The Bird Woman (18 page)

“Just horrible.” I shrugged and stopped, but she went on looking up at me, waiting. “All tight and tense with something huge
running through the tightness and tenseness,” I said. “I feel like a seed that’s being burst open from inside, whether it
likes it or not.” I didn’t know where the words came from or why I was trying to explain. “Pleasure is soft. Pleasure has
nothing to do with this.”

“What a medieval face you have, Ellen.” She was holding her muddy hand up to her brow, straining against the dusk that was
closing us in.

“You mean what Liam calls my Reformation Look?”

“You sound as if you’ve had about enough of Liam?”

It was a question, but I chose not to answer it. What was the use? She’d made up her mind, just as he had. She got to her
feet and wiped her muddy hands down her muddy jeans. “It’s freezing out here, let’s go inside. When do you have to collect
the children?”

“I don’t. Liam’s picking them up from the party on his way home.”

The kitchen table again. Sometimes I resent how much of my life has already been used up sitting at that kitchen table. Catherine’s
too. I looked at her.

I’ll have to let her have her say, I thought. So it might as well be now, when I’m nearly past caring.

“Turning your back on life is pointless,” she said. “I’ve tried it myself, so I know.”

“That’s all right then, I’ll take your word for it. In fact, I wasn’t thinking of joining a convent, or not right now.”

“Jesus, Ellen, why d’you have to make everything so difficult? For
me
the convent was pointless—meaning
totally beside the point.
For others, it’s not. But there are more ways of turning your back on life than entering a convent.”

I waited.

“Turning your back on life is pointless because life doesn’t just pack up and go away. And it’s not about going off somewhere
else and finding a different door either. The door is here; it’s the one we see every day, the one with the dirty finger marks,
the one that sticks in the damp. Our own door is the door we have to walk through.”

She set her mug down on the table, took out a cigarette, and lit up. Catherine is strict with herself, she wouldn’t normally
smoke in the kitchen. I’m tired telling her Liam does so she might as well, she only smiles and shakes her head and takes
her unlit fag outside, whatever the weather.

“Maybe the thing about living is simply the living itself,” she said. “I mean, I think it’s the living itself that connects
us with something deeper.”

“You sound like one of Marie Power’s self-help books. What’s all this got to do with me?”

“Nothing. All this is for me, not you; I’m working things out.” She inhaled deeply and breathed out a long jet of smoke. I
waited again.

“Ellen, I’m not trying to make you walk through any door if you don’t want to, truly I’m not. But I’d say that it’s time you
tried opening your eyes and taking a quick peek at where it is you’re standing. If you don’t like what you see, you can always
shut them again.”

“I don’t want to look,” I said. “Once you’ve seen, you’ve seen, it’s inside your head and you can’t get it out.”

“What is it that you’re so afraid of?”

“I don’t know, I’m just afraid. If you’re afraid of the dark, you’re afraid of the dark, you don’t hang around working out
what there is in there that makes you afraid.”

“Would you let me try to talk about it a little?”

“No. I’ve had it with talking. I don’t want to talk, and that’s that.”

“Ellen,” she said gently, “I didn’t say
you
had to talk, I said I would.”

I looked at her.

“You don’t have to say anything.” She went on. “All you have to do is listen. You can hold up your hand if you want me to
stop, and I will, but at least let’s give it a try.”

I wasn’t sure how much she knew, but I’d a fair idea it was more than she let on. Liam talked to her, plus she had eyes in
the back of her head—she missed nothing. Deep down I thought that probably she knew about the spiralling. Part of me was glad.
And part of me wanted to hear what she’d say, but the other part couldn’t bear it.

“Alright,” I said at last. “But if I even begin to lift up my hand, you promise me you’ll stop?”

“I promise.”

“On your honour?”

She shot me a look to see was I serious. I was.

“On my honour,” she said, making a face.

Then I sat waiting for her to tell me where it was she thought I was standing.

“I’d say you left home a good while ago, but you didn’t know you were leaving.” She spoke slowly, her voice going dreamy,
unfocused. “You went strolling along through the woods, heading for open country. Things happened. You met with the talking
fox, and you gave him half your sandwich. The woodcutter told you the way, and the frog with the golden ring in its mouth
knew your name—”

Catherine’s clever, she knows the children never have to ask twice for a story. Most of all, I like fairy tales with youngest
sons and talking animals.

“Is there a raven?”

“I’m the raven,” she said. I laughed. Then I realised I was laughing, so I stopped.

“Now you’re walking along on the edge of the woods, and you’ve come to the place where the road forks and you have to choose
your path—”

I shot her a look, but her voice didn’t change and she kept her eyes fixed on this inner landscape.

“The road forks and you have to choose,” she repeated. “It’s getting dark, the fox has gone hunting, the frog’s hopped off,
the raven’s got laryngitis and lost her voice. But there are signposts. One sign says God and the other says Magic. Decision
time.”

I got up from the chair. “That’s shite,” I told her. “Pure shite.”

“What is?”

“Forks and roads and God and Magic.”

“Ellen,” she said softly, “it’s not going to go away.”

“It might. It did before.”

“Sit down, Ellen. You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

I sat down.

“So, the one sign says Magic… the other says God—”

I shivered. I could feel the fear rising up in me, but my hand stayed flat on the table.

“Ellen,” she said, leaning forward, and suddenly changing tack, “what does Presbyterianism
feel
like?”

“What does
it feel
like?” I was that surprised at the question, I nearly laughed aloud.

“That’s what I asked. Don’t think. Just say.”

“Partly it’s like being in the front room on Sunday,” I said slowly. “Too much furniture, everyone on their best behaviour.
At the same time you’re up on this high, windy plateau with no one around except God. There’s this terrible light. Apocalyptic.
You can’t hide.”

“And Catholicism?”

“Darkness and candles and incense and graven images.” That came out easily; I could get into this.

“And Magic?”

“Snakes. In a pit and it’s dark.”

“So it’s snakes,” she said softly. “Or else it’s the plateau.”

“What’s the point of this?” I could hear my voice, sharp with fear.

“Ellen, you haven’t been given this thing accidentally.”

“What is it, Catherine? Why me, and why won’t it go away when I don’t want it?” Now it was something closer to hysteria I
was hearing.

“I don’t know the answer to any of those questions,” Cather
ine said steadily, “but I think you’ve been given it because as a channel you may not be perfect, but you’ll do.”

“Given? You mean
forced
—”

“It feels like you’re being forced because you won’t accept it. You can change that. But if you decide to accept it, you’ll
need help. I don’t think you have to worry about that; I think it’ll come as you do the work. But it might be as well to be
conscious about where you want the help to come from. As you’ve said yourself, you’re only a channel—”

“For energy. Energy’s neutral.”

“Agreed. But there are other forces that aren’t.”

“No.” I surprised myself by my own vehemence. “It’s not like that, it’s all the one. It’s not
this way’s good, that way’s bad,
it’s all everywhere and the same thing and there’s no limits.” I stopped and put my elbows on the table and rested my head
in my hands. There was this weird feeling in the room. I had no idea what I was talking about or where this stuff came from,
I just knew it gave me a ferocious headache, and I wished it would go away.

“You’re right, Ellen,” Catherine said slowly, and from right inside the weird feeling, “you’re dead right.” She sat back in
her chair and put her hands in her lap and waited. The weirdness eased up, and I began to think I’d imagined it.

Catherine leaned forward again. “I wanted to help you to make a conscious choice because I thought it would steady you, take
away some of the fear,” she said. “But you’re right, that’s beside the point.” She paused. “Ellen, did you know that healers
were recognised by the early church? Not faith healers—gift healers. They weren’t anything to write home about, they were
just part of life, the way doctors are today. And another thing—if you had the gift you were looked on more favourably if
you wanted to be ordained.”

I stared at her. I didn’t know what she was talking about.

She looked at me curiously. “Ellen, what have you got against God?”

“Fear,” I said. My voice came out cracked, like the raven with laryngitis. “Fear God. It’s in the Bible.”

“God is love. That’s in the Bible too.”

“So they told us. I never believed it. I don’t trust God, and I never will.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“Isn’t it? Why? Because He doesn’t care?”

“Because God can’t be anything we can recognise or imagine, or God wouldn’t be God,” she said quietly. “God can’t be like
us—to be trusted or distrusted. A God you felt you could trust would have to be quite small.”

“The minister in Derry called Christ ‘Our Leader.’” Not a flicker. Catherine usually relished the idiotic, but not this time.
She didn’t even smile.

“Christ’s supposed to be tangible,” she said, her voice flat, her face dead straight.

“Feel-my-wound?” I sneered. “Like for doubting Thomas?”

“No, not quite, that was a one-off thing, a proof-of-resurrection. I think Christ’s really an avatar, an avatar of love.”

“What’s an avatar?”

“Something that represents God. Something small enough for us to get our minds around.”

“You’re telling me Christ’s not God?”

“Love is an aspect of God.”

“Only an aspect? What happened to God is love?”

She looked at me, but she didn’t answer.

“I hate this sort of conversation,” I told her, angry enough to forget I’d been afraid. “It just goes on and on, getting vaguer
and vaguer, more and more abstract. I don’t want to think about God at all.”

“Then don’t. God will most likely come and get you if He wants you. If He doesn’t, He’ll leave you alone.” She said it so
casually it took me a second to hear it.

“Stop.” My hand shot up of its own accord, then the other one joined it and I clapped them both to my ears. It was like being
ten, when Brian was teasing me and it was the only way I could defend myself. Catherine sat looking at me. I kept my hands
there till the look on her face changed. Then slowly I lowered them. She got up and began to collect her things.

“It’s your decision,” she said. “Only you can decide.”

“Liam—”

“You can stand up to Liam when you want to. I’ve seen you. You won’t get off the hook by blaming Liam.”

L
iam won a big prize a few weeks later, so for once in our lives we had money going spare.

We bought a new range for the kitchen. Well, not new, secondhand, but still about fifty years more recent than the old one.
It heats the water and runs eight radiators, and it’s oil so I don’t have to be forever lugging in solid fuel. I love it.
I used to listen to women saying they loved their kitchen appliances, and I’d be certain sure that I’d never come to that.
And now, here I am, saying I love my Stanley. Comfort. How easy put to sleep we are.

But I don’t love the car, though that was upgraded as well and these days it mostly starts.

Liam didn’t want the range or the car; he wanted to leave the children with Connor and Kathleen and spend the lot on a trip.
A long trip—China or Africa—somewhere neither of us had ever been or were ever likely to go. Which for me was everywhere outside
of Ireland, but Liam had travelled in Europe when he was a student and had been to India two years later. He’d got the taste.

We argued and argued. I told him the car was a heap, we needed heating, we needed professional work on the plumbing, we might
even start to pay off the loan from the bank—

He said the bank could wait. He promised he’d ask Tom for help with the plumbing, and somehow he’d get me some heating.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “A trip like this is worth twenty cars, it’ll change who we are, and that’ll change our whole
lives. And anyway, we can have Connor’s old car for a song when the new one’s bought.”

But I wouldn’t shift, I kept saying the same thing over and over. I was tired of always, always making do.

Then Liam said he’d let go of the trip if I’d give the Healing a try.

I thought I hadn’t heard him right, so he had to repeat it.

This time I knew I’d heard right, but I said nothing. I sat and stared, for I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“I’ll give up the trip, I’ll change the car, I’ll get you some heating and anything you else you want for the house if there’s
any money left over. And I’m not saying make a big deal of it. You don’t have to stick up notices or charge people, or do
anything else you’re not happy with. All I’m asking is that you stop turning folk away when they come to the door.”

Still I couldn’t speak.

“Ellen? Ellen, answer me—”

“Just heating,” I said at last, my voice coming out in a croak. “You go. Forget about the car. Forget about the bank. Just
go and I’ll stay, and we’ll pay for the heating out of what we save on my not coming.”

“No. We go together, or else we both stay and you give the Healing a try.”