Rules of the Road

by Ciara Geraghty

  Jennifer folds her arms and examines my face. ‘Why would you take them?’ she asks.

  ‘Eh … I … because they’re lovely?’

  ‘No they’re not.’

  ‘Then why did you give them to me to try on?’

  ‘It was a test.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Which you failed.’

  Jennifer smiles, and I notice a speck of bright-red lipstick on one of her front teeth which makes me feel a tiny bit better.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, unfolding her arms and rubbing her hands together. ‘We are going to practise, okay?’

  I nod. I’ve no idea what she means.

  I suddenly wonder if this is one of those television programmes where they make fools of people like me. But she’s looking right at me so I can’t scan the shop for hidden cameras.

  ‘I’m going to show you an outfit, and you’re going to tell me exactly what you think of it. And I’ll know if you’re lying.’ She glares at me like I’ve already told a lie, so I say, ‘Okay,’ and she smiles then and there’s the speck of lipstick again, and so we begin.

  If it were a quiz, it would be the quick-fire round.

  She holds up outfit after outfit. She’s calling them ensembles. They’re not just tops and skirts or tops and trousers. She adds jewellery. Belts. Hats. Shoes. Jackets. Arranges me so that I’m facing the full-length mirror and holds the first ensemble against me.

  ‘Well, it’s … it’s really lovely but—’

  ‘I just need one word,’ explains Jennifer, with end-of-tether patience. ‘An adjective preferably. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. But … before you begin, could I just quickly ask … do you have anything navy?’

  ‘Navy?’ she says. ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, because, you know, I like navy, and—’

  ‘Nobody likes navy,’ she says. She holds the ensemble – none of which is navy – up again.

  ‘Garish,’ I manage.

  ‘Oh. Right. Well done. This one?’

  ‘Tacky.’

  ‘Is that not the same as garish?’

  ‘No. Tacky refers mainly to poor taste and quality whereas garish could be good quality but lurid.’

  ‘Impressive. This one?’

  ‘Itchy.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Skimpy.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Fussy.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Scanty.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Dressy.’

  Jennifer runs out of clothes before I run out of adjectives. She lets her now-empty arms hang by her sides, appraises me anew. I can tell she is surprised, and I feel ridiculously pleased about this. Emboldened, I point at a summer dress that I will never wear because it is a linen dress. A linen dress, the colour of early morning mist, that will both crease and stain easily. A linen halter-neck dress that will stop just short of my bony knees, and then there’s the rest of my legs, south of my bony knees, which I’d have to shave, and …

  ‘Good choice,’ says Jennifer, nodding with naked approval. ‘What else?’

  In the end, Jennifer manages to persuade me to buy three carrier bags full, containing:

  bright-pink bomber jacket (silk – will have to be hand-washed in cold water);

  puffball red skirt (cotton – machine washable);

  green leopard-print A-line skirt (acrylic – the washing instructions tag is no longer attached, but I imagine it should be washed inside out, at a safe thirty degrees);

  brown (dark-chocolate brown, say 70% cacao) kitten heels, which I will never wear because I never wear heels (suede);

  silver-grey ‘boyfriend’ cardigan with long fitted sleeves (80% acrylic, 20% wool, will hand-wash for safety);

  a bright-pink tulle high-waisted midi-skirt (as yet unidentified synthetic mix);

  a lime-green T-shirt with bright-pink limes all over it (the softest cotton!);

  a pale peach cropped jumper with three-quarter-length sleeves (mohair!);

  brown ‘gladiator’ summer sandals (leather);

  two spaghetti-string tops (1. Scarlet! 2. Orange!!);

  one pair of white ‘skinny’ jeans (denim) with – subtle-ish – diamanté detail on back pockets (short, cold-water cycle, add a thimble of vinegar);

  a silk shirt-dress, much too short and impractical given the delicacy of the fabric and its shade of palest blue, which Jennifer says is the exact shade of my eyes (strictly dry-clean only);

  a black one-shoulder, one-sleeve top, which seems sort of lacking to me, but which Jennifer assures me is made for me, citing my jutty-outy collar bones and my freakishly-long arms. (I forgot to examine the washing instructions before purchase …);

  two bras (one a black, lacy affair, and the other so soft and white, it’s impossible to believe it’s ever been through even a delicate cycle);

  a straw hat with a pink gingham ribbon that Jennifer, with no trace of irony, says will make me stand out from the crowd.

  Oh, and the linen summer dress, at the bottom of the bag, already creased.

  Jennifer shakes her head.

  ‘I didn’t think you had it in you, Terry,’ she says because we’re on a first-name basis now.

  ‘Neither did I.’ Just because I now own the clothes doesn’t mean I have to wear them. There could be a Marks & Spencer in Dover, couldn’t there?

  ‘And you have to wear them. I’ll know if you don’t.’ Again that feeling that she can see right inside me. That she knows everything.

  I try hard not to tell her anything. I tell her about the girls, obviously.

  Brendan says I could go on Mastermind and have the girls as my specialist subject and I’d come away with the chair, quicker than you could say, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

  I say I am on a driving holiday with my father and Iris. She doesn’t comment on the fact that I am on holiday without a change of clothes. Instead, she wants to know if Iris is my best friend.

  I say, ‘Yes,’ even though the very fact of our friendship continues to remain a surprise to me. We’re like chocolate and chilli, me and Iris.

  I do not say that Iris is my only friend. People tend to feel awkward around those who admit to such limitations. I have lots of acquaintances of course. But Iris … well, I don’t think Iris knows how to be an acquaintance.

  *

  Iris – quite literally – barged through the front door of my quiet, orderly life. Of course, I was aware of her before she did that, since she was the person who was in charge of the Alzheimer’s Society; the chairperson or the managing director or the CEO; I’m not entirely certain of her title, Iris is not one for such things. She joined as a volunteer after her father passed away. The Society had done a lot for Mr Armstrong – who was riddled with dementia, as Iris put it – and Iris said it was her turn to do something for them. So she joined, and within a short period of time, she had given up her job as Sister-in-charge at the Coombe Hospital, and was running the place.

  The first time I spoke to her, she asked for my help.

  No. That’s not true. She didn’t ask. She just happened to be in the kitchenette at the back of the hall where the Alzheimer’s coffee morning takes place twice a week, struggling with the lid of the coffee jar. She bore down on the jar as if the weight of her body might convince the lid to turn, but even though the weight of her body is significant – there isn’t an ounce of fat on her, mind; she just happens to be a strong woman – and even though her hands are enormous – she’d tell you that herself, hands like shovels, she’d say – she couldn’t get her hands to come to grips with the lid of the coffee jar that morning. Of course I didn’t let on that I’d noticed. I busied myself looking for jam. Dad had developed an insistent taste for blackberry jam smeared between two digestive biscuits. And still she struggled, so I reached out my hand and curled my fingers around the jar. I looked straight ahead, at the blackened grout ridging the tiles around the sink. I somehow already knew that Iris was averse to accepting help.
I sensed her long fingers slipping away, so I slid the jar down to my end of the counter, and, with my two good hands, I turned the lid and passed it back to her, all the while concentrating on the grout. Perhaps I thought about vinegar and bread soda. How a combination of both might shift the grease. She might have mumbled a brief thanks, which I perhaps acknowledged with a nod. Then I located the jam, checked the best before date, and left the kitchen to the sound of the whistle of the kettle, high-pitched and insistent.

  It was a few weeks later that I met Iris properly. I was at home. It was dinner time. We were eating mushroom risotto, so it must have been a Monday or a Wednesday, which were the days I cooked Kate’s favourite dinner. Anna’s days were Tuesdays and Thursdays. We got a takeaway every Friday, and I grilled tuna steaks on Saturday nights because Brendan loves them. Sunday was not set in stone, although I usually did a curry, which – luckily – pleased everybody.

  It’s harder than you might think, pleasing everybody.

  The doorbell rang and I answered it, and there was Iris Armstrong.

  I was so surprised to see her, I didn’t even say hello. It was Iris who spoke first. ‘There she is. The hero of the hour.’

  I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Are you going to ask me in?’ she said, and it was only then I noticed the rain. Drizzle really, but unpleasant nonetheless when you’re standing at somebody’s door getting soaked by it.

  ‘Oh gosh, sorry, I … of course, come in.’

  Iris walked around the kitchen table, shaking everybody’s hand. She never mentioned the fact that we were in the middle of dinner.

  ‘You’re a lucky man,’ she said to Brendan, clapping his shoulder. ‘Having a woman like Terry in your life.’ She smiled at him, and Brendan did the only thing anyone can do when Iris Armstrong smiles at them. He smiled back. I can see Brendan’s face even now, bright, as if it were lit by the power of Iris’s smile.

  I stood at the kitchen door, at a loss as to what to do or say. I think I was worrying about feeding her. Was there enough food left over to warrant an invitation to eat with us? And whether Iris liked mushrooms. Lots of people don’t.

  ‘You must be so proud of her,’ said Iris, looking at the girls and Brendan in turn. When nobody responded immediately, she turned to me, then back to the table, put her free hand on her hip. ‘You didn’t tell them,’ she said. Her tone registered little surprise. Even back then, before we were friends, Iris seemed to know exactly who I was.

  ‘Tell us what?’ Brendan glanced from me to Iris and back to me, and his look was sort of fearful. Maybe fearful is too strong. But this wasn’t what usually happened in our house at dinnertime. A stranger in our kitchen. Making declarations. Not that Iris was a stranger exactly. I just … well, I hardly knew her.

  ‘Your mother saved Ted Gorman’s life today,’ Iris said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say I—’

  ‘Ted is one of the Society’s biggest donors,’ Iris went on, wrestling herself out of her coat and draping it on the back of a chair before sitting down. ‘And today, when he was having a tour of one of our day-care facilities, he collapsed, and Terry here performed CPR on him and saved his life.’ She picked up a slice of garlic bread and took an enormous bite so that, for a moment, the only sound in the room was Iris’s molars grinding the crust. ‘I’ve just come from the hospital, and his doctor told me that if it hadn’t been for Terry’s swift action, Ted would be on a slab this evening.’

  There was a stunned silence. The girls looked at me. Brendan looked at me. Iris looked at me. I felt the familiar heat of my blood rushing up the length of my neck and into my face.

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.’ There was an edge of accusation in Brendan’s voice.

  ‘I was going to,’ I said. ‘After dinner, when we were relaxing.’ I’m not sure if that was true. I slipped away when the ambulance arrived, got on with the rest of my day. I picked up Brendan’s suit from the dry-cleaners, collected the text book I had ordered for Anna in Eason’s, brought Dad home from day-care, helped my mother wash her windows, did the grocery shopping on my way home, ran a Hoover over the hall, stairs and landing, then cooked dinner. Truth be told, I had mostly forgotten about Mr Gorman after all that.

  ‘This garlic bread is delicious,’ declared Iris, picking up Brendan’s napkin and wiping her mouth with it.

  ‘Please. Join us for dinner,’ I said, clenched with worry that there might not be enough.

  ‘I’d love to, I’m starving,’ said Iris, tucking Brendan’s napkin into the collar of her top. ‘I forgot to have lunch with all the excitement.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you could do CPR,’ said Brendan, as I managed to scrape a decent enough portion of risotto out of the pot.

  ‘I did that first-aid course, remember?’ I said. ‘When the girls were little. Just … you know … so I’d know what to do if they … burned themselves or something.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Brendan.

  ‘I nearly forgot,’ shouted Iris, pulling a bottle of champagne – I mean, proper champagne, not fizzy wine – out of her handbag. ‘We have to toast you, Terry. You’re a handy woman to have around in a crisis, big or small.’ Iris winked at me, and I thought she might have been referring to the coffee-jar incident. Not that it was a crisis, but … I was still pretty sure that’s what she meant all the same.

  *

  ‘So,’ says Jennifer, when all my purchases have been bagged. ‘That’ll be seventy-four pounds and twenty pence, when you’re ready.’ I hand over two crisp fifty-pound notes, still warm from the ATM machine. I smile at her. ‘Goodbye Jennifer. Thanks for your help. And I hope everything works out. I’m sure your girlfriend will forgive you once you explain.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I do. Bonsai trees are notoriously difficult to maintain. Everyone knows that. And it’s obvious she’s crazy about you.’

  ‘Thanks T,’ she says. T! ‘Have a great trip. Where are you heading for next?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure.’

  ‘Wow. I thought you’d be like my mum, with a laminated itinerary.’

  ‘I am, usually,’ I say. ‘My girls often give out about my lack of spontaneity.’

  ‘I always give out about my mum,’ Jennifer says, ‘but I’d be lost without her.’

  Jennifer hugs me before I leave. Although perhaps she is overly-familiar with all her customers.

  The door tinkles when I open it, and I step outside into the main street.

  The High Street. That’s what you call it in England.

  Either way, it’s still a street. An unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar place with no laminated itinerary in my handbag that I can touch with my hand from time to time, just to feel it there.

  I think it’s then – that moment – that I come up with The Plan.

  I’ll ring Iris’s mother.

  Vera.

  Called for Vera Lynn.

  It’s like Jennifer says. We’d be lost without our mothers. Even mothers like Vera, who, on the face of things, is perhaps not going to be a poster-girl for motherhood anytime soon. But who is still, essentially, a mother. Perhaps she is who Iris needs right now.

  In the absence of any other plan of action, this seems like a viable option.

  I’ll be breezy. Let her know we’re in town. We’re passing through. Suggest that she might like to meet up. I could dress it up as a surprise for Iris.

  Iris hates surprises.

  But Vera is not to know that.

  I’m pretty sure the last time Iris saw Vera was at her father’s funeral. Iris said Vera only showed up on the off chance there might be something in the will for her.

  That can’t be true. Not entirely, at least.

  Vera is Iris’s mother, after all. That will always be true no matter what has happened.

  They haven’t spoken since then. But it’s never too late for a second chance. Did someone famous say that? Or did I just see it on a
T-shirt once?

  It doesn’t matter. The idea has taken hold, grown roots. I become convinced that a mother’s love is what is needed here. A mother’s love will be like a bridge over the hurt and neglect and, well … abandonment, yes, there’s no getting around that. It might prove a difficult one to bridge.

  But not impossible.

  9

  EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED.

  I don’t have my mobile with me. It’s charging back in the apartment. But then, on the corner, I see a bright-red London telephone box.

  Which could be a Sign.

  I step inside the box. The phone is stained with rust and the smell of urine makes my eyes water, but there is a dial tone when I pick up the receiver with my sleeve-covered hand, and there is a number for directory enquiries, which I am going to have to call despite the astronomical cost of the service according to the instructions above the phone. I push many pound coins into the grimy slot before an operator says yes, she has a number for a Vera Armstrong on Archway Road – I remember the address from the envelope on Iris’s laptop – and would I like to be put through and I say yes I would and the operator says, One moment please, and now there is a ringing sound on the line, which means that somewhere in London, along Archway Road, a phone is ringing. I imagine an old-fashioned telephone – a black Bakelite perhaps – on a polished hall table with curved feet and a little drawer where she keeps, I don’t know, coupons maybe. Or knitting patterns.

  ‘Yeah?’ A hoarse, cracked voice. A suspicious tone. A thick Cockney accent.

  ‘Oh. Hello. Is that … Vera Armstrong?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry, this is Terry Shepherd.’

  ‘Never heard of you.’

  ‘No. No, of course not, sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘I’m a friend of Iris’s.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Iris. Your daughter.’

  ‘I know who Iris is, thanks very much.’

  ‘Of course, I just … I was trying to explain …’