In the kitchen, Hanneke is preparing the first solution that Iris will take. The one that will stop her body rejecting the second. The second solution is the one that will fell her.
Hanneke looks up, puts the glass down on the counter, moves towards me, folds me into a chair, pushes my head between my knees. Her movements are deft. Quiet. Practised. She has done this before.
The sensation of blood rushing to my head is a curious one. Loud. I hear the roar of it in my ears. I see it behind the lids of my eyes, like shadows of dancers, twisting and turning in time to the beat of the blood. The thump of it.
When Hanneke bends, I hear the creak of her knees. She rubs my back. Small, circular movements.
‘Breathe,’ she whispers.
‘I don’t think I can …’
‘Ssshhh,’ says Hanneke, still rubbing me.
I breathe. Big breath in, hold it for five, release for five. Repeat.
‘Sorry, Hanneke,’ I say when I release my head from its clamp between my knees. She smiles at me. ‘It is often harder for the ones who are left behind,’ she says. She nods her head towards the room where Iris and my dad are singing ‘My Way’. Iris doesn’t know all the words. Dad does.
‘… I’ve lived a life that’s full, I’ve travelled each and every highway …’
‘The others,’ says Hanneke. ‘The ones who come here, they are more prepared. This is natural.’ I nod. Breathe. Stand up. ‘Will you be all right?’ she asks me.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I will.’
34
YIELD RIGHT OF WAY.
In some ways, I never want this day to end. Once it does, it’s the past. Set in stone.
Dad and I are on the ferry, having driven seven hours on the motorway from Zurich to Calais, stopping three times for cake and other necessities.
I drove for seven hours. On the motorway. It’s actually not a big deal.
Hanneke said we could take our time. We could stay as long as we liked. I said we had to go home.
Home.
We sit on the deck. Dad insisted, in spite of the dark and the air, which is cooler now.
‘Eugene? Eugene Keogh?’
I look up. Standing in front of us is a man. A tall man, about the same vintage as Dad, wearing a sunhat, shorts, a shirt buttoned up to the neck and secured with a tie, a pair of calf-high white socks, and thick-strapped black leather sandals. He leans towards Dad, bending a little at his white, bony knees. When he glances at me, his expression is a potent mix of curiosity and wariness. I wonder what he sees? I imagine I have the bewildered countenance of a soldier who has been told the war is over.
The man grins at Dad. ‘It’s me, Eugene. Damien Harrington. Damo. Remember?’
He lifts the sunhat off his head to reveal a sunburned, hairless pate. ‘You probably don’t recognise me without my mullet.’ He laughs and punches Dad playfully on the arm. Dad looks at the place where he has been punched, rubs it. I stand up. The movement of the boat beneath my feet is unsettling and I grip the rail and close my eyes. I see Iris when I do that. Iris drinking the first drink. In her typically Iris way. Knocking it back without fanfare. Asking when she can take the second one.
Half an hour, Hanneke said.
That seemed like an impossibly long period of time. Except it wasn’t.
‘You must be Eugene’s little princess, you’re cut out of him,’ Damien says. I open my eyes. ‘That’s what he called you, back in the day. We worked the ranks together, me and your old man.’ Damien looks at Dad again. ‘Never shut up about her, did you Eugene?’
I didn’t know that. That Dad called me his little princess. That he never shut up about me. The man thrusts his hand towards me. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ he says. I take his hand. Hold it. Behind him, darkness blurs the line between the sea and sky, rendering them almost indistinguishable.
I don’t know what I thought about during that half hour. Iris had set the alarm on her phone. Maybe I thought about that. About the sound it would make. The sharp, insistent trill.
Or the phone itself. What would I do with it? Afterwards? What would I do with anything? Her handbag. All her stuff. Her things. The detritus of a life. These stupid, meaningless possessions now seemed vital. I was consumed by thoughts of Iris’s belongings. What would become of them? Iris put her hand on my shoulder. ‘You look worried,’ she said.
‘I always look worried,’ I reminded her.
‘I could sing a song,’ Dad piped up.
‘That’s a fine idea, Mr Keogh,’ Iris said.
We all sang along for the It’s up to you bit, even Hanneke.
‘Your turn, Terry,’ Iris said when Dad finished.
I didn’t want to sing. I never know all the words.
I sang ‘Mull of Kintyre’ in the end. We learned it in choir in sixth class. While my voice lacks the style or tone of my father’s, the physical effort that the singing required, the concentration on the melody, the lyrics, the projection of my voice around the room that shouldn’t look like somebody’s sitting room but did – all these things distracted me from phones and handbags and everything else.
Iris sang ‘Love Is All Around’, the theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was her favourite programme when she was a kid.
Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
‘You have a lovely singing voice,’ Hanneke told her.
‘You’re only saying that because I’m about to die,’ said Iris, grinning.
Hanneke smiled. ‘Is this the black humour you Irish are famed for?’
‘Yes,’ said Iris. ‘We’re either hysterical with the laughing or weeping into our pints. You have to visit. You’d love it.’
‘I am perhaps a little too Swiss for the laughing and the weeping,’ said Hanneke. I laughed at that and so did Iris. I know it’s not particularly funny, but it’s just … well, Hanneke made a joke and I get the impression that it’s not the kind of thing she does all that often, which means she is not just making a joke. She is making an effort.
And then the alarm on Iris’s phone rang.
There was nothing but quiet then.
Damien gently extricates his hand from my grip, gestures towards my chair. ‘Sit yourself down there, love, you’re looking a bit peaky.’
‘No, I’m fine, I … A touch of seasickness is all. The crossing can be a bit rough.’
Damien arranges me into the seat and I whisper in his ear. ‘Eugene has dementia.’ I never like Dad to hear me saying that. I’m not sure he knows. Or ever knew. What is happening to him. And there’s something so harsh about the word. It seems cruel, to say it in front of him. Like rubbing salt into an open sore.
‘Ah no, I’m sorry to hear that, love.’
‘What?’ asks Dad.
Damien turns to Dad. ‘About your dementia,’ he says, louder now, as if Dad is hard of hearing. People sometimes do that. I don’t know why.
‘Dementia?’ Dad says, and he looks at me, confused.
‘Don’t worry, Dad, it’s—’
‘I bet you’re still bragging about Frank Sinatra though,’ says Damien. ‘Aren’t you?’
The confusion clears from Dad’s face like a switch flicked. He smiles. His Frank Sinatra smile.
‘Have I told you about Francis Albert?’ Dad asks Damien.
‘Sure wasn’t I the one you were on the radio to, when your man ducked into the cab?’ says Damien, grinning.
I study Damien’s face. ‘What do you mean?’
Damien looks at me, his eyes behind his glasses wide and round. ‘Surely he’s told you the story?’
‘Well, yes, but … I wasn’t sure if …’
Damien shakes his head, nudges Dad. ‘Your own daughter doesn’t believe it, Eugene.’
‘It’s not that, it’s just … he only told us after he … got sick, and we thought … maybe he was confused?’
Damien shakes his head. ‘The soul of discre
tion aren’t you Eugene?’ He looks at me. ‘Sinatra asked him not to say a word about it. He was supposed to be playing a gig in Las Vegas. But he didn’t want to do it. So he basically rang in sick and legged it to Dublin for a couple of days. He had himself hidden under a hat and behind sunglasses and he was all dressed up like an ordinary Joe, but yer man,’ he nods towards Dad, ‘had him clocked straight away. Didn’t you?’
Dad nods, sits up straighter in his chair. ‘It was lashing rain and I was driving down Harcourt Street,’ he begins, like he always does.
Damien listens to the story as if he’s never heard it before, nodding and smiling in all the right places.
The second drink was a viscous white substance. ‘You can stay where you are on the couch,’ Hanneke told Iris after she drank it. ‘Or you can lie on the bed. As you prefer.’
The bed was in the corner. A pretending-to-be-regular bed, made irregular with the wheels at the end of each leg.
‘I’ll stay on the couch,’ Iris said.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ Dad asked.
‘I’m going to die now,’ Iris told him. Her voice was calm and clear.
‘Why?’ Dad said.
‘It’s my time,’ said Iris.
‘Is it my time?’ he asked, worried.
‘No,’ said Iris.
She looked at me and I wanted to say something then. Something profound. Something meaningful.
I said, ‘Do you need to go to the ladies first?’
Damien scribbles my telephone number on the cover of his guidebook. ‘I’ll give you a buzz when I get home if that’s okay,’ he says. ‘Make arrangements to visit Eugene.’
Home. Already I can make out a faint outline of land, pinpricks of light, brightening as we move closer. It feels like I’ve been gone for such a long time.
‘Dad would love that,’ I tell Damien. When I hug him, he smells of suncream and mothballs. He pats me awkwardly on the arm, the way Dad does.
I didn’t hug Iris. After she drank the second drink. I was afraid I might never let her go. Instead, I asked her if she wanted me to hold her hand. She smiled at me. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to worry about me.’
‘Well, would you hold mine?’ I whispered.
‘I’d be glad to.’ She slipped her big, warm hand into mine. I tried not to think about how cold her hand would be. How stiff. I tried not to think about anything but this moment. Iris and me, sitting on a couch together, holding hands.
Of course, I couldn’t do it. I thought about the past. The future. What had happened. What would happen. But the panic of earlier had left me. And the anger of before had evaporated too.
‘Are you scared?’ I asked her.
‘No.’ Her voice was quieter. Slower.
‘I am,’ I said.
‘You’re braver than you think, Terry.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know you.’
Her hold on my hand loosened, her head moved onto my shoulder. I felt the weight of her there, the solidness of her.
‘She is sleeping now,’ Hanneke told me gently.
I wondered if Iris’s life flashed through her mind.
Does that happen?
If it does, I imagine the reel, all bright colours, filled with the sounds of a life that has been lived.
Every single day.
Even today.
EPILOGUE
The inaugural journey of the Iris Armstrong Memory Bus happens on a Friday. It is spring again, and, as I drive along, I see patches of bright yellow along the hedgerows as brave daffodils burst through swollen buds and dance on their slender stems.
Anna says, if I drive any slower, we’d see individual blades of grass, growing.
I am not driving slowly. I am driving within the speed limit, which is an entirely different thing. Besides, you have to be extra careful when driving a bus. ‘It’s a minibus, Mum,’ Kate reminds me.
A minibus is still a bus.
In the reflection of the windscreen, I see my girls, strapped into the front seats, leafing through the information packs. They take out the page with the staff bios and laugh at my mugshot on the top. In fairness, I look sort of horrified. The photographer’s camera was one of those enormous contraptions that flash and whir and stare.
‘You don’t look old enough to be in charge, Mum,’ says Anna, nodding at the photo.
‘It’s the pixie haircut,’ says Kate, matter-of-fact.
‘Oh dear,’ I say, ‘perhaps I should grow—’
‘NO,’ they shout.
On the seats across the aisle, Dad and Brendan, holding hands. Dad is looking out of the window and smiling. He has stopped telling his Frank Sinatra story.
He has stopped talking, for the most part.
And he no longer eats Bakewell tart. He has to be fed by the nursing-home staff now. Mainly fortified yoghurts and rice puddings and thickened soups.
But he still smiles his old, before-version smile. And he likes to hold the hand of whoever is sitting beside him. Today, that person is Brendan. I glance in the mirror and catch Brendan’s eye. He smiles even though I know he wishes Dad would release his hand. Brendan is not a fan of prolonged hand-holding. He dislikes the clamminess it produces. Dad will hold his hand all the way to Kilkenny. And Brendan will let him.
Is that the reason we’re still friends?
It is one of the reasons.
‘Are we there yet?’ says Vera from the back of the bus where she flounced in a temper when I told her she couldn’t smoke. Or vape. Now she is sticking a second nicotine patch on her arm and unwrapping another stick of Nicorette gum. Her hair – bright orange today – matches her skinny jeans, and her leopard-print high heels are her highest yet. ‘Respect,’ the girls said in unison, when Vera sprang up the steps of the bus in them this morning. My girls have taken to Vera, since she started visiting after Iris’s memorial service. They call her Gangsta Granny and she tells them they’re not too old for a clip around the ear, but it’s all good-humoured banter. I think.
‘Another twenty kilometres,’ Kate tells her, consulting my roadmap.
‘So we should be there in about an hour and a half,’ says Anna, pushing her seat back and closing her eyes. She was out late last night, celebrating the submission of her thesis for her Masters. I typed it up for her. I didn’t understand much of it, but I can attest to the fact that it contains no typographical errors or misspellings. She’s going to do a PhD next. ‘I’m not like you, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready for the real world yet.’
I’m not sure I’m ready either. And yet here I am.
The bus is second-hand. Iris left everything she owned to the Society, but even so, brand-new buses are prohibitively expensive. And we needed the rest of the money to pay for ongoing costs. Like petrol. And cake. I feel bad taking a salary, but the Society said they couldn’t give me the job otherwise, which would be a shame after I’d gotten my Carers’ Diploma and PSV driving licence.
I got the licence first time round. I still can’t get over it.
‘It’s as good as new, Terry,’ Brendan said, when he arrived at my apartment for dinner and I gave him a sneak preview of the bus.
I showed him the seats I had upholstered using Iris’s patchwork quilts. I saved two of the quilts for Vera, one for her bed and one for Coco Chanel II’s basket. ‘I don’t believe in replacing fings,’ Vera said when I arrived at her flat with the puppy at Christmas.
‘Maybe you’ll make an exception just this once,’ I said, coaxing the dog into her long, bony arms.
‘I didn’t know you could upholster,’ said Brendan.
‘I watched a tutorial on YouTube,’ I told him.
‘You keep surprising me,’ he said.
He has surprised me too. For example, he no longer smells of office machinery. It is a sharper smell. Soil and sun and the type of sweat you produce when you spend the day digging potato drills, which is what he’s been doing in the garden of his mother’s ho
use, where he has been staying since we sold the house. They play poker with Monopoly money in the evenings. He no longer plays golf. Or works in insurance. He says he doesn’t know why he ever did either. He is learning Italian. He said he always wanted to and I felt bad, that I never knew that.
He’s working part-time in the local MABS office, dispensing budgeting advice. He says it’s temporary but he’s enjoying it. I can see that.
I pull into the car park of the library and the girls help me set up the signage around the bus while Brendan pulls out the awning in case of rain.
It is not going to rain. It is one of those box-fresh spring mornings. My mother would declare herself lucky to be alive on a day like today.
I know what she means now.
I make tea and coffee in my brand-new industrial-sized flasks, fill the sugar bowl and the milk jug and arrange the chocolate brownies and jam tarts and porter cake I have made on plates. I glance around. What if nobody comes?
I distract myself by checking the shelves, stocked with information about services and resources. I have a stack of notebooks and pens. I have a short film about dementia that Kate wrote and directed for me.
It’s brilliant. Kate says I would say that even if it were awful.
Which it’s not.
It’s brilliant.
‘Over there, sweetheart.’ I hear Vera’s hoarse, cracked voice behind me and I turn around. She is sitting cross-legged on a grass verge, rolling a cigarette, pointing an elderly couple in my direction. The woman has dementia. I can tell by the way her fingers worry at the buttons of her cardigan and the careful way the man leads her towards me. He wears a suit, shiny from years of wear and fraying at the collar. His shirt is missing the top button and there is a ketchup stain on his tie. I try not to notice these things. Instead, I listen. His name is Tom. His wife, Sheila, was the principal in their local primary school. She played piano. She visited art galleries. Now her consultant thinks she should go into a nursing home. That Tom can no longer cope since he turned eighty last week. But he can. He just … he just needs a bit of help. Can I help?
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