Finch, page 12
“We’re interested,” said Audrey. “Aren’t we, Chlo?”
Chloe made a face. “I guess so.”
“Follow me,” said Mavis.
A track wound through low scrub and she-oaks and led them up a rise into a grove of trees and shrubs – lemon-scented gums, wattles, bottlebrushes. Hidden parrots squawked and whistled: there was the sweet ting! ting! of an eastern rosella.
“Ross planted things that would attract the birds,” Mavis said.
Behind a dense hedge of banksias was a small timber house. It had the lonely, rather downtrodden look of a place where nobody was living. Grey drifts of spider web were caught in the window frames, and creepers wound up the verandah posts.
Mavis unlocked the front door.
“It’s a good little hide-out,” she said. “In fact, I’ve decided I’ll sell my old place and move in. All it needs is a good dust and a bit of a clean-up, and it’ll suit me and Daphne just fine. I think Ross’d be happy with that.”
There wasn’t much furniture inside the hut. A bed. A table. A workbench. Above the bench was a shelf crowded with branches, dried flowers, wood carvings, rock specimens and what looked like a few fossils. The bench itself was covered with sketchbooks and art paper, coloured pencils and paintbrushes thrust into jars, geometrical equipment, masking tape, a scalpel. There were dozens of photographs of birds, and a scattering of bird feathers, from downy breast feathers to sturdy pinions. A stuffed magpie sat on a perch, its head permanently cocked as its brown glass eye searched for non-existent grubs.
Audrey picked up a sketchbook and turned the pages with careful fingers. Pencil sketches of bird feet, beaks, lightning impressions of parrots in flight, details of feathers–
She turned to Mavis. “He was good, wasn’t he? Awesome. Where did he learn to draw?”
“Self-taught, believe it or not. He really got into it after he retired. Never showed his work or anything like that. Just did it for himself.” She opened a long drawer under the workbench and took out a pile of watercolour paintings on thick art paper. Dozens of them, nearly all of birds. Audrey gasped. Magpies. Blue wrens. Diamond-tailed finches. Black ducks. A pair of peregrine falcons. A clutch of honeyeaters, and a willie wagtail on a fence post. A boobook owl. A white-faced heron. And a sketched impression of an emu-wren – only one this time – a male. A bright eye, a puff of feathers. And that extraordinary tail.
Chloe craned her neck to see. “That’s an emu-wren, isn’t it? It’s so cute! I wish we’d seen some this morning. That would’ve been so excellent.” She humphed. “I don’t know what to do my project on now.”
“It was bad luck we didn’t see them.” But at the exact moment she said this, Audrey had an idea. “I know what you can do instead, though.”
“What?”
“Finch.”
“What?” Chloe scowled. “Why would I want to do a project on your finches?”
“Not my finches. Finch. It’s perfect! He’s an important local person. Or he was,” she corrected herself. “And he helped with conservation, like buying this land so it wouldn’t be developed. And he was a brilliant artist. I could help you, if you like. We could take some photos of things around here – this bench, and the house, and stuff. What d’you think?”
“Yeah! Great idea!” Chloe bounced with delight.
Mavis carefully laid the paintings out on the bench. “Audrey, I’d like you to have something in memory of Ross. You too,” she added, seeing Chloe’s lower lip begin to droop. “You can choose a painting as well.”
“Oh!” Chloe said. She moved her hand over the bench, darting it back and forth and finally picking up the watercolour of the willie wagtail. “Can I have this?”
“Of course you can. And Audrey, what would you like?”
“They’re all really beautiful. But I’d like the emu-wren.” Tears came into her eyes, and she blinked hard to keep them from falling. “It has to be the emu-wren, doesn’t it?”
Mavis smiled at her, and it was Finch’s smile. “I reckon so,” she said.
CHAPTER 23
The scrub glowed golden, bathed in sunshine. Audrey had just seen the three emu-wrens again, and amazingly, impossibly, one of them had flitted right up to her and perched on her finger. It looked at her, its tiny dark eyes sparkling – she almost expected it to speak. It was a moment of pure happiness. Then an odd noise edged its way into her head. A harsh sort of wailing noise. Could it be a wattlebird? No, it wasn’t a wattlebird. What was it?
Slowly Audrey opened her eyes. As the vision of the emu-wrens faded, she felt a deep disappointment. Of course – it had been a dream. Reality told her that the wailing sound was Freddy, calling her. She rolled over, slid out of bed and stumbled down the hallway.
In the darkness of the kitchen the screen back door was a rectangle of pale grey. Freddy was nuzzling it, rubbing his back along it, making little purring noises in his throat.
“Okay, Fred.” Audrey looked at the digital clock on the microwave: nearly five-thirty. “I guess it’s late enough. Out you go.” I’m sick of this. I must train Fred to use a litter tray.
She opened the door, watched as Freddy bounded away over the lawn, and then closed it. Yawning, she made her way back to bed and crawled under the quilt.
Sleep.
*
She decided not to go back to the waterhole after school. She’d been planning to – she wanted to have another go at finding the emu-wrens – but it was getting late, so instead she went to the cave. She didn’t tell anybody where she was going. This was something she had to do by herself.
She took the torch with her, and a garden trowel. It was big enough for all the digging she’d have to do.
When she reached the cave entrance, she hesitated, unsure. For a moment she felt almost afraid. But the place now seemed neither welcoming nor sinister.
It’s just rocks, she told herself. It’s just a cave.
Inside the main chamber there was absolute blackness, absolute silence except for the sound of her own breathing. The dark reached out to her, velvet-soft. She stood there, eyes closed, remembering Finch. This had been his home, and he’d been free and happy here. Alone, but not lonely. Was that why he’d come back, to re-live this time in his life? And then he’d lost the little dog he loved so much, and the loneliness became too much to bear.
After a while, bit by bit, Audrey felt the cave begin to come alive. The air moved gently, and darker shadows appeared in the darkness. A whisper of warmth grew warmer, surrounding her, embracing her. She felt safe, protected, completely unafraid.
I’m not alone, she thought. Finch promised me he’d be here in the cave, and he’s here now, I know it. Others, too. Lots of others. I can feel them all around me.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before the spell was broken and she was aware of coldness and damp. She switched on her torch, and in its glare the shadows retreated and vanished. The cave was just a cave again.
Audrey sighed, and shivered.
Inside the smaller chamber Snowy’s skeleton still lay partly uncovered. She crouched beside it and gazed at it for a long time. Lightly, barely touching them, she stroked the eroded bones.
“Good boy,” she whispered. “Good dog.”
As soon as she’d said the words, a huge lump came into her throat. She cried as Finch must have cried, gutted with loss, and the raw animal sound echoed all around her.
She cried until she could cry no more. Then, very tenderly, as if folding a blanket over them, she began to cover the bones.
CHAPTER 24
“Please don’t feed sweet things to the cat,” Mum said. “They’re so bad for him. He’s a carnivore. He should only eat meat.”
“But it’s the Easter holidays,” said Audrey. “I know he’s not allowed to have chocolate, but can’t he have a little bit of hot cross bun?” She scratched Freddy’s head. “You like hot cross bun, don’t you, Fred?”
Freddy daintily licked up the offered buttery scrap.
“See? He loves it.”
Mum shook her head as she pushed open the back door and walked outside with a basket of wet washing. “He’ll get fat,” she said over her shoulder.
“I’ll get fat,” said Chloe, slumping over the kitchen table. “I’m so full of chocolate I can’t move.” She sat up again. “Aud, did I tell you Emma’s mum’s taking me and Emma to the city on Wednesday? We’re going shopping, and then we’ll go to that ice cream place in the mall. Bubblegum gelato, yay!”
“Sounds great,” said Audrey. She helped herself to one of her mini Easter eggs, peeled off the foil and folded it neatly into a thin strip. Her mouth full of chocolate, she walked over to the kitchen window and looked out. The rows of vines were golden now. High on the hill, beyond the orchard, a bright red tractor was slowly turning the far paddock into brown corduroy.
Life in the country was turning out to be all right. Actually, it was even better than all right. It had taken a little while, but now Audrey felt that she was finally at home. The farm was a place where she fitted, exactly. It was solid and comfortable and real.
School was good, too. She was near the top of the class in most subjects, and right at the top in maths and science. So far she didn’t have a best friend, but she didn’t feel lonely. She was part of a group. And there was always the chance that her sort-of friends might one day be real friends.
One of the best things about school was Mr Scardino. He was really kind, really easy to talk to, a bit like Finch had been. He was going to organise extra art lessons for her in third term, which would be brilliant. When she’d told Mavis, Mavis had given her all Finch’s art materials – lots of excellent stuff. She’d said she was only too pleased to find a good home for it.
Using Finch’s brushes and pencils made Audrey feel sort of sad and sort of happy at the same time. Sometimes, when she was drawing, she felt that he was standing next to her, his hands guiding hers, correcting and refining her line work. If she turned her head very quickly, she imagined she might just catch a glimpse of him.
She hadn’t told Mr Scardino about Finch. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She’d told him how the conservationist Ross Finch had also been this amazingly talented artist nobody knew about, but she hadn’t told him about the person she thought of as the real Finch, the boy who’d been her friend. Not yet, anyhow. Maybe one day.
Dad was working hard on his new vineyard. He was putting in five more hectares of vines, grenache and pinot noir this time. And Mum had started a part-time job at Goosey Gander, helping Emma’s mum and doing the bookkeeping.
Audrey turned to Chloe. “Did you know Mavis has moved into Finch’s old place? She’s sold her house already.”
“I heard Mum and Dad talking about it. Maybe we’ll get a new family living down the road.”
“Maybe.” Audrey considered this. It could be good – depending on what the family was like. Maybe there’d be a boy like Finch. But no, nobody else could be like Finch.
She peeled another chocolate egg and popped it into her mouth. Last one. “I’m going birdwatching with Mavis next weekend.”
She waited, but there was no response.
“Chlo?”
Chloe was flicking through the fashion pages of a department store catalogue. Dad had given her twenty dollars as a reward when she got top marks for her conservation project, and she’d told Audrey she was going to spend it when she went shopping with Emma.
“What did you say, Aud?”
“I’m going birdwatching with Mavis. Well, not just Mavis. There’s about six of us, and we’re going up to the ranges. There could be some flame robins up there, and Mavis said she’s almost positive she saw a brown treecreeper a couple of weeks ago. It’s hard to see them because they have such good camouflage. Chel likes bushwalking, so she’s coming too. You want to come with us?”
Chloe shook her head vigorously. “I don’t think so.”
“Mavis says there are at least a hundred different species around here. I’ve started to make a list of all the ones I’ve seen, and so far I’ve got more than thirty. Actually, thirty-three–”
“Maybe only thirty-two,” Chloe said.
“What? I’m talking about species. That’s different kinds of birds, not numbers.”
“Freddy ate one of the species, then. Sorry, I meant to tell you. I saw some feathers at the back of the tank-stand, I think it was Friday. I don’t know what sort of feathers they were. There were bits of black and white.”
“It mightn’t have been Freddy.” But Audrey felt a sharp twinge of fear. Oh, Fred.
“I was hoping like crazy it wasn’t. I mean, Fred doesn’t do things like that, does he? I thought it might be another cat. Then I saw him after, and he still had a bit of fluff stuck to his mouth, so …”
“Show me,” Audrey said.
There wasn’t much to see, after all, just a small pile of downy breast-feathers and a few pinions. They stared at it in silence.
“I still love him,” Chloe said, almost tearfully. “I know he’s been naughty, but I still love him.”
“I know, Chlo. So do I.”
“He’s still our kitty.”
“Of course he is.”
“He’ll probably never do it again.”
“We just have to make sure he doesn’t. Oh God, I let him out this morning, didn’t I? I should stop doing that. It was just before five o’clock, way too early. Perhaps …” But she didn’t want to think any more about perhaps.
“What sort of bird do you think it was?” Chloe asked, poking at the feathers with her foot.
“I’m not sure,” Audrey said. “There’s not much of it left, but I think it was most likely a New Holland honeyeater. Phylidonyris novaehollandiae. See, there’s a bit of yellow? That’s from a wing.”
Chloe stooped to pick up one of the bright feathers. “Why would Fred do it? It’s not like we don’t feed him.”
“He’s a cat, Chlo. It’s like Mavis says, they don’t change. Once a cat, always a cat. They hunt things. It’s in their nature.” She stopped. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You talk about Mavis a lot.”
“Do I?” Audrey thought about that as they walked slowly back towards the house. It was a relief to concentrate on something apart from Freddy and the terrible thing he’d done. “I think it’s because I really like her,” she said at last. “We’re friends. I know she’s old but it doesn’t make any difference, it’s just part of who she is. And she reminds me of Finch. Does that make sense?”
“I guess so.”
“And she knows heaps. She’s kind of like a wise old owl. Tyto alba.” Audrey looked sideways at Chloe. “That’s a barn owl to you.”
Chloe aimed a pretend smack at her. “You’ll never change either, Aud. Once a nerd, always a nerd. Nerdo audrey.” She stuck the yellow feather in her hair. “If Mavis is an owl, what am I?”
“You’re a rainbow lorikeet. Trichoglossus moluccanus. Noisy and greedy and very cheeky.”
“That’s a horrible name.”
“Can’t help it. Lorikeets are heaps pretty, though.”
“Okay, I’ll be a lorikeet. So what bird are you, Aud?”
“What do you think I am?”
“I was going to say you were some kind of owl, but you can’t be if Mavis is an owl too.” Chloe stopped walking and rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “You don’t like people noticing you, so you have to be a treecreeper or something. Sorry, a brown treecreeper.”
Audrey shook her head. “I’m not a brown treecreeper. I’m not a brown anything. Not any more.”
“I give up, then. Tell me.”
Audrey closed her eyes and imagined herself hovering, hovering, the whole world spread out beneath her, and then diving–
“I’m a falcon,” she said. “A peregrine falcon.”
“But falcons are scary, aren’t they?” protested Chloe. “They kill things. How can you be a falcon?”
Audrey could still hear Finch’s voice in her head. There’s something extra special about falcons. Aloud, she said, “Because falcons are right at the top of the pecking order, and they know it.”
Chloe looked at her curiously. “Are you at the top of the pecking order now?”
“Of course,” Audrey said. She hugged her little sister. “That’s exactly where I am.”
EPILOGUE
Freddy loved the early morning. Head up, tail up, whiskers bristling with anticipation, he bounded down the hill towards the creek. The dampness of the grass, the earthy smells of still unfamiliar living things made him feel alert and excited. He investigated tufts of fur and wisps of feather, ancient droppings left by long-gone sheep, tracks of slugs and snails, crickets and woodlice. Occasionally he breathed in the warm, rank aromas left by larger, more recent overnight visitors – passing rabbits and foxes. The excitement of the hunt coursed through his blood, made his eyes grow huge and his pupils dilate.
The creek was his favourite place. Sometimes he caught a frog there, or a shiny little lizard unable to hide in time, his teeth crunching the tiny bones.
He leaped nimbly over the rocks, reaching the far bank in a couple of seconds, impatiently shaking a wet paw.
Along the line of the creek he trotted. In the light of the rising sun the shadow of his small body cast a wavering spidery shadow.
He stopped to drink at the waterhole, his pink tongue lap-lapping. The scrubby land around here was full of interesting surprises. Beetles, mice, baby rabbits, birds. What would he find today? He sniffed a familiar scent beneath a tea-tree. Another cat had been here – an interloper. The musky scent was offensive, unmistakable. His tail bristled slightly.
A faint peeping and rustling caught his attention.
He crouched.
At the fringe of a mass of greenery he saw three small birds. Their jerky, erratic movements were unbearably stimulating. Freddy focused his whole mind on them, pinpointed every fraction of his energy and concentration on those movements. He could smell the little birds’ soft feathers, could almost taste the warm blood in their bodies. His jaw began to tremble uncontrollably. The end of his tail twitched.
