In the distance there were flashes of colour on the pier, early-morning joggers bouncing up and down on the sea wall.
“Can you see the pier, out there to the right? The East Pier is the one with the bright red lighthouse and the West Pier has the faded green one. If you were ever going to be big, which they say you really don’t have much chance of being, you would love the East Pier because right at the end of the pier, just by the lighthouse, is an ice-cream kiosk, and it sells the best ice cream in Ireland. Parents bribe their kids to walk to the end of the pier to get ice cream – it must seem so far for little kids with tiny legs. Then the lovely creamy ice cream is finished, the tears start, and the little legs have to walk all the way back up the pier but without the promise of a special treat at the top.
“Do you know why one pier has a green lighthouse and the other one has a bright red one? Guess why. You don’t know? Well, they’re not the only red and green lighthouses in Dublin Bay – I bet you thought they were – well, they aren’t. The different-coloured lighthouses are to tell the ship where to dock, to park. You see, port means the left side on a ship, starboard means the right side – red is for port and green is for starboard – so as you enter Dun Laoghaire Harbour, if you were a ship, the East Pier and its red lighthouse and red light would be on your left and on the right would be the West Pier with its green lighthouse and light – so the captain would know he was on track. Isn’t that cool?
“You know, I don’t think I’ll go to the East Pier with all its perfect babies any more; it might make me too sad. I’ll go to the West Pier in future – anyway the West Pier is better and anyway I prefer green to red.”
The water was still like glass. A faint sea mist hung over Seapoint Beach. The tide was going out, so the yellow buoys were tilted on their sides in the water – they looked like drunken old men slumped over.
“The next stop, Ruby, is Sandymount – see there, that is Sandymount.” I pointed enthusiastically to the beach.
The tide was so far out you could hardly see any water at all, just an expanse of soggy sand with early Sunday-morning dog walkers that looked like tiny spots on the sand.
I hummed “Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday”. “I am gonna miss you, Ruby, like it says in the song. That’s your song. Your mum is so silly she didn’t make the connection between the song and you until now . . . silly silly Mum.”
We stopped outside a dusty pink house. It had steps up to a navy-blue door. The house was surrounded by black railings, which badly needed a lick of paint. In the front garden peach and white roses swayed in the wind. In the corner by the stone wall were the forget-me-not flowers.
“Look, Ruby, the little blue-and-white flowers, the ones with the yellow centres – don’t they look like a print from an elegant tea-party set? They are called ‘Forget-me-nots’. They are my favourite flower because they are so tiny and so perfect. Henry used to live there in the pink house. He loved travelling and when we were very young he used to go to exotic places like Cairo to sell them seeds for something or other. When I was little I could never understand why he had to take seeds to other countries, why he could not send the seeds on the boat on their own. He explained to me that he had to meet people and tell them how great the seeds were, but I didn’t understand that either because wouldn’t they see for themselves how good the seeds were when the plants grew? Henry just chuckled to himself when I said that. On a work day he had a lunch box for his sandwiches. When I was little, I always thought it strange that a grown-up had a lunchbox. I thought lunchboxes were only for kids not for big people. Henry’s lunch box didn’t have any pictures, like Thomas the Tank Engine or Superman, and he didn’t have his name on it – he told me he didn’t need to put his name on it because he knew what it looked like. Every day, he would sit in Merrion Square on a bench, eat his lunch and read the newspaper. Once he told me that he always sat on the same wooden bench. It has a gold plaque on it, he said, with black writing. He told me it was dedicated to someone, but I didn’t really understand what he meant, but I nodded and smiled anyway. I asked him once what would happen if someone was sitting on his bench when he came to eat his lunch. He opened his eyes wide like they might pop out of his head. He said that he would glare at them until they left, but I didn’t believe him. He was too kind to glare at strangers so I think he would just smile at them and then go and sit on a different bench.
“When he went on his travels he would bring us back lovely jewelry, like gold rosebud earrings from Cairo – I thought those people in that country must have tiny fingers to be able to make the delicate gold leaves. Another time he brought moonstone rings from exotic Greek Islands and Egyptian bracelets with beautiful intricate designs from old manuscripts.
“He loved good wine and adored great wine – his wife says he spent most of his salary in the wine shop in the village. Henry was a great cook and every Sunday he would cook us all a delicious dinner and serve us plenty of wine. He would phone and say: ‘Will I throw you into the pot?’ Of course he didn’t literally mean that he would throw me into the pot – he was asking me to come to Sunday dinner. He taught me how to pour wine and how to twist the bottle after pouring it – he didn’t want to waste a single drop down the side of the bottle.”
Early-morning risers were beginning to make their way toward the Sandymount Dart Station; it was after nine thirty on a beautiful summer morning.
We headed down the Grand Canal towards Harold’s Cross. The vegetation on either side of the water was lush. People pushed buggies and pulled dogs along the wobbly path that runs alongside the murky brown water of the canal. The water in the canal was low so the riverbed looked like the contents of a skip, with buggies, bikes, shopping trolleys, beer cans and other debris on view from the road.
I was taking my daughter to see the house where I spent ten happy years of life.
“Normally, the canal looks much better than this, Ruby. In its own way it is beautiful, but it is an urban beauty. Sorry you can’t see it at a better time,” I twittered on.
“There it is, Ruby – see the cottage there with the solid brown door and windows with brown frames – that is our house. I used to live there with my best friend Sue. Imagine having a best friend from the age of four until now! That’s thirty-six years – that’s a really good return on investment, isn’t it? That is a best best friend, isn’t it? We lived there in that cottage, the two of us. She is a singer and an actress – she’s really talented, my little angel, and it’s a pity you will never get to meet her, or hear her sing. You would love her. She has eyes the colour of light-blue topaz. I think that she has the most beautiful eyes of any person I have ever met. When you look at her eyes you float away, you get lost – they’re like a drug, and they make you dreamy. She’s funny too in a really understated way – witty, but without ever being the centre of attention.
“Once she broke her leg. Because she couldn’t walk she decided that while the leg was healing she would cycle so that she could get around. So on the street just here, right here where we’re parked, we road-tested her cycling with a broken leg. The actual cycling was not the problem – it was getting on and off a man’s bike with a crossbar that was the challenge. It was quite an operation to get going. She rested the pedal of the bike on the kerb and then she got on the bike with her good leg still on the pavement so as to balance herself. She took the crutches, pushed in their buttons, shortened them, and then fixed them with an elasticated rope along the bar of the bike, onto the back carrier and over the back mudguard. They stuck out the back of the bike, like fierce artillery. We had tried putting them on the handlebars of the bike but they were too long. We were terrified that they would catch in some granny’s Opel Corsa as she drove along the canal looking at the view on a sunny summer afternoon.
“She was fine when she got going; the difficult part was stopping and starting so we had a few dry runs, right here on the road. Twice she fell off the bike, once because we were laughing so hard. The tears ran down my face as I wat
ched her go up and down the road. But she was so determined that she could do it – you could see it in her focused deep-blue eyes. She was determined to ride that bicycle with a broken leg.
“Then it was time to cycle into town where she was singing at a gig. I offered to drive her, but she was determined to cycle. She was a bit wobbly on the bike, and she decided it safest to stay close to the kerb in the bus lanes. Traffic lights were also a bit of a problem as they involved stopping and starting. Obviously it was best for her to stop at as few sets of lights as possible.
“On the way into town she was weaving in and out of the bus lanes and everything went okay. Then, just near where she was playing her gig, she began to cycle slower so that she wouldn’t have to stop at the traffic lights, but the slower pace meant the bike began to wobble. A bus full of passengers swerved to avoid her, and with one big wobble she fell to the ground and the bike fell on top of her.
The bus stopped. All the passengers peered out the window at her on the ground. The alarmed bus driver came running over to her to see if she was okay.
‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she replied. ‘Yes, I’m fine – just a bit shocked and I have a broken leg.’
‘Ah Jaysus! Not a broken leg! Let me call you an ambulance, love,’ and he started to fuss around her.
‘No – no need to call an ambulance. I broke my leg weeks ago. I’m fine.’
The intrigued passengers watched from the bus as he helped her to get back up and onto her good foot. She perched herself on the kerb and remounted, with the assistance of the bus driver.
‘Jaysus, love, I can’t believe you’re cycling with a broken leg! Why don’t you get the bus?’
‘Hadn’t thought of it – maybe next time.’
The people on the bus watched the girl with a broken leg cycle off. Sue said she wondered how many people on that bus were at her gig. She hoped a few so that they could say that they’d been properly entertained.”
Chapter 7
I reversed a little down the street, away from the white cottage. I was afraid that the girl who had rented our cottage would think that the owner was spying on her.
“When your dad first moved to Dublin, we lived here for two years; they were the best two years of our life together. By then Sue had moved to New York where she joined a funky jazz band. Your dad, when he was young, lived in a house with a garden on a big farm in the countryside. The cottage has only two small bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and small bathroom. It has no garden. Your dad often said it was like living on the street and sleeping with four other people. You could hear how the neighbours on each side lived their lives. When they argued we would both takes sides in their disputes, and then we would end up fighting too – it was all a bit mad. He felt that he was three sizes too big for the cottage – he banged his head on the door frames and kept knocking things over. There’s a flat roof on the bathroom, and during our first hot summer he would climb up the ladder and sunbathe naked on the flat roof. The hot tar of the roof would stick to his bum but he didn’t care – he was desperate for sun. He would look up at the clouds and say he felt like Chicken Licken, afraid that the sky might fall down on him. He said the clouds were too close to his head, that the winter gave him claustrophobia.
“Shh, my little girl, please don’t kick me – quiet now – the whirlwind tour won’t take much longer. Are you enjoying it, my little girl?
“We would cycle around the city for hours. I would give him guided tours telling him all sorts of ridiculous stories about Irish myths. I made up half of them because I could only recall bits of the legends. He would try to read the signs in Irish – he never quite got the pronunciation correct – he even struggled with Irish place names – Port Laoise he would pronounce like Port Louis, making it sound like some exotic Caribbean island instead of the town that was home to the largest prison in Ireland.
“You see, Ruby, my hope was that he would fall madly in love with Ireland and with me and he would never want to leave. I wanted him to move here, forever. I focused all my attention for that one year on taking him to the most beautiful spots in Ireland. We went to Connemara in winter, when it was covered in snow, with clear blue skies. We stayed in a beautiful handcrafted wooden lodge overlooking a lake and watched the sun set on the snow, the evening sun turning the snow pink. It was magical.
“We climbed Croagh Patrick on a day you could see every single island in Clew Bay it was so clear – you know, Clew Bay has an island for every day of the year. On a freezing October day we swam down through the mussel beds in Killary Fjord, with the burnt autumn reds and oranges on the trees and the baldy-headed mountain behind. We emerged frozen and exhausted and drank hot whiskeys until our frostbite thawed.
“We swam in luxurious swimming pools in castle hotels that had their coat of arms tiled on the bottom of the pool. We sat in a bubbling hot outdoor Jacuzzi on a freezing November evening sipping pints of Guinness overlooking the Lakes of Killarney, with desolate snow-clad mountain tops in the distance. We swam around the Aran Islands in summer. ‘But they didn’t look that big on the map, they were only dots,’ he said, having been stung by jelly fish, chased by seals and battered by the Atlantic Ocean. After each adventure we would return to the little cottage, exhausted and exhilarated, craving the next outing together.
“We had the best sex, but I don’t want to tell you about that. I don’t think that a mother ever really discusses her sex life with her daughter, does she? I don’t think so.
“Then, after six months, I knew that he was hooked. At the beginning I was never too sure if he was keen on your mother or Ireland or a bit of both. He no longer talked of returning home; instead he began to call Dublin his home. My task was complete. Maybe that is what happened, Ruby – maybe because I thought I had him then I became complacent.
“We would drive out to Dublin Bay and swim for miles. Then wrapped in warm layers and semi-frozen we would stop for a creamy pint of Guinness and a packet of Tayto on the way home. On very cold days your dad would wear his slippers. Then Tommy, the fella behind the bar, would look at us when we walked in the door. His greeting to us was always ‘Jaysus, don’t tell me that you were at that craic again? Have ye no sense?’ Your dad would perch himself up at the bar and chat to Tommy. Tommy would say, ‘And you’re not even from here and you have less sense’. To Tommy that was a compliment. He would tell your dad stories about the fishermen of Dun Laoghaire and stories of Dublin Bay. Then we would come back to our tiny terraced cottage, perished and refreshed.
“Your dad is a fabulous swimmer, you know, but he had never really been a sea swimmer – too many sharks where he comes from. He loved the idea of being able to finish work and then jump in the sea and swim for miles. We became addicted to sea swimming; we swam for hours and hours side by side in Dublin Bay, often just the two of us gliding through the water. We would stop in the middle of the bay, relaxed and in love. ‘How happy are we?’ he would often say. ‘Aren’t we are the luckiest people on this planet?’ I would reply: ‘Yes, I would say we are.’ We’d swim side by side, breathing to the left, seeing views of the Head of Howth, with its vibrant yellow gorse-clad hills. ‘Doesn’t the gorse cheer up those hills?’ he would say. Further down the headland from the patches of golden bushes the white-and-grey lighthouse sat on a lonely rock with the sea crashing up on it. Some days, I would say to your dad: ‘Today the water is flirting with the rocks.’ Other days it was as if they were raging with each other – other times they seemed just like friends that were getting on.
“Then we would breathe to the right and see the DART race past, packed with commuters. From the sea, the carriages looked like mass-produced items on a conveyor belt whizzing by. Just above the DART line was a solid line of different-coloured rectangular objects: it was the rush-hour traffic jam snaking along the coast road – more commuters, just in a different race.
“Often when we stopped at the end of our lap we would look up an
d watch a plane come in over Howth Head, in towards Dublin Bay. We would guess where the plane was coming from; it was a silly game that we would play. We would dream about where we would go if we had all the money in the world. We would always choose locations surrounded by water, exotic locations where we could swim, snorkel and dive all day, where the sky was high.
“One day, in the middle of Dublin Bay, I asked your dad, if he could choose one place for that plane to take him, anywhere in the world, where would it be? Do you know what he said, Ruby? Right there in the middle of the Irish Sea. He took off his goggles, placed them on the front of his swimming cap, continued to tread water and said: ‘I would get that plane to turn around and go right back to Dublin airport because there is nowhere in the whole world I would prefer to be than right here with you.’ My heart nearly melted, though my body was frozen by the temperature of the water. ‘Afric,’ he said, ‘never in my life have I ever been so happy, I mean really happy.’ Then he said: ‘I love you, I want to be with you forever and ever, and never let you go.’
I looked down at my bump and rubbed it gently.
“Yes, Ruby, that is what he said. I was speechless, both from the cold and the shock. And do you want to know what he said next? I must tell you this. He said: ‘Please marry me and we will spend our days together swimming. Marry me and I will take you to swim in every ocean in the world – that is my promise to you if you marry me: every ocean in the world. Marry me, please, Afric.’ And, Ruby, guess what your mother did, guess what I did . . . I burst out crying and the tears flowed down my cheeks and into the sea. Luke just treaded water beside me, looking at me, waiting for an answer. ‘Luke,’ I replied, ‘yes, of course I will, yes, of course I will marry you.’ Then, Ruby, he took me in his arms, and the rubber of our suits clung to each other. Treading water, he took my face and cupped it in his hands. He traced his finger along my lower lip and kissed me very tenderly in the middle of Dublin Bay. Behind us a huge Irish Ferries ferry with its bright red masts chugged its way into Dublin Port, the DART whizzed by, the traffic piled up, and yachts sailed past us. Ruby, isn’t that so romantic? Isn’t it like a fairy tale? He used to call me his Irish mermaid . . . but he has not said those words in so long, in so very long – in fact I had almost forgotten he used to call me that.”
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