Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

How could he not hear?

Then she spoke her mother’s name, I said. Emily.

And that made him turn around. He looked at Maeve and studied her face very carefully. He must have thought he had suddenly gone back in time and he was seeing Emily in front of him, a miniature Emily with the same lips and the same smile, the hair, same everything about her. He must have thought he had stopped in time also, not a day older than he was with Emily. He stepped towards her and shook her hand, then led her away from the group he was with. He said he was pushed for time, could he get back to her.

If you leave your number with my secretary, he said to her.

I’ve already done that, Maeve said.

That’s good, he said. I’ll be in touch with you.

I can always come back here, Maeve said. If I don’t hear from you.

He said nothing more, just smiled. I suppose he liked that in her, she was just like Emily, not going to be swept away by excuses. So that’s the way it was left. She smiled at him and pulled her hair back like she was opening the curtains. Then she turned and walked away.

I thought Maeve only wanted to lay eyes on him, I said. She wanted to see what he looked like in real life. She wanted to say his name. She wanted to see her reflection, that’s all, I thought.

I know they’ve met since then, I told Úna. She’s met her real father. She’s been out to his house, I have no problem with that. It’s not like a competition any more. Maeve is not comparing fathers, only exercising her right to know. She told me what his house looked like, the greyhounds guarding the front door with yellow lichen on their faces. She described the fanlight over the door, and the front room with the oak bookcases and the painting of a wheat field with the angle of the sunlight low. Maeve was shown around the rooms, the bedrooms with the books on the bedside tables. She met his wife, Julia. The kitchen is huge, with black and white diagonal tiles and there’s an island in the middle, double sink, a professional-level gas cooker with six rings. He loves cooking apparently, could have been a master chef, anything he put his mind down to. He looked very fit, so Maeve told me. He was wearing a tracksuit. He offered her a drink and they sat for a while in the living room together. She told me that he was sitting at one end of the room and she was sitting at the other end, at far ends, if you like, with a wide rug between them because the room was so large.

I had no more follow-on news to give Úna in Berlin. I wish I could have told her that we had fine weather for the wedding, everything went well, it was a great day. I wish I could have told her that my daughter was very happy, expecting a baby. I wish I could have told her all kinds of good news about the world that has not even happened yet.

I gave her my wedding speech.

That’s all I had at the time. I asked Úna if I could try it out on her. I told her that if my daughter ever got married, I was all ready with the speech. Could I rehearse it with her, I said, because she was not going to make the wedding anyway, even if it was happening after all.

It’s the usual father’s speech, I said. The one that every father makes. I’m sure they’ve all heard it before. About a taxi driver coming to the door of the house at four in the morning, asking if I could come out to the car and identify my daughter. Was that my daughter asleep in the back of his cab? And did I have any way of waking her up, because he didn’t want to shake her, physically, and he had tried everything including Jethro Tull full volume, he had been a taxi driver for thirty years, it never failed before. Absolutely, I said to him. No doubt whatsoever, it was my daughter, Maeve. I was her father, I said a few times, always was. The taxi driver looked as if he was suddenly in doubt and he had come to the wrong house, but then I paid him the fare and carried her in. I was the world expert at carrying a sleeping child in from the car, all the way into bed without waking her up. I was able to do it without letting her head roll back, bending down to open doors with one hand, making sure not to pass with her face directly under the light, pulling back the sheets even. I had lots of practice over the years. I managed to transfer her in from the taxi and lay her out on the bed, but then she woke up, just after I got her shoes off and covered her up. Maeve sat up wondering where she was, asking if there were any rashers, she could murder a rasher sandwich, with mayonnaise.

I know every father says they have that story, but it’s mine.

The problem was, there were no rashers. I checked in the fridge and found nothing. You know how it is, nobody went shopping and the fridge was empty. There was not even sliced bread for toast, as far as I remember. So I decided to make chips. I knew she would like that, home-made chips. So I started peeling potatoes. She came down in her dressing gown and slippers and sat at the table watching me. It was the summer, I remember, the beginning of brightness was already coming in through the window. I was asking her questions, how the night went. General questions that you ask as a father, not really expecting any answers, did you have a good time? She smiled at me, but she was saying nothing. We had no deep fryer, only a pot and the bottle of vegetable oil from the last time I made chips, so it still had sediments of burnt potato at the bottom. I cut the potatoes into chips and dried them individually on a fresh kitchen towel. The oil was making hot squeaking sounds and it started bubbling up as soon as I dropped the chips in. It’s a lovely sight, I thought to myself, boiling oil. I felt like the man in the chipper, with people watching me, waiting for their chips. I put on the extractor fan so it was hard to talk. I was asking Maeve more and more questions, fishing for information, I suppose. Again she smiled, tracing a permanent tea stain on the wooden table with her finger, holding her dressing gown closed over with the other hand. Her hair was tied up at the top of her head which made it look like a feather stuck forward. And I was busy concentrating on the chips, lifting them up with a slotted steel spoon to make sure they were not sticking to one another, waiting for them to get crispy and change colour from white to light brown.

This is what I remember. The chips in a bowl on a double layer of kitchen paper and Maeve sprinkling salt over them, ketchup on the side, eating them even though they were still far too hot, hardly able to hold them in her fingers. She took a small bite, keeping her mouth open as if she was holding on to a piece of information, like volcanic rock, throwing it back and forth, breathing quickly in and out. You know the way, I’ve often seen people outside the chipper doing this, I’ve done it myself, I’ve even seen my own father doing it that one time I remember him buying chips for us, rattling the bag, huffing as if you really want to say something and you can’t wait to put it into words, only you have to let the chip in your mouth cool down first and not burn your tongue.

Of course I was not going to put all this into the wedding speech, not all the details. But that’s the story as I remember it. I was giving Úna the unabridged version in Berlin, asking her advice, I suppose, trying to see if it works, would they still be interested?

Keep it short, Liam, Úna advised me. The wedding guests don’t want to know everything. They’ll want to start dancing at that point, if they’re still able to stand up.

I laughed.

Get to the point, she said.

I’m not trying to make any point, I said. I’m only saying it felt good to be able to carry Maeve in from the taxi. It felt good to be making chips. It was great seeing my daughter eating the chips with her bare feet on the cross beam of the kitchen table, rocking her chair back.