Rules of the Road

by Ciara Geraghty

  Even though I don’t specify it, Jacques seems to know our sleeping requirements. He shows Iris into a bedroom, the centre of which is occupied by an enormous four-poster bed, the mahogany posts draped with blood-red velvet. The room beside it is for Dad and me, with two single beds, dressed in goosedown duvets, separated by a heavy, walnut table holding a flower-patterned china jug and bowl and a glass vase of bright-pink carnations. The walls are painted a pale lemon and the floor is covered in wide, knotted wooden boards. Through the window, I see neat rows of vines, all the way to the horizon.

  ‘Let’s see if the beds are comfortable Dad,’ I say.

  ‘Is it bedtime?’ he wants to know as I untie his shoelaces and ease his feet out of his shoes.

  ‘Are you tired?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Then it’s bedtime,’ I tell him, covering him with a throw I remove from the high-backed chair by the window. He closes his eyes when I tell him to, and smiles when I kiss his hollow cheek.

  I am a mother to my father. Mostly I don’t think about it, but, when I do, like now, it feels like the opposite of everything I know.

  I should return Brendan’s call. Make sure everything is all right.

  Instead, I sleep. For over an hour. A deep sleep, unmarred by dreams. When I awake, I feel as refreshed as if I’d slept for eight hours. The water in the jug is scented with lemons and mint and has been warmed by the lowering sun, now pouring golden light through the window. I splash the water onto my face, under my arms. From Dad’s suitcase, I take the impractically white shirt-dress that doesn’t quite cover my knees. Hold it against my body. Oddly, I find myself unconcerned about my knees. I think it might be because of the material. The silk against my skin. It’s like being touched by gentle hands. I wake Dad, put a fresh shirt on him, spray some of his Old Spice onto my hands, then pat his face and neck, then hand him his toothbrush smeared with paste.

  I stand back to admire my handiwork. ‘You look very handsome,’ I tell him.

  ‘So do you,’ he says offering me his elbow. I link my arm through his, and we set off for the dining room at a surprisingly brisk clip. Iris is already there, chatting to Jacques and halfway down a gin and tonic. She looks as though she has also benefitted from a nap and a change of clothes. Her hair is damp from the shower and her skin glistens with the vanilla body butter she favours. I check her forehead; the bump has subsided, and the bruise is fading to shabby yellows and greens.

  ‘We must be the only guests,’ I whisper to Iris as we take our seats at the dinner table.

  ‘Jacques said the hotel doesn’t officially open until June,’ says Iris, tucking her napkin into the collar of her grandfather shirt. ‘He must have liked the cut of our jib. I certainly like the cut of his.’

  I should feel bad. Ordinarily I would. We appear to be taking advantage of Jacques, who perhaps finds it difficult to say no. Especially to such a sorry troupe of travellers as we must surely have appeared when we arrived.

  But I don’t feel bad. I feel cocooned. As if I’m in a bubble, suspended in a place that’s out of time somehow. Apart. Where reality has no weight.

  It’s a peculiar feeling.

  My being a vegetarian does not seem to faze Jacques who, as far as I can make out, both cooks and serves the meal, for I can detect no hint of any other staff in the chateau.

  I eat stuffed red peppers, green salad, artichokes in garlic and butter, potatoes baked in their jackets – all from the vegetable garden and greenhouse, Jacques tells us – slices of homemade sourdough bread smeared with black olive tapenade, chocolate fondant with orange zest and vanilla ice cream, slabs of thick, soft brie, peppermint tea, and heavy, crystal goblets of dense, earthy red wine that Jacques produces from the cellar, the bottle shrouded in layers of dust.

  It is a testament to how good the food is that the three of us barely speak until we have finished every last morsel. I should feel uncomfortably full and jaded, but I do not. Instead, I feel light and full of energy. Not the kind of energy that fuels housework. A different kind. A kind that might lend itself to something frivolous. It might be the dress. The silky caress of it.

  But Dad is tired, his head nodding onto his chest and the lids of his eyes lowering like blinds.

  ‘Will we take the last of the wine out to the garden?’ Iris asks, using the edge of the table to help her stand. ‘It’s a beautiful night.’

  I look through the window. The night is bright from the light of an almost full moon and a vast scattering of stars.

  ‘I should get Dad to bed,’ I say, coaxing him awake with my hand cupped on his bony shoulder. I remember Mam asking him to lift Hugh and me onto his shoulders so that we wouldn’t miss any of the floats at the Saint Patrick’s day parade. I remember that feeling, of being lifted off the ground, my skinny legs dangling down the wide expanse of my father’s chest, and the ground below feeling like a long way down.

  Jacques, clearing the table, says, ‘Iris is right, Terry. You should take the night air. It is better than a digestif, in this part of France.’ He continues clearing the table as he speaks. ‘I have a monitor you can borrow, if you like. So you will hear your father if he wakes.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Iris says, picking up the wine bottle and our two glasses. ‘I’ll bring these outside.’ Somehow, Jacques seems to know not to ask if she needs assistance. Instead he says, ‘There is a bench in the herb garden, on the west side of the castle.’ He also knows not to point in a westerly direction. Iris nods, tucks the bottle under her arm, dangles the glasses by their stems between her fingers, and manages to arrange herself on her sticks. There are steps from the dining room through the French doors into the garden, and I can hardly bear to look at Iris negotiating them, but I do anyway. So does Jacques, albeit without seeming to.

  Upstairs, I help Dad out of his clothes, into his pyjamas. The first time I did this, I wept afterwards. The kind of weeping that leaves you dehydrated and spent. ‘What on earth happened?’ Brendan asked when I eventually came downstairs.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘But …’ he said, lowering his newspaper and peering at me over the top of it, ‘you’ve been crying.’ His face was caked in surprise. It’s true that I don’t cry as a rule. That day was an exception. And I never cried after that, when I helped Dad get dressed or undressed. It was just that day. And the only thing that differentiated it from all the other days was that it was the first day I did it. The first time. Holding out the pyjama bottoms so he could step one spindly leg, then the other into them, his hands gripping my shoulders tight. Feeding his arms into the sleeves. Fastening the buttons. Taking off his socks. His feet were cold to the touch and his toenails were pink and square and so like my own. I hadn’t noticed that before.

  Was that what made me cry?

  Or was it putting him into Kate’s single bed – she had moved to Galway by then – tucking the blanket under his chin the way I used to do with Kate and Anna? Bending to kiss his cheek, slack without the dentures.

  ‘Goodnight Dad,’ I said, turning off the bedroom light.

  ‘Could you leave the light on?’ he asked.

  Was it that? The plaintive tone of the question that first night. His memory of a child’s fear of the dark.

  I left the light on and went into my bedroom, closed the door, lay on the bed, pushed my face into a pillow and wept. It was the kind of weeping that makes you lose track of the time. There was nothing cathartic about it. It does you no good whatever. When you stop, nothing is resolved and everything is the same as it was before except now your face is blotchy and your eyes are swollen into slits and you can’t quite catch your breath and you feel limp with exhaustion.

  I told Brendan that I had PMT that night. He nodded swiftly and did not comment further. He is not comfortable with such talk, which he terms women’s issues.

  Now I help Dad out of his clothes, into his pyjamas, brush his dentures and put them into a glass of water out of his reach, tuck him i
nto bed, kiss him goodnight. None of it bothers me, and when I think of that weeping woman, she seems like a stranger to me.

  I sit on my bed and take the monitor out of the box. There are instructions, but I don’t need to read them. I remember my way around a baby monitor. Even after all these years. I plug it in, put the detachable bit into my handbag, and check Dad before I leave. In sleep, he looks peaceful. As though his brain is not knotted with plaque. He smiles in his sleep, mumbles something, and I wonder if he is dreaming, and if his dreams are eroded by dementia or is there some clarity there? Some respite?

  I have to ask Jacques which way is west. He doesn’t smile indulgently or say something derogatory about women and their orienteering skills or sense of direction. Instead, he walks through the French doors and points to a stone wall running along the edge of the lawn, inset in the middle of which is a small blue door with peeling paint that I imagine Jacques is going to sand and re-paint when he gets the time. ‘Go through the door and turn to your right,’ says Jacques. ‘And don’t worry about your father,’ he adds. ‘I will be in the office so if he comes down the stairs, I will see him.’

  ‘You work long hours,’ I say.

  ‘I am the night manager,’ Jacques says, without a trace of irony.

  I open the little door in the wall and duck my head before I walk through it. And now I’m in a little garden, lit silver by the moon glancing through the branches of the apple trees that line the edges of the garden, like sentries. I take off my sandals and walk on the grass beside the gravel path that wends its way past rows of lavender, thyme, rosemary, wild garlic, honeysuckle, jasmine … I don’t recognise all of them, but their scents drift towards me as if they recognise me. Between my toes, blades of grass poke, soft and lush.

  Iris is lying on one of two sunloungers at the top of the garden. Between them, a wrought-iron table with our wine glasses and the remains of the bottle. I perch on the edge of the other lounger, testing its ability to accommodate me, which it does without complaint.

  ‘These are a treat,’ I say, stretching out. ‘I thought there was only a bench?’

  ‘There is,’ says Iris. ‘Behind me. But then Jacques appeared and hauled these two beauties out of the shed over there.’

  ‘Is there nothing he can’t do?’

  ‘He’s quite the Jacques-of-all-trades all right,’ says Iris, rummaging in her bag. She takes out a hand-made cigarette and a box of matches.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re smoking again.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Terry, this isn’t a cigarette.’ She strikes the match along the side of the box and it catches, lighting her face so I can see the glint in her green eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s cannabis,’ she says, lighting up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cannabis.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I lifted it from Vera’s stash.’

  ‘You stole it. From your own mother?’

  ‘I figured it was the least she could do.’

  ‘You could have been arrested. At the ferry port. For drug smuggling.’

  ‘I know,’ says Iris with a grin. ‘Banged up abroad.’

  ‘Why are you taking it?’ I ask, suddenly worried. ‘Are you in pain?’

  Iris shakes her head. ‘I just fancied getting a little high.’

  ‘Jesus Iris, anything could happen to you. You could, I don’t know, overdose or something. Or it could interfere with your medication, and … we’re miles away from a hospital or even a doctor and …’

  ‘Do you want a drag?’ asks Iris.

  ‘No thank you.’ I try not to make my tone prim, but prim it is all the same.

  Iris shrugs. ‘Suit yourself,’ she says, taking another deep pull. I find myself curious. ‘Are you … high now?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. ‘It takes a while,’ she says.

  ‘What will it feel like?’ I say. ‘When you’re high?’

  ‘Why don’t you have a toke,’ says Iris. ‘Then you’ll know for yourself.’

  ‘What if I become addicted?’ It’s a gateway drug, after all? That’s what the man at the drug-awareness meeting at Kate and Anna’s school called it. Next thing you know, I’ll be snorting cocaine and … and heroin. Although I don’t think you snort heroin, do you? You do something with a spoon. And a hypodermic needle. A sterile one. That’s important. It has to be sterile.

  ‘You won’t be addicted after one pull,’ says Iris. ‘I promise.’

  ‘But what will it do to me?’ It seems vital that I know beforehand.

  ‘It’ll relax you,’ says Iris.

  ‘Really? That’s all it does?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ Iris takes another pull, settles back on her cushions and closes her eyes. She certainly looks relaxed. Even though the burning tip of the joint is perilously close to her – inflammable, I imagine – Arabian tie-dye trousers. I remove it from between her fingers. It is warm to the touch. The smell that curls from it in long smoky tendrils is sweet and heavy. I wonder if you can get high from second-hand smoke?

  Probably.

  Oddly, the thought produces more curiosity than worry. Which means I could be high already. Which means that you can get high from second-hand smoke.

  Imagine if I die now. If I have a heart attack and die and the last thing I ever did was take illegal drugs and Brendan and the girls will know that the last thing I ever did was take illegal drugs in direct contravention of my strict policy on illegal drugs.

  And many legal ones too. For example, I won’t keep Solpadeine in the house on account of the addictive nature of the codeine. I’ll allow paracetamol, but only if really necessary. A hot-water bottle and a good night’s sleep works wonders, I tell my girls, ignoring their sniggering.

  And now, look at me.

  I lift the joint to my mouth, take a tentative pull.

  Nothing happens.

  ‘Iris?’ I whisper, poking her arm with my fingers. ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘No,’ she says, without opening her eyes.

  ‘I smoked it, but nothing happened,’ I tell her.

  ‘You need to inhale,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t you feel bad that you’re introducing me to a gateway drug?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  This time I inhale, but I think the smoke goes down the wrong way. Down my oesophagus instead of my trachea. I cough and splutter, but there’s no water, only wine, so I pick up my glass and take a gulp.

  ‘Atta girl,’ says Iris.

  I take another pull. A toke, apparently. Then another one. The air above my head swirls with thick, pungent smoke. I look at it; at the designs it makes. There is something faintly beautiful about it.

  Which is weird because there is nothing beautiful about smoke. It’s bad. For your lungs, your skin, your teeth. And the environment, of course.

  ‘Let’s not forget about the environment,’ I say, and my voice sounds as thick as the smoke. As if my tongue is swollen. I stick out my tongue.

  ‘What about the environment?’ Iris says. Her voice has a dreamy quality, which seems sort of appropriate in the circumstances.

  ‘Is my tongue swollen?’ I ask. It’s difficult to articulate words with your tongue hanging out of your mouth. And I can’t bring myself to worry as much as I should about the possibility of my tongue being swollen. Even though a swollen tongue could be dangerous. Lethal in fact.

  I’m just curious to know whether or not my tongue is swollen.

  Iris laughs. ‘I think it’s working now,’ she says. She doesn’t open her eyes, so she can’t see my tongue and tell me if it’s swollen or not. I find myself unable to care as much as I probably should. Instead, I poke Iris. ‘Do you know what the weird thing is?’ I ask.

  ‘Good to know there’s only one weird thing,’ says Iris.

  ‘I’m having a lovely time,’ I say. ‘I know I shouldn’t say that.’

  I close my eyes and inhale so deeply, I can feel my ribs pushing up
and out. I’m like a pro. I’m like someone who has been smoking cannabis all her life. I feel ridiculously pleased with myself. When I open my eyes, Iris is smiling at me. ‘I’m having a lovely time too,’ she says.

  Hope is like warmth spreading inside my chest, expanding and filling the hollow. Or maybe it’s just the smoke.

  Iris struggles into a sitting position. She reaches for the joint and I hand it to her. She inhales and the end of the cigarette crackles and withers. She shapes her mouth into a circle and exhales, making the most exquisitely perfect circles of smoke that float away from our shadows with such grace and ceremony, it sort of takes my breath away.

  ‘Terry?’ Now Iris is poking me with her finger and I blink and the world reassembles itself. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  I look at Iris and nod. Did she say something?

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ I ask.

  ‘I just presumed you would say he’s too young for me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The waiter.’

  ‘You mean Jacques?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t just call him a waiter. I mean, he’s also the bartender.’

  ‘And the chef,’ says Iris.

  ‘And the porter,’ I say.

  ‘And the receptionist,’ adds Iris.

  ‘Oh, and he’s the night manager too,’ I say, remembering.

  ‘And the purveyor of garden furniture, don’t let’s forget,’ says Iris.

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘Men can multitask.’

  ‘They just pretend they can’t so we do everything,’ Iris says.

  ‘Ye cads!’ I yell, which strikes me as the right sort of vocabulary to employ in a castle-type setting. My voice echoes about the garden, bringing a lilting music to the words and giving them a sort of majesty.

  ‘Sssshhhh,’ Iris says. She holds out her hand. ‘Give me a hand up, would you?’

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘To have sex with Jacques, like I said.’

  ‘What?’