Rain Birds Read online

  The knots creaked as she started to lean into them; she bounced up and down a couple of times, working them into position. The smooth length of the rope ran slickly through her fingers and through the pulley system.

  With fluid movements she inched herself into the sky. Once she was in line with the nest, she threw her lanyard around the trunk and hauled herself in close to the box. She had to strain in her harness to peer inside; the jagged wood around the open-topped box left splinters and scrapes if she wasn’t careful. Triggered by motion, the camera traps operated on a timer and were infra-red to capture night-time movements.

  She slid the memory card out and replaced it with a new one, checked the batteries, changed those that were low, before returning them to their position on the trunk and rappelling to the ground again. She needed to repeat these steps for every one of the ten trees with nests. Up and down, up and down. The whole process took around forty minutes for each tree. By the time they reached the last nest, her arms were beginning to tire; her movements becoming slower.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Tim called from the base of the trunk. ‘Are you laying an egg up there?’

  She closed her eyes and breathed in the aroma of heated eucalyptus. There in the treetops, she was forever reminded of how landlocked she was, how trapped against the curve of the earth.

  ‘Come on, clucky,’ Tim shouted. ‘Bruck, bruck, bruck.’ He was flapping his elbows.

  She suddenly felt a tightness in her chest, that the ground was very far away. One day, when she was fourteen and standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she’d pulled all the hairs from one eyebrow; her fingers working before she even knew what was happening. A compulsion like a tsunami, surging with a slow menace. When her fingers finally had nothing more to grasp, the sink was littered with tiny, dark hairs. She emerged from the bathroom, still trying to comb her fringe down over her forehead to hide her handiwork from her sister.

  ‘You’ve shaved your eyebrow off,’ Caro said, grabbing her face.

  ‘No I haven’t.’ She pushed her sister’s hands away.

  ‘You have. You can’t deny it because it’s gone.’ Caro laughed. ‘You look like a plucked chicken,’ her sister said, tucking her hands into her armpits and flapping her elbows. ‘Bruck, bruck, bruck. Like a mangy dog.’

  On the forest floor below her, Tim was still making chicken sounds, still taunting her. She took a deep breath, leant backward and rappelled down, pushing her feet against the trunk of the tree.

  It took them over an hour to walk back to camp from the furthest nest. They made it in time to see the setting sun send the clouds mauve and lavender through the leaves. Dusk still arrived quickly at the end of winter.

  They ate dinner as the footage from the cameras downloaded onto her computer. Freeze-dried meals: it was almost impossible to run a fridge in Murrungowar, and they didn’t have time to go into town for fresh produce. She sat her radio on a stump and turned it on, as the bats began to emerge and dance around the branches.

  In 2003 the New South Wales government reported that it was more likely than not that there was a colony of exotic big cats living in the bush near Sydney.

  She let the voices drift out and get tangled in the foliage.

  In another such case, the phantom cat of Gippsland in Victoria’s south-east is thought to be the result of American airmen in World War II bringing cougars across as mascots and releasing them into the bush.

  ‘Told you they were out here,’ Tim said, rummaging around nearby, searching for something. ‘Where’s my head torch?’ he asked.

  It was already quite dark.

  ‘You know you should always carry it with you,’ she told him. ‘It’s a safety measure.’

  She fiddled with the tuning band of her radio, scrolling through stations.

  ‘Can’t you put on some music?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you just want to switch your brain off for a while? Why always words, words, words?’

  ‘I find at the end of the day that I’m in need of intelligent conversation.’

  He rolled his eyes.

  Of course, if you suddenly stopped the earth from spinning, a guest on a drivetime science program was saying, most of our planet would rapidly become very inhospitable. Half of it would almost continuously face the heat of the sun, while half would face the cold of space.

  The trees split the vibrations of the radio voices into shards of bouncing sound. She was used to echoes, used to how they turned back towards you, unexpectedly.

  Where will you go? Where will you go?

  After dinner the two of them watched what had been captured on the cameras. Most of the time, the motion trigger had been tripped by the wind in the foliage; there were hours and hours of leaves shuddering and swaying.

  But, occasionally, there was a screech from off-screen, followed by the sudden appearance of a black shadow on the jagged lip of a nest. Then a glimpse of wings beating as a bird tried to get purchase on the sharp wooden edge of the box, twisting its head around to survey the world it had flown in from, a few short feathers flipped up on its head. Or, later, when the sky was darkening, two black heads above the jagged entrance of the nest box, blinking into the twilight, the stars claiming the sky behind them.

  10

  AFTER THE ANXIETY of the release a little over a month ago, her and Tim’s routine took on a monotony of sorts. They conducted nest-checks every day by hiking out to the nesting area and holding up the radio antenna at the base of each gum with a box set up in its branches. If the birds weren’t there, they would hike back to where they’d last spotted the pair, get a signal bearing, then move six hundred metres away to get another. Slowly, they’d triangulate their position, narrow in on it methodically. If the signals weren’t to be found in the immediate area, Tim would fetch the Land Cruiser and they’d drive the service roads around Murrungowar while she held the antenna out the window. The receiver didn’t pick up transmissions unless they were within a twenty-five kilometre distance of the transmitters secured to the birds.

  Sometimes she spent the day immersed in the white noise that came through her headphones. Even when the transmissions did appear, the bips of signal could be extremely faint. She’d send herself mad trying to hear those signals through the static, her ears echoing with the sounds of nothing. On good days, the flock could be found in the upper, thicker branches of the casuarina groves closest to camp, chattering happily. The cockatoos would spend hours in those trees, their beaks turning the seed pods over and over, clicking them against the ridged wood, debris left to cover the ground, the fronds of the trees hissing softly in the breeze.

  She could watch the birds endlessly. The coloured bands around their legs helped her track who was who – a red band denoted a male, a yellow band a female; then there were two other coloured bands to give each bird an individual identification – but after watching them closely for a couple of weeks, she began to feel as though she could tell who was who just on sight alone.

  The pair in nest number three were the lovebirds; they would spend hours grooming each other’s feathers or rubbing their heads together. The male crooned to his mate, whistled and chirped little messages. His black feathers glinted purples and greens in the sunlight. The male of the sixth pair – with yellow, green and red leg bands – was the most beautiful of all. His large frame was strong and sleek, and he often perched on the lip of his nest, screeching proudly into the bush. His mate (yellow, green, yellow) was left to preen herself. They were the only pair that had found themselves an empty tree hollow instead of using one of the boxes.

  Once a week, she and Tim would wait until nightfall, maybe an hour past dark, and then head out to the nesting boxes. They needed to weigh the birds regularly and so it was easiest to catch them once they’d come in to roost for the evening.

  Tree ascensions in the dark were different from in daytime, especially on nights like this one, when the moon was at its thinnest. She couldn’t see far in front of her as she climbed but could sense that thin
gs were moving around nearby. The beam from her head torch bouncing off the trunk made it difficult for her eyes to fully adjust to the dark.

  Climbing up through the branches towards the first nest, she was reminded of when she was a child, inching along their darkened hallway, holding her hands out to feel her way through the apparitions to her mother’s bedroom. A hot, raw prickle crept across the back of her neck as she ascended, and she was sweating beneath her warm night-gear.

  When she brushed the sharp edges of the nesting box, she saw something dart to her left and she shrieked.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Tim shouted from below.

  ‘Nothing, just a branch … moving.’

  He started laughing so hard that she could feel the vibrations through the rope.

  ‘You know I get a bit of a kick out of seeing you shit yourself,’ he said.

  It’s just a joke; don’t be so sensitive.

  She composed herself and reached into the nest, touched feathers. A bird squawked indignantly as she lifted it out and placed it into a weigh bag. Nest #2: Male 468g, she jotted down in her notebook.

  ‘Can we speed it up a bit?’ Tim said below her. ‘I want to get to the pub before the night’s a total write-off.’

  It was the end of the week, she realised. Normal people used alcohol to let loose, be social. She’d never understood that.

  A hair-raising yowl bounced through the trees followed by a guttural bray like a demonic donkey.

  ‘What’s that?’ Tim called up.

  ‘Koalas,’ she replied.

  ‘Or so you hope. Otherwise it’s something fucking scary.’

  The sound continued, a demented back and forth.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about the ghost of the white woman?’ Tim said, trying to wind her up. ‘Apparently she was the wife of a captain whose boat was shipwrecked on the coast here. She was the only survivor. But then she was kidnapped by local tribes. Murderous tribes, they reckon.’

  ‘Can you shut up?’ she hissed down. ‘You’ll disturb the birds.’

  She checked the bird’s leg bands (blue, purple, red); there had been reports of black cockatoos in other studies crushing the stainless steel bands with their beaks and injuring themselves. Some subspecies were even prohibited from being tagged altogether. Male #2 was hefty inside the weigh bag. He crooned softly, and the sides of the bag rippled slightly as he moved.

  As she held on tightly, the thing that had been playing on her mind returned. Caro had called again that afternoon, left another voicemail.

  This little devil has been kicking me all night. I told you I reckon it’s a girl, didn’t I? Maybe I’ll call her Patricia. For Mum.

  ‘The settlers in the area spent months searching for her,’ Tim piped up again. ‘They reckon she haunts this bush, that she appears in the tops of the trees.’

  She put Male #2 back into his nest and reached for his mate.

  Female 480g.

  It’s a girl.

  She returned the female to the nest and began her descent.

  ‘They say if you see smoke on the horizon that looks as if it’s coming from a campfire,’ Tim said as he belayed her down, ‘it’s supposed to be the white woman trying to lure people to their death.’

  The night swam around her as she was lowered. She felt the dull ache of blood rushing back into her feet when she hit the ground.

  Tim was regarding her from beneath his head torch.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ he asked, grinning.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did I spook you too much? They’re only stories.’

  She smarted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, don’t you worry,’ he said, gathering up the ropes, ‘I’ll be here to protect you if any ghosts appear.’

  A koel called from somewhere in the distance. Haunting. People unfamiliar with the bush at night assumed it would be a peaceful place but, really, it was full of unexplainable and unearthly sounds. She didn’t need protection; ghosts were something she had lived with since she was a child.

  One time when she was seven, and supposed to be in bed, she’d got up for a glass of water and seen her father follow her mother into the bathroom. From underneath the door she’d heard a rising swell of violence.

  ‘You bald bitch.’

  Arianna wasn’t supposed to be there, she wasn’t supposed to hear. A bloodied towel in the sink, rosy red.

  Not long after that event, she and her sister and mother had moved to a new house, just the three of them. A small weatherboard place that butted up against a rough, coastal forest at the end of an unfinished street. The bitumen turned to gravel just beyond where their block finished. The road didn’t lead anywhere; a few metres past their house it simply stopped.

  ‘One day, they will build more road and more houses,’ her mother had said. ‘And there’ll be lots of kids for you to play with.’

  Arianna’s bedroom was a shaky box tacked onto the side of the building. An afterthought. One night, she timed her dash between the ghosts and arrived outside her mother’s room to see her inside standing in front of the mirror, towel around her waist, breasts bare and flat. Her hair gone. Or not gone, not completely. Hacked, battered, tufted; large, gleaming bald patches shining through fuzz along the side of her head. What was left was falling soft and delicate from a narrow line at the very back of her skull. Where she couldn’t reach.

  Her mother hadn’t noticed her in the doorway; her fingers were still up around her ears, probing and feeling the edges of her scalp. You bald bitch. She watched as her mother pinched the tips of her fingers together and pulled. Again and again. Arianna had crept backward and then run through the ghosts and the darkness to her own room.

  ‘You in there?’ Tim was clicking his fingers in front of her face. ‘You coming or what?’

  He turned, and she followed his indistinct outline back towards the truck.

  11

  THAT MORNING PINA had woken to a riot outside their bedroom window. A group of wild parrots were complaining, chattering together in the dusty wattle. The arrival of spring had meant an increase in the insects and flowers that attracted birds to the garden. How was it already September?

  She tried to hear Alan’s breathing underneath the bird noise. It was light and draughty. She gently put her hand on his chest, let it move her fingers up and down. In their life before Alzheimer’s, she’d loved mornings the best. She used to like waking with the dawn, alert as soon as her eyes opened. It had been a running joke between them.

  ‘Do you even sleep?’ Alan asked often, in mock outrage.

  But it wasn’t funny anymore. The last few years had brought an insomnia she hadn’t been able to shake. Now she gently moved her body closer to his, resting her face right next to his shoulder so that her nose brushed against the fabric of his pyjama shirt.

  The day of the diagnosis, in Doctor Nash’s office, had been the first of many small betrayals, little reminders that she didn’t know everything about her husband.

  ‘Is there a family history?’ Doctor Nash had asked.

  ‘My mother,’ Alan replied. ‘We always thought that this was the way she went.’

  ‘In that case, given your family history, you would have had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the gene.’

  ‘Family history?’ she found herself saying, mystified.

  ‘Early onset is a consequence of an amyloid gene mutation,’ Doctor Nash explained. ‘It causes the overproduction of beta-amyloid, which is the toxic brain protein found in the plaques of Alzheimer’s patients.’

  Pina had stared at her husband as Doctor Nash slipped a wide X-ray sheet into the top of a light-box and switched it on. The reflection was blue-white against their faces.

  ‘This is your brain,’ Doctor Nash said, pointing to the X-ray. ‘And this is a normal brain. See here and here, the dark patches indicate amyloid build-up.’

  ‘You never told me your mother had this,’ she whi
spered to him.

  ‘There wasn’t really a name for it then,’ he said. ‘At the time we just thought she was losing it.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘It never came up.’

  ‘Well, it’s fucking come up now.’

  That morning, lying in their bed, as the parrots bickered, she studied the lines in Alan’s cheeks, the papery skin. It was something she didn’t often get the chance to do these days, get this close. She watched the tiny movements of his lips as the breath slipped in and out.

  Alan was bovine and slow in the mornings, had been even before the disease. She remembered often jumping back into bed after running to the toilet, and lying as much of herself over his body as she could manage, pressing her cold toes against his warm skin. He’d groan and wriggle while she clung to him, tight. Other days she remembered waking to a barrage of kisses on her face. The hot, slightly sour smell of his breath on her skin. The way the light spilt around the outline of him like water around a rock.

  Often now, she had to fight to quell the rising tide inside her, the torrent of this isn’t fair, why me, whymewhyme? She found herself thinking about her wedding vows, trying to remember each word exactly as it had been spoken. I didn’t sign up for this, did I? She was searching for a clause, she realised with disgust, a release, a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  A parrot flew close past the window, screeching, and Alan began to stir. She quickly moved away, clambering over the pool noodle tucked beneath the fitted sheet at the end of the bed.

  Over the last few months in particular, Alan’s night-time wanderings had become worse and worse. She had put a second, thin mattress on the floor beside the bed in case he stumbled when getting up in the middle of the night. She’d pushed pool noodles – those brightly coloured foam tubes – under the fitted, bottom sheet along the edge at his side and the end of the bed and had tucked them tightly into place. Hoped the incline would discourage him from rising. It hadn’t. A couple of times, she’d woken to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, his knees bunched up by the noodle. But most of the time he got over them and wandered, testing all the doorknobs in the house, opening everything.