Lyrebird Read online

  It’s not the end of her journey. She thinks of Solomon. His awkward throat-clearing, his satisfied sigh, his contented groans, a strum on a guitar. The happiness of the beauty of this afternoon. The magical sound of his mother playing the harp. The waves lapping on the beach across from their home. The seagulls. Just the two of them, alone, they don’t need anyone else or anything else. This is not the end. It is only the beginning.

  She thinks of Rachel and her beautiful little baby Brennan and suddenly she hears his cry in the studio. They must have brought him into the studio, Rachel and Susie will be embarrassed he has made the sound, broken the silence but nobody seems to mind, or to look around. Most people are smiling, some are wiping their eyes. She likes the cry of the baby, it’s not a sad sound, she could listen to it all day, and so she does and she starts to swing on the swing, her wings fully extended.

  She looks to the side and she sees the people who have brought her here.

  Bo is crying.

  Solomon is looking up at her proudly, grinning, eyes shining.

  Bianca is sobbing.

  Even Rachel is struggling. Brennan sleeps in Susie’s arms and she realises it wasn’t him at all, it was herself who made that sound. She should have known.

  The cage descends slowly. She hangs on to the swing until the cage gently touches the stage. The crowd are silent as she descends. And then she doesn’t know what to do; her time isn’t up yet. She has five more seconds. It counts down on the screen above her. On one, the cage door suddenly opens, automatically.

  She smiles at Benoît’s final touch.

  42

  Laura and Alan stand in the centre of the StarrQuest stage. Jack is between them, but Laura reaches across and takes Alan’s hand. His hand is clammy, on his other hand is his loyal Mabel, who’s covering her eyes with her hand in anticipation of the result.

  Behind them, their fellow finalists stand in the darkness, their lights extinguished as soon as Jack announced they were eliminated in the public vote. Alice has a scowl on her face. The twelve-year-old gymnast has already had an argument with her parents in the corridor. And now it is down to Alan and Laura as the final votes are in.

  The tension builds but Laura feels an overwhelming sense of calm. She has won already. She has achieved what she wanted, and more. She has truly soared. Reached her own personal new heights. She feels free, she embarked on an adventure, she changed her life. Hidden for so long, she’s not hidden any more.

  Jack Starr rips open the golden envelope. There’s sweat on his brow and upper lip.

  ‘And the winner of StarrQuest 2016 is … ALAN AND MABEL!’

  She grins. The cage door opens again. And she’s free to go.

  Part 4

  From about the end of June until middle-July the singing of the male bird undergoes a curious change. During this period his powers of mimicry are rarely exerted and he concentrates on the rendition of his own peculiar notes and call and the long, mellow, warbling nuptial song of his tribe. This song is incomparably the loveliest item of his vast repertoire, and for at least a fortnight in each year he applies himself assiduously to its perfection, singing it over and over from dawn till dark. During this period the male and female birds are never apart. They tread a fixed round through the forests and the underbrush or bracken from mound to mound, and at every mound the male bird stops to display and sing.

  Ambrose Pratt, The Lore of the Lyrebird

  43

  Laura is sitting on the balcony, in another of Solomon’s T-shirts. Her long legs extend to where her feet are crossed on the top of the balcony, her hands are wrapped around a cup of green tea. Her eyes are closed and lifted to the morning sun. Solomon watches her lazily from the couch where he lies with his guitar, strumming gently, slowly concocting a new song, mumbling words here and there, trying to make things fit together. He could never do this in front of Bo, he always needed to be alone, he felt too self-conscious, but Laura’s company is calming. She listens and occasionally mimics the sound of his strumming. He stops to listen to her, she attempts it a few times until she has perfected the sound. He practises his song, she practises hers. He smiles and shakes his head at the wonderful bizarreness of it.

  Laura opens her eyes and looks at the folded newspaper that Solomon placed beside her. She felt him leave it there before sitting on the couch to strum on his guitar.

  She sees the headline. SUPERB LYREBIRD.

  ‘You told me never to read these.’

  He continues strumming. ‘You should read this one.’

  She sighs and removes her feet from the balcony, needing to plant herself, to ready herself for possible attack, though she knows it must have positive content if Solomon is pushing it on her. It’s a piece about the StarrQuest final by TV critic Emilia Belvedere. Laura braces herself as she reads.

  My mother was a midwife but related more with being a keen gardener. She dedicated most of her spare time to fighting a war with unwanted plants between the cracks of her pavement, in the lawn, on her hands and knees muttering curses and threats. Cracks and crevasses in pavements are comfortable, sneaky hiding places for weed seeds, carried in the breeze. Pulling them from their cracks is futile. Dandelions, thistles, sticker weed, pigweed, yarrow – these were my mother’s arch-enemies. I think of this analogy in particular when contemplating the part reality talent shows play in our society.

  The judges, the finders, are not the breeze that carry the seeds. They have an element of my mother, in that they notice and they pluck, but are (at first) without her aggression or irritation. Their purpose is not to annihilate – though that is all too often the result of their efforts. They see something rare, something pretty, but in the wrong place, and they uproot them. The finders put them in a fancy vase or jar, a place where they will be shown to advantage for all to see. They convince the weed it is where it belongs. They convince the weed to fight with all of the other weeds who always stood out from each other in their own cracks in their own pavements and never had to fight before. This is both the skill and the downfall of the talent show. The finders cannot be keepers. They uproot, they pull, they replant, and it soon loses its beauty in its new habitat. It cannot grow, it cannot thrive, it has lost its chink where once it sprouted with vitality. It is lost to the great unknown, in an unnatural world that doesn’t understand.

  The finders’ purpose is to shine a light, yet often the light is so bright it stuns or blinds them.

  From their moment of conception, I have despised television talent shows. It is an hour of discovered talent displayed in the wrong place, nurtured, if at all, in the wrong way. It may not have been concentrated vinegar poured on these rare weeds before our very eyes, but it might as well have been. This year, one talent show changed my mind, the finder of the rarest weed, that has grown and flowered in the most distant of fissures …

  Alan and Mabel was a worthy winner of StarrQuest, a likeable act, an act you cheer for, chuckle at, cannot help to be moved by with its veiled desperation, but Lyrebird stole the nation’s heart – correction, the world’s heart. I was transported, in that one performance, to my childhood … not something that happens often. Usually it is escape we desire, to get away from what we know so well. Lyrebird brought me to the core of me.

  Lyrebird’s sounds came so swiftly, in waves, sometimes overlapping one another wondrously, that it’s impossible for everybody to have heard everything, even in playback. Each sound speaks to every person differently. While dealing with the repercussions of one, another arrives. Doors opened inside of me, feelings came in surprising bursts, here, there everywhere. A flutter in my heart, a pop in my stomach, a lump in my throat, a prick in my tear ducts. I heard my childhood, my adolescence, my youth, my womanhood, my marriage, my motherhood – all in two minutes. It was so great, so overwhelming I held my breath and my tears fell while I watched a still creature on a swing, in a cage, tell us the story of her life. A life in sounds, her sounds, but parts of life that we all share. We came together
, it brought us together, a collective gathering of hearts and minds.

  It may have lacked the razzle-dazzle of other finals; no doubt the absence of pyrotechnics is something that others will attack, but its subtlety was its strength, its majesty. It took great power to be so refined, and of course with Benoît Moreau at its helm, aided by documentary maker Bo Healy, there should be no surprise. Yet there is. It was filled with humanity, emotion and warmth. It was raw, it was gritty, soft and gentle. It rose and it fell before rising again. Harsh sounds during subtle images, gentle sighs of acceptance when faced with unyielding sorrow.

  Lyrebird’s performance was captivating, enchanting, a real moment of not just TV magic, but the kind of magic that rarely occurs in life. Whatever happened in StarrQuest HQ, whatever conversations or alleged altercations took place, it was right, it was fair, it was necessary. Right won out. People will forget, as they usually do, what they felt in those two minutes. It dissipated perhaps in the time it took them to boil the kettle, put the children to bed, send a text message or change the channel, but the feeling was there in the moment, and that they can’t deny.

  A change occurred, not just in the TV talent show: it happened within me, too. As a result, I am a TV critic, a woman, in two parts; who I was before I watched Lyrebird’s performance and who I am after.

  Asking Laura Button to find the moment her skill arrived would be like asking mankind to explain the moment it was no longer an ape. It is part of her evolution. We know that Laura lived in seclusion for much of her life, ten years on her own, and sixteen years before that in relative seclusion with her mother and grandmother. What we know is that animals that live in seclusion for so long evolve in magnificent and curious ways. Laura is no different.

  This lyrebird’s lore travelled far and fast, deep and wide, from a fissure, a crack, deep into the human heart and mind.

  It is not the spotlight that encourages growth, it is the sunlight. Jack Starr learned that last night.

  The finders found her, the devotees such as I will keep the gifts she gave, now let us leave her be and may she fly free.

  Laura finishes reading the piece feeling breathless, her eyes filled with tears. She looks back at Solomon who has stopped strumming while he watches her.

  He grins at her reaction. ‘Told you it was good.’

  There’s a knock at the door. Ten a.m. on a Sunday morning, he’s not used to visitors.

  ‘Stay there,’ he says, protectively as he places the guitar down. He pads to the door and looks through the spyhole. It’s Bo.

  ‘Laura, Bo’s here,’ he says quickly, giving her a chance to compose herself before he answers the door.

  ‘Bo, hi,’ he says awkwardly, pulling the door open, tucking his hair behind his ears.

  She quickly takes in his dishevelled look. ‘Hope I’m not disturbing any …’ Then she sees Laura on the balcony and she seems relieved she hasn’t walked in on anything unsavoury. ‘Can I come in? I won’t stay long.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  Laura puts her cup down and goes to stand.

  ‘No don’t stand for me,’ Bo waves her hand dismissively, seeming awkward as a guest in what was her home only days ago.

  ‘Please sit,’ Laura pulls the second balcony chair closer to hers.

  Bo sits and Solomon hangs back. Bo notices the review on the chair beside her.

  ‘Oh good, I’m glad you saw that.’

  Laura smiles. ‘She mentions you too. Thank you, Bo. I appreciate everything you did for me over the past few days.’

  Bo’s cheeks pink. ‘You shouldn’t be thanking me. It was the right thing to do. Finally. I should have stepped in sooner, but I didn’t know how to. Have you any idea what you’re going to do now? I’m sure there have been a lot of offers.’

  Laura shakes her head. ‘I have some thinking to do. You’re right, there have been offers. Even a cooking show,’ she grins.

  ‘You would be great at that!’ Bo laughs.

  ‘I’d like to do something on foraging … outside the kitchen,’ Laura says, but trails off. ‘I don’t know, everything I want to do, that’s truly me, means going home. I feel like I can’t move forward without going there. I want to sit down with Joe. There’s so much that I want to talk to him about, ask him about, explain to him. I’m sure he’s feeling so hurt by what Tom did, there’s a lot I can tell him that will help him. And I want you to know that I’ll honour your documentary. I’ll keep my word on that, but if Joe will ever talk to me, I think we will need to be alone.’

  ‘Gosh, Laura, that goes without saying,’ Bo says, waving her hand dismissively. ‘I came to give you this.’ She reaches into her bag and retrieves an envelope. ‘I got this from StarrGaze Entertainment.’

  Solomon eyes the envelope suspiciously. He doesn’t want anything from StarrGaze in here, though they were honourable to Laura in the end, he’s cautious of what more ‘help’ they can offer.

  Bo senses his wariness. ‘You still don’t trust me,’ Bo says quietly, sounding betrayed and resigned.

  ‘Bo,’ he says gently. ‘It’s not you, it’s them. I’m sorry. Of course I trust you, especially after everything you did for the final.’

  Bo seems relieved. ‘You liked it?’

  ‘Loved it, but you used your documentary footage.’

  She shrugs. ‘Well, I still own it, it’s not exclusive any more but I think I can live with that. It was the right thing to do. Look, they didn’t exactly give this to me, okay? So …’

  ‘We won’t say a word,’ Solomon agrees, watching Laura turn the envelope over and her eyes go wide when she reads the writing.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks concerned.

  ‘From Joe Toolin, Toolin Farm, Gougane Barra,’ Laura reads, quickly taking the letter out.

  Solomon looks at Bo in surprise.

  They watch as Laura unfolds the letter, note the light tremble of the paper in her shaking hands. She reads aloud.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  Laura Button was born in Gougane Barra, Co. Cork, Ireland. Her mother was Isabel Button (Murphy) and her father was Tom Toolin. She lived with Hattie Button and Isabel Button until she was sixteen years of age and then on my property, Toolin Cottage, Toolin Farm, Gougane Barra, Co. Cork, until recently.

  I am her uncle. I hope this is all that you need for the passport.

  Good luck to her.

  Joe Toolin

  Laura looks up at Bo, her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘He must have heard you on the radio,’ Bo says. ‘Jack says he sent this without any request from the agency. I would have told you sooner, but I only recently found out.’

  Solomon looks down at Bo, notices that she looks thrown together, unusually for her. She looks different, rushed. It’s ten a.m. on a Sunday morning. She got here as soon as she could. He starts to wonder in what circumstances exactly did she find out about the letter from Jack, that would cause her to rush here on a Sunday morning. The familiar jealousy starts to rise within him, like a burning in his chest, but he quells it immediately, hating himself for even thinking like this.

  ‘I thought it would help with your … options.’ Bo smiles.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it does, thank you so much.’

  Laura stands and wraps her arms around Bo. Bo reciprocates and they stand together on the balcony, embracing. One sorry, one thankful, one redeemed, one restored. Both grateful for each other.

  It’s six p.m. when Solomon drives through the entrance gate to Toolin Farm in Gougane Barra. Joe could have been anywhere on his acres of mountainous land, it could have taken them all day to wait for him to return, but Laura is lucky. Joe is mending a fence in front of his house.

  He looks up as the car approaches, squints to see who’s inside. An aggressive stare at the possibility of more journalists coming to aggravate him about Lyrebird. Solomon lowers his window and gives him a healthy wave. He seems to relax a little, recognising Solomon and the car. Solomon pulls in at the farmhouse.

  Laura
looks at Solomon.

  ‘Take all the time you need,’ he says. ‘Wherever you decide to build your mound, I’ll follow you and watch you.’

  She grins. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, leaning in, lifting her hands to his cheeks. She kisses him, this man she watched and adored, trusted in and followed until she found herself. As soon as she gets out of the car, Ring and a new pup come racing towards her, dancing around her legs with excitement to greet her after their time apart. Solomon gets out of the car, elbows on the roof, to watch her.

  She climbs the fence in front of the farmhouse, and walks down the mountainside, hair blowing in the wind as she joins her uncle. He looks at her for a greeting but she doesn’t say a word. Instead she helps him with the fence, lifting the wooden pole from the ground and holding it upright so that he can twist the wires around each other. He watches her for a moment, taking her in, trying to figure her out and what she’s doing here, and then he takes the wire from her and they work together.

  A SUMMARY

  When we draw together all the threads available to us to approach an understanding of the Lyrebird, we are imperiously compelled to enter the misty realm where intelligence separates from instinct and merges into a form, however vague, of spiritual consciousness.

  The Menura, as we have seen, willingly submits its life to regulation by a definite code of guiding principles.

  It has a strong sense of property rights and values.

  It respects the territorial rights of its neighbours and defends its own.

  It possesses the power to impart ideas by a form of speech.

  It is monogamous and is strictly faithful to its mate – even apparently (although that has not yet been exclusively established) after it has been bereaved of its life companion.

  It has a deep love of melody, which it is able to express most sweetly with consummate art.

  It dances prettily and accompanies its steps with a strange elfin music, spaced with throbbing time-beats which the dancing steps conform.