Free The Bird Woman by Kerry Hardie Page A

at the lights and the darkness because it was better than staring in at Robbie’s face, which wouldn’t go away.
     I tried again for Liam, but the harder I tried the more completely I’d forgotten. Kilkenny was coming up on every signpost,
     so I knew we were near. By the time we’d swung off the ring road, I was wound up tight as a scream.
    The bus drove into the station yard and stopped. I reached up and took my things from the rack, then walked slowly, slowly
     down the centre aisle. I climbed down the steps, my eyes on my feet. I lifted my head and there he was, and I knew him right
     away.
    He took my bag and pulled me to the side so the girl behind me could get past. Then he stood there, looking down at me, smiling
     like an idiot.
    “You’ve no hair.”
    “Not much. Anne says I look like a scalded fox with a dose of the flu.”
    “Who’s Anne?”
    “Brian’s wife.”
    “Ah. The sister-in-law. Is this all the luggage you have?”
    “There’s another one in the hold.”
    We went round to the side of the bus where the driver was unloading. I pointed to a small blue suitcase.
    Liam lifted it out, set it down on the pavement, folded me into his arms, and that was that. Or it was till we reached the
     house and we had a row over nothing at all on account of the state of our nerves. Then we went to bed and that was that again.
    Liam is a stonemason and a sculptor. He went to art college in Dublin, spent a couple of years in a stonemason’s yard in Cork,
     then moved himself here because he’d had about enough of cities. Liam comes from Tipperary—that’s the next county—a place
     called Graigmoyla, forty-odd miles to the west of here.
    “Kilkenny seemed a good compromise,” he’d told me on Achill. “Close enough to home but not too close. People I knew around
     the place to give me a start.”
    By that he meant near enough to see his family when he wanted to, but not so near that they’re forever dropping in. Liam is
     one of five, and he’s slap in the middle. Connor’s the oldest; he lives in the home-place with Kathleen, his wife, and they
     work the family farm. His father still lives there, and he keeps his hand in, though these days he does less and less. Then
     there’s Eileen and Liam, and after him, Carmel and Tom. Liam thinks a lot of his family, especially Connor and Kathleen, but
     he has to have a bit of a distance from them or he feels like he needs to come up for air.
    Which suits me as well. I like the Kielys now that I’m used to them, I do my bit in the family-thing, but I wouldn’t want
     to live in the midst of the nest. Liam comes and goes, and they’re tactfulenough to keep their distance and give us a bit of space. We have his mother to thank for that. She laid down the rules in
     the early days—without her, it might not have entered their heads to hold back.
    We’re not one of these couples you never see apart. Not now, anyway, though we were to begin with, when I was new and everything
     was strange. I was glad enough of it back then, but it’s different now and I wouldn’t want to be always tagging along in Liam’s
     wake. It passes, the twined-fingers stage. You don’t see it going till it’s gone.
    I’m getting ahead of myself again. When first he came to Kilkenny, Liam stayed with Dermot Power and his wife, Marie, the
     same two who’d lent him the house on Achill. Dermot was a painter, his oldest friend, so Liam wasn’t shy about cluttering
     up their living-room floor while he looked around for a house he liked at a rent he could scrape together. He was in no hurry,
     so he stretched his welcome. It’s a good story now—they laugh in the telling—but by all accounts he wore their patience thin.
    Liam knew what he wanted, you see, and he wasn’t about to compromise just to have somewhere to live. He wasn’t like Robbie,
     saying yes to the first place we saw that wasn’t a total dump. Liam watched and waited, taking his time. At last he found
     a