The Bird Woman (34 page)

You share the same bed year in and year out, but if you think you know each other’s thoughts then think again. This was my
latest discovery—the way that I felt about Dermot was how Liam had always felt about Marie.

And now here she was, two days after Christmas, and she’d brought a child for my hands who should have been home in his bed.

“You’re staying with Dermot?” I asked when I’d finished on James.

She shook her head. “No, not with Dermot. We’re in Callan for Christmas with their gran.”

I nodded. I’d forgotten that Marie was almost local.

“I’ll leave them over with Dermot for the New Year,” she said.
“Or that’s the plan for the moment.” The child looked up at her quickly, anxiety like a flickering light through his snuffles.

“Now away off next door and watch the TV with Andrew and Suzanna,” she told him, dumping any lingering pretence that they
were here for him. “I need to have a word or two with Ellen before we go.” She stroked his hair briefly with one hand, then
propelled him off through the kitchen door with the other. For a moment I nearly felt sorry for Dermot; he wouldn’t have stood
much chance against Marie.

“Could we go into your room? I want to talk to you in private.” Her eyes roamed the kitchen as though there were microphones
hidden away in the walls.

“It’s freezing in there,” I said shortly. I was annoyed, we’d never exactly been friends, but there hadn’t been any bad feeling
either. If she wanted to talk why hadn’t she said it straight out when she’d phoned?

“I don’t mind the cold so long as it’s private,” she said, her hand on the door.

So I gave in and fetched the blow heater and followed her through. She got straight to the point, which was Dermot—the state
he was in, how good Liam had been—and how it was time now for Catherine to come onboard.

It all came out fast, with behind it this relentless determination. I’d no time to figure out her agenda: all I could do was
stall and try to deflect her from Catherine and little Dan.

“Catherine?” I asked, hearing a feeble surprise in my voice. “What makes you think Catherine can help? Liam’s every bit as
close to Dermot as Catherine is, and he’s been trying for months and getting exactly nowhere.”

“Dermot’s not in love with Liam.”

Drinkers. Sooner or later they talk in their cups.

“What Dermot feels about Catherine is Dermot’s problem. Catherine doesn’t feel the same way.”

She stared at me. “I know that,” she said. Her face was calm and expressionless, but her eyes never once left mine.

“What exactly is it you think that Catherine can do?” I asked cautiously.

“Get him signed up for a programme to dry him out,” she said. “Then, when he’s off the drink, get him back to his work.”

Marie was wearing a dark-red sweater that showed off her figure. Her face was made up, she looked pretty and sexy, and she
wasn’t asking, she was stating. It was weird. Her calm, and the way she looked, and the words coming out of her mouth. “Catherine
thinks she can do it alone, but she doesn’t know her arse from her elbow. Children need a father. Dan’s no different from
my two.”

That stopped me short, which was exactly what it was meant to do. I got up and walked across the room, furious with her, though
I wasn’t sure why.

“Are you trying to tell me that Dermot’s Danny’s father?”

“You know I am.”

“Why would you think a thing like that?”

“Dermot. He told me himself on the night of Catherine’s show.”

“Lies and wishful thinking. You said it yourself, he’s in love with her. As well as that there’s the drink.”

“It could be, but it isn’t. And there’s plenty of talk to back it up—ask anyone who saw that baby before she hid him away
at her sister’s.”

“If there’s talk it’s all coming from Dermot. Catherine’s not telling anyone who Danny’s father is. Ask her. She looks you
smack in the eye and says it’s someone we none of us know.”

“She’s told you.”

“She has not.”

“You weren’t one bit surprised just now when I said it was Dermot—”

I opened my mouth to argue, but what was the use? Marie’s nobody’s fool, she had read me right, and more than that, I could
see from her face that she’d guessed how it was that I knew.

“Dermot’s besotted about her, and she hasn’t seen him for months. Now she won’t let him see that baby at all, and it’s making
him worse.”

“She’s gone to her sister’s.”

“I
know
she’s gone to her fucking sister’s, you’d think her sister lives in Africa to hear you all talk. Well she doesn’t, she lives
in Kildare, about an hour’s drive up the road.” She stopped and steadied her voice with an effort. When she continued it was
even and expressionless, like her face. “He phones, and whoever answers says she’s not there. He’s been over four times, but
she doesn’t come out and they won’t let him through the door. They’ve told him they’ll call the Guards if he comes again.”

That was cold alright; it shocked me in spite of myself. I stopped pacing about and sat down again across from her. I would
hear her out, I decided. That wouldn’t hurt me, or Catherine either.

“What is it you want me to do, Marie?”

“You’re her friend, persuade her to see him.” She was urgent now, the unnatural calm finally slipping. “He needs to see her—not
seeing her’s making him worse. That’s why I’m sitting here dumping this shit in your lap.”

“It won’t solve anything. She doesn’t want to be with him.”

“I know that, but it might calm him down and she might be able to talk him into getting help—” She got up, stared at the
black uncurtained window, sat down again. “Ellen, in two days’ time I’m supposed to leave the boys with him for the week,
and they need to go. They’re dying about him—you saw James when I even hinted it might not happen. But I
can’t
when he’s the way he is, I can’t. And that makes him worse as well. What would
you
do if it was Andrew and Suzanna?”

“Cancel,” I said, no hesitation. “He’s in no state to mind children. He’s in no state to mind himself.”

“I’ve cancelled the last two visits.” She slumped back in her chair, defeated. I sat watching her, saying nothing.

“And what about
my
life?” she suddenly said, and she might have been asking herself, for her face was moody, withdrawn, her eyes avoiding mine.
“I’ll have to put it on hold again—yet again—and people don’t just wait around, you know, they run out of patience, take themselves
off, find someone else without all these problems—”

I realised she was talking about a lover. I don’t know what my face was doing, but it must have been doing something because
all of a sudden the apathy went. She stood up, took out a cigarette, lit it, the lighter trembling in her hand.

“Saint fucking Catherine.” She inhaled, then blew the smoke out in my face. “I don’t understand you, Ellen,” she said. “You
judge me for wanting a life after Dermot, yet Catherine sleeps with your husband and that’s all grand by you.”

I didn’t hear her at first, or rather I heard her words perfectly, but they didn’t go in. Even when they did I understood
only that she was telling me something important. I didn’t understand how it related to me.

I suppose she must have been standing there watching this happening on my face, at the same time as I was watching what was
happening on hers.

I saw her slowly realise that this was all news to me.

“Oh, Jesus, Ellen,” she said. She put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes looked at mine with a sort of despair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, so sorry, I thought—”

She broke off, then she started again.

“I thought you’d have
seen
it. I didn’t know you didn’t know—”

If she hadn’t said that I might have doubted. But she did, so there was nowhere left for me to go.

And I’m certain that she was as horrified as she looked. Marie’s a strange woman—self-contained, set on some goal of her own
that’s away beyond me—but she isn’t malicious. She’d assumed that I’d know through the Seeing. She’d assumed there’d been
some sort of reconciliation that meant that Catherine and Liam and I could go on being friends. She wouldn’t ever have said
it otherwise.

But I’ve never had the Seeing for my own. Neither for Liam, nor for the children. I had it for Robbie when he died, but that
was a long time after he’d ceased being one of my own.

A beast came and sat in my entrails and devoured them. Its teeth gnawed my bowels, its claws gouged my heart, its foul breath
breathed in my face when I lay down at night and when I awoke in the morning. It lived inside me and gave me no peace.

No peace for Liam either. All I could think of was what he had done with Catherine. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t rest, I followed
him round, spitting bile. It was a living nightmare. A thousand times worse than the pain of the first discovery.

“How many times?”

“Ellen, what are you doing this for, why do you have to know?”

“How many times?”

“In all? About four.”

“Liar.”

“What’s the point of this? Whatever I say you don’t believe me. What’s the point of me telling the truth if you turn it into
a lie?”

“Liar, liar, liar. Four means eight, eight means sixteen. I know you Liam—tell me a figure, I know to double it. If you say
four, it’s eight at the very least.”

Silence. He tries to not answer back, to end the exchange, to go on doing what he’s doing.

I’m not having any of that.

“How
dare
you talk about truth. You don’t know the meaning of truth, you wouldn’t know truth if it sat on your head and beat its heels
in your face.”

Who is this woman, this crazed egomaniac, this foul wee tyrant who thinks the whole world revolves around her betrayal?

When she wasn’t shouting she wept; she wept so her heart would break from self-righteousness and self-pity.

The children were stunned, they didn’t know what was happening. But something was, they were certain of that—they’d never
seen me like this. I’d never seen it myself. I was possessed—all that other stuff that I’d casually called possession was
nothing at all to this.

Catherine came. I stood at the door, screaming insults till she finally turned and got into the car and drove away. She phoned,
but I slammed the receiver down and hurled the phone at the wall. When she tried again I said things I didn’t know were in
me to say, things that stank with the breath of the beast.

Liam tried too. He waited till I was running down, then he stood in the kitchen and tried to make me understand.

“Ellen, I know you’re hurt and betrayed, but you have to for
give me, there isn’t any other way. If we go on living together it has to be because we want it—both of us—regardless of whose
fault this is, and I’m not saying it isn’t mine. But if you
can’t
forgive me, if you
keep
going on like this, then I don’t want to stay because I can’t stand it and that’s the truth.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Truth?” I sneered at him. “What would
you
know about truth? And what can’t you stand, Liam, ask yourself that? Is it me? Or is it what you’ve done to me and the children?”

He didn’t answer.

“And I don’t
have
to forgive you, Liam. I don’t
have
to do anything.
You
have to
earn
my forgiveness.”

He sighed and turned away. I went back to chopping the carrots, hot tears splashing down onto my hands.

Dermot came and saved me. He was drunk or hungover, I don’t know which, he was unshaven, red in the face, and he smelled.

I told him to go away.

He took hold of me by the upper arms and pushed me down into a chair.

“Sit down there, you stupid bitch,” he said. “Sit there while I talk some sense into you. After that I’ll be more than happy
to take myself out of your sight.”

I sat. I was too worn out to take him on as well.

Dermot got straight to the point.

“What is it, Ellen? Your husband’s cock in another woman, is that what all this is about? Is that why you’re wrecking your
marriage and hurting Catherine and frightening your children silly?”

Hurting Catherine.
I heard that through the exhaustion, but I couldn’t believe my ears. “You have it the wrong way round, Dermot,” I said. “Drink
has pickled what’s left of your brain, Catherine’s the one who’s hurt me.”

He lit up a cigarette.

“That’s how you see it, is it? Well, listen carefully, Ms. Wronged-Wife, while I tell you a thing or two.” He paused, took
a drag at his cigarette, and gave me a look that kept me sitting where I was. “Catherine’s in love with Liam. Has been for
ages, most likely still is, I can’t say for sure, she isn’t speaking to me at the moment.” I opened my mouth to protest, but
he silenced me with a gesture. “
Listen,
Ellen. I’m telling you what really happened, so fucking sit there and
listen.
You and Liam were going through a bad patch, remember? Liam lost his way over that commission, he was very depressed, then
Catherine got him the job in Limerick, trying to help you both out.” He looked round for an ashtray, found none, used a plate.
“So they’re working together, travelling together, the proximity gets too much, they have it off a few times. So?
It doesn’t matter, Ellen.
What matters is that they both pulled back. Liam came home to you. Catherine walked away.”