The Elusive Language of Ducks (27 page)

What? he said. What have I done this time?

She was on the lawn, in the back garden, with the duck. It was just on sunset — the garden was framed with clouds, tinged with luminescent oranges, pinks and gold.

Look at that, she said to the duck. My mother would have loved those clouds. She would have painted them.

The duck flexed his feet onto the tip of his claws and flapped his enormous wings, lifting himself skyward. As he rose, the garden was enveloped in shade. The draft from his wings created a chilling wind that stirred dry leaves about her. And then she realised the dark shadow that was his own had become the night, and he had gone. No signal, no circling, no call of goodbye.

She fell back onto the grass and waited, watching the steady drift of stars. She was pinned through the heart into the ground. And then the stars peeled from the sky, at first one by one, then in showering clusters to land upon her, burying her in a growing heap of crumbled bricks. The seconds marked by her heart-beat either tumbled over-eagerly against each other, or waited in a silence that rushed like the ocean through her ears. She hadn't realised that the process of dying would feel so cold.

The dream was so powerful that she was surprised when she woke up to the cool breeze wafting with the early morning light through the open window. Her bedding had fallen to the floor, and she'd knocked a glass of water from the window sill; the fallen tumbler lay beside the wet patch, soaking the sheet beneath her.

She dressed hurriedly and clomped outside in her gumboots, armed with the leaf rake, to let the duck out. The garden had absorbed the dream from the night before, so much so that she looked to the place where it had occurred, expecting a flattening of the grass or some leftover crumbs from the bricks. She felt uncertain whether the duck would still be there. But he was.

He strutted out from his cage, his tail feathers fanned. Then he stopped. He looked at her, rubbing the back of his neck into the flat heart-shaped terrain between his wings. All she wanted was to pick him up and nurse him comfortingly, as she used to. But she didn't. She offered him a couple of crickets and a cicada, then plodded up the lawn and went inside to ring Simon.

Why was she so nervous after all those long years of being together?

When he answered, there was a weary wariness in his voice, and when she asked him how he was, he confirmed that, indeed, he was tired. His contract was on hold while the city concentrated on cleaning up.

Where were you when it happened?

In a café, having lunch.

Were you alone?

There was a group of us.

She felt a lunge through her heart as she asked, Is there someone else?

Yes, there was a group of us.

Don't play with me, Simon. Have you found someone else?

You mean, have I found a duck?

Don't be stupid, you know what I mean.

No, tell me what you mean.

Do you love someone else?

The back of her throat was closing, her breath caught like a fly in the web of her chest.

I'm not going to answer that, he said calmly.

Why not? You mean there is — there is, isn't there? Just tell me, Simon.

No, he said. No, I'm not going to tell you, because I want you to know what it feels like to doubt whether the person you love most in the world reciprocates that love. I want you to think about things, as I've been forced to think about things.

That's cruel.

Yes. It does feel cruel, doesn't it? It hurts. Oh, yes.

So I think about things and then what?

Don't know. Depends what conclusion you come to.

I've been thinking all the time, and I miss you.

Do you have any idea what it's like here? How's your duck?

Come back home, Simon.

This conversation is becoming more and more insignificant by the minute. Everything is in ruins here.

Everything is in ruins here, too.

You have no idea. No drinking water, no sewerage. The ground bubbling with putrid liquefaction. Mud everywhere. Rubble everywhere. Dust, filth. Roads twisted and cracked open.

So, come back home.

I can't. There's too much to do here. Shovelling mud, looking for people who
really
need help. There was a man, a man screaming, and no one could get to him under tonnes of rubble, no one. All of us trying, scrabbling through broken concrete, but it was impossible, and he screamed on and on and then he was whimpering and then it stopped. Mercifully. But then, that meant . . . I don't know who he was, but I wonder, I think about him . . .

She could hear him crying. There was a gulp of breath and then there was nothing.

Simon?

She waited.

Anyway, he said. Anyway.

I'm sorry, she said.

Well, yes.

I truly am.

Eventually we all get to an age when we are forced to re-evaluate our lives. It's probably not a bad thing.

Please . . . Simon. His name stuck in her throat.

So . . . It's nice to be needed. But anyway, I've got to go.

She heard him sigh.

Yes, of course, of course, she said.

There was a silence. She knew he was still there, and then, she knew, he wasn't.

The duck was on the deck looking at her sitting on the sofa with the phone still on her lap. His beak tapping at the window, bap bap bap. Bippity bap bap bap. He sidled away and wandered over to pick up a twig, his feet slap slap slapping at the boards, like an old woman uncertain as to what to do with the long day ahead. He was dependent upon her, as her mother had been. He was waiting for her to go down to the garden and pull out weeds and all she wanted to do was shoot him. Without her, he felt useless. He
was
useless. She was the foil through which he had a misguided sense of his own value in the world. Just like her old mother when she came to stay, with that sense of still being the mother and she the child, when in fact the relationship had shifted to the reverse. And she, she was the mother of nobody. How on earth did she get into this predicament? Without the duck, her husband would still be here with her. Though of course, without her husband, she wouldn't have had the duck.

And what would Yuri Gagarin think of this? This pathetic dance of love and hate and yearning that, from the heavens, would not even have the significance of moths rising towards the moon.

The Earth has a beautiful blue halo. The sky is black. I can see stars. Oh yes, but wait. Oh, there's a woman with a duck, and they seem to be looking for crickets and worms.

The Earth plates shift and a man cries and cries and no one comes. A duck cries and she comes, and the man goes away.

And now no one can hear her own cries, and it just so happens that the Earth is cracking apart and the man is standing in ruins.

The next day she rang again.

Simon, she said. I'm coming down. I've decided.

The relief, the flooding of relief, as she told him this. She had to hold herself back from tears because it was so simple, so obvious. Now that she'd decided, she was impatient to head on her way. She would drive down, bring her work with her, leave the duck in Te Awamutu, and continue onwards.

No, Hannah, he said carefully. I don't think so. Things aren't good here.

That's OK, I can help. Just tell me what to bring, what's needed down there. I'll load up the car.

What we need, what we really need, is for things to be as stable as possible amidst the chaos. It's not the right time for marriage counselling. Anyway, he added, and again that tone of voice: you have your duck.

It's all organised. Claire and Bob. I haven't asked them yet, but—

I'm sorry, Hannah. I don't know how else to say this: I don't want you down here right now. Don't come. No surprises. Please.

Hannah felt winded. She rubbed her bare arm. She was suddenly cold.

Hannah?

Finally, she said, So . . . are you planning to come back at all?

Of course. We need to talk, I know that. I just can't give
us
much attention as things are at the moment. What's happened here has brought everything into a sharpened focus. It's messy in more ways than one.

What do you mean?

I can't say, but I'll tell you everything.

Are you staying with Maggie and Toby?

Yes, I am.

Is Toby well?

Why do you ask?

Is he?

He's better than he was.

Simon. What's happening there? Apart from the earthquake. You could offer me an explanation at least.

I'm exhausted, he said. Please, Hannah. Can you please be patient?

I presume you have your car.

Yes. Dennis drove it down. I flew with Maggie and Toby.

Oh? So Dennis was in on this, too? Well, that's great. The whole bloody family. The whole extended scheming lot of you. And I thought this was about you and me, but it seems I don't even figure. I apologise for bothering you when you are so tired. I'm sorry for trying to make amends in the middle of an earthquake. Give my love to everybody, and goodbye — I'll get on with my own life.

Love? he said. Oh, Hannah, that's nice to hear you say the word. I haven't heard it from you for a while.

It takes two, you know.

Do you have any idea what it is like down here?

No, Simon, and that's because you're not communicating. You're trying to make me feel selfish.

I can't cope with that sort of talk right now. I have to go, Hannah. Let's just chew things over, shall we, and talk when we're more centred.

How can I chew things over when you haven't given me any meat?

Goodbye for now, Hannah.

He hung up. She was mad with herself for not disconnecting first. She thought about bundling the duck into a box and getting into the car and driving down there anyway. But he was right; she couldn't arrive in Christchurch with all her pitiful emotional baggage stuffed in the boot of her car while Christchurch was suffering in such a real way.

Chapter 22

Hannah had a yearning to scrub and scrub and scrub, with her hands immersed in warm, frothy water. She gathered a jersey that needed hand-washing and carefully snuck to the laundry around the side of the house to avoid the duck, who was strutting and posturing along the railing of the deck. On the path outside the laundry, she'd left a couple of white towels for the washing machine. The taps were running to fill the tub.

But suddenly he was there, at her feet. Not Dr Duckell, but Mr Hyde, the wolverine in duck's clothing. Her feet, in black leather shoes with toes covered but with a mound of skin exposed, were the prey. He was consumed by that unstoppable madness. She knew that look in his eye. He was tearing at her feet, the shoes, and, then, he stopped. Focusing on her face, positioning his feet. He was preparing to fly up at her. She grabbed a large blue plastic bucket and popped it over the top of him. Just like that.

His craziness was contained apart from a wildly wagging tail outside the bucket. The bucket was jiggling under her hand, but she swivelled her body around it and sped out from the laundry, up the side path to the front door and inside. She locked the door. And then she remembered the taps, hot and cold, gushing into the tub.

She rushed out the back way through the ranch sliders, grabbing the leaf rake. Over the deck and down to the laundry where the duck was skulking, now liberated from the bucket. Shielded behind the leaf rake, she sidled around him to reach the taps. But again he threw himself at her, under the rake, over the rake, under the rake, with unwavering focus. Keep calm, she reminded herself. She was cornered. She used the bucket trick again, to make an escape to the front door as before, but of course it was locked.

And there he was.

She sped back down again to the back, kicking off her shoes as a red herring, and darted into the laundry. The shoes were no red herring: he had what he wanted. She was now relegated to onlooker as he pecked and pecked at the little black shoes. His beak within the toe piece, his feet clasping the heel as if he was urgently struggling to clamber inside them,
the whole quivering feathery tail-wagging duck of himself, desperate, so desperately intent on
being in
her shoes, and she felt he would turn himself inside out if he could. Then he tossed the shoes high into the air several times, willing the two dead useless black birds to move, to fly, to
move
why don't you? He grabbed them again. And then it was the towel. One shoe and the towel. The shoe one end and the towel the other, his neck outstretched, his tail wiggling, and then she saw it. She saw the little lump. Just a wee peep, whether before or after the .36 seconds she didn't know. Just a pink and shiny lump peeping from behind the belly feathers, no twenty centimetres of wayward corkscrew. He lay there, quieter now, grasping the shoes, the towel; the towel the nearest thing he could find that resembled the ravishing white duck that the overnight educator told him would be waiting for him one day.