The Bird Woman (20 page)

I’m making her sound sly, but she isn’t, she’s only well able for him and very determined. Way too determined. Liam likes
it that she stands up for herself; he thinks Suzanna’s pure heaven, faults and all, and she is—was—especially then, when she
was three going on four. She was one of those delicious children, all merriment and brown curls and little round limbs and
bright eyes.

I didn’t want to squash her down, yet I needed to encourage Andrew. Sometimes I ached for him, he had to try so hard, while
the whole wide world responded to Suzanna. Often and often we’ve stood in the road watching the young calves come galloping
and barging across the field, stopping dead at the gate in sudden quiet, their liquid eyes and the soft blowing sound of their
breath in the rainy air. Suzanna could stand close, her round eyes on theirs, and they’d watch her and you could see they
liked her, for they’d drop their heads down for a better look. Andrew would stand back a bit and a little to the side, but
if he made a sudden movement they’d skitter and start away. Yet Suzanna could laugh and clap her hands together and bang with
a stick on the gate, and they only drew closer again to watch her.

I don’t worry about the way she is, but I worry that she makes Andrew worse than he is, that Little-Miss-Win-All-Hearts makes
his heart thinner and stranger than it should be, makes it fly off up to a rafter, where it sits, hunched in on itself, like
an owl. It’s hard to get it right, and many’s the time I didn’t and don’t, but I was lucky in that I had time with them while
they were very young. And the gentle start to the Healing meant that I went on having time for at least another year.

When I landed in here I was moving way too fast for the country, but once I slowed down I surprised myself at how easily I
settled in these fields. All those farmers in my mother’s family, or maybe it was the memories of my childhood in Dunnamanagh.
Whatever the way of it, there was nothing I liked better than wandering about in the meadows, and having children to teach
let me out from under the weight of my own belief that the kitchen was where I should be. Spring after spring we walked up
the road and I showed them the grey paired leaves of the woodbine; the comely, red-stemmed herb robert; the ferny, singing
green growth of the cow parsley. We went to the river and studied the frog spawn, the blue spears of the flags pushing up
through the wetland, the strange segmented spikes of the horsetails before they opened. They saw mallard duck in the rushes,
the blue flash of a kingfisher, the herons standing about in the shallows, stoic and unsociable, beings from some other realm.

They knew the cattle as well, the black-and-white Friesians, the donkey-brown Charolais crosses, the creamy gold of the purebred
Charolais. Anything in the farm-line I wasn’t sure of, I asked Liam, who knew without stopping to think. They liked hearing
me asking him, liked it that he knew, that he had a place and an ease in the life around them.

All I had was Derry—and what was Derry?—all glamour of violence had long since gone from the North. The Peace Process was
only a dream back then, the IRA was still planting bombs, still killing human beings on behalf of the People-of-Ireland, though
the Southern People-of-Ireland had mostly lost patience with being used to justify something they wanted no part of anymore.
The Protestant violence—the steady stream of sectarian assassinations—somehow didn’t bother the Southern People half as much
as the IRA did, for no one claimed to be killing anyone else in their name.

But though Liam knew the breeds and the crops, I was away ahead of him on the wildflowers.

“How would I know?” he’d say easily, when I showed him a flower that was strange to me, “’ Twas your mother was the school-teacher,
not mine. Farmers don’t have the time to be messing with flowers.”

Which isn’t true, some would and some wouldn’t, and mostly you’ll find that the bigger the farm the less the farmer cares
for such things.

So I asked the country people I met out walking the roads, for they knew the names and habits and where the plants grew. Often
as not the name I was given for a flower was a local one, describing some feature of its growing, or a cure to be got from
the root or the stem. Sometimes the name was strange altogether and came from the Irish.

That was a shock to me. When I was growing up we called it Gaelic not Irish, this funny dead language they made a big deal
of down South, forcing children to learn it instead of a modern one that might have been of some use to them in the world.
For the first time I saw a real language that had been everywhere once—with words from it sitting inside the English that
had been spoken in most of Kilkenny now for years. And here was my own child, just starting school and bringing home little
books with the words in Irish, and me sitting helping him learn and learning myself, in spite of myself.

That made me think, and the more I thought the more I fancied I understood why the language issue was being taken up so strongly
by Nationalists in the North.

“It’s a tool for them,” I said to Liam indignantly. “They’re using it—saying they were here first—Protestants are only Planters.
They’re taking over—in a sneaky, stealthy sort of a way from underneath.”

Liam laughed. “Didn’t you do that yourselves once?” he asked. “In an un-sneaky, un-stealthy sort of a way, with muskets and
swords?”

“That was hundreds of years ago,” I shot back. “Nothing to do with now.”

“They could set you down in Iceland or in Africa, Ellen,” he said. “Wherever you are it’s always the same—all roads lead back
to the North.”

I didn’t speak, I was too offended. He finished his coffee and moved his chair out from the table.

“Come over here, Ellen, my Wee Black Bigot,” he said. “Come and sit on my lap while I show you some sneaky, stealthy things
from underneath. Ah, don’t be like that, don’t clamp your mouth shut and turn it hard down at the corners. You’ve a pretty
mouth, and it’s mine now, I’ll not let your ancestors take it back.”

I still didn’t speak.

“No? You won’t come and sit on my knee? Your Mammy won’t speak to me, Suzanna, or sit on my knee, she’s afraid I’ll make a
Taig of her, and I’d never do that—even I could, which I doubt. Maybe she’ll do it herself though. Or whatever it is that
comes visiting her.”

I turned my mouth down worse then, I don’t like him speaking of that in front of the children. Why not? he asks—look at the
things they come out with. Don’t they still live half in some other place themselves?

But Suzanna took no notice. She was standing up on her chair, making big blue circles with a wax crayon on a sheet of paper,
her brown curls bouncing with the effort she was making. She has the determination from Liam as well as the curls and the
drawing.

Taig.
They don’t say that down here. That’s his word for himself when he’s sending me up. And I’d never call him that, I
wasn’t reared like that, when I’d used the word she’d punished me hard so I’d understand that I’d let her down.

Your children bring back your childhood in a way that I’d never have guessed at or wanted. Those walks were the walks I’d
done with her before Daddy died and she moved us to Derry and went out to work to earn the money to rear us. That was the
way she spoke of it. Resentful. As though she could have had the life she’d wanted if it hadn’t been for us. She never liked
the teaching. Maybe she’d never intended to teach, maybe she’d only trained to get herself a better class of a husband.

Whatever the way of it was, she was often in my mind outside in the fields in the spring with the children. Sometimes I’d
even imagine talking with her: dialling the number, hearing the ringing tone down the line. Then I’d watch her lift the receiver
in the hall in Derry.

I never got any further. The sound of her voice in my head was a cure for any softening.

T
here began to be money left as well as produce. Coins, with notes wrapped around them, pushed in at the back of the step or
set out on the windowsill. I hadn’t minded the produce, but money was different—the sight of it filled me with unease so strong
it was closer to fear.

The first time it happened I picked up the notes and carried them out to the workshop between my thumb and my index finger.
A dead rat I had by its tail.

“I won’t take payment,” I told Liam. “I won’t do it at all if they’re going to try to pay me.”

He set down his chisel. “Why ever not?”

It was so obvious to me that it hadn’t occurred to me he might not see it as I did. I searched for words, but none came. I
stood there, gaping at him, fish-mouthed and stupid.

“You’re providing a service,” he said carefully. “People come because they want that service. It’s
your
time and
your
skill; if they feel they’ve had value they’ll leave money to show their appreciation.”

“My time,
not
my skill,” I told him, the words shooting out hard and sure before I could think to stop them.

“If I lay a floor or light a show, I get paid for it,” he said, his voice still even and reasonable. “I get paid, and I bring
home the money and I never hear you telling me to hand it back—”

“I can’t Liam—”

“Why not? We need the money—”

“I can’t. You don’t understand, it’s not just a skill that you learn, like laying floors.”

There was a silence.

“You’re afraid that money will drive it away,” he said, his voice no longer careful, but flat and angry. “That’s it, isn’t
it, Ellen, that’s what all this is about?”

I stood there, miserable, unable to look at him or answer.

“Ellen,” he said more quietly, “you’re never done saying you wish to Christ it would go away—”

I lifted my head and tried to stop him with my eyes. It made no difference. He went on saying the things I didn’t want said.

“Why don’t you just come right out and charge for it and see what happens? If it goes, it goes. You don’t want it, what’s
there to lose?”

The question hung there, whole minutes seemed to be ticking by.

“You don’t believe I want it to go,” I said at last.

“That’s about the height of it.”

“It might turn against me.” I spoke very low, for it was one of those thoughts that is like pain to speak.

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I do it when I shouldn’t or I try too hard or I don’t do it when I should…. It’s horrible, something
horrible happens—”

“What are you trying to say, Ellen?”

“It might punish me—”

“Why would it do that?”

“For misusing it—”

“So you
do
believe that it’s positive.”

“No, I don’t,” I said miserably. “You’re putting words into my
mouth. I only believe that it’s powerful Power makes its own laws….” My voice trailed off

“Take donations, leave out a box. If they want to leave money at least there’ll be somewhere to put it.”

“I’d never ask for money. Never—”

“You wouldn’t be asking.”

I’d hit a blank wall with Liam, so I turned to Catherine for help.

“Liam wants me to take money,” I told her.

“Donations,” Catherine said. “Or that’s what he said to me.”

“Donations, charges, what’s the difference? It’s all money.”

“What’s wrong with money?”

I looked at her, but I didn’t bother to answer. No point in talking if she was going to be stupid on purpose. And I minded
that Liam had got to her first. Besides, there was something else that I wanted to say, but I didn’t know what it was so I
couldn’t say it. I rolled the dough round the bowl till it gathered all the loose flour to itself, then slapped it onto the
baking tray and quartered it into farls.

“You’re angry because Liam’s talked to me already,” Catherine said.

“Liam has plenty of people to talk to. I only have you.”

“He thinks you’re hung up on secrecy. He thinks that’s part of the problem.”

“What problem?”

She looked me straight in the face. “Ellen, Liam thinks you should talk about all this.”

“All what?” Now it was my turn to be stupid on purpose.

“The Healing. What goes on behind the Healing. Not to everyone, just to the ones you trust, the ones you see every day, who
are part of your life. He says that they’d understand, and your life would be easier. He could be right.”

“No.” I was shaking my head as I spoke. “Liam knows nothing.”

“He’s lived with you for eight years. You talk to him. He knows more than anyone else except you.”

“No, Liam doesn’t understand. It’s not right for me. It’s not our way.”

“What’s not your way?”

“Standing up. Speaking hidden things. Things aren’t hidden if they’re spoken. Once they’re spoken, everything changes. I don’t
want Liam to speak, but I can’t stop him. I’d never, ever speak of it myself.”

“Did you know you just said
our
way?”

“Fuck away off, Catherine,” I said softly. She looked at me. She saw I was serious.

There are times something old rises up in my blood, and I say things I hadn’t planned or thought. I don’t know where the words
come from. Once they are out, I can’t take them back.

But I wasn’t going to say that to her. I might have done, for I thought so much of her then, but I didn’t know how.

“
I had a fall in the yard, but it wasn’t too bad at the start. Well, I hopped about for an hour or two, but the son came round
and the minute he saw it nothing would do him but the hospital. So off we went, and they tried, but it done no good. The tablets
dull the pain by day but it’s worse at night, I get no sleep.”

“
Would you put your hands on my hip? It’s the old arthritis is getting to me, and I don’t want them sawing me open, or not
yet awhile.”

People kept coming; money was left around in places I’d find it. Or rather, where the children would find it, for they’d make
the rounds in the evenings, searching it out, as you’d search out eggs tucked away by a straying hen.

At first they brought the money to me, but I shook my head
and turned from them. I couldn’t help it, I didn’t mean to confuse them or spoil their game; I tried not to turn away, but
my body moved itself round of its own accord. So they took it to Liam instead.