Thanks for the Memories

by Cecelia Ahern

  Justin realizes the driver is now staring at him intently. His head moves in close, as though he’s awaiting the answer to a very personal question.

  Justin clears his throat and adjusts his eyes to the world of thirty-five years later. Time travel of the mind; a powerful thing.

  “That’s us over there.” The driver presses the button on his keys, and the lights of an S-class Mercedes light up.

  Justin’s mouth drops. “Do you know who organized this?”

  “No idea.” The driver holds one of the back doors open for him. “I just take the orders from my boss. Thought it was unusual having to write ‘Thank You’ on the sign. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Yes, it does but…it’s complicated. Could you find out from your boss who’s paying for this?” Justin settles into the backseat of the car and places his briefcase on the floor beside him.

  “I could try.”

  “That would be great.” I’ll have gotcha then! Justin relaxes into the leather chair, stretches his legs out fully, and closes his eyes, barely able to hold back his smile.

  “I’m Thomas, by the way,” the driver introduces himself. “I’m here for you all day, so wherever you want to go after this, just let me know.”

  “For the entire day?” Justin almost chokes while sipping from his free bottle of chilled water, which was waiting for him in the hand rest. He saved a rich person’s life. Yes! He should have mentioned more to Bea than just muffins and daily newspapers. A villa in the south of France.

  “Would your company not have organized this for you?” Thomas asks.

  “No.” Justin shakes his head. “Definitely not.”

  “Maybe you’ve a fairy godmother you don’t know about,” Thomas says, deadpan.

  “Well, let’s see what this pumpkin’s made of.” Justin laughs.

  “Won’t get to test it this morning,” Thomas says, braking as they enter Dublin traffic, worsened by the rainy weather.

  Justin presses a button on the door to heat his seat and feels his back and behind warming. He kicks off his shoes and relaxes in comfort as he watches the miserable faces in the fogged-up windows of the buses gliding past him.

  “After the gallery, do you mind bringing me to D’Olier Street? I need to visit somebody at the blood donor clinic.”

  “No problem, boss.”

  The October gust huffs and puffs and attempts to blow the last of the leaves off the nearby trees. They hang on tight like the nannies in Mary Poppins, who cling to the lampposts of Cherry Tree Lane in a desperate attempt to prevent their airborne competition from blowing them away from the big Banks job interview. The leaves, like many people this autumn, are not yet ready to let go. They cling on tight to yesterday, putting up a fight before giving up the place that has been their home for two seasons. I watch as one leaf lets go and dances around in the air before falling to the ground. I pick it up and slowly twirl it around by its stalk in my fingers. I’m not fond of autumn. Not fond of watching things so sturdy wither as they lose against nature, the higher power they can’t control.

  “Here comes the car,” I comment to Kate.

  We’re standing across the main road from the National Gallery, behind the parked cars shaded by the trees rising above and over the gates of Merrion Square.

  “You paid for that?” Kate says. “You really are nuts.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. Actually, I paid half. That’s Frankie’s uncle driving—he runs the company. Pretend you don’t know him if he looks over.”

  “But I don’t know him.”

  “Good, that’s convincing.”

  “Joyce, I have never seen that man in my life.”

  “Wow, that’s really good.”

  “How long are you going to keep this up, Joyce? The London thing sounded fun while it lasted, but really, all we know is that the man donated blood.”

  “To me.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you can’t know that.”

  “But I can. That’s the funny thing.”

  She looks doubtful at me with such pity, it makes my blood boil. “Kate, yesterday I had carpaccio and fennel for dinner, and I spent the evening singing along to practically all the words of Pavarotti’s Ultimate Collection.”

  “I still don’t understand how you think that it’s this Justin Hitchcock who’s responsible for all that. Remember that film Phenomenon? John Travolta just suddenly became a genius overnight.”

  “He had a brain tumor that somehow increased his ability to learn,” I snap.

  The Mercedes pulls up by the gates of the gallery. The driver gets out of the car to open the door for Justin and he emerges, briefcase in hand, beaming from ear to ear, and I’m happy to see that next month’s mortgage payment has gone to good use. I shall worry about that, and everything else in my life, when the time comes.

  He still has the aura I felt from the day I first laid eyes on him in the hair salon—a presence that makes my stomach walk a few flights of stairs and then climb the final ladder to the ten-meter diving platform at the Olympics final. He looks up at the gallery and around at the park, and with that strong jawline he smiles, a smile that causes my stomach to do one, two, three bounces, before attempting the toughest dive of all, a reverse one-point-five somersault and three and a half twists before entering the water with a belly flop.

  The leaves around me rustle as another soft breeze blows, and I imagine that it carries to me the smell of his aftershave, the scent I remember from the salon. I have a brief flash of him picking up a parcel wrapped in emerald-green paper, which sparkles under Christmas-tree lights and surrounding candles. It’s tied with a large red bow, and my hands are momentarily his as he unties it slowly, carefully peeling back the tape from the paper, taking care not to rip it. I am struck by his tenderness for the package, which has been lovingly wrapped, and I am in on his plans to pocket the paper and use it for the unwrapped presents he has sitting out in the car. Inside is a bottle of aftershave and a shaving set. A Christmas gift from Bea.

  “He’s handsome,” Kate whispers. “I support your stalking campaign one hundred percent, Joyce.”

  “I’m not stalking,” I hiss, “and I’d have done this even if he was ugly.”

  “Can I go in and listen to his talk?” Kate asks.

  “No!”

  “Why not? He’s never seen me; he won’t recognize me. Please, Joyce, my best friend believes she is connected to a complete stranger by blood. At least I can go and listen to him to see what he’s like.”

  “What about Sam?”

  “Do you want to watch him for a little while?”

  I freeze.

  “Oh, forget that,” she says quickly. We still haven’t talked about how I ran from the gymnasium the other day, leaving Frankie to try to stop Sam from crying. “I’ll bring him in with me. I’ll stay down the back and leave if he disturbs anyone.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. I can do it.” I swallow and paste a smile on my face.

  “Are you sure?” She looks unconvinced. “I won’t stay for the entire thing. I just want to see what he’s like.”

  “I’ll be fine. Go.” I push her away gently. “Go in and enjoy yourself. We’ll be fine here, won’t we, Sammy?”

  Sam puts his socked toe in his mouth in response.

  “I promise I won’t be long.” Kate leans in to the stroller, gives her son a kiss, and dashes across the road and into the gallery.

  “So…” I look around nervously. “It’s just you and me, Sean.”

  He looks at me with his big blue eyes, and mine instantly fill.

  I look around to make sure nobody has heard me. I meant to say Sam.

  Justin takes his place at the podium in the lecture hall in the basement of the National Gallery. A packed room of faces stares back at him, and he feels he’s back in his element. A late arrival, a young woman, enters the room and quickly takes a place among the crowd.

&nbs
p; “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you so much for joining me on this rainy morning. I am here to talk about this painting, Woman Writing a Letter, by Gerard Terborch, a Dutch Baroque artist from the seventeenth century who was largely responsible for the popularization of the letter theme. This painting—well, not this painting alone—this genre of letter-writing is a personal favorite of mine, particularly when in this current age it seems a personal letter has almost become extinct.” He stops.

  Almost but not quite, for there’s somebody sending me notes.

  He steps away from the podium and looks at the crowd, suspicion written upon his face. His eyes narrow as he studies his audience. He scans the rows, knowing that somebody here could be the mystery note-writer.

  Somebody coughs, snapping him out of his trance, and he is back with them again. Mildly flustered, he continues where he left off.

  “In an age when a personal letter has almost become extinct, this painting is a reminder of how the great masters of the Golden Age depicted the subtle range of human emotions affected by such a seemingly simple aspect of daily life. Terborch was not the only artist responsible for these images. I cannot go further on this subject without paying lip service to Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu, and Pieter de Hooch, who all produced paintings of people reading, writing, and receiving and dispatching letters, which I have written about in my book The Golden Age of Dutch Painting. Terborch’s paintings use letter-writing as a pivot on which to turn complex psychological dramas, and his are among the first works to link lovers through the theme of a letter.”

  He studies the woman who arrived a little late, wondering if she is reading deeper into his words. He almost laughs aloud at his assumption, first, that the person whose life he saved would be in this room; second, that it would be a young woman; and third, that she’d be attractive. Which makes him ask himself, What exactly are you hoping will come out of this current drama?

  As I push Sam’s stroller into Merrion Square, we’re instantly transported from the Georgian center of the city to another world shaded by mature trees and surrounded by color. The burnt oranges, reds, and yellows of the autumn foliage litter the ground and, with each gentle breeze, hop alongside us like inquisitive little birds. I choose a bench along the quiet walk and turn Sam’s stroller around so that he faces me. I watch him for a while as he strains his neck to see the remaining leaves that refuse to surrender their branches far above him. He points a tiny finger up at the sky and gurgles some sounds.

  “Tree,” I tell him, which makes him smile, and his mother is instantly recognizable in his face.

  The vision has the same effect as a boot hitting my stomach. I take a moment to catch my breath.

  “Sam, while we’re here we should really discuss something,” I say.

  His smile widens.

  “I have to apologize for something.” I clear my throat. “I haven’t been paying much attention to you lately, have I? The thing is…” I wait until a man has passed us before continuing. “The thing is”—I lower my voice—“I couldn’t bear to look at you…” I trail off again as his grin widens.

  “Oh, here.” I lean over, remove his blanket, and press the button to release his safety straps. It opens easily this time. “Come up here to me.” I lift him out of the buggy and sit him on my lap. His body is warm, and I hug him close. I breathe in the top of his head, his wispy hairs silky as velvet, his body so chubby and soft in my arms, I want to squeeze him tighter. “The thing is,” I say quietly to the top of his head, “it broke my heart to look at you, because each time I did, I remembered what I’d lost.” He looks up at me and babbles in response. “Though how could I ever be afraid to look at you?” I kiss his nose. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, but it was so hard.” My eyes fill, and this time I let the tears fall. “I wanted to have a little boy or girl so people would say, ‘Oh, look, you’re the picture of your mummy.’ Or maybe the baby would have my nose or my eyes, because that’s what people say to me, that I look like my mum. And I love hearing that, Sam, I really do, because I miss her and I want to be reminded of her every single day. But looking at you was different. I didn’t want to be reminded that I’d lost my baby.”

  “Ba-ba,” he says.

  I sniffle. “Ba-ba gone, Sam. Sean for a boy, Grace for a girl.” I wipe my nose.

  Sam, uninterested in my tears, looks away and studies a bird. He points a chubby finger again.

  “Bird,” I say.

  “Ba-ba,” he responds.

  “But there’s no Sean or Grace now.” I hug him tighter and continue to let my tears fall, knowing that Sam won’t be able to report my weeping to anybody.

  The bird hops a few inches and then takes off, disappearing into the sky.

  “Ba-ba gone,” Sam says, holding his hands out, palms up.

  I watch it fly into the distance, still visible like a speck of dust against the pale blue sky. My tears stop. “Ba-ba gone,” I repeat.

  “So what do we see in this painting?” Justin asks.

  Silence as everyone views the projected image.

  “Well, let us state the obvious first. A young woman sits at a table in a quiet interior. She is writing a letter. We see a quill moving across a sheet of paper. We do not know what she is writing, but her soft smile suggests she is writing to a loved one or perhaps a lover. Her head tilts forward, exposing the elegant curve of her neck…”

  While Sam is back in his buggy, drawing circles on paper with his blue crayon, or more accurately, banging out dots on the paper, sending wax shrapnel all over his buggy, I produce my own pen and paper from my bag. I imagine I’m hearing Justin’s words from across the road. I don’t need to see the work of Woman Writing a Letter on canvas, for it has been painted in my mind after Justin’s years of intensive study during college and again during research for his book. I begin to write.

  As part of a mother/daughter bonding activity when I was seventeen years old, during my goth phase, when I had dyed black hair, a white face, and red lips that were victim to piercing, Mum enrolled us both in a calligraphy class at the local primary school. Every Wednesday at seven p.m.

  Mum read in a rather New Age book that Dad didn’t agree with that if you partook in activities with your children, they would more easily, and of their own accord, open up and share things about their lives, rather than being forced into a face-to-face interrogative-style sit-down, which Dad was more accustomed to.

  The classes worked, and although I moaned and groaned when I first heard we’d be doing this, I eventually opened up and told her all. Well, almost all. The rest she had the intuition to guess. I came away with a deeper love, respect, and understanding of my mother as a person, a woman, and not just as a mum. I also came away with a skill in calligraphy.

  I find that when I put pen to paper and get into the rhythm of quick upward flicks, just as we were taught, it takes me back to those classrooms where I sat with my mother. It was a perfect activity for her to choose for me at seventeen, better than she ever knew. Calligraphy had rhythm, with roots in Gothic style; it was written in the vigor of the moment and had attitude. A uniform style of writing, but one that was unique. A lesson to teach me that conformity may not quite mean what I once thought that it had meant, for there are many ways to express oneself in a world with boundaries, without overstepping them.

  Suddenly I look up from my page. “Trompe l’oeil,” I say aloud with a smile.

  Sam looks up from his crayon banging and regards me with interest.

  “What does that mean?” Kate raises her hand and asks.

  “Trompe l’oeil is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist, instead of being two-dimensional painting. It’s derived from French, trompe meaning ‘trick’ and l’oeil meaning ‘the eye,’” Justin tells the room. “Trick the eye,” he repeats, looking around at all the faces in the crowd.

  Where are you?

  Chapter 34<
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  SO HOW DID IT GO?” Thomas the driver asks as Justin gets back into the car after his talk.

  “I saw you standing at the back of the room. You tell me.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about art, but you certainly knew how to talk about one girl writing a letter.”

  Justin smiles and reaches for another free bottle of water. He’s not thirsty but it’s there, and it’s free.

  “Were you looking for somebody?” Thomas asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “In the crowd. I noticed you looking around pretty intently a few times. A woman, is it?” He grins.

  Justin shakes his head. “I have no idea. You’d think I was crazy if I told you.”

  “So, what do you think?” I ask Kate as we walk around Merrion Square and she fills me in on Justin’s lecture.

  “What do I think?” she repeats, strolling slowly behind Sam’s buggy. “I think that it doesn’t matter if he ate carpaccio and fennel yesterday, because he seems like a lovely man. I think that no matter what your reasons are for feeling connected or even attracted to him, they’re not important. You should stop all this running around and just introduce yourself.”