He is looking. He can’t take his eyes off his daughter, a vision in white, dancing in perfect unison with the flock of swans, not a movement out of place. She looks so grown up, so … how did that happen? It seems like only yesterday she was twirling for him and Jennifer in the park across from their house, a little girl with a tutu and dreams and now … His eyes fill and he looks beside him to Jennifer, to share a look, share the moment but at the same time, she reaches for Laurence’s hand. He looks away quickly, back to his daughter. A tear falls and he reaches into his front pocket for his handkerchief.
A handkerchief is raised to my face, catches my tear before it drips from my chin.
‘What are you crying for?’ Dad says loudly, dabbing at my chin roughly, as the curtain lowers for the interval.
‘I’m just so proud of Bea.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, nothing … I just think it’s a beautiful story. What do you think?’
‘I think those lads have definitely got socks down their tights.’
I laugh and wipe my eyes. ‘Do you think Mum’s enjoying it?’
He smiles and stares at the photo. ‘She must be, she hasn’t turned round once since it started. Unlike you, who’s got ants in her pants. If I’d known you were so keen on binoculars I’d have taken you out bird-watching long ago.’ He sighs and looks around. ‘The lads at the Monday Club won’t believe this at all. Donal McCarthy, you better watch out,’ he chuckles.
‘Do you miss her?’
‘It’s been ten years, love.’
It stings that he can be so dismissive. I fold my arms and look away, silently fuming.
Dad leans closer and nudges me. ‘And everyday, I miss her more than I did the day before.’
Oh. I immediately feel guilty for wishing that on him.
‘It’s like my garden, love. Everything grows. Including love. And with that growing everyday how can you expect missing her to ever fade away? Everything builds, including our ability to cope with it. That’s how we keep going.’
I shake my head, in awe of some of the things he comes out with. Philosophical and otherwise. And this from a man who’s been calling me his teapot (lid, kid) since we landed.
‘And I just thought you liked pottering,’ I smile.
‘Ah, there’s a lot to be said for pottering. You know Thomas Berry said that gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe? There are lessons in pottering.’
‘Like what?’ I try not to smile.
‘Well, even a garden grows stranglers, love. It grows them naturally, all by itself. They creep up and choke the plants that are growing from the very same soil as they are. We each have our demons, our self-destruct button. Even in gardens. Pretty as they may be. If you don’t potter, you don’t notice them.’
He eyes me and I look away, choosing to clear my already-clear throat.
Sometimes I wish he’d just stick to laughing at men in tights.
‘Justin, we’re going to the bar, are you coming?’ Doris asks.
‘No,’ he says, in a huff like a child, folding his arms.
‘Why not?’ Al squeezes further into the box to sit beside him.
‘I just don’t want to.’ He picks up the opera glasses and starts fiddling with them.
‘But you’ll be here on your own.’
‘So?’
‘Mr Hitchcock, would you like me to get you a drink?’ Bea’s boyfriend, Peter, asks.
‘Mr Hitchcock was my father, you can call me Al. Like the song.’ He punches him playfully on the shoulder but it knocks him back a few steps.
‘OK, Al, but I actually meant Justin.’
‘You can call me Mr Hitchcock.’ Justin looks at him like there’s a bad smell in the room.
‘We don’t have to sit with Laurence and Jennifer, you know.’
Laurence. Laurence of Ahernia who has elephantitis of the—
‘Yes we do, Al, don’t be ridiculous,’ Doris interrupts.
Al sighs. ‘Well, give Petey an answer, do you want us to bring you back a drink?’
Yes. But Justin can’t bring himself to say it and instead shakes his head sulkily.
‘OK, we’ll be back in fifteen.’
Al gives him a comforting brotherly pat on his shoulder before they all leave him alone in the box to stew over Laurence and Jennifer and Bea and Chicago and London and Dublin and now Peter, and how exactly his life has ended up.
Two minutes later and already tired of feeling sorry for himself, he looks through the opera glasses and begins spying on the trickles of people seated below him who’d stayed in their seats for the interval. He spots a couple fighting, snapping at one another. Another couple kissing, reaching for their coats and then disappearing quickly to the exits. He spies a mother giving out to her son. A group of women laughing together. A couple saying nothing to one another or who have nothing to say to one another. He’d prefer the former. Nothing exciting. He moves to the boxes opposite. They are empty, everyone choosing to have their pre-ordered drinks in the nearby bar. He cranes his neck up higher.
How on earth can anyone see anything from there?
Here, there are a small number of people, like everyone else, just chatting. He moves along from right to left. Then stops. Rubs his eyes. Sure he is imagining it. He squints back through the opera glasses again and sure enough, there she is. With the old man. Every scene in his life was beginning to be like a page from Where’s Wally?
She is looking through her opera glasses too, scanning the crowd below them both. Then she raises her opera glasses, moves slowly to the right and … they both freeze, staring at one another through the lenses. He slowly lifts his arm. Waves.
She slowly does the same. The old man beside her puts his glasses on and squints in his direction, mouth opening and closing the entire time.
Justin holds his hand up, intends to make a ‘wait’ sign. Hold on, I’m coming up to you. He holds his forefinger up, as though he’s just thought of an idea. One minute. Hold on, I’ll be one minute, he tries to signal.
She gives him the thumbs-up and he breaks into a smile.
He drops the opera glasses and stands up immediately, taking note of where exactly she is sitting. The door to the box opens and in walks Laurence.
‘Justin, I thought maybe we could have a word,’ he says politely, drumming his fingers on the back of the chair that separates them.
‘No, Laurence, not now, sorry.’ He tries to move past him.
‘I promise not to take up too much of your time. Just a few minutes while we’re alone. To clear the air, you know?’ He opens the button of his blazer, smooths down his tie and closes his button again.
‘Yeah, I appreciate that, buddy, I really do, but I’m in a really big hurry right now.’ He tries to inch by him but Laurence moves to block him.
‘A hurry?’ he says, raising his eyebrows. ‘But the interval is just about over and … ah,’ he stops, realising. ‘I see. Well, I just thought I’d give it a try. If you’re not ready to have the discussion yet, that’s understandable.’
‘No, it’s not that.’ Justin looks through his opera glasses and up at Joyce, feeling panicked. She’s still there. ‘It’s just that I really am in a hurry to get to somebody. I have to go, Laurence.’
Jennifer walks in just as he says that. Her face is stony.
‘Honestly, Justin. Laurence just wanted to be a gentleman and talk to you like an adult. Something, it seems, you have forgotten how to be. Though I don’t know why I’m surprised about that.’
‘No, no, look, Jennifer.’ I used to call you Jen. So formal now, a lifetime away from that memorable day in the park when they were all so happy, so in love. ‘I really don’t have time for this right now. You don’t understand, I have to go.’
‘You can’t go. The ballet is about to begin in a few minutes and your daughter will be onstage. Don’t tell me you’re walking out on her too, because of some ridiculous male pride.’
Doris and Al enter the box, Al
’s size alone completely crowding the small space and blocking his path to the door. Al holds a pint of cola in his hand and an oversized bag of crisps.
‘Tell him, Justin.’ Doris folds her arms and taps her long fake pink nails against her thin arms.
Justin groans. ‘Tell him what?’
‘Remind him of the heart disease in your family so that he may think twice before eating and drinking that crap.’
‘What heart disease?’ Justin holds his hands to his head while on the other side of him, Jennifer drones on and on in what sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice. ‘Wah, wah, wah’ is all he hears.
‘Your father, dying of a heart attack,’ she says impatiently.
Justin freezes.
‘The doc didn’t say that it would necessarily happen to me,’ Al moans to his wife.
‘He said there was a good chance. If there’s a history in the family.’
Justin’s voice sounds to him as though it’s coming from somewhere else. ‘No, no, I really don’t think you have to worry about that, Al.’
‘See?’ He looks at Doris.
‘That’s not what the doctor said, sweetheart. We have to be more careful if it runs in the family.’
‘No, it doesn’t run in the—’ Justin stalls. ‘Look, I really have to go now.’ He tries to move in the crowded box.
‘No, you will not,’ Jennifer blocks him. ‘You are not going anywhere until you apologise to Laurence.’
‘It’s really all right, Jen,’ Laurence says awkwardly.
I call her Jen, not you!
‘No, it’s not, sweetheart.’
I’m her sweetheart, not you!
Voices come at him from all sides, wah wah wah, he is unable to make out the words. He feels hot and sweaty, dizziness grips him.
Suddenly the lights dim and the music begins and he has no choice but to take his seat again, beside a fuming Jennifer, an insulted Laurence, a silent Peter, a worried Doris and a hungry Al, who decides to munch loudly in his left ear, on the packet of potato chips.
He sighs and looks up at Joyce.
Help.
It seems the squabble in Mr Hitchcock’s box has ended, but as the lights are going down, they are all still standing. When the lights lift again, they are all seated with stony faces, apart from the large man at the back, who is eating a large bag of crisps. I have ignored Dad all throughout the last few moments, choosing instead to invest my time in a crashcourse in lipreading. If I have been successful, their conversation involved Carrot Top and barbecued bananas.
Deep inside, my heart drums like a djembe, its deep bass and slap reaching down into my chest. I feel it in the base of my throat, throbbing, and all because he saw me, he wanted to come to me. I feel relieved that following my instincts, however flighty, paid off. It takes me a few minutes to be able to focus on anything other than Justin, but when I calm my nerves slightly I turn my attention back to the stage where Bea takes my breath away and causes me to sniffle through her performance like a proud aunt. It occurs to me so strongly right now that the only people privy to those wonderful happy memories in the park are Bea, her mother, father … and me.
‘Dad, can I ask you something?’ I lean close to him and whisper.
‘He’s just after telling that girl that he loves her but she’s the wrong girl,’ he rolls his eyes. ‘Eejit. The swan girl was in white and that one is in black. They don’t look alike at all.’
‘She could have changed for the ball. No one wears the same thing everyday.’
He looks me up and down. ‘You only took your bathrobe off one day last week. Anyway, what’s up with you?’
‘Well, it’s that, I, em, something has happened and, well …’
‘Spit it out for Christsake, before I miss anything else.’
I give up whispering in his ear and turn to face him. ‘I’ve been given something, or more, something very special has been shared with me. It’s completely inexplicable and it doesn’t make any sense at all, in an Our Lady of Knock kind of way, you know?’ I laugh nervously and quickly stop, on seeing his face.
No, he doesn’t know. Dad looks angry I’ve used Mary’s apparition in County Mayo during the 1870s as an example of nonsense.
‘OK, perhaps that was a bad example. What I mean is, it breaks every rule I’ve ever known. I just don’t understand why.’
‘Gracie,’ Dad lifts his chin, ‘Knock, like the rest of Ireland, suffered great distress over the centuries from invasion, evictions and famines, and Our Lord sent His Mother, the Blessed Virgin, to visit with His oppressed children.’
‘No,’ I hold my hands over my face, ‘I don’t mean why did Mary appear, I mean why has this … this thing happened to me? This thing I’ve been given.’
‘Oh. Well, is it hurting anyone? Because if it’s not and if you’ve been given it, I’d as soon stop callin’ it a “thing” and start referring to it as a “gift”. Look at them dancing. He thinks she’s the swan girl. Surely he can see her face. Or is it like Superman when he takes the glasses off and suddenly he’s completely different, even though it’s as clear as day that it’s the same person?’
A gift. I’d never thought of it like that. I look over at Bea’s parents, beaming with pride, and I think of Bea before the interval, floating around with her flock of swans. I shake my head. No. No one is being hurt.
‘Well, then,’ Dad shrugs.
‘But I don’t understand why and how and—’
‘What is it with people these days?’ he hisses, and the man beside me turns round. I whisper my apologies.
‘In my day, something just was. None of this analysis a hundred times over. None of these college courses with people graduating with degrees in Whys and Hows and Becauses. Sometimes, love, you just need to forget all of those words and enrol in a little lesson called “Thank You”. Look at this story here,’ he points at the stage. ‘Do you hear anybody here giving out about the fact she, a woman, has been turned into a swan? Have you heard anything more ludicrous in your life?’
I shake my head, smiling.
‘Have you met anyone lately who happens to have been turned into a swan?’
I laugh and whisper, ‘No.’
‘Yet look at it. This bloody thing has been famous the world over for centuries. We have non-believers, atheists, intellects, cynicists, him.’ He nods his head at the man who shushed us. ‘All kinds of what-have-yous in here tonight, but all of them want to see that fella in the tights end up with that swan girl, so she’ll be able to get out of that lake. Only with the love of one who has never loved before, can the spell be broken. Why? Who the hell cares why? Do you think your woman with the feathers is going to ask why? No. She’s going to say thank you because then she can move on and wear nice dresses and go for walks, instead of having to peck at soggy bread in a stinky lake every day for the rest of her life.’
I have been stunned to silence.
‘Now, whisht, we’re missing the performance. She wants to kill herself now, look? Talk about being dramatic.’ He places his elbows on the balcony and leans in closer to the stage, his left ear tilted towards the stage more than his eyes, quite literally eavesdropping.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
During the standing ovation, Justin spies Joyce’s father helping her into a red coat, the same one from their Grafton Street collision. She begins to move to her nearby exit with her father in tow.
‘Justin,’ Jennifer scowls at her ex-husband, who is more busy spying through his opera glasses up at the ceiling than at his daughter bowing on stage.
He puts the glasses down and claps loudly, cheering.
‘Hey, guys, I’m going to go to the bar and keep some good seats for us.’ He starts moving towards the door.
‘It’s already reserved,’ Jennifer shouts after him, over the applause.
He holds his hand up to his ear and shakes his head. ‘Can’t hear you.’
He escapes and runs down the corridors, trying to find his way upstairs
to the lower slips. The curtains must have fallen for the final time as people begin to exit their boxes, crowding the corridors and making it impossible for Justin to push past.
He has a change of plan: he’ll rush to the exit and wait for her there. That way he can’t miss her.
* * *
‘Let’s get a drink, love,’ Dad says as we slowly amble behind the crowd exiting the theatre. ‘I saw a bar on this floor.’
We stop to read some directions.
‘There’s the Amphitheatre bar, this way,’ I say, looking out constantly for Justin Hitchcock.
A woman usher announces that the bar is open only for cast, crew and family members.
‘That’s great, we’ll have some peace and quiet so,’ Dad says to her, tipping his cap as he walks by. ‘Oh, you should have seen my granddaughter up there. Proudest day of my life,’ he says, putting his hand on his heart.
The woman smiles and allows us entry.
‘Come on, Dad.’ After we’ve bought our drinks, I drag him deep into the room to sit at a table in the far corner, away from the growing crowd.
‘If they try to throw us out, Gracie, I’m not leaving my pint. I just sat down.’
I wring my hands nervously and perch on the edge of my seat, looking around for him. Justin. His name rolls around in my head, plays around my tongue like a contented pig in muck.
People filter out of the bar until all that is left are family, crew and cast members. Nobody approaches us again to usher us out, perhaps one of the perks of being with an old man. Bea’s mother enters with the two unknown people from the box, and the chubby man I recognise. But no Mr Hitchcock. My eyes dart around the room.
‘There she is,’ I whisper.
‘Who?’
‘One of the dancers. She was one of the swans.’
‘How do you know? They all looked the same. Even the nancy boy thought they were the same. Sure, didn’t he profess his love to the wrong woman? The bloody eejit.’
There’s no sign of Justin and I begin to worry that this is another wasted opportunity. Perhaps he has left early and isn’t coming to the bar at all.
‘Dad,’ I say urgently, ‘I’m just going to take a look around for somebody. Please do not move from this chair. I’ll be back soon.’
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 44
