Every Single Minute (22 page)

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.

And then Emily came down the stairs, wearing a similar dressing gown. They looked so alike, Emily and Maeve. They both had the same hair tied up, identical. They looked like they were going for an early-morning swim. Mother and daughter. One swimming ahead of the other. What was going on, Emily wanted to know. Was I making mountains of chips again, in the middle of the night? Yes, we we’re having a few chips, I said. Emily sat down at the table and tasted one of the chips and Maeve started talking. Maeve was telling us everything. How she had met somebody, his name was Shane, he makes me laugh a lot, she said, and his family owns a farm in Leitrim with the ruins of an ancient church on their land, all covered in ivy, it would be lovely to get married there, out in the open with no roof.

It was getting bright outside, I could hear the birds. We still had the lights on because it was in between night and next day. I got up to make a few more chips, another batch, why not? I continued listening to Maeve and started peeling more and more potatoes, not knowing when to stop.

We should be watching the time. By right we should be heading straight back to the hotel at this point. It’s late in the afternoon and I’m not sure she’s up to seeing anything now, she can’t absorb any more sights. She must be exhausted, there is something going on in her thoughts that she’s not letting me know about. I can see it in her eyes, she’s worried. And for a day that was quite warm, it’s gone quite cold. Getting out of the car you feel it. But she’s determined to see the memorial. It’s on the list of things she wanted to see, the list I gave Manfred, no question of leaving it out.

At first you think it’s not finished yet, like a building site. All these grey blocks or square concrete pillars, columns with a smooth concrete finish. It’s not fenced off or anything. You see a few people walking around between the columns and you realize that it’s been designed to look like that, empty, unequal, in long lines at different levels, with columns getting taller and deeper and further away, this is what people have come to see.

The sun has gone and the wind is coming straight through. There’s no shelter. She won’t be able to stand the cold out here for very long, that’s what I’m saying to myself. This is going to be very brief, so we leave everything in the car, she won’t be needing her bag. I make sure she has her cap on. And why does she not have a scarf?

Manfred is waiting by the car.

There’s no official entrance, so you can make your way in from any side you like. Straight into the low columns or straight into the high columns, there’s no difference. I push the wheelchair into a row that leads us towards the centre, if there is a centre. The ground is uneven with cobbles. The front wheels rattle and the wheelchair is tilted, like on a rough road. I continue pushing the wheelchair further along the row going down and we’re almost underground at this stage, that’s the feeling. She wants to stop and look around. There’s nobody there. You don’t hear anything much. You could be lost and nobody would know. We’re talking about a place right in the middle of the city that makes you feel like you could be left behind, deserted. Nothing but lines of grey columns and grey cobbles. And you would expect a bit more shelter down there but the wind is actually stronger, like a wind tunnel, the gap between the columns is pulling the wind from far off and you feel even more exposed.

I thought it was the cold that made her so silent. But she said she didn’t feel anything, she was fine. Later on she told me that it made her feel guilty being there. She wouldn’t tell me what it was that made her feel guilty, only that she felt guilty and she could not say. It seemed to me that everybody visiting this place was bringing their own guilt with them, leaving it behind in the concrete. This is only something I thought to myself afterwards. It felt as though all the guilt in the world was being brought here, adding to the columns, growing new columns. As if this was the collecting point where all the guilt was going to be kept from now on.

Is silence even a good word for it? I’m not sure. There among the grey columns you could hear all the words that were still calling out to be said. The silence underneath the streets, coming up through the pavement. That’s what I was listening to, I think. An entire city full of words not even invented yet coming up to the surface.

It was too cold to speak. So I got her back to the hotel and she wanted to go up to her room alone, I respected that. She wanted to spend some time on her own, without me asking questions. Even when I was not asking questions, my presence was like a conscience walking beside her.

So that’s when I went to speak to Manfred and she went upstairs to her room. I gave Manfred the plans for the evening and let him know that we didn’t need him any more. I must have been there speaking to Manfred for a couple of minutes, no more. He protested a bit, but then he accepted the instructions given to him and left. And in that short space of time, she had gone up in the elevator. She must have got to the right floor because I had pressed the right number for her and even watched the dial outside going all the way up to the fourth floor. She knew the number of her room, there was no fear of her getting lost.

When I was finished talking to Manfred, I went up to my room. I could understand that she wanted to be alone, but I phoned her room to make sure there was nothing she needed. There was no answer. I went around to knock on her door. She was probably having a rest and I didn’t want to disturb her. I walked up and down the corridor and came back to knock again, because it was not like her to ignore me like this without some reason. She should have told me that she was fine, at least, not to worry. And when I was getting no answer, I thought there might have been something wrong, was there some emergency I needed to help her with? I didn’t want to start worrying too much, only that hearing nothing made me think the worst. If only she had her mobile I could have contacted her that way, but it was switched off and I had her see-through bag in my hand in any case. I called her room again. There was still no answer, so I went back down to the lobby to see if she had somehow gone down there to look for me. That’s the only way I could explain it to myself. I was trying not to assume the worst thing right away. I even checked outside the hotel on the street, in case she went out there to see if I was talking to Manfred by the car, which was gone at that point. I ran back inside and went upstairs once more, banging on the door and shouting this time to see if she was all right in there. All I could think of doing was to go back down to the lobby, into the restaurant, around the hallways, anywhere I thought she might have got lost looking for me. I went to the reception to ask if she had left a message. She had to be in her room. I was sure something had happened to her. She might have fallen, maybe worse. I had no option but to go back to the reception desk and tell them it was an emergency. Not that I wanted to alarm them, only would they mind opening the door of her room, it was stupid of me not to have kept a spare key. This took a little while because they had to check my identity before they could even talk to me about another guest at the hotel. I explained that I was meant to be looking after her, so eventually they must have seen by the way I spoke, slightly agitated and almost losing my patience, that I was serious. They agreed to phone her room. But, of course, there was no answer, I could have told them that. And then I was thinking what kind of way was this to look after her? I should never have let her out of my sight.

What was I thinking, letting a child go up in the elevator alone?

One of the staff at the reception agreed to go up with me in order to check. And the trip in the elevator is longer than you think. There was nothing to say, no point in trying to get friendly with this man or trying to gain his trust and win him over by making some remark about the weather. He wanted to retain his doubts about me. He was not going to be drawn in until he got this clarified. So the elevator moved almost without moving. I was thinking about the dial reaching the fourth floor. The doors opened and the man from the reception walked at normal pace ahead of me, no hurry. He knocked on the door, politely calling out her name. All of which takes time. Valuable seconds spent on formalities before he eventually looked at me and looked at the door and then put his hand up to indicate that I should stand back, while he took the initiative and made the decision to open the door. He stepped into the room, cautiously at first, coughing and calling her name, you never know what you might come across in a situation like that. And she was not there. I knew it. I ran past him to check the bathroom, but there was no sign of her there either.

She was lost in the hotel somewhere, but where?

The man called the reception to report a guest missing, in a wheelchair. He gave her name and the room number. It was all about procedure and what to do next. But I had no time to wait. I went back down again, trying to work out what had happened. She must have been unable to find her room, just as I had suspected. The only thing to do now was to search for her, floor by floor, and then I heard her voice.

Inside the elevator, I heard her calling. She was not in the elevator, but I could hear her voice clearly calling me.