Читать книгу: «Rules of the Road», страница 3
Her dad’s death. That might have been a cue. Anyway, that’s when she started experiencing symptoms. Turns she called them. Blurred vision, staggering, tripping, banging into the architraves of doors as if she’d suddenly lost touch with spatial awareness. And then the pain. Pain in her muscles, her joints, her limbs, her head. These turns didn’t happen all at the same time. They took turns and did not persist, so that, at first, Iris thought she was imagining them. Or she put it down to the tiredness she was feeling then. All the time. The doctor, vague, cited an auto-immune deficiency. Said it could be caused by stress which was natural, under the circumstances. With the recent death of her father and her new job – new career – as communications officer for the Alzheimer’s Society. He described these things as stressful. Iris disagreed. Her father dying was the least stressful bit of the whole process, she told me. ‘If he’d been a dog, he would have been put out of his misery long ago,’ she said. I agreed with her. I’ve seen the liberties this disease takes.
Iris told me that the first thing she felt when she was finally diagnosed was relief. That it wasn’t Alzheimer’s. She had experienced sporadic short-term memory issues and had thought the worst, which is so unlike her. That’s more my area of expertise. It turns out that memory problems can be another symptom of MS. Another little gift, as Iris puts it. Left at her door like a cat leaves a dead bird.
But there was nothing relieving about Iris’s diagnosis. Primary progressive Multiple Sclerosis.
‘I’ve been upgraded,’ Iris said when she came out of the hospital that day. The day she finally got the diagnosis. She didn’t want me to go with her that day. ‘It’s just routine,’ she said. I insisted. I had a bad feeling. And yes, I do have a habit of expecting the worst. But I had observed some deterioration in Iris’s movements at that time. A heavier lean on her walking stick. A slower gait. A tautening of the skin across her face that hinted at fatigue and unexpressed pain.
‘What do you mean? Upgraded?’ I said. Already, I could feel my heart inside my chest, quickening. I knew how Iris could dress up a thing. Make it sound acceptable.
And she did her best that day.
But it isn’t easy to dress up primary progressive MS.
‘We’ll get a second opinion,’ I said, as we walked down the corridor.
Iris stopped walking. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I know it’s true.’ Her voice was quiet.
She was in a relationship at that time. Harry Harper. He was an artist and a year-round swimmer, which was where Iris met him. They met at sea.
Iris said theirs was a casual relationship and the only reason it had gone on so long was because of the sex, which she declared thorough. And she loved his name, being a fan of alliteration.
But she really liked him. I could tell. He was unselfconsciously handsome, interesting and interested. And he was thoughtful. Kind. He always matched Iris’s pace, was careful not to hold too many doors open for her, and remembered that she disliked dates, so he never put them into the sticky toffee pudding he made for her because he knew that she loved sticky toffee pudding but hated dates.
He had no children and one ex-wife with whom he played squash once a week.
And while Iris didn’t believe in The One – one-at-a-time is her philosophy – I could tell that she thought a lot of Harry.
And then she got the upgrade as she called it, and she ended her relationship with him shortly after that. She said she refused to be a burden to anybody.
‘You’re not a burden,’ Harry said.
‘I will be,’ Iris told him.
‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t matter to me.’
‘It matters to me,’ Iris told him.
And that was that.
I always tell the girls, when they complain about this or that, that they must look at the situation objectively and try to find something positive in it.
The only positive thing about this version of the disease is that people don’t usually get it until they’re older, and so it was with Iris, who wasn’t diagnosed until she was forty-five.
Other than that … well, that’s it really. Everything else about the disease is … well, I suppose it isn’t always easy to see the positives.
Iris put a brave face on it, she didn’t battle it as such. She mostly ignored it. Never mentioned it. And that worked, I think. For a long time. People sort of forgot she had it, and that suited Iris down to the ground. And while there were always reminders, should you care to look for them, these were outnumbered by Iris herself. The mighty tour de force of her. The indefatigable fact of her.
I suppose that’s what’s so wrong about where we are now. Here, on a boat that smells like dirty J-cloths. It’s so unlike her. Oddly, it’s this thought that gives me pause. And some comfort. This is probably just a temporary setback. A down day. We all have those, don’t we? God knows, Iris, of all people, is entitled to one.
I walk back to my seat with my tray of grey teas and three KitKats – the only confectionary on offer with a protective wrapping – and also an ever-so-slight bounce in my step. Perhaps bounce is an overstatement, but there is definitely more flexibility in my gait than before.
An off day. That’s what this is. We’ll be calling it a ‘glitch’ in a few weeks’ time.
5
YOU MUST NOT PARK IN ANY WAY WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE NORMAL FLOW OF TRAFFIC.
The ferry takes three hours to get to Wales, and to be honest, I could not say much about the journey other than it passed.
I can say that Wales smells different. And it sounds different. Mostly fumes and the blaring of car horns as I release the handbrake and now we’re on the ramp again, but this time I’m driving down the ramp, onto foreign soil.
I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
Iris does.
She tells me that I am going to buy two ferry tickets back to Dublin for Dad and myself.
I nod and don’t say anything because I need to think.
THINK.
On the way into the car park, I have a panicky thought about what side of the road English people drive on. And Welsh people. It’s the same side as us, isn’t it? Of course it is. It’s just … I hate driving in unfamiliar places. Or in the dark. Or in bad weather. I have never driven in another country. The routes I drive are well-worn and familiar. The school run, back in the day. Over to Santry where the Alzheimer’s Society holds a few events during the week; singsongs and tea and buns and round-the-table conversations like what’s your favourite food and who’s your favourite singer and whatnot. Frank Sinatra always gets a mention, and not just from Dad. Semolina is a hit when puddings are discussed. I made it for the girls once. They wouldn’t believe me when I told them it was dessert. I ended up eating theirs as well as mine. They were right, it was lumpy.
Inside the car, nobody talks. I glance in the rear-view mirror. Dad is asleep, his head resting against the window. The collar of his shirt gapes around his narrow neck. Every day it seems there is less of him. Iris, in the passenger seat, looks out her window. There is nothing to see but lines and lines of cars parked beneath harsh fluorescent lighting. These places remind me of scenes in films where something frightening happens. Something shocking. Iris loves horrors. I like period dramas. When we go to the cinema, we compromise with comedies or biopics.
I reverse into a torturously narrow space in jerking stops and starts, which shakes Dad awake. He straightens and shouts, ‘Hard down on the left,’ and I stiffen, my neck snapping as I twist my head every which way until the car has been parked without incident.
I look at Iris. ‘We’re here,’ I say, unnecessarily.
‘How are you going to get out?’ she says, nodding towards the massive Land Rover inches away from my car door.
‘I’ll climb out your side.’ There is no question of me attempting to park in a more equitable manner. This is as good as it gets. Iris opens her door, hooks her hands behind her knees, and lifts her legs out of the car. Then she places her hands on the headrest and the door handle and uses them as levers to pull herself into a standing position. I hand her the crutches, and she leans on them, her knuckles white with effort. She has a wheelchair in her house. ‘In case of emergencies,’ she told me, when I spotted it, folded, behind the clothes horse in her utility room. I don’t think she’s ever sat in it. I stretch into the back seat and open Dad’s door. ‘What are we doing now?’ he wants to know, and his face is pinched with the kind of worry that the nursing staff talk about avoiding at all costs. He needs his routine, they tell me, when I arrive to take him out for one of our adventures as I call them. Feeding the ducks in Saint Anne’s Park. He still likes doing that. Even though he’s started to eat the bread himself.
Or to that nice café in Kinsealy where the staff are kind and don’t mind if Dad tears his napkin into a hundred tiny bits and scatters them around his plate. Or takes the sugar sachets out of the bowl and lines them along the edge of the table. Or spreads jam on his ham sandwich, or ketchup on his apple tart. They don’t mention any of that, and they remember his name and smile at him when they’re taking his order as if he is making perfect sense and not getting his words all jumbled up.
‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I say. I smile and put my hand on his arm, rub gently. He looks frozen as well as worried.
‘Should I get out?’ He nods towards the door I have opened.
Iris bends towards him. ‘Yes, Mr Keogh, you can get out now,’ she tells him. ‘I’m going to take you for a cup of tea while Terry is organising your ferry tickets back to Dublin.’ She looks at me then, and I say nothing, and she nods as if I haven’t said nothing. As if I have agreed with her, because, let’s face it, that’s what most people do.
‘And a bun?’ Dad asks.
‘Of course,’ says Iris.
He negotiates himself out of the car. The sluggishness of the endeavour suits me, as I need time to think.
THINK.
I lift Iris’s bag out of the back seat. She’s travelling light. I’d say three days’ worth of clothes inside.
Which means I have maybe three days.
Three days.
During which Brendan will worry himself sick about the Canadians. There are young people in his department. Two of them with brand-new mortgages and one with a brand-new baby.
Last in, first out. Isn’t that what they say?
And Anna. Conscientious, hardworking Anna, who, despite all her conscientiousness and hard work, is always convinced that she will fail every exam she has ever sat. And these are her finals. Not a weekly spelling test. Although it is true to say that she worried about those too.
And then there’s Kate’s play, debuting in Galway next week. Which is a marvellous thing, of course it is. But she’ll be stressed about it and pretending she’s not stressed at all, which, in my experience, makes the thing you’re stressed about even more stressful.
I am needed at home.
What will happen if I’m not there?
I can’t imagine not being there. I’ve always been there.
But I’m already not there, and, so far, nothing has happened. Nothing bad at any rate. But it’s only been – I check my watch – seven hours since I left the house this morning. How can it only be seven hours? They don’t even know I’m gone yet. Brendan will assume I didn’t get on the boat, I know he will.
Because I am needed at home.
Apart from all that, am I really thinking about dragging my father behind me for three days? And apart from all that, Iris will go berserk if she even suspects that I am considering doing anything other than what she has told me to do.
THINK.
In the terminal building, Iris shows me where the ticket sales office is. ‘We’ll be in here, okay?’ she says, nodding towards a café that smells like the oil in the deep-fat fryer needs changing as a matter of urgency.
Iris smiles her full-on, no-holds-barred smile at me. ‘Thanks Terry,’ she says.
‘For what?’
‘Just … for being so understanding.’
I nod.
I understand nothing.
I stop outside the ticket sales office. Iris turns just before she and Dad enter the café and I make a great show of rummaging in my bag for something. My purse, perhaps. Yes, my purse. I find it easily. I make a great show of finding it. Kate will not be casting me in one of her plays any time soon. In my peripheral vision, Iris waits. My father looks around in his confused, vexed way as if he has no idea what he is doing here but he is certain it is nothing good.
I walk into the ticket sales office, my purse held aloft like a prize.
Once I am out of Iris’s line of vision, I take out my mobile. There’s a missed call from Brendan. I dial his number. The girls are always at me to programme people’s numbers into my phone, but I prefer doing it this way. It gives me time to gather my thoughts. Work out what I’m going to say.
Brendan answers the phone immediately, as if he’s been sitting beside it, waiting for it to ring.
‘Terry?’ he says. ‘Where are you?’
The small speech I had prepared deserts me. It wasn’t a speech exactly, just, you know, a collection of words. Sentences. An explanation. I had the words ‘unforeseen circumstances’ in there somewhere. I’m pretty sure I did. Now there’s nothing. Just a blank space in my head where the small speech had been.
‘I’m in Holyhead,’ I say.
‘Holyhead?’ As if he’s never heard of it.
‘Yes. The ferry port in Wales.’
‘What the hell are you doing there?’ His use of the word ‘hell’ jolts me. We don’t use words like that. And I can’t remember the last time he raised his voice. Not even at the telly when Dublin played in the final. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we argued, me and Brendan. It’s been ages. Years, I’d say.
‘Well, Iris is talking about going to a concert.’ This seems so … preposterous all of a sudden.
‘A concert?’ Brendan’s tone is halting, as though he’s positive he’s misheard.
‘Jason Donovan,’ I offer, just to get it out of the way. ‘He was in that soap opera, remember? Neighbours.’
‘What in the name of God does Jason Donovan have to do with anything?’
‘Well, nothing really. Only, Iris wants to go to his concert. It’s on in the Hippodrome tonight. That’s in London. You probably already know that.’
Down the line, I hear Brendan’s breath, being sucked into his lungs, held there, released in a long thin line through the small circle that he will have made of his mouth. The phone feels hot and slippery in my hands. When he speaks, his voice is conversational. ‘I thought Iris was anxious to do away with herself?’
I say nothing. I’m afraid to say anything because of how angry I suddenly am. I am boiling with rage. Seething. I feel like, if I breathed out through my nose, plumes of smoke would issue from my nostrils, that’s how angry I feel. It’s a strange sensation. It is huge. Bigger than me.
‘Terry? Are you there?’ Brendan says.
‘Yes,’ I say. The word sounds strangled, as if someone is pressing their hands around my neck.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘When are you coming home, for starters?’
‘I’m not sure.’
I hear Brendan shift the receiver from one hand to the other. ‘Listen Terry, you need to get back here. ASAP.’
‘Why? Has something happened? Are the girls okay?’
‘Of course they’re okay. Why the hell wouldn’t they be okay?’
There is that word again. And his voice still raised. Maybe his blood pressure too. The doctor said it wasn’t high exactly, just … that he needed to keep an eye on it. Watch what he eats and maybe do a bit more exercise. I glance around and a woman behind me snatches her head away, now apparently engrossed in the clock on the wall, which is, by my reckoning, five minutes slow. I lower my voice. ‘Brendan, listen, just calm down and …’
‘Don’t tell me to calm down. I’ve been researching this. You could face gaol time if you continue on this ridiculous odyssey. And dragging your poor father along as well. That is so … so …’ He struggles to find the appropriate word. ‘Irresponsible’. That’s the word he’s looking for. I feel the sting of it before he locates it and throws it at me like a punch. I see Iris and Dad in the café now, sitting by the window. Iris is pouring tea from a stainless-steel pot into two cups. Dad is cutting a Bakewell tart into a hundred pieces with a spoon while his eyes scan the people hurrying past the window. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t eaten even one of his five-a-day today.
Brendan is right. I am being irresponsible.
‘… and if the girls knew what you were—’
‘Have you spoken to them?’
Brendan sighs. ‘Anna rang me from the house earlier.’
‘Did she pick up the laundered clothes I left on her bed? I washed them with that new organic detergent I ordered. The pharmacist reckons it’s the best detergent on the market for people with eczema.’
‘For God’s sake, Terry, I don’t know. Just … come home. Stop this. Now.’
‘Did she?’
‘What?’
‘Get the clothes? I told her I’d have them ready for her. She’s been really anxious about the exams, and I—’
‘She wanted to know where you were.’
‘What did you say?’ I hold my breath.
‘I said … I just said you were out. With Iris.’
‘And she didn’t ask anything else?’
‘No. She’s too preoccupied.’
I am struck by what must be maternal guilt. The working mothers used to talk about it when I’d meet them sometimes at the school gate or the supermarket. I’d nod and say, ‘Oh yes’, and, ‘Isn’t it desperate’, and, ‘It comes with the territory’, but the truth was, I never felt it. I never left the girls. I was there. I was always there.
‘And Kate rang.’
‘Kate?’ Kate never rings. I ring her. Every Sunday night ten minutes before the news, which usually hasn’t started by the time I hang up. Yes, of course she’d ring me if I didn’t make the effort, but she’s so busy. Especially now, with the play so close. Anyway, she prefers texting to talking. I’m sure lots of young people do.
‘Why did she ring?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Brendan. ‘Something about our hotel accommodation in Galway. She said she couldn’t get through to you.’ He lapses into silence.
‘Is there a problem with the hotel?’ I ask.
‘I think so. I’m not sure. Look, you should really talk to Kate yourself,’ says Brendan.
‘But you were on the phone to her. Why didn’t you talk to her?’
‘I don’t do phones, Terry. You know that.’
‘Well then, I’d better not keep you.’
‘Terry, wait, I—’
I hang up.
That’s the second time in one day I’ve hung up on him.
The second time in twenty-six years.
6
IF YOU ARE APPROACHING A JUNCTION WITH A MAJOR ROAD, YOU MUST YIELD.
‘Are you okay?’ Iris wants to know when I arrive in the café where they have drained their tea and my father has eaten all of the tiny denominations of his tart.
I am out of breath and very possibly flushed of face, having run from the ticket office to the bookshop, then to the café. I don’t know why I ran. People stared as if they’d never seen a long, loping woman before.
I am out of shape. I can feel the flush of blood across my usually pale face. I had relied on running up and down the stairs several times a day, carrying baskets of laundry, to keep obesity and heart disease in check, and perhaps it did, back in the day. I can’t remember the last time I took the stairs at a run.
I put the book on the table, face up so there can be no confusion. Dad reads the title.
‘The A to Z of L … on … don,’ he reads in the faltering way he has now, dragging his finger under the words.
‘No,’ says Iris.
I take off my cardigan and sit down. I feel the sweat I have worked up collect in the hollows of my armpits, and I am reminded that I have no change of clothes for three days. For any days. I open the book. ‘Well, I’ve never driven in London before,’ I say. ‘Now, whereabouts is the Hippodrome?’ I ask, oh-so-matter-of-factly. I follow that with an offhand, ‘And have you booked somewhere to stay?’
‘You’re not coming with me, Terry,’ Iris says, in her quiet, steely voice that brooks no argument.
‘I am,’ I rally with a casual tone.
‘No,’ Iris says, her voice rising. ‘You’re not.’
‘If it were me going to Switzerland, would you come with me?’
‘If you wanted me to, I would.’
‘And if I didn’t want you to?’
‘Look, this is a moot argument. You wouldn’t go to Switzerland.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because … you’d always be thinking that a cure would be discovered.’
‘Exactly!’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘It could.’
‘It’s unlikely. In my lifetime at any rate.’
‘Only if you insist on cutting your lifetime short.’ I whisper this, but it’s a loud whisper and attracts the attention of a couple at a neighbouring table.
Iris glares at the couple, who whip their heads in the other direction so now it looks like they are taking a keen interest in the hot food, which no one in their right mind would do.
I was going to make seafood pie this evening. I tend to cook fish when Dad is staying. Good for your brain. Brendan doesn’t think eating fish will make any difference to Dad at his stage of the disease – stage five, we think – but it’s important to feel like you are doing something positive. I think about my bright, comfortable kitchen with the rocking chair that faces towards the garden where, only this morning, I admired the tulips I had planted as bulbs last September, dancing on their long stems, a palette of oranges and reds and yellows.
Dad points to a television screen mounted on the wall where a reporter is at the scene of a road-traffic accident. ‘If you are approaching a junction with a major road,’ he recites, ‘you must yield.’
‘You hear that Iris?’ I look at her. ‘You must yield.’
‘Are you all finished here?’ asks a waitress, appearing at our table with a tray in her hand and a wad of chewing gum bulging in her cheek.
‘Yes we are.’ Iris reaches for her sticks, hauls herself to her feet. She sways before she steadies herself, and I see the familiar curiosity in the waitress’s expression.
People like illnesses to be visible to the naked eye. Otherwise there’s suspicion. That’s one of the reasons Iris rarely tells anyone she has MS. To avoid a variation of, You look fine to me.
‘No, 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.
