Rain Birds Read online

  Harriet McKnight’s writing has been shortlisted for the 2014 Overland VU Short Story Prize, the 2015 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, and the 2016 Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. She has been published in Australian Book Review, the Suburban Review and Westerly, and was the managing editor of the Canary Press. Rain Birds is her first novel.

  Published by Black Inc.,

  an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

  Level 1, 221 Drummond Street

  Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

  [email protected]

  www.blackincbooks.com

  Copyright © Harriet McKnight 2017

  Harriet McKnight asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  McKnight, Harriet, author.

  Rain birds / Harriet McKnight.

  9781863959827 (paperback)

  9781925435795 (ebook)

  Black cockatoos – Fiction.

  Australian fiction.

  Cover design by Peter Long

  Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main

  Cover painting by Dana Kinter

  For my mother, and for Nick

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgements

  1

  PINA MARINELLI SAW that it was already half past eight and went into the bedroom she shared with her husband. He was still lying in bed, the covers tucked right up under his chin. There was a musty smell to the room; she wrinkled her nose against it and tried to push away the thought: old person. Her husband remained handsome and, if she looked at him in profile, she saw that strong bone structure she loved.

  She went over to the window and pulled the curtains open so that daylight spilt across the bed. They’d never bought a new bed until this last one – they’d always chosen second-hand, slept amongst the ghosts of the previous owners. She didn’t really believe that things could hold on to the memories or the presence of a person. But, even though he wouldn’t have admitted it, Alan had always been prone to superstition and – when the old bed finally wore out – he’d insisted that they drive to Orbost and choose a frame and mattress that was brand-new.

  ‘Ours,’ he’d told her once they’d collected it, ‘this one is just ours.’

  It was a large bed; Alan had been a man who took up a great deal of space. Now, he was dwarfed by it. He lay half buried beneath the covers, the bones of his face showing more prominently when he was flat.

  ‘Are you awake?’ she asked. ‘It’s time to get up.’

  ‘I’ve been awake for ages.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you get up, then?’

  Alan appeared puzzled. ‘I didn’t think of it.’

  She shook her head. ‘We’ll get you up and you can have some breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t want breakfast.’

  He didn’t eat much these days, was never hungry.

  ‘I’ll just make some toast,’ she said. ‘You have to eat.’

  ‘I’ve already eaten.’

  Pina sensed something give inside her. Just one morning. I just want to get through one morning without this shit.

  ‘That was yesterday,’ she explained. ‘You haven’t eaten anything today yet.’

  That expression on his face again, the puzzlement.

  ‘Yesterday we had dinner,’ she said, deliberately slow, ‘then you had a sleep, now it’s today. You haven’t eaten anything today.’

  Outside a currawong was screeching.

  ‘Do you understand what I mean by yesterday?’ she asked. ‘We were awake, then we had a sleep, and now it’s today.’

  She was using her hands to break up the steps, chopping them through the air as though it might help her husband to see how simple this all was.

  ‘But I don’t want any more food,’ he said.

  In the early days of their courtship, Alan had told her that she reminded him of Claudia Cardinale. Particularly the Claudia Cardinale in The Leopard. Pina had thought this sweet, but Australian men always chose either Claudia or Sophia Loren as a comparison. Not every Italian girl could resemble them. Besides, Alan had been the one who’d looked like he’d stepped out of a film. So handsome.

  Despite being only sixty-two, his skin now hung loose about his bones. Rapidly, over the last couple of years, he’d deflated like a punctured paddling pool. She didn’t often put her hands on his body anymore, not in that way. It had been one of the first things to go. Intimacy. The sweet and twisting history of them. They still touched: they’d hug, and at night she received a goodnight kiss. Or, rather, she gave a goodnight kiss, to a cheek that wasn’t offered, and to a husband she sometimes had to remind who she was.

  ‘It’s me, your wife.’

  Now, as the winter morning light seeped through the open curtains, she put an arm behind Alan’s back and helped him up to sit at the edge of the bed. She guided his feet into a pair of slippers.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Nah, it’s … um,’ he said. ‘Uh.’ His mouth was slack with emptiness, all words evaporated.

  She straightened up and brushed her hand across his cheek. He flinched a little at her touch. His eyes were wide and searching as he gazed at her. She knew that by the time dusk fell that day – and the light outside turned from purple to grey – there would be nothing in his eyes but confusion and loosely held suspicion. Even after more than thirty years together, by evening her face would mean little to him; a collection of foreign curves and ridges.

  She folded a pair of his trousers that had been tossed onto the chair in the corner of the bedroom; heard the distant, muffled rumble of thunder and bent to peer out the window.

  ‘It’s going to storm,’ Alan said.

  ‘No, it’s just thinking about it.’

  He was swinging his feet back and forth like a child sitting on a high chair, except Alan’s legs were long and his soles scuffed against the ground. Scuff, scuff, scuff.

  They never used to see storms this early in the year; usually they wouldn’t roll across until the end of spring. Winter had so far been warmer than expected; it was still chilly but they hadn’t had as many frosts. For the last few days she had noticed storm clouds travel in from the ocean – dark and swollen like overripe fruit – but they passed overhead, too high and without breaking open.

  ‘Up you get,’ she said as she took hold of Alan’s elbow and bore his weight
as he rose to his feet. For a few moments after he’d shuffled off down the hallway, she stood in the bedroom, listening to the grumble of the heavens and watching the light shift from bright to dull as the clouds moved over the sun.

  It was late afternoon before Pina got a chance to sit down for a few minutes at the kitchen table. She opened the newspaper to the sudoku quiz at the back, and picked up a pen and jiggled it between her fingers. Sudoku was a ‘brain game’ – it was meant to be good at improving memory and staving off senility. As she tried to fill in the first few numbers the paper tore, and she put the pen down. These kinds of activities had never come naturally to her.

  What’s he doing now? She stared out the window above the kitchen table; it ran the length of the wall and looked out onto the rambling back garden. Beyond the fence were hectares of untouched state forest and, on a clear day, she could see the shark’s tooth tip of Black Mountain above the tree line.

  She spotted Alan trudging slowly along the bottom fence, near the casuarina trees that draped their thin branches over the wire and dropped their needles onto the garden beds; she’d sent him out several minutes ago to collect kindling from the pile beside the shed. She pushed her chair back and walked heavily out onto the verandah to hurry him. Beneath her feet, the boards creaked and bent like brittle twigs.

  I’ll have to attend to that, I suppose, she thought. Add it to the list of things needing fixing.

  It was those smaller, round-the-house chores she found the most difficult since Alan’s disease. When they could share tasks, things had seemed more manageable even though it was an old house, always at risk of crumbling out from under them.

  I have to stop thinking of him as if he’s already dead.

  She felt the wash of a slight, cold breeze find a gap above her socks and slide up her trouser legs.

  Alan climbed the verandah steps, leaning heavily on the railing.

  ‘Did you get them?’ she asked.

  He didn’t glance at her as he passed. The back door slapped closed, and she heard his footsteps move along the hallway. He was whistling as he made his way to the lounge room. Even when he turned on the television, the whistling continued. Tuneless. She wondered if he could hear something in the refrain that she couldn’t, or if it was more about the feeling of air flowing through his lips, of breath.

  As she leant against the railing that ringed the verandah, three black cockatoos flew overhead, their cries mournful. She glanced up and recalled how some of the locals who’d lived in Boney Point their whole lives believed an old wives’ tale, that those birds brought the rain, as if a wet veil was attached to their wings. These days, along with the earlier yet more infrequent storms, they were seeing the cockatoos less and less. The usual markers of the changes in seasons and weather were scattered and haphazard. Unpredictable. But right above her were three black cockatoos, their heavy heads and shoulders unbalanced against their elegant tails.

  I’d hate to make liars of you, she thought as she watched the birds disappear into the treetops of the state forest. She knew the clouds were too high, their bellies sucked in tight. There was no way they would be dropping anything anytime soon.

  2

  PINA HEADED INTO the lounge room and found Alan sitting on the couch, staring out the window while the television chattered.

  ‘Did you get the sticks? For the fire?’

  He stared at her blankly. Then recognition. ‘Was that what I was outside for?’

  ‘Jesus, Alan.’

  It was too aggressive; she knew it as soon as she’d said it. The doctors had all told her that dusk was a bad time. Sundowning. When the shadows got longer – when the light shifted lower, made things appear unnatural – it was harder for him to keep a grip on what was real and what wasn’t.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll get them in a minute.’

  She walked through to the kitchen, folded up the newspaper left open at the sudoku page, turned on the taps and slid some dirty dishes beneath the water to soak. She put her hands in there, too; felt the warmth and the soap against her skin.

  From the lounge room came a roar. Loud enough to make her jump. For a moment it sounded like thunder, closer now, but she ran in just in time to see Alan put his fist through the wall. Right next to the cricket bat signed by the 1970–71 Australian men’s team, the year Bill Lawry had been sacked mid-season. It was an anniversary gift from her. The plaster had crumbled easily, and it dusted down across the couch.

  She yelled his name. Alan yanked his hand from the wall and nursed it. The skin was stained white as if he’d stuck it in flour.

  ‘What is your problem?’ he asked. ‘I forgot the bloody sticks. So what?’

  ‘Is your hand alright?’

  He clutched it tighter to his chest. ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem.’ She tried to deflect.

  It was useless, sometimes, trying to argue with his disease.

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said, attempting to sound breezy.

  ‘You fucking do.’ He was getting louder. ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You’ve always said do this and do that and it’s always been done, hasn’t it? Before?’

  ‘I know, but now it’s just different. Not worse, I didn’t say that. I really don’t have a problem, Alan.’

  He turned to stare out the window. In profile it was easy to think there mightn’t be anything wrong with him; he didn’t look that old.

  ‘Why do I have to live here with you?’ he asked, so quiet she almost didn’t catch it.

  ‘Where else would you go?’

  ‘I have options.’

  She felt the ground become shaky beneath her. ‘Well, you do,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even. ‘The alternative is that you go to a home … for old people.’

  She’d been hoping to wound, to shock.

  ‘I’d happily go to a home,’ he said.

  ‘What? And stay there?’

  His face was defiant. ‘Yep, I wouldn’t have any responsibility. I wouldn’t have a wife asking me questions all day, nagging me, reminding me. I’d be completely normal again.’

  She noticed a hot and sudden pressure building behind her sinuses, her eyes. She turned from him and blinked as fast as she could to keep the tears back. ‘Well, I’m not ready for that to happen.’

  Some had already suggested residential care, just for a week or so, even a night. Alan’s specialist, Doctor Ellen Nash, had said she could use the break. Pina wasn’t really the ‘carer’ type, she’d be the first to admit that. She wasn’t a martyr. But she couldn’t chance it. Her biggest worry was that once he was in there she’d like it too much, that she wouldn’t want him to come back.

  A couple of times a week, Tracey, the home-care nurse, came out to check up on Alan and spend time with him. To adjust his medication, dress any scratches or skin complaints that he had. She was the one who’d replaced all his cutlery with plastic utensils that were soft on teeth and jaws prone to biting down; who’d taught Pina how to manoeuvre Alan around without hurting herself, and how to perform a bed bath. Tracey had brought in a commode chair for the toilet and a plastic stool for the shower; she gave advice on nutrition and the like.

  Tracey was due tomorrow to give her a few hours to herself. Respite. That’s what they called it, although to Pina the word was too similar to despite, as if her rest was always at Alan’s expense. It was hard to know what to do during those few hours anyway.

  Often she’d find herself at her former workplace, the nursery. Her friend Lil Bellamy had bought the old bakery building over a decade ago and turned it into Toongabbie Nursery and Plants. Toongabbie was a word from Lil’s ex-husband’s people that meant ‘a place near water’; from the back fence you could see the edge of the inlet as it curved around towards the ocean. She’d given Pina a four-day position once the business was making enough profit to afford another wage. She and Lil had worked side by side for almost twelve y
ears. It was difficult not to take something on as your own after that long; it was hard to walk away from it.

  ‘But you’re always here,’ Lil had joked when she’d told her that a few months before. ‘You’ve hardly walked away from anything.’

  In fact Pina felt she was on the other side of a divide now, that’s what a lot of people didn’t realise. There was a before in her life and there was an after.

  Alan was still clutching his hand to his chest like a wounded bird and whimpering, but Pina couldn’t see any blood or scratches.

  ‘Wait here,’ she told him.

  Back in the kitchen, she pulled an icepack from the freezer. Then she tugged a tea towel from where it hung across the handle of the oven and dipped a corner into the warm washing-up water. She carefully wiped the plaster dust from his hand. His knuckles were red and already swelling.

  ‘This is going to bruise, you know,’ she said.

  ‘You shouldn’t make me do it, then.’

  She gripped her hand tightly on his wrist in anger, had to breathe deeply until it relaxed. ‘I didn’t make you do anything.’

  ‘You know you did.’

  It’s not true, she told herself. But the words seemed hollow.

  She wrapped an icepack around his hand, then pinned the tea towel to hold it in place. She went out to the shed to collect what she’d need to fix the hole.

  By the time she’d finished the repairs, the pale, flaky plaster was streaked across the backs of her arms and itched the skin beneath it.

  ‘Don’t touch this,’ she told him when he drifted back into the lounge room. She’d dragged the couch further into the centre of the room so that when he sat down again his hair wouldn’t touch the drying plaster. ‘I mean it, Alan. Don’t touch this at all.’

  But he’d already forgotten that it was his fist that had made the hole, just like he’d forget his threats of wanting to move into a nursing home. That was a trick she had learnt: if she waited long enough, everything would eventually evaporate.

  3

  BY THE TIME Arianna Brandt and her colleague Tim were close to Boney Point, it was late enough in the morning that swarms of grass flies were hovering around the car and turning the air thick and unbreathable. Swirling clouds of them caught the winter light on their glassy wings. Arianna knew this was an indication of the unseasonably warm weather, which had drawn the hibernating insects out early. Climate change. It never ceased to infuriate her when she heard remarks like, Hooray, beach weather all year round or I hate the cold anyway. Most people didn’t understand the implications of significant changes in the climate or the way they would eventually affect us all; didn’t realise that humans were simply one inconsequential part of a larger ecosystem.