Lyrebird

by Cecelia Ahern

  Not once did Solomon ask her to stop or ask her why she made one single sound. Not once. Laura’s head spins and she aches for him.

  She absorbs the new sounds, new accents, the increase in tone at the end of their sentences.

  This evening is an appearance on the Cory Cooke Show. Jack will do an interview on the couch, also on is Will Smith, who’s promoting his new movie. And then on the show is Lyrebird.

  ‘What am I doing on the show?’ Laura asks Bianca.

  ‘Schedule says TBC,’ she explains, looking up from the rail of clothes. She’s holding dresses against her body, posing in the mirror.

  ‘What does TBC mean?’

  Bianca assesses her for a moment to see if she’s serious. ‘To be confirmed. We’ll find out later what they want you to do.’

  An hour later, hair and make-up on, clothes to be decided next, a total of six outfits for six shots, but have eight just in case. The show have been in touch with Bianca and the arrangement is to have Lyrebird sitting in the front row in the studio. Jack will do his interview ‘on the couch’ and the camera will throw to her as Jack discusses Lyrebird and her impact on the show. She is lucky, it seems, to be sitting in the front row in this studio, on the Cory Cooke Show.

  An hour later, when photos emerge of her at the airport and social media hype grows that Lyrebird is in Australia, the TV show call Bianca as Laura is finished make-up. Laura’s front-row position in the audience is to be increased to two questions from the host, Cory Cooke. Questions are TBC after the staff meeting. By the time her hair is complete, Lyrebird has been moved from the front row in the audience to now walking down the illustrious steps that only celebrities are allowed to walk down. This, Bianca tells her, is a great honour. Bianca seems to see Laura in a new light. What Lyrebird will do when she gets to the end of the steps is TBC.

  Laura begins to relax when she is given a minute to step outside for fresh air before she puts on her first outfit. She hadn’t felt uptight but the forest lets her fall into an even deeper relaxation. She’d almost forgotten how it felt to be in that state of relaxation, almost hypnotic, as she went about her days and chores with a feeling of harmony. Even in her most relaxed moments in Dublin, on the couch with a cup of tea, talking with Solomon, she was nowhere near that old feeling.

  Laura closes her eyes and breathes in, loving the fresh air and the sound of new accents and birdcalls. When she turns around, she sees the hair and make-up team, the journalist and press photographer gathered at the door staring at her.

  ‘What?’ she asks, self-consciously. ‘Did I ruin my hair?’

  Wanda, the sweet make-up artist, looks at her with amusement, ‘You sounded like a kookaburra.’

  ‘Really?’ Laura smiles.

  ‘And a whipbird,’ the hair stylist says.

  ‘I don’t even know what a whipbird is,’ Laura smiles.

  They join her on the verandah, while Bianca nervously watches the time. She was chosen to come on this trip with Lyrebird because of their closeness in age. Bianca is a year younger than Laura and this trip is a big promotion for her, but Laura can tell her handler is just as nervous as she is, despite trying to hide it with her cool and confident demeanour.

  ‘There,’ Wanda says, ‘that’s the kookaburra. Jane, what does a whipbird sound like?’

  They all listen in silence.

  ‘There,’ Jane whispers. She looks at Laura. ‘There.’

  Laura closes her eyes and listens. She doesn’t even notice herself attempting it but they all start laughing with utter joy.

  ‘You are bloody amazing!’ they cry, and they point out as many other birds as they can, though their knowledge of birds isn’t broad. Magpies and cockatoos – that’s as far as they get in identifying sounds, but Laura doesn’t need to know what they are, she enjoys hearing strange sounds anyway. Despite Bianca pointing out that they’re now behind time, Laura appreciates everybody pausing in this moment with her.

  ‘This is nice,’ Jane lifts her face to the sky and closes her eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to just … stop.’

  The others nod in silent agreement, breathing in the fresh air, lapping up their moment of time out before it all kicks off again, more appointments, home to their families, or their salons, always on the go, always planning the next thing. At least now they can be in the now.

  ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ Grace explains. ‘Lyrebirds mate in the depths of winter, the adult males start singing a half-hour before sunrise, singing for their lives,’ she laughs.

  ‘You know what the weird thing is,’ Bianca says. ‘You might not even be mimicking a real kookaburra.’

  They all turn to Bianca.

  ‘You could be mimicking a lyrebird mimicking a kookaburra.’

  Which is quite an interesting thing to come from Bianca. Bianca seems to be surprised by herself. Laura and Bianca laugh as if sharing a private joke.

  Dress number one on, Laura and the team go outside for the first shot. She feels everybody’s curious eyes on her; the stylist’s team, the press photographer, the magazine photographer and his assistant, Grace the journalist. She feels self-conscious under their gaze.

  Despite June being midwinter in Australia, the lushness of the greenery is beautiful. The air is fresh, she’s glad of that. After air-conditioned airplanes and the hotel room, she can fill her lungs now. She longs to take a walk, but the stylist doesn’t want the shoes to get dirty. The shoes don’t fit, they’ve been stuffed in the front with tissue. The dress is too loose and has been clamped down the back, making it difficult for her to bend. She can turn to look at the lyrebird, but not so much that the camera catches the clamps, she’s warned.

  While they’re doing more touch-ups to her face and the photographer busies himself checking the light, she hears Bianca tell somebody over the phone that Lyrebird is going to be walking down the steps on the Cory Cooke Show. Great news. Everybody at the shoot is impressed. Lyrebird won’t be sitting on the couch, she won’t be in the front row. Whether she sits at all is TBC. Laura laughs to herself. They look at her as though she is peculiar, which makes her laugh again. They think she is being peculiar now?

  The photographer has a quiet word with Laura. He takes her aside, makes a big deal of it, all intense and brooding. He’s handsome, his T-shirt is tight around his biceps, his black jeans fall low on his hips revealing an impressive V-line and Laura wonders if he’s wearing any underwear. Laura feels that he’s flirting with her, even though he’s just discussing the shots. It’s in his face. In his lips and eyes. The thought of this, and no underpants, piques her interest until she realises he looks at everything that way, all around him, a squint, a purse of his lips, a hand through his hair. He flirts with everything he sees. She’s feeling tired now. She had a bowl of seasonal fruits at the hotel, but perhaps it wasn’t enough. She feels slightly faint, light-headed. All these people, so many quirks, so much to analyse and understand in order to work with them; it’s draining. Bianca must be feeling the same because she sits quietly away from everybody, sipping a bottle of water.

  Laura looks around the forest. ‘Are we going to wait for a lyrebird to fly into shot …?’

  ‘We’re bringing the lyrebird to us,’ Grace says with a smile.

  And they do. Just as they flew Laura to them, the actual lyrebird arrives in a cage, carried by a ranger who places the distressed bird down on the woodland floor. It looks like a guinea fowl with a long neck and impressive plumage. The photographer tells her where to stand, the soles of her shoes have been taped over so they won’t get dirty, she’s been warned not to ‘scuff’ them, they must be returned to the store by the evening. Everyone watches her expectantly.

  Laura doesn’t know what they’re expecting will happen. Do they think she will suddenly start a conversation with the bird in a secret lyrebird language? It’s a bird. A distressed bird that has been scooped from freedom to captivity, driven across the reserve and plonked beside a jet-lagged woman, and Laura knows that, de
spite her nickname, she’s human, a human that does not possess superpowers to communicate with or understand feathered creatures. Nor does the actual lyrebird possess that quality, both of them are mere mimics. But everyone watches, excited, moved by the pairing of these two species.

  The photographer won’t allow the lyrebird out of the cage until he gets his light reading. The lyrebird is in distress. Laura mimics his sound, watching him. As soon as it is let out of its cage it hops behind a tree, instantly, for safety.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Laura says aloud. She follows it, ignoring the calls that they can see the clamps lining the back of the dress that’s two sizes too big for her. She kicks off her shoes and the stylist rushes to pick them up. She gets closer to the bird, and she stands still and watches it, getting a good look at it.

  The bird mimics the whirr of the camera shutter. Laura smiles and hunches down. The photographer wants her to get closer, but she knows the bird will run away, it’s what she would do. It’s what she should do.

  The photographer is down, hunkered down, trying to get a good angle. He’s talking to her, telling her to turn her face this way and that, her chin this way and that. Open her fingers, close her fingers, rest her arm, relax her arm. Look at the lyrebird, look over the lyrebird. Pretend you’re looking at the lyrebird but over its head, into the distance. You’re squinting, close your eyes and open them on three. No sausage fingers, give a posh mouth, bend her knee, tilt her chin, no, not that way, the other way. Bond with the lyrebird.

  If the photographer takes one step closer to her she’ll run, she’ll hide. She’ll do what this funny little creature is doing.

  She remembers at her house she went out playing. She was supposed to be home by lunch but she misjudged the time. She arrived at the house and a customer was there, a car in the driveway. Children were playing in the garden, waiting outside for their mother. Laura hadn’t been so close to other children before. She’d read about them in books, seen them on the TV, watched them from car windows on trips out of Cork. She hid from them in the forest, so close she felt she was one of them but so far they never knew she existed. They’d played Pooh sticks in the stream and she’d even dared to throw her own stick in, pretending to be a part of the gang. The kids thought the stick had fallen from a tree. She planned her hiding adventures after that. Hikers and walkers, hunters and ramblers.

  When Laura looks up she sees tears in the eyes of the make-up artist. The photographers are snapping happily. Laura’s not sure what sound she made recalling her childhood, but her sounds had made them sad. It is only when the lyrebird imitates her sounds that she realises exactly what she sounded like; he relays the sound of children’s joyous laughter. She looks at the lyrebird in surprise. He looks back at her.

  They are both silent. She gazes deep into his little eyes, wondering if perhaps they do have a connection, perhaps everyone is right, perhaps they can understand each other.

  The photographer takes a step closer and the lyrebird scarpers. He lowers the camera, disappointed. Laura watches the bird, happy that he has escaped. She hopes he finds his mate. She longs for hers.

  That evening at 9.42 p.m., after Jack’s interview with Cory Cooke where he has discussed his past success, his dabble with drugs, his stint in rehab, his failed marriage and his climb to the top and unexpected success with StarrQuest, Cory Cooke announces his next guest: Lyrebird.

  ‘Not since Police Academy’s Man of Ten Thousand Noises, Michael Winslow, have we seen anyone like this. Dubbed Lyrebird, our next guest auditioned on talent show StarrQuest in Ireland and in one week has received two hundred million hits on YouTube. That’s staggering.’

  ‘It’s two hundred and twenty now, actually,’ Jack interrupts and the audience laughs.

  ‘That’s even better,’ Cory joins in the laughter. ‘Here she is – Lyrebird!’

  The audience goes wild. Almost as much as they did for Will Smith.

  She’s wearing a striking red dress and it’s so tight the stylist called it a bandage. Her lips are bright red and she’s afraid to move them in case she smudges them, while her strappy shoes are so high she feels her ankles shake as she descends the famous steps. She pauses at the top, as she’s been told, a small wave to the audience, to the people at home. Then she descends the steps that are usually only for the clobber of celebrities. She stops at the area she has been told to stand on, a piece of tape marking the ground, and she greets the host. She doesn’t sit on the couch, or the front-row seat. Everything was confirmed to her thirty minutes before this moment.

  ‘Welcome, Lyrebird, to the home of real lyrebirds.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiles.

  ‘How was your flight?’ he asks. ‘I believe it was your first time on a plane?’

  She makes the sound of the announcement bell, the call button for the air steward, the sound of the seatbelt clip.

  The audience laughs.

  ‘I believe you had a photoshoot with a lyrebird today. How was it, meeting the family?’

  The audience laugh.

  She makes the sound of the photographer’s camera shutter, the kookaburra, the magpie, whipbirds and cockatoos.

  The audience love it.

  Then she makes the sound of a train. She didn’t plan it, she just remembered it.

  ‘Right!’ Cory says with surprise and a laugh, ‘Puffing Billy, the steam train! So we’ve spoken to Jack about the incredible reaction to your audition, what it’s done for him and the show. I can’t imagine what it’s done for you. Are you glad that you entered the show, after the reaction you’ve received?’

  ‘I am,’ she says. ‘It’s been overwhelming, but everybody has been so kind and coming here’ – she makes the sound of the seatbelt clip, the call button, the camera shutter – ‘has been a fantastic experience. My life has utterly changed.’

  ‘What are you hoping for from this experience? Your own show? TV work, stage work? What kind of career comes from this ability?’

  She thinks about it. Too long for air time, because he follows it up: ‘Why did you enter? Did you know of Jack? Were you a fan?’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head and the audience laughs. Jack holds his head in faux comedy embarrassment.

  ‘You wanted your life to change,’ he says, trying to wrap it up, hoping for a good and swift end.

  ‘My life had already changed,’ she replies. ‘My dad died. My uncle didn’t want me to live on their land any more, my mother and grandmother passed away many years ago. I had no choice. I had to move with the change. I had to start my life.’

  This seems to touch the host, and he fixes her with a more rooted look, a look that shows he’s not only listening to the voices in his ear.

  ‘Well, Lyrebird, on behalf of Australia, we wish you the best of luck and hope that your life soars.’

  ‘That was flawless,’ Jack says, hugging her backstage. ‘You see how smooth that ran? By the time you’re in the studio for the semi-finals, you’ll be an old pro.’

  Jack, Curtis, and the team all go for dinner. Jack wants Laura to meet some more people at the dinner, but she insists on going to her hotel. She needs sleep, she needs isolation, she needs to retreat. She doesn’t know how Jack can stand to be around so many people all the time, always on. It exhausts her, giving all that energy away. She’s so jet-lagged the ground is moving beneath her, as though she’s on a boat.

  She rushes to catch the elevator and is surprised when she sees Bianca inside.

  ‘Are you not going out with the others?’ Laura asks.

  She closes her eyes and groans. ‘I escaped. Do you ever feel if somebody asks one more thing of you, that you’ll scream in their faces?’

  Laura looks at her in surprise.

  Bianca laughs. ‘I don’t mean you.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Laura says relieved, she was thinking her and Bianca were getting somewhere with their relationship today.

  ‘I’m tired. And I don’t like being around lots of people.’

 
; Laura looks at her, confused. ‘But you’re so great at being around people.’ Despite Bianca’s aloofness, she has spent the day organising, greeting, arranging everything for Laura.

  ‘For a time,’ she says, ‘then when they’ve sucked the energy from me, I have to recharge my batteries.’

  Laura looks at her in shock. ‘So I’m not the only one who feels that way.’

  ‘No you’re most definitely not,’ Bianca says with a yawn. ‘My mom says it’s because I have empathy. I feel other people’s energies and it drains me. But I think she’s just being nice.’ The elevator stops and the doors open. ‘I think it’s because I’m a bitch.’

  The way she says it makes Laura laugh. Bianca giggles too as she steps out to her level. ‘Night.’

  Laura sits naked on the enormous hotel bed, stripped of the clothes she’s been told to wear for her new life. The new clothes feel like a uniform, and the clothes she wore in her old life no longer feel appropriate.

  She reaches into her bag for her schedule and the extra page Bianca had given her hours previously falls loose.

  Interview with Cory Cooke.

  Q1. Lyrebird, how was your trip to Australia?First time on a plane?

  Lyrebird: airplane sounds. Seatbelt, call button.

  Q2. How was it meeting a real lyrebird?

  Lyrebird: kookaburra, camera shutter, magpie, cockatoo, whipbird.

  Q3. Are you glad you entered the show?