Your reviews have inspired lots of this so far! You're all amazing!
DUBLIN
Niamh had congratulated herself on the idea of a restorative stop at Phoenix Park. The dogs badly needed a break, and Kieran himself was a bit stir-crazy. She had looked forward to showing him the obelisk, the gardens...maybe spotting a fallow deer. Most of all she'd wanted to show him the papal cross, to tell him how her own parents had brought her here when she was not quite his age, to see the pope. Well, really just to see a white-clad speck, from that distance. But the young Niamh had known it was important. She wanted Kieran to know it was important, too.
What would John Paul II think of what I've done?
What would my mother think?
The weather, for its part, showed no concern for their pilgrimage. Niamh eventually gave up trying to protect her makeup from the rain. Her dampening hair was now long enough to pull into a low ponytail, but only just: she knew it wouldn't hold. The downpour also made her acutely aware that she needed a stop of her own.
She looked at Kieran and nodded toward the toilets. "What about you? Don't you need to go before we hit the road?"
He shook his head. "I did it on the ferry."
"Wasn't that a long time ago?"
He shook his head again.
"You'll wish you'd gone in another half-hour. You'll be miserable and we'll have to stop again."
"I promise I won't."
"Well, will you come in with me and wait in another stall?"
Kieran made a face. "I'm not a girl."
"You're a boy with his mother!"
"I don't like it."
"I'm not leaving you out here alone."
"I'm not alone. I'll have the dogs."
Niamh scowled. She ushered Kieran and the now-soggy dogs back into the car.
"Now, the dogs will probably frighten off any bad people, but if someone approaches you-"
"Honk the horn."
"And?"
"Scream bloody murder."
"Correct. But watch your language in the meantime. I'll be right out."
She locked the car and sprinted for the outbuilding, feeling horribly irresponsible.
So this is single parenthood, she thought. Lord help me, I should have remembered.
Peter instantly regretted volunteering to take over driving duty. Ambrose was already fast asleep in the passenger seat; his quiet snore made Peter jealous.
Peter rolled his window down for a bit of fresh air, hoping it might revive him. He still didn't much care for driving. It had only been a painful reminder for all these years, and another needless risk to take with the sacred gift of life. Now something new was displacing that old heavy grief, something less simple. The knowledge that she was willing to let him believe she was gone, knowing he loved her.
The knowledge that he'd simply said, I can't live without you ... Just don't run away from me, and she had taken it in the spirit of a dare.
He let out a bitter laugh. Tell Assumpta Fitzgerald what not to do, see how far you get.
His eyes welled. He blinked to keep his vision clear. Mass would be underway at St. Luke's now. He ought to be there. Father Randall had been so eager to send him away.
Save my vocation. Right. He didn't buy it, not with her disdain for clergy. He had to know the truth, learn who she really was. Clearly in all that time he'd never really known her. Once an actress...
The sea air swam into his lungs, made him feel...not resuscitated. No. Revived? Restored, perhaps.
She's still breathing. She's still out there.
No. No. I'm not going back for her; I am going back to heal. He could hardly wait. No one had ever wounded him so brutally. He'd see her once again, cure himself of this pitiful sickness and be back to his duties in England in no time. That would show Father Randall. It would show everyone.
Assumpta Fitzgerald's remarkable heart is still beating. I could touch her tonight. She would be warm.
A tiny glow manifested in his cheeks, on his neck, at the tips of his ears. He shook his head, willing it away.
He considered the snoring man at his left. He judged it a safe bet that some soft music wouldn't wake Ambrose, but might help a driver stay awake. There was a tape in the stereo of Ambrose's weatherbeaten old Astra; Peter turned the volume up slowly, at the expense of the first few words.
...I bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?
Sometimes as a teenager he'd been known to do this - flick on the radio and take whatever came up as his advice. He'd never been able to decide if this was seeking God's guidance or something manmade, secular oracle in its place. But it had rarely failed him; like flipping to a random Bible verse, there always seemed to be something relevant to his situation.
"A reading from the Book of Whinging East Midlanders..." he whispered.
Drying up in conversation, you will be the one who cannot talk;
All your insides fall to pieces, you just sit there wishing you could still make love...
This earned another bitter chuckle. That was years ago, he thought, remembering to press on through the amber light instead of slowing down for it.
He'd done so little of this since he moved back to Manchester. It occurred to him he'd never even traded in for a local driving licence. His old one still had him living on Quigley's property. It still had him collarless, and grinning like a fool: he'd stepped into that photo booth already hatching a plan to convince the examiner Assumpta was his "wife." One couldn't tell from the final picture, but he'd been blushing as well. He remembered the burn in his cheeks.
He wondered if any part of him was still that young man. For so long, all of him had felt like the one he became two years later, taking blows to the face by the side of the road.
The best thing that you ever had, the best thing that you've had has gone away...
There'd been a time when that lyric made him cry. This time, he shut off the song before it ended.
