The Elusive Language of Ducks (22 page)

That night she collected a few of her clothes from their bedroom and closed the door. Downstairs, she stuffed them into the empty drawers of the spare room, her mother's old bedroom. She undressed and climbed between the cold sheets, lying on her back, her head upon the same pillows that had cushioned her mother's dreams. She looked around the flesh-pink room with its misty floral wallpaper, and at the door. This had been her mother's territory, her outlook, before moving to Primrose Hill.

Hannah pulled the sheet over her face and closed her eyes. She could hear her mother's voice saying to her,
You know, your blood flows gently through your body and then it comes to . . . it comes to . . .
The following words were elusive, but she knew Hannah understood.

How still she had become and how peculiar not to have the steady course of breath in and out of her body. Her blood was seeping from its customary highways and byways, drawn by gravity to the grave, collecting like ballast beneath her. She was aware of Hannah moving in the surrounding space. She could feel the presence of Simon there, too. One or the other touched her head, fiddled with her hair. But mainly it was the walking around her head, backwards and forwards. Her daughter, her little girl, Hannah. Simon standing back. He had been a caring, patient son-in-law. He was a good man. For that she had been lucky. Where was Margaret? Busy? She always had such important things to do.

There was no emotion anymore. No sadness. No fear. No anger. Just awareness. Aware that her life had been spent and that she had loved and had been loved. Aware of time squeezing itself into itself as she left them. Aware of the colour gone.

Chapter 17

From the stairs to the bottom of the garden, heaving himself along a few feet from the ground, the duck flew, his wings thwacking the air. He came to a halt alongside her, his neck craning, his feet skidding in the stones by the pond.

Wow, Ducko, you clever boy!

She was so proud of him.

You did it!

He cocked his head at her as if to say, So what? She picked him up for a congratulatory cuddle, but he wriggled wildly, his feet clawing at her arm, until he landed heavily on the grass.

Baby's first steps, and it felt as though he was moving away from her.

And her mother was undeniably a part of him now. The residue of her body was in the process of infusing with the elements of his own composition. Each day a couple of teaspoons gobbled up with his mash. And one day he would take her soaring, high above the world, free, as a bird, just as she longed for in her living dreams.

One morning Hannah was in the garden dreamily picking up cabbage tree leaves when a feathered monster ambushed her, intent on eating her toes, her ankles, her legs. She fled, springing over the pond and onto the bridge, through plants to the other side. In vain. It was still tearing at her feet, a pterodactyl with wings spread.

She darted behind a chair on the lawn, using it to shield herself. Her pursuer changed tack. She dropped the chair. Lunged to catch the snapping beast, but it twisted its serpent neck and ripped at her hand. She hurled the thing off.

It gathered itself. Gripped the hem of her jeans. They spun. Whirling dervishes. Feathers, white blur. Dancing, fighting, courting. Whatever. She didn't know.

They froze for a second, staring at each other before it rushed in for the kill again. She dived, grabbing its beak shut, but it tugged away. The strength of it! It flew at her, chomped at her hopping feet. And then suddenly it stopped and sidled away.

She watched him, panting.

It was over.

Ducko.

She gingerly picked him up and, sure enough, he allowed her to place him on her knee. They sat passively on the grass as her heart and breathing settled. She examined her wounds. Her arms and feet marked with red and purple welts. Her hand bleeding.

Was this something ducks did? Were all waddly old plodders host to nasty nimble ninjas? Was he a Trojan duck? She rubbed her fingers deep into the feathers over his chest. Flakes of duck dandruff floated to her clothes, to the grass. He craned his neck, pulled his head back.

She gently placed her hand around his beak. It was feverishly hot. The minuscule feathers around his face were moulting, to reveal a red wartiness, a thumping raw skin of blush.

Ducko. What's going on? We could have really hurt each other.

Even amidst the ferocity of it all, she'd been anxious that she might step on his head, or any part of him.

It happened again a few days later. She had just covered his hutch with the tarpaulin as she did now each evening, and was preparing his food. Once again he went for her feet, his wings flattened. She grabbed his beak shut and yelled at him. NO! He yanked his head away, snatching at the skin of her hand. She picked him up and threw him into the cage, but he was out before she could swing the door closed. Again she managed to get him in, and this time closed the door, but the next second he'd barged through and was upon her. He was a wing-beating devil. She flung him with force to the end of the cage and thrust the door down with a spade shoved against it, then a large stone. All was still. She stood gasping, listening until she heard a movement. He was eating.

Back up at the house, she inspected the new bruises. She tried to analyse what might be triggering these attacks. Not enough snails? Not enough foraging? Lack of attention? Did he hate her? Was she feeding him the ashes of a maniac, and not her mother at all?

All the following day she kept away from him, apart from cautiously letting him out of his cage in the morning. For a while she watched him silently from the top deck as he listlessly pecked at a piece of straw on the lawn. Then he cocked his head and stared at her. Neither said a thing, but she felt he was unfriendly. She was relieved when she was able to put him to bed without a hitch.

The next day he appeared cordial and calm, darting at beetles and crickets exposed as she pulled a few weeds from the garden.

This is better, Ducko, said the woman. We're friends again.

What are you talking about? We've always been friends.

Come on, she said. Those attacks. What's going on in your head?

He tapped his chest several times with his beak. He wasn't going to answer the question. She didn't expect him to. It was unfathomable. The answer lay in the treatises of animal behaviourists. It was nothing to do with love or betrayal. This, at least, was the counsel she gave herself. He plodded away from her, scooping his beak into the loose soil, sucking up water collected on a large yellow leaf.

The next time it occurred, just as she was beginning to relax with him, he was even more determined. She was bringing in the washing and he made his way towards her from under the deck. He pecked in a casual manner
around the clothes in the wash basket. Then he leapt up to perch cockily upon the pile of clothes.

King of the castle, eh Ducko? she said. But I'd rather you got off my clean washing.

She was unpegging a white towel. He flew from the clothes and started to have a go at the towel that hung from her hands. She dipped the towel to cover her legs, but he pushed through to her feet, tugging at the sandals she was wearing. Then he struck her toes. Viciously.

NO!

She flicked the towel at him.

NO! Stop it!

He paused. His wings were extended ominously. Then he charged again. She thrashed the towel in the air towards his face, but this only made him more furious, attacking her feet, her legs, flying at her arms. They were two wild things.

He stopped, his feet apart, and eyed her.

Ducko, she panted. No, no, not this. Let's stop. Good boy.

At last he'd come to his senses. She was his kind and loving foster mother, his fellow forager, his soul-mate.

He sprang upwards and flew at her face, his claws scratching at her neck. She could smell the hot muskiness of his body as a wing whacked her temple, bone on bone. She reeled, shoving him away with her forearm. When he came at her again she flung the towel over him, felt for his wings folded against his body and held him down, struggling, on the grass. She couldn't believe his strength. His head was motoring maniacally beneath the towel. She tucked the cloth beneath his belly, wrapping him up loosely. She grasped him firmly against the ground, careful not to injure him, and then released her grip and ran. Looking back, she could see him still dealing with the towel before she escaped into the house.

She was a battered thing. Her arms and feet were like an old woman's, her skin covering patches of tamarillo flesh. There was already a painful lump by her eye. She dabbed disinfectant then antibiotic cream over the deep scratch down the side of her throat. If the duck was her mother, she wanted her dead, there was no doubt about that. If the duck was just a duck, it was not the duck she used to know. The tadpole
was metamorphosing into Mr Hyde. The kitten was now a tiger.

She sat dejectedly on the couch with her phone and wrote a text.
Hi. Missing you. Where are you? x

Delete.

Then:
I presume all is well with you. I hope you are enjoying your thinking.

Delete.

Hi. How's thinks?

Send.

Could her mother really want her dead? There had been an incident at Primrose Hill that was squatting broodily in her thoughts, even though she had tried to laugh it off, to shoo it away whenever it emerged. The whole scene from that morning visit was still vivid with the several layers of revelations it presented.

The head nurse was giving attention to her mother's arm as she sat propped up in bed. A thick piece of her skin had been folded back from the bloody interior — bones and ligament. She couldn't say flesh because there wasn't any. Hannah had perched herself by the bed as the nurse dressed the wound, pulling the skin closed and taping it together with tiny strips. Alongside were the raised scars of many such tears, a criss-crossing of mending in a threadbare fabric, too thin to tolerate the rough and tumble of life.

When the nurse left, Hannah opened a box of chocolates from the bedside table. Only three left. It had been full a few days before. The box was lined with glitzy gold plastic, pocked with compartments for each individual chocolate. She placed the box on the bedspread and her mother, who normally hated kitschy glitter, gasped in awe.

Oh, oh, oh, that's so beautiful. So beautiful.

She held the box, tutting in amazement, holding her head this way and that to catch different angles of light. Hannah plucked a chocolate from the box, stripped the chewy centre away from the exterior shell, and popped the rest in her mother's mouth.

Hannah went to the communal kitchen and made a cup of tea. Back in the room, she'd then fed her mother a knob of cheese on a portion of savoury biscuit — a tiny little nibble of her favourite titbit. She'd chewed it eagerly. It was only later that Hannah discovered it gathered in a pulp at the front of her mother's mouth, along with the chocolate. She encouraged her to spit it out, which she did readily. She had two mouthfuls of tea and then stopped.

Hannah realised that her mother had no will or energy to swallow. Basically, she was starving herself. Food sat in her mouth and pooled there, eventually festering into the stench that Hannah had been aware of
recently. On top of this, they stuffed medication crushed up with insipid stewed fruit into her mouth and it lingered between her teeth and cheeks until they shoved something else in, followed by a rich sickly-smelling fortified drink that came in a carton with a straw. If her teeth weren't cleaned properly, everything rotted there, like a dead rat in a gutter.

It was palliative care now, this had to be the case.

She took her mother's passive hand and held it to her cheek, then placed it back on the blankets. Then she stood up and paced around the room. She stopped to look at the memorabilia on the notice-board. She unpinned a photo of the family: her mother and father, Hannah in her early teens, and Maggie — Margaret — all in their night clothes, squeezed together against pillows in her parents' double bed. Their faces were mellow from sleep and their tanned arms bare. The weather was probably hot, a Hawke's Bay summer. The camera must have been set up — propped on a small tripod on the window sill in front of them — but there was an unrehearsed air as if everyone had relaxed after they'd assumed the photo had been taken or had failed to work. Her father had his arm behind Maggie with his hand holding her mother's neck, his fingers under her hair, and they were looking at each other fondly, perhaps after a comment, as Hannah too was looking across at her father. Only Maggie still faced the camera, her gaze direct, confronting, enigmatic. She held a blue teddy bear in the crutch of her arm.