Rain Birds Read online

  Tim’s brow was a deep, furrowed line.

  ‘Anything yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Nup.’

  The trees shuddered.

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad news,’ he added.

  But Arianna knew that just because things seemed ok on the surface, it didn’t mean they were – she’d learnt that as a child.

  She was reminded of a holiday they’d all taken as a family. Even her father had been there. They had stayed in a caravan park, fought over the bunk beds, eaten hot chips straight from their paper packaging. She’d felt as though the world was wide and loose around them. Freedom.

  Every afternoon they’d gone to the beach. One time, at the edge of the water, a jellyfish had washed ashore. She had spent ages considering the membranous texture of its tentacles, the veiny pattern of colours in clear flesh.

  ‘Come and do something else,’ her mother had called to her as the air had begun to cool.

  But little girls have an automatic interest in monsters. She’d wanted to figure out where it had come from, what it was about, why it was there. She’d traced its outline, prodded the slick jelly form, the feathered feeding fronds along the underside. She’d examined the tiny, silver fish tangled in its tentacles, its open and staring eye.

  Then, a shadow fell across her back, and he was there behind her.

  ‘Did you know that some jellyfish can glow in the dark?’ her father had asked, as though they always chatted like that.

  She hadn’t faced him fully.

  ‘Some can clone themselves,’ he’d continued.

  ‘No!’ she’d gasped. Despite herself.

  ‘And,’ he said, ‘they don’t even have brains.’

  ‘How do you know all this stuff?’

  She could see her mother further up the shore, stiff-backed, half standing and half sitting, watching them intently. When her father turned to observe her mother, she sank down a little into the sand. Tried to seem nonchalant.

  ‘It’s important to know things,’ he said. ‘Then no one can get the better of you.’

  Afterwards, they’d gone back to their crumbling caravan, and her mother cooked sausages and mashed potato with bread and margarine. She remembered thinking how nice it was, that this was what families were supposed to be like.

  His eyes would glaze over.

  Later, her father got that look on his face – the one that meant he was unreachable – and he’d stomped off into the night. He used to just go crazy. She and Caro had buried themselves deep in the covers of the bunks; they knew what would happen when he returned.

  It was a lesson she’d carried with her into adulthood: if you always suspected things would fall apart, you wouldn’t be blindsided when they did, you’d never let them get the better of you.

  ‘Oh no,’ Tim murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forget what I said. It is bad news.’

  The bush roared. She felt her chest constrict. I knew it.

  ‘Just tell me,’ she said.

  He glanced at her, shut the laptop lid. ‘The flock has spent fifteen per cent of its time within the nesting range.’

  She sensed the wild pushing at her back. ‘That’s not good.’

  He gave her a look. No shit.

  The birds needed to be establishing their territories within the nesting range she had chosen for them. It was the only area that had the optimal distribution of nesting and feeding habitat close by. When it came around to breeding season in January, if the birds had found themselves another nesting hollow beyond the site, they could be too far away from their food source and at a higher risk of predators. Glossy black cockatoos only produced one egg per season. Any adverse conditions could jeopardise that.

  Later, after night had fallen, Tim went into town again. The red tail-lights of the four-wheel drive bounced off into the trees until they were swallowed up, and she was left alone. She felt the space around her billow, the heavens expand, and fell asleep to the quiet sounds of small creatures moving about outside.

  She was woken first by the car engine and then the thuds of stumbling bodies through the undergrowth. It was the giggles that didn’t make sense. Her mind, still half emerging from sleep, wasn’t able to place the girlish tone. Then the realisation hit her.

  Noise travelled easily in the stillness of the bush at night – it wasn’t that she was listening. In fact, she tried not to hear the whispered cursing as two people moved unsteadily across the camp, the sweeping, silken zip of the tent flap being opened and closed. She tried not to hear the moans and animals sounds that followed. Lurking. All the trees seemed to catch the noise and throw it back towards her.

  She tried not to think of limbs being pressed against the forest floor, tried not to picture Tim’s naked torso; his rounded belly, the pale freckles on his shoulders, that she knew what his body looked like beneath his shirt.

  There was no wind to dampen what was happening; the bush was traitorously quiet. She felt discomfort course through her body. Her scalp was on fire; each pore on her head prickled with heat. She raised her fingers to her hairline, just behind her left ear. Pulled. There was a bitter taste in the back of her mouth.

  17

  AS THE LATE spring air grew drier and drier, Pina decided to head into Toongabbie for mulch. The garden was hardy – all those native plants – but she wanted to keep them green, to lock the moisture in the soil.

  ‘This is the hottest year on record, they’re saying,’ Tracey told her as she was getting ready to leave the house. ‘Out at the fire station we’ve got this graph that shows the mean temperatures across the country. It’s scary.’

  She wasn’t sure if Tracey had noticed the bed linen on the couch but, if she had, Pina was grateful that she hadn’t mentioned it.

  As she was walking into Toongabbie from the car park, she almost collided with Harley. He was pushing a trolley loaded with potting mixture with his headphones on.

  ‘You need glasses or what?’ he asked, joking, tugging his headphones down to sit around his neck.

  She flicked his arm. ‘You got a girlfriend yet, Harley?’

  He rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. ‘You’re as bad as each other. You and Aunty Lil both.’

  ‘Don’t have much luck, do you?’

  Harley spread his arms wide and flexed his biceps. ‘Too many offers to choose just one.’

  He really was a beautiful boy. It must have been about three years ago now that Lil had introduced Harley to her and told her he was going to help out around the nursery for a few hours on weekends. It was a surprise to everyone that he was still around. He’d really stepped up since Pina had left, too. A good kid.

  That scar that ran right down the side of his neck had been given to him by his mum. After that, Harley had gone to live with his grandmother. He had other family around, too: cousins, uncles, aunties. Lil knew the family, had been close with them while she’d been married. Sometimes Harley stayed with Lil when his grandmother needed a break; she was getting on in years now. Or sometimes Earl took him in, took several of the local boys in, showed them hunting, culture.

  ‘Did you know they’re cousins, my ex and Earl?’ Lil had asked her. ‘You wouldn’t believe it if I told you what he was like back when I was first married. You wouldn’t believe the change in him.’

  Lil had been in and out of that marriage before she was thirty. Pina wasn’t quite sure where her ex-husband had gone, but he wasn’t in the area anymore. A lifetime ago.

  Harley nodded past her shoulder at the road. She turned around and saw a white Land Cruiser drive slowly past the nursery, almost at a crawl. She noticed a wild-eyed young woman with her arm out the window, a silver antenna held aloft.

  ‘What the …’ Harley said.

  She glared at him sternly.

  ‘I didn’t say it,’ he protested.

  ‘Are you still going to come up on Saturday?’ she asked. She paid Harley once a month to mow the grass around the house.

  He ga
ve her a thumbs up and put his headphones back on.

  Walking around him, she went into the office where Lil was staring out the window, her arms folded.

  ‘Did you see that bloke that was just here, trying to sell some plants?’ Lil said. ‘Did you get a good look at him?’

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘He had a whole heap of ferns with him, big ones. A couple of staghorns, maidenhair, even some false bracken. But big ones, old ones. There was something up – I could feel it.’

  ‘What do you mean up?’

  ‘There was something off. The guy turned real funny when I asked where he got them from. Reckoned he’d grown them all. I said, Mate, it would take you twenty years to grow a staghorn that size. He got nasty after that. I just called Earl. Said he’s going to check their story out.’

  The thud of Harley stacking bags of potting mix outside was rhythmic and measured.

  ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ Lil asked. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Just mulch.’

  ‘You got drip soaker hoses? A few people have been having trouble with water getting underneath the mulch at the moment. Too hot.’

  ‘I’ll stick with my system for now.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got a nice mulch in. Eucalyptus leaf litter and woodchip mix.’

  ‘You worried about those ferns?’

  Lil turned away from the window. ‘I’ll just be fucking furious if they’ve stolen them from the national park. You know what? I reckon they’ve taken advantage of the situation with that oil company. Everyone’s been distracted.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

  The thud of potting-mix bags was still going.

  ‘You look tired,’ Lil said. ‘You looking after yourself?’

  She wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Before she’d left to come to Toongabbie, she’d noticed a bare spot on the mantelpiece – a large, painted conch shell they had brought across from Western Australia was missing. She had found it inside the rubbish bin, carried it back to Alan and asked what it was doing there.

  ‘I’m cleaning up,’ he said.

  ‘Have you thrown out other things?’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  She wondered what other treasures he’d already disposed of without her realising; she’d walked around the house searching the shelves and surfaces for absences until she’d seen Tracey’s hatchback arrive.

  ‘I can only take care of one person at a time.’ She tried to make it sound light-hearted.

  ‘Pina, I know I’ve mentioned this before,’ Lil said, her eyebrows raised. ‘Maybe you’ve got to think about whether it’s time to put yourself first for once.’

  She loved her friend but sometimes she just didn’t get it. It was impossible to put herself first.

  She thought back to how, about six months after his diagnosis, she’d found Alan sitting on the couch as dusk fell. She sat down next to him.

  ‘Peppina,’ he’d said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’

  A rush of panic had surged up her throat. ‘Everything’s ok,’ she said.

  ‘You look so tired already.’

  ‘You’re doing really well. We both are.’

  He’d smashed his fist against his thigh. ‘Doing well? I get lost in my own fucking yard. I wonder what I’m doing out there; I can’t find my way back inside. I can’t even leave the fucking house because I don’t know if I’ll remember how to get back from the letterbox.’

  She remembered that it had been the start of the heavy, early spring rains. Back when it actually rained. The weather bureau had issued a flash flood warning for further inland. They’d been able to hear the first rumbles of thunder in the distance; the gathering winds were winding the tops of trees around in circles.

  ‘One day I will just step over that line completely,’ he said. ‘I’ll simply forget to come back.’

  Rain started falling in diagonal sheets.

  He took her hand and held it tight. ‘I have to tell you something, and you have to listen. When the time comes and I think I’m past the point of no return, you’ll get a hug and a kiss and a goodbye. Then I’m going to leave and I won’t come back. I’ll just go and I’ll take care of it.’ He became unnaturally still.

  She felt the earth drop away beneath her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s no way to save me.’

  ‘What do you mean take care of it?’

  He started stroking her fingers.

  What do you mean? her mind was screaming.

  ‘I don’t want you to see me like that,’ he said.

  Since that conversation, she was always on high alert, searching for the signs. She had tension in her shoulders every day; felt an electric jolt every time he was a little late coming inside or spent too long in the bathroom; was constantly waiting for the signal that this was it.

  She followed Lil out to the sales desk and watched her ring up the bags of mulch on the cash register and then handed her some money. She didn’t always feel a divide between them, but what Lil didn’t realise was that things couldn’t improve. She would always be tired. Or that the time when she’d finally have a break and a chance to look after herself would be when her husband was no longer around to worry about. And that was something she couldn’t even think about yet.

  And, as it had turned out, Alan had now progressed past the point of being able to make that decision to take care of things as he’d threatened to. Just like when the front door of their house was obscured by heavy curtains, it no longer existed for him; he forgot that it had ever been a concern. The choice itself was gone.

  It was late afternoon by the time she had the ute’s tray loaded up with the bags of mulch. Lil passed her a pile of old newspapers to use as insulation between the earth in the garden beds and the mulch. A photograph on the front page of the paper on top caught her eye. She’d seen it already, that weekend just gone, when she had tried to read to Alan. A group of people standing with the bush at their backs, facing towards a cloud of dust and flashing lights.

  Not Happy, read the headline above it. Local Indigenous groups have clashed with law enforcement outside the Sol Petroleum worksite. The mining company had promised jobs for local Indigenous people that Gunaikurnai spokespeople say have not been delivered. The demonstrations have at times turned violent, forcing police to make arrests and use deterrents such as capsicum spray.

  ‘It’s a bit full-on, isn’t it,’ she said to Lil, nodding at the photo, ‘that they’re treating them like this.’

  Lil peered down. ‘That’s old news.’ She grinned. ‘Geddit?’

  ‘Hilarious.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ Lil said more seriously now, ‘even though it’s well hidden, our society is fundamentally racist.’

  ‘You reckon?’ But she knew. Wog.

  ‘Pina,’ Lil said, tapping the photograph, ‘what do you reckon?’

  She clutched the pile. She could feel the strain in her biceps as she lifted them over the steel side of the ute’s tray. There was sweat on her skin. She reached across for the tray cover and looked more closely at the top paper. At the edge of the photograph’s frame, she noticed Earl. He was almost out of focus, arms folded in front of him, staring right down the camera lens.

  18

  BY THE TIME Pina pulled back into their driveway, the air had changed. Thunder rumbled just beyond the horizon, and she could sense the electricity dancing in the air. It was as though the leaves on the trees were crackling. As she got out of the ute, she heard a wailing from inside the house. Something animal.

  Tracey’s voice was cajoling, pleading.

  Thank god it’s her and not me, she thought, and immediately hated herself.

  That emotion had been brewing in her, especially since discovering Alan had been taking things from the house and putting them in the trash. Ornaments, books, some mementos. Treasured things. She couldn’t even admit it to herself yet. Hate. It was such an ugly word.

  She walked around to the back garde
n and turned on the hose; set about dousing the plant beds with the spray.

  ‘Get away from me,’ Alan cried from inside.

  She closed her eyes and felt the weight of everything settle onto her shoulders. As a child, her nonno had picked her up from school every day. They would take the back roads out past all the houses and then walk beside the old highway, disused once the bypass was put in. Occasionally, cars would bounce past, swirling dirt into their faces.

  Once, a thrush flew in front of a ute, and the afternoon had stalled in a wet smack of bones and feathers. When they reached the bird, its eyes were roving wildly in its head, its small ribcage pounding, the tips of its wings trembling. Her nonno picked it up so gently that she’d suddenly become scared; he wasn’t usually such a gentle man. The bird’s neck hung loose and unnaturally long.

  ‘I have to kill this bird, Peppina.’

  She did not look away but stood rigid beside him.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘You know it is what must be done,’ he said. ‘God tells us we must do what is right, even when the action is abhorrent to us.’

  With a twist of his wrist, he tore off the bird’s head.

  In her garden now, wattlebirds were fleeing from the bushes, darting across the open space of the yard and into the dense vegetation beyond the back fence. Insects had lifted up from the earth, disturbed by her watering.

  She switched off the hose and went inside. Tracey was alone in the lounge room, folding laundry. She thought she saw relief flash across her face, but Tracey’s features rearranged so swiftly that she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard what kind of mood he’s in?’ Tracey said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Tracey waved her hands. ‘Don’t be silly. Although, you better watch him around the gates. I caught him trying to get out the front today.’

  She walked Tracey to the front door and shut it securely behind them.

  ‘You look terrible,’ Tracey told her as they stood on the verandah. Both of them smiled.