The Essential Bird Read online

  For Gerardo

  Ruby-throated humming bird sips nectar

  Black-backed magpie tells tale

  Papaver Somniferum, Carrillo Mean

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Epigraph

  Made Glorious Summer

  Shooting the Fox

  Cave Amantem

  A Taste of Earth

  Woodpecker Point

  A Telephone Call for Genevieve Snow

  Major Butler’s Kidneys

  The Golden Moment

  Goczka

  Oklahoma

  The Girl in the Freud Museum

  Buff Orpington and the Disasters of Middle Life

  The Man in the Red Car

  The Right Stuff

  Automatic Teller

  Kay Petman’s Coloured Pencils

  The Hair and the Teeth

  Pomona Avenue

  Higher Animals

  Buttercup and Wendy

  The Enlargement of Bethany

  One Last Picture of Ruby-Rose

  Why Breezy McCarthy Drank the Cider

  The Horse Might Talk

  Now Ida Haunts the Car Park

  Ties of Blood

  Affair at the Ritz

  The Picture of Doreen Gray

  Kawasaki 500

  Special Connection

  Maytime Fair

  Reptile Girl

  The Isolation of the Deciding Factor

  The Sea is Going to France

  The Golden Earring of Hepzibah-May Mull

  What World is This?

  The Woodpecker Toy Fact

  The Common Rat A Story in Seven Parts

  The Common Rat

  The Cricketers’ Arms

  Flick

  Red Letters

  P.D. Hepworth, Architect

  Henry Lawson’s Chromosome

  Soldier of the Round Valleys

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books By Carmel Bird

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Made Glorious Summer

  A mutant elephant, the trunk of the Moreton Bay fig tree has constructed a supernatural forest of pleats, folds, bosses, crannies, caves, seats, crocodile jaws and crusty rhinoceros flanks. The branches elbow out, stretch, stretch, seeking sunlight, fashioning the broad umbrella of large thick waxy leaves. So wide. So high. A biblical statement drawn from pen and brush of Albrecht Dürer and Arthur Rackham. Chupa Chups of red-green spotty fruit decorate with Christmas-tree festivity the spring chartreuse of the extremities.

  The bats come here at night.

  And who can imagine how many insects, spiders, mice, snails, lizards, grubs may shelter, burrow, nestle, feed and multiply within the crevices of the fig tree’s ghostly fingers? This is a hiding place for children who seek the door to some bright other reality, where things are both more beautiful and more dangerous than the things of everyday.

  In summer, when the sunlight bounces and shimmers off the rattling leaves, a flock of rainbow lorikeets—poison-green wings, curved crimson beaks and heads of royal blue—comes to spend the afternoons feasting, flitting, flashing in and out, screeching and chattering. The sounds of these birds have the power to enter the human brain, to disrupt and to arrest all thinking. When suddenly they fall silent, there is a moment of world-emptiness, of significance and of wisdom.

  The fig tree is a hundred years old.

  It stands in the school playground and, upstairs, in the building alongside there is a classroom that almost rests within the branches. You can look from the classroom window down into the pitter-patter patterns of the leaves. The lorikeets zip and zap hither and thither, distractions at the corner of the eye. And, sometimes, it is good to abandon the study of poems on paper pages, to gather at the window and to watch the birds.

  Let your gaze wander from the excitement of the feasting lorikeets, and move through the leathery leaf umbrella, towards the facade of the house across the street. Two-storeys high, it is a ‘townhouse’, a handsome, new, clean, smooth and blocky construction of pale expensive yellow stone. Miniature box trees form a tiny hedge of lollipops at the foot of the high stone fence. The security intercom is set into the pillar on the right; the brass mailbox and brass porthole for a newspaper are let into the pillar on the left. The tall security gate is made from silvery bars. Through the bars you can see the soft terracotta tiles of the path, the pocket handkerchief of lawn on either side, Tuscan tubs of cumquat trees. The blinds, white, are drawn against the sun. The fortress door is shut against the world. No cat, no dog, no speck of dust disturbs the quiet harmony. No sound but the faint rustle of the leaves on the trees growing in the street.

  Sometimes in the early morning when the students are coming to the school, they pass a woman with a broom. She is sweeping the leaves that have drifted from the street onto the paving around the cumquat trees. She smiles and greets the girls who wear traditional and time-warp dark uniforms, clothing that could suggest this street is somewhere in another hemisphere, the girls creeping like snails unwillingly to school. The leaves the woman is sweeping up have fallen down from English trees, and the sight of the girls who trickle past possibly reminds the woman of her own children, now grown-up.

  In the classroom which perches in the giant fig tree, the senior students are reading Richard the Third.

  Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous.

  What, so he murdered his own brother and his nephews as well as everybody else?

  He’s a total psychopath.

  But if they all knew it was him, why couldn’t somebody stop him?

  So was he really a hunchback in real life?

  The woman has taken the newspaper from the brass porthole, has removed its blue plastic condom, and is now preparing breakfast for herself and her husband—orange juice, toast, marmalade, coffee. Now they read the paper in the sunny alcove that overlooks the pool. They discuss the stock market, the property market, the art market, the antique market and politics. In a tall glass vase, roses, sweet splodges of butter and cream, dark-green glossy leaves, small wild imperceptible transparent thorns.

  Oh, Harry—Richard and Elizabeth have asked us to go over there for dinner tonight.

  Oh. What do they want now?

  You’re so cynical. Why should they want anything?

  Why would they invite us, Margaret? If they don’t want something?

  I love to see the babies, you know that.

  Brats. Spoilt brats. How many nannies’ve they got?

  Well, I want to see them, anyway.

  Richard’s got you round his little finger. Well, OK. But if he would go out and get a decent job, he wouldn’t have to keep sponging off us.

  He said he’s had a really good offer, a partnership. And he wants to discuss it. That’s all.

  Partnership in what, a gaming cartel?

  Why can’t you be more patient and understanding?

  Why can’t you see through him? And her for that matter.

  He’s had so much bad luck.

  Yeah.

  A woman in a pale-blue uniform arrives to clean and polish and tidy up the house. Such brooms and dusters and gels, liquids, perfumes, insecticides and detergents. The bed will be stripped and made up. Washing and ironing will be done. Soiled clothes will be taken to the cleaners; fresh clothes will be collected, hung in closets. Margaret and Harry dress for golf, and in the silver Rover they drive out to the club. Australian sunlight filters through the leaves of gum trees on the course. Seagulls squawk, squabble. Small craft are bobbing on the lake; a gentle summer breeze ruffles the surface of the water.

  Oh ill-dispersing wind of misery!

  Oh my accursed womb, the bed of death
,

  A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world,

  Whose unavoided eye is murderous!

  Who can give us a definition of the word ‘cockatrice’?

  Some smooth young faces stare down at the book. Some clear bright eyes look at the teacher, quizzical, some gaze out the window at the lorikeets in the fig tree. Some long strong fingers flick through dictionaries. Pages rustle and the definition rushes forth from perfect lips, the gleaming teeth now free from the wires of teenage bands. Beauty contemplates the concept of the cockatrice.

  It says here it’s a serpent fabled to kill with a glance.

  It’s sometimes confused with the crocodile.

  Yes, this is one of the ugly descriptions of Richard.

  What are some of the others?

  Bunch-backed toad.

  Bottled spider.

  Yes.

  A late lunch with the Windsors in the club dining room. They are old friends who go back forty years. Smoked salmon and avocado salad. A very nice South Australian white. Strawberries and sorbet. Valerie Windsor has had some not-so-subtle surgery on the bags under her eyes, has lost a lot of weight and is looking fabulous. You would never guess that she had had a breast removed. Reg is as fat and red and rude and crude as ever, but he makes the other couple laugh.

  Margaret, you’re still my pin-up girl, you know.

  I wish I could believe that.

  Every word is true. I swear ---- on my mother’s grave.

  That was a chilly little thing to say. They quickly order the coffee and liqueurs, and Harry cheers them up with jokes about the antique carpet market. Post nine-eleven carpet jokes.

  Afterwards the roads are choked with traffic, and Margaret and Harry are very pleased to have a shower and a rest in the hushed, clean, shining, silvery white of their upstairs tower luxury bedroom suite. The woman in the blue uniform has disappeared, and all the vases are filled now with fresh flowers. As they doze, the girls from the school drift by the house, chattering, going home to where they will eat packets of crisps and lie on the couch to watch The Bold and the Beautiful. Some heads are pleasantly swimming with rich words culled from the terrible story of Richard the Third and the family and friends he slaughtered. For the girls must learn some passages by heart to present as recitation.

  I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower.

  Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes

  Whom envy hath immur’d within your walls.

  The tyrranous and bloody act is done.

  ’girdling one another

  Within their innocent alabaster arms:

  Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

  Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other.

  Ah, my tender babes,

  My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets,

  If yet your gentle souls fly in the air

  And be not fix’d in doom perpetual,

  Hover about me with your airy wings,

  And hear your mother’s lamentation.

  When the light has faded, and the street is still and silent, the cosy windows of the houses glow with the comfort of electric light. The bats come flapping in flocks to the fig tree to feast on the Chupa Chups. There is also an owl. Mice. A balanced world. Perhaps a cockatrice or two. Back at the golf course a flock of ghostly grey galahs, scarcely visible against the whitening sky, flash and blaze into a swathe of violent pink as they wheel round towards the dying sun. Margaret has a deep and aromatic bath, she is embraced by oils of rosemary and lavender. She dresses in silk underwear and an immaculate grey dress with pearls. Her fingers are elegantly encrusted with valuable rings. Manolo Blahnik sandals, pink as a galah. Harry in cool black sweater and grey slacks. A leather jacket from Florence, shoes likewise. The burglar alarm is on, state of the art. Margaret and Harry are in the car.

  The weary sun hath made a golden set.

  Two million is nothing to them, fuckin’ nothing, Liz.

  I’m frightened, Ricky.

  It’s easy. Nothing’s going to happen. They’ll come across.

  Your Dad said last time was the last time.

  Mum can’t refuse me anything.

  Two million’s a hell of a lot.

  I told you. To them it’s play money. Nothing but play money.

  But what if they won’t do it?

  Like I said, they will.

  No, but you know, what if…

  Then they pay the fuckin’ price. I think they know that.

  They Do Not. As if they’d think you’d do what you’d do.

  The stakes are high. This is life and death. And they know that.

  Ricky, I don’t think they do.

  They can do it my way, or they can do it their way. Either way I’ll get the money. You see?

  Yes. I see.

  And all my brothers and sisters will be quite pleased to inherit.

  Yes, yes, I do see.

  Margaret and Harry have kissed the babies goodnight. The lights are low. The dinner is bright but tense. Margaret’s favourite, oysters Kilpatrick. Duck with orange. The latest thing in green salad. Turkish delight. Wines from New Zealand. Margaret and Harry love good wine. A terrible argument. There will be no money forthcoming for Richard’s new and mysterious business venture. Harry offers to employ him instead. Richard removes his signet ring and puts it on the table. The gesture is a sign to Elizabeth to bring in the next bottle of wine. This wine contains a measure of Rohypnol. Elizabeth stands by the kitchen sink for a long, long time. She cannot do it, cannot serve this wine. She imagines herself bringing instead an untreated bottle, but realises that unless she fulfils her part, her fate will be the same as that of her husband’s parents. So she carries in the bottle, her fingers white as she grips it tightly, her eyes filled with a kind of frozen terror. Obedient.

  Art thou my son?

  They all sit on the couches in the study, Margaret and Harry sipping poisoned wine until they drowse and slump and sink into the scarlet velvet cushions.

  A grievous burden was thy birth to me;

  Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;

  Thy school days frightful, desperate, wild and furious;

  Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;

  Thy age confirm’d, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody.

  The owl in the fig tree swoops down on a mouse. Silently.

  Elizabeth has left the room.

  Richard strangles first his mother then his father.

  The lights turn blue. It is now dead midnight.

  Elizabeth must stay in the study with the bodies on the scarlet sofa while Richard goes up to the all-night market to rent a trailer. Strangely enough, as if to pass the time, Elizabeth removes from the bodies all their jewellery and she puts it in a plastic bag. As if in a trance she walks out into the cool midnight street and drops the bag into one of the big black council rubbish bins. Tomorrow these will be emptied and the rings and watches will go off to the dump. There is something consoling for her in this action. It is a kind of dissociation from the horror of the murder. Murder.

  Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d

  Came to my tent.

  They wrapped the bodies in an old pink quilt, settled them into the trailer, switched on the burglar alarm, left the babies sleeping, locked up and drove away. Away into the cold hills, where they worked together desperately, wearing gardening gloves, to dig a hole and bury the parents, the one on top of the other. Possums skitter-scattered. Ferns are soft, but blackberries have vicious prickly thorns. Elizabeth moved and worked now always in a trance, her eyes glazed and fixed in a kind of shock. She could not help imagining the two hearts, still and silent, inside the two breasts, still also the two pairs of hands that had loved each other, loved their son. In the cold soft earth beside a row of youngish Christmas trees, the bodies lay, heaped with soil and bracken, crowned with a whole bush of blackberry. They drove home in nervous silence, down to the city from the hills, and Richard took the Rover to the golf cour
se, followed by Elizabeth in the four-wheel drive. They left the Rover underneath a tree in a suburban street, and went home.

  Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers,

  A pair of bleeding hearts.

  Tomorrow in the battle think on me.

  And on the next day, the students walking past the house did not spare a thought for the woman with the broom who was not there to greet them. The newspaper lay—tight-rolled stock market, antique market, property-art-politics-sport-crime—in its porthole until the arrival of the woman in her pale-blue uniform. She noted the oddity of this, and then became very puzzled by the bed where no-one had slept the night before. She saw that the car was not parked in the garage.

  The police, the family, the media, the public—all are bewildered and alarmed by the disappearance of the couple. Can it be a double suicide? An abduction?

  Time passes.

  The lorikeets have moved on and the afternoons are quieter now, and the rotting spotty Chupa Chups plop softly to the ground.

  The car is found.

  And bodies under blackberries cannot stay hidden for very long, so they are soon discovered. It is horrible. The jewellery is missing. At the funeral Richard delivers a loyal speech to the glamorous black felt hats and lace mantillas and strings of rosary beads. Police and media flank the family group.

  Roses, blobs of butter and cream, adorn the sorry coffins.

  The next day Richard and Elizabeth are arrested for the murders of Margaret and Harry, and the engines and processes of the law move into action. Trial, convictions, sentences. Closure? The summer is over now.

  A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

  So he wanted the crown, the throne, the land, the jewels, the money.