Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,45

it, Dora thinks. You do it by imagining you are somebody else.

Slashing gorse in the shelterbelt Harry finds the nest of a striped honeyeater underneath the trees. It’s a lovely article – a deep hairy cup of woven grasses bound with spider web and beak spittle. The outside of the nest is patterned; tawny and pale like the bird herself. Harry eases the nest into his pocket and forgets about it until later, until teatime when he’s slicing his sausages and smearing them with chutney. He coaxes the nest from his trousers and places it on the table next to his plate; watching, as he chews, the suppleness of it as the flattened grass stems unfurl, little by little, to form the circular lip of the cup again. The expansion completed, the nest rolls softly onto its side and touches the back of Harry’s hand. ‘Whoa there,’ he says to it, and his throat catches tight. As he rights the nest and wedges it between the salt and pepper shakers he realises that he knows too much. When you look at things for long enough they reveal themselves to you, and then they reveal some more. Harry with his four sausages; ‘One for each limb,’ his mother used to say. Harry at the kitchen table with his empty nest.

I’m going to share this with you, Michael. I can’t make it out myself, but it happened and it might be useful and that’s that. When I was twelve years of age Mum took me along to a wedding breakfast for an aunty from Bendigo. We went down on the train. I was all gingered up in a cut-down suit of Dad’s (away for the hay cutting). The wedding was a big fancy do. Mum had a new dress – peach lace. You’d think it was olden days because it went to the ground. There was something very sombre and mysterious about the shape of her in that dress. The breakfast was in an orchard at Eaglehawk. (Ate my first sugared almond and a peppery sausage brought in from somewhere foreign – Italy? Greece? Queensland?) Mum had a glass of sherry.

When the speeches were done Mum got up from her chair and wandered off a little way between the trees. She waved over to me and we went for a stroll together. All good enough fun. When we were a bit of a distance away she stopped and took up a stooped stance and cocked her head to one side. I was still holding her arm. I thought she was listening to something in the distance. Then I heard a distinct gushing sound. She smiled at me shyly and when we walked on I noticed a small puddle on the grass and the distinct smell of urine. Nothing was said. We just kept walking. I didn’t know what to think. (But I’ll admit that afterwards I thought about it a great deal.) Mum had always been very private in her doings before this. ‘Facilities’ were available not far away had she wanted to use them, and even if she had fixed on using the orchard it would have been easy for her to send me away on some errand or another. I got the feeling that she wanted me to know what she had done and, more than that, she wanted me to enjoy it and know she had enjoyed it too. I deduce from this that the female act of passing water might be pleasurable – that, similar to the male organ, the location of the urinary equipment has proximity to the sexual equipment. It occurs to me that the female passing water when standing (rather than in the seated or crouching position we are familiar with) might also experience a stronger stream (gravity) and therefore increased pleasure. Don’t be fey about the female water, Michael. On one (morning) coupling with Edna (first year of marriage) I noticed a fair wash of liquid over my thighs and member. My first thoughts were of an extra-copious ejaculation, but by the smell of the sheets later in the week I deduced that her bladder must have been engaged. It wasn’t unpleasant, Michael. My memory is that it wasn’t unpleasant at all. I’ve also read (but I can’t for the life of me think where) about a fellow training to be a doctor. He had to assist at many births in the course of his studies and while down the business end of things