The Bird Woman (31 page)

“You’re not cross, Mammy?” he said, stopping midsentence, suddenly anxious.

“No, darlin’, I’m not cross,” I said, one arm round his waist, the other hand stroking the hair back from his forehead. I
should throw my-mother-in-me a bone more often, I thought; let her lie there, chewing away at it, keeping herself out of mischief
I watched Suzanna take three biscuits from the tin at once, her curly head turned away from me, attention absorbed in her
booty. She must have felt my eyes on her, for she sneaked a quick, nonchalant glance, saw there wasn’t a threat, then laid
the three biscuits side by side on the table.

“What did she give you for us?” she asked, not looking up from the biscuits.

“Who’s
she,
the Cat’s Grandmother?” It came out quick as a flash and sharp as a lemon. So much for throwing my mother a bone.

“Catherine, Mammy, it’s Catherine she means. What did Catherine send for us?” This time it was Andrew, still snuggled into
my side.

“Catherine isn’t very well,” I told them. I don’t encourage expectations, I’d usually reprove them even for asking, but I
saw Catherine so clearly, alone in her newly smart house, and I softened.

“She
might
have had something put aside for you, I don’t know,” I told them. “But this morning she was sick, so even if she had, I think
it might have slipped her mind.”

“Insects or flowers?”

“No insects or flowers anymore, remember? She’s making things from the sea.”

For Suzanna the sea meant ice creams and fish suppers and hurdy-gurdies.

“Not the sea like the Irish Sea,” I said. “The sea in the West, the Atlantic Ocean.”

Then I told them about the sea urchins and lobsters and conger eels, the long, shiny ropes of seaweed, the rock pools full
of glass water.

“And d’you think the seaweed’s going to be all slimy when you touch it, Mammy?”

“You do, but it isn’t. And that makes you want to laugh.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it just does—”

When Liam came in we were still at it. He stood at the door, shaking the water from his jacket, and I moved to get up and
put on the kettle, but he laid his hand on my shoulder, restraining me. He kept it there for longer than he needed to, and
I felt his life so warm and strong in him that I remembered again about forgetting what I had.

He made himself coffee and sat with us and listened to the children chattering on about starfish and stingrays and sharks
and the special invitations that Catherine was going to send them for her party.

He stretched out his hand for a biscuit. “What’s it like?” he asked me.

“Have you not seen it, Daddy?”

He shook his head. “Dermot’s seen sketches. I haven’t seen Catherine properly for ages, she’s been too busy.”

“I thought it was great,” I said. “I couldn’t keep my hands off it.”

He smiled, an amused, indulgent smile.

“What are you smiling at?”

“You. Your hands. You and Catherine are the same. You both get at life through your hands, though in different ways.”

I was tired and suddenly touchy with hangover, so I didn’t smile back, I opened my hands and laid them palms down on the table.
I don’t know what it is about setting them down flat like that, but it’s like standing out under the sky with your feet planted
firm on the ground, a wee bit apart, and it always helps. When I was calm again I got up and took Liam’s dinner out of the
oven, where it was keeping warm. I let the children sit with him till he’d finished, then chased them both next door to do
their homework. I wanted to talk to him about Catherine.

“She said I was making her anxious on account of my liking it all so much,” I told him. “She said I never liked the teapots,
and they walked themselves out through the door.”

“It’ll sell,” Liam said. “People come to Catherine’s openings with the cheque already signed. All they have to do is fill
in the amount.”

“That can change.”

“Anything can change. But having that sort of buzz around your work is half the battle.”

“She said her work was pure kitsch. She said if she sold the way she does and it wasn’t kitsch you’d all hate her.”

He laughed and swung his chair back on its legs. “Seaside motifs are big-time naff—bathroom stuff, and she knows it. But if
it’s kitsch enough she can claim she’s being ironic and it might just pass. Anyway, she’s got enough money to be going on
with, and we’ll all forgive her everything if it doesn’t sell. She can be poor but loved. See how that feels for a change.”

“She needs to sell.”

His eyebrows went up. “Any more than anyone else?”

“She’s pregnant.”

His chair came out of its swing and hit the floor with a thump. “She’s what?”

“She’s nineteen weeks pregnant.”

“But she can’t be—not Catherine.”

“Try telling
her
that.”

It was no good the next day either. It came alright, but it wouldn’t move through me, it was as if all the little ducts and
valves it normally uses were silted up and blocked. I sat by the phone, cancelling anyone I could get hold of. I’d never needed
to cancel before, so it hadn’t occurred to me to ask for people’s numbers, and finding them out of the phone book took forever
so in the end I just gave up and stuck another notice onto the door.

I said there was a funeral in Monaghan I had to go to. I always say I have to go to a funeral if I need an excuse in a hurry.
Liam couldn’t believe it the first time he heard me, he thinks saying a thing out loud is halfway to making it happen. That’s
stupid. It’s a good excuse, and it hurts no one. Anyway, going to a funeral’s a courtesy, half the people there have come
out of friendship for someone they know in the family, it doesn’t matter that they’ve never laid eyes on the deceased. And
I had to say something, I wasn’t about to tell them I couldn’t work because I’d had a heavy night two days before.

It was horrible being me. My head still ached and ached, and the energy crackled about, trying to find a way through and failing,
for every channel it normally used was still blocked. It felt hot and stingy and dirty in there, as though a great swarm of
angry insects was on the loose inside me, all buzzing and crawling and biting and never for one second staying still.

I kept thinking about Catherine. I worried because she was so alone, and I’d never thought of her like that before, I always
saw
her as being so self-sufficient. Which she was—is—everything doesn’t change completely because you’re pregnant, but at the
same time somehow it does. I fretted some more, then made up my mind to phone, though I hardly ever phoned her and never without
a definite reason. No one answered, so I let it ring on until it switched to the answering machine, but I didn’t leave a message
because I couldn’t think what to say. I tried her mobile as well, but it was the same.

I told myself not to be stupid, I hadn’t worried before I knew, so why was I worrying now? Besides, there were loads of people
in Catherine’s life, which is something I often forgot, for she was my only friend. But I kept seeing her bowed head when
she told me she wouldn’t have an abortion. It upset me so much I almost wished I could pray for her. People round here are
always praying for each other, they really believe it, they send up prayers in flocks like little grey birds flying up into
heaven to say their piece to God. They should be so lucky.

Still, my mood was so strange that I thought I might give it a try. I walked up and down, searching around in my mind for
a God I could trust enough to pray to. It wasn’t any use. I wouldn’t pray to the angry black God of my childhood, I wouldn’t
even say Catherine’s name out loud to Him for fear He might hear it and write it down in His book. If I’d been a Catholic
I could have prayed to Our Lady, which is what they call Mary here, as though she’s mine as well as theirs. But I wasn’t,
so I couldn’t.

Women down here are forever complaining about having Mary for a role model, they don’t want to be virgin mothers, forever
meek, forever mild, they want a bit more than that to aspire to. Well, they’re right, but at least she’s a female being. They
should try having only a Trinity without so much as a smell of a woman about it.

Liam had been more disturbed by the news than I’d expected.
More disbelieving as well, he’d kept saying over and over that it couldn’t be true, he said it so often that in the end I’d
got annoyed.

“Why shouldn’t Catherine be pregnant?” I’d asked him. “Sure, can’t anyone get pregnant? Sometimes it seems to me that the
only ones who can’t are the ones who want it most.”

He’d shut up about not believing it then. Instead he’d said Catherine hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend, and he hadn’t heard any
talk.

I’d understood then, or I’d thought I had. Liam and Catherine were close; they were colleagues in a shared world, and more
than that they were “mates” in that comfortable, easy, everyday way that breeds a steady affection. Perhaps he assumed a love
in her life, perhaps he was hurt that she hadn’t said anything? Suddenly, unaccountably, I’d been hurt for him as well.

“Maybe she was working up to telling you. You said yourself that you haven’t seen her for ages—”

“Does she know you were going to tell me?”

This time it was me who was surprised. I’d not have told him if I hadn’t cleared it with Catherine first, I thought he’d have
known that. She’d hesitated when I’d asked her, then nodded her assent.

“She does,” I’d told him.

There’d been a thud from next door and a muffled squeal, but neither of us had moved to intervene. Liam’s eyes had been fixed
on my face.

“Who is it?” he’d asked me, his face almost apprehensive.

“I don’t know, she wouldn’t tell me. She kept saying it was only a one-night stand so it didn’t matter.”

“It’ll matter alright when she can’t pay the bills and she’s looking for money for maintenance.”

His tone had been coarse, almost brutal, making me angry.
Why did he have to say that? Why did men always move in a dead-straight line from pregnancy to paternity to money?

“Catherine’s very independent,” I’d told him. “I doubt she’d take anything from anyone, whoever it was.”

“Can’t you see who it is?”

I’d got to my feet then and started clearing the table. I’d hoped he could read my face, I’d hoped it would tell him loud
and clear that he didn’t deserve a reply.

“Ellen, I asked you a question—”

“I heard, and the answer’s
no.
I can’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Very principled I’d sounded, very high and mighty, but I’d wanted to know as well, and my thoughts had kept sneaking back
in that direction. I even considered trying again, and it was hard to be obedient to myself when I forbade it. And I honestly
didn’t like this prurience in myself; I thought it was Catherine’s business, and if she wanted to keep it private then she
was entitled to do exactly that.

But if I’d known what I know now, I might have let myself.

It was around that time that people began to turn up at night without ringing for an appointment. They’d have done a day’s
work then got into the car and driven someone sick a good long distance.

I had no idea there were so many people who lived, day in and day out, with pain or sickness or with someone trapped inside
pain and sickness, I never thought about it at all before I started doing this. If you’re healthy and everyone belonging to
you is healthy, then you don’t. And you don’t see the sick because when they’re too sick to be out they stay home, and when
they’re well enough to be out you see them and you take it for granted that
they’re well Before I did this I thought—if I thought at all—that either sickness killed you or you got better.

Unless you were old, that is. I knew that people who were old got arthritis and angina and diabetes and stuff like that, but
that was about being old and old age seems a long way off when you’re under forty, it seems like another country that you’ll
maybe end up visiting one day, but perhaps not. And I didn’t understand how much people who are old protect the young from
knowledge of old age, I didn’t understand their feelings of failure and shame when the body starts to wear out, I didn’t have
the wit to see that behind that bent knee there’s most likely pain, that behind the figure stuck to the chair lies malaise
and exhaustion.