The Bird Woman (28 page)

I think these things, but I don’t say them, things are hidden until they want to be known. And who would understand me, when
I don’t believe in God, and I don’t understand them myself?

J
ULY
2000

I
heard the latch on the gate click, and I knew without turning round that it was Suzanna, left back from Roisin’s by Roisin’s
mother.

When she saw Catherine she stopped dead, put down her schoolbag, and gave her a long, hard look.

“You haven’t been here for ages and ages and
ages”
she told her indignantly. “You haven’t been to see me for at
least
a year.”

I laughed and put my arm round her and pulled her to me in a hug. For once she was barely exaggerating. She squirmed and wriggled
herself into my side, still staring accusingly at Catherine, waiting for her to explain herself, and it had better be good.

Catherine was teaching in Cork now, she’d given up Limerick, which meant she wasn’t sharing lifts with Liam anymore, nor calling
in to drink tea and talk shop. She’d been in Cork since the college year started last autumn; she was travelling up and down
each day instead of staying over, and that takes time. Plus she’d had her “idea,” so every spare minute she had was being
used on her work. I didn’t mind; it hadn’t occurred to me to think of her absence as desertion—I was way too busy myself.
And I knew she’d come back when her life had calmed down, and
maybe by then mine might have done the same. Besides, artists are like that, they disappear for months on end, it’s only part
of the process.

I’ve a show coming up in November.
You’ll hear someone say that in August. Already the eyes have turned inwards, the banned cigarette has reappeared in the
hand.

Fine. Hope the work goes well. See you at the opening.
That’s the response. Then they vanish into their work, which is only what they need to be doing, and Catherine’s no different
from anyone else. But the children didn’t know that—I should have explained.

Then Andrew came round the side of the house, saw Catherine sitting there, hesitated, made his face blank, and drew himself
up just that wee bit taller. Catherine pulled out the seat beside her and offered it gravely. He smiled at her and she smiled
back, and he put his togs down on the table and stood there, smiling and smiling. I told him to go inside and get himself
some juice, and he went, but reluctantly, and he kept looking over his shoulder to make sure she’d still be there when he
got back.

“He’s pleased to see you.”

She nodded. “I’ve missed them,” she said, “and Suzanna’s right, it is a long time. I can’t get over how quickly they change
at this age.”

“He’s been out with Eamon,” I told her.

Suzanna was busy all summer, she had friends coming out of her ears, she’d go on and off them at will—it didn’t matter to
her, there was always another. But Eamon was Andrew’s only close friend, and his mother was relieved when the friendship took,
for both boys were solitary by nature. Eamon was an only child, and his mother had time on her hands and was into walks and
educational expeditions and trips to the sea, which was only
an hour away by car. Andrew was always invited, and mostly he went, especially in summer when the things they did were outside.
Sometimes I’d ask him if he wanted to bring Eamon home, and he might say yes but more often he’d look at his feet and say
that he’d see him at school the next day.

I didn’t push him. Andrew liked to keep his home to himself, and Eamon’s mother had made it clear that we didn’t have to take
turns.

Andrew came out of the house with his juice and the red notebook under his arm. That was so Catherine would see how he loves
it, I thought, but he wasn’t just flattering her, that notebook was
him.
He’s an old-fashioned child, happy with pencils and paper, uneasy in the fast, bright world of PlayStations and mobile phones.

“How’s Eamon these days?” Catherine asked. “Is he still taller or have you overtaken him?”

“I’m taller,” Andrew said proudly. “But he still looks taller because his hair grows sticking up but mine grows flat.” Andrew
ran his hand over his hair, which was fine and smooth despite my frizz and Liam’s curls. “Sometimes he puts soap in it,” he
added, after a moment’s thought.

“What for?” she asked.

“So it’ll stick up more,” Andrew said.

“Does it work?”

“Yes. But then when it’s raining it runs down his forehead and stings his eyes so you think he’s crying.”

Catherine put her head back and laughed. Andrew looked at her for a second to check it wasn’t at his expense; then he grinned
and looked pleased, proud of himself that he’d made her laugh.

“Good swim?” she asked.

He nodded; he’d just taken a big bite of shortbread, and his mouth was full.

“River or sea? No, don’t say, let me smell you, I bet I can tell” She leaned over and pushed her nose into his hair and had
a good sniff. “River,” she said. “Definitely river. But was it the Nore or the Barrow?”

“Barrow,” he said through a splutter of crumbs.

Catherine laughed and flicked crumbs off her sweatshirt.

“Kilberry?”

This time he only nodded furiously, his face glowing.

“Where have you been? Why didn’t you come and see us?” Suzanna demanded, interrupting this love-in. She was seven years old,
and she said what she wanted to say. Now her voice told Catherine she wasn’t about to be charmed and bamboozled like Andrew.

“I’m sorry, Suzanna,” Catherine said quietly. “It’s because I’ve been working so hard.”

“Mammy works hard and Daddy works hard and Dermot works hard and all the aunties and uncles work hard,” Suzanna said flatly.
“Everyone works hard; it doesn’t mean they don’t have time to come and see me.”

“You haven’t been to see
her
either,” Andrew said, rushing to Catherine’s defence.

We all looked at him.

“
I’ve
been to see her,” he said, blushing furiously.

“No you haven’t—”

“Have so, haven’t I, Mammy? The time we both went to Catherine’s house on her birthday and I saw the rats.” He turned on Suzanna.
“You went to Roisin’s to play;
you
didn’t want to come with us.”

“Stop squabbling,” I said, trying to keep the laugh out of my voice. Andrew’s so serious that people often laugh at him, and
it
upsets him. I was trying to teach him to ignore it, and sometimes he did but sometimes it got through. I didn’t know Andrew’s
secret, so all I could do was watch and wait and love him, which wasn’t hard because we shared so much.

“She’s here now, isn’t she?” I asked them. “If you go on squabbling she’ll go away. Don’t pester Catherine, be nice to her.
Then she might just come and see us again when she’s finished her work.” I stopped. I hadn’t meant any reproach, the words
had just come out that way.

She smiled at me, a no-offence-taken smile.

We were sitting outside at the white plastic table I’d bought in Dunnes Stores four years earlier, when I’d given up on the
stone one that Liam kept promising to make.

“I’ve done the drawings,” he’d said as he’d helped me undo the cords that had kept it lashed in its place upside down on the
top of the car.

“Open your eyes, Liam. Take a good look all around and tell me what it is that you’re seeing,” I’d said. “Flowers. Leaves
on the trees. Wee birds hopping about the place. It’s called summer. It’s here now; in two months’ time it won’t be. This
is a table, Liam, it’s for putting food on. It may not be aesthetic, but it does the job. Besides, we’d look well, wouldn’t
we, all of us sitting around a set of drawings, eating?”

He’d laughed. “The cobbler’s children never have shoes,” he’d said. I’d laughed as well. What wasn’t done wasn’t done, it
carried no baggage, it was simply a statement of fact back then. Back then when the world was young, or that’s how it seems
to me now.

“How’s it going anyway?” I asked Catherine. “Liam said you’d had an idea, but that was ages ago. He said he didn’t know what
it was, because you wouldn’t tell him.”

“Sometimes it’s best not to say an idea out loud too soon,” she
said. “Sometimes you have to keep it so secret it’s nearly a secret from yourself as well”

“Why?” Andrew asked.

“So you can creep up on it when it’s not looking. Catch hold of it by its tail. Pull and pull till the mouse pops out of its
hole.”

“Can you say now?” This from Suzanna.

“I can. It’s about things that live in the sea.”

“No more teapots and insects?”

She laughed. “No more teapots and insects, thank God. I never want to think Bugs and Blooms again as long as I live.”

“So why d’you want to make things from the sea?” Suzanna asked her.

“It’s a long story,” Catherine said. No one moved.

“When I was about the age you are now I had an uncle David who was a priest in Macau. He was my godfather as well as my uncle,
so when it came to my birthday he always sent me a present. That year it was Chinese water flowers. Do you know about Chinese
water flowers? No? Well, I didn’t either, so when I tore open the packet I thought there was nothing in it at all. Then I
tipped it upside down and shook it, and five little dried-up lumpy things fell out.”

We waited.

“The thing about Chinese water flowers is they don’t look like flowers at all, or not to begin with.”

“Wasn’t there a label?”

“The label was in Chinese. But there was a note.”

I glanced at Suzanna and Andrew. They both looked like goldfish.

“The note said to drop them into a glass of water and wait. So I did, and nothing happened. I went out to play, then tea,
then homework, and then it was time for bed. All that waiting and
still
nothing had happened. I took the glass upstairs, but I’d more or less given up hope.” She took a sip from her tea.

“When I woke up next morning the first thing I saw was the glass. Inside the glass were five coloured flowers that swayed
about under the water and grew out of five little stones. I thought they were magic. The most beautiful flowers I’d seen.”

Catherine smiled to herself. We knew she was seeing them again.

“D’you remember when Dermot went to China last year for that show?” she asked.

We all nodded.

“Well, I’d told him the story, so he went on a search and he brought me a packet home. They’re not real flowers at all; they’re
pretend flowers made of very thin paper that’s wrapped around the stones. When they’ve been underwater for long enough, the
paper gets wet through, then unwraps itself, and opens out into flowers. Well, that started me thinking about things that
open out in water. I remembered all the treasures I’d brought home from the sea when I was small, and how they changed when
they dried out. Stones that lost their colour and shells that lost their shine. Seaweed, just like the Chinese flowers, but
smelly as well as dry. Then I got out my sketchbook and started to draw.”

For a moment there was silence. Then Suzanna asked could she come to Catherine’s house and see?

“Not yet,” Catherine said. “I want you to see it properly, I want you and Andrew to come to the party I’ll have at the start
of the exhibition. Will you do that for me?”

They both nodded solemnly.

“And I want your mother to come all by herself and see it at my house before it all goes up to Dublin for the show.”

My face must have shown what I felt.

“D’you not want to see it?” she asked.

“Certainly I want to see it,” I lied, and straightaway got up and started clearing the table. Catherine never showed me her
work. I
saw
her work, but I never had to walk around it saying I like this or I don’t like that, making comments and suggestions the
way artists do for each other. Liam did all that. I wouldn’t know how.

“Come some afternoon when you’re not full up,” she said, watching my face. “Next week? The week after?”

I went and got the book. “Next week’s completely full, but there’s only one so far in the afternoon of the Thursday after.
I know her, so I could ring and change the time. Is that soon enough? I could come for a couple of hours and still be back
for the children… ?”

“We’ll mind ourselves, Mammy,” Andrew said. “Then you can stay for as long as you like—”

“Good idea,” Catherine said. “Thursday it is, then.” She got to her feet.

I was late. I drove to Catherine’s, the first rain smattering the windscreen, the trees and fields fading off to either side.
A wind had sprung up, stirring the heavy air that had weighted us down for days.

You’d think I’d have known how to get to Catherine’s—I did know—but somehow I always got lost and this time the rain made
it worse. It was farm country, a maze of small roads and overgrown hedges and fading signposts; no matter how hard I tried
to remember I never could hold the way in my head.

I stopped at an unsigned junction and peered through the rain for clues. I took a chance and turned right, but I’d no idea
where I was. The wind was getting stronger, and the rain had gone from smatter to hard drumming—I’d have turned the wipers
up if the high speed had worked, but it didn’t. I switched on the lights instead, and their daylight beams put a gleam on
the tatters of leaves that were flying green from the trees. I checked my watch. Well after four. Two o’clock, I’d told Catherine.
I glanced at my face in the mirror. My skin was flushed, and my eyes were shiny and large and my hair had a life of its own.
My mouth kept grinning although I was lost and late. What would I tell Catherine? Not the truth, I was certain of that, surprised
at the realisation. Time was when it wouldn’t have occurred to me to tell her anything else. I cursed myself for not having
had the wit to bring the mobile. Perhaps I should just wrong-foot her, I thought, breeze in and pretend I’d said four o’clock,
not two. As soon as this thought crossed my mind, I surprised myself over again. Why was I thinking of lying to Catherine,
who knew my most intimate secrets? Why hadn’t I phoned her before I’d left home so she’d know I was going to be late?