we’re not,’ I say to the waitress. ‘I’m sorry but … no, we’re not finished here.’ The waitress is brandishing one of those disinfectant sprays that I cannot abide, for who can tell what chemicals lurk inside?
‘I’ll come back in a bit,’ the waitress says, taking herself and her noxious spray away. Now she looks cautious, as if we are one of those groups where there’s no telling what might happen next.
‘I’m not letting you go by yourself, Iris,’ I say. I will say it as many times as I have to and then, if that doesn’t work, I’ll just follow her. Wherever she goes. I won’t let her out of my sight.
‘You can’t fix this, Terry,’ Iris says. ‘This is not one of those things you can fix, like buck teeth.’
It’s true that buck teeth are easy to fix, so long as you’ve got plenty of money. The girls’ orthodontist and Brendan’s bank balance can attest to that.
‘I don’t want to fix it, I just don’t want you to go by yourself.’ This is not true. I do want to fix it. It’s fixable. Not the MS of course. Not yet at any rate. But the situation.
Iris isn’t usually a pessimist.
She is a realist.
It is this side of her that I address now.
‘What happens if you fall? On the way to Zurich? What happens if you get sick? Or you’re so tired you can’t keep going. It’s a long journey. Anything could happen to you.’
Iris hoists her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ she says. She turns and walks towards the door. I jump up, the legs of my chair screeching against the floor. I have to do something. I have to say something.
THINK.
‘You could choke,’ I shout after her. ‘You could choke to death.’
This is cruel, and I wouldn’t say such a thing ordinarily. Or at all. Iris is not afraid of many things, apart from flying. And I know she’s not afraid of dying. Of death.
But the disease has compromised her swallow, and she is terrified of choking to death. She says she’d prefer to burn.
Where death is concerned, I am more of a worrier than an existential thinker. When the girls were little, I regularly imagined scenarios in which they were in mortal peril and there was nothing I could do to save them. Kate, in a Babygro, crawling out of an open, upstairs window. Anna toddling unnoticed off the footpath, as a Des Kelly Carpets truck, looking for number 55, bears down on her wobbly little body.
Iris stops and turns. She walks back to our table. ‘What did you say?’ It’s nearly a whisper, as if she can’t quite believe I’ve stooped this low.
‘I know the Heimlich manoeuvre,’ I say.
‘What has that got to do with—’
‘If you start choking,’ I say, ‘I can do the Heimlich manoeuvre.’
Iris shakes her head slowly. ‘Listen Terry, I know you don’t understand this and—’
‘I won’t try to change your mind,’ I say.
She looks at me then. Examines my face. I cross my fingers in deference to the lie, a habit that has persisted from childhood.
I sense a slackening of Iris’s resolve. While I know it’s more to do with her being tired than any powers of persuasion I may possess, I press home the advantage it affords me.
‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ I say, ‘if I let you go on your own.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, now I’m supposed to feel guilty on top of everything else?’
‘Well, no, but … I would.’
‘Fuck’s sake.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘For making you feel bad.’
‘I don’t feel bad.’
‘You do.’
‘Who is feeling bad?’ Dad asks, anxious, and Iris and I look at him, and our expressions are both a little shame-faced, and I think it’s because we sort of forgot about him and because he has no idea what’s going on.
Iris sits down, all of a sudden, as if her legs have collapsed beneath her. She exhales and shakes her head, and I know I’ve won, although won might not be the appropriate word.
‘Two conditions,’ she says.
I can’t believe there are only two. I nod and wait.
Iris holds up the forefinger of her left hand. ‘One,’ she begins. ‘We do not talk about this again for the rest of the trip.’
I cross my fingers beneath a napkin and nod.
Iris leans towards me. ‘Do you agree?’ she says.
‘I do,’ I tell her, which cannot be categorised as a ‘white’ lie. It is an out-and-out blatant lie. I will think about this conundrum later. For now, I need to concentrate, because Iris is holding up a second finger. ‘Two,’ she says. ‘The furthest you can come is the Swiss border. After that, you have to turn around and go back home.’
‘Okay,’ I say. I am shocked at how easily the second lie comes. Already, I am a master of deception.
I can tell Iris is shocked too. In different circumstances, I would be delighted. Iris is a difficult woman to shock.
‘Definitely okay?’ she says.
‘Definitely okay,’ I repeat.
Once again, she reaches for her sticks, hauls herself to her feet.
Dad stands too.
So do I.
‘Please know now that I won’t change my mind,’ Iris says as we make our way to the door of the café.
I nod. I know that Iris believes that today. But there are other days up for grabs. Maybe three of them, judging by the weight of her bag. Enough time for Iris to change her mind. For me to persuade her to change her mind.
The truth is I’ve never been very persuasive.
But this is not about me, it’s about Iris.
Iris won’t do this. She won’t be able to, in the end. The simple fact of the matter is that Iris loves life. Maybe she’s forgotten that. Sometimes that happens, doesn’t it? To the best of us?
All I have to do is remind her of that one simple fact.
