‘Thanks for getting here so quickly,’ I say.
‘It sounded urgent on the telephone.’
‘I need to get going as soon as possible.’
‘Well, your car is in working order and the motorway will take you all the way,’ Lucas says.
‘The motorway?’ I say.
He nods.
The motorway.
I never drive on motorways.
I’m afraid of motorways.
‘Terry?’ Lucas studies my face. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Well … no, not really, I …’
‘Here, allow me to show you.’ He picks my roadmap out of the pocket of the car door and gets out, unfolds the map across the bonnet. His hands, spread across the map, span most of western France. He nods and points. ‘We are here, see?’
‘I see,’ I say.
‘So you take a left at the mairie and go five kilometres up that road and you will arrive at the motorway.’
‘The motorway. Right.’
Lucas straightens, looks at me. ‘Your friend has gone ahead? Iris?’ Now my face reddens. A clenching sensation inside my stomach.
‘Did you see her?’ I ask.
‘She was in Vincent’s car,’ he says.
‘The taxi?’ I say. He nods. Relief and regret struggle for position.
Iris is okay.
She shouldn’t be on her own.
But she’s okay.
I let her down.
But …
I let her down.
Lucas folds the map, offers it to me. ‘So,’ he says. ‘You know the way now?’
‘We had a fight,’ I blurt. ‘Iris and I.’
‘I’m certain you will reach a resolution,’ he says. ‘You are close, yes?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We are close.’ My voice is low. Like it’s bowed down. Like I am bowed down. Hollowed out inside, save for a great well of sadness, deep enough to drown in. The sadness of knowing how badly I let Iris down. Knowing how I dumped the promise I made to her. Dumped it like rubbish onto the floor of our friendship. Lucas puts his arms around me and for a moment I allow myself the luxury of comfort, pushing my face into the cotton of his T-shirt, feeling the vast span of his arms around me, the press of his hands against my back. I know that, once I lift my head, I’ll have to leave. I’ll have to face everything.
Dad taps Lucas on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me?’ he says. I lift my head. Pick a tissue out of my pocket and wipe my face, blow my nose. Lucas’s T-shirt is stained with my tears and possibly some snot.
‘Have I ever told you about the time I picked Frank Sinatra up?’
‘No,’ says Lucas even though I distinctly heard Dad tell him the story at least once last night. Still, he listens as though he’s never heard it before as I put the suitcase in the boot. That’s one of the good things about dementia. You bear witness to the kindness of people. I manoeuvre Dad into the car, belt him in.
‘Money!’ I suddenly remember when I look at Lucas. ‘How much do I owe you?’
Lucas tilts his head towards the sky, considers my question, then says, ‘Forty euros.’
‘It can’t be that little. What about the tow and—’
‘Forty euros,’ he says again. ‘If you please.’
I hand him two twenties. ‘Can I at least drive you back to the garage?’
‘I like to walk,’ he says.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Thanks. For everything.’
I need to move. I need to get on the motorway. The noisy, fast, scary motorway. I need to find Iris.
Instead I stand beside the car, shifting from foot to foot. Lucas examines my face.
‘You do not like the motorway, Terry,’ he says.
‘No,’ I say.
‘It is like dancing,’ he says then with a hint of a grin. ‘You just keep moving.’
29
ON THE MOTORWAY, YOU MUST ONLY DRIVE AHEAD. NO TURNING OR REVERSING IS PERMITTED.
I’m on the motorway.
Driving.
On the wrong side of the road.
In a foreign country.
I’m in the lane people refer to as the slow lane. It’s not the slow lane. It’s the lane you’re supposed to drive in unless you’re overtaking.
I am not overtaking.
I am overtaken.
It seems like every car on this motorway has overtaken me. I have been beeped at, flashed at, and, on two occasions, been the recipient of hand gestures.
I grip the wheel with both of my knuckle-white hands. The ten-to-two position as Dad taught me.
Six of the most stressful months of my life.
Dad. Teaching me how to drive.
My mother insisted on it. And she never insisted on anything. But in this matter, she was insistent.
She said that every woman should know how to drive.
Perhaps because she did not.
Engage the bloody clutch, he’d shout at me on those endless Sunday afternoons in the industrial estate in Baldoyle.
And then later, out on the road, the cars behind me beeping and flashing and hand-gesturing as I grappled with the hill start, the three-point turn, the parallel parking.
Engage the bloody clutch.
My hands, sweaty on the wheel, as they are now. My eyes darting, at the wing mirrors, the rear-view mirror, the front windscreen, trying to keep a safe distance from the other cars.
Each of the lessons ended in him flinging open his door, marching around to the driver’s side, telling me to get out.
GET OUT.
Him, driving off, leaving me standing there, in the middle of the road with the cars beeping and the lights flashing and the hands gesturing.
I’d walk home.
‘How’d it go, love?’ Mam would call from the kitchen.
‘Fine.’
‘Where’s your dad?’
‘He had to go somewhere.’
She never asked where.
And he’d come home. An hour later. With the smell of Guinness on his breath and a bag of Liquorice Allsorts for me.
I never remember him apologising. For anything. Not in words.
Bags of Liquorice Allsorts. That was his way.
The fact that I never liked Liquorice Allsorts was neither here nor there.
I glance at him in the back seat through the rear-view mirror. I thought he’d be safer back there. He is asleep, his head at a sharp angle that will make his neck ache when he wakes up.
Still, he is asleep. That is good. I have time to think. THINK.
I think about the motorway.
The terrifying endlessness of it.
No, it’s only four hours to Zurich. That’s not endless.
Four hours. On the motorway.
I breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out.
I think about the noise coming from the engine. An unfamiliar noise. It’s probably just the fried egg settling in the crack in the radiator.
I think about Brendan’s interview for his own job. About how he might be made redundant.
No, don’t think about that.
Although, he’s good in a crisis, Brendan.
And this is a crisis. For him. His job – his career – has been his radar. How he defines himself. Measures himself. Judges himself.
I get it, all of a sudden. Here, on the wrong side of a motorway in a foreign country.
I get it.
Because I’m being made redundant too, amn’t I?
I am a stay-at-home mother of two children who no longer stay at home.
Who are no longer children.
I’m redundant.
And so might Brendan be.
Finally, we will have something in common.
I remember Brendan when Kate was born. Standing at the ‘business end’ of the delivery suite as he called it. He was peering over the top of my knee, peering between my legs, and I was, for the most part, oblivious to his presence. I had been in labour for nearly twenty hours by then. And two weeks overdue.
Kate.<
br />
My Kate. By whom you could set a watch. For whom good time-keeping is a value she rates and employs.
Her birth was the only time she was late.
The baby’s heart rate had slowed. The midwife told me that. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said then, perhaps realising, too late, her mistake. Because when you tell a worrier not to worry, that’s when they start to worry. That’s if they haven’t already started.
So there I was, worrying and crying and shouting.
Brendan said afterwards he’d never heard me shouting before.
I don’t know what I shouted. I don’t remember. Probably best. Mother Nature’s band-aid.
And somewhere amongst all the worrying and the crying and the shouting, something caught my attention. Snagged on the part of me that was still aware of the outside world.
It was Brendan. His face. The look on it.
It was … pure wonder.
‘I see her, Terry,’ he breathed and the wonder was there too, in his voice. ‘She’s so perfect.’
The midwife, with three deft circles of her hand, removed the umbilical cord from around the baby’s neck.
Three.
That’s the number of times it was wrapped around Kate’s neck.
And Brendan holding her in the cups of his hands afterwards.
Placing her on my belly with a gentleness that was potent, wiping the tears from my face with the pad of his thumb. He said something to me. I think he did. Whispered it. I don’t remember what it was.
But I remember the wonder. Across his face. The like of which I never saw before. Nor since.
‘I’m hungry.’ Dad’s voice makes me jump.
‘Are you sure?’
‘What?’
‘What I mean is …’ Of course he’s sure. All he’s had is a cereal bar. And it must be lunchtime. Or past it. ‘Could you wait?’
‘I’m hungry,’ he says, sitting forward so that the seat belt strains against the narrow bone of his chest.
The thought of getting off the motorway is glorious. But I don’t have time. And if I get off, will I have the nerve to get back on?
‘Is there anything to eat?’ Dad asks, tapping me on the shoulder in a way that will prove most distracting if he persists, which he most certainly will.
‘No, I don’t think so …’ And then I remember the cake. Iris’s birthday cake. It’s still in the boot.
But there’s no place to pull in. Except the hard shoulder.
Which is a dangerous place to be.
And only supposed to be used in emergency situations.
Dad’s fingers drum against my shoulder.
I indicate, check my mirrors, and pull in.
Now we’re on the hard shoulder. It seems much narrower than hard shoulders should be. Each time a car roars past, my fillings vibrate. I grip the door handle.
From behind, I feel Dad’s eyes on me, wondering what I’m going to do next. I open the door and a blast of wind, whipped up by an articulated truck thundering past, throws the door wide open. I think I scream. It’s hard to know for sure because of the noise of the traffic. I grab the handle, pull the door closed. The quiet inside the car is beautiful. I close my eyes and breathe it in, like it’s a scent.
‘Where are we?’ Dad asks.
‘I have cake,’ I say.
‘I like cake,’ he says.
So I get out of the car and get the cake. The box is at the back of the boot, underneath the raincoat I keep there, just in case. The box is displaying signs of wear and tear. Inside, the icing has come undone. The stick figure that was Iris has merged with the rocks and the sea so that the top of the cake is a lumpy mess of concrete grey. Below this congealed surface, the chocolate-biscuit cake itself is edible.
In fact, it is delicious. I break it with my fist.
I ring Iris’s phone.
This is Iris. Leave a message but not a long one.
I indicate and wait for a long enough gap in the traffic.
‘Remember that an indicator is not a right of way,’ says Dad.
‘I remember.’
Maybe it’s the sugar rush, but I perform the manoeuvre, unperturbed by such thoughts as death and carnage. It’s just traffic. It’s just a motorway. I don’t know why I made such a fuss.
Or it could be because my head cannot accommodate any additional concerns. There’s enough going on. Like Iris. I should try her again. Leave a message this time. Except I don’t know what to say.
And Brendan. But if I ring him, I’ll have to tell him that I’ve lost Iris.
What kind of a person loses a person?
I breathe in, hold it for five, breathe out.
‘Are you okay, love?’ Dad asks through a mouthful of cake.
Never speak with your mouth full.
That was one of his mantras.
So was, Fronts, backs and individuals. When he’d send us to wash our hands before dinner. And after dinner.
He was a stickler for table manners.
I hand him a napkin. He looks at it for a moment before setting it on the seat beside him.
I don’t think we’re all that far from Zurich. Maybe two hours.
And then what?
Zurich is a city of a million people.
How do you find one person in a city of a million people?
30
SIGNAL YOUR INTENTION TO CHANGE COURSE AND PULL IN.
Zurich looks about the same size as Dublin city, which is to say not all that big. Even so, I can’t get my bearings. I keep crossing bridges over the river and back again.
If I wasn’t so desperate, I could look at the lake properly. Admire it even. The reflection of the tall, narrow buildings that flank it, with their wooden-shuttered windows and the way the sun glances off their curved rooftops.
But you can’t notice any of that when you’re driving around with no idea of where you’re going, on the wrong side of the road, with the day getting away from you like water down a drain.
The streets are criss-crossed with pedestrians and cyclists and cars and trams and long buses that bend in the middle, like accordions. I am going around in circles, I’m sure I am. I’ve seen that bank before, haven’t I? And that one. And that one.
There are a lot of banks.
None of the pedestrians are Iris.
Now I’m driving over another bridge and I turn left for no other reason than it’s the least difficult option and now I’m driving along the lakeside again. A car behind me beeps and I jump and Dad jumps and I think hard about just stopping. Right here, in the middle of the road. Putting on the handbrake and folding my arms and just sitting here, refusing to move until somebody arrives to take charge.
And then I see her.
Glimpse her. The back of her. On her sticks, making her way up the steps of a hotel. I brake and open the window. I lean out. ‘Iris.’
She keeps walking. I cup my hands around my mouth.
‘IRIS,’ I shout.
She disappears through revolving doors.
Behind me, a line of traffic, bristling and beeping. Another line coming towards me. I force my way through traffic and jerk to a stop at the drop-off only area in front of the hotel. I put on the hazard lights and jump out of the car. A doorman, in gloves and a top hat and tails, smiles at me as if no-one is beeping their horn or shaking their fist in my direction. ‘Please keep an eye on my father,’ I shout at him as I bound up the front steps of the hotel. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I add, holding my breath as I make a run at the revolving doors. I get myself into one of the quadrants, wait for it to rotate, then propel myself out the other side.
I stumble into the lobby, twisting my head this way and that, trying to look everywhere at once. ‘IRIS,’ I shout, and people stop what they are doing and turn to look at me. One of the people is the woman I thought was Iris. She examines me with an expression of mild curiosity. One of her feet is in plaster of Paris. I hadn’t noticed that before. I hadn’t noticed anything. She is shorter than Iris. A
nd slighter. She has thin hair. She has pale eyes. She has wan skin.
This woman is nothing like Iris. She is like a negative of Iris.
A negative of Iris who is waiting for me to say something sensible. I can think of nothing apart from, ‘Sorry.’
Not even in Swiss German. Just a plain old English sorry and without much conviction, truth be told.
Outside, Dad is standing on the pavement, telling the doorman his Frank Sinatra story. ‘… and he offered me a cigarette from a silver case engraved with his initials, FAS. Francis Albert Sinatra. And I …’
‘I’m so sorry about that,’ I say.
‘Not at all,’ the doorman says, in jovial English. ‘Your father was regaling me with tales of—’
‘Do you think we could stay here?’ I blurt. I don’t even say, excuse me. I need to stop moving. I’ll be able to think better, if I can just stop moving.
‘Do you have a reservation?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I say, my shoulders sagging.
‘Don’t worry, I will check,’ the doorman says. I sit on the kerb. Dad tells me the ground is dirty and I’ll ruin my clothes and also catch my death of cold. I reach my hand up to hold his. Squeeze it. I tell him that the ground is warm, that I’ll wash my clothes. I look at myself. I’m wearing last night’s top and skirt over the silver ‘boyfriend’ cardigan, which is the last clean thing I possess. I think about Jennifer in her lovely shop in Stoke Newington. She seems faraway and ethereal, and my spending spree seems like it happened a long time ago, to a different person.
I ring Iris’s phone. The message is different this time.
The number you are calling cannot be reached at this time. Please try again later.
Does that mean Iris has turned off her phone? Or maybe she ran out of battery? Or she could be out of coverage?
The doorman emerges from the hotel smiling. There is a room for us. I nearly weep with relief even though this looks like the kind of hotel that could clear my running away from home account in one night.
‘Do you have any luggage?’ the doorman asks. I open the boot. He lifts out Dad’s small case, hands it to a porter.
‘May I have your car keys?’ the doorman asks me.
‘Why?’
‘Our valet will park your vehicle, madam.’
Rules of the Road Page 27