Rules of the Road

3

DON’T MOVE FROM ONE TRAFFIC LANE TO ANOTHER WITHOUT GOOD REASON.

I run outside. My father is still in the car. The car is not on fire. I fling open the door. He looks at me with his now familiar face; the one that is somehow vacant, like an abandoned house. Or a space where a house used to stand.

‘Dad, I …’ My voice is high and tight with fear. Crying seems inevitable. My brother called me a crybaby when we were kids.

‘Your mother should be back by now,’ he says. ‘She’s been gone a long time.’

I clear my throat. ‘She’ll be back soon,’ I say. I don’t have time for crying. I have to think.

THINK.

I could call the guards. Couldn’t I? I have Iris’s letter. That’s proof, isn’t it? But is it illegal? Iris’s plan? She’d never forgive me. But maybe she would, in the end. Maybe she’d be grateful I forced her hand?

I look at my watch. The boat leaves in an hour and a half.

THINK.

I ring home. I don’t know why. Nobody is there. But the ring tone, the sound of it ringing in my own home in Sutton, in the hallway that smells of the floor polish I used this morning, the phone ringing in its own familiar way, is a comfort to me.

In the early years, I did nothing but worry about the house. The lure that it represented to would-be burglars. The strain of the mortgage on Brendan’s salary. And on Brendan himself. I worried that he would end up like his father, who died a week before he retired from the building sites.

‘We can buy a smaller house,’ I said. ‘In Bayside maybe. They’re not as expensive there.’

But Brendan had already put the deposit down. It meant a lot to him, our address. He said I wouldn’t understand because I hadn’t grown up in a three-bed council house in Edenmore.

He told me not to worry.

I worried anyway.

The phone stops ringing. Then a click, and Brendan’s monotone. ‘We’re not in. Leave a message.’

‘You could sound a bit more …’ I said when he recorded the message.

‘A bit more what?’

‘Well … interested, I suppose.’

I don’t remember what he said to that. Nothing, I expect.

I hang up. Dad smiles at me and says, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time Frank Sin—’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘What would you say if I told you we were going on a little trip?’ This is crazy. I can’t go. I have too much to do here. Too many responsibilities. Besides, I’ve got no change of clothes. Or even a toothbrush.

‘But what about your mother?’ Dad asks. ‘She has to come with us.’

I scan the front of the terminal building. Maybe Iris will come out? She seemed stunned when I left. She was probably expecting me to do something. What should I do?

THINK.

I can’t just get on a boat. What about Dad? And the girls? They’re both under pressure at the moment; Kate with her play debuting in Galway next week, and Anna, in the last year of her politics and philosophy course. Studying for her finals.

Brendan told me not to ring him at work unless it’s an emergency.

‘GoldStar Insurance, Brendan Shepherd’s office, Laura speaking, how may I help you?’

‘Oh, hello … I …’

‘Is that you, Mrs Shepherd?’

‘Well, yes, yes it is, I—’

‘I’m afraid Brendan is in a meeting and he—’

‘I’m … sorry, I don’t want to disturb him, but I need to … could you …’

‘Certainly, one moment please.’

‘Greensleeves’. It sounds soothing after the brisk efficiency of Laura Muldoon. She’s worked there for years. Brendan says he couldn’t manage without her. His right-hand woman he calls her.

A second round of ‘Greensleeves’, and still no sign of Iris. Part of me knows for a fact that she is on the boat. That’s what she said she was going to do, so it seems likely that that’s what she’s done. Still, I look for her at the main door of the building. Just in case.

‘Terry?’ Brendan sounds worried. ‘What is it? Is everything okay?’

‘Well, no, but, I—’ What to say, exactly?

‘Are the girls all right?’

‘Yes, yes, they’re fine, it’s just—’

‘I’m in the middle of an important meeting. The Canadians arrived this morning. Remember?’

‘Yes, of course.’ How could I have forgotten about the Canadians? Brendan has talked of little else but this takeover for months now. There’s talk of rationalisation. He’s worried about his staff. Losing their jobs.

‘Can you print out last week’s bordereaux on the financial services portfolios?’ Brendan asks.

‘Pardon?’ I say.

‘Sorry, I was talking to Laura there. Listen Terry, I’m going to have to—’

‘Wait.’

‘What is it?’ His impatience is almost tangible. I clear my throat.

‘Brendan. I need to talk to you. It’s about Iris.’

‘Iris?’ He wasn’t expecting that. I can’t blame him. Iris is not someone who usually warrants an emergency phone call.

‘Yes, Iris,’ I say, so there can be no doubt.

‘What about her?’ The urgency is gone from his tone. He thinks this is one of my worrying about nothing scenarios.

‘Well, she’s … talking about going to Switzerland. She says she’s going to a place where she can … it’s a clinic. In Zurich. They help you to … you know … end your life.’

‘What?’

‘Iris is going to Swi—’

‘No, Jesus, I heard what you said, I just … what the hell is she doing that for?’

‘Well … she says it’s to do with her MS and—’

‘But there’s not a bother on her. She’s not even in a wheelchair.’

‘That’s why she wants to do it now, she says. While she still can.’

‘That makes no sense whatsoever.’

‘Look Brendan, there’s no time to explain. The boat is leaving in …’ I check my watch. ‘… an hour and a quarter, and—’

‘Boat? What boat?’

‘The boat to Holyhead.’ It was a mistake. Ringing Brendan.

‘But she’s going to Zurich, you said. Why would she—’

‘She doesn’t fly. You know that.’

Brendan makes a sort of snorting noise down the phone. ‘So she’s going to kill herself, but she’s taking the boat just in case the plane crashes? Jesus, even for Iris, that’s crazy.’

‘Don’t say that, it’s—’

The sound of a foghorn wails through the air, startling me.

‘Where are you, Terry?’

‘I’m … I’m at Dublin Port.’

‘What are you … Jesus Christ, you’re not thinking of going with her, are you?’

‘Of course not. I mean, probably definitely not. It’s just … she’s by herself and …’

Crackling on the line now, then a door – Brendan’s office door – being firmly closed. When he speaks again, his voice is louder. Clearer. As if he is pressing the receiver hard against the side of his face.

‘Terry, listen to me now. She’s not going to go through with it. This is one of her notions. Like that time she said she was going to trek through the Sahara Desert.’

‘She did trek through the Sahara Desert.’

Brendan pauses, takes a deep breath.

‘Look, Terry, you’re needed here. Work is crazy at the moment with the Canadians landing. And there’s Kate. We need to be in Galway for her play next week.’

‘I know that, but—’

‘And what about Anna? She gets so stressed at exam time. And these are her finals.’ I want to tell him I know all that. I am her mother. These are the things I know. Like Anna being stressed and her skin being bad. I’m positive she’s not applying the cream I got for her eczema as regularly as she’s supposed to.

‘The best thing to do is go home, Terry. I won’t work late tonight. I’ll do my best to be home in time for dinner. We can talk about it then.’

I picture Brendan, arriving home from a hard day at the office and no dinner on the table and the washing still hanging on the line in the back garden. Anna brought a week’s worth over yesterday, and I promised her I’d …

THINK.

I think about Iris.

Say I went.

I can’t go.

But say I did.

Could I persuade Iris to change her mind? I’ve never persuaded anyone to do anything. I couldn’t even talk Brendan out of having the vasectomy after Anna was born.

‘Terry? Terry? Are you there?’ I hear the bristle in his voice, straining to get back to his important meeting.

‘Yes.’

‘So I’ll see you tonight?’

‘Well, I …’

‘Terry, this is nonsensical.’

‘I have to go.’ I hang up.

I’ve never hung up on Brendan. Ever. It’s true that we rarely communicate by telephone, but still, I’ve always held a civil tongue in my head and allowed him to finish his sentences and said my goodbyes before disconnecting the call.

Outside the terminal building, people stand and smoke or punch buttons on their phones or search for something in their handbags or stare into the middle distance.

There is no sign of Iris. The boat is leaving in – I check my watch – seventy minutes. And you have to check in thirty minutes before departure. Giving me forty minutes to come up with something.

THINK.

Everything Brendan said is true. Apart from Iris having notions. Iris has plans, not notions.

‘Do you think your mother will be back soon?’ I look at Dad. Without his dentures, his cheeks are hollow. He looks old. And cold. And so thin. When did he get so thin?

‘Yes,’ I say. I wish it were true. Mam would know what to do. She would have advice although she offered it only when it was sought. Even then, she maintained that people never really wanted advice, just someone to listen to them.

I think about Iris, sitting on the boat, her long fingers drumming the armrest of her chair, anxious to be off, regretful that things did not go according to plan. If they had, I would not have read her letter until next week, and by then, it would have been too late.

But it’s not too late.

Not yet.

THINK.

I ring Celia Murphy, my next-door neighbour, who has a key for our house. She gave me her front-door key, so I felt I had to reciprocate. I mind her cats when she goes to those juicing seminars in Scotland, and she gives us pears from her tree in the autumn, although none of us like pears. I stew them with ginger and brown sugar and put them in Tupperware containers in the freezer. The freezer is full of Tupperware containers of stewed pear. I don’t know why. My mother hated waste. Perhaps that’s it.

‘Celia? It’s Terry, I … No, nothing’s wrong, not a thing, sorry to disturb but, I … well, I need a favour and …’

Celia launches into a monologue about her cats, Fluffy and Flopsy. One of them is sick. I can’t make out which one. When she pauses for breath, I attempt to divert her.

‘Oh no Celia, I am sorry to hear that, hopefully the vet will …’

She’s off again. I grip the phone harder, dig it into my ear. ‘Listen Celia, sorry to interrupt, but I need your help. It’s urgent.’ I’m not quite shouting, but the silence that follows has a sort of stunned quality. I rush into it.

‘It’s just … well, I’m filling out paperwork for Dad and I need his passport. And eh, mine too. No, no, nothing serious, it’s just … just some paperwork, they’re always looking for something or other, these nursing homes. You’ll find them in the middle drawer of the sideboard in the dining room. Could you … Oh that’s great. Thank you. No no, there’s no need for you to bring them to the nursing home. But you’re so kind to … I’ll … I’ve ordered a taxi to collect the passports. Yes. Yes, that’s what I’ve done, I’ll … Sorry Celia the line is bad, I’d better go, yes, bye, bye, bye, thanks, bye, bye, thanks, bye.’

I hang up. If I stop and think about what I’m doing, I won’t do it, so I don’t stop. I don’t think. I ring a taxi company in Sutton, tell the man who answers what I need. This is not the type of service they usually provide, the man tells me. I say I wouldn’t normally ask, but this is urgent. I assure him of my ability to pay. I do my best to seem like a person who doesn’t take no for an answer. I bombard him with details. Celia’s address, my mobile number, my bank card details. ‘How soon can one of your drivers be here?’

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.