The Bird Woman (42 page)

“They’re not Catholics.”

“Their father’s a Catholic, they live in the South, they go to Catholic schools. Are you seriously trying to tell me they’re
Presbyterians?”

I look him straight in the eye. “They have minds of their own,” I say stubbornly. “And what about truth?
Tell the truth and shame the devil.
She was never done telling us that. And right at the heart of her life she’s nursing this lie.”

“I know,” he admits. “You’re only hearing it now, but I’ve been over and over it in my mind all these years and still I can’t
reconcile it. The first lie I can understand, but why keep it secret once he was dead and buried? So as not to upset her mother?
To make our lives easier? Because she was ashamed of what he was?”

That’s what that nurse said she said about me, I think. Is it true? Was it true for her? And if it’s true for me—though I’m
not saying it is—is that how she knew?

“Perhaps she was afraid they’d dig him up,” Anne says quietly.

“
What?”
It sounds so weird, I think it some strange kind of joke, but Anne’s voice has been matter of fact.

“He was a Catholic lying in Presbyterian ground,” she says. “Maybe she thought they’d make her move him if they knew. She
couldn’t exactly have gone round making enquiries, however discreet. Maybe she wanted to lie beside him when her turn came.
”

Brian looks at her. “That might be it, but still she could have told her own family, especially once her mother had died….
And she might have told Ellen about her own father.”

“Maybe she didn’t know how,” Anne says.

Brian goes on looking at her, but as though he hardly sees her.

“What about his family, why didn’t they come to the funeral?” I ask.

He turns back to me.

“He was an only child, his parents were dead—or that was his story. But there must have been someone. Cousins. Uncles and
aunts. It could be she never told them.”

It’s my turn to stare.

“She’d never met them, she told me that. She said she’d never wanted to.” Brian tosses back the rest of his whiskey and sets
down the glass. “And it wasn’t only her that was head over heels in love.
He thought the flowers sprang up where I trod
—that’s what she said to me. Imagine it, Ellen, a woman like her coming out with something like that. But those were the very
words that she used, I’m not about to forget them.”

After that, we go up to our beds. What is there left to say?

I hit the mattress thinking I’ll sleep like the dead, but I’ve reckoned without the thing-that-comes-visiting. When I lie
down the part of me that I think is myself falls away, and some other self comes up from a place so deep underwater that light
doesn’t penetrate that far.

I’m filled with the same strange emptiness I felt in the car. I’m completely here and not here at all; I can’t think, yet
there are thoughts drifting across, touching down, lifting off, like thistledown in a wandering breeze.

I no longer doubt Brian’s story, but the world has changed colour and shape. Soon I’ll forget this time, but for now I still
know both before and after: before her death and after it; before the secret and after it.

I don’t hold with those who want to uncover all secrets, yet here is a secret that gathers harm to itself, of this I am sure.

I neither judge my mother nor understand her. I judge no one, understand no one, not even myself, especially not myself, for
there seems to be no one in residence to be judged. There are times in the past when I’ve sensed this someone who lives behind
the me that thinks and loves and hates and fears and wants, and I’ve wondered who this someone might be and what is her name?
Now I know that she has no name and wants nothing. She’s stronger than me, unconcerned with me, yet she has no mortal existence
without my being.

I pull back the covers and swing my legs over the side of the bed and feel my way to the door. I switch on no light, for I
need the dark. I open the door and make my way down the stairs, my feet in the soft deep pile of Anne’s carpets. In the kitchen
I find the phone without remembering where it lives, and the orange light that the streetlamps cast is enough.

I have a terrible need to smell Liam and touch him and hear his voice. My mother is beside me, and her longing for Daddy after
he’d gone flows into me, engorging my longing for Liam. The phone rings and rings, but I know that he’ll come. Then he picks
it up and I hear his voice.

I can’t speak. I see him as though he’s standing before me, but this is no Seeing, it’s the breathing, unreal reality of the
imagination.

“Ellen? Is that you?”

I can’t answer.

“Ellen?”

“Yes.” A whisper.

Suddenly all my hurt and rage and my distance from Liam collapse like a building scheduled for destruction after the fuse
has carried the spark and the dynamite has blown. Liam is Liam—himself, and not me. His is the life that I live alongside.

“Ellen,” he says. “Ellen, it’s alright.”

“Yes,” I say, and I put the phone down very gently.

I have one more call to make, and I know the number by heart.

When Catherine answers her voice is alert, only tinged at the edges with sleep.

“Catherine?”

“Ellen. Dermot told me. I’m sorry. So sorry. Was it hard?”

“No. Not hard.” I see the bird fly to the light. “You’re seeing Dermot… ?”

“I am. I lost the run of myself back there, but I’ve calmed down now, I’m starting to see things a bit straighter,” A pause,
then an intake of breath. “Can I see you? Can I come up with them tomorrow?” Her voice is eager, almost joyful.

“What about Danny?”

“He’s on a bottle now, I can leave him with Fran for a couple of days. Sure he thinks she’s his Mammy anyway, he’ll be delighted—”

I feel the gladness rise up in me at her tone.

“Not yet,” I say. “Stay with Danny. But soon.”

“Alright, whatever you say. As long as it’s not too long. I’ll pray for her while I’m waiting.” A low, mocking laugh. “In
my own peculiar way.” A pause. “How’s Brian?”

“Anne’s a very humbling woman.”

“Is she now? So is Fran. I’ve decided I like humbling women.”

“We’re not.”

“No, definitely not. How’s your Dark God? Did He come for you yet?”

“He did. He picked me up, then He set me back down. I wasn’t to His liking.”

“I told you. Even God needs permission.”

“Who from?”

“You, of course—the you that is God. It’s all inside God or He wouldn’t be God.” She sounds surprised that I’ve asked.

“Catherine… ”

“Yes, Ellen.”

“My father wasn’t a Presbyterian.”

“We all have our problems.”

“I’m serious. He was a Catholic.”

A small silence. “You just found out?”

“Brian told me.”

She starts to laugh. An infectious laugh, and I feel myself joining in, which is strange, for I want to weep. She stops.

“Ellen,” she says seriously, “when you get to the border, don’t let that Dark Fella across. Send Him back up there, where
He belongs.”

“It isn’t only up here He comes visiting. Your lot down there know all about Him as well.”

“You’re right, but the Old Fecker’s losing ground at last, thank God. We’re learning to live in life.”

I put down the phone again, equally gently.

Upstairs, I get back into bed. The emptiness has left me, and I am myself again, even my body is normal. Thoughts fly about.
It matters that Liam and Catherine have fucked, and it doesn’t at all. Liam’s still my husband, Catherine’s still my friend.

Then I am small, and I’m looking out through an upstairs window. There’s a column of men and boys wearing stiff, dark
clothes, and they’re moving off down a road splashed with sunlight and shadow. They walk down the leafy green road, and the
young ones look like the old ones look, and it could be another century.

She had held him too tight to let him go back to his own, even in death. But maybe she’d craved lying beside him when her
turn came.

I slide into sleep.

F
RIDAY

I
stop by the rail and stand watching a shag afloat on the river. One minute it’s there, then it makes a quick lep and vanishes
under the swirling brown water. A wrinkle furrows the surface, then that, too, smoothes out. All trace of it’s gone—like my
father’s secret.

I watch for what seems a long time. It pops up again a good bit further on, then cruises along, its knavish black head in
the air. Big and solid and real. Then lep, it’s away down under the water. The secret—surfacing, disappearing.

Cormorants and shags—she’d made us learn the difference. The teacher in her, holding us to species and identification. I always
liked shags, blacker and wickeder-looking than cormorants.

Now I think of the starling flocks that move across the stripped winter landscape at home; how you’ll hear and look up to
this great rush of birds, lifting and diving and turning. I think of the ravens, afloat on the airstreams. Of the crows, going
home at the fade of the light, hundreds on hundreds, flowing and flowing, the winter sky filled with their tide.

Dark birds, ruffianly dark birds, stronger than birds of light and better survivors. They are the undervoice, scavenging life,
living off gleanings. Uncivilised. Shameless. Outside all law. They allow the return of the soul.

It’s early still, the morning rush hour not yet over, the cars still piling fast down the big road behind me. This river walk’s
new since my time, a neat railed path replacing the jumble of warehouse and shed and empty lot. The shag’s through with fishing;
it’s heaving up into the air, wings hitting strong off the water. For a moment its flight path shines on the river then fades
in the cloudy light.

Lies breed more lies, that’s what she’d taught us. She should know. There could be Catholic second cousins in Glasgow.

I’d woken early to a sleeping house, was out of the bed and into my clothes before I rightly knew what I was doing. I hadn’t
run a tap nor boiled a kettle for fear it might wake them, but this time I’d left a note. It said why I’d gone and told them
not to come looking.

It’s freezing cold by the river; I head up into the town. Breakfast. My stomach sounds like a practice session with a Lambeg
drum. I sit at a table in a cafe on the Strand Road, getting myself onto the outside of a pot of tea and a fry. I can’t stay,
though I want to: I’m too restless, it’s too warm and safe. I pay and go outside, but I don’t know where it is I need to be.

In front of me is Shipquay Street and the girdle of Derry’s Walls. On a whim, I’m through the city gate and climbing the steps.

I’ve never walked the Walls before because you couldn’t before—they’re strategic. The British Army lived up here—guns and
barbed wire and big steel gates kept firmly locked and guarded. Now the metal gates stand open, and the barbed wire’s all
but gone. The fort’s here still—an unlovely place of high metal walls—and above are the look-out posts, and higher still
are the masts. Her Majesty’s forces, surveying the citizens of Derry.

It’s snowing now, that fine, blithery snow that wanders about, sometimes descending, sometimes meandering back up where it
came from. The walkway along the Walls is lethal with frozen sludge. I inch my way up the steep bit, holding on tight, like
an old one afraid for her life of a fall.

She’d loved the snow, would come bursting into our bedroom throwing the window wide, letting the warmth stream out, pound
notes floating up to the frosty sky. She must have been young then, out there throwing snowballs in the snowy garden of my
childhood. Younger than I am now. As young as she’d ever let herself be in her life.

She’d never been young again after he’d died.

Fires laid but not lit. Clothes darned. Shoes patched. Leftover food for tomorrow’s dinner. Making ends meet—a widow’s lot.
Not that she’d ever been anything but careful: thrifty and frugal and clean in the Scots-Presbyterian tradition. But he’d
eased her. His presence had opened her out. She had laughed. Suddenly I remember that, though I haven’t before. Later her
laughter was never more than a social activity, signifying tolerance of such things in others. A polite wee sound.

I love the snow—I have that from her—though my feet are wet through and my hands are so cold I can’t feel them. I want to
see it on the ruffed fur of the cattle and horses at home, dusting the slopes of the mountains, shining their crests.
Want
is too weak a word. I
long
for it—that’s the truth. For snow is precious, and beasts and mountains are home now, and precious and home belong together.
Thinking this makes me long for Liam again. I want the children as well, though there’s pain in the thought of them here,
the place I’ve denied them.

Home. Down South. Only days away now. Days that might as well be years, for they seem that far off.

They’ll have set off by now. I’m glad they’re on their way, glad to be glad, for I’m sick and tired of the passions of my
own nature. Yet I’m panicked as well, for once they’re here I’ll be part of them, and I need to find out what the secret means
while I’m only me, and alone.

The snow steadies and thickens. I lean on a rampart and watch a schoolgirl who stands in the street down below me. She’s still,
her eyes are shut tight, her tongue is out catching the snow, her hands are thrust deep in the pockets of her dark-green blazer.
A hot, red, healthy tongue—the snowflakes melt the instant they touch down. She opens her eyes and sees me watching, grins
joyously, strolls off like a young one walking a meadow in early summer, the air warm, the sky a stretch of mild blue.

I walk on, stop again, look down on the houses and streets that wash round the sloping skirts of the old walled city. I can
see the Free Derry Corner and the murals on the gable ends. The dead schoolgirl stands there, dressed forever in the innocence
of childhood. Further down Bishop Daly goes on waving his white handkerchief on Bloody Sunday. Murals of martyrdom and grief.
The moral high ground. Different altogether from the gable ends of the Waterside. There it’s ArmaLites and flags and
No Surrenders.