Kitabı oxu: «Rules of the Road»

4
BUMPS ON THE ROAD.

There are speed bumps up the ramp to the ferry.

‘Oh dear,’ Dad says, when I drive over one. He is a bag of bones, rattling with each jolt.

‘Sorry Dad, it’s the speed ramps,’ I say.

‘Where there are speed ramps, road users should take extra care and expect the unexpected,’ says Dad. I put my hand on his shoulder and he smiles. I need to find his dentures when I park. I need to find Iris. My stomach muscles clench. My stomach is always the first thing to let me down. The doctor says this is where my stress lives. In my stomach.

‘Will you sing me a song, Dad?’

‘I used to squawk out a few numbers all right. Back in Harold’s Cross, remember?’

Harold’s Cross is where my father grew up. He lived in Baldoyle with my mother for nearly forty years and he never mentions it. But he can tell you the names of the flowers his mother grew in the long, narrow garden at the back of the house in Harold’s Cross.

‘Sing “Summer Wind”. I love that one.’ I love them all really. Dad starts to sing.

‘The summer wind, came blowin’ in from across the sea

It lingered there to touch your hair and walk with me …’

He remembers all the words, and even though his voice no longer has the power and flourish of before, if I close my eyes and forget everything I know and just listen, I can hear him. The ‘before’ version of him.

I don’t close my eyes of course. I am driving. In unfamiliar environs.

An Irish Ferries employee gestures me into a space. It’s a tight one. The car starts beeping, indicating that I am approaching some impediment; the side of the boat on one side and a Jeep on the other. Dad twists in his seat, anxious as a fledging perched on the edge of the nest. ‘Careful there,’ he says. ‘Careful.’ His face is pinched with fear and he puts both hands on the dashboard, bracing himself for an impact.

It’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of him.

I shiver. ‘Are you cold, love?’ my father asks. He puts his hand on my arm, rubs it, as if to warm me. It does. It warms me.

I smile at him. ‘Thanks Dad.’

I find his teeth buried in the pages of the Ireland roadmap I keep in the pocket of the passenger door. Brendan and I used to talk about going away for weekends when the girls were old enough to look after themselves. Just getting in the car on a Friday evening and driving away, wherever the road took us type of thing.

I don’t know why we never got around to it.

The wind is brisk when we get out of the car. Everything Dad needs is in the suitcase. Enough for a week, the manager said. But I have nothing other than the clothes I’m standing up in. The shoes – navy Rieker slip-ons – are comfortable and warm. And the navy trousers from Marks & Spencer are good travelling trousers. Hard-wearing and slow to crease. My navy and cream long-sleeved, round-necked top is a thin cotton material that does little to cut the draught. At least my cardigan is warm. I pull it across my chest, fold my arms to keep it there. My ponytail – too girlish for my age, my daughters tell me – whips around my head and I catch it in my hand, hold it down.

My other hand keeps a tight grip on the clasp of my handbag into which I have stuffed banknotes. The man at the ticket booth eyed me suspiciously when I pushed the bundle of cash through the gap at the bottom of the glass partition. I don’t carry money about my person as a rule. But I extracted the money from an account I’ve never used before. My mother opened it for me a long time ago but I only discovered it after she died, three years ago. I found the bank card in the blue woolly hat in the top drawer of her dressing table. I found all sorts in that hat. Her children’s allowance book. The prize bonds she got from her mother for her twenty-first birthday. My first tooth. A lock of Hugh’s white-blond baby hair. Her marriage certificate.

Stuck to the bank card on a scrap of paper was the PIN number – my birthday – and a note.

A running-away-from-home account, she had written. Just in case you ever need to.

I was shocked. At my mother, who, I was certain, did not approve of running away. Bearing up was her philosophy. Making the most of things.

I didn’t tell Brendan. He might have taken it the wrong way.

Iris doesn’t know we’re on the boat.

I haven’t worked out what I’m going to say yet. I don’t know what Iris will say either. There will be expletives. I know that much.

‘Where was I?’ says Dad, as if we are in the middle of a conversation from which he has become temporarily distracted.

‘We’re going to find Iris,’ I tell him, linking his arm. I sound definite, like someone who knows what they’re doing. I lead him towards the door. He shuffles now, rather than walks, as if he is wearing slippers that are too big for him. Progress is slow. Inside, there are flights of stairs, and progress becomes slower.

‘Hold onto the bannisters, Dad.’

‘Yes, but … where are we going?’

‘We’re going on an adventure,’ I tell him. ‘Remember when you used to bring me and Hugh on adventures? To Saint Anne’s Park? We’d be Tarzan and Jane, and you’d be the baddie, chasing us up the hills. Remember that?’

‘Oh yes,’ he says, and he does the laugh he does when he can’t remember but pretends he can.

Although maybe Hugh doesn’t remember either. He’s been in Australia nearly ten years now. Mam didn’t cry at the airport. She wouldn’t have wanted to upset him. He invited her to visit lots of times, but she said it wouldn’t have been practical, with Dad the way he was.

She should have gone.

I should have persuaded her to go.

Dad and I reach the bottom of the stairs. Set in the door at the bottom is a circular window, and through the glass I see a seating area with a hatch where you can get tea.

And I see Iris. Reading. I can’t make out the title of the book, but it doesn’t matter because I know what book it is. The Secret Garden. Iris’s version of a comfort blanket.

Her father bought it for her when she was a child. After her mother left. Iris remembers him reading it to her at bedtime. He’d never read to her before. That’s how she worked out her mother wasn’t coming back.

I open the door and a wave of heat and babble hits me and I feel my father flinch.

‘I don’t …’ he begins.

‘I’ll get you some tea,’ I tell him. He has forgotten that his favourite drink is a pint of Guinness with a measure of Bushmills on the side.

‘And a bun,’ I say. He nods and I persuade him through the door.

Iris has a window seat. One hand holds the book while the other is wrapped around a Styrofoam cup of tea. Her head leans against the window. Through it, grey waves rise and fall, dragging their white manes behind them. And the land, falling away with the distance we have already come.

I usher Dad towards her table. He clutches my arm as a small boy barrels towards us and I steer him out of harm’s way as the child, and – in hot pursuit – his mother, rush past us. The boy makes a loud and accurate siren wail and the noise alerts Iris’s attention. She looks over the top of the book and sees us. Surprise freezes her face. Her eyes are wide with it; her mouth open in a perfect circle. She looks unlike herself.

I have finally managed to surprise Iris Armstrong.

The seat beside her is empty. I coax Dad out of his coat, steer him into the chair.

‘Hello,’ he says to Iris. ‘I’m Eugene Keogh. I’m a taxi driver. From Harold’s Cross.’ He offers his hand, and Iris puts her book down and obliges, as she always does, with hers. Instead of shaking her hand, Dad holds it between both of his as though he is warming it.

The woman in the seat opposite Iris looks at me. ‘Do you want to sit here?’ she says. ‘So you can talk to your friend.’ Her smile is wide.

‘Oh … thank you but, I don’t want to distur—’ I begin.

The woman stands up, hitches the strap of her handbag on her shoulder. ‘It’s no problem,’ she says, smiling. ‘There’re lots of seats.’

When she leaves, Iris and I look at each other. I don’t know what to say, so I wait to see if Iris knows.

‘I can’t believe you got on the boat,’ Iris says.

‘You didn’t leave me with any choice.’ I can’t believe how calm my voice is. Iris stares at me as if she knows me from somewhere. Then, she shakes her head and points to the recently vacated seat opposite her. ‘You may as well sit down,’ she says.

Silence circles the space between us, predatory as a lion. Dad is the one to break it. ‘Where are we going?’

Iris glares at me, raises her eyebrows in a question, waits for me to answer it.

‘We’re going wherever Iris is going,’ I say.

‘No, you’re not,’ she stage-whispers at me, stretching across the table so I can see the golden-brown specks that circle the green of her irises.

‘Yes, we are,’ I say, injecting as much authority as I can muster into the words.

‘You can’t,’ Iris says.

‘I can,’ I tell her.

This could have gone on and on – Iris has alarming stamina – but then Dad interrupts. ‘Where is Iris going?’ he says.

The question produces a silence that’s as potent as the loudest sound. We stare at each other. If I manage not to blink first, I will be able to persuade Iris home. That’s what I find myself thinking. My eyes water. Iris blinks and turns to Dad. She puts her hand on his. ‘I’m going … away,’ she says.

‘Away,’ Dad says, nodding, as if it’s a location he’s familiar with and approves of.

Iris looks at me. She seems like a different person when her face is shadowed with worry. ‘I’m sorry, Terry, I never wanted you to find out like this.’

‘You thought it would be better if I found out afterwards? In a letter?’ Anger is not an emotion I’m familiar with. It burns.

‘I know this is hard to understand,’ she says.

‘Yes it is.’ I’m not going to make this easy for her.

‘Am I going away too?’ Dad says.

‘No,’ says Iris at the same time as I say, ‘Yes.’ Iris hands him the sports section of her paper. He runs his finger along a headline, mouthing the words, like the girls used to do when they were learning to read. She looks at me again. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ I tell her. ‘Just come home with me.’

Iris sighs. ‘This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly, Terry. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. I’ve done a huge amount of research, waded through so much red tape you wouldn’t believe it.’

I’m about to say that I would have helped her with the red tape. I’m good at red tape. The tedious part of plans, no matter how exciting the plans themselves are. Iris doesn’t have the patience for red tape.

But of course, I wouldn’t have helped her with the red tape for this plan.

The questions jostle for position in my brain. The first one out of the traps is Why. It comes out louder than I intended, almost a shout. ‘Why?’

Iris leans forward. ‘You know why.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t.’

‘Jesus Terry, do I have to spell it out?’

‘Yes.’

Iris looks surprised. In fairness, I am not usually so belligerent. ‘Two letters,’ she says, holding up two fingers. ‘M. S.’

I try to assume a reasonable tone. ‘Okay, so you have MS, which is not great, but it’s manageable. Isn’t it? You’ve always managed so well. And it’s not bad enough to …’

‘Which is why I’m doing it now,’ Iris says. ‘While I’m still in control.’ She makes everything sound so logical. So reasonable.

‘You hugged me when we had dinner last week,’ I say, remembering. Me, rummaging in my bag for keys as I walked to my car, and Iris coming after me and hugging me even though we’d already said goodbye at her door.

Iris shrugs. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘You don’t usually.’

‘Well, I should.’ Iris leans back in her seat, looks out of the window. ‘You’re my closest friend,’ she says, her voice quieter now.

‘Which is exactly why I’m not going to let you do this,’ I tell her briskly, as if she hadn’t said something so … well, if she were her normal self, Iris would call that sappy.

‘Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you,’ Iris says. A surly-faced gentleman in an ill-fitting suit glances at us over the top of his Tom Clancy paperback. I send what I hope is a reassuring smile in his direction, which sends him scurrying back behind his book.

I take a breath.

In one of the many parenting books I have read, readers are advised to approach a discussion from a different angle, if the discussion is tying itself up in knots or backing itself into a corner.

I train a reassuring smile on Iris. ‘May I ask a logistical question?’ I say.

Iris rolls her eyes. ‘It was only a matter of time,’ she says.

‘Why are you going to Holyhead? What I mean is … you could have gone directly to Calais from Rosslare.’ This is the part of me that I can’t help. The part that drives the girls mad. And Brendan probably. Although I don’t organise him as much any more. He tends to do his own thing these days.

Iris shrugs. ‘I have things to do in London,’ she says.

I think about the other letter. Still sitting on the keyboard of Iris’s laptop. ‘Are you going to see your mother?’

Iris snorts. ‘Christ no.’

‘It’s just … the letter?’

‘It’s not a letter. It’s a copy of my will. So she knows she gets nothing.’ The bitterness in her tone is shocking. Also the mention of Iris’s will. That seems … definite.

‘I know, it’s childish,’ Iris says before I think of an appropriate response.

‘It’s not like you,’ I say. Then again, none of this is like Iris. It’s all foreign. Double Dutch, as Dad used to say.

Break it down into manageable pieces. That’s what I used to tell the girls when they got stressed about something. A school project, for instance.

I’ll start with London. ‘So,’ I say, ‘what’s taking you to London?’

Iris shakes her head. ‘I’d rather not say.’

‘Why not?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Terry, I just … okay then. If you must know. I’m going to see Jason Donovan. Happy? He’s playing at the Hippodrome in London tonight and I’m going. To see him. Okay? That’s my plan. That’s what I’m doing.’

Dad, who has abandoned the sports pages and has been following the conversation with his head like a tennis umpire, looks at me, waiting for my response, although I can think of none.

Iris smiles. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Keogh?’

‘And a bun?’ he asks. I don’t know if he remembers that I promised him a bun. Or if it’s just an association he has with tea. Probably the latter. New information seems to glance off him, like hard rain against a window. Iris places the palms of her hands on the table, uses them to lift herself out of the chair. She refuses to wince, but her discomfort is visible all the same. When pressed, she has described the sensation in her limbs as stabbing, hot and thorough. She says she prefers the pain to the numbness. The numbness is what makes her walk as though she’s had a few too many glasses of ginger and brandy. The pain is what makes her refuse to wince.

‘I’ll go,’ I say, standing in one fluid movement. It feels unfair; my fluidity of movement, her concentrated effort. Although there is no point talking about fairness when it comes to MS.

Fairness has nothing to do with it.

It feels good to queue, even on a boat where the ground beneath your feet might not be as stable as you’d like. To do something as normal as queue. All around me, snatches of conversations.

‘… and then I said, well if you’re that nervous of strangers, you shouldn’t have gotten into the Airbnb business in the first place …’

‘… a reddish-brown. That would suit your colouring, and my stylist reckons …’

‘… and I was like, I’m so over that, and she was like …’

‘… the hire-car company said they’d only upgrade if …’

Ordinary, pedestrian conversations. As if everything is normal and life is trundling along on its usual rails.

I thank the man behind the counter and lift my tray. There is a smell of un-rinsed J-cloth that makes me twitch and think about grabbing every single cloth – the smell suggests more than one – throwing them in a bucket with Milton and water and leaving them there for at least an hour, even though the bleach could break down the fibres of the cloth, especially if they are a sub-standard brand.

I walk slowly with the tray, careful not to spill the tea, which has a not very hopeful grey pallor.

Iris is listening to Dad telling one of his stories, her face alive with interest, her head nodding along to all the details she has heard before, as if she has never heard them, as if this is the first time. She was always great with Dad. Great with all of them at the Society. Probably because of her experience with her own father. Although that was early-onset. A different animal altogether. ‘Probably the best one to get,’ Iris said. ‘I’d liken it to being struck by lightning. It takes you by storm, but it’s over nice and quick.’

It took eighteen months. Iris requested a leave of absence from the hospital where she worked at the time, and moved back into her father’s house. They watched re-runs of Neighbours every afternoon on UK Gold. Mr Armstrong jerked awake when he heard the theme music, pointing at the screen every time his favourite actor – Jason Donovan – appeared. Iris never worked out why, but thought it might have something to do with Jason’s teeth; perfectly white and even and on display every time he smiled his frequent and lengthy smiles. She bought Jason’s first album around that time. ‘It was like putting a soother in a baby’s mouth,’ she told me. ‘Especially for You’ was her dad’s favourite. Iris’s too, in the end.

I didn’t know her then. Back when she didn’t have MS. Or hadn’t been diagnosed yet, at any rate, although Iris says that she always got pins and needles in her legs as a kid. Sparkles. That’s how she described them to her dad at the time. Sparkles in her legs. So maybe it was there all along. In the wings, as Kate might put it. Waiting for its cue to take centre stage.