Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘TV? What do you mean?’ Dr Montgomery looks up at Sky News and finally removes his fingers from Justin’s mouth.

All three focus on the television screen, the other two concentrating on the news while Justin watches the background where Joyce and her father have wandered into the path of the camera’s angle, them in the forefront, Big Ben in the background. Seemingly unaware, they carry out what looks like a seriously heated conversation, their hands gesturing wildly.

‘Look at those two idiots at the back,’ Dr Montgomery laughs.

Suddenly Joyce’s father pushes his suitcase over to Joyce and then storms off in the other direction, leaving Joyce alone with two bags, and throwing her hands up with frustration.

‘Yeah, thanks, that’s very mature,’ I shout after Dad who has just stormed off, leaving his suitcase behind with me. He is going in the wrong direction. Again. Has been since we left the Banqueting House but refuses to admit it and also refuses to get a taxi to the hotel as he is on a penny-saving mission.

He is still within my sights and so I sit on my case and wait for him to realise the error of his ways and come back. It’s evening now and I just want to get to the hotel and have a bath. My phone rings.

‘Hi, Kate.’

She is laughing hysterically.

‘What’s up with you?’ I smile. ‘Well, it’s nice to hear somebody is in a good mood.’

‘Oh, Joyce,’ she catches her breath and I imagine she’s wiping her teared-up eyes. ‘You are the best dose of medicine, you really are.’

‘What do you mean?’ I can hear children’s laughter in the background.

‘Do me a favour and raise your right hand.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it. It’s a game the kids taught me,’ she giggles.

‘OK,’ I sigh, and raise my right hand.

I hear the kids howl with laughter in the back.

‘Tell her to wiggle her right foot,’ Jayda shouts down the phone.

‘OK,’ I laugh. This is putting me in a much better mood. I wiggle my right foot and they laugh again. I can even hear Kate’s husband howling in the background, which suddenly makes me uncomfortable again. ‘Kate, what exactly is this?’

Kate can’t answer, she’s laughing so much.

‘Tell her to hop up and down!’ Eric shouts.

‘No.’ I’m irritated now.

‘She did it for Jayda,’ he begins to whinge, and I sense tears.

I quickly hop up and down.

They howl again.

‘By any chance,’ Kate wheezes through her laugher, ‘is there anyone around you who has the time?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I frown, looking around. I see Big Ben behind me, still not sure of the joke, and as I turn back round only then see the camera crew in the distance. I stop hopping.

‘What on earth is that woman doing?’ Dr Montgomery steps closer to the television. ‘Is she dancing?’

‘Oo han ee ha?’ Justin says, feeling the effects of his numbed mouth.

‘Of course I can see her,’ he responds. ‘I think she’s doing the hokey cokey. See? You put your left leg in,’ he begins to sing. ‘Left leg out. In. Out. In. Out. Shake it all about.’ He dances around. Rita rolls her eyes.

Justin, relieved that his sightings of Joyce aren’t all in his mind, begins to bounce up and down in his seat, impatiently. Hurry! I need to get to her .

Dr Montgomery glances at him curiously, pushes Justin back in the chair and places the instruments in his mouth again. Justin gurgles and makes noises from the back of his throat.

‘It’s no good explaining it to me, Justin, you’re not going anywhere until I have filled this cavity. You’ll have to take antibiotics for the abscess, then when you come back I’ll either extract it or use endodontic treatment. Whatever I’m in the mood for,’ he laughs girlishly. ‘And whoever this Joyce lady is, you can thank her for curing your fear of needles. You didn’t even notice I’d injected you.’

‘Aah haa ooo aaa aa ee a.’

‘Oh, well, good for you, old boy. I donated blood before too, you know. Satisfying isn’t it?’

‘Aa. Ooo aaa iii uuuu.’

Dr Montgomery throws his head back and laughs. ‘Oh, don’t be silly, they’ll never tell you who the blood has gone to. Besides it’s been separated into different parts, platelets, red blood cells and what have you.’

Justin gurgles again.

The dentist laughs again. ‘What kind of muffins do you want?’

‘Aa.’

‘Banana,’ he considers this. ‘Prefer chocolate, myself. Air, Rita, please.’

A bewildered Rita puts the tube into Justin’s mouth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I succeed in hailing a black cab and I send the driver in the direction of the dapper old man who is easily spotted on the pavement swaying in horizontal motions like a drunken sailor, amidst the crowd’s vertical stream. Like a salmon, he swims upstream, pushing against the throngs of people going in the opposite direction. Not doing it just for the sake of it, not to be deliberately different, or even noticing he’s the odd one out.

Seeing him now reminds me of a tale he told me when I was so small he seemed to me to be as gigantic as our neighbour’s oak tree that loomed over our garden wall, raining acorns onto our grass. This, during the months when outside playtime was interrupted by afternoons spent staring out the window at the grey world, and, outside, wearing mitts that hung from strings through my coat sleeves. The howling wind would blow the giant oak tree’s branches from side to side, leaves going swish swash, left to right, just like my dad, a skittle wavering at the end of a bowling alley. But neither of them fell under the wind’s force. Not like the acorns, that leapt from their branches like panicked parachutist pushed out unawares or excited wind worshippers falling to their knees.

When my dad was as sturdy as an oak tree and when I was bullied at school for sucking my thumb, he recalled the Irish myth of how an ordinary salmon had eaten hazelnuts that had fallen into the Fountain of Wisdom. In doing so, the salmon gained all the knowledge in the world, and the first to eat the salmon’s flesh would, in turn, gain this knowledge. The poet Finneces spent seven long years fishing for this salmon and when he’d finally caught it, he instructed his young apprentice, Fionn, to prepare it for him. When spattered with hot fat from the cooking salmon, Fionn immediately sucked on his burned thumb to ease his pain. In doing so, he gained incredible knowledge and wisdom. For the rest of his life, when he didn’t know what to do, all he had to do was suck on his thumb and the knowledge would come.

He told me that story way back when I sucked my thumb and when he was as big as an oak tree. When Mum’s yawns sounded like songs. When we were all together. When I had no idea there would ever come a time when we wouldn’t be. When we used to have chats in the garden, under the weeping willow. Where I always used to hide and where he always found me. When nothing was impossible and when the three of us, together forever, was a given.

I smile now as I watch my great big salmon of knowledge moving upstream, weaving in and out of the pedestrians pounding the pavements towards him.

Dad looks up, sees me, gives me two fingers and keeps walking.

Ah.

‘Dad,’ I call out the open window, ‘come on, get in the car.’

He ignores me and holds a cigarette to his mouth, inhaling long and hard, so much so that his cheeks concave.

‘Dad, don’t be like this. Just get in the car and we’ll go to the hotel.’

He continues walking, looks straight ahead, as stubborn as anything. I’ve seen this face so many times before, arguing with Mum over spending too late and too often at the pub, arguments with the Monday Club gang about the political state of their country, at a restaurant when his beef is handed to him not resembling a piece of charcoal as he so wishes. The ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ look that has set his chin in that defiant stance, jutting outward like Cork and Kerry’s rugged coastline to the rest of the land. A defiant chin, a troubled head.