Rules of the Road. Ciara Geraghty

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.

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