Nest (26 page)

The opening had gone well, everyone said. She hadn’t embarrassed herself too much – but it had left her stretched thin.

She reached into the shed, pulling her treeboat from its hook. And a coil of rope. She marched down past the house, past the end of the garden, into her forest. She knew the tree already – the big old bloodwood with a high crown. Her tallest. She stood at its base and placed her hands on the warm trunk. Asking permission. It was intrusive, she was sure, to have a human clambering among your limbs, ropes rubbing away at your skin. She trusted the bloodwood to help her, because it would bleed if she hurt it; it could express its pain.

She threw the lead rope over the branch she had picked out, and missed. She tried again. And missed. Craig had always
refused to climb when he was angry or upset; he said that’s when you made mistakes. They had fought once, on a trip, the night before they were to climb the back of Mount Buffalo. Something silly about who would cook dinner or who forgot to pack the tea. He refused to climb the next morning, so they had sat at camp and read books and played cards until they were laughing together again.

When his brother had been arrested the second time they had cancelled a trip altogether. She had thought climbing mountain ash forests would be just what he needed, but they had walked Mornington Peninsula instead.

She finally landed the rope where she wanted it on the fourth go and pulled it over the limb. She rigged the treeboat, climbed in, and hauled herself up. If only she could wheel herself in and out of the world in the same way.

Jen hung, suspended, out of sight of the house, the neighbours, any visitors: everything. She had a clear view of the mountain, the sun setting behind it. The cicadas headed into crescendo, their final orchestra for the day, competing with the birds. A treeclimber hopped up up up the trunk, piping above the din.

The sky burned orange and then red. She watched until all colour and light were gone and the stars started winking. A boobook called from down in the gully and bats chittered and squealed as they fed. The tree rocked her to sleep.

She woke to raindrops on her face. Not from the sky, but from the tree, passed from leaf to leaf. She should move, get down from the tree and pack up her gear before it became too damp. Instead, she lay still, swinging free. The tree was whispering.

It was a moment that approached, a shift in time. She stared up at the tree’s dead heart while she listened, and at last she understood. She carried something dead inside her, too.

The rain was only mist, and the distilled drip from the leaves gentle. She struggled at the thought of letting go, as if standing on the edge of a high diving board. But she took the stone, shells and glass trinkets – the artefacts of Craig – from her pockets, and let them fall, one by one. They made a sound as they hit the ground, though not as loud as she might have imagined. The tree’s rain washed any tears away.

Yellow robins perched and dived beneath her, baring their yellow rumps as they fetched their breakfast.

F
rom the kitchen sink, she watched a male fairy-wren performing on the deck railing, head tilted back, eyes closed, as if in wonder at its own song. The volume of trills and range of notes produced by such a tiny bundle of bones and feathers was indeed wondrous, defying physical, if not earthly, laws.

It was John Burroughs who said that you did not know a bird until you heard its song. For her, the point of knowing was when you could pick a bird out of the forest cacophony without sighting it. Jen was at that stage with many of her companions, though only through cheating: three years of observing them, singing, at her birdbaths.

Their personality was just as evident in the way they bathed. The treecreeper entered the water the same way he went about the rest of his day, in a series of furtive, jerky, vertical movements up the post, until encountering the lip of the dish. Where, caught blind, he listened to establish whether another bird was present above him. Then he had to take a leap, up to the edge of the bath, and if all was clear, would turn and back into the water, as if fearing attack.

The fairy-wrens, on the other hand, dived in headfirst, entering on one side of the dish and exiting on the other, hopping between the two dishes with a great deal of splashing and chirping, in celebration of water and life in general – as they were doing now, the extended family of husband, wife and their three children, two female and one male.

She felt guilty, sometimes, a voyeur intruding on their private space. Although they did not disrobe – or defeather – she was watching them go about their ablutions. Sometimes she thought the birds conscious of her, as a living thing, but perhaps they had grown so used to her they thought her part of the furniture.

She wiped up her cup and bowl and placed them in the cupboard. Her mother had liked birds, the more colourful the better, hanging seed-feeders out in the backyard to attract the parrots and parakeets. She had been fond of the chooks and ducks and even the turkeys they had tried to farm for a while, in another of her father’s grand schemes that never quite came off. Jen had been afraid of those large, caged birds, their wrinkled feet and spurs a source of quiet horror. Even as an adult, she could not bring herself to run chooks, despite the obvious benefits, which was probably somewhat perverse for a bird woman.

She had chosen her mother’s room at the nursing home for its little balcony with a low-slung blue gum, heavy with red blossom. She had hoped her mother would not only enjoy its plumes but the conversation of the lorikeets and rosellas. As it turned out, they made quite a mess on the deck – and the little table and chair Jen had put there for her to sit at – but she could hear the birds, all year round, even while in bed, which was one of the few things that seemed to give her any pleasure.

Jen had done some pieces for her mother’s room, a series of king parrots in colour wash, to brighten the place, hanging one above the bed and another by her armchair. The ladies seemed to appreciate them, bringing in visitors to view the pictures of birds, rather than those outside. Her mother, although irritated by the interruption at times, was quite proud, one of the nurses had told her, talking up her ‘artist daughter’.

Jen had never seen any sign of such pride herself, the only comment coming shortly after she had hung them. ‘You should use colour more often, dear,’ her mother had said. ‘Everyone likes a bit of colour.’

The birds at the baths celebrated the sun’s descent. Lewin’s honeyeaters snapped away fantails and white-eyes; wrens and pardalotes made way for the robins; and the treecreepers preferred to bathe alone. Through sheer numbers, the robins tended to rule the roost. She took a glass of wine out onto the deck. The thing that had been worrying its way forward for weeks now, slowed by her trying to worry back at it, trying to dig it out rather than let it work its way free, was upon her.

For all their stories, Sam and Glen had not once mentioned her father’s last job, the development on the edge of town. If Sam didn’t get him the job, he would have at least known about it.

It was no longer the edge, but some sort of middle, overrun by housing estates, a new school and park, the outlying houses infilled as blocks were sold up and split off. A light industrial area had sprung up, with a factory that turned fruit into straps and another that put herbs in a tube. The sort of project lauded for its innovation and employment opportunities.

When her father and his team had begun clearing, it had been controversial. She remembered that much. Her parents whispering after dinner, when she was supposed to be asleep. ‘We need the money, love,’ he’d said. The phone would ring in the middle of the night, but after the first few times, no one answered it.

At the time she had thought the fuss was about the destruction of the forest guarding the town’s edge, and perhaps for some it was. In those days, though, trees were a minority concern. The town relied on the timber-getters and the economy they created. They were the economy.

There must have been something else about the development, though: the people behind it, or the process. Not that there was much of a process in those days.

S
he woke up tired. The neighbour’s dog had barked half the night, starting a chorus of hounds all around the district. Sound carried on a clear and otherwise quiet night, and she had counted half-a-dozen different voices. They were not the voices she wished to hear. When she had first moved back, there were one or two dogs about. Now everyone seemed to have one. If she had a dog, which she would not, she would be mortified if it disturbed the peace in that way – how did their owners just sleep through it?

The brush turkeys were out and about, more ugly and bedraggled than ever. There were three of them now, which was a worrying development. One made a half-hearted attempt to chase another off. A child, blow-in or rival, she wasn’t sure. They strolled the lawn with feathers flat to their bodies and showed no interest in scratching up her gardens, so she let them be.

Jen paused, hand on her cup. The fairy-wrens were cavorting below the deck and up into the birdbaths, their tails, longer than their bodies, held at a jaunty angle. They lived up to ten years, which was a long time for a bird. They tended to
settle in one place, a territory of a few hectares, in an extended family arrangement – a habit returning to favour in the human world – the offspring often delaying setting out on their own in favour of the security of home territory. Although the group might have more than two adults capable of brooding, only one female laid the eggs each year. When the young wrens did finally disperse, it was usually the females who up and left.

She had always known Craig didn’t want children. At first she assumed that he would change his mind when he was older, or that she could change his mind for him. Not through arguing or mounting some sort of campaign but by loving him. Demonstrating that their relationship was worth it. That she was worth it.

He was right. If she had wanted them enough, she would have raised the question – pushed the issue.

She had wanted children only in an abstract sort of way, as an extension of their relationship, but she had never felt clucky or fussed over babies the way some women did. There was something about teaching that soon drummed any idealism about child rearing out of you. She enjoyed them, their open minds and hearts, and had assumed she would get more maternal as she matured, that something would kick in. But it hadn’t.

She had put Craig first, before herself, and had to nurture her art in secret. There hadn’t been enough energy left over for a child.

The truth was, she hadn’t found the right man. She had just left it too late to admit it. When the time came – when she could no longer keep the realisation out of her mind – she waited until Craig was at work, packed her things in three hours and hit the road. No note. Of all people, she should have had more
regard for the person left behind, but it was the only way she could be sure she wouldn’t change her mind.