Magpie Hall (9 page)

‘A she, was it? I didn’t look.’

‘A beautiful she.’ I nodded my head in the direction of the hallway. He followed close behind. I wondered how much time he’d spent in the house, if he’d ever been upstairs, how well he knew Grandpa. Something stopped me from asking, though; I didn’t want him to think it was an invitation.

He let out a long low whistle when I opened the door to the menagerie room.

‘So I take it you’ve never seen this collection?’

‘No. Man, I’d heard about it, but this is awesome.’ He stalked about the room, reaching out and touching things as he went. Then he stopped and looked at me. ‘Sorry, is it okay if I touch?’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s not a museum. Yet.’

‘What do you mean, yet?’

‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, this is all mine now.’

‘True that? Well, I guess you’re the girl who likes to stuff animals.’

‘Mount — the correct term is mount. The girl who likes to
mount
animals.’

He let out a great guffaw then, and I joined him. ‘Whatever turns you on, I suppose,’ he said.

The room was dark and the looming shapes of the animals watched us as we talked. The rabbit skin lay drying out under the window where I had left it the night before. The salt looked like ice crystals. I turned a lamp on and Sam put his face up close and examined it. ‘Nice job,’ he said. He stroked the fur. ‘Soft. Isn’t it weird for you, stuffing — sorry, mounting it — when you won’t eat the meat?’

‘It’s hard to explain. I have my reasons, but it would take all night to tell you.’

He smiled. ‘Maybe later, then.’

As he looked around, riveted to the spot, I remembered the birds in the living room.

‘By the way, did you move the huia? Back up onto the shelf?’

‘Huia? Where?’ He turned a circle, scanning the room. ‘Aren’t they extinct? I’d like to see one of those.’

‘Not here — in the other room. I thought maybe you did it when you brought the rabbit inside.’

‘Nah. Why?’

‘Well, someone did. That freaks me out a bit. Someone’s been in the house.’

He didn’t look particularly alarmed on my behalf. ‘Don’t worry about it. It was probably just Elsie or —’

‘Who’s Elsie?’

‘Josh’s missus. She’s hard case, that one. Bit of a nag. Josh is scared of her, I reckon. Or it could have been Josh. Someone probably just making things tidy for you. You’re not the only one who loves this house, you know.’

What a strange thing to say, I thought, but I let it slide.

‘Okay, I’m probably just being paranoid. City girl, you know.’

‘Probably.’ He didn’t seem interested in continuing the subject. ‘Do you reckon you could stuff a human?’ The room was becoming unbearably cold, but Sam didn’t appear to notice.

‘You could try. It wouldn’t look very nice, though. No fur. It’d just look all leathery and strange.’

‘Hmm. Worth trying though, I suppose. To achieve immortality.’

‘I guess you could say that … Actually, you’d be better off donating your body to plastination.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s like embalming. There’s a place in Germany that does it. I thought I might end up there. Why not? I do it to animals, why not let someone do it to me?’

‘And then what? You’ll be on show?’

‘That’s right. I’ll be exhibited.’

‘Naked?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Who knows? Maybe.’

‘I’d like to see that.’ He moved closer to me.

‘Would you now.’

What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. Well, actually, I was. I wanted to obliterate all thoughts of Hugh in the way I had always obliterated thoughts of love gone bad. With sex. With a warm, hard body, so different from the pillowy flesh of my last lover. With someone I knew I wouldn’t develop any feelings for.

Sam brought his body up close to me but leaned back to read my face. I smiled an encouragement and he needed little. His lips were rough and hot and the hand on the back of my neck was callused. I put my hands under his top and felt the smooth down on the small of his back. It was as if we both knew we would end up here, ever since we saw each other in the garden.

‘You’re sure you’re all right with this?’ he asked.

‘Mm, yes.’ I nodded and he took it as a signal to go further, and fast.

His lips trembled on mine as he fumbled with the buttons on my blouse. He pulled away for a moment to see what he was doing.

‘Holy …’ He stopped and stared at the tattoo on my chest — a bluebird hovering above each breast, a ribbon floating between them. ‘That is some tat.’ He continued unbuttoning my top and it fell from my shoulders.

‘Jesus, girl, how many have you got?’

I was shirtless now, sitting on the workbench where he had lifted me as though I were a paper doll. I still wore my bra, but he had the chance to stare at most of my tattoos, including the new one of the magpie, still raised and pink. He walked around the table to look at my back. His were just another pair of eyes in the crowded room. I found myself staring straight at an ancient fox with its teeth bared.

I sat up straighter. It was a ritual I had been through many times before with men: the surprise, the fascination, then ultimately, the renewed sexual fervour. But never in such a strange setting.

‘Ten,’ I said. ‘So far. One for every murder committed.’

He laughed uncertainly as he came a full circle back to me. His finger traced the dahlia on my left shoulder and moved down to the mermaid on my right arm. My white skin goosebumped in the icy room.

‘Come on,’ he said suddenly, and lifted my blouse back onto my shoulders. ‘Let’s get you into the living room and get the fire going. You’re freezing.’

With the heat of the moment gone, I found my teeth beginning to chatter and I nodded and lowered myself to the floor.

I followed him into the living room and sat on one of the shabby couches while he expertly built a fire. The springs of the couch dug into my thighs and an odour of dog enveloped me. I didn’t mind. I sank into the familiar feeling and the smells and pulled the old crocheted blanket off the back to wrap myself in while I waited for the room to warm up.

I thought of Hugh at home with his wife. The children tucked up in bed, the two of them curled up on a couch with glasses of wine, maybe books. The comfortable silence only years of togetherness can bring. I looked at Sam’s back as he crouched by the fireplace, poking the virgin flames with a piece of kindling, and for a moment imagined a life with him in the country. He would go out to farm the land while I stayed behind and looked after the children, passed on the Summers art of taxidermy. Maybe even in this house, if I could find some way to persuade my family to let us live here. I could resurrect Gram’s garden, grow vegetables.

It was preposterous, of course. I did this with every man I had a glimmer of romance with — slept with them, married them and divorced them all in one night.

‘So why the tats? You seem like such a nice girl.’ Sam had finished with the fire and was sitting back on his heels and warming his hands.

‘What, a girl can’t be nice and have tattoos?’

‘I don’t know. I always thought only biker chicks had them. You’ve got that sweet little haircut and that pretty face and tattoos. Seems strange to me.’

‘Not that strange. Plenty of girls have tattoos.’

‘Yeah, maybe one on their ankle or just above their arse, not all over their arms and chest.’

‘Well, you learn something new every day, don’t you, country boy?’

‘Yeah, all right. Got anything more to drink?’

‘Hang on a sec.’ I rose and crossed the room to Grandpa’s liquor cabinet. It held a healthy supply of gin and brandy, and there at the back, an old bottle of Chivas Regal.

‘This’ll do,’ I said. I unscrewed the lid and took a swig. It burned sweetly.

Sam moved back to sit beside me on the couch and took the bottle.

‘That magpie you’ve got there on your wrist. Can I see?’

I uncovered it for him.

‘Looks fresh. Which murder is that for?’ He touched it, a little too hard.

I didn’t say anything, but took my hand away. It throbbed lightly from his fingertip’s touch.

‘It’s your Grandpa, right? One for sorrow.’

‘You’re pretty perceptive, aren’t you?’

His face darkened and he drank from the bottle. ‘For a farmhand, you mean. Go on, say it.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘I’m not stupid, you know. I read books. Probably more than you with your fancy education. Go on, ask me how many I’ve read.’

I sighed. I didn’t want to be drawn into this.

‘Thousands,’ he said, and drank again.

I didn’t know how to respond without sounding patronising, so I said nothing. I took the bottle.

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m getting drunk. Not far to drive home. Only three people I know have died driving pissed, anyway.’ He laughed.

‘Are you serious? Jesus.’

He was still laughing, as if the idea of losing his friends was the most hilarious thing in the world. His laughter had the manic edge of a mean drunk. He stopped when he saw I was actually shocked, which had probably been his intention. He wore the look I had seen on his face the day before, when he had stormed from the house.

‘You’ve got no fuckin’ idea what it’s like out here in the country. You and your prissy mates have got taxis in the city. You’ve got your pretty little theatres and art gallery openings. We’ve got the pub. Or parties. Which are usually miles away from home.’

I held tightly on to the bottle of whisky. ‘I’m sorry.’ I laid a calming hand on his arm and he stared at it.

‘You should ask Josh about it some time,’ he said. ‘Living out here for so long — what, twenty years? I’m sure it’s driven him mad. I think getting married and having kids might have saved him. It gets bloody lonely out here.’

I didn’t want to talk about Josh. ‘So you don’t think you’ll last much longer?’

‘I dunno. What else would I do?’

I relinquished the bottle and he took another swig and stared into the fire.

‘I do know what it’s like, you know,’ I said. ‘Losing people.’

‘Ah shit, sorry. Josh told me about … well, you know.’

‘Josh did?’ I wondered how much he had said, how much he had admitted to his employee. I didn’t feel like finding out.

‘Let’s play a game for a bit,’ he said. ‘Let’s play for one night that I’m not a drop-kick from the country and you’re not a stuck-up rich bitch from the city.’

I laughed. ‘What are we then?’

‘I don’t know. Equals.’

‘You don’t think we’re equals?’

‘You don’t.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Look, just play along, okay?’ He took my hand and, in a sweet gesture, raised my fingers to his lips.

The room was finally beginning to warm up. I shrugged the crocheted blanket off.

‘Will you do something for me?’ asked Sam.

‘Depends.’

‘Will you take off your clothes so I can look at you? At your tattoos?’

I suppose it was part of the game we were meant to be playing — at least, that’s what I told myself. I don’t think I really wanted to get naked in front of this man. But still at the back of my mind was the image of Hugh and his wife, and the moment I saw my ex-lover’s face, I knew what I was about to do.

I kicked off my shoes and slid out of my tights. I declined to make it a strip-tease for him. My skirt came down next, then, one by one, I loosened the buttons of my shirt, until I stood before him in my underwear.

I felt his gaze on my body as I revolved slowly in the firelight. I felt the warmth of the flames as I turned towards them, the coolness when my body fell into the shadow, like the earth rotating around the sun. The only sound was the bristling of the pine logs and our breathing. He read me, as I had been read before, laying myself bare for a near stranger. When he asked me for the story of each tattoo, I refused him. Finally, he stopped asking.

The house moaned and shook off the ghostly music playing through my dreams. A grey light fingered the edges of the curtains. The eiderdown had fallen to the floor in the night but I was warm: the body beside me burned like a furnace.

Hungover. Thirsty. I looked over at Sam, at the tattoo on his shoulder blade that he had proudly showed me the night before — his badge of honour, his connection to me. It was ugly and inexpertly done, a symbol he could neither translate for me or explain what it meant to him personally. The lines were already blurring, the black had faded to green, and he didn’t seem to care. He shrugged when I mentioned its colour and mangled shape and said he couldn’t see it anyway, so what did it matter?

At least the muscles beneath the skin were nice to look at, so unlike Hugh’s soft moonscape of a back. I felt sick. I missed that back. What was I doing?

I turned over and faced away from him. Something was nagging me about the situation I found myself in. Not deja vu exactly, but I knew I wasn’t the first of the Summers to take the ‘help’ to bed. It didn’t feel good. History was beginning to repeat itself in unexpected ways.

Sam stirred, reached for me and pulled my slight body into the pocket between his torso and raised knees. I may as well have been a hot water bottle.