Every Single Minute (21 page)

And maybe that’s why our memory is so aligned on this. Because it was the biggest surprise hearing my father say we were going for chips. As if he stopped being our father and he was going to be more like other fathers from then on. We looked at each other standing on the pier and wondered what changed him. We thought he had suddenly turned into the best father in the world. He was not the kind of man who ever bought chips, he was against all that take-away food. He wanted people to eat their food where it was cooked, where they bought it. Because our house was exactly the distance of a packet of chips away from the chipper. People coming home from the pub at night always arrived right outside our house as they finished their fish and chips, so they threw the empty wrapper into our front garden. My father said they treated our garden like a refuse bin. And sometimes he stood at the bedroom window, installed like a security camera, just to see it for himself. Every Monday morning he would go out and put all the discarded chip papers from the weekend into the bin, then he came inside to wash his hands. Once we heard him say that he was going to collect all the empty chip bags and bring them back to the chipper at the end of the year. Sometimes people threw the packet of chips into our garden even before they finished eating them and we lay in our beds thinking about the uneaten chips inside. Our garden was the cut-off point and nobody ate chips any further beyond that because they were normally gone cold by then. My father hated anything to do with chips. He hated anything to do with salt and vinegar. It’s hard to explain what made him change his mind and break all his own rules, give in, go against his own principles. Myself and my brother talk about that day and we both believe my father wanted to find out once and for all what the truth was. He wanted to find out if our house really was the exact distance of a packet of chips. So he bought chips for himself and one each for me and my brother. And it took as long to get home as it took to eat the chips.

We covered a lot of ground together in Berlin. In time, in words, in the things we said to each other, in the places we went to visit. She had not come to Berlin to see the place and go away again like a tourist. She wanted more than that. She had come looking for something in herself, I knew that. Something left unsaid. Some clue dropped in the streets. I mean, how much information is enough? When can you say you really know a city? Or a person? When can you say that you know yourself?

She was not mad about Sanssouci. We were out there briefly and she couldn’t wait to move on, it was stifling, all that opulence. She said the palace was designed like a wedding cake and she had no time for that sort of thing. On the way back she wanted to stop at the Wannsee Villa, where the Wannsee Conference took place. She came out silent.

We passed by the old airport where the Americans rescued the people of West Berlin. We saw the synagogue with the golden dome. We saw the Turkish vegetable shops and Manfred showed her the street where he was living. We saw a house that was not renovated yet, with peeling paint along the façade and balconies with junk left out on them. Bicycles. Slogans written up about freedom and justice, words that didn’t completely make sense, like free all prisoners. An end to all money. Stuff that people think up late at night. She loved that, people thinking outside the normal way of life. People with a bit of artistic rage left in them, she said. We saw an old wooden door with so much graffiti on it that it must have felt like walking into an abstract painting, like living inside a work of art. And outside on the pavement there were lots of things thrown out, a TV and a used mattress, bits of broken furniture, a sofa waiting to be sat on, an old reading lamp, bits of living without the lives.

The city is a contradiction, she said to me.

And she was a contradiction too, she was the first to admit. It’s my life and I have the right to contradict myself. I’m a big, random life, full of messy contradictions, that’s what she said. And at some point all the contradictions in a person fit together into one life. The contradictions are not contradictions any more, they become the story. Like all the contradictions come together in one city.

If there was a clue to describe who she really was, then maybe it was something in herself that was always missing. Some place inside that could not be reached. Something that remained unresolved, put on hold. She said she had the weather inside her, changing all the time. Her life was a mixed-up condition, so she said, swinging between sadness and happiness, between loving everything and regretting everything.

She told me about one of the great moments in her life. The time when they were travelling in Italy together. Herself and Noleen. Along the coast. Going by the side of the cliffs, on a train, through the tunnels. Every now and again the carriage was thrown into darkness. From what she was saying it was probably not unlike the end of the day and when they came out of the tunnel it was a new day beginning, I know that feeling. The view of the sea bursting into the carriage again. She said it was hard to look, it was blinding, your eyes would start watering with all the brightness. They were alone in the carriage together, with the window wide open and the breeze blowing in, flapping at their hair, at their light summer clothes.

They had only one book to read on the train, she told me. Noleen and myself, she said, we had an argument over who was going to read it first. I won the toss because I was the faster reader and it was me who brought the book in the first place, she said. But then Noleen started distracting me, looking out the window and making remarks in her deep voice, making me laugh. In fact Noleen decided to sing a song. Thank God there was nobody listening, she said, whatever it was. I’m glad it was not Bob Dylan. At least I hope she was not singing ‘Girl from the North Country’, she said. We did that as a duet together sometimes, we murdered it. Noleen could do Johnny Cash with her deep voice, and I did Bob Dylan, because I couldn’t sing at all.

Noleen was like a big sister, she said, making me laugh in spite of myself, reminding me that there was more to life than the characters in a book. So you know what we did, Úna said. After I read each page I tore it out and passed it over to her.

That’s how we read the novel, she said. Every time I finished a page I ripped it out and Noleen read it. And when she was finished reading it she put each page neatly down on the seat beside her. At one point, coming out of a tunnel, she said, a gust of wind came into the carriage like an invisible hand, like the hand of the next reader impatiently grabbing the pages off the seat and pulling them out the window in no sequence at all. Some of the pages flew down towards the cliffs, she said. Some of them went up vertically, up over the roof of the train. Some of them flew along the length of the train, attempting to get back on again, trying some of the doors and windows further down. Honestly, she said, they looked like birds. White birds with writing on them. An entire novel full of birds left behind along that journey.

What was the book?

I can’t tell you that, she said.

What was it about?

I’m not sure I can remember too much of what was in it, she said.

She could only remember the pages flying. Then the train stopped. We were held up somewhere along the coast, she said, miles away from anywhere, with the sounds of clicking and snapping in the metal underneath. I’ll never forget it, she said, as long as I live. Only the two of us alone inside the compartment and the heat and the breeze coming in from the sea across both open windows. Nobody came to tell us anything or explain why we were stopped. Over three hours the train was unable to move because of a forest fire ahead. We could smell the smoke in the carriage, she said. We were stuck in time. Everything on hold. Two women, she said, left behind on a train overlooking the Adriatic. Staring at the blue sea. And the terns diving. The terns squeaking and diving, like pages from the book, she said, because they changed direction so fast.

I told her what happened with my daughter. Úna wanted to know all that, about Maeve going to see her real father. I told her how she had been trying to contact him, the biological father, but he refused to get back to her.

Think about this clearly, I said to Maeve. He’s not going to get back to you, that’s guaranteed. And there is nothing to be gained by going to see him in his house, I said, only more trouble. Think about what’s important, Maeve, I said. Think about the good things, like I try to remember good things about my own father. Remember the time you wanted to be a unicorn for Halloween, I said. A golden unicorn. The trouble it took to make that outfit before you changed your mind at the last minute and wanted to be an angel instead, so I had to find wings somewhere quickly. I don’t know if Maeve remembers a lot of those things, only me reminding her.

You can’t plan what a child is going to remember.

Maeve was very cool about all this. I’ve never seen her more confident. She put her hands around my face and called me Dad and said this was only something she had to do for herself, she used the word identity.

She knew what he looked like, her biological father. She had pictures downloaded off the net. Photos of him at conferences in America, Germany, Cairo and places like that. Looking really well, I have to say. The same as ever. Serious, afraid of nobody, but also up for a laugh as always. His hair is a different colour now, darker than I remember. Only his moustache is the same colour as before.

She tried to make an appointment to see him, but he was unavailable. His secretary was protecting him, so I gather, from people not referred to him by other legal practices, people coming to him with private matters, unsolicited, if you like. So then Maeve decided to go in there, into the courts, in person. It’s a public place, she’s perfectly entitled to be there as much as anyone else.

Maeve found out where he was likely to be. She’s that type of person, I said, just like her mother, quite determined. She went there and examined all the lawyers standing around, waiting for the court to be in session. Trying to identify her father.

Her biological father, Úna said.

Yes, that’s right, I said. And then she found him. He was standing in a group, she recognized him straight away, no mistake, dressed in a suit, with a black gown loosely draped around his shoulders. Maeve said he had a look of calmness, a single-minded expression, full of concentration. He was accepting a file from somebody and nodding, or half bowing, slowly, to say thank you. He was shaking hands with one or two of the other lawyers and smiling. She saw him leaning his head down to listen to somebody whispering some last-minute information into his ear.

She walked right up and apologized for interrupting him, but she would like to have a word, she spoke his name.

He didn’t react, so Maeve told me. She repeated herself, giving her own name this time. It’s Maeve, she said to him. She didn’t say the word daughter, she had no intention of embarrassing him. But he was in preparation mode for the trial. He turned away from her. He had no time to be distracted by things that were long in the past now and as much forgotten as they could be.

He didn’t hear, Úna said.

He must have heard, I said. Everyone else heard. You know when your name has been called. There has to be a little tug, when the voice that says something connects with the ear that hears it, don’t you think?

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.