my eyes and forget everything I know and just listen, I can hear him. The ‘before’ version of him.
I don’t close my eyes of course. I am driving. In unfamiliar environs.
An Irish Ferries employee gestures me into a space. It’s a tight one. The car starts beeping, indicating that I am approaching some impediment; the side of the boat on one side and a Jeep on the other. Dad twists in his seat, anxious as a fledging perched on the edge of the nest. ‘Careful there,’ he says. ‘Careful.’ His face is pinched with fear and he puts both hands on the dashboard, bracing himself for an impact.
It’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of him.
I shiver. ‘Are you cold, love?’ my father asks. He puts his hand on my arm, rubs it, as if to warm me. It does. It warms me.
I smile at him. ‘Thanks Dad.’
I find his teeth buried in the pages of the Ireland roadmap I keep in the pocket of the passenger door. Brendan and I used to talk about going away for weekends when the girls were old enough to look after themselves. Just getting in the car on a Friday evening and driving away, wherever the road took us type of thing.
I don’t know why we never got around to it.
The wind is brisk when we get out of the car. Everything Dad needs is in the suitcase. Enough for a week, the manager said. But I have nothing other than the clothes I’m standing up in. The shoes – navy Rieker slip-ons – are comfortable and warm. And the navy trousers from Marks & Spencer are good travelling trousers. Hard-wearing and slow to crease. My navy and cream long-sleeved, round-necked top is a thin cotton material that does little to cut the draught. At least my cardigan is warm. I pull it across my chest, fold my arms to keep it there. My ponytail – too girlish for my age, my daughters tell me – whips around my head and I catch it in my hand, hold it down.
My other hand keeps a tight grip on the clasp of my handbag into which I have stuffed banknotes. The man at the ticket booth eyed me suspiciously when I pushed the bundle of cash through the gap at the bottom of the glass partition. I don’t carry money about my person as a rule. But I extracted the money from an account I’ve never used before. My mother opened it for me a long time ago but I only discovered it after she died, three years ago. I found the bank card in the blue woolly hat in the top drawer of her dressing table. I found all sorts in that hat. Her children’s allowance book. The prize bonds she got from her mother for her twenty-first birthday. My first tooth. A lock of Hugh’s white-blond baby hair. Her marriage certificate.
Stuck to the bank card on a scrap of paper was the PIN number – my birthday – and a note.
A running-away-from-home account, she had written. Just in case you ever need to.
I was shocked. At my mother, who, I was certain, did not approve of running away. Bearing up was her philosophy. Making the most of things.
I didn’t tell Brendan. He might have taken it the wrong way.
Iris doesn’t know we’re on the boat.
I haven’t worked out what I’m going to say yet. I don’t know what Iris will say either. There will be expletives. I know that much.
‘Where was I?’ says Dad, as if we are in the middle of a conversation from which he has become temporarily distracted.
‘We’re going to find Iris,’ I tell him, linking his arm. I sound definite, like someone who knows what they’re doing. I lead him towards the door. He shuffles now, rather than walks, as if he is wearing slippers that are too big for him. Progress is slow. Inside, there are flights of stairs, and progress becomes slower.
‘Hold onto the bannisters, Dad.’
‘Yes, but … where are we going?’
‘We’re going on an adventure,’ I tell him. ‘Remember when you used to bring me and Hugh on adventures? To Saint Anne’s Park? We’d be Tarzan and Jane, and you’d be the baddie, chasing us up the hills. Remember that?’
‘Oh yes,’ he says, and he does the laugh he does when he can’t remember but pretends he can.
Although maybe Hugh doesn’t remember either. He’s been in Australia nearly ten years now. Mam didn’t cry at the airport. She wouldn’t have wanted to upset him. He invited her to visit lots of times, but she said it wouldn’t have been practical, with Dad the way he was.
She should have gone.
I should have persuaded her to go.
Dad and I reach the bottom of the stairs. Set in the door at the bottom is a circular window, and through the glass I see a seating area with a hatch where you can get tea.
And I see Iris. Reading. I can’t make out the title of the book, but it doesn’t matter because I know what book it is. The Secret Garden. Iris’s version of a comfort blanket.
Her father bought it for her when she was a child. After her mother left. Iris remembers him reading it to her at bedtime. He’d never read to her before. That’s how she worked out her mother wasn’t coming back.
I open the door and a wave of heat and babble hits me and I feel my father flinch.
‘I don’t …’ he begins.
‘I’ll get you some tea,’ I tell him. He has forgotten that his favourite drink is a pint of Guinness with a measure of Bushmills on the side.
‘And a bun,’ I say. He nods and I persuade him through the door.
Iris has a window seat. One hand holds the book while the other is wrapped around a Styrofoam cup of tea. Her head leans against the window. Through it, grey waves rise and fall, dragging their white manes behind them. And the land, falling away with the distance we have already come.
I usher Dad towards her table. He clutches my arm as a small boy barrels towards us and I steer him out of harm’s way as the child, and – in hot pursuit – his mother, rush past us. The boy makes a loud and accurate siren wail and the noise alerts Iris’s attention. She looks over the top of the book and sees us. Surprise freezes her face. Her eyes are wide with it; her mouth open in a perfect circle. She looks unlike herself.
I have finally managed to surprise Iris Armstrong.
The seat beside her is empty. I coax Dad out of his coat, steer him into the chair.
‘Hello,’ he says to Iris. ‘I’m Eugene Keogh. I’m a taxi driver. From Harold’s Cross.’ He offers his hand, and Iris puts her book down and obliges, as she always does, with hers. Instead of shaking her hand, Dad holds it between both of his as though he is warming it.
The woman in the seat opposite Iris looks at me. ‘Do you want to sit here?’ she says. ‘So you can talk to your friend.’ Her smile is wide.
‘Oh … thank you but, I don’t want to distur—’ I begin.
The woman stands up, hitches the strap of her handbag on her shoulder. ‘It’s no problem,’ she says, smiling. ‘There’re lots of seats.’
When she leaves, Iris and I look at each other. I don’t know what to say, so I wait to see if Iris knows.
‘I
