“Here, take my bloody cap. My Joyce is a good girl, never did a thing wrong in her life. She has nothing right now but me and this trip, as far as I can see. So here, take it. If I have to go without my cap and my shoes and my belt and my coat, well, that’s fine by me, but my Joyce isn’t going to London without her father.”
Well, if that isn’t enough to break a girl.
“Mr. Conway, you do know that you get your clothing back once you go through the metal detector?”
“What?” he shouts. “Why the hell didn’t she tell me that? All this feckin’ nonsense for nothing. Honestly, you’d think she almost wants the trouble sometimes. Okay, lads, you can take my things. Will we still make the flight, do you think?”
Any tears that had welled have instantly dried.
Finally the door to my cell opens, and with a single nod, I’m a free woman.
“Doris, you cannot move the stove in the kitchen. Al, tell her.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Honey, first of all it’s heavy, and second of all, it’s gas. You are not qualified to move around kitchen appliances,” Al explains, and prepares to bite into a doughnut.
Doris whisks it away from him, leaving him to lick dribbles of jam from his fingers. “You two don’t seem to understand that it’s bad feng shui to have a stove facing a door. The person at the stove may instinctively want to glance back at the door, which creates a feeling of unease, which can lead to accidents.”
“Perhaps removing the stove altogether will be a safer option for Dad,” Bea pipes in.
“You have to give me a break,” Justin sighs, sitting down at the new kitchen table. “All the place needs is furniture and a lick of paint, not for you to restructure the entire place according to Yoda.”
“It is not according to Yoda,” Doris huffs. “Donald Trump follows feng shui, you know.”
“Oh, well then,” Al and Justin say in unison.
“Yes, well then. Maybe if you did what he did, you’d be able to walk up the stairs without having to take a lunch break halfway up,” she snaps at Al. “Just because you sell tires, sweetie, doesn’t mean you have to wear them too.”
Bea’s mouth drops, and Justin tries not to laugh. “Come on, Bea, let’s get out of here before it turns to violence.”
“Where are you two going? Can I come?” Al asks.
“I’m going to the dentist, and Bea has rehearsals for tonight.”
“Good luck, blondie.” Al ruffles her hair. “We’ll be cheering for you.”
“Thanks.” She grinds her teeth and fixes her hair. “Oh, that reminds me. One more thing about the woman on the phone, Joyce?”
What, what, what? “What about her?”
“She knows that I’m blond.”
“How did she know?” Doris asks with surprise.
“She said she just guessed. But that’s not it. Before she hung up she said, ‘Best of luck with your ballet show.’”
“So she’s a thoughtful lucky-guesser.” Al shrugs.
“Well, I was thinking about it afterward, and I don’t remember telling her anything about my show being specifically ballet.”
Justin immediately looks to Al, a little more concerned now that it involves his daughter, but adrenaline still surges. “What do you think?”
“I think watch your back, bro. She could be a fruitcake.” He stands up and heads to the kitchen, rubbing his stomach. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Fruitcake.”
Deflated, Justin looks to his daughter. “Did she sound like a fruitcake?”
“I dunno.” Bea shrugs. “What does a fruitcake sound like?”
Justin, Al, and Bea all turn to stare at Doris.
“What?” she squeals.
“No.” Bea shakes her head wildly at her father. “Nothing like that at all.”
“What’s this for, Gracie?”
“It’s a sick bag.”
“What does this do?”
“It’s for hanging your coat up.”
“Why is that there?”
“It’s a table.”
“How do you get it down?”
“By unlatching it, at the top.”
“Sir, please leave your tabletop up until after takeoff.”
Silence, but only for a moment.
“What are they doing outside?”
“Loading the bags.”
“What’s that button?”
“An ejector seat for people who ask three million questions.”
“What’s it, really?”
“For reclining your chair.”
“Sir, could you stay upright until after takeoff, please?”
Silence again.
Then, “What does that do?”
“Fan.”
“What about that?”
“Light.”
“And that one?”
“Yes, sir, can I help you?”
“You pressed the button for assistance.”
“Oh, is that what that little woman on the button is for? I didn’t know. Actually, can I have a drink of water?”
“We can’t serve drinks until after takeoff, sir.”
“Oh, okay. That was a fine display you did earlier. You were the image of my friend Edna when you had that oxygen mask on. She used to smoke sixty a day, you see.”
The flight attendant makes an O shape with her mouth.
“I feel very safe now, but what if we go down over land?” He raises his voice, and the passengers around us look our way. “Surely the life jackets are hopeless, unless we blow our whistles while we’re flying through the air and hope someone below hears and catches us. Do we not have parachutes?”
“There’s no need to worry, sir, we won’t go down over land.”
“Okay. That’s very reassuring, indeed. But if we do, tell the pilot to aim for a haystack or something.”
I take deep breaths and pretend that I don’t know him. I continue reading my book, The Golden Age of Dutch Painting: Vermeer, Metsu and Terborch, and try to convince myself this is not the bad idea it’s turning out to be.
“Where are the toilets?”
“To the front and on the left, but you can’t go until after take-off,” the attendant responds.
Dad’s eyes widen. “And when will that be?”
“In just a few minutes.”
“In just a few minutes, that”—he takes the sick bag out from the seat pocket—“won’t be used for what it’s supposed to be used for.”
“We will be in the air in just a few minutes more, I assure you.” The attendant leaves quickly before he can ask another question.
I sigh.
“Don’t you be sighing until after takeoff,” Dad says, and the man next to me laughs and pretends to turn it into a cough.
Dad looks out the window. “Oh oh oh,” he sings, “we’re moving now, Gracie.”
As soon as we’re off the ground, the wheels moan as they’re brought back up, and then we are light in the air. Dad is suddenly quiet. He is turned sideways in his chair, head filling the window, watching as we reach the beginning of the clouds, mere wisps at first. The plane bumps around as it pushes through. Dad is agog as we’re surrounded by white on all sides of the plane; his head darts around looking at every window possible, and then suddenly it is blue and calm above the fluffy world of clouds. Dad blesses himself. He pushes his nose up against the window, his face lit by the nearby sun, and I take a mental photograph for my own hall of memories.
The Fasten Seatbelt sign goes off with a bing, and the cabin crew announces that we may now use electronic devices and the facilities, and that food and refreshments will be served shortly. Dad takes down the tabletop, reaches into his pocket, and takes out his photograph of Mum. He places her on the table, facing out the window. He reclines his chair, and they both watch the endless sea of white clouds disappear below us and don’t say a word for the remainder of the flight.
Chapter 20
WELL, I MUST SAY, THAT was absolutely marvelous. Marvelo
us indeed.” Dad pumps the pilot’s hand up and down enthusiastically.
We are standing by the just-opened door of the plane, with a queue of hundreds of irritated passengers huffing and puffing down our necks. They are like greyhounds whose trap has opened, with the bunny having been fired off ahead of them, and all that blocks their path is, well, Dad. The usual rock in the stream.
“And the food,” Dad continues to the cabin crew, “it was excellent, just excellent.”
All this over a ham roll and a cup of tea.
“I can’t believe I was eating in the sky.” He laughs. “Well done again, just marvelous. Nothing short of miraculous, I’d say. My Lord.” He pumps the pilot’s hand again, as though he’s meeting JFK.
“Okay, Dad, we should move on now. We’re holding everybody up.”
“Oh, is that so? Thanks again, folks. ’Bye now. Might see you on the way back,” he shouts over his shoulder as I pull him away.
We make our way through the tunnel adjoining the plane to the terminal, and Dad says hello and tips his hat to everyone we pass on the way to the baggage claim.
“You really don’t have to say hello to everybody, you know.”
“It’s nice to be important, Gracie, but it’s more important to be nice. Particularly when in another country,” says the man who hasn’t left the province of Leinster for ten years.
“Will you stop shouting?”
“I can’t help it. My ears feel funny.”
“Either yawn or hold your nose and blow. It will help your ears to pop.”
He stands by the conveyor belt, purple-faced, with his cheeks puffed out and his fingers pinched over his nose. He takes a deep breath and pushes. He lets out a fart.
The conveyor belt jerks into motion, and like flies around a carcass, people suddenly swoop in front of us to block our view, as though their life depends on grabbing their bags this very second.
“There’s your bag, Dad.” I spot it and step forward.
“I’ll get it, love.”
“No, I will. You’ll hurt your back.”
“Step back, love, I can do it.” He passes over the yellow line and grabs his bag, only to realize that the strength he once had is gone, and he finds himself walking alongside it while tugging away. Ordinarily I would rush to help him, but I’m doubled over laughing. All I can hear is Dad saying, “Excuse me, excuse me,” to people who are standing over the yellow line as he tries to keep up with his moving luggage. He does a full lap of the conveyor belt, and by the time he gets back to where I stand (though I’m still doubled over), somebody has the common sense to help the out-of-breath grumbling old man.
He pulls his bag over to me, his face scarlet, his breathing heavy.
“I’ll let you get your own bag,” he says, pulling his cap farther down over his eyes in embarrassment.
I wait for my bag while Dad wanders around the baggage claim “acquainting himself with London.” After the incident at the Dublin airport, the satellite navigational voice in my head has continuously nagged me to head back home, but somewhere inside, another part of me is under strict orders to soldier on, feeling convinced that this trip is the right thing to do. As I collect my bag from the belt, though, I am aware that there is no clear purpose for this trip. A wild goose chase is all it is right now. Instinct alone, caused by a confusing conversation with a girl named Bea, has caused me to fly to another country with my seventy-five-year-old father, someone who has never left Ireland in his entire life. Suddenly what seemed like the “only thing to do” at the time now appears to be completely irrational behavior.
What does it mean to dream about somebody you’ve never met, almost every night, and then have a chance encounter with them over the phone? I had called my dad’s emergency number; she had answered her dad’s emergency phone number. Surely there is a message in that. But what am I supposed to learn? Is it just a mere coincidence that an ordinary right-thinking person would ignore, or am I right to think and feel that something more lies beneath this? My hope is that this trip will have some answers for me. Panic begins to build as I watch Dad peering at a poster on the far side of the room. I have no idea what to do with him.
Suddenly Dad’s hand flies to his head and then to his chest, and he darts toward me with a manic look in his eyes. I make a grab for his pills.
“Gracie,” he gasps.
“Here, quickly, take these.” My hand trembles as I hold out the pills and a bottle of water.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Well, you looked…”
“I looked what?”
“Like you were going to have a heart attack!”
“That’s because I bloody well will, if we don’t get out of here quick.” He grabs my arm and starts to pull me along.
“What’s wrong? Where are we going?”
“We’re going to Westminster.”
“What? Why? No! Dad, we have to go to the hotel to leave our bags.”
He stops walking and whips around to push his face close to mine, almost aggressively. His voice shakes with adrenaline. “The Antiques Roadshow is having a valuation day today from nine thirty to four thirty in a place called Banqueting House. If we leave now we can start lining up. I’m not going to miss seeing it on the telly and then come all the way to London just to miss seeing it in the flesh. We might even get to see Michael Aspel. Michael Aspel, Gracie. Christ Almighty, let’s get out of here.”
His pupils are dilated, he’s all fired up. He shoots off through the sliding doors, with nothing to declare but temporary insanity, and takes a confident left.
I wait there in the arrivals hall while men in suits approach me with placards from all sides. I sigh and wait. Dad reappears from the direction he went in, seesawing and pulling his bag behind him at top speed.
“You could have told me that was the wrong way,” he says, passing me and heading in the opposite direction.
Dad rushes through Trafalgar Square, pulling his suitcase behind him and scattering a flock of pigeons into the sky. He’s not interested in acquainting himself with London anymore; he has only Michael Aspel and the treasures of the blue-rinse brigade in sight. We’ve taken a few wrong turns since surfacing from the tube station, but Banqueting House finally comes into view, a seventeenth-century former royal palace, and though I am sure I have never visited it before, it stands before me, a familiar sight.
We join the deep queue already forming outside, and I study the single drawer that is in the hands of the old man in front of us. Behind us, a woman is rolling out a teacup from a pile of newspapers. All around me there is excited and rather innocent and polite chatter, and the sun is shining as we wait to enter the Banqueting House reception area. There are TV vans, camera and sound people going in and out of the building, and cameras filming the long queue while a woman with a microphone picks people out of the crowd to interview. Many people in the queue have brought deck chairs, picnic baskets of scones and finger sandwiches, and canteens of tea and coffee, and as Dad looks around with a grumbling stomach, I feel guilty, like a bad mother who hasn’t properly equipped her child. I’m also concerned for Dad that we won’t make it past the front door.
“Dad, I don’t want to worry you, but I really think that we’re supposed to have something with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like an object. Everybody else has things with them to be valued.”
Dad looks around and seems to realize this for the first time. His face falls.
“Maybe they’ll make an exception for us,” I add quickly, but I doubt it.
“What about these cases?” He looks down at our bags.
I try not to laugh. “I got them at TJ Maxx; I don’t think they’ll be interested in valuing them.”
Dad chuckles. “Maybe I’ll give them my undies. You know there’s a fine bit of history in them.”
I make a face, and he waves his hand dismissively.
We shuffle along slowly in the queue, and Dad has a gre
at time chatting with everybody about his life and his exciting trip with his daughter. After queuing for an hour and a half, we have been invited to two houses for afternoon tea, and the gentleman behind us has instructed Dad how to stop the mint in his garden from taking over the rosemary. Up ahead, just beyond the doors, I see an elderly couple being turned away. Dad sees this too and looks at me, his eyes worried. We will be up next pretty soon.
“Eh…” I look around quickly for something.
Both entrance doors have been held open for the flowing crowd. Just inside the main entrance, behind the opened doors, is a wooden wastebasket posing as an umbrella stand. When we reach the doors, and while no one is looking I turn it upside down, emptying it of a few scrunched balls of paper and forgotten umbrellas. I kick them behind the door just in time to hear, “Next.”
I carry it up to the reception desk, and Dad’s eyes pop out of his head at the sight of me.
“Welcome to Banqueting House,” a young woman greets us.
“Thank you.” I smile innocently.
“How many objects have you brought today?” she asks.
“Oh, just the one.” I raise the bin onto the table.
“Oh, wow, fantastic.” She runs her fingers along it, and Dad gives me a look that, if for any second I had forgotten which of us was the parent, would quickly remind me. “Have you been to a valuation day before?”
“No.” Dad shakes his head wildly. “But I see it on the telly all the time. Big fan, I am. Even when Hugh Scully was host.”
“Wonderful.” She smiles. “Once you enter the hall you’ll see there are many queues. Please join the queue for the appropriate discipline.”
“What queue should we join for this thing?” Dad looks at the item as though there’s a bad smell.
“Well, what is it?” she asks.
Dad looks at me, baffled.
“We were hoping you could tell us that,” I say politely.
“I’d suggest miscellaneous, and though that is the busiest table, we try to move it along as quickly as possible by having four experts. Once you reach the expert’s table, simply show your item, and he or she will tell you all about it.”