More Miracle Than Bird

by Alice Miller

  The builder, Rafferty, did write, but his reports were mixed. Two weeks before, he’d said he had finished building the chimneys and the fireplaces, and installed the eaves. This week, he had made the castle windows and he was planning to stay overnight to plaster the cottage. But there had been heavy rains overnight, and in the morning he had found the hall and the first floor of the tower flooded. The cottage was only one and a half inches higher than the waterline, and the yard was three feet underwater. She was certain that all this meant there would be something wrong with the child.

  Willy was working on a poem, and when he was at his desk he seemed happiest, having made some change that felt significant. She was pleased for him but envied him the escape. She had read a first draft over his shoulder—it was about the last stages of the war, the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and the continued conflict in Ireland—but she felt that when she spoke to him about her thoughts on the poem, he seemed distracted. She thought it would be better if the poem reached beyond the war—its effect seemed limited by specific lines about the Germans arriving in Russia—but either he didn’t agree with her, or he wasn’t listening to what she said. She felt agitated; there was not enough connection between them. She felt as if she were merely a vehicle for a baby. She wanted him to touch her.

  “I want to go back to Ballylee,” she said.

  “We can’t, of course.”

  “I have to.”

  “Darling, it’s practically underwater. And you are due in six weeks.”

  “I want to go.”

  “Perhaps we can ask Thomas for advice?” Willy said. “Perhaps he might lend another perspective?”

  “All right,” she said. But she kept putting off asking the spirits anything. She claimed that they wouldn’t come. She said she was too unwell.

  A week later, Georgie had two letters. One was from Rafferty, saying that he hadn’t been able to do any work on Ballylee for a full week because of the flooding. The other letter said that Scott, the architect, had caught a chill at Archbishop Walsh’s funeral, contracted pneumonia, and died. She shut herself in the library and read, tried not to think about the tower or the birth, and to remind herself whatever was happening with her body, her mind was still her own. She read a newspaper article about how Sinn Féin was growing more popular in Ireland, even with many of its members in jail. She wanted to talk to Willy. She was about to stand up and head upstairs to find him, but at that moment, Willy walked into the room. He came in and sat across from her.

  “I need to speak to Thomas,” he said. He handed Georgie a pencil. “Thomas, are you there?”

  Georgie gave in. She stood up and walked over to the chair where she usually summoned the spirits. Willy followed her. As soon as she sat down, he began to address Thomas:

  “I’ve decided to dedicate myself to your writings. To write down all the things you say.”

  He waited. There was a pause before the reply came.

  THAT IS NOT OUR PURPOSE. WE HAVE COME TO GIVE YOU METAPHORS FOR POETRY

  “But I want to write a book with your teachings,” Willy said, “so that the world can learn—can know—all this is real.”

  WE DO NOT NEED YOU FOR THAT

  Willy shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. She thought of the poem he was writing, and of the flooded tower.

  THE GREAT WHEEL IS TURNING. THE CYCLE OF TWENTY CENTURIES IS ENDING. CHRISTIANITY ONLY ONE TURN OF THE WHEEL. DO NOT ONLY LOOK AT NOW AND THEN. LOOK AT THE CYCLE. LOOK AT WHAT’S TO COME

  “But what is to come?” he said.

  NEW ERA OF DISTRUST AND DESTRUCTION. DO NOT NEGLECT THE MEDIUM. DO NOT FORGET THE 6TH SENSE. THE MEDIUM NEEDS ATTENTION OR WE WILL NOT RETURN

  The sixth sense was the sexual, an area which Willy occasionally needed to be reminded was essential to continue spiritual communications. She put the pencil down, opened her eyes, and looked straight at her husband. “I’m going to bed.”

  “I want to make some more notes,” Willy said. “I’ll be there in a moment.” His eyes were wet—he was excited—and he leaned down to kiss her gently. He picked up the notebook she had been writing in and tucked it under his arm.

  Georgie went upstairs to the bedroom. Willy was not listening to Thomas either. She didn’t know how to make him listen. She put her hand on her pregnant belly, this part of her body that no longer felt like hers, that now belonged to her son. Again she had the sense that something was going to go wrong. She wanted to call downstairs to Willy so she could tell him she felt afraid, to ask him to reassure her. But she was worried that if she called him, he wouldn’t come; she was worried he would stay downstairs with the scrawlings of Thomas, and that this would be worse than if she didn’t ask at all. Instead, she rubbed her neck, which at least she still recognised as her own. She got herself ready for bed and wondered if Willy would come to her, but by the time she lay down and closed her eyes, he still had not come. Much later she woke when she heard him come in, the soft thud of his steps around the room, before he slipped under the sheets and wrapped himself around her.

  The following evening she found a new draft of the poem on his desk. The ending read as follows:

  The darkness drops again; but now I know

  That twenty centuries of stony sleep

  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

  And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  She returned the page to the desk. She was already flooded with dark images of the birth; she found the imagery disturbing. She put her hand once more to her stomach. At the same time, she could see that Willy had listened to Thomas, and what he had written was good, far better than the poem she’d read back at Stone Cottage. Things would be better when her son was finally born.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  It was not until the labour was over, and when the nurse called out her congratulations, that Georgie realised what it was that had gone wrong. The baby was a girl. For a moment, she was horrified—the spirits had clearly promised a boy. But when the nurse placed the baby in her arms, Georgie stared into her eyes and found that she could manage, that she didn’t really mind so much. Even Willy, when he arrived at the nursing home within the hour, declared that, despite all the promises to the contrary, he was glad to have a daughter.

  FIFTY-NINE

  She had expected Nelly to arrive all afternoon. Georgie had looked forward to showing off Anne again, who by now had a slick of thick black hair, and large dark eyes that stared silently at what went on around her. She even had six words, which she deployed very carefully, watching how you reacted, as if she weren’t sure if they meant what she thought.

  There was no sign of Nelly. She was still not there at five o’clock, and the nurse had to put Anne to bed.

  “Why can’t she do as she says?”

  Willy tried not to smile at her usual frustration with her mother. “There’s probably some holdup in London.”

  “She’s doing it on purpose. She knows you’re going to Dublin, so she’s waiting for you to leave so she can have Anne all to herself.” Georgie had also wanted to show Nelly the house, which everyone agreed Georgie had furnished beautifully, despite their constrained finances. It had been some consolation to Georgie that she’d managed this, given the endless delays with the tower’s renovations.

  She considered Willy, with his book on his lap.

  “Why aren’t you packing?”

  “I couldn’t find my suitcase.”

  “Did you think it would find itself?”

  He smiled at his own incompetence, placed his book aside, and stood up from his chair. Standing, he looked at her. “Perhaps you have seen it somewhere?”

  She had not noticed before they married the extent to which he couldn’t manage his own affairs, the extent to which women like Olivia and Lady Gregory had always stepped in to help him with practical matters. He seemed to find his own ineptitude charming.

  She went downstairs, found his case wh
ere he had left it behind a chair in the parlour, and started to drag it across the room. He put his hand out.

  “Darling, perhaps, before I pack, we could consult with them one last time?”

  He meant Thomas, Ameritus, and the others. She shook her head. “Of course we can’t. There’s no time.” The spirits had been rather defensive after Anne turned out not to be a son, but Willy had forgiven them. They said they could never predict things with true clarity. It was possible they had been misinterpreted.

  “But it will be a whole fortnight.” He had to go for Abbey Theatre business, but he didn’t like to be away so long.

  “Nothing would come now even if we tried. Please just pack so we can get you on that train.”

  “And you will go and see Iseult?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “I’m so glad you two are such good friends.”

  She began collecting together the books from his desk and handing them to him.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the books, placing them on the bed, and kissing her. “What would I do without you?”

  “You’d miss your train,” she said.

  There was still no sign of Nelly when he left for the station. After he left, she sat by the window. The clouds were heavy cream with a puffy underside of deep grey. Anne was asleep in the nursery.

  She had got what she wanted. She had, in a way, been more right than anyone.

  What was strange was that even though she never could have married a man like Thomas Pike, she still thought of things she might say to him. She might explain, for instance, the way all lives were a kind of compromise, and the one that she had chosen was right for her after all. She would show him this house that she had furnished, she would show him Willy’s latest poem, and most of all, she would show him Anne. But why did she wish to show him anything? To defend her decision to marry Willy? Was she imagining an intimacy she and Pike had never had? Was she confusing him with the spirit she mustered to guide Willy through his anxieties? Although she used Pike’s first name to talk to Willy, she didn’t feel that he—that young officer in his narrow bed, or walking with her in Ashdown Forest—was speaking through her. Someone might be, maybe, but not him. Sometimes she pictured his body in the process of being blown to bits, in a shower of mud and skin, blown into the air. Sometimes she wondered what was kept from that moment. An image of the lady Emma’s pale throat? Those crisp sheets Mrs. Thwaite always insisted they pull sharply to smooth a crease’s hint? That blurry canvas of Paris and Helen, waiting on the shore?

  She entwined her fingers together and looked out the window. The sunset seemed ridiculous, as if it were old-fashioned somehow, like an old textbook depiction of heaven. The knock on the door surprised her. She remembered Laura was in the parlour, and she sat back down and waited.

  It was Nelly, at last. She had been delayed, she was dreadfully sorry; she was dying to see little Anne. Almost as an afterthought she swooped in to hug her daughter, in a surge of perfume and soap.

  “She’s sleeping in the nursery,” Georgie said, leading her through to the baby’s room, and at the same time staring at the way her mother’s face had fallen in slightly more since she had seen her last, the way the skin pulled down as if filled with fluid. She was tired, she said, so many delays, and even first class had been stuffy and smelly. In the nursery, Anne was sleeping, but when she heard Nelly chattering, the child woke up and began to cry. Nelly reached in and picked her up, but she cried harder.

  “Come on, Anne,” Georgie said, rather desperately. “It’s your grandmother.”

  “She looks exactly like you,” Nelly said, seeming unworried by the rising screams as she cradled the red-faced child. “Exactly as you did.” She glanced at her adult daughter and smiled at Anne. “Could be the same baby.”

  “I think you should put her back,” Georgie said, stopping herself from reaching for Anne, but Nelly shook her head and walked around the room with the baby screaming and pushing her tiny fists into the air.

  “She’s fine,” said Nelly, face to face with the baby. “Just a little growly, aren’t you?”

  “Give her to me,” Georgie said. She took Anne, tried to soothe her, and called for the nurse to come back. She hustled her mother out of the room, and Nelly led the way out into the hall.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier,” Nelly said. “The trains—”

  “It’s fine,” Georgie said. Nelly had to have it her own way. She was looking around with a calm expression but didn’t say anything about the house.

  Out the window the sunset had gone; the sky had turned dark blue and would soon be black. Nelly looked back towards the nursery, where the crying continued. “She’s a very dear thing.”

  Georgie smiled. “Yes. Willy has written her a poem.”

  “How useful.”

  Georgie ignored this.

  “Are you taking Anne to Galway?” Nelly said.

  “As soon as the renovations are finished.” She glanced at her mother. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  “It’s so remote. And there’s so much unrest. Surely you could wait till she is older—”

  “It’s important for us to go.”

  “It’s not your country.”

  “It’s Anne’s, and Willy’s, and it will be mine. It will only be for the summers. You can visit us.” She wouldn’t come all that way, Georgie was certain. She had not told Nelly that all the money to renovate the tower had come out of the savings that had been released on her twenty-fifth birthday. She refused to give her mother any more reason for disapproval.

  Nelly was watching her closely. “Are you enjoying marriage?”

  “Yes,” Georgie said. It was true enough. She had given up trying to explain to anyone what it was like.

  SIXTY

  It was a relief to go down to London for some days, to spend some time away from Oxford, and leave Anne with the nurse. The train was on time, and Georgie was happy to sit back and watch the world flash by. It was a gift not to have to take care of anyone for a few hours. She brought along Willy’s poem for Anne, in which he solemnly instructed their young daughter not to end up like Maud Gonne:

  An intellectual hatred is the worst,

  So let her think opinions are accursed.

  Have I not seen the loveliest woman born

  Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,

  Because of her opinionated mind

  Barter that horn and every good

  By quiet natures understood

  For an old bellows full of angry wind?

  Georgie herself had kept quiet when she read the poem, and resolved that she would teach her daughter that having her own opinions—whatever they might be—was to be applauded. Anne would never be mad like Maud. Georgie would encourage her to be as noisy as she wished. Reading the poem again, she supposed she herself would never escape the Gonne women; they were knitted into her victory.

  She walked from the station to the small tea-shop, tucked away in a leafy courtyard, where Dorothy was sitting under a tree, with a teapot already waiting. Dorothy leapt up and embraced her with a surprising fierceness.

  Georgie laughed nervously and sat down. Dorothy was already lifting a flask from her bag.

  “Not for me,” Georgie said. “I’m not quite well.” Without meaning to, she raised her hand to her stomach. She hadn’t told anyone yet, worrying it might amount to nothing.

  “Not again?” Dorothy hesitated, unable to hide her disappointment, but she made an effort to smile. “How marvellous. Well. We should celebrate.” She tipped some of the flask into Georgie’s cup. “Ezra might drop in, too. He has gone to someone with a proposal for a magazine. We thought we might get some money out of it.”

  Georgie eyed the teacup and wondered if her stomach would settle. She raise the cup to her nose, sniffed, and took a sip; the alcohol was strong. She took another and returned the cup to the table.

  “How is Anne?”

  “Good. I left her with the nurse.”


  Dorothy was not much interested in children, but she tried for Georgie’s sake, and she had at least acted pleased with Anne when they had brought her to London the first time; she had held the child and pronounced her lovely.

  “And you’re already ready for another?”

  “I suppose we are.” Georgie was more relaxed about the prospect of pregnancy than she had been, knowing how it had gone with Anne, knowing not to make any promises in advance.

  She heard a rush of footsteps behind her, and someone grasped her shoulder.

  “Our Oirish lass!” Ezra swooped in and kissed her cheek with a smacking sound. He looked triumphant.

  “The meeting went well?” Dorothy said.

  “Not exactly. The gentleman said, and I quote, ‘It’s not you, Ezra. It’s the seven black phantom dogs barking and screaming around you.’” He turned back to Georgie. “It’s astonishing to me too, but not everyone approves of me.” He smiled at her. “I promised to leave you two alone, but I couldn’t miss the chance to glimpse our lady of the flooded towers. Are you looking after our Dante?”

  “I am.”

  Dorothy did not bring up Georgie’s pregnancy, and so Georgie didn’t either.

  “What you are doing is ever so good for poetry, you know.” He kissed her again and left, dodging around the tables in an exaggerated dance.

  “He is—energetic.”

  “He isn’t all that well,” Dorothy said. “I think he still misses Willy, and all he can do is rail against him. He claims Willy’s work has deteriorated completely, but I’m not actually sure he even believes it. I think it’s more self-protection, but if I even suggest such a thing, he roars.” She reached for the flask and tipped more brandy into her own cup. “He’s often roaring. He says London has no intellectual life, mankind’s imbecility is contagious, on it goes.”