Rules of the Road

by Ciara Geraghty

  ‘Dad’s in Vera’s car.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll have to get in with him.’ There’s no way Dad will get out unless it stops raining, and the rain looks like it’s down for the night.

  ‘Nothing is turning out the way I wanted it to,’ she says, almost to herself.

  I couldn’t feel worse.

  ‘Is you comin’ or goin’?’ Vera shouts at us from her car. I look at Iris, who says nothing. I’d prefer if she was angry with me. There is something defeated about her silence. Something beaten. And the blood isn’t helping. It’s all down the front of her beautiful jumpsuit. If I was at home, I’d be well able to get those stains out. A thorough scrub in cold, salted water, then smear it with Vanish-Stain-Stick followed by a short, hot wash. I’d have to check the label, obviously. The material looks silky, but I’m guessing a clever synthetic mix that’d be well able to withstand a high temperature.

  And the rip at the knee. It could be sewn up I’d say. Even though the rip is not along a seam, more’s the pity.

  Odd as it seems, these are the thoughts that soothe, and it is with reluctance that I persuade myself from the laundry room in my head, where I am seldom vanquished. I look at Iris. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, holding the umbrella over her head and pulling her arm around my neck. We walk slowly towards Vera’s car. I open the back door and help Iris inside. I close the door and walk around the back of the car.

  There’s a moment – fleeting – when I think about running. Running across the road, even though there’s no pedestrian crossing and the traffic is dense. Running down the escalator into the Tube station, jumping the barrier. Not even buying a ticket. Just getting on a train to wherever a train happens to be going.

  Imagine running away.

  Twice in one day.

  I get into the car. It smells of years of smoke and the heat of damp bodies. There is an underlying smell of dog, earthy and solid. Or perhaps I only think that because of the laminated photograph dangling from the rear-view mirror. It looks like a passport photograph. The dog is big and sullen, pinkish-white in colour. His teeth are bared as he glares at the camera.

  ‘Anyone mind if I smoke?’ says Vera, lighting up.

  ‘I mind,’ says Iris.

  ‘I’ll pull the window down, shall I?’ Vera struggles with the hand crank and manages to lower the window by an inch.

  ‘Is that a pit bull?’ I ask Vera.

  She reaches for the photograph, strokes her fingers across its surface. ‘That’s Coco Chanel.’

  ‘He’s … big,’ I say. I am not afraid of dogs per se. Small dogs are okay. Small dogs on leads with careful owners. Small, clean dogs on leads with careful owners.

  ‘She,’ says Vera.

  ‘Oh, right, sorry.’

  Vera adjusts the mirror towards Iris. ‘So … Iris, my love. How’ve you been then?’

  ‘Fine,’ says Iris. The tissues I gave her are now soggy and pink. I hand her fresh ones, put the bloody ones in one of the Ziploc bags I keep in my handbag for just such occasions. The transaction happens in silence. Iris doesn’t look at me.

  ‘That’s a be-damndable night,’ says Dad, shaking his head at the rivers of water coursing down the windscreen. Vera switches on the windscreen wipers. They groan as they drag themselves across the glass. Ash teeters at the end of her cigarette, falls onto her lap. She doesn’t brush it off.

  ‘So,’ she says, looking at Dad. ‘Where you lot staying then?’

  ‘Who are you?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m Iris’s mum, sweetheart.’

  Iris makes a sort of strangled noise without opening her mouth.

  ‘Did you say something?’ asks Vera, looking at Iris in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘We’re staying in Stoke Newington,’ I say, and Vera shakes her head.

  ‘Stokey? Why are you staying all the way out there? Full of ponces and yuppies.’

  ‘I … Iris wanted a place with a garden.’ I wish I hadn’t said that. I feel like I’m betraying Iris’s confidence in some way. But if Iris has heard me, she gives no indication.

  ‘She always loved nature, did Iris,’ says Vera. Her voice is wistful. As if Iris is a memory. A fond, distant one. Perhaps for Vera, she is.

  Vera turns the key in the ignition and yanks at the gearstick, which makes a low guttural sound. Without indicating or checking her wing mirror, she pulls the barely-there BMW into the traffic where it is greeted by a cacophony of car horns, blaring.

  ‘Always check your blind spot,’ Dad tells her.

  Vera squeals, slaps his shoulder. ‘You’re a right cheeky Charlie, ain’t ya? Me blind spot! Is that anywhere near me G-spot, eh?’ She heads off into cackles of laughter and I’m pretty sure her eyes are closed, which makes me feel even more nervous than her pulling into the traffic without reference to the indicator or wing mirror did.

  ‘My car is parked down the next left-hand turn,’ I say, pointing in the direction of Chinatown. Vera throws her cigarette butt out of the window and rolls another with one hand, which, I have to admit, is pretty impressive.

  ‘So, did you have a good night out, then?’ Vera says as we roar past the turn.

  ‘Oh, Vera, I think you missed …’

  ‘I used to love the old Hippodrome,’ Vera goes on, oblivious to my frantic hand gestures, ‘back in the 80s when Peter Stringfellow were runnin’ it. All very glam back then, I don’t mind telling you. All disco balls and slow sets and martinis.’

  ‘Vera, the thing is …’

  She swerves to the right without slowing or indicating. A cyclist has to brake sharply to avoid being smeared across the bonnet. He shakes his fist at Vera, who transfers her cigarette to her other hand and raises two bony, crooked fingers in the cyclist’s direction. She cackles again. ‘Bloody cyclists.’

  ‘Can you turn back?’ It comes out louder than I anticipated. A plaintive tone. Iris screeches to a halt on the road and the car behind does the same, then blasts the horn.

  Dad puts his hands over his ears. Vera turns her head to look at me.

  ‘Sorry, Vera, I just … the car, it’s parked back that way.’ I gesture out of the back window towards the car with the blaring horn. ‘In Chinatown.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ says Vera.

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘What’s that bloody geezer beeping at?’ she says, nodding towards the car behind us.

  ‘I’m … not sure.’

  Vera looks at Iris. ‘I reckon you should come back to mine. My flat’s just down the road, and I’ve got some TCP that’ll sting the shit out of that cut on your forehead.’ She cackles again.

  ‘She might need stitches,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t need stitches,’ Iris says.

  ‘Just as well ’cos I’m not great wiv a needle and thread, bein’ honest,’ Vera says. A man, morbidly obese and glowering, emerges from the car behind.

  ‘I think we should go,’ I say to Vera. My voice is high and taut as the man lumbers towards us.

  ‘All right, all right, keep yer ’air on.’ Vera tosses the cigarette out of the car window, narrowly missing the man’s be-sandalled foot. I clench every muscle at my disposal. Vera, oblivious, wrestles the car into gear and scorches up the road.

  12

  YOU SHOULD CHECK YOUR MIRRORS REGULARLY TO OBSERVE WHAT IS GOING ON BEHIND YOUR VEHICLE.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I ask Vera when my breathing returns to normal.

  ‘You know Archway Road?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘You know where Suicide Bridge is?’

  ‘Em … no, I don’t …’

  ‘Well, I live there. On Archway Road. Just before the bridge.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘They used to queue up, in the olden days, to throw themselves off that bridge. But they got railings now, don’t they? Made it real difficult.’ She shakes her head.

  ‘What’s difficult
?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Killing yourself. Off Suicide Bridge,’ Vera tells him. ‘Not as easy as it used to be, see?’

  ‘Killing yourself?’ Dad says, his face creased in bafflement at the notion. Dementia has gifted him a dread of death.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Vera. ‘Suicide, y’know? Like the song, yeah?’ Vera’s singing voice is the most elderly thing about her. It’s high and warbling and frail.

  ‘Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, I can take or leave it if I please.’

  Dad sings along, his fear wiped away as easily as a child’s tear. I remember him watching M*A*S*H on the couch in the front room on a Sunday afternoon while me and Mam did the washing up in the kitchen and Hugh would escape out the front door as soon as the last mouthful of jelly and ice cream was swallowed. Dad’s laugh. More like a giggle. Trickling from time to time through the double doors in the kitchen. I loved hearing his laugh on those Sunday afternoons. Sunday was his day off. He didn’t go out in the taxi, he didn’t go out to the pub, he didn’t pin his hopes on a sure thing at the bookies. Things were easier on Sundays. I didn’t have to worry on Sundays. We went to mass. We went for a walk. We came home. Mam and I made dinner. Dad watched the telly. Hugh’d be in his room, listening to music louder than usual and nobody telling him to turn it down.

  Now, he’s singing along to the M*A*S*H theme song and smiling again, and I glance at Iris, but she is still looking out the window.

  I wish Vera didn’t live beside a bridge called Suicide Bridge.

  I shiver.

  ‘Are you cold back there?’ Vera asks. She must have been looking at us through the rear-view mirror. I hope she’s paying attention to the road, I really do.

  ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ I say. But Vera isn’t listening. She’s pointing to a pub – she calls it a boozer – and now she’s telling Dad about the darts championship and how she’s been unbeaten for five years in a row. She holds her hand in front of Dad’s face. ‘Look at that,’ she tells him. ‘Steady as a rock, that is.’ Dad takes Vera’s hand, holds it in one of his. She is unfazed by this development. She drives on, now with only one hand on the wheel.

  Iris stares out the window. I see London passing by in the reflection of her eyes. I lean towards her. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Her voice is flat and low. She doesn’t look at me.

  The car lunges to the left all of a sudden, mounts a pavement, screeches to a stop, and Vera says, ‘Here we are, lovies. Home sweet home.’

  She releases her hand from Dad’s and points to the building we’re parked – illegally, I’m pretty sure – outside. We all look at it, even Iris. It is a three-storey building that looks as if it’s ready to collapse under the weight of neglect. A red-brick Victorian terrace that might once have been grand, with ornate bay windows on the ground and first floors. But the red brick has been blackened by years of traffic fumes, and weeds sprout from every crack of the building’s façade. The tiny front garden is bordered by rusted, listing railings and is filled with black bin bags, lying on their sides like bloated slugs. A satellite dish dangles from a broken hinge and sways in the wind. Vera turns off the engine, yanks on the handbrake, and readjusts the rear-view mirror so she can see her face in it. She pulls a lipstick from the pocket of her coat and applies it to the frozen O of her thin, dry lips.

  ‘Are you … is it okay to park here, Vera?’ I ask tentatively. I don’t like telling people their business, but nor do I want her facing a hefty de-clamping bill. I don’t know for certain and I don’t like to make assumptions but … it’s possible that Vera doesn’t have too much in the way of disposable income.

  ‘Don’t you worry ’bout me, sweetheart,’ she says, tapping the bridge of her nose with a long, painted fingernail. ‘I know people.’

  She flings open her door without checking her wing mirror and not so much as a glance towards her blind spot. I really don’t know how she’s managed to live as long as she has, with such a cavalier approach to road safety. On the road, she pulls at her jeans, which have slipped down and are now clinging to the dubious jut of her hips, and hoists them onto the tiny circle of her waist. She surveys us, still inside the car. ‘Is you coming?’

  ‘Where?’ Dad asks.

  I open the door.

  Iris says nothing.

  I help Iris to the front door. There are three doorbells, with a laminated space where the names of the residents should appear. They are all blank. The fanlight over the front door is an impediment to natural light, given the thickness of the grime that has collected along its surface. There are cracks too; it wouldn’t withstand too much in the way of elbow grease before it shattered altogether.

  Vera unlocks the door and steps into a narrow hallway where a table missing a leg leans, covered with flyers for launderettes and takeaways. Beside it is a bicycle with flat tyres, and sitting on top of a payphone with wires sticking out of it is a long-dead spider plant, usually difficult to kill.

  The stairwell is a dark, narrow affair, the treads and rises of the steps unlikely to be in keeping with current health and safety regulations.

  Vera takes to the stairs at a surprising clip. Dad follows her. It is unusual for him to form a connection with new people. Vera seems to be an exception.

  There is only room for single file on the stairs. ‘Can you manage?’ I ask Iris. She nods and starts up the stairs. I follow, trying not to breathe through my nose. There is a pervasive smell of mildew.

  It brings to mind the word abandonment.

  Which makes me feel bad.

  Feel worse.

  So I try not to think about the word abandonment.

  Or about Coco Chanel. Vera’s pit bull.

  I try not to think about anything. I continue upstairs, behind Iris in case she falls. I can break her fall. It seems like the least I can do. I look down at my feet. Concentrate on my feet in the brown gladiator sandals. On slotting them carefully onto the next step. And the next. Avoiding the edges of each step where the ancient carpet is fraying and curling away from the wood beneath. It’s probably solid wood. Oak maybe. That would come up lovely with a bit of sanding and re-varnishing.

  This makes me think about the solid oak floors in the hallway of my house. The soft glow of them when the evening sun pours in through the mottled glass of the front door.

  Which brings me back to the word abandonment.

  I concentrate on my sandals. My long, narrow toes poking out of the top. Lifting my foot, slotting it onto the next step. And the next. Concentrate on not slipping. Concentrate on not falling.

  Vera’s flat is on the top floor.

  ‘The penthouse suite,’ she declares, rummaging in her bag for the key.

  The door opens into a small living area where there is a white plastic table, two white plastic kitchen chairs, an enormous television perched on footstools, an armchair in front of the enormous television, a dog basket containing a mattress, pillow, blanket, and a teddy bear. The bear is leaking stuffing and has gaping holes where his eyes used to be. Along one wall, a Formica counter, housing a sink, a toaster, and a kettle. Vera walks inside, takes her coat off and drops it across the back of a kitchen chair. From the table, she removes a bundle of magazines, half a white sliced loaf, a tub of margarine, a jar of Marmite, and a carton of milk.

  ‘How about a nice cup of rosy lee?’ Vera unscrews the lid of the milk and rests her nose across the spout, sniffing inside. She winces, replaces the lid and throws the carton, sour milk still inside, into the bin.

  ‘Or a drink?’ she says then, heading for the fridge. ‘I’ve got cans.’ She turns towards us. We must look like a bedraggled band of misfits. Iris, with her torn clothes and her blood-matted hair and mutinous face, standing by the door, gripping the handle. Me cowering beside her, clutching my handbag against my chest and snatching my head this way and that for sightings of Coco Chanel, and Dad heading for a corridor on the far side of the room. I imagine Coco Chanel down there, her enormous mouth revealed behind h
er curling lip, teeth glinting white in the dark.

  ‘You lookin’ for the john, Eugene?’

  Dad turns, studies Vera as though she’s some exotic specimen in the Natural History Museum. ‘Pardon?’ he says.

  ‘The lav,’ says Vera. ‘The bog. The can. The throne?’

  Dad looks at me. ‘The toilet,’ I say. ‘Are you looking for the toilet?’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes. Indeed,’ he says.

  ‘Come with me, dearie. I’ll show you where to lay your ’hat,’ says Vera, taking Dad’s arm and leading him away. I brace myself for the cacophonous barks of Coco Chanel, but there is no sound other than Vera, explaining the sometimes fickle nature of the pull-chain flush mechanism.

  When she returns, she eyes the pair of us, still standing at the door. ‘You best sit down, Iris,’ she says. ‘You look done in.’ She points to the armchair. It’s a faded red leatherette that bare legs would stick to on a hot day. Stuffing spills from the arms where a large glass ashtray overflows with cigarette butts, the filters stained lipstick red.

  Iris sits down and Vera lifts the ashtray off the arm of the chair, hands it to me. ‘Fetch us the first-aid kit, would you love?’ she says to me, nodding towards a plastic Tesco bag on one of the white plastic chairs.

  The bag is heavy and makes a sound like broken glass when I lift it. Vera perches on the arm of the chair and pushes Iris’s hair off her forehead. Iris stares at the television as if it’s on.

  ‘I’m going to need the TCP, cotton wool, tweezers, and bandages,’ says Vera, inspecting the gash on Iris’s forehead. I rummage inside the bag and am surprised to find everything Vera has asked for. There is also a fine concoction of pharmaceuticals and I’m certain not all of them are what one might find in a pharmacy.

  Cannabis resin.

  I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.

  There was a talk at the girls’ school years ago. A drug-awareness presentation. We were shown photographs of all different kinds of substances.

  I take what I need out of the bag, set them beside Vera on the arm of the chair.