Lyrebird

by Cecelia Ahern

  A rusted railing stops them in their tracks. Solomon beats Joe to it and jumps out of the jeep to push it open. He runs to catch up with them. Joe parks in a clearing by the forest, Solomon collects his equipment. They must walk up a trail the rest of the way. The dog, Mossie, races up ahead of them.

  ‘Bad land, we could never do nothing with it, but we kept it nonetheless,’ Joe tells them. ‘In the thirties, Da planted Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine. Thrive in bad soils, good with strong winds. About twenty acres. You can see Gougane Barra Forest Park from up here.’

  They walk through the trails and come to a clearing with a shed that was once painted white but now is faded, beaten away by time, and reveals the dull concrete beneath. The windows have been boarded up. Even on this beautiful day it’s bleak, the austere outbuilding at odds with the beautiful surroundings.

  ‘That’s the bat house,’ Joe explains. ‘Hundreds of them in there. We used to play in there as boys,’ he chuckles. ‘We’d dare each other to go inside, lock the door and count for as long as we could.’

  ‘When is the last time you were here?’ Bo asks.

  ‘Ah. Twenty years. More.’

  ‘How often would Tom check this area?’ Bo asks.

  ‘Once, twice a week, to make sure the well wasn’t contaminated. It’s over there, behind the shed.’

  ‘If you can’t make money from this land, why didn’t you sell it?’

  ‘After Da died, the land was up for sale. Some Dublin lad wanted to build a house up here but couldn’t do anything with that bat house. Environmental people’ – he throws his chin up in the air to note his annoyance – ‘they said the bats were rare. Couldn’t knock down the shed or build around it because it would ruin their flight path, so that was that. Took it off the market then. Mossie!’ Joe calls for his dog, who’s disappeared from view.

  They cut filming. Rachel moves close to the bat house, presses her face up to the windows to see in through the cracks in the wood. Bo notices Solomon walk away, equipment in hand, and head towards the forest. She hopes he’s heard something interesting to record and so lets him go. Even if he hasn’t, she knows she’s gotten him and Rachel up early and driven them here with no food, and they can’t function without it, unlike her, and she’s starting to sense their irritation. She lets him go, for a few moments on his own.

  ‘Where’s the well?’

  ‘Up there, beyond the bat house.’

  ‘Would you mind if we filmed you checking the well?’ she asks.

  He gives her that same grunt that she recognises as signalling he’ll do whatever she wants, he doesn’t care, no matter how odd he regards her.

  While Rachel and Joe talk bats – Rachel can hold a conversation about just about anything – Bo takes a little wander, around the back of the bat house. There’s a cottage behind it, run-down, the outside in the same condition as the bat house, the white paint almost completely gone and the grey concrete dreary amidst all the green. Mossie wanders around in front of the cottage sniffing the ground.

  ‘Who lived here?’ Bo calls.

  ‘Ha?’ he shouts, unable to hear her.

  She studies the cottage. This building has windows. Clean windows.

  Joe and Rachel follow her and turn the corner into the path of the cottage.

  ‘Who lived here?’ Bo repeats.

  ‘My da’s aunt. Long time ago. She moved out, the bats moved in.’ He chuckles again. He closes his eyes while he tries to think of her name. ‘Kitty. We tormented the woman. She used to hit us with a wooden spoon.’

  Bo moves away slightly, closer to the cottage, she studies the area. This house has a vegetable patch beside it, some fruit growing too. There are wildflowers sitting in a tall glass in one of the windows.

  ‘Joe,’ Bo says. ‘Who lives here now?’

  ‘Nobody. Bats maybe,’ he jokes.

  ‘But look.’

  He looks. He takes in all that she has already absorbed. The fruit and vegetable garden, the cottage, the windows that are gleaming, the door painted green, fresher paint than anything else in the vicinity. He’s genuinely confused. She walks around the back. She finds a goat, two chickens wandering around.

  Heart pounding, she calls out. ‘Somebody is living in there, Joe.’

  ‘Intruders? On my land?’ he says angrily, an emotion she has never seen from Joe Toolin or his brother in all her time with them.

  Hands in thick fists by his side, he charges towards the cottage, as fast as he can, and she tries to stop him. Mossie follows him.

  ‘Wait, Joe, wait! Let me get Solomon! Solomon!’ she yells, not wanting to alert the person inside the cottage, but having no choice. ‘Rachel, film this.’ Rachel is already on the case.

  But Joe doesn’t care about her documentary and places his hand on the door knob. He’s about to push open the door but stops himself – he’s a gentleman, after all. He knocks instead.

  Bo looks in the direction of the forest where Solomon disappeared, then back to the cottage. She could kill Solomon right now, she shouldn’t have let him wander off, it was unprofessional of him. She let him leave because she knew he was famished, because as his girlfriend she knows how he becomes. Grumpy, unfocused, ratty. Again, one of the frustrating parts of being romantically linked with a colleague is actually caring when your decisions mean they go hungry. The sound will have to be compromised. At least they’ll have a visual, they can add sound in after.

  ‘Careful, Joe,’ Rachel says. ‘We don’t know who’s in there.’

  There’s no answer at the cottage and so Joe pushes open the door and steps inside. Rachel is behind him, and Bo hurries after.

  ‘What the …’ Joe stands in the centre of the room, looking around, scratching his head.

  Bo quickly points out singular items she wants Rachel to capture.

  It’s a one-roomed cottage. There’s a single bed by one wall, with a view through one of the small windows beside the vegetable patch. On the other side there’s a natural fire, a cooker, not too dissimilar to the one in Joe’s farmhouse, and an armchair beside shelves of books. The four shelves have been filled to the brim and stacks of books are piled neatly on the floor beside it.

  ‘Books,’ Bo says aloud, wonderingly.

  There are a half-dozen sheepskin rugs on the floor, no doubt to warm the cold stone floor during the desperate winters in a house with no obvious heating other than the fire. There’s sheepskin across the bed, sheepskin on the armchair. A small radio sits alone on a side table.

  It has a distinctly feminine feel. Bo’s not exactly sure why she feels this. She knows it’s biased to base this on the glass of flowers; there’s no scent but it feels feminine, not the dirty rustic feel of Tom and Joe’s farmhouse. This feels different. Cared for, lived in, and there’s a pink cardigan folded over the top rail of a chair. She nudges Rachel.

  ‘Got it already,’ she says, the sweat pumping from her forehead.

  ‘Keep filming, I’ll be back in a minute,’ Bo says and runs out of the cottage towards the forest.

  ‘Solomon!’ she yells at the top of her voice, knowing there are no neighbours around to disturb. She returns to the clearing in front of the bat house, sees him a short way down the hill in the forest, just standing there, looking at something, as though he’s in a trance. His sound bag is on the ground a few feet away from him, his boom mic leaning up against the tree. The fact that he’s not even working tips her over the edge.

  ‘Solomon!’ she yells, and he finally looks at her. ‘We found a cottage! Someone lives there! Equipment, hurry, move, now!’ She’s not sure if the words she has used make sense or if they’re in the right order, she needs him to move, she needs sound, she needs to capture the story.

  But what Bo hears in response is a sound unlike anything she’s heard before.

  3

  The sound is a like a squawk, from a bird, or something not human, but it comes from a human, from the woman standing at the tree.

  Bo runs down into the fo
rest and the blonde woman’s basket goes flying up in the air, its contents fall out on to the forest floor and her eyes are wide in terror.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Solomon says, hands out wanting to calm her, standing between Bo and the stranger like he’s trying to tame a wild horse. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

  ‘Who is that?’ Bo calls.

  ‘Just stay there, Bo,’ Solomon says, annoyed, without turning.

  Of course she ignores him and comes closer. The young woman makes a sound again, another unusual, kind of chirping sound, if a chirp could ever seem like a bark. It’s directed at Bo.

  Bo is gobsmacked, but a smile crawls to her face with fascination.

  ‘I think she wants you to back off,’ Solomon says to her.

  ‘Okay, Doctor Doolittle, but I haven’t done anything wrong,’ she says, annoyed at being told what to do. ‘So I’m not leaving.’

  ‘Well then just don’t come any closer,’ Solomon says.

  ‘Sol!’ she says, looking at him with shock.

  ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay!’ he says to the girl, slowly moving a little closer, getting on his hands and knees to pick up the flowers and herbs from the ground. He places them in her basket and holds it out to her. She stops her chirping but is clearly in distress, looking from Solomon to Bo, eyes wide and fearful.

  ‘My name is Bo Healy. I’m a filmmaker and we’re here with Joe Toolin’s permission,’ she holds out her hand.

  The blonde woman looks at her hand and makes a series of more distressed sounds, none of them words.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Bo looks at Solomon, wide-eyed, taking out her phone and calling Rachel. ‘Rachel, come up to the clearing, quickly. I need the camera.’ She hangs up. ‘Record this,’ she mouths to Solomon, signalling his equipment with her eyes, afraid to move the rest of her body.

  The young woman is firing off one bizarre sound after the next and it is the strangest thing Solomon has ever witnessed. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from her voice box, it’s like a recording. He’s so stunned and fascinated he can’t stop watching her, he looks for wires and there are none. This is real.

  He takes a few steps in the direction of his audio bag.

  Rachel appears through the trees, rushing with her camera in her hands, closely followed by Joe.

  ‘What the hell is going on down there?’ Rachel shouts, coming to an abrupt halt as she sees with her own eyes.

  The young woman turns to Rachel and starts making the sound of a car alarm. Solomon looks at what’s happening from her perspective, surrounded by three people, strangers in the forest, she must feel completely trapped. He can’t bring himself to record this. It’s not right.

  Bo senses his hesitancy and sighs. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she snaps. She does what she should have done at the outset had she thought of it at the time, and films the unfolding scene with her phone.

  Joe joins them.

  The blonde woman stops making her sounds, for a moment she looks at Joe and she seems relieved.

  ‘Who are you?’ Joe shouts, half hidden by a tree. The fear is obvious in his voice. ‘What are you doing on my land?’

  She panics again, backing away through the trees.

  Solomon watches them all. Bo is filming on her phone, Rachel pointing the camera at her, Joe a fierce face on him.

  Solomon is exhausted, he needs to eat.

  ‘Stop!’ he yells and everybody goes silent. ‘You’re frightening her. Everybody step away. Let her go.’

  She stares at him.

  ‘You’re free to go.’

  She keeps looking at him. Those green eyes on him.

  ‘I don’t think she understands,’ Bo says, still filming.

  ‘Of course she understands,’ Solomon snaps.

  ‘I don’t think she can speak … words. What’s your name?’ Bo asks.

  The young woman ignores the question and continues to look at Solomon.

  ‘Her name is Laura,’ he says.

  Mossie suddenly comes racing from the direction of the bat house, towards the forest, he’s barking manically, protecting his land from the intruder. But instead of stopping by Joe he continues into the forest and heads straight for Laura.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, call him off her, Joe,’ Solomon says fearfully, afraid he’ll take a chunk out of her.

  But Mossie stops right at her feet, circles her excitedly, jumping up and down for her attention, licking her hand.

  She rubs him – clearly the two of them are no strangers – as she nervously keeps her eye on everyone around her. She holds her hand out to Solomon and he looks at her, confused, thinking she wants to hold his hand. He reaches out his hand and then she smiles and looks down at the basket.

  ‘The basket, Sol,’ Bo says.

  Embarrassed, he hands it to her.

  Laura sets off with Mossie in tow, trying to avoid everyone. She is tentative at first. As she passes Bo, she growls, a perfect imitation of a dog growl so real it sounds like a recording, or as though it has come from Mossie. Laura examines Joe carefully and as soon as she’s clear of them she runs up through the forest, past the bat house in the direction of the cottage.

  ‘Did you get that?’ Bo asks Rachel.

  ‘Yep,’ she removes the camera from her shoulder, and wipes the perspiration from her forehead. ‘I got the blonde woman barking at you.’

  ‘Where did she go?’ Solomon asks.

  ‘There’s a cottage around the back of the bat house,’ Rachel explains. Bo is too busy reviewing her video footage to see if she captured the moment.

  ‘Do you know her?’ Solomon asks Joe, completely confused as to what happened but feeling the adrenaline running through his body and a light tremble within him.

  ‘She’s trespassing on private property,’ he huffs, the anger steaming off him.

  ‘Do you think Tom knew about her?’ Bo asks.

  That question stumps him. His face goes from certainty, to confusion, to anger, betrayal, to disbelief once again. Then he’s sad. If his brother did know about this young woman living in the cottage on their land, then he was keeping it from him. The brothers with no secrets from each other, it turns out, had one very big one.

  4

  ‘There’s only one way of finding the answers,’ Bo says, rolling up the sleeves of her black blouse to reveal her bronzed skin, as the sun continues to beat down overhead. ‘We have to talk to the girl.’

  ‘She’s not a girl. She’s a woman, and her name is Laura,’ Solomon says, not sure where the anger is coming from. ‘And I seriously doubt she’ll want to talk to us now after we scared the shit out of her.’

  ‘I didn’t know she was … that she had a … disability,’ Bo defends herself.

  ‘Disability?’ Solomon splutters.

  ‘Oh, come on, what’s the PC term?’ Bo searches. ‘Developmentally delayed, developmentally disabled, unsophisticated. Any of those please you? You know what I mean, I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Well, she ain’t exactly normal,’ Rachel says, sitting down on a rock, exhausted and sweating.

  ‘Whatever the word for her, there’s clearly something wrong with her, Solomon,’ Bo says, pushing her hair off her face and redoing the short ponytail in her hair, the excitement bursting from her. ‘If I’d known that, I would have approached her differently. Did you two talk? Apart from her telling you her name. You were there a while.’

  ‘I think what happens from here is Joe’s decision. It’s his land,’ Solomon says, ignoring Bo’s interview, his stomach grumbling.

  Bo throws him an annoyed look.

  Joe shuffles around, clearly very uncomfortable with this chain of events. Joe likes routine, for everything to remain the same. Already his day has been very stressful and emotional. ‘I want Mossie back,’ he says finally. ‘And she shouldn’t be living on my land.’

  ‘Squatters laws are tricky,’ Rachel says. ‘Friend of mine went through it. You have to get a court order to remove them.’

  ‘Did your friend
s get rid of the squatter?’ Solomon asks.

  ‘My friend was the squatter,’ Rachel replies.

  Despite his frustration with what’s going on, Solomon smirks.

  ‘She has no right keeping my dog. I’m getting Mossie,’ Joe says, adjusting his cap and marching off toward the cottage.

  ‘Follow him,’ Bo says quickly, picking up Rachel’s camera and handing it to her, ignoring the exhausted glare. But as she’s doing that Joe runs out of steam.

  ‘Maybe it’s better a woman talks to her.’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Rachel warns Bo.

  Apart from his mother, Bo, Rachel and Bridget, Joe hasn’t been around many women, and has rarely spoken to a woman for most of his life. Rachel is easy with all people but it took him some adjustments to get used to her, particularly as she’s not the kind of woman he’s used to; a woman married to another woman was a fact that boggled his mind on learning it. Joe doesn’t consider Bridget a woman, he doesn’t really consider her at all; and Bo is still a cause for some awkwardness because of her own social abilities, or lack thereof. Having to talk to another new woman would flummox him. Especially one so odd, who requires care, thought and understanding. The four go to the cottage, their movements less charged and aggressive than before.

  Bo knocks on the door, while Rachel and Solomon wait outside.

  ‘What do you think?’ Solomon asks Rachel.

  ‘I’m fucking starving.’

  ‘Me too,’ Solomon rubs his face tiredly. ‘I can’t think straight.’

  They watch as she knocks again.

  ‘If Bo was looking for a new story, then she sure as fuck found one. This is a whole new brand of crazy,’ Rachel says.

  ‘She won’t agree to an interview,’ Solomon says, watching the door.

  ‘You know Bo.’

  He does. Bo has a way of convincing people who are so sure about not wanting to appear on camera into eventually speaking with her. When she really wants them, that is; the three interviews at the graveyard weren’t important so she hadn’t pursued them. Solomon and Rachel aren’t usually this listless when it comes to a project, but Bo’s typical filming style has severely altered today. She’s jumpy, grabbing at things, obviously without a plan.