He ignores me and holds a cigarette to his mouth, inhaling long and hard, so much so that his cheeks concave.
‘Dad, don’t be like this. Just get in the car and we’ll go to the hotel.’
He continues walking, looks straight ahead, as stubborn as anything. I’ve seen this face so many times before, arguing with Mum over spending too late and too often at the pub, arguments with the Monday Club gang about the political state of their country, at a restaurant when his beef is handed to him not resembling a piece of charcoal as he so wishes. The ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ look that has set his chin in that defiant stance, jutting outward like Cork and Kerry’s rugged coastline to the rest of the land. A defiant chin, a troubled head.
‘Look, we don’t even have to talk. You can ignore me in the car too. And in the hotel. Don’t talk to me all night, if it’ll make you feel better.’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he huffs.
‘Honestly?’
He looks at me.
‘Yes.’
He tries not to smile. Scratches the corner of his mouth with his yellow-stained cigarette fingers to hide how he softens. The smoke rises into his eyes and I think of his yellow eyes, think of how piercingly blue they used to be when, as a little girl, legs swinging, chin on my hands, I’d watch him sitting at the kitchen table, while he dismantled a radio or a clock or a plug. Piercing blue eyes, alert, busy, like a CAT scan sourcing a tumour. His cigarette squashed between his lips, to the side of his mouth like Popeye, the smoke drifting into his squinted eyes, perhaps staining them the yellow that he sees through now. The colour of age, like old newspapers dipped in time.
I’d watch him, transfixed, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe, afraid to break the spell he’d cast on the contraption he was fixing. Like the surgeon who’d operated on his heart during his bypass surgery ten years ago, there he was, youth on his side, connecting wires, clearing blockages, his shirtsleeves rolled to just below his elbows, the muscles in his arms tanned from the gardening, flexing and unflexing as his fingers tackled the problem. His fingernails, always with a trace of dirt under the surface. His right forefinger and middle finger, yellow from the nicotine. Yellow, but steady. Uneven, but steady.
Finally he stops walking. He throws his cigarette on the ground and stomps it out with his chunky shoe. The cab stops. I throw the life-saving ring around his body and we pull him out of his stream of defiance and into the boat. Always a chancer, always lucky, he’d fall into a river and come out dry, with fish in his pockets. He sits in the car without a word to me, his clothes, breath and fingers smelling of smoke. I bite my lip to stop from saying anything and prepare to have my thumb burned.
He is silent for a record amount of time. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes. Finally words start spilling out of his mouth, as though they’d been queuing up impatiently behind his closed lips during the rare silence. As though they’d been fired from his heart and, as usual, not from his head, catapulted to his mouth, only this time to find themselves bounce against the walls of closed lips. Instead of being allowed out into the world, they build up like paranoid fat cells, afraid of the food never coming. But now the lips open and the words fly out in all directions like projectile vomit.
‘You may have got a sherbet but I hope you know that I haven’t a sausage.’ He raises his chin, which pulls on the invisible string attached to his pride. He appears pleased with the collection of words that have strung themselves together for him on this particular occasion.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Sherbet dab, cab. Sausage and mash, cash,’ he explains. ‘It’s the ol’ Chitty Chitty.’
I try to work that out in my head.
‘Bang Bang, rhyming slang,’ he finishes. ‘He knows exactly what I’m talking about,’ he nods at the driver.
‘He can’t hear you.’
‘Why? Is he Mutt and Jeff?’
‘What?’
‘Deaf.’
‘No,’ I nod my head, feeling dazed and tired. ‘When the red light is off, they can’t hear you.’
‘Like Joe’s hearing aid,’ Dad responds. He leans forward and flicks the switch in the back of the cab. ‘Can you hear me?’ he shouts.
‘Yeah, mate.’ The driver looks at him in the mirror. ‘Loud and clear.’
Dad smiles and flicks the switch again. ‘Can you hear me now?’
There is no response, the driver quickly glances at him in the rearview mirror, concern wrinkling his forehead, while trying also to keep an eye on the road.
Dad chuckles.
I bury my face in my hands.
‘This is what we do to Joe,’ he says mischievously. ‘Sometimes he can go a whole day without realising we turned his hearing aid off. He just thinks that no one’s saying anything. Every half-hour he shouts, “JAYSUS, IT’S VERY QUIET IN HERE!”’ Dad laughs and flicks the switch again, ‘’Allo, guv,’ Dad says pleasantly.
‘All right, Paddy,’ the driver responds.
I wait for Dad’s gnarled fist to go through the slit in the window. It doesn’t. Instead his laughter filters through.
‘I feel like being on my tod tonight. I say, could you tell me where there’s a good jack near my hotel, so I can go for a pig without my teapot.’
The young driver studies Dad’s innocent face in the mirror, always meaning well, never intending insults. But he doesn’t respond and continues driving.
I look away so Dad isn’t embarrassed, but I feel rather superior and hate myself for it. Moments later, at a set of traffic lights, the hatch opens and the driver passes a piece of paper through.
‘There’s a list of a few there, mate. I’d suggest the first one, that’s my favourite. Does good loop and tucker right about now, if you know what I mean,’ he smiles and winks.
‘Thank you.’ Dad’s face lights up. He studies the paper closely as though it’s the most precious thing he’s ever been given, then folds it carefully and slides it into his top pocket, proudly. ‘It’s just that this one here, is being a merry ol’ soul, if you know what I mean. Make sure she gives you a good bit of rifle.’
The driver laughs and pulls over at our hotel. I examine it from the cab and am pleasantly surprised. The three-star hotel is right in the heart of the city, only ten minutes’ walk from main theatres, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Soho. Enough to keep us either out of trouble. Or right in it.
Dad gets out of the car and pulls his case along to the revolving doors at the hotel entrance. I watch him while waiting for my change. The doors are going around so fast, I can see him trying to time his entrance. Like a dog afraid to jump into the cold sea, he inches forward, then stops, jerks forward again and stops. Finally he makes a run for it and his suitcase gets stuck outside, jamming the revolving doors and trapping him inside.
I take my time getting out of the cab. I lean in the passenger’s side window to the sound of Dad rapping on the glass behind me.
‘Help! Someone!’ I hear Dad call.
‘By the way, what did he call me?’ I ask the driver, calmly ignoring the calls behind me.
‘A merry old soul?’ he asks with a grin. ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Tell me,’ I smile.
‘It means arsehole,’ he laughs, and then he pulls away, leaving me at the side of the street with my mouth gaping.
I notice the knocking has quietened and turn to see that Dad has been freed at last. I hurry inside.
‘I can’t give you a credit card, but I can give you my word,’ Dad is saying slowly and loudly to the woman behind the reception desk. ‘And my word is as good as my honour.’
‘It’s OK, here you go.’ I slide my credit card across the counter to the young lady.
‘Why can’t people just pay with paper money these days?’ Dad says, leaning further over the counter. ‘It’s more trouble that the youth of today are getting themselves into, debt after debt because they want this, they want that,
but they don’t want to work for it so they use those plastic thingies. Well, that’s not free money, I can tell you that.’ He nods his head with finality. ‘You’ll only ever lose with one of those.’
No one responds.
The receptionist smiles at him politely and taps away on the computer. ‘You’re sharing a room?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I respond with dread.
‘Two Uncle Teds, I hope?’
She frowns.
‘Beds,’ I say quietly. ‘He means beds.’
‘Yes, they’re twin beds.’
‘Is it an en-suite?’ He leans in, trying to see her name badge. ‘Breda, is it?’ he asks.
‘Aakaanksha. And, yes, sir, all our rooms are en-suite,’ she says politely.
‘Oh,’ he looks impressed. ‘Well, I hope your lifts are working because I can’t take the apples, my Cadbury’s playin’ up.’
I squeeze my eyes together tightly.
‘Apples and pears, stairs. Cadbury snack, back,’ he says with the same voice he used to say nursery rhymes to me as a little girl.
‘I see. Very good, Mr Conway.’
I take the key and head towards the elevator, hearing his little voice repeating a question over and over again as he follows me through the foyer. I hit the button for the third floor and the doors close.
The room is standard and it’s clean, and that’s good enough for me. Our beds are far enough apart for my liking, there’s a television and a mini-bar, which hold Dad’s attention while I run a bath.
‘I wouldn’t mind a drop of fine,’ he says, his head dis appearing into the mini-bar.
‘You mean wine.’
‘Fine and dandy, brandy.’
I finally slide down into the hot soothing bathwater, the suds rise like the foam atop an ice-cream float. They tickle my nose and cover my body, overflow and float to the ground, where they slowly fade with a crackling sound. I lie back and close my eyes, feeling tiny bubbles all over my body pop as soon as they touch my skin … There’s a knock on the door.
I ignore it.
Then it goes again, a little more loudly this time.
Still I don’t answer.
BANG! BANG!
‘What?’ I shout.
‘Oh, sorry, thought you’d fallen asleep or something, love.’
‘I’m in the bath.’
‘I know that. You have to be careful in those things. Could nod off and slip under the water and drown. Happened to one of Amelia’s cousins. You know Amelia. Visits Joseph sometimes, down the road. But she doesn’t drop by as much as before on account of the bath accident.’
‘Dad, I appreciate your concern but I’m fine.’
‘OK.’
Silence.
‘Actually, it’s not that, Gracie. I’m just wonderin’ how long you’ll be in there for?’
I grab the yellow rubber duck sitting at the side of the bath and I strangle it.
‘Love?’ he asks in a little voice.
I hold the duck under the water, trying to drown it. Then I let go, it bobs to the top again, the same silly eyes staring back at me. I take a deep breath, breathe out slowly.
‘About twenty minutes, Dad, is that OK?’
Silence.
I close my eyes again.
‘Eh, love. It’s just that you’ve been in there twenty minutes already and you know how my prostate is—’
I don’t hear any more, because I’m climbing out of the bath with all the gracefulness of a piranha at feeding time. My feet squeak on the bathroom floor, water splashes in all directions.
‘Everything OK in there, Shamu?’ Dad laughs uproariously at his own joke.
I throw a towel around me and open the door.
‘Ah, Willy’s been freed,’ he smiles.
I bow and hold my arm out to the toilet. ‘Your chariot awaits you, sir.’
Embarrassed, he shuffles inside and closes the door behind him. It locks.
Wet and shivering, I browse through the half-bottles of red wine in the mini-bar. I pick one up and study the label. Immediately an image flashes through my mind, so vivid, I feel like my body has been transported.
A picnic basket with this bottle inside, an identical label, red and white chequered cloth laid out on the grass, a little girl with blonde hair twirling, twirling in a pink tutu. The wine swirling, swirling in a glass. The sound of her laughter. Birds twittering. Children’s laughter far off, a dog barking. I am lying on the chequered cloth, barefoot, trousers rolled above my ankles. Hairy ankles. I feel a hot sun beating down on my skin, the little girl dances and twirls before the sun, sometimes blocking the harshness of light, other times spinning in the other direction to send the glare into my eyes. A hand appears before me, a glass of red wine in it. I look to her face. Red hair, lightly freckled, smiling adoringly. At me.
‘Justin,’ she’s singing. ‘Earth to Justin!’
The little girl is laughing and twirling, the wine is swirling, the long red hair is blowing in the light breeze …
Then it’s gone. I’m back in the hotel room, standing before the mini-bar, my hair dripping bath water onto the carpet. Dad is studying me, watching me curiously, hand suspended in the air as though he’s not sure whether to touch me or not.
‘Earth to Joyce,’ he’s singing.
I clear my throat. ‘You’re done?’
Dad nods and his eyes follow me to the bathroom. On the way there, I stop and turn. ‘By the way, I’ve booked a ballet show for tonight if you’d like to come. We need to leave in an hour.’
‘OK, love,’ he nods softly, and watches after me with a familiar look of worry in his eyes. I’ve seen that look as a child, I’ve seen it as an adult and a million times in between. It’s as though I’ve taken the stabilisers off my bicycle for the very first time and he’s running along beside me, holding on tight, afraid to let me go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dad breathes heavily beside me and links my arm tightly as we slowly make our way to Covent Garden. Using my other hand I pat down my pockets, feeling for his heart pills.
‘Dad, we’re definitely getting a taxi back to the hotel and I’m not taking no for an answer.’
Dad stops and stares ahead, he takes deep breaths.
‘Are you OK? Is it your heart? Should we sit down? Stop and take a rest? Go back to the hotel?’
‘Shut up and turn round, Gracie. It’s not just my heart that takes my breath away, you know.’
I spin round and there it is, the Royal Opera House, its columns illuminated for the evening performance, a red carpet lining the pavement outside and crowds filing through the doors.
‘You have to take your moments, love,’ Dad says, taking in the sight before him. ‘Don’t just go head first into everything, like a bull seeing red.’
Having booked our tickets so late we are seated in the lower slips almost at the top of the tremendous theatre. The position is unlucky, yet we are fortunate to have got tickets at all. The view of the stage is restricted, yet the view of the boxes opposite is perfect. Squinting through the binoculars situated beside the seat, I spy on the people filling the boxes. No sign of my American man. Earth to Justin? I hear the woman’s voice in my head and wonder if Frankie’s theory about seeing the world from his eyes was correct.
Dad is enthralled by our view. ‘We’ve got the best seats in the house, love, look.’ He leans over the balcony and his tweed cap almost falls off his head. I grab his arm and pull him back. He takes the photograph of Mum from his pocket and places her on the velvet balcony ledge. ‘Best seat in the house, indeed,’ he says, his eyes filling.
The voice over the intercom system counts latecomers down and finally the cacophony of the orchestra dies down, the lights dim and there is silence before the magic begins. The conductor taps and the orchestra play the opening bars of Tchaikovsky’s ballet. Apart from Dad snorting when the male principal dancer appears on stage wearing tights, it runs smoothly and we are both entranced by the story of Swan Lake. I look
away from the prince’s coming-of-age party and study those sitting in the boxes. Their faces are lit, their eyes dancing along with the dancers they follow. It’s as though a music box has been opened, spilling music and light from it and all those watching have been enchanted, captured by its magic. I continue to spy at them through my opera glasses, moving from left to right, a row of unfamiliar faces until … My eyes widen as I reach the familiar face, the man from the hair salon I now know from Bea’s biography in the programme, to be Mr Hitchcock. Justin Hitchcock? He watches the stage, entranced, leaning so far over the balcony it looks as though he’ll topple over the ledge.
Dad elbows me. ‘Would you stop looking around you, and keep your eye on the stage. He’s about to kill her.’
I turn to face the stage and try to hold my eyes on the prince leaping about with his crossbow, but I can’t. A magnetic pull turns my face back down to the box, anxious to see who Mr Hitchcock is sitting with. My heart is drumming so loudly I only realise now it’s not part of Tchaikovsky’s score. Beside him is the woman with long red hair and lightly freckled face, who holds the camera in my dreams. Beside her is a sweet-looking gentleman and behind them, squashed together are a young man pulling uncomfortably at his tie, a woman with big curly red hair and a large round man. I flick through my memory files like I’m going through Polaroids. The chubby boy from the sprinkler scene and seesaw? Perhaps. But the other two, I don’t know. I move my eyes back to Justin Hitchcock and smile, finding his face more entertaining than the action on stage.
Suddenly the music changes, the light reflecting on his face flickers and his expression changes. I know instantly that Bea is on stage, and I turn to watch. There she is among the flock of swans, moving about so gracefully in perfect unison, dressed in a white fitted corset dress with raggedy long white tutu, similar to feathers. Her long blonde hair is tied up in a bun, covered by a neat headdress. I recall the image of her in the park as a little girl, twirling and twirling in her tutu and I’m filled with pride. How far she has come. How grown up she is now. My eyes fill.
‘Oh, look, Justin,’ Jennifer says breathily beside him.
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 43
