‘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.