The Spare Room by Judith White

Author:Judith White [Judith White]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775534174
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

SOMETHING, SOMEONE, TO CARE FOR

When her mother came to live with them after she became ill, Hannah would lurch from sleep, wondering whether she might have passed away overnight. There were times when the anxiety was so insistent that she was forced to get out of bed and pad down the stairs to stand at her mother’s door, listening for the soft snoring that filled the room.

Once, confronted by silence, she eased open the door, crept in and stood by the bed. Moonlight filtered in through the curtains and settled around the shapes of the motionless bedclothes, across her mother’s face, the dark cavity of her open mouth, empty of breath. Hannah touched her cheek. Slapped her vigorously, calling. Suddenly her mother heaved and yelped, struggling in vain to sit up.

Oh, oh, I’m sorry Mum, I … was just looking for your teeth. She grabbed the first reason — however ludicrous — that came into her head.

Hannah, for heaven’s sake, what’s happening?

Nothing, I’m sorry. I just, I was just checking, that you were all right. Ssssh, it’s OK. Go to sleep.

I was asleep. Where are my teeth?

They’re in the glass. It’s OK. I had a dream that you’d lost them.

Are they there?

Now, every morning, Hannah was awakened by her husband perfunctorily plodding around the house, his weight wrapped thickly around his middle, whereas hers returned to fill her head, unseen except for the pull of flesh from around her cheeks, her mouth. The weight of heavy deliberation.

Her first task was to check on the little duckling in the carry-box in the bathroom, to make sure he hadn’t drowned in his water or died in his sleep from lack of whatever it was that ducklings needed that she hadn’t been able to offer.

From the local pet shop she had bought supplies of straw to line his box, and special baby chook mash. Each day he ate a little more.

When he spotted her, the duckling peeped an urgent staccato code, for which she didn’t have the key, but it soon threaded its way from its helplessness to the part of her that had become habituated to caring for the helpless. She only had to pick him up to soothe him. All he desired was to nestle into somebody, to sleep with his head pushed into a fold of arm or flesh. All he really wanted, of course she realised, was a mother duck.

Because of this, when she was at home the woman carried the duckling on her shoulder under her hair. If she was working at her desk, the ducking snuffled into her neck before settling to sleep. It was a strange companionable thing to have this downy ball rummaging through the blonde grassy shelter of her hair. At other times she spread a towel across her lap and he’d sleep there as well. Eventually, she noticed that, as long as she removed him from time to time, he didn’t poo when he was upon her. She supposed that, in the wild,

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