Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘… and of course Viking Dublin !’

Everyone roars again, including Dad, and I can’t help but laugh.

‘I don’t understand why we’re celebrating a bunch of oafs who raped and pillaged their way around our country.’

‘Oh, would you ever lighten up, at all, and have the craic?’

‘And what do we do when we see a rival DUKW on the road?’ the tour guide asks.

There’s a mixture of boos and roars.

‘OK, let’s go!’ Olaf says enthusiastically.

Justin frantically searches over the shaven heads of a group of Hare Krishnas who have begun to parade by him and obstruct his view of his woman in the red coat. A sea of orange togas, they smile at him merrily through their bell-ringing and drum-beating. He hops up and down on the spot, trying to get a view down Merrion Row.

Before him, a mime artist, dressed in a black leotard, with a painted white face, red lips and a striped hat, appears suddenly. They stand opposite one another, each waiting for the other to do something, Justin praying for the mime to grow bored and leave. He doesn’t. Instead, the mime squares his shoulders, looks mean, parts his legs and lets his fingers quiver around his holster area.

Keeping his voice down, Justin speaks politely, ‘Hey, I’m really not in the mood for this. Would you mind playing with someone else, please?’

Looking forlorn, the mime begins to play an invisible violin.

Justin hears laughter and realises he has an audience. Great .

‘Yeah, that’s funny. OK, enough now.’

Ignoring the antics, Justin distances himself from the growing crowd and continues to search down Merrion Row for the red coat.

The mime appears beside him again, holds his hand to his forehead and searches the distance as though at sea. His herd of spectators follow, bleating and snap-happy. An elderly Japanese couple take a photograph.

Justin grits his teeth and speaks quietly, hoping nobody but the mime can hear. ‘Hey, asshole, do I look like I’m having fun?’

With lips of a ventriloquist, a gruff Dublin accent responds, ‘Hey, asshole, do I look like I give a shit?’

‘You wanna play like this? Fine. I’m not sure whether you’re trying to be Marcel Marceau or Coco the clown but your little pantomime street performance is insulting to both of them. This crowd might find your stolen routines from Marceau’s repertoire amusing but I don’t. Unlike me, they’re not aware that you’ve failed to notice the fact that Marceau used these routines to tell a story or sketch a theme or character. He did not just randomly stand on a street trying to get out of a box nobody could see. Your lack of creativity and technique gives a bad name to mimes all over the world.’

The mime blinks once and proceeds to walk against an invisible strong wind.

‘Here I am!’ a voice calls beyond the crowd.

There she is! She recognised me!

Justin shuffles from foot to foot, trying to catch sight of her red coat.

The crowd turns and parts, to reveal Sarah, looking excited by the scene.

The mime mimicks Justin’s obvious disappointment, plastering a look of despair on his face and hunching his back so that his arms hang low and his hands almost scrape the ground.

‘Oooooooo,’ go the crowd, and Sarah’s face falls.

Justin nervously replaces his look of disappointment with a smile. He makes his way through the crowd, greets Sarah quickly and leads her speedily away from the scene while the crowd clap and some drop coins into a container nearby.

‘Don’t you think that was a bit rude? Maybe you should have given him some change or something,’ she says, looking over her shoulder apologetically at the mime, who is covering his face and moving his shoulders up and down violently in a false fit of tears.

‘I think the gentleman in the leotard was a bit rude.’ Distracted, Justin continues to look around for the red coat as they make their way to the restaurant for lunch, which Justin now definitely wants to cancel.

Tell her you feel sick. No. She’s a doctor, she’ll ask too many questions. Tell her you have unfortunately made a mistake and that you have a lecture, right now. Tell her, tell her!

But instead he finds himself continuing to walk with her, his mind as active as Mount St Helens, his eyes jumping around like an addict needing a fix. In the basement restaur ant, they are led to a quiet table in the corner. Justin eyes the door.

Yell ‘FIRE’ and run!

Sarah shuffles her coat off her shoulders to reveal much flesh, and pulls her chair closer to his.

Such a coincidence he bumped, quite literally, into the woman from the salon again. Though maybe it wasn’t such a big deal; Dublin’s a small town. Since being here he’s learned that everyone pretty much knows everyone, or somebody related to somebody, that someone once knew. But the woman, he would definitely have to stop calling her that. He should give her a name. Angelina .

‘What are you thinking about?’ Sarah leans across the table and gazes at him.

Or Lucille . ‘Coffee. I’m thinking about coffee. I’ll have a black coffee, please,’ he says to the waitress clearing their table. He looks at her name badge. Jessica . No, his woman wasn’t a Jessica.

‘You’re not eating?’ Sarah asks, disappointed and confused.

‘No, I can’t stay as long as I’d hoped. I have to get back to the college earlier than planned.’ His leg bounces beneath the table, hitting the surface and rattling the cutlery. The waitress and Sarah eye him peculiarly.

‘Oh, OK, well,’ she studies the menu, ‘I’ll have a chef’s salad and a glass of the house white, please,’ she says to the waitress and then to Justin, ‘I have to eat or I’ll collapse, I hope you don’t mind.’

‘No problem,’ he smiles. Even though you ordered the biggest fucking salad on the menu. How about the name, Susan? Does my woman look like a Susan? My woman? What the hell is wrong with me?

‘We are now turning into Dawson Street, so named after Joshua Dawson, who also designed Grafton, Anne and Henry Streets. On your right you will see the Mansion House, which houses the Lord Mayor of Dublin.’

All horned Viking helmets turn to the right. Video cameras, digital cameras and camera phones are suspended from the the open windows.

‘You think this is what the Vikings did, way back when, Dad? Went clickety-click with their cameras at buildings that weren’t even built yet?’ I whisper.

‘Oh, shut up,’ he says loudly, and the tour operator stops speaking, shocked.

‘Not you.’ Dad waves a hand at him. ‘Her.’ He points, and the entire bus looks at me.

‘To your right you will see St Anne’s Church, which was designed by Isaac Wells in 1707. The interior dates back to the seventeenth century,’ Olaf continues to the thirty-strong crew of Vikings aboard.

‘Actually the Romanesque façade wasn’t added until 1868, and that was designed by Thomas Newenham Deane,’ I whisper to Dad.

‘Oh,’ Dad says slowly at this, eyes widening. ‘I didn’t know that.’

My eyes widen at my own piece of information. ‘Me neither.’

Dad chuckles.

‘We are now on Nassau Street, we will pass Grafton Street on the left in just a moment.’

Dad starts singing, ‘Grafton Street’s a wonderland.’ Loudly.

The American woman in front of us turns around, her face beaming. ‘Oh, do you know that song? My father used to sing that song. He was from Ireland. Oh, I would love to hear it again; can you sing it for us?’

A chorus of, ‘Oh, yes, please do …’ from around us.

No stranger to singing in public, the man who sings weekly at the Monday Club begins singing and the entire bus joins in, moving from side to side. Dad’s voice reaches out beyond the plastic fold-up windows of the DUKW and into the ears of pedestrians and traffic going by.