Every Single Minute

by Hugo Hamilton

  Calm down, you’re in Berlin.

  I got her as far as the souvenirs and told her to keep her voice down. I told her I’d make sure there would be no bridges named after her.

  She was laughing again.

  What would you say to a roundabout? I asked her.

  I swear to God, Liam.

  I leaned down behind her and whispered in her ear. There might be one or two roundabouts in Limerick still unnamed, I told her. Every time people come to the roundabout they’ll think of you, I said, wouldn’t that be nice? Then she half-turned around in the wheelchair and said she would come back and kill me. She would kill the whole lot of us.

  33

  I’ve got her a small brochure about the history of the Pergamon Altar. I’ve bought her a drink of apple juice mixed with fizzy water, a cloudy drink. I ask her would she like a cake and she wants a scone. Do they not have any fruit scones and jam, raspberry jam? Blackberry jam, I don’t suppose they have that, she says. They have no scones in the café at the Pergamon Museum, so I get her one of those almond cakes, like a horseshoe with both ends dipped in chocolate. She loves those. She’s eaten hers very quickly so I give her one of the remaining chocolate ends off my horseshoe as well. She drinks the apple juice and takes some more pills and I ask her is everything all right now?

  I’m fine, she says.

  She starts taking things out from her see-through bag. She places them on the table one by one, her medication, her reading glasses, the room key, the nail clippers, the mobile phone, switched off. All the contents out on the table for everyone to see. As if she was at home. She looks at each item individually. She examines the tub of hand cream as though she’s never seen it before, reading the label, holding it away from her to look at the design on the lid, seeing what’s underneath, reading the label a second time, opening it up to smell it and closing the lid again. Then she picks a spot on the table for it. She looks into her bag once more, outside and inside. She takes out more and more things, I don’t know what for, does she want to make sure she’s got everything?

  Liam, she says. We better not forget the sheets.

  No problem, I’ll remind Manfred.

  She has an overview. She’s playing dominoes with her things, shifting them around on the table to make the display more logical, creams together, hotel belongings together, reading materials with reading materials. She looks at everything in front of her on the table, all in order.

  I’m only putting this together now.

  She’s thinking back, wondering what more she could have done for her brother. She talks about him coming to see her on her birthday once. He was living up in the north of London at that stage, Wood Green, I think she said it was. She’s talking about how she hardly ever got to see him. And one day she found him standing in the reception, where she was working. He was talking to the porter at the door. Her brother was the image of his father, she says, chatting to the nearest person available to see what story they had. He had come to bring me out for a drink on my birthday, she says. Even though he didn’t really have the money to stand a drink. And I had already arranged to go out with friends, colleagues from work. So I was caught between the two. He was standing there with a big smile on his face and I had to introduce him to everyone, she says, what else could I do? I brought him with me to the pub and they all loved him. They were buying him drink and he was really happy, telling stories.

  For a moment, she says, I thought it was great having a brother, like some kind of credentials, so people knew I came from a normal family where everyone drank and sang songs around the table. But I knew where this was headed, she says. I could see the thin façade I had going for myself in London was steadily being dismantled. There was no telling what he would say. I was about to be found out. Having my brother around was like wearing my heart on my sleeve, she says.

  At one point, she got her brother up to the bar so he could help carry a round of drinks back to the table. It was the only way she could talk to him privately.

  Don’t start getting any ideas, she said to him, you’re not here for the night.

  He kept getting more and more drunk, she says, just like his own mother. It was the only thing he ever learned at home, how to look forward to the next drink, how to go all the way and get properly out of the head. I didn’t know what to do with him, she says. You know the way it is, you can dismiss your own brother and think of him as a failure, until you’re in company and you feel you have to be nice to him, in front of people. You see other people taking him seriously. You see what they see in him, the pity they have for him. It was the disaster in my brother that reminded me of the potential disaster in myself, she says. I was afraid they could see that whole family disaster coming out bit by bit the more drunk he got.

  So I got him out of there, she says. When the next opportunity arose, she says, I took him by the arm like we were the best family in the world. I made excuses, she says. I told them we had to go because we were expecting a call from home. Which was a big lie. There was nothing I wanted more than to keep drinking with my brother and my friends, if they even were friends, but I had to stop him before he got totally paralysed and let me down. I didn’t want him to see me being myself either. So I sent him off in a taxi, God forgive me, she says, all the way up to Wood Green, it cost me a fortune. Imagine that, Liam, I packed my brother off in a taxi to whatever Godforsaken place he was living and I went back to the even sadder, Godforsaken place where I was living, just to be on my own, on my birthday.

  I didn’t know how to help him, she says. I didn’t think it was up to me. I was his big sister but I had no idea. I should have given him things to do. Some kind of task to carry out. Something to get him started. Something he could be proud of.

  Then she turns to me and wants to know would I do her a favour. After she’s gone, that is, would I go somewhere she’s never been before.

  Where?

  If I had children, she says, that’s what I would do. I would give them tasks to carry out. I would send them all over the world, places I could never get to. Go to Tibet, that sort of thing. Go to one of their temples. Bring me back something, I would say to them, she says. Come back with a stick or a small piece of cloth. Dried fruit. Anything at all.

  Will you do me a favour, Liam? After me. Will you go to Kraków? I always wanted to go to Kraków. Please, Liam, will you do that for me?

  34

  I told her what it was like being a father. I told her that once you become a parent yourself you keep wondering if there’s something you have deprived your child of and you hope it’s not love.

  I told her about my daughter, when she was only four years of age. She went ahead of me one day, at top speed, on her scooter. She went down the hill, waving at the rabbits in the window of the pet shop, all the way down past the church. No sense of danger. I was shouting after her to stop but she kept going. She was miles ahead and I was sure she would end up going straight on to the main road. I ran after her. I legged it as fast as I could, with all these Italian students across the road laughing at me. And at the bottom of the road she disappeared around the corner and fell off. I picked her up and held her in my arms and I felt so lucky that she was all right, unharmed.

  What are you saying, Liam?

  I couldn’t stop my daughter growing up and asking questions, I said. Maeve. She must have overheard. Because she was upstairs when I was asking Emily all these questions I should never have asked. It was my last chance not to ask questions. But that’s the truth for you, it’s like a hair in your mouth. Emily was standing in the kitchen saying she was not going to answer any questions, why should she? It was not a question she was able to answer. And I kept saying I didn’t believe her. My question was following her around the house, out on to the patio while she suddenly had to look after some potted plants in semi-darkness, back into the house the question was still following her into the bathroom while she was going to the loo and she asked me to let her close the door at least, through the
hallway while she was putting on her coat, searching for something in her bag as though the answer was there all along. And Maeve was standing at the window upstairs watching while Emily was walking out the front door not knowing where to go from there, stopping to look right and left on the pavement, and me still asking her to come back and answer the question.

  What question?

  Like, am I the real father?

  Is there some doubt?

  It finally came out because of the wedding, I explain. Everything is up in the air because the wedding is not happening, it’s been cancelled. All these second thoughts that Maeve is having. She feels it’s better not to commit to anything, as if she’s only going to be repeating all the mistakes that went before her, as if there’s something keeping her from starting her life.

  It was me who gave her that doubt, I point out. All these second thoughts she picked up from me in the first place. Doubts I should have been keeping to myself and which were suddenly out in the open.

  One evening she came out to see me on her own. Just Maeve and myself, the two of us alone in the house. I had everything ready, laid out on the table. She came in and kissed me. Then she passed me by and dropped her bag in the middle of the hallway, by the stairs. She threw her coat on the sofa and looked around as usual and said, Jesus, look at the place, Dad. You’re so fucking tidy, it’s unbelievable. Because she was always accusing me of tidying around people, saying there was nothing I enjoyed more in life than clearing up, coming to the end of a packet, or a carton, a bottle of shampoo, getting the dishwasher stacked properly. She said I behaved as if I wanted to be invisible, as if I didn’t want to leave any evidence behind. As if real people were too real for me and I could not bear them leaving their belongings around the place. At least give me a chance to make a mess, Dad, before you start picking things up. She said you had to leave some trace of yourself behind or else you don’t exist. So I left her bag where it was in the hallway and her coat on the sofa, with one arm reaching down towards the floor. I was glad to see them there, where they were dropped.

  I asked Maeve did she want something to eat but she didn’t, not even cake. I told her the silver stud in her bottom lip looked great, but that’s not what she came to hear.

  When she came into the kitchen it felt as though we were going to have dinner together. Maeve sat at one end of the table and I sat at the other. It was no big deal, just a formality. We read through the instructions first and there was no need to say too much or keep looking at each other. I think we both wanted to get on with it. It was a bit embarrassing, to be honest, so unnecessary. So we just moved on as if it was no more than a form to be filled in together. Tax returns or something like that. I licked my swab. She licked her swab at the other end of the table. We had to keep things very separate, that was important to bear in mind. Because you can’t allow the colours to get mixed up. Otherwise everybody is related to one another and there is no way of proving anyone apart. So we did all that. As per the instructions. I had the green envelope and she had the pink one. There was a third blue envelope which would have been for the mother, but there was no dispute over her and no need for that extra one, Emily was not present. Then Maeve and myself put the two envelopes, the green one and the pink one, into the big envelope and we threw the other one out, the blue one. And that’s where we stood, so to speak, in doubt, unresolved.

  It felt like being on one of those reality shows, Jerry Springer, there must be a million stories like it all over the world, I thought. This must be going on in every town in Ireland, Europe, anywhere. It felt like we were in one of those TV dramas, maybe inside an opera, even older than that, something that’s been going on in families for centuries, since the beginning of time. There was no sense in getting emotional about it, saying things that could not be revoked. I think we tried to behave quite normally, as though nothing was happening. We carried on as always, like father and daughter, not taking too much notice of each other.

  Although.

  There was one moment where Maeve and I made eye contact, I remember. Across the table, we looked at each other as if we were both saying what? What are we doing here? Only we didn’t say anything at all. It was nothing more than a brief look, directly in the eyes. It was filled with a million passing questions, going back and forth in a great hurry. Like how come we were sitting here in the same room together? We could be people who never met before, we could have been in different lives coming from different families and never laid eyes on each other until now. It was so ridiculous, we smiled. A quick smile, just to confirm how close we were and how many things we could remember together, so much stuff that didn’t even need to be said. But we were also examining each other, checking each other out, as they say. Because everything was up for comparison. Everything that was familiar was being questioned, like going through the family check-list, everyone does it. Ticking off. Measuring. Eyes, nose, cheekbones. The laugh, the voice, the whole person you are, the kind of jokes you make.

  All those thoughts were listed off in that smile, nothing hidden. It was a moment of honesty. We were sharing something, I suppose you could say. Sharing, that’s a terrible word, completely misappropriated. Why is your child not sharing? We’re disappointed that your child has not learned to share yet like the other children, they said when Maeve was in Montessori. Today we are going to learn how to share, OK? I don’t know about those words they impose on children. It’s like the word connection, or the word included. They can be so meaningless, so unhelpful, so common to everyone and nobody. Maybe it was more of a confirmation, if you can even trust that word. Because there was something in that smile between myself and my daughter that made us both feel so included, so connected, so much like a confirmation, like we were sharing something that involved nobody else in the world, nobody else could have come to claim any part in it, we were in the same place, in the same life, in the same stretch of time together.

  It felt like an attempt at clearing up our family story, like tidying up the house, turning it into a show house, no trace of anyone actually living there, ready to rent. That’s what my life suddenly looked like to me. Unoccupied. I was smiling at her, trying to make sure she understood that she was still part of the same family disorder, I suppose, that not everything was tidy, we were leaving a trace.

  I wanted to say something along those lines to Maeve, something father to daughter. I mentioned the wedding, which was a mistake. I was encouraging her to go ahead with it, asking her what kind of music she was thinking of having, a DJ or a band? I suppose I was looking for practical things to say, not realizing that the less I said about the wedding the better.

  Maeve looked at her phone.

  I asked her did she want to stay and have a drink, would we open a bottle of wine? She raised her head up from her phone as if she was blinded by the sun. What? Again it was the silent word, what? Was this the right moment for a drink? Had I suddenly discovered something to celebrate in all this? She got up from the table and said it was time for her to go. She went around picking up everything she had brought with her, one by one in reverse order, her phone, her coat, her bag, making sure to leave nothing behind. Then we walked out the front door and went to the nearest postbox down on the main street. We posted the envelope together, you know, in each other’s presence, because that’s what you’re meant to do, to make sure nobody has tampered with the evidence in the meantime.

  I put my arms around Maeve, and, of course, she returned the embrace. I knew it was important not to make it look like we were saying goodbye. She was not going away anywhere, she was not leaving, only going home, back to her place. And she didn’t want me standing in the street watching her walking away as if she would never be seen again, the way I used to do when she was going to school. Waiting for her when she came out of school again as if I hadn’t moved from the spot. I knew not to do that. Be cool about this, she said to me. Only she didn’t say that. I just heard myself saying it for her.

  35

&
nbsp; I spoke to Maeve on the phone as soon as the result came back and she was not saying very much, neither of us were. We’re not related, Maeve and me. She still kept calling me Dad. I suppose it takes time to get out of the habit of saying that. Dad, she said, are you still there? Dad? Because I was silent, as if I had turned off the phone. I had no idea what to say to her. It was all a bit of a transition for me. I felt myself sweeping back over everything as if my life had been a mistake. My memory was not to be trusted. It was all being questioned. It felt like having nothing to hold on to, nothing to go by.

  You never suspected? Úna asked me.

  Well, yes, I kind of knew. You know and you don’t know, at the same time. I didn’t want to know, I suppose. And now that I know, I’m trying to tell myself it doesn’t matter. Who cares who the father is, I’m fine with all that. It has no substance, it’s only proof. I don’t have to believe the proof. It was knowing and not knowing, that was the problem. I wanted to be the owner of my life with my daughter in it. I should never have started following Emily with questions she could not answer. I was trying to find out something I should not have been hoping to find out, that’s all.

  You’re still her father, Liam. She’s still your daughter.

  No question, I said.

  Of course she’s my daughter. I brought her up. It was me who brought her out to Tallaght Hospital when she was only four to get a blood test, just a precaution really, we thought she was too small for her age. I was afraid she might have stopped growing. I remember telling Maeve this long story to keep her distracted while the nurse was getting the needle ready, all about a stormy night with lots of big words like ferocious winds and mountainous waves. It was me who made sure nothing was wrong with her, only that she was not very tall, and her height was always something she could compensate for, she’ll look great in a pair of high heels, so the consultant said at the time. It was me who helped her with her homework, I explained how fermentation works, the solar system. I made her sandwiches for school, that sort of thing. All the journeys we went on together, the large stones we brought back from Kerry with us in the car, I know that’s not very ecological now. Big oval stones, glossy in the rain. The eggs of a dinosaur, so we believed and maybe she still believes that, I hope so. All the photographs I have of her sitting on the stones. All the stories we made up about dinosaurs hatching and how we had to bring them back to the beach in Ventry where they came from, because that’s where the dinosaurs live.