The Elusive Language of Ducks (9 page)

Rosemary already had her chubby fingers around his neck, and the duck was wriggling furiously. He was not used to anything other than reverent handling. Hannah unclasped the tiny boa constrictors and told her to be gentle. Max demonstrated how it was done, by patting the outer edges of the duck's down, as if testing a hedgehog.

Does Poppa know you're here?

He went to sleep. Can I hold the chicken?

No, I want to.

I said it first.

Just a minute. Tell me, Max. Just wait a minute and tell me. When did Poppa go to sleep?

Before. Before when we came to see you.

Hannah stood up and went to the hole in the hedge, hoisting aside branches to peer through to the lawn next door. Eric was sitting in a plastic garden chair, and indeed he was asleep, his chin buried in the chest hair frothing through his shirt. She darted to the cage and dumped the duck, ignoring his tantrum against the netting as she sprinted back to the hedge.

Come on, back we go, she said to the children, and they all crawled, bumping against each other through the opening that used to be an easy thoroughfare between the two houses. They stood up and she took their sticky hands, kissing first one and then the other. She had missed them.

Ssssh, she said, taking the children on exaggerated tiptoe over the grass to Eric. He looked unkempt, his hair lank and tousled, a few days' growth of grey bristle over his soft chin. He was wearing the brushed-cotton blue shirt that she — they — had given him for Christmas a couple of years ago, rolled up past his paint-splattered elbows. What could have destroyed the camaraderie that they'd had together, the jocular discussions over a glass of wine or two, the friendship?

Hannah's got a chicken, announced Rosemary. Eric snorted loudly. His eyes shot open. He blinked, then registered that she was there. She held her ground, even though her heart was pounding. Why was her heart pounding? He sat up, rubbing his eyes.

What? What's going on? he growled.

Eric, she said.

He threw his head into his hands, rubbed his face vigorously and shook his head.

The kids came over to see me. You were asleep.

Hannah's got a chicken, said Rosemary.

It's a duck, said Hannah.

Well, that's very good, said Eric. As if I didn't know. Most likely the whole bloomin' neighbourhood knows.

Eric, said Hannah.

Come on, kids, we need to go inside and have something to eat.

He didn't look at her as he rounded the children into his care, and she felt their fingers slipping from hers, her hands empty again, as she turned, her eyes welling with tears, to crawl without dignity back through the hole in the hedge.

There was more to Eric, if she were to be honest. Eric was a self-employed house painter. He was also a musician. In his younger days he had played the fiddle and the cello. For a few years he was even a member of a country music band, The Eketa Hoons, which toured in the summer, doing gigs in country halls.

Hannah had never had much to do with his wife, but by Eric's account she couldn't stand his music and had left him for the man who mowed the lawns at his daughter's primary school.

There was something about music. If it be the food of love, play on. Play on, my lover. Simon had been in Uganda. She tried not to think about it. That Easter. She'd been hanging out the washing and he was digging in his garden. They often chatted over the hedge, which at that time was kept lower than it was now. It was a sunny day with a good breeze for drying clothes. She'd been grappling with a sheet. Eric had a gumboot balanced on the spade, his hands clutching the handle as they talked. His head shining through his hair. She'd mentioned casually, conversationally, that she'd like to hear his band one day.

Well . . . he'd said, looking fixedly at a bit of something he was scratching on the spade handle. Then he raised his eyes to hers. We've got a gig at a country music festival in the Coromandel tomorrow afternoon. Can't promise you'll like it, but, if you're willing to take a punt, you can drive down with me in the morning. But, he shrugged, it's probably late notice . . .

He flicked a flop of sandy hair behind his ear.

The Eketa Hoons consisted of four men. Singer and guitar, bass, fiddle and drums. All about fifty, all a bit weathered, all a bit sexy, dressed in black shirts and jeans. All constantly connected by seemingly mischievous glances, as if sharing some arcane joke. They all sang a bit. They knew how to have fun. That was it. She'd often heard Eric practising both his violin and his cello next door, but she'd never seen him play. His body lithe and alive, his bow sawing the fiddle so vigorously.

She'd positioned herself on a rug in the grass. There was something about the lilt of the music, so light, so uplifting that she wanted to get
up and dance with the other picnickers bouncing uninhibitedly in their bare feet, their hair flinging, the sun glinting on smiling cheeks. The singer was gruff and seductive, the lyrics funny and romantic. Her heart was flying, fighting against the Lilliputian forces of shyness pinning her to the ground.

Afterwards Eric came and sat beside her on the rug.

That was great! she'd said and she'd astonished herself by flinging her arm around him, and kissing him briefly but enthusiastically on his perspiring cheek. The music had created a sense of intimacy.

Thanks, he'd muttered, lifting his cowboy hat as if to let out all the steam and energy of the music. He replaced the hat, fizzed open a can of cold beer from the chilly bin she had prepared, and drank, the afternoon light glowing on his tanned, closely shaved skin. His hat dropped off into the grass. His hair was pulled into a short pony tail. His nice sharp jawline just beginning to soften with age. She picked up his hat and handed it to him. It had an oily green feather poking from the hatband. Why was she remembering these small details? His delphinium blue eyes. Yes, delphinium blue. Or were they? Surely not. They certainly weren't now. Did eyes fade with time? Or with circumstance?

Eleven years ago, this was, when Simon was in Uganda on a contract for three months.

They'd booked separate units in a motel for the night before the drive back the following day. They'd had fish and chips on the beach and a bottle of wine. They'd laughed like idiots. She hadn't realised how funny he was, all those years of knowing him. Was he
really
so amusing? What had they talked about? Before she returned to her unit they had hugged goodnight. Then they kissed. They had melted together in a kiss. They were two ice-creams smashed together. She had pulled away. Aghast. Smirked at him self-consciously.

G'night, she'd said, backing away like a fool, crashing into a large pot plant. She could feel the crunching of the plant beneath her. She started to laugh, her knees up, her feet waving mid-air, her bottom wedged in the pot. He grabbed her hand. Have a good trip? he'd said, pulling her out. Pulling her out like an unidentified creature rescued from mud. She didn't recognise herself. The red geraniums were flattened. She tried in vain to pull them upright. Oh dear, she said, and she knew she couldn't look
at him again, so she turned, scuffling through her bag searching for the key to her unit. She turned around. He was standing there. Waiting. Her hands were shaking. The key, she said. There it was, in her pocket. She opened the door. He was still standing there. Passively. Under a perfectly contained bowl of light under the soffit. Little black flies dancing, so excitedly. She gave him a childlike wave, her fingers playing notes on the keyboard of the night. And closed the door. And all night she thought of him.

The next day Eric had organised to give the bass player a ride back home. Hannah insisted on sitting in the back seat. She'd dozed, listening to their banter, their boys' chatter about music and musicians. Simon was much more serious, in general. Hannah and Eric were alone in the car for just ten minutes after Justin had been dropped off; Hannah back in the passenger seat, staring out the window. They were nervous, restrained, quiet. Back home, they stood on the footpath, their arms loaded with their overnight bags, and, in his case, his fiddle.

I had a lovely time, thank you, she said.

Yeah, me too, me too, he said nodding furiously. His hat fell onto the pavement. She bent, scooped her finger under the chinstrap he didn't use, and pushed it under his arm. Then they split; he into his house, she into hers.

Their attraction to each other boiled for a couple of weeks, lurking under their skin, waiting to be released. Hannah would lie in bed listening to the sombre threads of his cello or the bright enticing notes of his fiddle, and she knew he was playing for her. And all the windows of their houses breathed shared air, gaping to be fed. She imagined them both leaning across the sills, their elongated wavering tongues straining to touch.

There was no way Hannah wanted to be unfaithful to Simon. No way. But one afternoon, a couple of weeks later, there'd been a storm, one of those crazy furious storms. A flying branch had smashed the window of their basement. Rain was pelting into the laundry. She'd dragged a large piece of plywood from the basement and was trying to hammer it across the window, but the force of the wind was pulling the wood from her grasp. Then Eric was beside her. She held the plywood against the
house as he hammered. They almost had to yell at each other to be heard above the gale. Thanks so much, she said and then they were drinking the water that fell from each other's face, into their shared ravenous — yes, ravenous — mouths. His cold hand slipping under the collar of her raincoat, over the skin of her shoulder onto her back. They couldn't deny it this time. He took her by the hand and led her through the shuddering hedge and up the path and into his house.

It had lasted a week. Well, eleven and a half days. It had stopped while it still had life. It had stopped because, if it hadn't, it would never have ended. It had stopped because they didn't want to hate each other. It had stopped because it had to stop because they would have consumed each other totally. It had stopped because his teenage daughter had arrived unexpectedly when Hannah was in bed with him in the early morning. Sheila just let herself in through the front door and they could hear her pounding towards them up the stairs. Hannah flung herself onto the carpet between the wall and the bed, lying under a tent of blanket. She didn't move for the next hour, as Eric sat in his dressing gown with Sheila drinking coffee downstairs at the kitchen table, talking about boyfriend trouble. Hannah was forced to evaluate her life and her marriage and the choices she had to make. She was forty years old.

Six weeks later she discovered for certain that she was pregnant.

When the cramps and the bleeding started, she knew what was happening. There wasn't enough room in this body for one more. Is that what it was? Not enough room in this marriage for an intruder?

It was a Friday afternoon and she'd just arrived home when the pain in her stomach started to take her breath. She welcomed it; willed against it; was relieved; longed for it not to be true.

She took herself to the shower, shuffling, kneeling on the floor of the shower as the pain intensified, leaning over the plastic stool she'd grabbed for support. The water soothingly hot on the small of her back. She started to bleed heavily, the liverish clots swirling by and slithering under the elevated plug cover, and down the drain. She was a concertina, wheezing out a long groan as her muscles determined to squeeze from her the darling little one. Then she was sure, almost sure, absolutely certain, that she saw him, or her. She saw the lump of different blob hesitate as it was caught for a second at the stainless steel plug cover. She dived to retrieve it, pulled the plug from its place, but he or she escaped, and down it went, down the drain. It was just having a wee pause to peek at her before it left. We could have had fun together, she thought it might have been saying.

And yes, she told it, I love you already.

Had she rejected it or had it rejected her? The little boy or the little girl, the little musician or ballerina, or writer or magician or brain surgeon. Already she'd started making plans, had been fantasising that Simon could be overjoyed. Unlikely. And still the cramps and the bleeding continued on and on, gradually diminishing until she was able to force herself to her feet. She turned the tap off. She dried herself, wrapped herself in pads and a towel and crawled into bed, and she had nobody to talk to about it. Nobody. That was the trouble with secrets. She wanted to tell Eric that she had lost their child. She remembered her desperate search for her keys at the door of the motel unit. They were in her pocket all along. And this wee one had been waiting all along, too. She wanted to rush next door and have another try, but of course she couldn't, and five days later Simon returned.

Chapter 7