Birdy Flynn

by Helen Donohoe

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Leave it, Mum,’ Eileen said. ‘How can you say those things when she’s lying there with broken bones?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything, Mum,’ I said but my mouth was dry and I’d forgotten the question.

  ‘Stop it, Bernice,’ Mum barked at me when there was nothing I had started. ‘It’ll break your father’s heart.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘A mother worries where she went wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘She hasn’t done anything,’ said Eileen. ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘Did you touch her?’ Mum leant in to whisper.

  I told myself to think as hard as my beaten-up head could manage. ‘Who?’

  ‘That bloody Kat Boswell. You were seen. At the cemetery,’ Mum said and crossed herself.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ One memory came back to me. ‘Her,’ I said, and Mum reeled backward. ‘I think I punched her.’

  ‘Oh, good God.’ Mum threw her arms in the air and turned away from me.

  ‘You did what?’ Eileen said.

  ‘What?’ I looked at Eileen, who looked as confused as I was.

  ‘Is that all?’ Mum turned back.

  ‘Is what all?’

  ‘Don’t arse about with me, Bernice. You were seen.’

  ‘Mum.’ Eileen pulled Mum back from my bed. ‘Have you gone mental?’

  ‘Everything OK in here?’ A nurse poked her head around the curtain.

  ‘Sorry, nurse,’ Mum whispered.

  The nurse smiled and disappeared.

  ‘I should have given you more attention.’ Mum looked up to the ceiling. ‘Oh, I hate to hear myself say that. I sound like that Deidre O’Farrell from the florist, all full of self-importance and pity.’

  ‘Mum,’ I kept saying, but she was like a lawnmower that would not switch off, whirling away, digging deeper down into the earth. Then she stopped and lowered herself on to the chair.

  ‘It’s enough to make my heart give in.’

  ‘Birdy should be resting,’ Eileen said while adjusting my blanket and stroking my hair.

  ‘I’m confused,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ Mum muttered.

  For a moment nobody said a thing.

  ‘Nurse,’ Leonard yelled and shattered the silence. ‘Nurse, please.’

  ‘Jesus, that bloody man,’ Mum said. ‘Why the Hell are you on this ward?’

  ‘Nurse,’ Leonard kept shouting. ‘I need a piss, please, nurse.’

  ‘Right, that’s it.’ Mum stood up. ‘I’m going for some air.’ She leant towards me and gave me a solid kiss on my forehead. ‘I love you, OK,’ she said.

  I said nothing. It was best when she had the last word. She did up her jacket buttons and threw the curtain open as if they were in her bad books as well.

  ‘Is that an Irish accent I hear?’ Manuel said.

  Mum looked up, surprised. He’s brave, I thought.

  ‘Hello. Yes it is,’ Mum said, trying to sound like Princess Diana.

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I am Spanish.’

  ‘Right,’ Mum replied.

  ‘Your boy will be fine,’ Manuel said.

  ‘Pardon?’ Mum snapped back to miserable.

  ‘He will be fine. I am saying.’ He pointed at me. ‘It’s not nice, but he’ll be fine.’

  ‘That is my daughter,’ Mum said, and Manuel’s eyes went wide open. He was trying to not look surprised.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘My daughter.’

  ‘But Leonard calls him Harry,’ Manuel said.

  ‘Her. Leonard calls her Harry,’ Mum said.

  I wanted to melt into the mattress.

  Leonard was quiet. So was the nurse.

  ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry,’ Manuel repeated.

  Mum strutted off.

  Rab wheeled me to the children’s ward later that day. He told me I had a new gang. I didn’t. I missed the chattering of the old men. The children sniffed and cried and snored. They mainly looked scared of me. During visiting hour, the ward was as noisy as the playground, with little brothers and sisters, and mums and dads and nans and grandads, getting all cranky and bored.

  I woke up at the same time every morning. The special armband went on me and got puffed up, my eyes were checked and sometimes my tongue. Doctors looked at my clipboard, said hello, wrote notes, whispered to each other and moved to the bed next door. My breakfast was always Rice Krispies, half an orange, a cube of butter and a bread roll.

  The peace was drifting into a dreary routine. The calm felt more like silent screams.

  Mum’s visits had to fit around her shifts. Over the days, as she grew less angry, a boiling rage stirred up in me. Everyone was asking after me, she said, but nobody visited. I got cards from our neighbours and all of our family. I asked, ‘Where are they?’ She told me that my dad was real busy, and she was worried for how hospitals sent him gloomy. And that Edna was a wee bit peaky, but if she got feeling better, for sure, she’d pop over and, anyway, it was best to keep things simple and easy.

  Not simple and easy for me.

  Mum kept her forced smiles going. She told me there was no rush for me to go home. She said I should take things steady. We often sat in silence. She held my hand as tight as a vice, and when the nurse rang the bell, at the end of visiting time, she would lean over, kiss me, drip a tear on my cheek, cross herself and pray for something secretly.

  I wanted to say, ‘Why don’t you tell me your prayers and I’ll tell you mine and we can have a Prayer Swap Shop?’ But she wouldn’t find that funny.

  After a while, I wanted no one there to see me. I sank into keeping my own self company. The pain slid from sharp stabs of agony to a spread of bruisey aches, and sometimes I’d catch a nurse from rushing and ask, ‘How many more days?’ Nobody could tell me, and I wasn’t sure I cared.

  I started writing letters, to get the grumbles out of my head.

  Birdy Flynn

  Nightingale Ward

  Queen Victoria General Infirmary

  England

  Dear Sir

  I think hospitals are great things. Here you don’t have to pretend or say what you think is the right thing and ignore your real thoughts. Everyone gets treated the same. In here you know where you are and you know what you’re doing.

  In the outside world, I pretended to be a girl and that didn’t work. Here I don’t have to choose. No one can laugh at me for wearing a skirt. Rab looks after me no matter what. Everyone wears more or less the same – pyjamas and dressing gowns – and if people are noisy there are nurses to tell them to keep the noise down.

  B.O.M. Flynn

  I didn’t expect it. I knew it wouldn’t happen. But when the post came round every afternoon, I hoped that Gypsy Girl had sent me something. I couldn’t believe that Martin was her brother. I couldn’t believe that me and her were almost friends. I think we were. I couldn’t quite remember. I wondered if she would talk to me again, if she was thinking about me ever.

  I missed the Pope’s trip to England. I heard nurses talking about their day off to see him in London and how magical it was. Rab wanted to tell me all about it, but I didn’t want to talk. Everything in the outside world was carrying on without me. I wondered if Martin’s dad got on the telly.

  When the police wanted to talk, Mum would tidy my things, comb my hair, plump up my pillows, then sit, in silence, watching me, as they bombarded me with questions. I told them I remembered nothing and I knew that they didn’t believe me. But they didn’t know how many memories I had packed in tight inside my head. Too many. I worried that if I talked I would have to keep going, all the truths would come out and I might as well be dead. I wondered if there was an operation that I could ask for, where they could open my skull up, take the memories out and stitch me back up with a new, start-again brain.

  ‘All lies,’ Mum said, every time she delivered my Daily Telegraph.


  ‘All of it?’

  ‘They all lie, Birdy,’ she said. ‘All the newspapers. About who is in the wrong and how many are dead, and then there’s the things they don’t tell us, all the secret goings-on.’

  ‘Secret goings-on?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘But it’s written in print,’ I said to Mum, pointing at the pages.

  ‘In black and white,’ she laughed. ‘No such thing. Do you know the saying that nothing is ever black or white?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s true. That saying is true. The rest is lies.’

  ‘Are these lies?’ I said to Mum, showing her the books that I’d picked from the library trolley that came round on Wednesday afternoons.

  She looked surprised.

  ‘All the other children are reading books,’ I said, like having books needed a reason.

  She looked at the details on the covers. ‘They look nice,’ she said, sounding nervous. ‘What are they about?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. That one is about a boy called Huckleberry Finn who lives in America and has a friend called Jim.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘The library lady said I would like it. She said I’d like that one as well.’

  Mum nodded as she studied the picture of Pippi Longstocking on the other book’s cover. ‘This one looks a fierce girl.’ She placed them back on my locker. ‘She looks Irish, so she does.’

  ‘I don’t think she is.’

  ‘No. But it’s grand that you’re reading them so,’ she said with a smile. ‘They’re stories, not lies, and reading some books will set you up well.’

  I read about Pippi and Huckleberry like they were best pals. I didn’t want to leave them. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to be on their adventures, on horses and boats, and not have to worry if I was the boy or the girl.

  Chapter 11

  I got an almighty send-off. The nurses hugged me, patted my back, smiled and clapped as I hobbled along the corridor. ‘Good luck, Birdy,’ they said, as if I was an amazing explorer and I was heading off around the planet.

  Uncle Brian was waiting for me, holding open the swing doors, reaching for my bag as I got close. ‘Your dad’s van is letting him down,’ he said.

  I knew that was a lie, and that Dad was banned from driving, but I didn’t mind. Uncle Brian drove a red Ford Capri and people stared whenever he drove through our town. I asked him to take the long way home. You never knew who you might see. It was a hot, sunny day so we wound our windows down. Uncle Brian turned up the stereo full blast and banged his hands against the steering wheel, shouting ‘Eton Rifles’. We saw Aunty Peggy coming out of Londis and he tooted the horn and gave her a wolf whistle. She turned, frowned, then smiled when she saw who it was. I looked in all the shops and at bus stops, and when we drove past the park I got Uncle Brian to slow down.

  ‘What you looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘My friend,’ I said, and then he joked that his petrol would run out and that he had better drive me home.

  ‘Come on, Captain Flynn.’ He helped me out of his car. He carried my bag and followed behind me as I took small steps towards our front door. It was gleaming bright white with the sun’s reflection. ‘The gates to Heaven, eh?’ Uncle Brian said.

  ‘Have they done that painting for me?’

  ‘Either you, or in case the Pope paid a visit,’ Uncle Brian said like he really meant it.

  The door was slightly open. In one of the glass squares there was a CAT MISSING poster with a tear down the middle. A delicious waft of boiling bacon was leaking out, mixing with the stink of fresh paint.

  ‘Special delivery,’ Uncle Brian shouted, pushing the door to let me in.

  ‘Hoorah,’ Mum shouted.

  As I walked through, to my right, the living-room door was shut, but I could hear the telly.

  Mum appeared. ‘Hello, love.’

  She took my arm, pulled me into the kitchen and gave me a careful cuddle. The kitchen was cleaner than ever before. Mum had her best tweed skirt on. The table had a new plastic covering. A plate of shortbread was in the middle with some flowers from the garden in a milk bottle.

  ‘Leave that there,’ Mum told Uncle Brian. He placed my bag gently and told us he’d be going. ‘OK, thanks, Brian,’ Mum said. Then to me she said, ‘I’ll make some fresh fizzy orange.’ She smiled and took my hand. ‘Sit down.’

  I lowered myself on to the chair that she held for me.

  I put my hand out for a biscuit, but Mum slapped it. ‘They’re not for eating.’

  She turned to the oven and wafted a tea towel over the steaming pot. After she’d turned the heat down, she walked out of the kitchen and opened the living-room door. There was a quiz on the telly. Then it was switched off.

  ‘That’s educational,’ Dad shouted.

  Mum came back into the kitchen, with Dad walking behind her like a dog.

  ‘Welcome home,’ he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. He looked older. His voice was deeper, more croaky. His eyeballs had spindly red threads. After a pause, I got a kiss on my cheek and a brush of his spiky bristles. I’d never seen him with a half-beard before.

  Mum stood next to us, like a referee.

  ‘Your hair’s grown.’ He ruffled it so hard my neck hurt. Mum flattened it back down. ‘Welcome home,’ he said, and I thought he looked a bit teary.

  ‘OK,’ Mum said.

  Dad walked away again and shut the living-room door.

  ‘Is Dad OK, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, love.’

  ‘He looks ill.’

  ‘He’s been a little unwell. So, let me hear about the hospital.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The nurses, were they sad to see you go?’

  ‘I think Rab was.’

  ‘Your pal Rab?’ Mum said, winking.

  I blushed.

  ‘Lovely, gentle lad, he was.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘And only young. No more than twenty, I would say. Couldn’t we do with more lads like him?’ Her hands fussed about, shuffling cutlery like a deck of cards. ‘Although our Desmond is a good soft boy.’

  ‘He’s in jail.’

  ‘Well, he loves his mum. Liam is a good lad too.’

  ‘He is not.’

  ‘And your friend Martin. I’ve missed him.’

  ‘Has Martin been around?’

  ‘No. Not a phone call or a peep. And you two were thick as thieves. There’s cards there for you.’ She pointed to two cards on the windowsill.

  I stared at them, then picked them up.

  ‘I’m going to my room for a bit, Mum.’

  ‘What? No, love,’ Mum said and held out her arm to block me. ‘Sorry, no. I have to make you up a bed.’

  ‘Make me up a bed?’ That was for uncles and aunties after their drinks for the road.

  ‘Will you help me here?’ She unwrapped the soda bread from its tea towel and began sawing with the carving knife. ‘Bernice, come on. Help your mum.’ Mum pointed to a pile of plates.

  I looked at her. Nothing was said.

  ‘What bed do you need to make up?’

  ‘Well.’ She kept sawing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve had it decorated for you.’

  ‘My room?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make it nice for you.’

  ‘Nice how?’

  ‘Don’t be contrary now, Bernice.’ Mum wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘You’re just after getting home.’

  ‘But I don’t want it nice. It was fine. It was nice.’

  ‘Your dad did it.’

  ‘Dad? Dad’s been in my room? Why has Dad been in my room?’

  ‘And you will be thankful. Do you hear?’ Mum turned and locked her stare. ‘The paint is still fumy, so you’ve to stay out for a bit.’

  I wanted to scream, ‘Thankful? Why should I be thankful?’ but I tried to stay calm.

  ‘Now don’t get exc
ited, it’s just –’

  ‘I want my things now.’

  ‘Your things are put away. We’ll sort through them next week. Clear some things out.’

  ‘Clear what out?’

  ‘And remember to thank your dad when he comes back in.’

  ‘Clear what out?’ My jaw began to hurt.

  ‘Keep your voice down. He’s tried hard, so he has.’ She placed the bread in the middle of the table. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Clear what out?’

  ‘You’ll sleep in your sister’s room.’

  ‘With Eileen? Oh my God.’

  ‘No, not with Eileen, and don’t blaspheme.’

  ‘Where will Eileen sleep?’

  ‘She’s moved out.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes, again.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No buts, Bernice. You’re in no position to be having buts.’ Mum raised her voice. ‘Now, get the butter from the fridge.’

  I slammed the cards down, got up and walked out. She shouted after me. I went up the stairs as fast as my legs would take me. The smell of paint got stronger and there were still dust sheets across the carpet on the landing, making a path to my bedroom. I stood for a second, feeling nervous. It’s your room, I told myself.

  As I opened the door the whiteness hit me, but sharper and harder than in the hospital. I felt like I was landing on the moon. My room was Tippexed out. I sat on the mattress, surrounded by bare white walls, no posters, no noticeboard, gleaming white net curtains, a different white wardrobe that leant to one side and had marks where stickers were scraped off with a knife.

  Under the bed my tin had gone.

  ‘Where’s my Birdy?’ Edna’s voice came up from the hall downstairs.

  I wanted to find my things but Edna kept shouting.

  ‘Oh, my darling, wee girl. Come down to me, will you?’ She was at the bottom of the stairs with her arms out wide. ‘Birdy, come here to me.’

  As I got close she hugged me as if I’d saved her life.

  ‘I can smell that hospital,’ she said. Her breath smelt of cigarettes and Polos. She softly touched my cheeks and nose and lips, like my face was written in Braille. ‘Your hair has grown.’