Rules of the Road

by Ciara Geraghty

  ‘Terry, this is nonsensical.’

  ‘I have to go.’ I hang up.

  I’ve never hung up on Brendan. Ever. It’s true that we rarely communicate by telephone, but still, I’ve always held a civil tongue in my head and allowed him to finish his sentences and said my goodbyes before disconnecting the call.

  Outside the terminal building, people stand and smoke or punch buttons on their phones or search for something in their handbags or stare into the middle distance.

  There is no sign of Iris. The boat is leaving in – I check my watch – seventy minutes. And you have to check in thirty minutes before departure. Giving me forty minutes to come up with something.

  THINK.

  Everything Brendan said is true. Apart from Iris having notions. Iris has plans, not notions.

  ‘Do you think your mother will be back soon?’ I look at Dad. Without his dentures, his cheeks are hollow. He looks old. And cold. And so thin. When did he get so thin?

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I wish it were true. Mam would know what to do. She would have advice although she offered it only when it was sought. Even then, she maintained that people never really wanted advice, just someone to listen to them.

  I think about Iris, sitting on the boat, her long fingers drumming the armrest of her chair, anxious to be off, regretful that things did not go according to plan. If they had, I would not have read her letter until next week, and by then, it would have been too late.

  But it’s not too late.

  Not yet.

  THINK.

  I ring Celia Murphy, my next-door neighbour, who has a key for our house. She gave me her front-door key, so I felt I had to reciprocate. I mind her cats when she goes to those juicing seminars in Scotland, and she gives us pears from her tree in the autumn, although none of us like pears. I stew them with ginger and brown sugar and put them in Tupperware containers in the freezer. The freezer is full of Tupperware containers of stewed pear. I don’t know why. My mother hated waste. Perhaps that’s it.

  ‘Celia? It’s Terry, I … No, nothing’s wrong, not a thing, sorry to disturb but, I … well, I need a favour and …’

  Celia launches into a monologue about her cats, Fluffy and Flopsy. One of them is sick. I can’t make out which one. When she pauses for breath, I attempt to divert her.

  ‘Oh no Celia, I am sorry to hear that, hopefully the vet will …’

  She’s off again. I grip the phone harder, dig it into my ear. ‘Listen Celia, sorry to interrupt, but I need your help. It’s urgent.’ I’m not quite shouting, but the silence that follows has a sort of stunned quality. I rush into it.

  ‘It’s just … well, I’m filling out paperwork for Dad and I need his passport. And eh, mine too. No, no, nothing serious, it’s just … just some paperwork, they’re always looking for something or other, these nursing homes. You’ll find them in the middle drawer of the sideboard in the dining room. Could you … Oh that’s great. Thank you. No no, there’s no need for you to bring them to the nursing home. But you’re so kind to … I’ll … I’ve ordered a taxi to collect the passports. Yes. Yes, that’s what I’ve done, I’ll … Sorry Celia the line is bad, I’d better go, yes, bye, bye, bye, thanks, bye, bye, thanks, bye.’

  I hang up. If I stop and think about what I’m doing, I won’t do it, so I don’t stop. I don’t think. I ring a taxi company in Sutton, tell the man who answers what I need. This is not the type of service they usually provide, the man tells me. I say I wouldn’t normally ask, but this is urgent. I assure him of my ability to pay. I do my best to seem like a person who doesn’t take no for an answer. I bombard him with details. Celia’s address, my mobile number, my bank card details. ‘How soon can one of your drivers be here?’

  4

  BUMPS ON THE ROAD.

  There are speed bumps up the ramp to the ferry.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Dad says, when I drive over one. He is a bag of bones, rattling with each jolt.

  ‘Sorry Dad, it’s the speed ramps,’ I say.

  ‘Where there are speed ramps, road users should take extra care and expect the unexpected,’ says Dad. I put my hand on his shoulder and he smiles. I need to find his dentures when I park. I need to find Iris. My stomach muscles clench. My stomach is always the first thing to let me down. The doctor says this is where my stress lives. In my stomach.

  ‘Will you sing me a song, Dad?’

  ‘I used to squawk out a few numbers all right. Back in Harold’s Cross, remember?’

  Harold’s Cross is where my father grew up. He lived in Baldoyle with my mother for nearly forty years and he never mentions it. But he can tell you the names of the flowers his mother grew in the long, narrow garden at the back of the house in Harold’s Cross.

  ‘Sing “Summer Wind”. I love that one.’ I love them all really. Dad starts to sing.

  ‘The summer wind, came blowin’ in from across the sea

  It lingered there to touch your hair and walk with me …’

  He remembers all the words, and even though his voice no longer has the power and flourish of before, if I close my eyes and forget everything I know and just listen, I can hear him. The ‘before’ version of him.

  I don’t close my eyes of course. I am driving. In unfamiliar environs.

  An Irish Ferries employee gestures me into a space. It’s a tight one. The car starts beeping, indicating that I am approaching some impediment; the side of the boat on one side and a Jeep on the other. Dad twists in his seat, anxious as a fledging perched on the edge of the nest. ‘Careful there,’ he says. ‘Careful.’ His face is pinched with fear and he puts both hands on the dashboard, bracing himself for an impact.

  It’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of him.

  I shiver. ‘Are you cold, love?’ my father asks. He puts his hand on my arm, rubs it, as if to warm me. It does. It warms me.

  I smile at him. ‘Thanks Dad.’

  I find his teeth buried in the pages of the Ireland roadmap I keep in the pocket of the passenger door. Brendan and I used to talk about going away for weekends when the girls were old enough to look after themselves. Just getting in the car on a Friday evening and driving away, wherever the road took us type of thing.

  I don’t know why we never got around to it.

  The wind is brisk when we get out of the car. Everything Dad needs is in the suitcase. Enough for a week, the manager said. But I have nothing other than the clothes I’m standing up in. The shoes – navy Rieker slip-ons – are comfortable and warm. And the navy trousers from Marks & Spencer are good travelling trousers. Hard-wearing and slow to crease. My navy and cream long-sleeved, round-necked top is a thin cotton material that does little to cut the draught. At least my cardigan is warm. I pull it across my chest, fold my arms to keep it there. My ponytail – too girlish for my age, my daughters tell me – whips around my head and I catch it in my hand, hold it down.

  My other hand keeps a tight grip on the clasp of my handbag into which I have stuffed banknotes. The man at the ticket booth eyed me suspiciously when I pushed the bundle of cash through the gap at the bottom of the glass partition. I don’t carry money about my person as a rule. But I extracted the money from an account I’ve never used before. My mother opened it for me a long time ago but I only discovered it after she died, three years ago. I found the bank card in the blue woolly hat in the top drawer of her dressing table. I found all sorts in that hat. Her children’s allowance book. The prize bonds she got from her mother for her twenty-first birthday. My first tooth. A lock of Hugh’s white-blond baby hair. Her marriage certificate.

  Stuck to the bank card on a scrap of paper was the PIN number – my birthday – and a note.

  A running-away-from-home account, she had written. Just in case you ever need to.

  I was shocked. At my mother, who, I was certain, did not approve of running away. Bearing up was her philosophy. Making the most of things.

  I didn’t tell Brendan. He might have taken it the wrong way.

  Iris do
esn’t know we’re on the boat.

  I haven’t worked out what I’m going to say yet. I don’t know what Iris will say either. There will be expletives. I know that much.

  ‘Where was I?’ says Dad, as if we are in the middle of a conversation from which he has become temporarily distracted.

  ‘We’re going to find Iris,’ I tell him, linking his arm. I sound definite, like someone who knows what they’re doing. I lead him towards the door. He shuffles now, rather than walks, as if he is wearing slippers that are too big for him. Progress is slow. Inside, there are flights of stairs, and progress becomes slower.

  ‘Hold onto the bannisters, Dad.’

  ‘Yes, but … where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going on an adventure,’ I tell him. ‘Remember when you used to bring me and Hugh on adventures? To Saint Anne’s Park? We’d be Tarzan and Jane, and you’d be the baddie, chasing us up the hills. Remember that?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says, and he does the laugh he does when he can’t remember but pretends he can.

  Although maybe Hugh doesn’t remember either. He’s been in Australia nearly ten years now. Mam didn’t cry at the airport. She wouldn’t have wanted to upset him. He invited her to visit lots of times, but she said it wouldn’t have been practical, with Dad the way he was.

  She should have gone.

  I should have persuaded her to go.

  Dad and I reach the bottom of the stairs. Set in the door at the bottom is a circular window, and through the glass I see a seating area with a hatch where you can get tea.

  And I see Iris. Reading. I can’t make out the title of the book, but it doesn’t matter because I know what book it is. The Secret Garden. Iris’s version of a comfort blanket.

  Her father bought it for her when she was a child. After her mother left. Iris remembers him reading it to her at bedtime. He’d never read to her before. That’s how she worked out her mother wasn’t coming back.

  I open the door and a wave of heat and babble hits me and I feel my father flinch.

  ‘I don’t …’ he begins.

  ‘I’ll get you some tea,’ I tell him. He has forgotten that his favourite drink is a pint of Guinness with a measure of Bushmills on the side.

  ‘And a bun,’ I say. He nods and I persuade him through the door.

  Iris has a window seat. One hand holds the book while the other is wrapped around a Styrofoam cup of tea. Her head leans against the window. Through it, grey waves rise and fall, dragging their white manes behind them. And the land, falling away with the distance we have already come.

  I usher Dad towards her table. He clutches my arm as a small boy barrels towards us and I steer him out of harm’s way as the child, and – in hot pursuit – his mother, rush past us. The boy makes a loud and accurate siren wail and the noise alerts Iris’s attention. She looks over the top of the book and sees us. Surprise freezes her face. Her eyes are wide with it; her mouth open in a perfect circle. She looks unlike herself.

  I have finally managed to surprise Iris Armstrong.

  The seat beside her is empty. I coax Dad out of his coat, steer him into the chair.

  ‘Hello,’ he says to Iris. ‘I’m Eugene Keogh. I’m a taxi driver. From Harold’s Cross.’ He offers his hand, and Iris puts her book down and obliges, as she always does, with hers. Instead of shaking her hand, Dad holds it between both of his as though he is warming it.

  The woman in the seat opposite Iris looks at me. ‘Do you want to sit here?’ she says. ‘So you can talk to your friend.’ Her smile is wide.

  ‘Oh … thank you but, I don’t want to distur—’ I begin.

  The woman stands up, hitches the strap of her handbag on her shoulder. ‘It’s no problem,’ she says, smiling. ‘There’re lots of seats.’

  When she leaves, Iris and I look at each other. I don’t know what to say, so I wait to see if Iris knows.

  ‘I can’t believe you got on the boat,’ Iris says.

  ‘You didn’t leave me with any choice.’ I can’t believe how calm my voice is. Iris stares at me as if she knows me from somewhere. Then, she shakes her head and points to the recently vacated seat opposite her. ‘You may as well sit down,’ she says.

  Silence circles the space between us, predatory as a lion. Dad is the one to break it. ‘Where are we going?’

  Iris glares at me, raises her eyebrows in a question, waits for me to answer it.

  ‘We’re going wherever Iris is going,’ I say.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she stage-whispers at me, stretching across the table so I can see the golden-brown specks that circle the green of her irises.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ I say, injecting as much authority as I can muster into the words.

  ‘You can’t,’ Iris says.

  ‘I can,’ I tell her.

  This could have gone on and on – Iris has alarming stamina – but then Dad interrupts. ‘Where is Iris going?’ he says.

  The question produces a silence that’s as potent as the loudest sound. We stare at each other. If I manage not to blink first, I will be able to persuade Iris home. That’s what I find myself thinking. My eyes water. Iris blinks and turns to Dad. She puts her hand on his. ‘I’m going … away,’ she says.

  ‘Away,’ Dad says, nodding, as if it’s a location he’s familiar with and approves of.

  Iris looks at me. She seems like a different person when her face is shadowed with worry. ‘I’m sorry, Terry, I never wanted you to find out like this.’

  ‘You thought it would be better if I found out afterwards? In a letter?’ Anger is not an emotion I’m familiar with. It burns.

  ‘I know this is hard to understand,’ she says.

  ‘Yes it is.’ I’m not going to make this easy for her.

  ‘Am I going away too?’ Dad says.

  ‘No,’ says Iris at the same time as I say, ‘Yes.’ Iris hands him the sports section of her paper. He runs his finger along a headline, mouthing the words, like the girls used to do when they were learning to read. She looks at me again. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ I tell her. ‘Just come home with me.’

  Iris sighs. ‘This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly, Terry. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. I’ve done a huge amount of research, waded through so much red tape you wouldn’t believe it.’

  I’m about to say that I would have helped her with the red tape. I’m good at red tape. The tedious part of plans, no matter how exciting the plans themselves are. Iris doesn’t have the patience for red tape.

  But of course, I wouldn’t have helped her with the red tape for this plan.

  The questions jostle for position in my brain. The first one out of the traps is Why. It comes out louder than I intended, almost a shout. ‘Why?’

  Iris leans forward. ‘You know why.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Jesus Terry, do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Iris looks surprised. In fairness, I am not usually so belligerent. ‘Two letters,’ she says, holding up two fingers. ‘M. S.’

  I try to assume a reasonable tone. ‘Okay, so you have MS, which is not great, but it’s manageable. Isn’t it? You’ve always managed so well. And it’s not bad enough to …’

  ‘Which is why I’m doing it now,’ Iris says. ‘While I’m still in control.’ She makes everything sound so logical. So reasonable.

  ‘You hugged me when we had dinner last week,’ I say, remembering. Me, rummaging in my bag for keys as I walked to my car, and Iris coming after me and hugging me even though we’d already said goodbye at her door.

  Iris shrugs. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘You don’t usually.’

  ‘Well, I should.’ Iris leans back in her seat, looks out of the window. ‘You’re my closest friend,’ she says, her voice quieter now.

  ‘Which is exactly why I’m not going to let you do this,’ I tell her briskly, as if
she hadn’t said something so … well, if she were her normal self, Iris would call that sappy.

  ‘Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you,’ Iris says. A surly-faced gentleman in an ill-fitting suit glances at us over the top of his Tom Clancy paperback. I send what I hope is a reassuring smile in his direction, which sends him scurrying back behind his book.

  I take a breath.

  In one of the many parenting books I have read, readers are advised to approach a discussion from a different angle, if the discussion is tying itself up in knots or backing itself into a corner.

  I train a reassuring smile on Iris. ‘May I ask a logistical question?’ I say.

  Iris rolls her eyes. ‘It was only a matter of time,’ she says.

  ‘Why are you going to Holyhead? What I mean is … you could have gone directly to Calais from Rosslare.’ This is the part of me that I can’t help. The part that drives the girls mad. And Brendan probably. Although I don’t organise him as much any more. He tends to do his own thing these days.

  Iris shrugs. ‘I have things to do in London,’ she says.

  I think about the other letter. Still sitting on the keyboard of Iris’s laptop. ‘Are you going to see your mother?’

  Iris snorts. ‘Christ no.’

  ‘It’s just … the letter?’

  ‘It’s not a letter. It’s a copy of my will. So she knows she gets nothing.’ The bitterness in her tone is shocking. Also the mention of Iris’s will. That seems … definite.

  ‘I know, it’s childish,’ Iris says before I think of an appropriate response.

  ‘It’s not like you,’ I say. Then again, none of this is like Iris. It’s all foreign. Double Dutch, as Dad used to say.

  Break it down into manageable pieces. That’s what I used to tell the girls when they got stressed about something. A school project, for instance.

  I’ll start with London. ‘So,’ I say, ‘what’s taking you to London?’

  Iris shakes her head. ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Terry, I just … okay then. If you must know. I’m going to see Jason Donovan. Happy? He’s playing at the Hippodrome in London tonight and I’m going. To see him. Okay? That’s my plan. That’s what I’m doing.’