She told me about one of the great moments in her life. The time when they were travelling in Italy together. Herself and Noleen. Along the coast. Going by the side of the cliffs, on a train, through the tunnels. Every now and again the carriage was thrown into darkness. From what she was saying it was probably not unlike the end of the day and when they came out of the tunnel it was a new day beginning, I know that feeling. The view of the sea bursting into the carriage again. She said it was hard to look, it was blinding, your eyes would start watering with all the brightness. They were alone in the carriage together, with the window wide open and the breeze blowing in, flapping at their hair, at their light summer clothes.
They had only one book to read on the train, she told me. Noleen and myself, she said, we had an argument over who was going to read it first. I won the toss because I was the faster reader and it was me who brought the book in the first place, she said. But then Noleen started distracting me, looking out the window and making remarks in her deep voice, making me laugh. In fact Noleen decided to sing a song. Thank God there was nobody listening, she said, whatever it was. I’m glad it was not Bob Dylan. At least I hope she was not singing ‘Girl from the North Country’, she said. We did that as a duet together sometimes, we murdered it. Noleen could do Johnny Cash with her deep voice, and I did Bob Dylan, because I couldn’t sing at all.
Noleen was like a big sister, she said, making me laugh in spite of myself, reminding me that there was more to life than the characters in a book. So you know what we did, Úna said. After I read each page I tore it out and passed it over to her.
That’s how we read the novel, she said. Every time I finished a page I ripped it out and Noleen read it. And when she was finished reading it she put each page neatly down on the seat beside her. At one point, coming out of a tunnel, she said, a gust of wind came into the carriage like an invisible hand, like the hand of the next reader impatiently grabbing the pages off the seat and pulling them out the window in no sequence at all. Some of the pages flew down towards the cliffs, she said. Some of them went up vertically, up over the roof of the train. Some of them flew along the length of the train, attempting to get back on again, trying some of the doors and windows further down. Honestly, she said, they looked like birds. White birds with writing on them. An entire novel full of birds left behind along that journey.
What was the book?
I can’t tell you that, she said.
What was it about?
I’m not sure I can remember too much of what was in it, she said.
She could only remember the pages flying. Then the train stopped. We were held up somewhere along the coast, she said, miles away from anywhere, with the sounds of clicking and snapping in the metal underneath. I’ll never forget it, she said, as long as I live. Only the two of us alone inside the compartment and the heat and the breeze coming in from the sea across both open windows. Nobody came to tell us anything or explain why we were stopped. Over three hours the train was unable to move because of a forest fire ahead. We could smell the smoke in the carriage, she said. We were stuck in time. Everything on hold. Two women, she said, left behind on a train overlooking the Adriatic. Staring at the blue sea. And the terns diving. The terns squeaking and diving, like pages from the book, she said, because they changed direction so fast.
43
I told her what happened with my daughter. Úna wanted to know all that, about Maeve going to see her real father. I told her how she had been trying to contact him, the biological father, but he refused to get back to her.
Think about this clearly, I said to Maeve. He’s not going to get back to you, that’s guaranteed. And there is nothing to be gained by going to see him in his house, I said, only more trouble. Think about what’s important, Maeve, I said. Think about the good things, like I try to remember good things about my own father. Remember the time you wanted to be a unicorn for Halloween, I said. A golden unicorn. The trouble it took to make that outfit before you changed your mind at the last minute and wanted to be an angel instead, so I had to find wings somewhere quickly. I don’t know if Maeve remembers a lot of those things, only me reminding her.
You can’t plan what a child is going to remember.
Maeve was very cool about all this. I’ve never seen her more confident. She put her hands around my face and called me Dad and said this was only something she had to do for herself, she used the word identity.
She knew what he looked like, her biological father. She had pictures downloaded off the net. Photos of him at conferences in America, Germany, Cairo and places like that. Looking really well, I have to say. The same as ever. Serious, afraid of nobody, but also up for a laugh as always. His hair is a different colour now, darker than I remember. Only his moustache is the same colour as before.
She tried to make an appointment to see him, but he was unavailable. His secretary was protecting him, so I gather, from people not referred to him by other legal practices, people coming to him with private matters, unsolicited, if you like. So then Maeve decided to go in there, into the courts, in person. It’s a public place, she’s perfectly entitled to be there as much as anyone else.
Maeve found out where he was likely to be. She’s that type of person, I said, just like her mother, quite determined. She went there and examined all the lawyers standing around, waiting for the court to be in session. Trying to identify her father.
Her biological father, Úna said.
Yes, that’s right, I said. And then she found him. He was standing in a group, she recognized him straight away, no mistake, dressed in a suit, with a black gown loosely draped around his shoulders. Maeve said he had a look of calmness, a single-minded expression, full of concentration. He was accepting a file from somebody and nodding, or half bowing, slowly, to say thank you. He was shaking hands with one or two of the other lawyers and smiling. She saw him leaning his head down to listen to somebody whispering some last-minute information into his ear.
She walked right up and apologized for interrupting him, but she would like to have a word, she spoke his name.
He didn’t react, so Maeve told me. She repeated herself, giving her own name this time. It’s Maeve, she said to him. She didn’t say the word daughter, she had no intention of embarrassing him. But he was in preparation mode for the trial. He turned away from her. He had no time to be distracted by things that were long in the past now and as much forgotten as they could be.
He didn’t hear, Úna said.
He must have heard, I said. Everyone else heard. You know when your name has been called. There has to be a little tug, when the voice that says something connects with the ear that hears it, don’t you think?
How could he not hear?
Then she spoke her mother’s name, I said. Emily.
And that made him turn around. He looked at Maeve and studied her face very carefully. He must have thought he had suddenly gone back in time and he was seeing Emily in front of him, a miniature Emily with the same lips and the same smile, the hair, same everything about her. He must have thought he had stopped in time also, not a day older than he was with Emily. He stepped towards her and shook her hand, then led her away from the group he was with. He said he was pushed for time, could he get back to her.
If you leave your number with my secretary, he said to her.
I’ve already done that, Maeve said.
That’s good, he said. I’ll be in touch with you.
I can always come back here, Maeve said. If I don’t hear from you.
He said nothing more, just smiled. I suppose he liked that in her, she was just like Emily, not going to be swept away by excuses. So that’s the way it was left. She smiled at him and pulled her hair back like she was opening the curtains. Then she turned and walked away.
I thought Maeve only wanted to lay eyes on him, I said. She wanted to see what he looked like in real life. She wanted to say his name. She wanted to see her reflection, that’s all, I thought.
I
know they’ve met since then, I told Úna. She’s met her real father. She’s been out to his house, I have no problem with that. It’s not like a competition any more. Maeve is not comparing fathers, only exercising her right to know. She told me what his house looked like, the greyhounds guarding the front door with yellow lichen on their faces. She described the fanlight over the door, and the front room with the oak bookcases and the painting of a wheat field with the angle of the sunlight low. Maeve was shown around the rooms, the bedrooms with the books on the bedside tables. She met his wife, Julia. The kitchen is huge, with black and white diagonal tiles and there’s an island in the middle, double sink, a professional-level gas cooker with six rings. He loves cooking apparently, could have been a master chef, anything he put his mind down to. He looked very fit, so Maeve told me. He was wearing a tracksuit. He offered her a drink and they sat for a while in the living room together. She told me that he was sitting at one end of the room and she was sitting at the other end, at far ends, if you like, with a wide rug between them because the room was so large.
44
I had no more follow-on news to give Úna in Berlin. I wish I could have told her that we had fine weather for the wedding, everything went well, it was a great day. I wish I could have told her that my daughter was very happy, expecting a baby. I wish I could have told her all kinds of good news about the world that has not even happened yet.
I gave her my wedding speech.
That’s all I had at the time. I asked Úna if I could try it out on her. I told her that if my daughter ever got married, I was all ready with the speech. Could I rehearse it with her, I said, because she was not going to make the wedding anyway, even if it was happening after all.
It’s the usual father’s speech, I said. The one that every father makes. I’m sure they’ve all heard it before. About a taxi driver coming to the door of the house at four in the morning, asking if I could come out to the car and identify my daughter. Was that my daughter asleep in the back of his cab? And did I have any way of waking her up, because he didn’t want to shake her, physically, and he had tried everything including Jethro Tull full volume, he had been a taxi driver for thirty years, it never failed before. Absolutely, I said to him. No doubt whatsoever, it was my daughter, Maeve. I was her father, I said a few times, always was. The taxi driver looked as if he was suddenly in doubt and he had come to the wrong house, but then I paid him the fare and carried her in. I was the world expert at carrying a sleeping child in from the car, all the way into bed without waking her up. I was able to do it without letting her head roll back, bending down to open doors with one hand, making sure not to pass with her face directly under the light, pulling back the sheets even. I had lots of practice over the years. I managed to transfer her in from the taxi and lay her out on the bed, but then she woke up, just after I got her shoes off and covered her up. Maeve sat up wondering where she was, asking if there were any rashers, she could murder a rasher sandwich, with mayonnaise.
I know every father says they have that story, but it’s mine.
The problem was, there were no rashers. I checked in the fridge and found nothing. You know how it is, nobody went shopping and the fridge was empty. There was not even sliced bread for toast, as far as I remember. So I decided to make chips. I knew she would like that, home-made chips. So I started peeling potatoes. She came down in her dressing gown and slippers and sat at the table watching me. It was the summer, I remember, the beginning of brightness was already coming in through the window. I was asking her questions, how the night went. General questions that you ask as a father, not really expecting any answers, did you have a good time? She smiled at me, but she was saying nothing. We had no deep fryer, only a pot and the bottle of vegetable oil from the last time I made chips, so it still had sediments of burnt potato at the bottom. I cut the potatoes into chips and dried them individually on a fresh kitchen towel. The oil was making hot squeaking sounds and it started bubbling up as soon as I dropped the chips in. It’s a lovely sight, I thought to myself, boiling oil. I felt like the man in the chipper, with people watching me, waiting for their chips. I put on the extractor fan so it was hard to talk. I was asking Maeve more and more questions, fishing for information, I suppose. Again she smiled, tracing a permanent tea stain on the wooden table with her finger, holding her dressing gown closed over with the other hand. Her hair was tied up at the top of her head which made it look like a feather stuck forward. And I was busy concentrating on the chips, lifting them up with a slotted steel spoon to make sure they were not sticking to one another, waiting for them to get crispy and change colour from white to light brown.
This is what I remember. The chips in a bowl on a double layer of kitchen paper and Maeve sprinkling salt over them, ketchup on the side, eating them even though they were still far too hot, hardly able to hold them in her fingers. She took a small bite, keeping her mouth open as if she was holding on to a piece of information, like volcanic rock, throwing it back and forth, breathing quickly in and out. You know the way, I’ve often seen people outside the chipper doing this, I’ve done it myself, I’ve even seen my own father doing it that one time I remember him buying chips for us, rattling the bag, huffing as if you really want to say something and you can’t wait to put it into words, only you have to let the chip in your mouth cool down first and not burn your tongue.
Of course I was not going to put all this into the wedding speech, not all the details. But that’s the story as I remember it. I was giving Úna the unabridged version in Berlin, asking her advice, I suppose, trying to see if it works, would they still be interested?
Keep it short, Liam, Úna advised me. The wedding guests don’t want to know everything. They’ll want to start dancing at that point, if they’re still able to stand up.
I laughed.
Get to the point, she said.
I’m not trying to make any point, I said. I’m only saying it felt good to be able to carry Maeve in from the taxi. It felt good to be making chips. It was great seeing my daughter eating the chips with her bare feet on the cross beam of the kitchen table, rocking her chair back.
And then Emily came down the stairs, wearing a similar dressing gown. They looked so alike, Emily and Maeve. They both had the same hair tied up, identical. They looked like they were going for an early-morning swim. Mother and daughter. One swimming ahead of the other. What was going on, Emily wanted to know. Was I making mountains of chips again, in the middle of the night? Yes, we we’re having a few chips, I said. Emily sat down at the table and tasted one of the chips and Maeve started talking. Maeve was telling us everything. How she had met somebody, his name was Shane, he makes me laugh a lot, she said, and his family owns a farm in Leitrim with the ruins of an ancient church on their land, all covered in ivy, it would be lovely to get married there, out in the open with no roof.
It was getting bright outside, I could hear the birds. We still had the lights on because it was in between night and next day. I got up to make a few more chips, another batch, why not? I continued listening to Maeve and started peeling more and more potatoes, not knowing when to stop.
45
We should be watching the time. By right we should be heading straight back to the hotel at this point. It’s late in the afternoon and I’m not sure she’s up to seeing anything now, she can’t absorb any more sights. She must be exhausted, there is something going on in her thoughts that she’s not letting me know about. I can see it in her eyes, she’s worried. And for a day that was quite warm, it’s gone quite cold. Getting out of the car you feel it. But she’s determined to see the memorial. It’s on the list of things she wanted to see, the list I gave Manfred, no question of leaving it out.
At first you think it’s not finished yet, like a building site. All these grey blocks or square concrete pillars, columns with a smooth concrete finish. It’s not fenced off or anything. You see a few people walking around between the columns and you realize that it’s been designed to look li
ke that, empty, unequal, in long lines at different levels, with columns getting taller and deeper and further away, this is what people have come to see.
The sun has gone and the wind is coming straight through. There’s no shelter. She won’t be able to stand the cold out here for very long, that’s what I’m saying to myself. This is going to be very brief, so we leave everything in the car, she won’t be needing her bag. I make sure she has her cap on. And why does she not have a scarf?
Manfred is waiting by the car.
There’s no official entrance, so you can make your way in from any side you like. Straight into the low columns or straight into the high columns, there’s no difference. I push the wheelchair into a row that leads us towards the centre, if there is a centre. The ground is uneven with cobbles. The front wheels rattle and the wheelchair is tilted, like on a rough road. I continue pushing the wheelchair further along the row going down and we’re almost underground at this stage, that’s the feeling. She wants to stop and look around. There’s nobody there. You don’t hear anything much. You could be lost and nobody would know. We’re talking about a place right in the middle of the city that makes you feel like you could be left behind, deserted. Nothing but lines of grey columns and grey cobbles. And you would expect a bit more shelter down there but the wind is actually stronger, like a wind tunnel, the gap between the columns is pulling the wind from far off and you feel even more exposed.
I thought it was the cold that made her so silent. But she said she didn’t feel anything, she was fine. Later on she told me that it made her feel guilty being there. She wouldn’t tell me what it was that made her feel guilty, only that she felt guilty and she could not say. It seemed to me that everybody visiting this place was bringing their own guilt with them, leaving it behind in the concrete. This is only something I thought to myself afterwards. It felt as though all the guilt in the world was being brought here, adding to the columns, growing new columns. As if this was the collecting point where all the guilt was going to be kept from now on.
Every Single Minute Page 17