Rules of the Road

6

IF YOU ARE APPROACHING A JUNCTION WITH A MAJOR ROAD, YOU MUST YIELD.

‘Are you okay?’ Iris wants to know when I arrive in the café where they have drained their tea and my father has eaten all of the tiny denominations of his tart.

I am out of breath and very possibly flushed of face, having run from the ticket office to the bookshop, then to the café. I don’t know why I ran. People stared as if they’d never seen a long, loping woman before.

I am out of shape. I can feel the flush of blood across my usually pale face. I had relied on running up and down the stairs several times a day, carrying baskets of laundry, to keep obesity and heart disease in check, and perhaps it did, back in the day. I can’t remember the last time I took the stairs at a run.

I put the book on the table, face up so there can be no confusion. Dad reads the title.

‘The A to Z of L … on … don,’ he reads in the faltering way he has now, dragging his finger under the words.

‘No,’ says Iris.

I take off my cardigan and sit down. I feel the sweat I have worked up collect in the hollows of my armpits, and I am reminded that I have no change of clothes for three days. For any days. I open the book. ‘Well, I’ve never driven in London before,’ I say. ‘Now, whereabouts is the Hippodrome?’ I ask, oh-so-matter-of-factly. I follow that with an offhand, ‘And have you booked somewhere to stay?’

‘You’re not coming with me, Terry,’ Iris says, in her quiet, steely voice that brooks no argument.

‘I am,’ I rally with a casual tone.

‘No,’ Iris says, her voice rising. ‘You’re not.’

‘If it were me going to Switzerland, would you come with me?’

‘If you wanted me to, I would.’

‘And if I didn’t want you to?’

‘Look, this is a moot argument. You wouldn’t go to Switzerland.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because … you’d always be thinking that a cure would be discovered.’

‘Exactly!’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘It could.’

‘It’s unlikely. In my lifetime at any rate.’

‘Only if you insist on cutting your lifetime short.’ I whisper this, but it’s a loud whisper and attracts the attention of a couple at a neighbouring table.

Iris glares at the couple, who whip their heads in the other direction so now it looks like they are taking a keen interest in the hot food, which no one in their right mind would do.

I was going to make seafood pie this evening. I tend to cook fish when Dad is staying. Good for your brain. Brendan doesn’t think eating fish will make any difference to Dad at his stage of the disease – stage five, we think – but it’s important to feel like you are doing something positive. I think about my bright, comfortable kitchen with the rocking chair that faces towards the garden where, only this morning, I admired the tulips I had planted as bulbs last September, dancing on their long stems, a palette of oranges and reds and yellows.

Dad points to a television screen mounted on the wall where a reporter is at the scene of a road-traffic accident. ‘If you are approaching a junction with a major road,’ he recites, ‘you must yield.’

‘You hear that Iris?’ I look at her. ‘You must yield.’

‘Are you all finished here?’ asks a waitress, appearing at our table with a tray in her hand and a wad of chewing gum bulging in her cheek.

‘Yes we are.’ Iris reaches for her sticks, hauls herself to her feet. She sways before she steadies herself, and I see the familiar curiosity in the waitress’s expression.

People like illnesses to be visible to the naked eye. Otherwise there’s suspicion. That’s one of the reasons Iris rarely tells anyone she has MS. To avoid a variation of, You look fine to me.

‘No, we’re not,’ I say to the waitress. ‘I’m sorry but … no, we’re not finished here.’ The waitress is brandishing one of those disinfectant sprays that I cannot abide, for who can tell what chemicals lurk inside?

‘I’ll come back in a bit,’ the waitress says, taking herself and her noxious spray away. Now she looks cautious, as if we are one of those groups where there’s no telling what might happen next.

‘I’m not letting you go by yourself, Iris,’ I say. I will say it as many times as I have to and then, if that doesn’t work, I’ll just follow her. Wherever she goes. I won’t let her out of my sight.

‘You can’t fix this, Terry,’ Iris says. ‘This is not one of those things you can fix, like buck teeth.’

It’s true that buck teeth are easy to fix, so long as you’ve got plenty of money. The girls’ orthodontist and Brendan’s bank balance can attest to that.

‘I don’t want to fix it, I just don’t want you to go by yourself.’ This is not true. I do want to fix it. It’s fixable. Not the MS of course. Not yet at any rate. But the situation.

Iris isn’t usually a pessimist.

She is a realist.

It is this side of her that I address now.

‘What happens if you fall? On the way to Zurich? What happens if you get sick? Or you’re so tired you can’t keep going. It’s a long journey. Anything could happen to you.’

Iris hoists her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ she says. She turns and walks towards the door. I jump up, the legs of my chair screeching against the floor. I have to do something. I have to say something.

THINK.

‘You could choke,’ I shout after her. ‘You could choke to death.’

This is cruel, and I wouldn’t say such a thing ordinarily. Or at all. Iris is not afraid of many things, apart from flying. And I know she’s not afraid of dying. Of death.

But the disease has compromised her swallow, and she is terrified of choking to death. She says she’d prefer to burn.

Where death is concerned, I am more of a worrier than an existential thinker. When the girls were little, I regularly imagined scenarios in which they were in mortal peril and there was nothing I could do to save them. Kate, in a Babygro, crawling out of an open, upstairs window. Anna toddling unnoticed off the footpath, as a Des Kelly Carpets truck, looking for number 55, bears down on her wobbly little body.

Iris stops and turns. She walks back to our table. ‘What did you say?’ It’s nearly a whisper, as if she can’t quite believe I’ve stooped this low.

‘I know the Heimlich manoeuvre,’ I say.

‘What has that got to do with—’

‘If you start choking,’ I say, ‘I can do the Heimlich manoeuvre.’

Iris shakes her head slowly. ‘Listen Terry, I know you don’t understand this and—’

‘I won’t try to change your mind,’ I say.

She looks at me then. Examines my face. I cross my fingers in deference to the lie, a habit that has persisted from childhood.

I sense a slackening of Iris’s resolve. While I know it’s more to do with her being tired than any powers of persuasion I may possess, I press home the advantage it affords me.

‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ I say, ‘if I let you go on your own.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, now I’m supposed to feel guilty on top of everything else?’

‘Well, no, but … I would.’

‘Fuck’s sake.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘For making you feel bad.’

‘I don’t feel bad.’

‘You do.’

‘Who is feeling bad?’ Dad asks, anxious, and Iris and I look at him, and our expressions are both a little shame-faced, and I think it’s because we sort of forgot about him and because he has no idea what’s going on.

Iris sits down, all of a sudden, as if her legs have collapsed beneath her. She exhales and shakes her head, and I know I’ve won, although won might not be the appropriate word.

‘Two conditions,’ she says.

I can’t believe there are only two. I nod and wait.

Iris holds up the forefinger of her left hand. ‘One,’ she begins. ‘We do not talk about this again for the rest of the trip.’

I cross my fingers beneath a napkin and nod.

Iris leans towards me. ‘Do you agree?’ she says.

‘I do,’ I tell her, which cannot be categorised as a ‘white’ lie. It is an out-and-out blatant lie. I will think about this conundrum later. For now, I need to concentrate, because Iris is holding up a second finger. ‘Two,’ she says. ‘The furthest you can come is the Swiss border. After that, you have to turn around and go back home.’

‘Okay,’ I say. I am shocked at how easily the second lie comes. Already, I am a master of deception.

I can tell Iris is shocked too. In different circumstances, I would be delighted. Iris is a difficult woman to shock.

‘Definitely okay?’ she says.

‘Definitely okay,’ I repeat.

Once again, she reaches for her sticks, hauls herself to her feet.

Dad stands too.

So do I.

‘Please know now that I won’t change my mind,’ Iris says as we make our way to the door of the café.

I nod. I know that Iris believes that today. But there are other days up for grabs. Maybe three of them, judging by the weight of her bag. Enough time for Iris to change her mind. For me to persuade her to change her mind.

The truth is I’ve never been very persuasive.

But this is not about me, it’s about Iris.

Iris won’t do this. She won’t be able to, in the end. The simple fact of the matter is that Iris loves life. Maybe she’s forgotten that. Sometimes that happens, doesn’t it? To the best of us?

All I have to do is remind her of that one simple fact.

7

BEFORE YOU START YOUR JOURNEY, YOU SHOULD PLAN WHERE YOU WILL STOP TO REST.

My mobile phone beeps, indicating a text message, which is probably either from Brendan or one of the girls. I don’t tend to give my number to people. But I can’t look at the phone because I am driving.

I am driving on an unfamiliar road somewhere in England – we must be in England at this stage, we left Holyhead hours ago – and the cars that are not passing me are beeping at me even though I’m driving at – I glance at the speedometer – ohmydearlord – sixty-five miles an hour. I slow down. More beeping.

The motorway would have been quicker of course, but I do not thrive on motorways. I did it once. The M50. Even elderly drivers honked their horns, albeit apologetically, as if they had no alternative.

Iris yawns and stretches. ‘Where are we?’ she says. But I can’t answer her, because I don’t know. ‘Tell me again why you don’t have a GPS system in the car?’ she says, connecting her phone, which has run out of battery, to her charger.

‘Because I don’t need one,’ I say. ‘I usually know where I’m going.’

I hand Iris the road map. Except it turns out that Iris is not as good at map reading as I had assumed.

‘Why had you assumed that?’ Iris wants to know, and it is a fair question. In fact, now that I know the truth, my assumption seems preposterous. She picks my phone out of my handbag, tosses it back inside when she sees the ‘no service’ sign on the screen.

Dad, realising that things are not brilliant, has taken to reading aloud every road sign we pass, and there’re rather a lot of them, so there’s a lot of reading aloud, which would ordinarily be fine, but, in this instance where there is a sizeable chance that we have missed our turn – or turns – it is not fine.

I am sorry to say that it is annoying.

‘Dad, it’s okay, you don’t have to—’

‘Bangor,’ he calls out. ‘Is it that one, Terry?’

‘No, I don’t thi—’

‘Chester,’ he shouts later.

Iris abandons the map.

‘Birmingham,’ roars Dad.

It begins to rain. Traffic builds up as the afternoon dwindles. Iris slumps against her seat, as if she too has run out of battery. If pressed, she’ll say that fatigue is the worst thing about MS, even though she never seems tired. Apart from now. But I suppose today is … well, it’s not your common-or-garden kind of day.

I long to pull onto the hard shoulder and consult the map, but you can add hard shoulders to the list of things I’m terrified of. You’re putting yourself in harm’s way, stopping on a hard shoulder.

I drive on.

‘Milton Keynes,’ shouts Dad.

I glance at the petrol-tank gauge. It is less than a quarter full. And I can’t mention it, because if I do, Dad will worry, and when he gets hold of something to worry about, he keeps at it and at it, like the skin he picks off his ears and his lips even though you beg him not to, and you lather them with Vaseline when the medicated cream the doctor prescribes fails to work.

I keep on driving.

Iris’s plan was to travel by taxi on motorways through England and France.

In this first part of her plan, she has allowed herself to be thwarted. Which gives me cause to hope.

The rest of her plan contains a worrying paucity of logistical detail. Other than the deed itself. Which is scheduled for Saturday morning.

Five days. Not three.

She has packed light.

But there is a meeting with the doctor on Friday evening. To get the prescription. And to make sure Iris is of sound mind. Or, if my plan goes to plan, to cancel the deed because Iris will have changed her mind.

Iris never changes her mind.

But there is a first time for everything.

And a deed is not a deed until it is done.

Today is Monday.

I have time.

‘Luton,’ Dad calls out.

‘Watford.’

I am cautiously optimistic that we are going in the right general direction.

Ahead, a petrol station. Where I can fill the tank and consult my A–Z. Get my bearings. It’ll be alright.

The apartment Iris has booked is in Stoke Newington.

‘Is that near the Hippodrome?’ I ask, leafing through the guidebook.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Promise not to laugh?’

‘I’m pretty sure I won’t laugh.’

‘It’s got a secret garden.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s a roof terrace really,’ Iris admits, reddening. ‘But there’s a touch of The Secret Garden about it. You’ll see.’

Iris seems so certain that I’ll get us there. Today. On time.

Stoke Newington is an hour’s drive from Watford, according to the book. Which also tells me that it is 7.4 kilometres from the Hippodrome in Leicester Square where Jason Donovan is playing tonight. Or 4.6 miles, since it’s England and this is the measurement used here. I allow myself a small moment of optimism when some signal returns to my phone. I manage to find the apartment using an app on my phone, which I’ve never used before, since I’ve never driven anywhere I didn’t know the way to before. The woman’s automated voice sounds bored with an edge of impatience. Now, I’m worrying about roaming charges and the congestion tax, but Iris tells me roaming charges have been discontinued, while, with a couple of casual swipes on the screen of her freshly-charged phone, she pays the tax.

She makes everything seem so simple.

What is not simple is the London traffic, lines of it stretching through gridlocked junctions, along what seems like the same street, over and over again. But then I see the street signs, the names of which bring home to me how far away from home we are.

Turn left. Turn right. Turn right. Turn right again. Turn left. Take the second exit here. Straight through the junction there. It feels as though this is how I will spend the rest of my life, following the endless directions issued by an automated voice. It feels as if we will never arrive, so when we do, I am awash with equal measures of drenching shock and exquisite relief.

I look around. I am stopped outside an efficient-looking custom-built apartment block that does not suggest gardens, secret or otherwise. It does, however, have an underground car park to which Iris has the code.

The apartment itself, on the top floor of the block, appears spacious, and this impression is enhanced by the furniture, which is spare. And the echo of our footsteps bounces against the bare walls. There are narrow, steep steps up to the roof, which will be difficult to negotiate on crutches. However, Iris will negotiate them because she was right. There is a secret garden. Although garden might be a little suggestive. The area is small, and what there is of it has more in common with the secret garden at the beginning of that book than the one that flourishes beneath the horticultural attentions of Mary Lennox and her friends. The flowerpots and baskets are overstocked with the remains of last year’s annuals, and vigorous weeds line the gaps between the patio slabs. But while the minuscule water feature is fighting a losing battle with rust, the sound of the water falling over round, smooth stones is pleasant enough, and the deckchair beside it provides a bright splash of red against the vivid green of the ivy that has wrapped itself around the wrought-iron railings that enclose the space and ensure that nobody stumbles off the edge.

Instead of the shy little robin redbreast that shadowed Mary Lennox around the garden, there is a pair of ragged crows, perched on a satellite dish and inspecting me with cold black eyes. I step towards them and flail my arms. They don’t move.

At least the railings seem sturdy enough. The ground is a long way down.

Inside, the walls are painted a watery shade of cream and the grey floor tiles are cold underfoot. The kitchen, usually my favourite part of any house, is a line of gleaming appliances and spotless cupboards and marble countertops. The cooker looks as though it’s never been switched on.

Clinical. That’s the word for this kitchen. A wave of loneliness comes over me then, pure and potent. I nearly buckle under the weight of it.

I check my phone for the source of the earlier beep. A missed call from Brendan. I will of course phone him back. Just not now. I’ll do it later. Or tomorrow, when my head might be clearer. I need to clear my head. Get some fresh air. I need to get out of this kitchen. Out of this apartment that seems spacious but is not.

And, I remember, I need knickers. And socks. And a change of clothes. And pyjamas and a toothbrush. And a hairbrush.

Oh, and some sterling.

Which, for some reason, reminds me that I need a plug adaptor.

For France.

If we ever get to France.

Which we probably won’t. Because surely Iris will come to her senses before then?

I settle Dad in front of the telly, look for some sports or wildlife programme, or maybe a western. I happen upon Ronnie O’Sullivan playing snooker against Mark Selby in the Crucible. Dad immediately straightens in the armchair, folds his arms across his chest. ‘Quarter-ball on the green,’ he says, nodding towards the screen.