Lyrebird

‘Em, last night I heard you make a sound. While I was in bed.’

Laura makes the sound again, an exact replica of Bo’s pleasured moans, as if she had recorded it and was playing it from her voice box.

Solomon bites his lip, tries not to laugh.

‘Yes. That.’ Bo is mortified.

‘You want that in your film?’

Solomon peeks through the crack again, to get a look at Laura, he noticed the change in the tone of her voice. It’s playful. She’s playing with Bo. Bo, on the other hand, misses it.

‘No!’ she says, laughing nervously. ‘You see that, what you heard, was private, a private moment between me and …’ Bo pauses, not wanting to mention Solomon.

‘Sol,’ Laura says, repeating the name exactly as Bo does. It’s Bo’s voice coming from Laura’s mouth.

‘Jesus. Yes.’

‘Solomon’s your boyfriend?’

‘Yes.’

Solomon swallows, his heart pounding once again.

‘Is that … okay?’ Bo asks.

‘Okay for who?’

‘For you. Okay with you,’ Bo replies, confused.

Laura clears her throat awkwardly but it’s not her sound, it’s Solomon’s. She looks quickly in the direction of the door and he realises she knows he’s been listening. He smiles and walks away, to the shower.

They spend Thursday filming Laura’s home. After realising that, under observation, Laura had a tendency to freeze up and look at the camera, lost, Bo has come up with a plan to film her making vegetable soup. This is something that Laura is comfortable with. At first she is wary of their presence, self-conscious of their eyes and camera on her. Then, as she gets lost in what she’s doing, she visibly relaxes. They stay back, trying not to be intrusive, though as unnatural as three people with recording equipment in a forest are. She mimics their sounds less as she moves around.

She tends to her fruit-and-vegetable patch, she forages for herbs; wild garlic is plentiful along the streams and shady areas, she picks the larger leaves and flower heads that have blossomed.

She doesn’t speak very much, sometimes hardly at all. Bo asks her to describe what she’s found in the ground but then she stops, deciding that this is going to be one of those documentaries, much like The Toolin Twins, where their audio will have to be added to the visuals at a later date, when answers can come from direct questions. Laura is no narrator but she does mimic the bird-calls; the birds seem puzzled, or at least convinced by her authenticity from afar, and reply to her.

Bo is buzzing, this much is obvious. They all are. They work together as silently as possible, respecting Laura’s need for that. Between filming, their chat is kept to a minimum, basic communication. Hand gestures, a word here and there. It is possibly the quietest day of Solomon’s life, not just because he’s had to stay quiet – he’s used to that – but most of his days are spent listening to others. Despite filming on the same mountain as The Toolin Twins, there is a distinct difference between the feel, sounds and rhythms. What they’ve got here is a completely different documentary. This is lyrical, musical, even magical. The images of Laura working her way through the forest, her white-blonde hair and calm disposition, are stunning, unearthly. It brings Solomon back to that first moment he saw her, how she’d quite literally taken his breath away. He could watch her all day. He could listen to her all day. He does. And with her sound pack clipped on her clothes, the microphone on her T-shirt, he can practically hear every breath and heartbeat. Yet when he looks at her, when their eyes meet, there’s nothing dainty about her. She’s strong. She’s firm. That mind of hers is solid.

Laura stands up from the forest floor and stretches her back. She looks up at the sky, breathes in and, as if remembering the crew are there, she turns around and lifts the basket into the air.

‘What did you get?’ Bo asks, delighted Laura is ready for conversation.

‘Wild garlic, it’s good for flavouring soups. Also good for coughs and the chest. I use it for a wild garlic, onion and potato soup. I’ve got mushrooms …’ She runs her long fingers over the array of mushrooms.

‘How do you know these are safe?’

Laura laughs, her laugh is older than she appears. She makes a vomiting sound, one so real it plays with Rachel’s gag reflex, yet she doesn’t seem to notice her sound, it’s as if a memory for her has come alive through her own sound, as an image would flash in somebody else’s mind.

‘Trial and error for the first few years,’ Laura explains, then runs her hands over the food in the basket. ‘These are pig nuts, also known as fairy potatoes. They’re good roasted. Alexanders, they’re like celery. Nettles, gorse blossom for blossom jelly and garlic mustard. It’s a wild member of the cabbage family, good for marinating meat. I like this because you can eat all parts of the plant, roots, leaves, flowers and seeds. The root makes tasty garlic mustard root vinegar.’

‘Okay, great, thanks.’ Bo smiles happily.

Inside the cottage, she opens her cupboards to show them her collection of food that has been pickled, dried and canned. She preserves the fruits and vegetables that don’t grow in the winter, when her diet would otherwise grow monotonous. That’s when she really relies on what Tom gives her. Gave her. She pauses, checks herself, before continuing. She is confident, proud of her work on her food and she is happy to talk about it. Her sentences are short and limited, of course, but for her, to offer any information unprompted is a sign of her confidence, which grows throughout the filming day.

She makes her soup that she then offers to them to taste. Bo politely sips a spoonful. Solomon and Rachel finish their bowls.

It is late in the afternoon.

‘What would you do next?’ Bo asks, trying to move things along.

‘I would usually be still out foraging,’ Laura smiles politely, aware that time is of concern to Bo.

‘Don’t feel you have to rush everything on our account, I want to capture you as you’d normally be.’

‘I wouldn’t normally have served three people my soup,’ she smiles, and to Solomon, ‘That’s the first time I’ve done that in ten years.’

‘Four people,’ Rachel says. ‘Can I have seconds?’

Laura laughs. She likes Rachel, this is obvious. She is wary of Bo. With Solomon, everyone knows it’s a sure thing.

Laura suggests cleaning her clothes, something Bo isn’t interested in. She doesn’t scrunch up her nose but it’s a similar reaction.

‘How about we film you reading?’ Bo asks. ‘Books are an important part of your life, aren’t they?’

‘Of course, I read every day.’

‘They’re your connection to the world?’

‘I’d say they are the only things that aren’t my connection to the world,’ Laura replies. ‘They’re entertainment, escape.’

‘Yes,’ Bo says, though she’s too busy planning her next shot to process the answer. ‘Where do you usually read?’

‘In lots of places. In here. Outside.’

‘Let’s go outside, show us where you’d go.’

‘It depends on the time of year, on the day, on the time of day, on the light,’ she says. ‘I walk around until I find somewhere that feels right.’

‘Let’s do that then,’ Bo says, smiling and when Laura isn’t looking, she steals a look at her watch. It’s not that Bo isn’t interested – she is, she can’t have enough information – it’s that time has never been her friend. There is too much to do, and not enough time to do it in. The aim is to do everything, quickly, so that she doesn’t miss a thing, and of course in doing things so quickly all the time, she is missing things, as Solomon constantly warns her.

Solomon accompanies Laura to her bookshelf, which is overflowing. Books are piled up on the floor all around.

‘Do you have a favourite one?’ he asks.

She picks up one, an erotic romance A Rock and a Hard Place, and shows it to him. She then makes the sound she heard from the previous night, Bo’s sounds of pleasure. She is quiet enough so that Bo doesn’t hear her. Solomon laughs and shakes his head.

‘You’re in love with her?’ Laura asks.

He’s so taken aback by the question he’s not sure how to answer. He should know how to answer, but he can’t bring himself to address it.

She mimics his awkward throat-clear.

‘I’m surprised Bridget brought you that book,’ he changes the subject.

‘I’ve never met her but I was surprised too,’ she laughs. ‘There was a whole box of them. Second-hand, church sale. A virgin named Betty Rock and naughty Nathan the window cleaner. They get a lot of suds in a lot of places.’

They both laugh.

‘No. This is my favourite. I’ve read it over fifty times.’ She hands him a picture book.

‘There’s no words,’ he flicks through it.

‘Words are often over-rated,’ she says.

‘What’s it about?’

‘A tree that turns into a woman.’

‘Just like Bo said,’ Solomon says sarcastically, studying it. ‘Your connection to the world.’

She laughs.

He looks at the cover. Rooted. ‘What’s it about?’

‘There’s a tree in a park. A busy city park. It’s hundreds of years old and it watches people every day. Children playing with a ball, mothers walking their babies in prams, people jogging, couples arguing. Life. As time goes by, the more she absorbs the life around her, the more human the tree becomes. Her bark turns into skin, her leaves to hair, her branches to arms. She shrinks. Until one day she is no longer a tree, she’s a beautiful young woman. She uproots her feet from the soil and she walks out of the park.’

‘Interesting,’ Solomon says, flicking through the pages.

‘You can read it, if you like,’ she offers it to him.

‘Does she walk out of the park naked?’ he asks. ‘Nudity is a must in a book with pictures.’

‘That’s revealed on the pop-up page.’ She smiles.

He laughs and studies her, curiously.

She looks up at him, not at all self-conscious under his greedy gaze. She doesn’t seem to mind his attention, so he drinks her in a little more.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. ‘Thanks for the book. I’ll return it to you in the same condition. Actually, I have a book for you.’ Solomon takes a paperback from his audio bag. ‘Bridget brought it here on Thursday. I’m sure it’s for you.’

Solomon had to hand it to Bo. As soon as Bridget mentioned that Tom was an avid reader, she’d known something was up. He wonders what else she can sense.

Laura takes the book from him, her energy completely changing. It’s the last book she received from her father, even if he hadn’t chosen it, even if he never gave it to her, even if he never touched it, or knew what it was. He’d asked for it for her. She hugs it close to her.

‘Let’s go,’ Solomon says. ‘So, how do you clean your clothes?’ he asks as they pick up their gear and prepare to go outside.

‘The dry cleaner’s at the top of the mountain, beside the nightclub,’ Laura says, seriously. ‘But Bo didn’t want to know about that.’

Solomon throws his head back and laughs heartily.

Laura takes a note of that beautiful sound, records it in her mind, replays it over and over.

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