One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

Castaways?
    Birdie looked at Kitty’s note nervously. Kitty was used to that: people were often afraid of speaking to journalists, afraid of saying something wrong.
    ‘My editor, and friend, Constance, passed away a few weeks ago,’ Kitty started to explain. ‘She was going to do a story, one which she left in my hands but which she never had the opportunity to fully explain to me. Your name was on the list of people she wanted to write about.’
    ‘My name?’ Birdie seemed surprised. ‘But why would I be of interest to her?’
    ‘You tell me,’ Kitty urged. ‘Is there something that happened in your life that you think she would have been particularly interested in? Something she would have been aware of? Something you talked about publicly that she could have seen or heard from somebody else? Or perhaps your paths crossed along the way somewhere. She was fifty-four years old, French accent, tough as nails.’ Kitty smiled to herself.
    ‘My goodness, where would I even start?’ Birdie began. ‘I have never done anything particularly special in my life that I can think of. I never saved a life, won any awards …’ she trailed off. ‘I can’t see why I would be of interest to her.’
    ‘Would you be willing to let me write the story about you?’ Kitty asked. ‘Would you allow me to ask you questions and perhaps find the thing that Constance thought was so special?’
    Birdie’s cheeks pinked. ‘Goodness, I was getting ready for a chess game with Walter, I didn’t think a magazine would be suddenly doing a story on me.’ She laughed lightly and sounded like a little girl. ‘But I would be more than happy to try to help you with your story. I don’t know how much help I will be, though.’
    ‘Great,’ Kitty said, not feeling as happy as she should be. She had finally found somebody from the list but that person had no idea of the story. It was getting curiouser and curiouser.
    Birdie sensed her hesitancy. ‘How many are on the list?’
    ‘There are one hundred names in total.’
    ‘My goodness,’ she whispered. ‘And do none of them know what the story is about?’
    ‘You’re the first I found.’
    ‘I hope you have more luck with the others.’
    Me too, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud.
    With a lot of encouragement from Kitty, Birdie talked about her life, starting from her childhood and going all the way up to her current life. Kitty kept it general, making a note of where she would like to question her further on her next visit. Birdie was shy at first, as most people were when talking about themselves, leaving out information, talking more about others than herself, but she seemed to warm up by the end, the wheels of her memory bank moving up a gear with each new question.
    Birdie was eighty-four years old and had grown up in a small chapel town in County Cork, in the southwest of Ireland. Her father had been a school teacher, as strict at home as he was in the school, and her mother had died when Birdie was a child. She had three sisters and one brother and when she was eighteen she had moved to Dublin to live with a family to mind their children. That same year she met her husband, Niall. They married and immediately started having children. She had seven children, six boys and one girl, ranging in age now between sixty-five and forty-six. Her daughter was the youngest. At the age of thirty-eight Birdie had her last child. This seemed less to do with family planning than with her husband having to sleep on the couch. The seven children were raised first in Cabra and then in Beaumont, in the home Kitty had visited earlier that evening, with Agnes sounding more like the second parent who helped raise Birdie’s children, taking the place of the husband who was busy with his job in the Civil Service.
    Though Birdie’s life was indeed interesting, nothing jumped out to Kitty as being particularly extraordinary about it. Birdie seemed embarrassed by it all at the end, apologising for not being more exciting, while Kitty reassured her over and over that her life was more than interesting, that she was an inspiring woman who lots of women could look up to and relate to.
    On the way home Kitty glanced at her notes and felt guilty for feeling that Birdie’s beautiful rich family life was not enough.
    From the bench in the now darkened garden lit by pathway lights and overhead lanterns, Birdie remained outside long after Kitty had left her, feeling aware of the lack of