Invisible Bird
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Audio: Claire-Louise Bennett reads.
After finishing my degree I would have liked to have stayed on in London. Despite owing considerable arrears on my rent I somehow assumed that I could carry on living in my high-ceilinged bedsit near the common for as long as I liked. I’d done a lot of work in the garden, two gardens really—the landlords owned two semis at the top of a smart tree-lined avenue. The semis were next to each other, but separate, joined to other houses, though the gardens at the back were side by side with no boundary between them, so it was quite admissible to think of them as a single sprawling entity. Especially when you were down there, hauling cables of bindweed that began in one corner and tapered off many solid yards later in the shady depths of another.
Now and then a man from the adjacent house would come down to marvel at my prospering biceps without so much as lifting a finger himself to help. I was relieved that he refrained from trying to get involved in my sudden undertaking. Though I appreciated his occasional visits, I would not have liked him or anyone else to be with me all day long, joining in. For one thing it would have made the whole endeavor embarrassingly earnest, because of that terrible, inspirative pressure another person’s presence can often put you under, I suppose. I did a fine job of clearing the garden on my own, and it was no mean feat—I don’t think anyone had been anywhere near it for a long time. Can’t imagine where I got the tools from. My landlords were quite taken aback by the impressive results of my sustained exertions and expressed their admiration on more than one occasion. However, the abiding fact was, I owed them an awful lot of money, and it was clear that nothing had developed that would enable me to address that shortfall satisfactorily, or even incrementally, and so, handing me a large whiskey in their radiant bow-windowed and art-filled living room one glorious summer’s evening, they gently announced the end of my tenancy.
It is possible that at that time London was not the best place for me. There were frequent periods during the three years I lived in the city when just the thought of going beyond the top of the street caused me a lot of anxiety. At the bottom of the street was the common and that was one of the few places I could handle at certain times of the day. Wearing a long green velvet skirt that mingled with the gently surging grass, I’d walk slowly, sedately even, around the ponds, dispensing bread along the way so that the ducks would stay with me. I would have been ill at ease anywhere, I expect, but London has a way of embellishing a minor dread so that it takes on pathological and seductive proportions. All those people, I thought, never taking a blind bit of notice of me yet somehow damning my muffled soul to Hell all the same. I felt that quite intensely, particularly on buses in the morning, and for a while saw insects and sores hatching at the corners of other people’s mouths. In some ways I thrived upon the bizarre tricks my senses frequently played upon me. The mottled backdrop of London conspired with my nervous agitation so that, rather than a dark affliction that ought to be cured, it sometimes felt like a curious power that might one day turn itself into something scintillating and expansive.
My home town, on the other hand, had no capacity whatsoever to exalt my neurosis into something thrilling, and I was supremely disgruntled to find myself back there—and back in my old room in my parents’ house. After a short time I moved in with a recalcitrant man with lovely hair who lived in a flat in the center of town, not so far from the train station. For several months on weekday mornings I beetled over the railway bridge, holding a cigarette in one hand and a toolbox that belonged to my father in the other. Those mornings tended to be cold and bright. Frost, beautiful pristine frost. Like mornings from childhood. I had signed up for a women’s course in blacksmithing which involved learning three types of welding: MIG welding, oxyacetylene welding, and a third method I cannot recall. After being instructed to decipher literature for three years I wanted to practice something based upon palpable laws and immutable principles. I wasn’t especially adept at it but I liked welding, and forging, and by combining the two techniques I produced a surprisingly acceptable mirror frame. However, over all, my boyfriend and I weren’t very happy living where we were. Unless you were prepared to get on with things in the normal way, people would often presume you were up to something fishy, and life in an unremarkable English town could be thoroughly grim and demoralizing—it’s not at all pleasant to feel incessantly judged and distrusted. We both worked night shifts in a paint-supply warehouse on the edge of town over the Christmas period, and then, on the last day of January, we left for Ireland. My boyfriend sold his car before we went and it was several months before I realized the mirror frame I’d spent weeks making had been left in the boot.
The bus from Dublin airport dropped us off midway down O’Connell Street. I don’t know the time of day, early afternoon perhaps. There was a very lively man whiskered like a paintbrush and upholstered in a puckered brown suit greeting people as they descended from the coach. It was a dismal day, gray as a bucket. We had a large black rucksack, which my boyfriend carried. I don’t remember what sort of bag I had, something impractical I think—a vanity case perhaps. I don’t know what our plan was. I assume we had one because it wasn’t as if we’d decided to up sticks on the spur of the moment. We had some money, but it didn’t last very long—things were much more expensive than we’d foreseen. Plus we went to all the wrong places and ended up paying well over the odds for everything, so pretty soon we had almost nothing left. In fact, I think we blew the last of it on a bewildering two-course meal in a nice restaurant called the Mermaid, and frankly it was a relief to be rid of it because when we had it we couldn’t stop fussing about it and wondering how long it would last. Well, now it was gone, and the futile calculations that were like so many staples in my head fell away.
Recollections of my first few months in Ireland come to me without much regard for chronology, and naturally there are a lot of gaps—days and days that remain quite blank. It makes no difference anyway. It’s not as if things developed in linear fashion, with one occurrence leading to the next in a gradually progressive way. Sometimes you’d have a bit of luck, and then it would be over, or else it would bring complications along with it so that it didn’t feel so much like luck anymore. I felt this way about Kenny, whom we met in the Sackville Lounge one weekday afternoon. He had high wolfish hair and small eyes that looked like they were boiling inside his face. I was wary of him immediately. Within moments, however, he and my boyfriend were as thick as thieves. That evening he brought us back to his flat up near Mountjoy Square and told his girlfriend, Anna, to cook something for us. She went out to get beans and cheese slices. I felt very uncomfortable and stood behind the sofa until she came back.
Kenny and Anna’s flat didn’t have a single window, not one, and instead of walls there were thin partitions so it was like a theatre set for a simmering kitchen-sink drama. It wasn’t very restful—all you could do was look at each other or down at the marked floor. Nothing felt natural. The ceiling was very high and there was a skylight somewhere so that sometimes a distinct shaft of light would fleetingly descend—I don’t recall what effect this had but I suspect it did something. We were susceptible to the slightest fluctuations because we were all on edge. On edge for the reason that we were all waiting for unrelated things, things we refrained from even hinting at in case it set someone off. There was an illusion of solidarity—really the underlying current was entirely factious. The atmosphere felt unyielding yet unbearably combustible. It was only a matter of time before one of us exploded. Downstairs there was a church, and a lot of African people would meet there and sing at the weekends, and there was a laundry next door which I was always pleased to visit. Whenever we got any money the first thing I’d do was take our clothes to be cleaned. Fresh clothing becomes very important to me when I’m having a rough time. The smoother things are going, the grubbier I gladly get.
I can’t remember what we slept on when we stayed at Kenny and Anna’s, but I think it was something proper—I mean we weren’t on the floor or on the sofa. The bathroom was very small but I liked it because you stepped down into it and the latch on the door was tiny and silver and firm. When I fastened it behind me I immediately felt I was someone else, somewhere else, such as on a beautiful ocean liner heading for San Francisco. It was completely tiled, white mostly, with a racing-green trim, and it was always spotless, as were the towels. I used a vanilla-scented body lotion then, Swiss Formula. It reminded me of something I couldn’t quite place, an oil I’d used in the summer a few years before maybe, or perhaps something my mother had used, further back again. I got on all right with Anna. She was very guarded and that suited me because I didn’t like to talk much either—I had nothing much to talk about. She had large protruding eyes—sometimes they looked horribly biddable and other times impressively contemptuous. I never saw her get cross or even irritated, but I sensed, or perhaps simply hoped, that she had her own secluded way of turning the tables on Kenny. He worked for a man, it quickly transpired, who had a furniture shop in Portobello, selling flashy pieces he imported from Bali. This chap was from the Liberties, so Kenny said, and his dad was a gangster—Kenny divulged this in a way that was clearly meant to shock and intimidate us, which I thought very childish. This association provided my boyfriend with some regular work that was frequently of a somewhat unsavory nature. Be that as it may, it started to feel like we’d made the first step toward getting ourselves set up.
One day Kenny and my boyfriend delivered a crimson love seat to a brothel. It had to be hoisted in through an upper window, my boyfriend told me later. There had obviously been a very bad fire throughout the building because the bare red brick walls were scorched black all over. “And they were shiny,” he said. “I think they’d just varnished straight over the burns.” There were shelves across the gleaming charred walls with rows of old china dolls sitting along them. Glazed legs slightly askew, and ringlets of blond, chestnut, ebony, and russet. Miraculously immaculate and reeking of smoke.
Kenny, I soon noticed, was very adept at slipping in a swift pint here and there throughout the day. My boyfriend was not a good drinker. The diabolical effects alcohol had on him were flagrant and guaranteed, and I began to suspect that Kenny’s enthusiasm for these periodic pints was at least partly motivated by a desire to get my boyfriend demeaningly twisted as often as possible. For one thing it put him in control and made him feel superior, and for another thing it caused a lot of trouble between my boyfriend and me, which upset and worried me deeply, and I believe that Kenny wanted me to feel distressed to pay me back for not liking him and being indifferent to his tall stories. Aside from whatever nefarious kick it gave Kenny, these habitual “few scoops” whittled down whatever wad the pair of them had made during the day to a rather thin wedge—this first step was, in fact, keeping us on a short leash handled by Kenny. We were getting nowhere. However, regardless of my boyfriend’s fervent weaknesses and misplaced strengths, he was inventive, idealistic, and hardworking, and Kenny’s bitter outlook and circuitous connivances began to wear on him, too. Before long he became restless and wanted to cut loose.
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We didn’t sever ties with Kenny and Anna completely. Overtly rejecting them would have made matters worse, but some distance was definitely required and so occasionally, increasingly, we’d stay in a hostel if we had the money, or else on the street if we didn’t. Out of everywhere I liked to sleep on Dawson Street the most, because of the nearness of books and the genial window fronts that framed them so enchantingly. In among the bookshops was a newfangled kind of storefront which displayed computer games on chunky floating shelves. It had a fairly sizable entrance angled in such a way that you could really get in off the pavement, which was crucial because it rained so very often and the nocturnal tarmac would be brimming with puddles that lapped, like lecherous tongues, at my various extremities. I had a terrible time keeping my feet dry, and it took many years for the skin between my toes to settle down and go completely smooth again. Even now, if they are wet for too long, the skin there has a tendency to turn pale and frilly, like a horrible cuttlefish.
Another advantage of staying on Dawson Street was that it was surprisingly quiet all night through. An antiquated shop sign further up the street creaked back and forth, and that was often the only sound I’d hear. The slightest breeze set it off, but it didn’t ever irritate me. It was an old-fashioned sort of sound that seemed somehow to highlight the standstill of everything. A lone sound in a soundless world. An unlatched green gate in the country, a weather vane on top of an empty barn. Paradoxical sounds that bring to mind Proust’s “invisible bird,” that mysterious and lonesome creature “striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.” Strange to say I did not wish for the nights to be curtailed. On the contrary, I loved the dark, which would not, perhaps, have gathered about me quite so consolingly had that shop sign swung mutely upon its overwrought hinges. When, finally, I put my head down on our rucksack in order to get some sleep, I would feel the iconic glass corners of my perfume bottle prodding into the base of my skull, pervading the slowing thoughts going on inside it with a golden pellucidity that melted away any feelings of discomfort entirely.
Sometimes somebody would go off for a while and you’d get to stay in their place cheaply. This happened a couple of times in fact. Once it was a friend of Anna’s, then another time friends of Kenny’s went to California for a whole month. They had a very nice flat on Leinster Square with steps up to the front door, which was big and bright yellow. I don’t remember the name of the woman whose room we stayed in—we never met her. She had a lot of stuff, old things mostly. There was a record-player and quite a few records to go with it—I was very pleased to find the soundtrack to “Last Tango in Paris” and played it every day. I liked the way it made me feel. I discovered early on in life that the right music can lend a glamorous edge to even the most dismal circumstances. I paid a lot of attention to the things around me but more or less resisted prying into them too much. There was however a Chanel primer in the bathroom that I used sparingly now and then because it smelt wonderfully chic and proficient. She also owned a burgundy feather boa which I borrowed several times—it became a vital part of my costume. For a little while my boyfriend and I busked in Temple Bar. He’d returned to the flat one day pleased as punch with a tailcoat he’d picked up for very little in a charity shop, and I’d brought an evening dress from England with me, since I’ve always felt it’s a good idea to be prepared for the life that you’d like, as well as for the one that you have.
Our busking act was very simple: it consisted of us standing in a flamboyant romantic clinch, completely motionless, on the brink of a kiss. This was just before those thickly painted human statues became ubiquitous in all the European cities, though in any case pretending to be statues wasn’t really what we were up to, it was more like a moment of passion, frozen in time—a tableau, if you will. The fact that we were about to kiss was a huge advantage because it meant that it was reasonable for us both to have our eyes closed, which helped us remain in position longer. Then, after a while, one or another eyelid would start twitching like mad, because it was unnatural, really, to be among all those curious murmuring strangers with eyes shut tight. Also my neck would ache, as if all the veins inside it were getting thicker and darker. Sometimes as I stood there my blood felt so present and thunderous it was all I could think about. At our feet was a velvet hat, upturned, and a neat piece of card against it that said something like “No moolah for movies, Martinis, or cigarettes. Oh la la, thank goodness l’amour is free!” We didn’t do too badly. Sometimes people would slip a banknote directly into my boyfriend’s sleek trouser pocket. On one occasion someone shuffled a brand-new pack of cigarettes in there, which we were over the moon about. It was strange not being able to see any of the people who gathered and dispersed all around us all day long, but then again I didn’t make much eye contact with anyone at that time. I had neither the opportunity nor the desire to do so.
Money went very quickly and quite often we’d make a misestimation that would leave us short and unable to buy anything to eat. There was a Centra on Capel Street that occasionally let us have some leftover items from the hot counter at the end of the day—potato wedges, sausages, things like that. I don’t know how that arrangement came about and we didn’t make a habit of it. I remember once being really hungry in the morning. It was a very sunny morning, around the end of March, and I remember the alert brightness made me yearn to do something physically demanding and purposeful. It was one of those days when you’d spring-clean the house, if you had one. We were walking down George’s Street, ravenous and watchful, when my boyfriend stopped a chap we’d seen begging here and there and asked him if there was anywhere that “did breakfast.” He said there was, very nearby, but he thought it only served men. We followed his directions and it turned out he was quite right, the kitchen did only serve men. I don’t recall what my boyfriend said to the man on the door, or even if he had to say very much. The doorkeeper stood aside to let us pass and announced that I was the “first woman to ever enter these premises.” I remember looking at my boyfriend out of the corner of my eye with a barely stifled smile—the way he’d said it you’d imagine I’d just been permitted entry into the world’s most exclusive private members’ club. Of course inside it was anything but. It was quiet though, and wide, and the décor was mercifully plain. In the middle of the room, sitting at a large round table all on his own, was a man whose head was completely bundled up in thick dry yellowing bandages. I sat facing him because although I didn’t particularly want to look at his swaddled head I thought it might hurt his feelings if I turned my back to him. I ate my breakfast very slowly. It wasn’t a very nice breakfast. The scrambled egg was watery and the beans had been sitting around too long. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten something nice. Walking around, there seemed to be delicious food just about everywhere I looked, yet I couldn’t get my mitts on any of it. One afternoon I watched as half a doorstep sandwich got tossed intact into a bin and coaxed myself into a detached trance to prevent my hands from diving in after it.
For just over a week I worked in a trendy sort of café on Kildare Street that specialized in gooey hot chocolates and exotically flavored coffees. It stayed open until late, two or three in the morning, and sometimes there were poetry readings and at other times tarot readings. It was a very popular spot. I worked every day and my shifts were long. We must have been staying in the place on Leinster Square, or perhaps at Anna’s friend’s house, somewhere near the canal. Anyway, wherever we were, one evening I got back very late, around four, and I was due in at ten that same morning. Not surprisingly I overslept and didn’t arrive at work on time. As I scooted past the counter on the way to the staff room the manager said something sarcastic and trite to me, something about it not being “a bloody holiday camp.” When I hung up my coat and scarf my hands were shaking, which was the last thing I wanted to see. I was trembling with tiredness and rage and I knew I should leave immediately, saying as little as possible, otherwise everything I’d kept a lid on these last few months would come pouring out of me in an unstoppable deluge of fury, indignation, and despair. This was absolutely not the place for any personal distress to be admitted. I pulled my coat and scarf back on and walked past the counter and without stopping or so much as glancing at the manager I informed him that in fact I’d worked until gone three the previous night and this was just about as far from a holiday as you could get and I’d be in at the end of the week to collect my wages.
The office was a scruffy oppressive room on the top floor and I felt very apprehensive going up the stairs that Friday, which was the day of the week one or other of the three corpulent owners put in a brief appearance at the café in order to do the accounts. All three of them were thoroughly unpleasant men and Kieran was the most blatantly unpleasant, and so naturally it was Kieran who presided over the ledger that particular Friday. “What can I do for you?” he said, his head cocked so far back he looked at me from underneath his glasses, which was off-putting. Nevertheless, I got straight down to it and politely requested the wages I was owed, at which point his gigantic head tipped back even further and appeared to split in half as a phony, villainous laugh heaved forth. Had I any proof that I’d worked all those hours? Any contract? No? Well then, he wouldn’t be giving me a penny. “I do this all the time, sweetheart,” he boasted. “You haven’t got a leg to stand on.” I really couldn’t believe I’d got myself into such a hackneyed situation as this, the predictability of it made me livid. At the same time I had no desire to amuse him further by playing the desperate wretch in this abject scenario, so I quietly gave him just a small piece of my mind then went off down the stairs, trembling, trembling, trembling.
Things were getting pretty desperate by this time so I went about finding a new position right away and promptly got an interview at a very ordinary café on Wicklow Street. The owner there was also named Kieran and as is customary he asked me about my most recent employment. I described to him quite matter-of-factly the underhand tactics of my previous employers and he did his best to assure me that not everyone in Dublin was crooked. He actually looked considerably aggrieved by what I’d told him, to the point where I felt I should come up with something to assure him in return, so I said something generic and absolving, along the lines of “There are people like that everywhere.” This seemed to cheer us both up, in fact things proceeded rather giddily after that. Not only was I given the job, Kieran also offered me a significant advance, which I accepted gladly. I left the café ecstatic. Finally we had enough money to put down a deposit and a month’s rent on a small unfurnished flat on Leeson Street.
I shall always remember when we went to look at the flat, not so much because it was a momentous occasion, although of course it was, but because of the landlord’s face when he opened the door. It was covered with blood. After saying a quick and pained “Hello,” he put his large hands up to his bashed head and told us he’d given it an almighty wallop on the way down. As soon as we were up in the flat I stood with him by the sink in the kitchen area and began cleaning the wound. He had to stoop quite a bit so that I could reach his forehead, which is where the gash was. It was quite deep. He wasn’t really in any condition to ask us about ourselves and we didn’t feel we should detain him by asking too many questions either, so once I’d flushed away the tissues and rinsed my hands we gave him our money, he gave us the keys in return, and that was all there was to it: the flat was ours. There was no furniture in it and I was pleased about that. When you haven’t been in a private living space for a long time it can feel abstract and overbearing and the fewer swags and tails there are the better. The flat was at the top of the building so the ceiling was low and the two front windows went more or less from floor to ceiling. It was quite nice to sit on the carpet drinking a cup of tea with your back against the wall and look out across the street. There was a mattress on the floor in the bedroom and that was just fine: it looked new and comfortable. I went up to Meath Street and Francis Street and got the things we needed—bedding, towels, dishcloths, and so on. Kieran let me take a teapot, a jug, and a few cups and glasses from the café, plus several soup bowls that were no longer in use because the dishwasher didn’t clean them out properly. At that time lots of buildings were being stripped of their original fittings so there were bountiful skips throughout the city center—you could get anything you wanted. We retrieved some splendid candlesticks and a hefty radio; that was all. It seemed we had both lost the habit of coveting things. Indeed, it took a little while to get accustomed to having a home again.
Quite often I’d stand in one of the flat’s two rooms, somehow gazing inward at that amorphous space between the temples on either side of my head, quite at a loss as to where I was or what I should do there. You’d think it’d be the most natural thing in the world, yet a break from living in the regular fashion revealed that inhabiting a home is in fact an acquired capacity. Nothing was automatic. To our surprise even getting off to sleep was difficult. We’d both lie there in the dark, wide awake and full of dread. The moon came through the small bare window, and would go again, and we’d still be awake. Perhaps the fear that we must have suppressed when we were out on the street had an opportunity to register now that we were inside a safe place. At least that’s what we told ourselves, and each other. The actual cause of our unease was a little harder to countenance I think. Our bedroom at night didn’t much feel like a safe place. We had disconnected ourselves from the wider scheme of things now that we were ensconced behind a closed door and it felt like we were trapped somewhere remote and unseen where no one would ever find us. We shook and jolted, yelled out and perspired. It was as if we had clean forgotten how to feel at home in a home.
And then we got used to it. We cooked nice meals and ate them by candlelight on a tabletop we’d seen for a few days leaning up against a building across the road. I listened to the radio in the afternoon—a new classical station had just gone on air, on the same day as my birthday in fact. Not an especially startling coincidence, but one that encouraged me to imagine that all that lovely music was being played just for me. Sometimes I’d buy flowers. Writing started to happen again. Short, episodic pieces and tipsy letters to friends that were not always posted—a few are still folded up and tucked in among my many notebooks. Some of those notebooks are old now. The ones from that time don’t contain anything especially interesting or important. Just the minutiae of the daily round. The ins and outs. The comings and goings. The humdrum details which life depends upon. The sums were still occurring—oddly moving to see them now, getting longer and longer as our income and outgoings steadily increased, and there are phone numbers with names beside them which I cannot put faces to, and here and there are notes my boyfriend and I wrote to each other—the kind of hastily written notes people used to leave on a kitchen counter all the time: darling, I’ll be home late; darling, sorry it’s a tip in here, I had to rush; darling, I hope I’m back before you read this, etc. On the last few pages of the largest notebook are some hangman diagrams. Hangman! We must have been really tired and broke that day! Cross-legged at the tabletop, guessing the names of books. There’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” “Vanity Fair.” “Story of O.” “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” “Down and Out in Paris and London.” And one title that remains a mystery. One of his books I couldn’t solve and still can’t figure out now, no matter how much I scrutinize those blanks with eyes narrowed and unassuaged. There’s no way of asking him the answer—my boyfriend returned to England ages ago, and we are not in touch. ♦
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