‘Shouldn’t the storyteller believe it?’
‘The storyteller should tell it,’ he winked.
‘Do you believe it?’
Raphie looked around the room to make sure nobody had sneaked in without him noticing. He shrugged awkwardly, moving his head at the same time. ‘One man’s lesson is another man’s tale, but often, a man’s tale can be another’s lesson.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Raphie avoided the question by taking a slug of coffee.
‘You said there was a lesson – what was the lesson?’
‘If I have to tell you that, boy …’ Raphie rolled his eyes.
‘Ah, come on.’
‘Appreciating your loved ones,’ Raphie said, a little embarrassed at first. ‘Acknowledging all the special people in your life. Concentrating on what’s important.’ He cleared his throat and looked away, not comfortable with preaching.
The Turkey Boy rolled his eyes and faked a yawn.
Raphie tossed his embarrassment to the side, giving himself one more opportunity to get through to the teen before he gave up altogether. He should have been at home on his second helping of Christmas dinner instead of being here with this frustrating boy.
He leaned forward. ‘Gabe gave Lou a gift, son, a very special gift. I’m not going to bother asking you what that was, I’m going to tell you, and you’d better listen up, because right after this I’m leaving you and you’ll be alone to think about what you did and if you don’t pay attention then you’ll go back out to the world an angry young man who’ll feel angry for the rest of his life.’
‘Okay,’ the Turkey Boy said defensively, sitting up in his seat as though being told off by the headmaster.
‘Gabe gave Lou the gift of time, son.’
The Turkey Boy ruffled up his nose.
‘Oh, you’re fourteen years old, and you think you’ve all the time in the world, but you haven’t. None of us have. We’re spending it with all the might and indifference of January sales shoppers. A week from now they’ll be crowding the streets, swarming the shops, with open wallets, just throwing all their cash away.’ Raphie seemed to crawl into the shell on his back for a moment, his eyes tucked under his grey bushy eyebrows.
The Turkey Boy leaned forward and glared at him, amused by Raphie’s sudden emotion. ‘But you can earn more money, so who cares?’
Raphie snapped out of his trance and looked up as though seeing the Turkey Boy in the room for the first time. ‘So that makes time more precious, doesn’t it? More precious than money, more precious than anything. You can never earn more time. Once an hour goes by, a week, a month, a year, you’ll never get them back. Lou Suffern was running out of time, and Gabe gave him more, to help tie things up, to finish things properly. That’s the gift.’ Raphie’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He looked down at his coffee and pushed it away, feeling his heart cramp again. ‘So we should fix things before …’
He ran out of breath and waited for the cramping to fade.
‘Do you think it’s too late to, you know,’ the Turkey Boy twisted the string of his hoody around his finger, speaking self-consciously, ‘fix things with my, you know …’
‘With your dad?’
The boy shrugged and looked away, not wanting to admit it.
‘It’s never too late –’ Raphie stopped abruptly, nodded to himself as though registering a thought, nodded again with an air of agreement and finality, then pushed back his chair, the legs screeching against the floor, and stood.
‘Hold on, where are you going?’
‘To fix things, boy. To fix some things. And I suggest you do the same when your mother comes.’
The young teenager’s blue eyes blinked back at him, innocence still there, though lost somewhere in the mist of his confusion and anger.
Raphie made his way down the hall, loosening his tie. He heard his voice being called but continued walking anyway. He pushed his way out of the staff quarters, into the public entrance room that was empty on Christmas Day.
‘Raphie,’ Jessica called, chasing after him.
‘Yes,’ he said, turning around finally, slightly out of breath.
‘Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is it your heart? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ he nodded. ‘Everything’s fine. What’s up?’
Jessica narrowed her eyes and studied him, knowing he was lying. ‘Is that boy giving you trouble?’
‘No, he’s fine, purring like a pussy cat now. Everything’s fine.’
‘Then where are you going?’
‘Eh?’ He looked towards the door, trying to think of another lie, another untruth to tell somebody for the tenth year running. But he sighed – a long sigh that had been held in for many years – and he gave up, the truth finally sounding odd yet comfortable as it fell from his tongue.
‘I want to go home,’ he said, suddenly appearing very old. ‘I want today to be over so that I can go home to my wife. And my daughter.’
‘You have a daughter?’ she asked with surprise.
‘Yes,’ he said, simple words filled with emotion. ‘I do. She lives up there on Howth summit. That’s why I’m there in the car every evening. I just like to keep an eye on her. Even if she doesn’t know it.’
They stared at one another for a while, knowing that something strange had overcome them that morning, something strange that had changed them forever.
‘I had a husband,’ she said finally. ‘Car crash. I was there. Holding his hand. Just like this morning.’ She swallowed and lowered her voice. ‘I always said I’d have done anything to give him at least a few more hours.’ There, she’d said it. ‘I gave Lou a pill, Raphie,’ she said firmly, looking him straight in the eye now. ‘I know I shouldn’t have, but I gave him a pill. I don’t know if all that stuff about the pills is true or not – we can’t locate Gabe now – but if I helped Lou have a few more hours with his family, I’m glad, and I’d do it again if anyone asks.’
Raphie simply nodded, acknowledging her two confessions. He’d put it in their statement but he didn’t need to tell her that; she knew.
They just looked at one another, staring at but not seeing each other. Their minds were elsewhere; on the times gone by, the lost time that could never return.
‘Where’s my son?’ A woman’s urgent voice broke their silence. As she had opened the door, light filled the dark station. The cold of the day crept in, snowflakes were trapped in the woman’s hair and clothes and fell from her boots as she stamped them on the ground. ‘He’s only a boy,’ she swallowed. ‘A fourteen-year-old boy.’ Her voice shook. ‘I sent him out to get gravy granules. And the turkey’s missing now.’ She spoke as though delirious.
‘I’ll take care of this.’ Jessica nodded at Raphie. ‘You go home now.’
And so he did.
One thing of great importance can affect a small number of people. Equally so, a thing of little importance can affect a multitude. Either way, a happening – big or small – can affect an entire string of people. Occurrences can join us all together. You see, we’re all made up of the same stuff. When something happens, it triggers something inside us that connects us to a situation, connects us to other people, lighting us up and linking us like little lights on a Christmas tree, twisted and turned but still connected on a wire. Some go out, others flicker, others burn strong and bright, yet we’re all on the same line.
I said at the beginning of this story that this was about a person who finds out who they are. About a person who is unravelled and their core is revealed to all that count. And that all that count are revealed to them. You thought I was talking about Lou Suffern, didn’t you? Wrong. I was talking about us all.
A lesson finds the common denominator and links us all together, like a chain. At the end of that chain dangles a clock, and on the face of the clock the passing of time is registered. We hear it, the hushed tick-tock sound that breaks any silence, and we see it, but often we don’t feel it. Each second ma
kes its mark on every single person’s life; comes and then goes, quietly disappearing without fanfare, evaporating into air like steam from a piping hot Christmas pudding. Enough time leaves us warm; when our time is gone, it too leaves us cold. Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely. Time cannot be packaged and ribboned and left under trees for Christmas morning.
Time can’t be given. But it can be shared.
CECELIA AHERN
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES
Dedicated, with love, to my grandparents,
Olive & Raphael Kelly and Julia & Con Ahern,
Thanks for the Memories
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
One Month Earlier
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Present Day
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
One Month Later
Chapter Forty-Three
PROLOGUE
Close your eyes and stare into the dark.
My father’s advice when I couldn’t sleep as a little girl. He wouldn’t want me to do that now but I’ve set my mind to the task regardless. I’m staring into that immeasurable blackness that stretches far beyond my closed eyelids. Though I lie still on the ground, I feel perched at the highest point I could possibly be; clutching at a star in the night sky with my legs dangling above cold black nothingness. I take one last look at my fingers wrapped around the light and let go. Down I go, falling, then floating, and, falling again, I wait for the land of my life.
I know now, as I knew as that little girl fighting sleep, that behind the gauzed screen of shut-eye, lies colour. It taunts me, dares me to open my eyes and lose sleep. Flashes of red and amber, yellow and white speckle my darkness. I refuse to open them. I rebel and I squeeze my eyelids together tighter to block out the grains of light, mere distractions that keep us awake but a sign that there’s life beyond.
But there’s no life in me. None that I can feel, from where I lie at the bottom of the staircase. My heart beats quicker now, the lone fighter left standing in the ring, a red boxing glove pumping victoriously into the air, refusing to give up. It’s the only part of me that cares, the only part that ever cared. It fights to pump the blood around to heal, to replace what I’m losing. But it’s all leaving my body as quickly as it’s sent; forming a deep black ocean of its own around me where I’ve fallen.
Rushing, rushing, rushing. We are always rushing. Never have enough time here, always trying to make our way there. Need to have left here five minutes ago, need to be there now. The phone rings again and I acknowledge the irony. I could have taken my time and answered it now.
Now, not then.
I could have taken all the time in the world on each of those steps. But we’re always rushing. All, but my heart. That slows now. I don’t mind so much. I place my hand on my belly. If my child is gone, and I suspect this is so, I’ll join it there. There … where? Wherever. It; a heartless word. He or she so young; who it was to become, still a question. But there, I will mother it.
There, not here.
I’ll tell it: I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry I ruined your chances, my chance – our chance of a life together. But close your eyes and stare into the darkness now, like Mummy is doing, and we’ll find our way together.
There’s a noise in the room and I feel a presence.
‘Oh God, Joyce, oh God. Can you hear me, love? Oh God. Oh God. Oh, please no, Good Lord, not my Joyce, don’t take my Joyce. Hold on, love, I’m here. Dad is here.’
I don’t want to hold on and I feel like telling him so. I hear myself groan, an animal-like whimper and it shocks me, scares me. I have a plan, I want to tell him. I want to go, only then can I be with my baby.
Then, not now.
He’s stopped me from falling but I haven’t landed yet. Instead he helps me balance on nothing, hover while I’m forced to make the decision. I want to keep falling but he’s calling the ambulance and he’s gripping my hand with such ferocity it’s as though it is he who is hanging on to dear life. As though I’m all he has. He’s brushing the hair from my forehead and weeping loudly. I’ve never heard him weep. Not even when Mum died. He clings to my hand with all of the strength I never knew his old body had and I remember that I am all he has and that he, once again just like before, is my whole world. The blood continues to rush through me. Rushing, rushing, rushing. We are always rushing. Maybe I’m rushing again. Maybe it’s not my time to go.
I feel the rough skin of old hands squeezing mine, and their intensity and their familiarity force me to open my eyes. Light fills them and I glimpse his face, a look I never want to see again. He clings to his baby. I know I’ve lost mine; I can’t let him lose his. In making my decision I already begin to grieve. I’ve landed now, the land of my life. And, still, my heart pumps on.
Even when broken it still works.
One Month Earlier
CHAPTER ONE
‘Blood transfusion,’ Dr Fields announces from the podium of a lecture hall in Trinity College’s Arts building, ‘is the process of transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into the circulatory system of another. Blood transfusions may treat medical conditions, such as massive blood loss due to trauma, surgery, shock and where the red-cell-producing mechanism fails.
‘Here are the facts. Three thousand donations are needed in Ireland every week. Only three per cent of the Irish population are donors, providing blood for a population of almost four million. One in four people will need a transfusion at some point. Take a look around the room now.’
Five hundred heads turn left, right and around. Uncomfortable sniggers break the silence.
Dr Fields elevates her voice over the disruption. ‘At least one hundred and fifty people in this room will need a blood transfusion at some stage in their lives.’
That silences them. A hand is raised.
‘Yes?’
‘How much blood does a patient need?’
‘How long is a piece of string, dumb-ass,’ a voice from the back mocks, and a scrunched ball of paper flies at the head of the young male enquirer.
‘It’s a very good question.’ She frowns into the darkness, unable to see the students through the light of the projector. ‘Who asked that?’
‘Mr Dover,’ someone calls from the other side of the room.
‘I’m sure Mr Dover can answer for himself. What’s your first name?’
‘Ben,’ he resp
onds, sounding dejected.
Laughter erupts. Dr Fields sighs.
‘Ben, thank you for your question – and to the rest of you, there is no such thing as a stupid question. This is what Blood For Life Week is all about. It’s about asking all the questions you want, learning all you need to know about blood transfusions before you possibly donate today, tomorrow, the remaining days of this week on campus, or maybe regularly in your future.’
The main door opens and light streams into the dark lecture hall. Justin Hitchcock enters, the concentration on his face illuminated by the white light of the projector. Under one arm are multiple piles of folders, each one slipping by the second. A knee shoots up to hoist them back in place. His right hand carries both an overstuffed briefcase and a dangerously balanced Styrofoam cup of coffee. He slowly lowers his hovering foot down to the floor, as though performing a t’ai chi move, and a relieved smile creeps onto his face as calm is restored. Somebody sniggers and the balancing act is once again compromised.
Hold it, Justin. Move your eyes away from the cup and assess the situation. Woman on podium, five hundred kids. All staring at you. Say something. Something intelligent.
‘I’m confused,’ he announces to the darkness, behind which he senses some sort of life form. There are twitters in the room and he feels all eyes on him as he moves back towards the door to check the number.
Don’t spill the coffee. Don’t spill the damn coffee.
He opens the door, allowing shafts of light to sneak in again and the students in its line shade their eyes.
Twitter, twitter, nothing funnier than a lost man.
Laden down with items, he manages to hold the door open with his leg. He looks back to the number on the outside of the door and then back to his sheet, the sheet that, if he doesn’t grab it that very second, will float to the ground. He makes a move to grab it. Wrong hand. Styrofoam cup of coffee falls to the ground. Closely followed by sheet of paper.
Damn it! There they go again, twitter, twitter. Nothing funnier than a lost man who’s spilled his coffee and dropped his schedule.
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