The Bird Woman

“Different country, different ways,” he said. “One squeeze for yes, two for no.”

I was nervous as a kitten, for I’d got it into my head that they’d turn me down flat if they found out I was a Prod. But they didn’t. I answered their questions and filled in their forms, and I didn’t need help from Liam. Then they said it all had to be processed and told me when to come back.

The minute we were outside the door, Liam asked me about the Russian.

“Did I not tell you?” I said, all surprise, though I knew very well that I hadn’t. Robbie had used it against me—he’d liked going on about fancy degrees and a fast track to the dole, while he was only City and Guilds but it paid the bills. I’m being hard on Robbie, I know that. Robbie was a grafter, never out of work, and he measured himself by the wage packet he brought home. I took any job that came up—unskilled and low-paid, I wasn’t fussy—but they never lasted that long, and I felt inadequate when I wasn’t working, so Robbie’s sneers got to me.

At that time, with glasnost and the crumbling of the Soviet Union, I felt worse about the Russian than ever. As though I’d just put my shirt on the favourite and watched him come limping in last.

“They told us at school there’d always be a need for Russian translators,” I said lamely.

But Liam liked having a girlfriend with Russian, he didn’t care if it didn’t get me a job. He started asking me words, and then he’d repeat them back and laugh at the way he had to make shapes with his mouth that it definitely didn’t want to make. In no time at all he knew basic words, and it was only a skip and a jump before he could mispronounce whole phrases in pidgin Russian. We’d use it in company to say private things, and when people asked he’d say he had this personal tutor who was teaching him Russian in bed.

The weather changed. Transparent rain fell from a whitish sky that sat low on the hills and wiped out the line of the mountains. A soft trickling sound. Gentle. Our life turned inwards, enclosed by the falling rain. We’d go to bed in the afternoon, and afterwards I would lie with my head on Liam’s belly; the house, our lives, ourselves, cocooned in the quiet rain.

I woke one night and got out of bed and went to kneel at the window. The rain had stopped, and the sky, wiped clean, was black and pierced with stars. In the morning the sunlight was different. Sharper, more defined. And a nip in the thinning air that pinched at your fingers and made you remember gloves. The sky was blue and intense, and the ash held its last yellow leaves to the radiant light. Light caught the filaments woven by spiders; it shone the wet grass and burnished the late gnats afloat in the air like sparks. From the ditches and fields came the dense gleam of light on water.

And there was I, uneasy, out of place, yet hardly caring so long as there was Liam.

Where was I from, what was I doing here, when was I going home?

Alone with Liam, I forgot the questions.

And Liam, never once asking me, letting the reins hang loose, feeding me apples, feeling my breath on his hand.

Chapter 8

The sale of the house came through. The papers were signed in March, and the new roof went on in the dry spell before Easter. Everyone helped. Connor brought us the slates from a ruined house on the farm, and one of Liam’s brothers-in-law had sawmill connections and got us a deal on the rafters. The insulation was a cobbling together of leftover stuff from a job on a schoolhouse, while tools and ladders and nails and the like were borrowed or scrounged. It was like that down here—you never just went to a shop and bought something; it all worked on who you knew and what way they’d find to help out.

Liam’s friends were handy enough—artists often are—and they’d have a crack at most jobs provided you weren’t too fussy about the look of the finished item. We weren’t too fussy; we wanted a roof on the house that would stand the wind and the weather and that’s what we got. I enjoyed it—a crowd of us up there, swarming about on the roof in the sunshine, busy as honey-bees. I worked hard alongside the men, and by the end of it I was stronger and fitter than I’d been for years. They accepted me, or they appeared to. I have good hands—always had. They were that way long before the Healing started.

By this time Liam’s family was well aware of my existence. I hadn’t meant them to be—Liam had promised me he’d say nothing—but you can’t hide anything down here, and anyway Connor had caught us. He’d called in one morning early, and there was I, in the kitchen making tea, with nothing on me but Liam’s old woollen dressing gown that I’d washed on him and shrunk down to half its size. I don’t know which of the two of us was the more embarrassed. The only one who wasn’t was Liam, who came in through the back, three eggs from the laying hen in his hand, and introduced us, cool as you please. I turned pure red, and I couldn’t look at Connor; then I scuttled off up the stairs and pulled on my jeans and a sweater. But I didn’t go back down; I stood at the door and listened till the voices ceased and Connor had gone.

When Connor came next he told Liam we were both expected for dinner on Sunday.

I wouldn’t go, though Liam said I was only making things worse for myself.

“They won’t stop asking, you might as well get it over and done with.”

But he went alone. The afternoon was fine, and I meant to go out for a walk but I hung around waiting instead. It was well after six when the car pulled up, and I heard Liam whistling to himself as he closed the yard gate. He came in carrying a pile of bed linen that his mother had sent, and apples and pears from Kathleen.

“Did they ask about me?”

“They did,” he said, dumping the fruit on the table.

“Well?”

“I told them you didn’t like Catholics.”

I stared at him, not believing my ears. He laughed. I shot out of my chair and pummelled him, hard as I could, but he only grabbed me and held my arms pinned to my sides. I swore I’d stay quiet if he let go.

He let go, and I went for him again.

He was wise to me, was Liam; he never once tried to persuade me, but off he would go, and when he came back I was always out of sorts.

“What is it you think they’re going to do to you, Ellen? Invite you to Sunday lunch and call you a whore?”

I was offended; I shook my head stubbornly and wouldn’t answer. At that time living together here was still something that was talked about. Besides, they were Catholics—under the thumb of the Church—their disapproval wasn’t negotiable in my mind. That I was unsure and embarrassed didn’t come into it at all.

Then I ran into Connor one Saturday in Kilkenny when I was shopping, and he said he was due to meet Kathleen outside Dunnes and she would want tea, and why didn’t I come along?

So I did, and Kathleen was plump with short brown hair and warm, direct eyes. We had tea, then we had a drink, and the end of it was that I promised her I’d come over with Liam the following Sunday. At that time Liam’s mother was still alive, and Connor and Kathleen were living in a house down the road from the farm. Kathleen said we should call with them first and she’d show me the house, then we’d all go over together, and that way it wouldn’t be so bad.

And it wasn’t. I liked them, especially the parents. And they made me welcome, for all I was a Protestant, living in sin with their son.

Fixing a house can be a habit you get yourself into. Once you are in it you go on doing it—you barely notice the months turning into years. And you get used to there always being some room you can’t use, some wall being ripped down, some passageway piled with rubble that your foot knows to step over. I never minded in the early days, when the nesting thing was strong on us, but there came a time when I wanted to call a halt. Enough was enough, I said, but Liam couldn’t listen. He loved that house, he never grew tired of planning, and he didn’t mind dirt or mess.

He couldn’t listen, and I couldn’t leave it alone. But then the commissions began to come in, so he had to go into the workshop full-time and let the house be. Liam’s work was beginning to sell, there were new demands on his time, he even began to turn down the building work that he’d always done to bring in some ready money.

Liam was strong and able. People employed him and found that they liked him, so the next time they needed a hand they came looking. Sometimes they didn’t come to the house, instead they’d run into me in the supermarket and ask me if Liam was free. At first the answer was always yes, but slowly it got to be no. I’d been proud of saying yes, but I was prouder still of saying no, and I liked them knowing to ask me for Liam, it didn’t make me feel awkward—it made me feel almost accepted.

It was hard for me here to begin with, and it made no difference that the hardship was mostly of my own making. I couldn’t help myself; I felt I had Protestant written in neon lights across my back. Liam was never done telling me that it was the opposite. He said once folk heard the North in my voice they assumed I was Catholic, for Northern Protestants never came this far south, or not to live. He told me, but I couldn’t listen, I was too used to scanning everyone and everything, too deeply tuned to the fact or conviction that difference meant threat.

As well as that, I missed the North. There was a gritty excitement about it, especially if you were young and not worn down, not paying the price in grief or in prison visits. There, violence was the stamp of reality—at the very least it was the yardstick by which you measured reality—and once you’re used to the hit of danger it’s hard to wind down and adjust to a seamless flow of days. That’s the way of violence—it drowns out the subtle, despises the ordinary, barges straight to the head of the queue. Here everything was always the same, and how could you know you were even alive if mayhem and chaos didn’t lep from the radio every time you turned it on? Sometimes I thought I’d fallen through time and landed facedown in a featherbed to smother in its softness.

With me, it was “in the North this or in the North that”—I was always on about it, always bringing it up. Mostly folk changed the subject, as if what I’d said was foolishness or bad taste. Or that’s what I thought then; now I think they were just bewildered. And on the whole they were amazingly patient with me. Patient and polite.

As for the Wildwood, it kept its distance. I had odd flashes—a blur and change at the edge of my vision—but nothing that stayed around or turned into anything else. And these shadowy “sightings” (for want of a better word) were always easy to deal with. I’d only to shake my head as you’d see off a fly, and they’d vanish away.

“You’re learning to handle yourself,” Liam had said when I told him.

I wasn’t at all, though I didn’t say that, and I soon learned to keep my own counsel. I was avoiding even thinking about it, just forgetting as fast and as hard as I could and leaving well alone.

We still had a permanent cash-flow problem, so I’d do a few evenings in one of the pubs if there were any hours going begging. There never were at the start, but once people knew my face and who I was they’d ask from time to time. I always liked bar work—I’d done it in Belfast, after Queens, when I couldn’t get what my mother called “a proper job.”

By then you would never have thought our house was the same place I’d first stepped into. It was snug and dry, the windows were sound, and it was painted white inside from one end to the other. We’d knocked the middle room into the kitchen so it wasn’t poky and wee anymore, and we’d fired out the cooker and put in a range that we had off one of Liam’s sisters, who was busy updating. It had its drawbacks, that range: it was solid fuel, so you had to be there to fill it, and you couldn’t run radiators off it the way you can with the newer models. Just the same the kitchen was always warm, and the water was spanking hot. I love the kitchen—it’s mine and I keep it scrubbed clean as the dairy at Gran’s, and mostly it smells of baking. I like the rest of the house as well. It’s home, I don’t care if Liam still thinks it isn’t finished, I don’t care if it isn’t perfect.

We applied for a phone, but back then you had to wait months, so when we finally got it in I sent my mother the number. I’d sent the address, but not right away, I’d taken my time to let her get over the shock of my leaving Robbie. I hadn’t told her about Liam; I thought I’d let her draw her own conclusions, which wouldn’t exactly be hard, for she’d know I wouldn’t have moved down South except for a reason, and if I didn’t so much as mention a name then the reason must be Catholic. I knew she wouldn’t like me leaving Robbie, for all she thought he wasn’t good enough. I’d married him, hadn’t I? I’d made my bed so I should lie on it. She was very strong on lying on your bed, was my mother, though the Presbyterian Church allows divorce. I waited, but she didn’t write back. I might as well have tossed a bottle into the sea.

About two months after I’d sent the phone number, a letter came with a Derry postmark. I knew the handwriting. I turned it over and over, then I put it on the dresser, and it looked at me for a couple of hours, till I lifted it down and opened it. A single sheet, the writing on one side only. She had written telling me not to be expecting any phone calls. I’d moved to a different country, she wrote, it was too expensive to phone.

I sat with the letter laid out on the table. Liam came in and asked who the letter was from, and I handed it to him. He read it through, which didn’t exactly take him all afternoon. I laughed, but he didn’t. Then he took my two hands in his, and the next thing I knew I was crying.

“She can say what she likes, I don’t care—it’s nothing to me,” I said. I was shaking my head from side to side, the tears flying off my face, which I couldn’t mop with Liam holding on to both my hands.

Liam didn’t speak, but he let go my hands and he put his arms round me and held me and stroked my hair.

“You’re a long way from home,” he said. So I cried and cried.

It wasn’t all like that. We had the usual rows—nothing spectacular, just run-of-the-mill complaints as we each of us discovered that neither one was as perfect as we’d let on. I thought when he said he’d do it tomorrow, he meant that he’d do it tomorrow; it took me a while to grasp that tomorrow meant sometime in the not-completely-distant future. For his part, he thought when I said tomorrow I meant sometime in the not-completely-distant future.

There were other things—I could make a list, but it wouldn’t be a long one. All couples have one—ours was shorter than most, and bit by bit we were learning each other’s ways. It’s this thing in me that comes between us, always has, always will. Yet that was what brought us together, for Liam understood it before ever I did, and more than that, he didn’t mind the way I was.

I changed down here. You change anyway, but I think the physical place that you live in makes for more difference than we sometimes allow. The buildings and streets of the city bring a particular alertness; the hard greyness sharpens the wits and the tongue, it hastens the feet. But the soft, dense colour of this place did its work on a sensual, physical level, sending me down from the mind and into the body, as rain finds the hollows and low places after long drought, filling them up so that they lose shape and turn into mud.

So it was for me. I lost shape, inwards and outwards. My feet pulled through mud and forgot to resist it.

Chapter 9

There was a young one working in the supermarket in the town, a girl of maybe nineteen or twenty years of age. The first time I saw her I couldn’t get over her; I had to force myself not to stand and gawp, for she was the living, breathing spit of Robbie poured into a female form. After a while I got more used to seeing her, didn’t get the same shock. All the same, I could never entirely just shrug and pass her by.

One morning I was over at the fruit and veg picking out onions, and there she was, up ahead of me, lifting bunches of bananas from a box on a trolley and setting them out on the shelf. She turned and glanced in my direction. Her face was a Pierrot’s—a dead-white, painted-on, chalky mask. I looked around, but no one else was staring. Maybe there was something going on that I hadn’t heard about, some children’s thing in the town to do with face painting or mime. She was a bit old for face painting, but it could be she was the face painter and she’d used some on herself as well…

I went back to the onions, keeping my eyes to myself, concentrating, for I knew there was something up and I was growing afraid. When I’d finished with the onions I moved on to the carrots, then the mushrooms, then I started in on the fruit. The hairs on the back of my neck had risen, so I let myself sneak another wee look to find out what she was at. The thick white paint had entirely gone; her face was back to being pink and normal.

I knew right away that it was Robbie, but I tried to pretend to myself that it wasn’t, for I didn’t want what I knew. All day I was jumpy and tense with waiting, but nothing happened. When I found I was sticking close to the phone, I took myself out to the garden and made myself dig and rake.

Liam came home and found me out there, and he was delighted with all the work I’d done.

“You must have a few farm genes in you after all,” he said. “From that crowd up in Dunnamanagh, your mother’s people.”

The phone rang at nine. I picked it up, and it was my mother, telling me Robbie was dead. It seems he was driving someone else’s car—too fast and too full of drink most likely—and he’d smacked it into a wall and killed himself and the girl who was sitting beside him. My mother said that his sister Rita had phoned her; she’d said to be sure to let me know the funeral was in two days’ time.

“Why would she want you to let me know?” I asked her. “I’d left him, hadn’t I? They surely don’t want me there at the grave?”

“You’re not thinking of going?” Her question came sudden and fierce down the line.

“Why are you telling me if you don’t want me to go?”

She didn’t answer, and I didn’t expect her to. She was phoning because I was Robbie’s wife still. Phoning me so I’d know she’d been right all along.

But she needn’t have worried, I didn’t want to see them bury Robbie, I didn’t want to go back to the North. But I sent flowers, yellow freesias, which have the sweetest scent I know and a shape like a promise if promises had shapes. I wept for him then, and I wept for Barbara Allen, and if I’d known how I’d grieve for him in the weeks to come I’d have gone to the funeral as well. I didn’t regret him, you see, and I thought that because there was no regret I wouldn’t have to remember.

I was wrong. The minute his coffin was safe in the ground some wall came crashing down inside me and my body was filled with a longing so physical and intense that it felt like pain. I thought of Robbie, his brown eyes and his brown hair and his strong, whippy body so different from Liam’s, and my heart fairly broke. I wanted to see him one more time, to be in his company one more time; I wanted things to be as they’d been back then, when he was my song and I was his, and the song that we sang together was who we were when we sang it.

It had taken me a year to do it, but I’d written at last to Robbie. I’d told him where I was and that I would sign any papers he cared to send my way. I never had an answer—I didn’t expect one—I knew that my letter would make him angry and remind him when he wanted to forget. But when I heard of his death, I was glad that I’d sent it. Sometimes silence can be every bit as bad as the worst of words.

When the grieving came on me I had to endure it. I couldn’t stop it or change it by act of will. No more could Liam. At the start he had moved to comfort me, but I’d turned away from him, for I couldn’t bear his touch.

Then when it had passed I tried to reach him, but he wouldn’t let me back. At first I thought that his distance would go once I’d drawn him into sex, but it didn’t. I couldn’t understand that: how could he make love with his body while his mind stayed cold and apart? Making love for me was all of myself. We went together into the Garden, we lost ourselves and remade ourselves, and afterwards everything started afresh.