Rain Birds Read online

  Tracey turned to gaze out at the bush beyond her hatchback parked in front of the house. Pina followed her line of sight: the bush on the other side of the road rippled and hissed as though there were thousands of tiny unseen creatures moving beneath its leaves.

  ‘I know he has his down days,’ Tracey said. ‘We all do. But things will get better.’

  Pina heard a loud screech to their left and jumped. A black cockatoo flew overhead and disappeared behind the roof of the house.

  ‘Maybe that bird’s a sign,’ Tracey said as she walked down the verandah steps. ‘My grandmother always used to tell us that black birds were omens.’

  A sign of what? Pina didn’t want to know.

  She didn’t go back into the house; Tracey had told her that Alan was resting in the bedroom, and she was reluctant to disturb him. Maybe it was really a reluctance to disturb herself. Instead, she walked over to the shed beside the fence that ran along the left-hand side of the house and opened its stiff tin door. There were piles of things inside; that’s why the ride-on mower had ended up being stored under a tarp on the grass beside it. Alan had spent the last twenty years or so promising to tidy up that shed. Before.

  She dug around in a rusty toolbox until she found a couple of padlocks still in their plastic wrapping and two lengths of chain. Walking back around the front, she tugged the chain tight around the gate and snapped the padlock into place. Then she did the same around the gate across the driveway. As she slipped the keys into her pocket, she tried to push away the feeling of a heavy tomb closing or a drawbridge rising up.

  She noticed as she carted the mulch down from the ute that Tracey’s messenger birds, the black cockatoos, were still in the casuarina grove. As she worked, the cockatoos chattered and flapped their wings without taking off.

  She set about laying down newspaper on the soil beneath the hakea and the silver wattle. She’d already run the hose across everything so the earth was wet. Thanks for nothing, she thought, watching the cockatoos bounce up and down in the casuarina branches. For birds that were supposed to bring rain, they’d delivered nothing all year.

  When she’d laid all the newspaper down, she sat back and leant against one of the bird feeders. They were ugly constructions; deformed and rough enough to give splinters. A large post driven into the ground with a flat platform on top for the seed to sit. But they were also symbolic: they’d been made in the last few weeks before Alan lost the ability to knock things together, to be spontaneous, to read a measuring tape. She couldn’t dismantle them, even if they were ugly.

  When all the newspaper was covered with mulch, she went back inside, picked up the laundry that Tracey had folded and walked to the bedroom. Alan was no longer in there. She tugged open the window; it was always so musty in there. There were already some of Alan’s clean clothes stacked on the armchair in the corner. She hadn’t got around to putting them away after the last wash. Or perhaps the wash before that. The clothes had been on that chair a long time now. Another thing to feel bad about.

  She could hear noises from inside the bathroom.

  ‘Errrgh, errrgh, errrgh.’

  Alan was talking to the mirror. She worked through the piles of clothes, pulling out drawers to put things away. When she got to the underwear, the drawer stuck a little as she tried to open it, jumping off its runner. Everything was falling apart.

  As she jiggled it back into place, her fingers brushed against the sides of a cardboard box. She pulled the drawer open again, yanking hard to overcome the loose runner. Inside was a ratty shoebox in which Alan had kept all his special keepsakes. The edges were rough and flaking, the sides held together with masking tape.

  Every now and then, over the years they’d been together, she’d sometimes stumble across the box. She’d never peeked in it before, though there were moments when she’d had to force herself not to. I will never be one of those women who pry on their partner, she’d tell herself when the temptation had been overpowering. But now, as she tried to sort his laundry, all she wanted was knowledge of him.

  She took the box out, sat on the bed and opened it up. There were cards, birthdays and anniversaries, mostly written in her hand. There was a medal from the 1994 cricket season premiership, an old cricket cap and, right down at the bottom, there was a small paper packet of photos.

  As soon as she’d taken them out, she wished she hadn’t. They were pictures of a young woman – not her. In one, the woman was in a bedroom wearing stockings pulled up to her waist and nothing else. Her blonde, curly hair, along with the shadows it cast, half obscured her face; her breasts sat pale and moonlike on her pushed-out chest. She was posing.

  Pina sensed horror take hold; she felt sick. In another photo, a close-up of the woman’s face, she was lying on her stomach on the bed, the right side of her cheek pressed into the pillow, her mouth open. They weren’t pornographic; they were intimate. That was the thing that stabbed the hardest at her heart. There was no mistaking what this woman and the person behind the camera knew of each other, the familiarity.

  But she’d never heard of a blonde, curly-haired girlfriend in Alan’s past – he’d never mentioned anything about her. The pictures were black and white, grainy. She couldn’t tell when they’d been taken. Before her? After her? How soon before? How long after? She hadn’t known of any other women in Alan’s life who meant enough to keep mementos like these. Why had he kept them? She hated the way her hands had begun to shake, how her mind was tripping back across all the years they’d shared, looking for the cracks that this woman might have slid between.

  They’d had a couple of enormous fights, the kind that seemed dangerous. Had it been then that he’d found comfort somewhere else? Don’t be silly, she told herself. Alan had always had a fascination with photography; she knew that in his younger days he’d tinkered around with it. He’d even taken some photos of her over the years. That might be all they were: artistic expression. They could mean nothing at all. But her body felt as though it had been pounded all over.

  She could hear Alan still roaring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A panic propelled her to him.

  ‘Who is this?’

  He jumped, and his hands flew up in front of him defensively.

  ‘Alan,’ she wailed. ‘Who is this girl? Tell me who she is.’

  He studied the photo, but his eyes were blank. There was no guilt in his face; no recognition.

  ‘My … sister.’

  ‘You don’t have a sister,’ she yelled.

  He cast around as though the answer had been misplaced, as though he’d set it down somewhere close by. ‘My …’

  But she whirled away, stumbling into the hallway wall as she returned to the bedroom. It was useless. She would never know what the photos meant, who the woman was. She wished she hadn’t looked because she would never be able to find out now.

  In their entire marriage, she’d only ever told Alan she hated him once, mid-fight. He’d looked as though he’d been slapped. But the truth was that it hadn’t been him she’d hated: it was the way he’d held up a mirror to her. It was her reflection she’d been speaking to. To death do us part.

  19

  ARIANNA SLEPT BADLY and was awake at dawn to hear the birdlife stir and to witness the darkness retreat. It was going to be a big day. The local birdwatching club that had assisted with the cockatoos’ release were scheduled to return today to help with data collection and bird surveys. Get the locals involved. It was a condition of the program’s approval that they create community links; at the same time, Sol Petroleum desired places their logo could be displayed along with plentiful photo opportunities to record their altruism.

  All sorts of organisations had expressed interest in being associated with the program. Birdlife Australia, other universities, birdwatching groups from all over the state. Arianna had pleaded concern for the disturbance of the birds’ territory and had managed to keep it to the East Gippsland birdwatching club, a small number of locals and the Parks
Vic rangers. But it was still more people than she’d like.

  She climbed out of her tent and walked into the clearing between their two camps. She set about finding a bowl for breakfast. They’d left their dinner plates soaking in a bucket of water overnight. Tim slouched across from his own tent, and it seemed to her as if the bush contracted. She hadn’t been able to look at him properly since the evening he’d brought a woman back to his tent.

  ‘You sick or something?’ he asked. ‘Your face is flushed.’

  Her hand flew to her cheek; her neck and across her chest burned, too. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to be nice to the birders, Goldilocks.’

  She wanted to scratch his face. ‘I’m always nice.’

  His cheeks pushed out and his chest jerked as he exaggeratedly performed the action of trying to vomit into his closed mouth. A smirk shimmered around the corner of his lips.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she took it out.

  ‘You’re popular,’ he said.

  ‘It’s my sister.’

  ‘The sister that I met?’

  ‘I only have one.’

  ‘She’s a great girl. You know, you guys look like total opposites. I’m sure no one would think badly of you if you wanted to answer it.’

  She slipped her phone back into her pocket. ‘I’ll call her later.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘we’ve been out here three months now, right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Are you missing civilisation? You know, a soft bed, bathroom, hair dryer – that’s what all you girls like, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  He put his hands on his hips and tipped his head to the side, watching her sceptically. ‘You’d have to be missing a shower, a meal off a proper plate.’

  ‘I have proper plates,’ she said, reaching down beside her into the washing-up bucket and lifting out a chipped piece of crockery. ‘And there’s no one out here I’m trying to impress.’

  He smiled. ‘You know that Parks Vic are going to be involved today. You could do well to try to make more of a connection with them. Don’t get shirty.’

  She and Tim had arranged for the data-collection volunteers to meet them at a bush picnic ground about two kilometres back down the service road towards town. It had fire pits with wrought-iron hot plates and two wooden picnic tables painted dark green.

  At about ten a.m. Earl’s truck pulled up and let loose a group of young men. She recognised the one from before, when he’d helped unload the bird acclimatisation tents. Harley, that was his name. Earl had his hand on the shoulder of another of the teenagers as they all walked over.

  ‘Some of these boys want to give this a go,’ he said. ‘There’s not much opportunity for them to get out on their country these days.’

  Tim acknowledged Harley and shook all the other boys’ hands, repeating their names back to them. Tane, Jayron, Billy. She just nodded at them. They all looked as though they were in their late teens or early twenties, wearing baggy t-shirts and baseball caps.

  Her eyes followed the scar along Harley’s neck. It ran straight down from behind his ear to below his collar. It was ropey against his otherwise smooth skin. He caught her staring and raised his eyebrows, smiled, his teeth bare. She dropped her gaze and fiddled with the clipboards laid out on the picnic table.

  The first of the birdwatchers’ cars began to arrive.

  ‘Here we go,’ Tim said to her. ‘Remember what we talked about.’

  She observed them assembling slowly, thick-kneed and heavy-footed, wearing floppy-brimmed hats. There were about ten of them. A couple of them held expensive-looking cameras with enormous lenses.

  ‘Everyone got their binos?’ Tim asked.

  The birdwatchers all lifted theirs into the air. The boys turned to Earl, who shrugged.

  Arianna handed everyone clipboards loaded with data sheets, pens and a map of the park.

  ‘What we’re looking for today,’ Tim said, ‘is where the birds are. Are they up high in the branches? Are they on the ground? We’re interested in their behaviour. How are they interacting with each other? Can you see signs of breeding? Some of our birds are collared; all of them have identification leg bands. Metal and plastic. The plastic ones are colour-coded and you should be able to read the identification code on them through your binos. It’s 210 26588. Has everyone got that written down? We need you to mark down whether you can see their leg bands, the numbers on them, and identify if you think they’re in pairs.’

  The birdwatchers stood quietly. Arianna watched Tim move about the group, answering questions and checking everyone had the right equipment.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you want to delegate this shit?’ he’d said to her before they’d arrived. ‘It’s already like running a marathon, this job. This is the kind of thing we can get someone else to do.’

  But she didn’t ever want a break from any of it. She needed to make sure that every piece of data was recorded properly and accurately if there was to be a thorough and well-monitored report at the end of it all.

  Her stomach fizzed as the birders and Earl’s boys collected their backpacks and adjusted their boots. She had her own data sheet and would be doing her own monitoring.

  Tim clapped his hands together. ‘We all know what they look like; males have a solid red panel on their tails, females have orange to red panels with black barring. Our females have some yellow patches on their heads so don’t get them confused with red-tailed black cockatoos if you see them, which is unlikely. Anyway, our cockies have coloured leg bands, like I said. You’ll find the list of identifying colour combos on the sheet in front of you.’

  ‘Can I have another pen?’ someone asked.

  ‘If you need anything, there are supplies on the table there. Earl, do your boys need binos?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Nah, they got young eyes.’

  Arianna couldn’t wait to get away from everyone – she was starting to feel claustrophobic among this number of people. She glanced towards Earl’s group to find that Harley was staring right at her.

  They all moved off into the bush. The landscape swallowed them as soon as they’d gone a hundred metres from the picnic site. She waited until all the volunteers had disappeared before making her departure, so as to avoid anyone attaching themselves to her. The bush was crunchy in the heat – dried leaves and twigs crackled beneath her boots.

  She walked about the national park for two hours, listening intently for the screech of a cockatoo above the other bird chatter. There were layers of sound in the wilderness, sometimes too thick to tease out and identify individual noises. As she went around, she heard alarm calls from all directions and various distances: birds warning each other of the human intruders. The normal sounds of birdlife were subdued; the bush was tense with foreign bodies.

  She caught glimpses every now and then of clothing between the foliage. Out-of-place forms appeared and disappeared at the corners of her vision. Sweat began to drip down the back of her neck and onto the collar of her shirt.

  There was movement to her left, and Harley appeared between the trees, noiselessly.

  ‘You right there?’ a voice behind her said, making her jump.

  She turned to find Earl heading towards her and tried to relax her shoulders down from tensing up around her ears. ‘You scared me.’

  ‘There are scarier things than me out here. You seen a puma yet?’

  Earl had a languidness to the way he moved – his limbs loose and dragging slightly.

  He continued, ‘American airmen in World War II brought them out as mascots and lost them in the bush.’

  ‘It’s a nice story,’ she said, ‘but all sightings of big cats turn out to be just really big domesticated ones gone feral.’

  Earl smiled and watched Harley creeping through the trees off to their left. ‘He’s quiet, ay. Gets that from his old man. That bloke doesn’t even leave footprints on the beach.’

  He was close enough now that she coul
d read the name embroidered above his breast pocket: Erland Howard.

  Somewhere in the distance, the roar of a machine started up.

  ‘You know what’s happening out this way?’ he asked.

  ‘Earl, you know our ties to Sol Petroleum.’

  ‘Nah, I meant with the opposition. Those demonstrations.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen the cars.’

  ‘You got a radio or something?’ he asked. ‘In case you need to call in?’

  ‘I have an emergency radio. But I’ve also camped many times before in more dangerous places than this.’

  He looked at her. ‘You never really know how dangerous a place is.’

  The whine of machinery bounced around the bush. There was the mournful scream of a bird from the treetops.

  ‘Over where they’re digging is a burial site,’ Earl said. ‘The first white settlers wiped out a lot of our people around here.’

  She didn’t know what to say. He was focused on something beyond the trees. She got the sense that his eyes could see things hers couldn’t, as if the bush was a language she hadn’t yet learnt.

  ‘Pelicans,’ he said, pointing.

  She followed his finger but could see nothing through the thick tree cover.

  ‘You know much about this area?’ he asked. ‘You know who it belongs to?’

  The question felt like a trick.

  ‘This is Gunaikurnai land. We had lots of different names in the past but now we’re Gunaikurnai. We got five clans in our nation. The people who belong to this land we’re standing on are the Krauatungalung clan. That means people of the east.’

  ‘And you’re from here?’ she asked.

  Earl’s gaze was sharp.

  ‘My family’s been here for generations. Even when my mother was taken away as a girl, she found her way back. Hitched up the highway when she was sixteen. She was one of the lucky ones.’

  ‘Sounds like things worked out, though,’ she said, ‘if she found her way back.’