Nest (18 page)

Only yesterday morning she had seen a butcherbird – horror enough – with something in its claws. Focusing her binoculars on the scene, she had found it was a yellow robin, flopped quite still and dead. She had chased the damned butcher away, but it was all too late. It was the way of things, and she should not interfere or sook, but she had been too upset to draw, cleaning out the laundry instead. All day she had tried not to think on it, pushing the image out of her mind. Red spilling over yellow.

She had given the robins a false sense of security, thinking that they were safe in this clearing. But with the trees dropping leaves and branches to survive the dry spell, the butcherbirds snuck in to spy little birds from the high branches, swooping to strike.

A
cool change around midnight brought nothing but wind. She had fallen asleep amid a rain of sticks and gumnuts on the roof and the bending of trees, and awoke from turbulent dreams.

It was blown drier than ever, and the deck, lawn and drive were covered in mess. Still, the drop in temperature was a relief. She gathered up bits of branch from the lawn, some as thick as her arm. There would be less opportunity to burn them now. She had already filled her kindling basket, and the fireplace. Now she was filling the wheelbarrow, to push up to the rubbish pile. She set aside those sticks too thick to break under her boot to chainsaw later.

The birds warbled and sang, happier for the cool. A black cockatoo called from somewhere down in the gully. Everything was brown and crunchy, like down south in late summer. For the first time since she had moved back, fire was a worry. Someone had dropped a note in her mailbox – one of the neighbours wanting to discuss a fire plan. It was probably a good idea, but she was hanging on to the hope of it raining first.

The ants had come into the bathroom, drinking from the puddles of water left by her feet and climbing her toothbrush in its tall glass for whatever nutrients they found there. And she had almost trodden on a red-bellied black snake on the cool step of the studio.

She put on her boots to water the vegetables, which were limp and sulky. Even the herbs were burned off.

‘Oh.’ She had heard the crash in the night, of something coming down. There had been a brief silence afterwards, before the owls and bats and crickets started up again. Whether the silence had been surprise or a mark of respect, she wasn’t sure. It was a brush box. Or half of one, at least. Grown top-heavy and then snapped off, leaving a splintery stump. The driveway was blocked. It was a problem; she had an appointment with the shrink in an hour.

She re-dressed: jeans and an old shirt. The shed, where she kept the saw and other tools, was cool. Her hands were clumsy pulling the cord; she had to relax her arm or the cord would jam and jar, wrenching her shoulder. The machine started without much protest and smoked until she shut off the choke.

It was the thin end of the tree, more bulk than weight. She trimmed each springy limb from the trunk before slicing it into lengths. It hurt a little, to cut a tree so fresh, although she had not brought it down herself. The leaves were still bright green, its heart sap-filled and rebellious, as if it did not yet know it was dead.

She took pleasure in the work, breaking down the tree, carving it up and hauling away the parts, the way she imagined a skilled hunter might cut up an animal out of need in the snow. She liked to think she now wielded the blade in a way her father
would have been proud of, shadowing what she remembered of his own technique.

Craig had never really wanted her to be his equal in chainsawing. Or his equal in anything for that matter. It had amused him to let her play with his toys, under his guiding hand, to try the things he did, as long as she didn’t surpass him. It had taken her a long time to see that. Those belief systems were so deeply ingrained in men, and women too, that they were replicated, consciously and unconsciously, all the way down the line.

When she had won a grant to work in the States and had the opportunity to walk the Sierras, she had just thought him jealous. He had always wanted to trace John Muir’s footsteps but hadn’t been able to take the time off work to come with her. It had been more than that, though; some kind of fear of her walking independently of him.

‘What’s the workshop, anyway?’ he had asked.

‘It’s a retreat, with Kym Daniels, the wildlife artist,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think I’d get in.’ In those days she had still been trying to keep her art going on weekends and holidays, even harbouring ideas about working towards another exhibition. She had laboured over the application for weeks without telling him and sent her portfolio from work, as if it were a dream she had no right to have.

‘What’s so good about him?’

‘
She
is the best in the field. I’ll be working with ten other artists from all over the world. What we produce will be exhibited, and perhaps published in an artist’s book. Part of it is about describing our practice, which I suck at.’

‘But you’ll have to take time off work,’ he said. ‘And we had the Bungonia trip planned.’

‘Only a few days.’ Teaching in a private school, she had an extra non-teaching week every term break, which had been burning him up for years. ‘We can still do the trip, if we leave two days later than we planned.’

He had smiled and nodded, but she had felt him turn dark underneath.

The workshop, and the trip as a whole, had changed her life. The feedback process had been fierce – she spent more than one night in tears – but she produced some of her best work. She had been so focused on working with Kym at first that she had underestimated the value of working with the other students. A mature group of peers with such a similar focus, similar passions. Four years of art school had not even come close to that week.

Some of them had been postgraduate students from the school, and they organised a field trip. They had walked and taken photographs and sketched. She had seen her first wolf and lain beside its tracks in the snow. Somehow the new landscape had kicked off something in her. She was an artist. If not by profession, by way of life. By nature. On the flight home, several wines into the long dark haul over the Pacific, she had been determined never to let go of that feeling. To find a way to keep working, somehow.

Craig had not been at the airport to meet her. She arrived home, after a fifty-dollar taxi ride, to an empty apartment and a Post-it note on the fridge. He was walking the Bungonias – on schedule and without her.

Jen hadn’t unpacked her bags, leaving them in the narrow hallway, as if she might leave again, still riding the great wave of inspiration. She had ordered takeaway and eaten it alone on the balcony with the bottle of Californian chenin blanc she had
brought back to share with Craig. Made plans. For the first time, she had felt life to be full of possibilities.

Jen propped the end of the splintered trunk up off the cement with her boot to make the last cut. She misjudged it a little, slicing right through the timber and bringing the blade down on her boot. The log rolled down the drive. She turned off the saw. Her boot was steel-capped, stopping the blade, but there was an unsightly notch in the leather over the toe.

By the time Craig returned, she had washed her clothes, put all her gear away, and cooked his favourite – veal scaloppine – for a welcome-home dinner.

She had been a stupid woman. Weak. Still wanting to believe the best in him, that he would change. But people didn’t really change and he never saw the need. Even as she watched Craig slice up the veal and eat it a little too fast, between stories about his walk, she knew she had made a mistake. He did not ask about her trip. She had told him anyway, shown him all of her pictures. But as she turned the album’s pages, she felt all the magic slipping away.

The sun had lifted itself above the tree line, lighting up the leaves. She dragged brush box limbs off to one side of the driveway and threw the lengths of wood, with an exaggerated back swing, into a rough pile on the other. She would have to ferry it down to the shed later.

Koel birds were calling all around – drowning out any other song. There seemed to be more of them than ever, and knowing what the birds were really up to, their rising notes had her feeling anxious.

She dusted off her jeans and jogged down the driveway, put the saw in the carport and ran into the house, already peeling off clothes.

T
he quail were at it again. Flecked brown, low to the ground. Chirping. A covey of at least twelve scuttling off into the undergrowth with a clumsy waddle, as if they couldn’t fly. Only when she was a few feet away would they launch into the air and then plunge into cover again, watching her out of the corner of their red eyes.

They turned up in drier years, and not always then. She hadn’t seen the pattern to it yet. Despite the dry, they looked out of place, their subtle browns showing that her world was still relatively green. It was easier to imagine them in dusty fields and dun-coloured grasses – open spaces. But the books said they also inhabited rainforest edges.

‘Mmm, lunch,’ her father would have said. Just to stir her up. And she would have resisted the urge to run after the birds to try to catch one. She’d had a child’s affinity with all things small in those days.

‘I don’t eat quail,’ she had told the birds, more than once. She did not eat birds or animals of any description. They saw
her as a predator nonetheless. It was sad, their lack of trust in the human race – but understandable.

The Bureau were at it again: ‘chance of a shower’. More than a dozen such forecasts within the last seventy-two days that had amounted to almost nothing. ‘Bollocks.’ Lil didn’t believe it either, ringing early to cancel their current regeneration project. ‘Even the wetlands aren’t wet,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to wait until it rains. And that could be some time.’

Jen had been a little relieved; she needed an extra day in the studio. But she would try to finish early to spend some time with her own trees instead, fertilising, remulching and watering the younger citrus in the orchard.

It hung over the town like a rainless cloud. The thing that no one was saying but everyone was thinking: it’s been too long; she’s gone and her body is buried somewhere. At the co-op, the post office, the servo, they had stopped talking about it. Waiting for whatever came next. Locking their doors and watching their children. Wanting answers – but beginning to realise they might never get them.

Parents would share a look, over dinner, during the news: their private thanks that it was not their child who had been taken. Remembering Caitlin’s parents, living with it all, walking among them. Pretending to keep on living.

Gum blossom covered the path in a sweet carpet. Great streamers of bark lay about the flooded gums. A robin worked to flip one over to find what was hidden beneath.

After pumping up this morning, the underground tank was nearly empty. It was ridiculous to think that she might have to
buy water in the subtropics. Her next windfall was going on an additional tank.

The only plant thriving was the sage, imagining it had been returned to the Mediterranean, with the lack of rain and higher than usual temperatures. If there was an upside, it was that the weeds weren’t growing either.

Jen gathered a handful of salad leaves from the vegetable patch, already wilted despite a heavy watering last night and early this morning. Only the rocket was going to make it, the rest fried off before reaching maturity. She had planted the crop a little late, but had not anticipated the sudden heat and sustained lack of rain. The tomatoes were happy, though, ripening as she watched. That was a positive; mostly they mildewed on the vine.

‘H
ow dry is it?’ Henry no longer knocked, figuring the car in the driveway and his stamping down the steps announcement enough.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It will rain tomorrow.’

‘Sunday, they reckon. Chance of showers.’

Jen grinned. ‘I counted sixty iris out this morning; it will rain tonight.’

‘Whoa,’ he said, seeing the easel set up on the deck, cradling a small, home-stretched canvas.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Today we’re going to paint.’

‘You mean I’m going to paint.’

‘Exactly.’

He pushed up his shirtsleeves, a little ragged on the edges and spotted with stains in the way of boys’ clothes.

‘I don’t want you drawing first, or worrying too much about shape or definition. Just prepare your pallette and focus on the colours.’

He forced some white out of the tube. ‘How long since you used these?’

‘A while,’ she said. ‘You can help me use them up.’ Modern organic oils were too bright for realist landscapes. Even around here. She had spent all her Henry money on four new pots from a fellow who was making paint in the old style using the mineral pigments of the masters.

‘Why?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Why leave it so long?’

‘I wanted to focus on the drawing,’ she said. ‘And I lived in an apartment, for a time, which didn’t help.’