The Elusive Language of Ducks (14 page)

She guided them back through the hedge. Eric was digging in the garden.

I thought you might be worried about your grandchildren, she called.

I knew exactly where they were, he said. I've had my ear out.

Well, you didn't hear them squelching my tadpoles.

She turned to the duck at her feet.

You're disgusting, she said.

What?

Eating that tadpole, and in front of the children like that.

The boy's a monster, chasing me the way he did. And what was I supposed to do with that thing?
Look
at it? It was delicious. Are there more?

All this consumption, she said, exasperated. What sort of example are you setting the children? All the little creatures in the garden, and here you are, gobbling them up.

I'm teaching them about all the little creatures in the garden, said the duck. And all the big ones that like to eat them.

Like duck for Christmas dinner, said the woman.

And the cruelty of people who pretend to be kind, said the duck, and she heard the voice of her mother repeating,
You have a cruel streak, you really do.
He waddled down to the back of the garden into the obscurity of dusk, and didn't come when she called him. Before she put him in his cage for the night, she had to hunt for him as he crouched, hiding, sulking, amongst the clivias.

Sometimes the woman became a heavy thing, her arms and legs filled with stone, her heart squeezing thick mud through the tendrils of her veins. Her cheeks were packed with gravel, pulling her mouth down towards the earth.

And on this particular day, the duck scrambled onto the dusty old pond of her lap and wrapped his developing fevered wings around her and together they lifted into the air, a whiff of fairy-down rising. He placed his winglets over her eyes so that her vision turned inwards. Far below she could see a muddy puddle and an empty nest of white fluff. In a paddock nearby, its juices already sinking into the earth, the carcass of a duck lay sprawled amongst a wreath of white feathers, its neck twisted back and a wing splayed across the grass.

The woman saw a swirling of dry clattering leaves rising to meet them. She and the duck were sucked into the eddy, whirling through space. And now, beneath them, there was her mother, laid out on a bed with a towel rolled under her chin, pink make-up brushed on bloodless cheeks, her hair swept from her forehead onto the pillow, and a carnation lying on the sheet over her chest.

She watched as her mother unclasped her hands and raised high her thin bony arms, her thin feathered arms, her thin feathered wings, her immense white wings beating, taking her upward to join them, enfolding the woman and her duck within the deeply downy underside of her wings. They glided back down to where they had been sitting, the woman leaning against a tree, her feet in soft green grass, the duckling on her lap, and something else wrestling in her chest.

Hannah wished now that she had taken more interest in the process of painting.

All through the house there were framed watercolours on the walls. They'd been painted by her mother who had been a respected artist in Hawke's Bay — people often wanting to commission her to paint their favourite landscapes or homesteads in the country. This task was usually a painstaking chore for her; her modesty and lack of faith in her own work tying her flowing lines into stiff knots. To say she had a natural flare, rather than flair, for painting would describe her intuitive creativity accurately. She constantly observed the world around her in relation to its palette, to composition, to aesthetics. In a few minutes she'd be able to capture a scene or a face with a few free lines and a flourish of colour. She'd dismiss this ability with a nonchalant,
Oh no, that's just a sketch.

Not long before she moved from Hawke's Bay, the painting society she belonged to had staged an exhibition of her work. She resisted fervently, embarrassed that she should be the centre of attention. By then her hand–eye co-ordination had been ruined by Parkinson's disease, so she was feeling especially vulnerable and unworthy of her artist's status. She refused to make a selection, until her friends barged upon her and pulled out their favourites from the boxes and suitcases of work gathered through the years. She succumbed to the inevitability of the event, and participated in the final decision as to which paintings should be exhibited. The paintings were mounted and framed. Everyone rallied together and helped with the hanging.

Hannah and Simon flew down for the opening. Her mother looked stunning in a new cherry-pink dress, with her wavy silver hair, her still-expressive eyes and engaging smile welcoming people as they arrived. The gallery owner buzzed patronisingly around the older guests, while fawning over the local artist, nationally acclaimed, who gave the opening address. After his speech, her mother's friends and fellow artists came forward one by one to acknowledge her talent. Her mother listened, mortified, unwittingly backing from the crowd, smiling humbly, blinking, pressing into the wall, framed and set up, her modesty refusing
the praise. Hannah noticed her face draining as she wobbled on her stick, and bound forward to grab her arm as she finally collapsed, fainting into a chair pushed hurriedly forward. The gallery owner fanned her with the exhibition price list. Shortly after, her mother emerged from her retreat into oblivion. She looked up at the circle of concerned faces surrounding her. Hannah offered her a glass of water.

For heaven's sake, Hannah, what's the matter? Whatever are you doing with that? Her whisper was sharp and audible.

You had one of your turns, Mum.

For goodness' sake. I did nothing of the sort. There's nothing wrong with me, she said, pushing the water away.

Everybody chuckled warmly but uneasily and returned to looking at the paintings, sipping their wine and nibbling the cheese straws and club sandwiches. By the end of the evening, almost all the paintings had a red sticker next to them. All except one: a single seagull gliding against a wild sky above a stormy sea. And that picture was still Hannah's favourite, hanging on the wall at the end of the table where she worked.

When her mother moved to Primrose Hill, Hannah explained to the supervisor that her mother had once been a fine artist and asked if there might be some opportunity for her to pursue her interest. It was organised for her to attend an art and craft session once a week, and Hannah was given permission to sit in on the sessions. When the time came, they were directed to the art room — a small room with a table and a trolley cluttered with cardboard, scissors, paintbrushes and children's plastic squeeze bottles filled with brazen colours.

Four other women straggled in on their walkers, and were helped around the table. The activities tutor bustled around, squirting paint into pottles, handing out card and a paintbrush and crude stencils of fir trees, stars, flower petals and leaves. They each had their own little pottles. The task was to fill in the stencils — the trees and leaves with green, the stars with bright yellow, and the flowers with blue or red. Paper towels were used to dab at any stray paint.

Hannah's mother said nothing, but looked at the card and other paraphernalia in front of her. Then she turned to Hannah and asked for water.

Anyone else like a drink? asked Hannah. No one replied, so she went
out to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. Her mother took it in her bony hand, leaned over and emptied the glass haphazardly over all her pottles, water flooding everywhere.

Mum, what are you doing?! cried Hannah, uncertain as to whether this was an act of defiance or an accident. The tutor fussed around, yanking over and over at the paper towels as Hannah apologised, moving jars and pottles to allow her to soak up the mess.

Don't worry, mouthed the tutor at Hannah with an exaggerated wink. When everyone had settled again, her mother reached for a clean paper towel and spread it on the table in front of her. With intense deliberation she dipped her paintbrush into the now diluted blue and held it against the edge of the paper towel. The colour swam into the paper. She repeated the action, ignoring everyone else as they held their own paintbrushes mid-air to watch this crazy performance. Then she dipped her brush into the watery yellow paint and did the same further along the towel, watching with satisfaction as the colours bled together, the blue and the yellow merging into a wash of green.

Hannah suddenly understood. She felt like weeping with empathy for her mother and anger with herself that she should have been judgmental over her mother's unorthodox behaviour. Her mother was stubbornly but calmly resisting the kindergarten activity and was doing what she loved best of all: playing with colour.

Although the duckling was allowed more time to run freely while she was around, Hannah kept him caged when she left the property, even if Simon was home. She couldn't depend on him to keep an eye on the duck while she wasn't there.

She had liberated the duck for a run this morning as she cleaned his cage, throwing in a bolted lettuce from the garden, concealing slugs and snails amongst the leaves. Once back inside, though, he found every one and snapped them up. By the time she'd replaced the lid of the hutch, he'd eaten them all. Eleven snails and five slugs. They were supposed to be his entertainment, little surprises to be discovered from time to time during the course of the day.

When she returned home, just before dusk, he was starving. The covered end of his house was heaped with bubbles of green poo. There wasn't much on the exposed lawn; she assumed he must have hidden away all day. She pulled him out and he hung into her, nuzzling her neck. Then they had a run around the garden, she jogging, laughing, while he waddled to keep up with her. She eventually led him to the pond, which she and Simon had cleaned and tidied up over the past couple of weekends, despite Simon's reluctance to do anything towards making the duck more comfortable during his stay.

She stood on the wooden bridge and the duck held back, staring at her questioningly. There was a nip in the evening. He took a few steps over the stones, joined her on the bridge, and peered down into the water. He shuffled uncertainly to the edge; he was Mr Bean trying to summon courage to dive from a high board, except that his jump was less than quarter of a metre. Finally he took the plunge, over the cord binding woman and duck, and into his automatic self, splashing around and washing his feathers.

Once done, he hauled himself onto the stones, then stood erect, flapping his wings. He surprised himself by toppling off-balance. She was shocked. His wings were beginning to have an effect on the air. The day spent cooped up in the hutch had been put to good use. All his energy had been pouring into his wings.

She felt a pang of grief. Soon he would have the strength to fly. She scooped him up and probed around his wings, those once naked morsels protected under their neatly designed feathered covers.

They'd been fluffing up, as if growing mildew. She'd been aware of that. But now the two rows of darts sprouting along the rims were flushed with nourishing blood. They were tender, alive, pumping with growth. They looked like two rows of pink birthday candles, with spindly feathery flames. They felt hot. He allowed her to place her hands beneath them, to spread them out to examine them, but it was as a favour and she had to treat them delicately. The power and energy that had been held back from these silly stunted flappers, while developing and maintaining the carefully planned planting on the rest of his body, was now shooting into the wings. The overnight educator was preparing him to fly. Had one of his ungainly practice flaps passed a test?

Her mother's words floated through her head.
All I want to do is soar high above the world.

And then Hannah thought of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space all those decades ago,
his
words to the world just on take-off:
Good-bye, see you soon, my dear friends. The vibration becomes more frequent, the noise increases.
And later,
I can see the Earth's horizon. It has a beautiful blue halo. The sky is black. I can see stars.
And then,
It is possible to determine the motion of the sea.

Goodbye, my friend,
her duckling might say to her, before lift-off, before finding himself in the infinity of it all, a lonely speck in the blue, flapping and flapping and flapping his new wings with no idea of where to go or how to stop, the vibration becoming more frequent, the silence increasing, determining the motion of the sea and not knowing what the ocean was, nor even that he was a duck.

The spine of the feathers is called a rachis, and during the formation of feathers is filled with blood. Feathers in the wings and tails are the largest so they have the greatest blood supply, which is why they are called blood feathers. They grow from a follicle in the skin, in the same way as human hair does. They are like channels to a bird's blood supply, similar to veins. There are stories of birds bleeding to death through damaged blood feathers where the rachis acts like an artery. Once the feather is fully developed, the blood is absorbed back into the duck and this creates a hollow and therefore much lighter feather. Leading from the rachis there are branches called barbs, then running from the barbs are the barbicels. Barbicels hold the vane of the feather together, similar to Velcro or zips. They interweave with each other. Rubbing the feather the ‘wrong' way unhooks the barbicels, and rubbing the ‘right' way reconnects them again. The barbicels are very fine and almost need a magnifying glass to distinguish them.

If a blood feather is damaged and bleeding, the feather can be pulled out and the follicle plugged with cornflour until it seals.