‘What does he mean? Later?’ says Iris. ‘That’s not a time.’
‘He seems reliable,’ I tell her, checking my watch. ‘And it’s only four o’clock. Still the afternoon.’
Iris shakes her head. Sighs. ‘This was not in the plan,’ she says. I hate seeing her like this. She looks forlorn, which is not a word I’ve ever needed to use in relation to Iris Armstrong.
‘Lucas might not need to order any parts,’ I say. ‘If the … egg and sticky-tape work.’
‘But what if he does?’ says Iris.
‘Then we’ll work something out,’ I tell her. This isn’t a reprieve. But it feels like one all the same.
24
WHEN APPROACHING A TOLL, REDUCE YOUR SPEED APPROPRIATELY.
The guest house is, like everything in France I am coming to realise, intensely French.
It is situated off the main street, at the end of a narrow, winding road, the front garden heavily stocked with a mix of practicalities and beauty – apple and fig trees, strawberry runners, lettuce, potatoes, scallions, rhubarb, fuchsia, honeysuckle, sweet pea, lavender. It is a riot of colourful order, permeated by a strong smell of wild garlic. In the midst of all this nature sits a small square white house, with a terracotta roof and duck-egg-blue wooden shutters edging each window. There is a stone cherub, chipped and cloaked in lichen. Also the de rigueur statue of Joan of Arc in her military uniform with her sword held aloft, in a stone grotto on the far side of the garden. The gate tinkles as I open it and we follow a meandering cobbled path through this abundance of flora towards the house where wind chimes sway, the tubes of bamboo lifting in the gentle breeze, glancing against each other to release their melancholy melody. Wild roses – a delicate shade of peach – arch around the wooden front door, and when I knock on it, it creaks open to reveal a dark hallway emitting a strong smell of cleanliness.
Which is good. I am a fan of cleanliness, am I not?
But there’s something clinical about this cleanliness. The white ceramic floor tiles gleam with recent attention. Even the bannisters – which are great harbingers of dust if you know where to look – are exemplary.
In the shaft of sunlight that protrudes through the open door, I can detect no dust motes.
Perhaps the key to maintaining this level of sterility is lack of clutter. Spartan comes to mind. A small, glass table on which sits a telephone, a telephone book, a notebook and a pen. A coat stand which accommodates two coats; one a massive, all-weathers wax jacket and the other a belted grey gabardine coat with a scarf, also grey, threaded about the collar.
‘Hello?’ I call out.
There is no response.
‘You have to say it in French,’ says Iris. ‘Like this.’ She steps forward. ‘’Ello?’ she calls, grinning, and I try not to laugh. Laughing does not seem appropriate in a hallway like this.
A door opens and a woman appears, wearing yellow rubber gloves and a buttoned-up housecoat. She is tall and hard-to-look-at thin. A collection of bones around which her skin is pulled taut. Her hair, pulled into a small bun at the back of her head, is thin too. The features of her face are pointed. The lines around her thin mouth are set, in anticipation of disapproval.
‘’Ello,’ Iris says again, and she steps into the hall without wiping her feet on the mat. She extends her hand and the woman has no choice but to peel the rubber glove off her right hand and offer it up; already, she can tell that Iris is a woman who doesn’t take no for an answer.
The woman – Madame Lalouette she admits, her voice heavy with housework – tells us that she will not speak English.
I presume she means she does not speak English?
I unpack my paltry store of rudimentary French. Iris – whose French should be as polished as Madame Lalouette’s furniture, having spent a year in France as an artist’s muse when she was twenty-five – mostly speaks English with a French accent.
Madame Lalouette’s store of French also appears to be paltry, given the terseness of the information she imparts.
Yes, she has vacancies.
No, all of her rooms are singles.
Strictly one person per room, she stresses.
No, she says curtly, when Iris asks about putting a camp bed in my dad’s room. Although I’m not sure she understood the question, in spite of Iris’s flamboyant miming technique.
Do we want the rooms or not? Madame Lalouette glares at me.
‘We can put him in the room between each of ours,’ Iris suggests. ‘Like a dad sandwich.’ I nod. What else can we do? We are where we are, as my mother would say.
Madame Lalouette hands each of us an A4 sheet with lines and lines of questions to be answered. She calls it ‘Registration’. Interrogation would be more apt. We are directed to three hard-backed chairs in the kitchen and given pens. The room is saved from the severity of Madame Lalouette’s ministrations by the view through the – smear-free – glass doors that look onto the back garden, which is just as abundant as the one at the front of the house.
A shadow falls across my page, and I look up. At the window is a man. As short and fat as Madame Lalouette is tall and thin. His thick, curly hair is like a bird’s nest sitting on top of his head. He wears khaki shorts with many pockets – all bulging – and a bright-yellow T-shirt that appears to have shrunk in the wash. In one hand, he holds a trowel and in the other, a bunch of mucky carrots. He bends to remove his wellington boots before sliding open the door and poking his head in.
‘’Ello,’ says Iris.
‘Bonjour,’ he says.
Madame Lalouette sweeps around the room, collecting our forms and bending to pick up a crumb from the floor that I suspect has fallen from Monsieur Lalouette’s vigorous beard. She returns to the sink and resumes a furious scrubbing motion with the French equivalent of what looks like a Brillo Pad.
The reason I know the short, rotund man is Monsieur Lalouette is because of the framed photograph on the wall. A line of five children, in height-descending order, and, on either end of this orderly line, two adults, one tall and thin, the other short and rotund, and while the photograph was taken as many as twenty years ago and the female adult appears to be smiling and the man is not quite as round as Monsieur Lalouette, I recognise them all the same.
Monsieur Lalouette, moving towards the sink, hands his wife the bunch of carrots which she receives without acknowledgement. She turns on the tap and washes off the muck. He leaves the room, not making a sound.
After the carrots have been dealt with, she turns to us. ‘Dinner is served at seven thirty,’ she announces. ‘I will show you to the rooms.’
We follow her up the stairs. Along the wall are five framed photographs, a young person in each, in gown and mortarboard holding a scroll. ‘Vous devez être très fière de vos enfants,’ I say, hopeful that it means ‘You must be very proud of your children.’
She nods.
We continue up the stairs. The quiet is like a weight, heavy and insistent. I imagine the house when it was full of the spill and splendour of five children, racing up and down the stairs, slamming doors, arguing over the hot water, sliding down the bannister.
It fills me with a sudden sense of loneliness.
A realisation that I am a long way from home.
The landing is a long, narrow corridor with no natural light. The carpet has faded. I imagine its original pattern, embedded in the soles of the shoes of five children who ran its length every morning before school and every night before bed. Even through the gloom, the spotlessness persists. I can smell it.
We walk in single file down the passage, Madame Lalouette in front. She opens three doors in turn, each of which reveals three identical bedrooms, small and square, all overlooking the back garden. Whitewashed walls. A single bed in each, covered with stiff white bedspreads that could star in an ad for detergent. At the foot of each bed, an extra woollen blanket, folded. My mother used to do that too. Leave blankets at the end of our beds. ‘Just in case,’ she always said. I remember the
weight of it on my feet in bed. The comfort of it.
Dad, Iris and I crowd into one of the bedrooms to allow Madame Lalouette to pass back up the corridor. She descends the stairs with barely a sound.
‘Yappy, isn’t she?’ says Iris, throwing her bag and her sticks on the floor and flinging herself onto the bed. Without taking her shoes off.
The walls between each room are so thick, I doubt even I – a light sleeper – will hear Dad if he gets up in the night.
‘I should have swiped the monitor from Jacques-of-all-trades instead of the bloody candelabra,’ says Iris, shaking her head.
‘Please tell me you didn’t steal a candelabra from the castle,’ I say, already wondering how to return it, candelabras being notoriously difficult to wrap, let alone fit through the mouth of a post box.
Dad worries at the rim of his ears. ‘Your mother will be wondering where we are,’ he says. I thread my arm around his. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘I’ll bring you to your room.’
‘We’ll keep the bedroom doors open tonight,’ says Iris. ‘So we’ll hear any movements.’ I nod. As a solution, it will have to do.
Dad sits on the bed in the room between mine and Iris’s. His shoulders sag and his clothes seem baggy and creased. He looks old. And tired.
‘Do you want to have a snooze?’ I say.
He looks around. ‘I don’t know where I am,’ he says wearily.
‘You’re with me,’ I tell him, crouching down beside him and easing his feet out of his shoes. His socks are hot and damp. I pull them off. His feet smell. There’s no getting away from it. In my mind’s eye, my mother, looking at me with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. Her look is expectant. She knows what needs to be done. She’s just waiting for me to do it.
She kept him so presentable. A new shirt every Christmas and birthday. A haircut once a month. Tweezed the hairs out of his nose and ears as soon as they protruded. A shower every second day. ‘Whether you need it or not,’ she’d laugh, manhandling him into the bathroom. He hated her attention to his personal hygiene. Perhaps some part of him remembered that he had once swept this woman off her feet. And then, there she was, every Saturday night until she died, clipping his toenails.
For the six months after she died, when I tried – and failed – to mind him in my house, I had home help. A lovely woman with strong arms and a repertoire of Elvis songs, who visited Dad for an hour every second day and took care of that side of things.
And yes, I’ve brushed his dentures every morning and night since we’ve been gone, got him to wash his face and hands, sprayed deodorant under his arms.
He was never a particularly sweaty person. And I never got a bad smell from him. Ever.
In my mind’s eye, my mother’s arms tighten across her chest. He’s my dad, I want to remind her. I can’t do it.
You can. That’s what she’d say if she could.
And it’s true. I can. I just don’t want to.
I stand up.
‘You need a shower, Dad,’ I say.
‘I had one,’ he says.
‘You need another one.’
His shoulders sag some more.
The bathroom is across the landing. The towels are plentiful and clean, but hardened by years of laundering. There is no lock on the door, but there is a chair I can jam against the handle. The shower is in the bath. I lean in and turn it on. The pressure is sluggish and it takes ages to adjust the temperature. ‘Dad, are you ready?’ I ask through the bedroom door. He doesn’t answer. ‘I’m coming in,’ I say, louder than necessary. ‘Are you decent?’
I open the door and Dad is standing exactly where I left him, fully clothed.
‘You really don’t want to have a shower, do you?’ I say.
‘I had one,’ he says again, and there is so much hope in his face. As if victory is within his reach.
‘Mam says you have to have a shower,’ I tell him.
‘Who?’
‘Teresa. Your wife.’
‘Oh.’
He starts unbuttoning his shirt. I take a breath and walk towards him. Undo his belt. Pull his trousers down. I get him to hold onto the bedstead as I lift first one, then the other foot out of the legs. I hold a towel in front of him. ‘Your … underpants,’ I say.
‘What about them?’
‘Can you take them off?’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re going to have a shower.’
He struggles out of his Y-fronts and I avert my eyes, wrap the towel around him and lead him into the bathroom. The running water steams up the window. I open it a notch, and when I turn around, Dad is standing in the middle of the bathroom floor, the towel that was preserving his dignity in a heap on the floor at his feet.
He looks so small.
How did he get to be so small?
I remember thinking he was a giant. When I was a girl.
There is an old man in his place now. Small and scared. His skin – like white parchment paper – hangs in limp folds from his frail body.
‘Right, let’s get you into the shower,’ I say, turning away from him and testing the water with my bare arm, the way I used to do when the girls were little. Now I know why nurses talk in loud, cheerful voices. ‘There,’ I say, looking anywhere but at my naked father. ‘The water is perfect. It’s not too hot and it’s not too cold. It’s just right.’ I keep up this meaningless chatter as I coax him, first one leg then the other, over the side of the bath that seems higher than the side of any other bath I’ve ever come across. He grips my shoulder with his hand, the nails that I have yet to clip cutting into my skin through the thin fabric of my top. I lift the shower head down from the hook in the wall, turn it on him, talking all the while.
‘That’s it, turn around, okay now, lift your arms, yes, good, now turn back to me, perfect, great, that’s it.’
I hand him the shampoo and he looks at the bottle, then tilts it towards his mouth. I grab it off him before he has a chance to drink it, squirt some onto the palm of my hand. ‘Bend your head towards me, Dad,’ I say, but he doesn’t. I try to reach his head, but I can’t. In the end, I take my sandals off and climb into the bath with him, grateful that I propped the back of the chair against the door handle.
I’m sure Madame Lalouette won’t mind me hanging my clothes on the line I spotted in the garden. Or perhaps it is Monsieur Lalouette I should ask. The garden seems to be his territory as strictly as the house is hers. The lines of demarcation are clearly drawn between them.
I go to town on Dad’s hair, using the tips of my fingers to massage the shampoo in. The girls used to complain about my industry when it came to washing their hair. And fine combing it afterwards.
But I had to be vigilant, with the regular letters about head lice from the school.
Dad doesn’t complain. In fact, he doesn’t say anything. He stands still with his eyes closed as I have instructed, so that the shampoo won’t breach them.
I hand him a cake of soap and tell him to wash himself. He slides the bar along his arm before he drops it.
I pick up the soap.
He stands with his back to me, arms by his sides. ‘Are you okay, Dad?’
‘Yes.’ His voice is as small as he has become.
I wash his neck, shoulders, arms, back. I squat down and wash his legs. He laughs when I get to his feet. I’d forgotten that. His ticklish feet.
‘Don’t fall,’ I tell him, but he can’t hear me, he’s laughing so hard. So I tickle them some more even though the bath is slippy now and he could fall and …
The sound of his laughter is as contagious as chickenpox.
And it’s big. Bigger than him. It fills the room like steam.
I’d forgotten that too. The sound of his laughter. Or just the fact of it. It’s like dementia is catching. I find myself forgetting the person Dad used to be.
He used to be someone whose laugh made you laugh.
And I’m laughing now. We both are.
A knock at the door.
‘Terry?’ It’s Iris.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Eh … yes.’
‘Oh good. It’s just … I thought I heard shouting.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Your dad’s bedroom door is shut. Should I check on him?’
‘No, he’s … having a lie-down,’ I say. I don’t know why I lie. It won’t bother Dad if I tell Iris that I’m washing him. Perhaps it is because of the sound of his laugh. The fact of it. He is still here, my dad. Some essential part of him that makes him who he is. I forget that sometimes. I talk about him in the past tense. Or as though he’s not in the room.
But he is here. A part of him. However small.
The Lalouettes do not take the news of my vegetarianism well. I find myself adding, ‘J’adore légumes!’ after I inform them, which I do well before dinner, forewarned being forearmed.
For the first time since our arrival, the couple survey each other, like the only remaining survivors of some type of holocaust.
‘Végétarienne?’ Madame Lalouette whispers. He nods grimly before returning to his garden with a heavy tread.
Dad and Iris sleep for an hour before dinner. I sit on my bed with my phone in my hands. I should ring Brendan. See how the meeting went this morning. I should ring the girls. See how the studying and the rehearsals are going.
Instead, I think about earlier. On the motorbike. The speed of it. And the speed of the world, flashing past. They are most diverting, these thoughts. Because, before I know it, an hour has passed and it is time to get dressed for dinner. My choices are limited given my recent lax attitude to laundry. I pull on the bright-pink tulle high-waisted midi-skirt and the scarlet spaghetti top. I look like one of those ice pops you never allow your children to eat.
I’ll make the phone calls later.
The Lalouettes are in the kitchen when we arrive downstairs, Monsieur Lalouette nods briefly at us and continues to worry at a kitchen drawer with a screwdriver, while Madame Lalouette pokes and prods at various pots with a wooden spoon. She gestures us towards the dining-room table and walks to the fridge. She passes Monsieur Lalouette on the way, sidesteps him. He does not look up.
Rules of the Road Page 22