Nest (29 page)

Jen dropped one side of the ute’s tray, hopped up and rolled the round metal frame to the edge. It was not heavy but unwieldy. She had popped into the second-hand store looking for something she could use as a bench seat or stool in the garden, but the hanging ball had caught her eye from the car park. It had been some sort of child’s hammock, more like a cocoon – homemade. Hung beneath a big old tree, no doubt. She lowered it onto the wheelbarrow, a bit like a giant egg in a teacup, and jumped down.

She used her Stanley knife to cut away the faded, mouldy canvas, looped on with nylon rope, dropping it all in a pale green pile on the driveway. What was left, when she had finished, was a black metal frame. There was a little rust but it was perfect for her purposes.

She gripped the barrow’s edge and the frame in one hand and lifted the barrow handle with the other. It was precarious, but easier than taking all the weight of the ball. She eased forward and lurched down the path.

J
en piled bamboo cuttings high in the wheelbarrow, slipped the secateurs in one pocket and wire in the other, and set off down to the bottom of the garden. Those pardalotes had given her an idea.

It was Karen who had harvested the bamboo, Glen said, from a screen planting gone feral by their pool. It wasn’t Jen’s first choice – not being native to the area – but the canes were green and flexible, which was what she needed for the first stage. Jen followed the path, kept in use as much by the wallabies and turkeys as her own feet, as far as she could along the slope.

She sorted the bamboo into piles of short, medium and long, and set herself up next to the round frame, already hanging from her tree, just above the ground, so that she could work. At the moment, it looked more like a cage, but she meant to change that. She began with the entrance, choosing a thin, flattish cane to form a circle, and attaching it to the frame with copper wire lengths. From there, she worked back, still in
a circular fashion, weaving the canes in and out of the frame like a giant basket.

Birdsong filled the clearing, the perfect accompaniment to her work. She experimented with splitting some of the canes, starting a cut with the secateurs and pulling the bamboo apart. These lengths were more flexible, easier to weave around the tighter ends of the ball.

She sat on a stump to drink from her water bottle and rest her arms. This was just the sort of project Craig would have been bored by, which was all the more reason to enjoy it. A young goanna skittered down the tree trunk beside her, all tail and enthusiasm. He leapt the final five feet to the ground, giving himself a fright as he came face to face with the basket.

He scuttled away, loud through leaves, and ascended the rear of a tallowwood, sending bark particles flying; he had a bit to learn about stealth if he wanted to pinch anybody’s eggs.

Jen turned the basket, resting it on its front. She continued weaving the canes, having to stretch over the belly of the ball in a kind of hug. The pile of bamboo was disappearing fast, but there would be enough to complete this layer. She stretched her neck and flexed her hands. Dappled light danced over leaves. Robins and fantails fussed about nearby, as if recognising what was beginning to take shape.

She set off with her water bottle straight after breakfast. The nest was lying where she had left it, on its side among grasses. It was still cool in the shade, the sun yet to reach through the canopy. She started the day’s work gathering long slender sticks, preferably with a bit of bend left in them. When she had an armload she wandered back and began weaving them into the spaces around the bamboo.

Her hands and forearms were sore this morning, their muscles unaccustomed to nest building. She alternated gathering and weaving, all punctuated with watching birds. She had heard a new call, in the canopy, and was determined to identify it. It was parrot-like, igniting her fantasy of discovering the Coxen’s fig parrot in her forest.

Sometimes a stick would snap as she was weaving and she would fall forward with the sudden loss of tension, but she was making good progress. The smooth green of the bamboo was disappearing, dropping into the background, replaced by rough browns.

She lay back to rest, arms above her head, watching the light sifting in: magic beams in her enchanted forest. A pair of robins gripped the fibrous trunk of a tallowwood and peered down, their yellow chests aglow.

She sat up and sipped her water. On its side the basket looked a little like a bloated fish trap. All that had been caught inside were a few flies, buzzing against the canes. It was warmer now, and she slipped out of her shirt to work in her singlet. She had to go further afield for the last round of sticks, one eye on the canopy for the owner of the new voice. A rose gum offered up a handful of long slender twigs ideal for trimming around the opening, and she could begin to imagine finishing. Perhaps that explained the nervous feeling she had been carrying all morning, as if something was about to happen. As if enough hadn’t happened already.

She had already gathered a wheelbarrow load of bark, and was now hunting for vines – at last, a good use for velcro creeper. She cut them off at the base and poisoned the root while she was at it: creative gardening.

She alternated bark and vine where she could, threading and poking through any remaining gaps to build texture and colour, as much for camouflage as aesthetics. A good nest should not be visible from the ground.

The birds had grown used to her, and the monster nest, sing-songing all around and darting down to take insects she disturbed. The rope had bothered them for a while, resembling a super-long snake. She gathered it up now, and fed one end through the great steel ring at the top of the nest, knotting it off according to the instructions she had written out. She ran the other end through the pulley, and tossed it over the branch. She raised the nest, hand over hand. The nest’s shape was almost as she had imagined, drawn and planned. She looped the end of the rope around her log, as if securing a horse.

Her stomach was complaining about lunch but all she grabbed from the house was the camera. She forced herself to walk on the way back, lest she trip and damage the gear. Her first decent camera had gone missing in the Nymboida National Park when she had become distracted, following a bowerbird to its nest. When she returned to her lunch spot, the camera and case were gone. It had glinted blue-black in the sun and she had always suspected the bird, and his less showy mate, of tricking her for the prize. Ten years later she had learned little, dropping a thousand-dollar telephoto lens from a tree when she saw her first lyrebird.

Today she had both feet on the ground and her wits about her. She photographed the nest from all angles. Warm and round, a little rough, and already almost at home in its environment.

She took the camera back up to the house and sat it next to her laptop for later, put an apple in her pocket, and carried down an old feather doona and pillow to line the nest with for now,
until she came up with something more durable. She pushed the bedding through the hole and climbed after it, nestling in.

She raised herself with the rope. It was just like the treeboat – only vertical and roomy. No synthetics in sight. The nest swung, and she swung free inside. Weightless as a bird.

The view was, as she had hoped, perfect. A glimpse through leaves out to the coast.

She snuggled deeper into her feathers, hummed a tune, all the while listening to the song around her, the wind in the leaves, birds gossiping about the installation of a giant nest in their woods. That’s what it was, she supposed: an installation. A hide.

T
he phone was ringing. She had forgotten to unplug it while she was sketching a better design for her knots and pulleys. Today something made her put down her pencil and answer it.

‘Um, it’s Henry.’

‘Hi, Henry.’ His mother said something in the background and the radio was on at their place, making it difficult for Jen to focus on his voice.

‘You need to listen to the news today.’

‘I do?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They … they’ve identified those bones. It’s Michael.’

She let out a breath.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. It was very thoughtful of you to tell me.’

‘Okay. Well, I’d better go.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘And Henry …’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you.’

She put the phone down. The sun was out, and scrubwrens chirruped in the grevilleas by the side of the house. A gumnut plonked on the roof and rattled down the slope and off the edge. Into the abyss.

She stood, filled the kettle, and fired up the gas. Waited for it to boil. She rinsed out a mug, a gift from her mother with a botanical print. Quite pretty, really. She took her time drying it, watching a cuckoo dove trying to land on the edge of the birdbath.

The kettle boiled. She turned off the gas, poured water over the infuser. Inhaled the gingery steam.

It was almost nine. Jen picked up the remote, pointed it at the stereo. The ABC news theme music was already playing. She sat on the arm of the lounge, holding her tea against her chest. It was the lead story. DNA testing had identified the remains found with those of Caitlin Jones as twelve-year-old Michael Wade, missing since June 1977. Police forensics had been able to match samples to those taken from a Wade family member.

There was an interview with Michael’s father, an old man now. He said he had been relieved to finally get the call, but not surprised. The family had been cooperating with the police for several weeks.

The next story was more on the blame game about the floods, as if any of it could have been predicted. Jen turned off the radio and took her tea outside.

T
he day summer finally ended, police arrested a man in his twenties and charged him with the abduction, sexual assault and murder of Caitlin Jones. Another man, believed to be related, had been charged as an accessory. Jen had been supposed to go to a meeting about the proposed new development, but town was the last place she wanted to be.

Jen switched off the radio. She sliced an onion and cubed leftover vegetables for a curry, fried them off in the spices and added tomato and yoghurt. She turned down the heat, and left it to simmer.

The sky was burning red over the mountain, her forest in silhouette. She opened a bottle of wine, which she didn’t often allow herself during the week, and sat out the back with the birds. The arrests didn’t explain what had happened to Michael or quite let her father off the hook, but surely it couldn’t be coincidence that the children’s bodies had been found in the same place.

Jen spooned curry over rice and took her bowl in to watch the news. Another glass of red, too, which she needed. She turned on the television and flicked through trying to find the ABC. The channel seemed to have dropped off somehow, as if insulted by the scarcity of use. Perhaps it had been taken off the air due to a lack of funding. She fiddled with the buttons on the remote, bringing up every menu on screen except the one for tuning in channels. It was almost seven, and it was bound to be the lead story.