I waited patiently. Then impatiently. Then I wanted to throw the flowers at his head. Then I wanted to pick each flower, petal by petal, and flick them in his face. What began as a mild innate happiness to see my father then turned to the usual feelings of frustration and anger. He just made things so difficult all of the time, always a barrier, always uncomfortable.
‘Hi,’ I said and I sounded like a seven-year-old again.
He didn’t look up. Instead he finished reading the page, turned it and finished reading that one too. It may only have been one minute but it felt like five. He finally looked up, took his glasses off and looked down at my bare feet.
‘I brought these flowers for you and Mum. I was looking for a vase.’ It was probably the closest thing to Dirty Dancing’s ‘I carried a watermelon’ that I’d ever said.
Silence. ‘There isn’t one in here.’ In my head I heard him say, You fucking fool, though he would never actually swear, he was one of those people who said “ruddy” which annoyed me to no end.
‘I know that, I just thought I’d say hi while I was on my way.’
‘Are you staying for lunch?’
I tried to figure out how to take that. He either wanted me to stay for lunch or he didn’t. It must have meant something, all his sentences were coded and usually had undertones implicating me of being an imbecile. I searched for the meaning and then for what could be the possible follow-up. Couldn’t figure it out. So I said, ‘Yes.’
‘I will see you at lunch.’
Which meant, Why would you disturb me in my office with a ridiculous ‘hi’ in your bare feet when I am due to see you at lunch any minute from now, you ruddy fool. He put his glasses back on and continued reading his papers. Again I wanted to fling the flowers at his head, one by one, just ping them off his forehead, but out of respect for Edith’s bouquet I turned and walked out of there, my feet making a squeaky sound as they stuck to the floor. When I got to the kitchen I dumped the flowers in the sink, picked at some food, and went back outside. Father was there already greeting his sons. Firm handshakes, deep voices, a few renditions of ‘We are men’; then they gorged on a couple of pheasant legs, clinked pewtered jugs, groped a boob or two, wiped their drooling mouths and burped – or at least I imagined them do that – and then they sat.
‘You didn’t greet Lucy, sweetheart, she was finding a vase for the beautiful flowers she gave us.’ Mum smiled at me again as if I alone was all that was good in the world. She was good at doing that.
‘I saw her in the house.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ Mum said studying me again. ‘Did you find a vase?’
I looked at Edith who was placing bread rolls on the table. ‘Yes, I did. The one in the kitchen beside the bin.’ I smiled at her sweetly, knowing she would understand this to mean I had placed them in the bin, which I hadn’t, but I liked teasing her.
‘Where your dinner is,’ Edith smiled back sweetly and mum looked confused. ‘Wine?’ Edith looked over my head, to everybody else but me.
‘No, I can’t, I’m driving,’ I responded anyway, ‘but Riley’s going to have a glass of the red he brought for Father.’
‘Riley is driving,’ Father said, not addressing anyone in particular.
‘He could have a small drop.’
‘People who drink and drive should be locked up,’ he snapped.
‘You didn’t mind him having a glass last week,’ I tried not to be confrontational but it wasn’t really working.
‘Last week a young boy wasn’t thrown through the windscreen of a car because the ruddy driver had too much to drink.’
‘Riley,’ I gasped, ‘tell me you didn’t?’
It was in poor taste, I know, but I think I kind of wanted it to be, for Father’s sake, so he began a conversation with his mother as though I had never spoken. Riley shook his head incredulously, whether at my inappropriate humour, or because he’d failed to wet his lips with Father’s precious wine, I wasn’t sure but either way he lost the bet. Riley reached into his pocket and handed me a twenty-euro note. Father looked at the transaction disapprovingly.
‘I owed her money,’ Riley explained.
Nobody at the table believed I could possibly have loaned anybody any money so it all backfired on me. Again.
‘So,’ Mum began, as soon as Edith had finished setting up and we were all settled. She looked at me. ‘Aoife McMorrow married Will Wilson last week.’
‘Ah, I’m so delighted for her,’ I said enthusiastically, stuffing a bread roll into my mouth. ‘Who’s Aoife McMorrow?’
Riley laughed.
‘She was in your tap-dance class.’ Mum looked at me, utterly surprised I’d forgotten my time-step acquaintance from when I was six years old. ‘And Laura McDonald had a little girl.’
‘Ee-I-ee-I-oh,’ I said.
Riley and Philip laughed. No one else did. Mum tried to but didn’t get it.
‘I met her mother at the organic fair yesterday and she showed me a photo of the baby. Beeeauuuutiful baby. You’d eat her. Married and a mother all in one year, imagine that.’
I smiled tightly. I felt Riley’s intense stare urging me to be calm.
‘The baby was ten pounds, Lucy, ten pounds, can you believe it?’
‘Jackson was nine pounds two ounces,’ Philip said. ‘Luke was eight pounds four and Jemima was eight pounds six.’
We all looked at him and pretended to be interested, then he went back to eating his bread.
‘It’s a lovely thing,’ Mum said looking at me and scrunching her face up and hunching her shoulders. ‘Motherhood.’
She was looking at me like that for too long.
‘I was married by the time I was twenty,’ my grandmother said as though it was some major feat. Then she stopped buttering her bread and looked me dead in the eye. ‘I finished university when I was twenty-four and had three children by the time I was twenty-seven.’
I nodded as if in awe. I’d heard it all before. ‘Hope they sent you a medal.’
‘Medal?’
‘It’s just an expression. For doing something … amazing.’ I tried to hold back on the bitter sarcastic tone that was just dying to get out. It was on the sidelines warming up, begging me to let it go on as a substitute for politeness and tolerance.
‘Not amazing, just the right thing, Lucy.’
Mum came to my defence. ‘Sometimes girls have babies in their late twenties now.’
‘But she’s thirty.’
