Misery o’clock
I lied to Vera. I don’t have important revenge things to do. I don’t have anything to do.
I’m a failure. Great-Aunt Myrtle was right to distrust me.
I should return to the pond and tell her. But how can I? She’ll look right through me as if I don’t exist.
And then she’ll give the job to Vera.
It’s such a humiliating thought that I bury my head under my wing, and pretend it is nighttime.
‘Hey, duck,’ whispers my army. She’s lying on her nest beside me. ‘Are you unhappy too?’
Her hand strokes my feathers.
I should bite her, but I’m too miserable.
Besides, it’s comforting.
‘I wish you could understand me,’ she whispers.
‘I can,’ I mumble.
‘When you quack like that, it’s almost like you’re answering me.’
‘I am answering you.’
‘I wish you were answering me.’
I take my head out from under my wing. ‘I AM ANSWERING!’
‘You know what I’d ask, if you could understand me?’ she says. ‘I’d get you to dance like you did the other night. To cheer us up. You know, with the wings and stuff?’
I stare at her in horror. She thought I was dancing? I was not dancing, I was showing her the ancient duck skill of unarmed combat.
How could she possibly mistake it for dancing? Dancing is not on the list!
I shrug off her hand and stand up. I raise my wings. I demonstrate the accuracy of my block, and the terrible threat of my advance and kick.
I wait for her to realise her mistake.
Instead, she gapes at me. ‘You – you understood?’
‘Of course I understood,’ I tell her.
‘But that’s impossible!’
If ducks could roll their eyes, I’d do it. But we can’t. So I just move my wings into a very sarcastic position.
My army leaps up and begins to pace the room. ‘Maybe it was just a coincidence. Yes, that’s probably it.’
‘No it’s not,’ I say.
‘I wish there was some way we could test it. Maybe if I asked you questions? And you answered one quack for yes and two quacks for no?’
‘How about one quack for no and two quacks for NO,’ I say.
She stares at me. ‘Was that a yes or a no? I couldn’t tell.’
She’s kneeling on her nest now, as excited as a duckling on its first swim. ‘I know! I’ll ask a question, and you nod or shake your head. Like this!’
She nods, which in duck language means, ‘Will you be my boyfriend?’
Why is she asking me to be her boyfriend? I’m a duck, not a drake. And besides, she’s human.
‘No,’ I reply, with great dignity. ‘I will not be your boyfriend. Please don’t ask me again.’
But now she’s shaking her head, which means, ‘I have mud on my beak.’
I look at her carefully. There’s no mud.
Why are humans so strange?
Half past confusion
Things have become a little clearer. My army was not asking me to be her boyfriend. Nor was she trying to shake mud off her beak.
It turns out humans do things differently. (I am probably the first to discover this.)
‘Will you be my boyfriend?’ means ‘yes’. And ‘I have mud on my beak’ means ‘no’.
Now we’ve got that sorted out, she is asking questions.
‘Are you and Clara friends?’
‘I have mud on my beak.’
‘That’s good, because I hate Olive Hennessey. Does anyone else know you can understand them?’
What a ridiculous question. Every single duck in Little Dismal knows I can understand them, and so do the pigs, the cows and the chooks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the magpies know, too.
But I can’t say any of that. All I can do is nod. ‘Will you be my boyfriend?’
‘Oh,’ says my army. Her head droops like a sick duckling, and I wonder if she has been forgetting to eat her dandelion greens.
But then she perks up. ‘No one’s said anything about it, not even Olive Hennessey. I bet they don’t know really.’
Aha, when she said ‘anyone else’ she meant other humans.
Why do they always think it’s about them?
‘So, you mustn’t tell anyone,’ she continues. ‘I’m your friend, and no one else.’
I’m beginning to wish that ducks could roll their eyes.
‘Can you write, like Clara?’ she asks next.
‘Will you be my boyfriend?’
‘Really? That’s so cool! Here, write something.’
She puts a page of her memoir on the nest in front of me. She hands me a pen and I take it in my beak.
The pen breaks.
We try another one.
That one breaks, too.
(Why do all these humans have pens made by chooks? Is it some sort of business deal? Have the chooks cornered the market?)
‘Maybe try not to bite it so hard?’ says my army, handing me another pen.
I do writing.