The Elusive Language of Ducks (5 page)

And with every new day it seemed that he had learnt things overnight about being a duck.

The woman took him down to the tiny pond in the garden, surrounded by trees and lilies and tall reeds. Two life-size ducks — one a decoy and one a concrete sculpture — cluttered up the pond, along with a slimy plastic lily-pad, a plaster-of-Paris frog, an ugly spouting fountain, and a weathered wooden bridge. Pieces of driftwood sat at the edge. Several orange goldfish lurked in the shadows. It was a once-crafted pond, abandoned.

When the duck was still a pom-pom he floated on the water, wildly paddling his little legs until he started to sink. He'd then panic back into the hands of the woman, with his transparent fluff sticking to his naked pimply skin.

Now that he was bigger, he plodded around the edge, flicking his head under the water before wiping it over his back. The woman, sitting on the bridge, watched him as he lifted his body upright and flapped his winglets. Then he took himself across to the other side of the pond where there was a mini beach of stones. Standing in a patch of sunlight, he poked his beak into his downy breast, as if exploring new terrain, searching for a clue to his duckness.

It was a new development for him to be apart from her while they were together. They were separated by a muddy puddle of water. They were separated by a vast expanse of pond, where she as a woman and he as a duck were different beings. He stood up tall again, fluffing up, flapping. Every day he did this now.

The mysterious overnight educator had informed him that he would fly, and
every day
he checked to see whether this was the day.

The woman looked at his stumpy wings fluttering uselessly. The design plan of his day-to-day evolution was impeccable. Even if he
could
fly now, it would be perilous for him, crashing into the walls of the world and careening into the mouths of cats and dogs and rats. Once he flew, where would he go? And how would he know to stop? She thought of thistle-down floating high in the sky and imagined that it was individual feathers on test flights, checking out the lie of the land, the sigh of the wind, the lift under the wing, and finally all returning to assemble on the duck for the first grand take-off.

Sometimes unpredictable events or expectations settled on a day before it had even started. They arrived by email, or phone. This day they'd arrived in a couriered box. The house shook with the early morning hammering on the door. Simon was in Sydney at a conference, and Hannah was still dozing in bed. When she opened the front door, there was the box on the doorstep, delivered by a guy in a uniform and a cap.

There wouldn't be time for the duck today. She cleaned his bathroom box and let him scurry behind her to his daytime cage on the back lawn. When she dropped him in, he chirruped in disbelief, demanding that she come with him to probe the catchments of dew in the bromeliads. He wanted her to peel back the long leaves of the agapanthus, so he could snaffle the cockroaches and wood lice leaping like people from a burning building.

He was too little to be released to forage alone — there were too many predators waiting for him. And he wanted to be with her.

She picked him out again and plonked herself down on the grass. He sat on her stomach.

That's better, he said.

I can't be with you today, Ducko, said the woman. I just can't.

What do you mean? You
are
with me. Everything is good.

But not for long. I have work. I have to go inside and work.

That's OK, I can come, too.

Ducko, she said. Listen. A box arrived today from the outside world. From the world outside
our
world. And when I opened the box, the whole house was filled with birds, dark flapping crows batting their wings against my face, their claws pulling at my hair. Squawking at me for attention. I screamed at them. Get out! Leave me in peace! I opened the window, releasing some of them, but they sat on the railing around the deck, or on the roof, or hid in leafy branches. Waiting for me.

That's terrible. I didn't see them. What did you do?

I flapped. Inside, one was drinking water from the kitchen sink, lifting its head as if about to gargle a song. Another paced on the kitchen table, its claws clattering like pins on the wood.

And then what?

Duckie, each crow is a task on a list. And I don't have energy for them today. I'm tired, Ducko. I have to catch the crows and tie coloured bands around their stiff-worm legs before they'll go away, labelled as done.

That's all very well, said the duck, but what's that got to do with me?

What it's got to do with you, Ducko, she said as she stood up and opened the lid to his cage, is that we're not going foraging today.

As she walked away she could hear the vibration of the wire netting as he threw himself against it. She wondered whether the feeling she had was anything like a mother might have, walking away from a crying baby.

And on top of that, this morning, when she'd been searching for a pencil sharpener, she'd opened the top drawer in her mother's bedroom cabinet, and there she was presented with all the non-descript knick-knacks left behind when her mother had gone to Primrose Hill. Spare glasses, magnifying glass, comb, birthday book, a writing pad with half-written letters, abandoned because her disease made it so difficult for her to write. Hannah picked up the pad and flicked through it.
I ask myself whether I will ever be happy again,
she read. And there it was again. The pain, swelling in her chest, in breech position, kicking its heel against her heart.

During the course of this day, the weather shifted. It seemed that the wind was filtered through ice. She went to the window. The sky had sucked up the shadows from the earth. The garden was misshapen, its edges gnawed into by its shivering self. Animals slunk by and tentatively sniffed at the wire netting. The duck had pulled himself under the wooden covering, into his own darkness, where Hannah had left a heap of soft towel. He'd backed into it, and tried to become a part of it, so that he was unseen. Hannah went once more down to the garden to put a tarpaulin over the cage to keep him warm, then left him again.

When she finally returned to the duck from her work, it was night. She took him inside and filled the bathroom basin with warm water. He stood there, letting the heat seep into his body as Hannah sat on the bath edge, her face level with the basin, talking to him softly. He flitted his beak at her mouth. It gave the impression of kissing her, but she knew that he was checking that her lips weren't two fat, lazy worms.

After the bath, Hannah dried him on a towel and held him for a while.
She had more work to do, another crow to deal with, so she put him to bed in his box. As soon as she left the bathroom he hurled himself out of the box. He'd managed to do this once yesterday, too, for the first time. She put him back and turned off the light. He clambered out again, waddling triumphantly into the kitchen where she'd just sat down at the table to work. Again she returned him to the box, but again he flung himself out onto the tiles. She could hear his flippers slap slap slapping on the floor as he crossed the hall and proudly waddled his way to her feet. She returned him to his box, but she hadn't even left the room before he was out again.

The woman yelled at him.

This is the last straw!

As she strode towards him she caught him accidentally on her foot, propelling him out into the hallway, where, to her astonishment, he spun a full circle, a feathery top spinning. He then stood motionless, his yellow feet splayed on the wooden floor, his eye black and piercing. He was measuring her, wondering whether she was a thing to be wary of. Until that moment, he had accepted her unquestioningly.

What did you do that for?

I'm tired.

What did I do?

You got out of your box. Over and over.

I wanted to be with you.

Well, she said, I don't want to be with you.

The duck let go of his legs and flopped into his nest of self. The woman plonked herself down on the bathroom stool. The duck in the hallway, the woman in the bathroom.

I'm tired. The crows. So much work to do. And now you. It is like having my mother here all over again.

Your mother is dead.

How do you know that?

You told me. But even if you hadn't told me, I would have known. It's in your eyes, in your blood.

The woman sighed. All I want is for you to be in your box. Now. Like a good duck. Please.

He cocked his head at her. Then he stood up, waddled into the
bathroom and over to her feet. She scooped him up.

Bed, she said. Bed, or else.

Or else what?

Eat.

Eat?

Christmas dinner. Yum. Cranberry sauce. Drumsticks. Hmmmm . . .

The duck said nothing. She cradled him, feeling his warmth spread through her body. Even his feet on her arms were warm. Even her heart felt warmed by him. He was a warm machine. He was a hot-water duckle.

Be a good boy, she said.

I am, he said, uncomplaining now as she placed him back in his box.

Later, Hannah thought about the duck's reluctance to go to bed. In the mornings he was quite content to sit in his box, greeting her with his mouth open, cheeping gratefully as he snapped up the strips of leaves she offered. He'd then wait patiently while she did her chores. If she popped into the bathroom they'd have a hello, but there was never any frenetic scrambling to escape. She was thankful that he gave her this precious time in the mornings before having to clean out his box and head outside.

Before her mother had moved into Primrose Hill, caregivers provided by the government would march into the house each morning to bathe her and prepare her for the day ahead. Hannah eventually resigned herself to the fact that strangers had the run of the house downstairs, strangers who would sneak her mother's make-up and perfume and creams for themselves. Although she didn't like this, she didn't complain; she was grateful for that small amount of time to herself. She also felt a nudge of guilt that she wasn't continuing to attend to her mother's ablutions herself.

When she questioned the duck the next day about this anomaly between his morning and night-time behaviour, he told her that in the mornings he was happy because he knew it was just a matter of waiting and that she would come because that was what happened. She would come and then together they'd go out into the garden and look for food. He would wait for her all day, he said.

So, why are you such a pain about going back to bed at the end of the day, then?

Because it's the night and you go away.

But you're safe here. Nothing can happen to you, truly. It's nice and cosy in our bathroom, with the heated tiles and the door that closes, and a curtain over the window. The worst thing that could happen is that you spill your water.

I know all that.

So what's your problem?

Well. You might not come back.

Me? Oh, Duckie, of course I'll come back.

Don't laugh, he said. There are slinking evil things out there. Sometimes I hear the front door close. I hear your footsteps up the path. You and the man go out and you don't come back until the night is half over.

Going to the movies or out for a meal occasionally hardly takes up half the night. But in any case, I
do
come back and I always will, she said.

But sometimes things happen, he said enigmatically. Bad things. In the night. Bad things that might stop you returning. When you leave me in the night, I'm left not knowing whether I'll ever see you again. Why don't you sleep with me?

I sleep with the man in a bed upstairs, she told him.

Can I sleep with you in your bed, then?

Hmmm, I wouldn't mind, but I don't think the man would like that, she said. But I could ask him.

The woman thought of her pillows and duvet stuffed with feathers. How many ducks had died to make them? How did they die? She pictured peasant fingers yanking at the breasts of limp or — worse still — squealing ducks. Should she ever bring her duck to her bed, she suspected that he might see her as a traitor.

The first plucking generally yields about sixty grams and the second, about six weeks later, a hundred to two hundred grams. Animal welfare groups find this repeated plucking cruel, as it is painful. Dead ducks can be plucked by scalding them in water at around sixty-five degrees centigrade for a couple of minutes. Down is removed by a plucking machine or by hand. The feathers are dried in a drier.

Sometimes information is too readily available, Hannah thought, as she closed her laptop.

That night Hannah was lying in bed with Simon, just back from his conference. He was reading his iPad, holding it propped upright on his chest. His other hand lay open alongside his body, and her hand, resting in his warm palm, felt like a contented duck in a summer pond. And, she couldn't help noticing, recently so many of her musings were skewed in relation to ducks.

Simon, she said.

Hmmm?

Do you ever feel uncomfortable about sleeping under a feather duvet and on feather pillows?

No, he replied dozily. I feel very comfy, thank you. It's nice to be back in my own bed. Hotel bedding is unwelcoming and sterile.

No, I mean, when you think about it. I was looking it up today. Some down feathers are actually plucked while the ducks are still alive, over and over, every six weeks or so, as soon as they've grown more. It'd be like some monster pulling out our hair.

That's not totally true, he said, and she knew he was going to give her a lecture. Not all, he continued. They're also plucked from the dead birds after they're killed for their meat. So don't worry. And the eider down is taken from the lining of the nests after the hatchlings have left. That's pretty well controlled these days.