water. Hannah drank and handed the glass back. She turned and took the duck back to his cage.

The man is coming between us, said the duck.

Don't be silly, said the woman. He's a bit fussy, that's all. He's not used to ducks. Never mind. We've had a lovely morning together, and really, I do have work to do.

But that night in bed she moved across the sheets towards Simon, resting her body against his back. She folded her legs into his legs, wrapped her arm around his plump stomach. She always loved the way his skin softened after a bath, and the fragrant hint of soap. Pulling herself against him, she sank gently into the comforting position of familiarity. And suddenly he twitched. Violently. His whole body in a dream-sinking spasm, rejecting her. He was a shanghai and she was a stone, flung away from him, from the bed, out the window, a stone with flailing arms and legs, thrashing madly through the night sky, then plummeting back to Earth, back to bed, where she yanked the bedclothes across her shoulders, spinning over and over and over away from, far far away from him, into sleep.

Chapter 10

This evening Hannah had attended a dinner party with a group of women. The conversation had turned to pets: stories of puppies, old dogs, old cats, kittens, and thrushes in a nest outside a window.

And I have a duck, she'd announced.

Oh, a duck! they'd chorused awkwardly. Where did you get a duck from?

She found herself holding her cupped palm across the table. When he arrived he could sit in my palm, she said. A ball of yellow fluff. An orphan. Ostracised by the flock.

Cute! they cried.

And now he's bigger than a football. He's a fatball. He's ugly and grubby-looking. He follows me everywhere.

She'd felt like a turncoat.

But doesn't he
poo?
somebody, of course, had to say.

Well, yes, she said, thinking of the conversation that she'd once had with Max, Eric's grandson, as he sat on the potty. Yes, everyone and everything poos. Mummy poos, Daddy poos, Auntie Jane poos, and Poppa. Yes, and me as well. And Simon? Yes, and Simon. And birds poo and cats poo and dogs poo and elephants too. And baby elephants? Yes, baby elephants and caterpillars. And ducks.

Somebody else said, as a loud aside and with particular emphasis: They do. They certainly do. Everywhere.
Actually,
they don't stop.

Hannah was wishing, how she was wishing she hadn't started this. She didn't mention how she cleaned his hutch out each morning, now that he slept outside, relocated the hutch across the lawn every two or three days, had spent a fortune on rubber gloves, hosed the lawn, scooped up any stray dollop on the deck. Had paper towels and a mop and bucket within ready reach inside. She hadn't mentioned that, after years of looking after her mother, a little duck's plop was like pesto in comparison.

Then, in an effort to rescue her, another woman said, I bet it has character, does it?

Oh
yes,
said Hannah. Oh yes, he
does.

In what way? asked the same woman, who had just talked about her
cat as being resilient, determined, intelligent, haughty, resourceful.

Umm, he's umm . . .

She was stumped. Did he, in fact, have any character at all?

He's
clingy,
was all she'd been able to find to say.

Yes, but what sort of characteristics does it have,
specifically.
Clingy, yes, but its personality. Does it have any particular personality trait you enjoy?

Hannah had stopped herself saying that he was a loving duck, who needed her to hold him, nestling his beak under her hair and under her chin, or wangling his neck beneath her shirt and under her arm after she'd been away for a while. She was viewing the middle distance above the candle in the centre of the table as she thought. Somebody passed the salad, offered the wine around, somebody else clattered her chair back to go to the bathroom. The stuttering silence that had been stumbling from Hannah's head was filled again by chatter.

And now she was driving home and the question was haunting her. His personality. Any redeeming characteristics. How well did she know her duck? What was the attraction to him? Was it because he made her laugh? The questions were disconcerting. Her mother had drained any nurturing tendencies until she felt she had nothing left. She didn't need another dependent creature. So, what was going on? Perhaps the love between them was an ongoing love between her mother and herself, transferring itself from body to body as each one died.

When she died she might become a snail, and, should the duck eat her, what would happen to the love then?

But. Personality?

Now that she was spending more time in the garden, the neighbourhood cats regarded this as reclaiming her territory, so the threat of cats was lessening. Her roar at the white long-haired lion slinking in the bushes, watching the cage, must have been heard across the valley. However, there had been some alarming incidents over the past couple of weeks.

She was always amused at how adept and quick the duck was in finding a short-cut to her, should they become separated, winding through passages in the undergrowth to appear at her feet. One day, though, she was behind the stone wall, still dealing with the jungle by the shed. With his short-cut logic, he pushed himself through an opening in the hedge to reach her on the other side of the wall, landing in the public right-of-way that ran alongside their property. His pleading cries alerted her as he realised there was no throughway to her on the other side of the wall. She, too, panicked, racing along the dividing wall and back again to the gap in the hedge. She imagined having to tear up to the top of the section, out the gate and down the path to retrieve him, and by then . . . the possibilities already gripped her. Neighbours seeing the opportunity for Christmas dinner. Cars. Mauling dogs. Just plain old disappearance. Meanwhile, she stood under the trees with wet leaves around her toes, calling desperately.

Ducko! Duckie!

He paced frantically on the other side of the hedge, his eye on her. She cried out to Simon.

Help! Help, Simon. Help!

Her heart beating crazily. Ducko, come on. All the endearments, embarrassing even to herself. Darling one. Come on, come to Mummy.

And, of course, he found the gap, pushed through again, into her arms. And there was Simon running down from the house, his face taut with anxiety.

Hannah? What's wrong?

She was still breathless, holding the duck's feet still.

The duck, the duck escaped. Into the right-of-way.

He stopped abruptly. Oh, he said, the bloody duck. I heard you calling.
I was worried. I thought you cried ‘Wolf'. I should have known better.

She watched him go. He kicked a plastic bottle flying across the section.

And now, today, Max and Rosemary arriving unexpectedly through the hedge, and Max taking it upon himself to terrorise the duck. The duck escaping around the house, through the bromeliads, darting around the clivias, over the lawn, under the trees into the open front doorway, through the foyer slap slap slap, into the hallway, the kitchen slap slap slap slap, the living room, the deck and squeezing through a narrow corner and halt.

Max also halted. Hannah caught up. The duck had managed to find a haven away from Max, behind a post onto a wee ledge without a railing, with a drop of five metres to the ground. He was petrified, lifting one foot then the other, over and over, staring into the space below.

Where's your little sister? You should be looking after her. Go and get Rosemary now! cried Hannah.

The boy rushed off to find his sister. The duck tried to back through the gap he'd slipped through so readily, but the feathers that had eased the smooth passage now prevented it. Hannah slipped her hands between the post and the house to squeeze him out. She tucked him under her arm and took off to find the children. Rosemary.

Rosemary had found the tadpoles that Hannah had been acclimatising in a large bowl by the pond, with the intention of giving the pond more life. The little girl had, with Max's blessing, five of the tadpoles lined in a row on the bridge over the pond, and was dipping into the bowl for more. And was experimenting with one of them between her fingers and thumb, examining its sloppy slimy texture. Hannah threw the tadpoles back, but that particular one floated to the top.

She fished it out and displayed it on her palm.

Look. Look at this poor tadpole. It's going to die now.

Don't worry, said Max. It can die into a frog.

The duck, suddenly there beside her, snapped the tadpole from her hand, squishing it in his greedy beak, a bulbous head one side and the tail the other before gobbling it altogether.

The children's nonchalance turned to disbelief.

The duck ate the tadpole. He ate it. He ate it all up.

Max. Rosemary. What are you doing over here, anyway? Where's Poppa?

In the garden.

Well, I think he'd like to see you. I'm sure I heard him calling you.