Thanks for the Memories (21 page)

e l l , I m u s t s a y, t h at was absolutely marvelous. W Marvelous indeed.” Dad pumps the pilot’s hand up and down enthusiastically.

We are standing by the just-opened door of the plane, with a queue of hundreds of irritated passengers huffing and puffing down our necks. They are like greyhounds whose trap has opened, with the bunny having been fired off ahead of them, and all that blocks their path is, well, Dad. The usual rock in the stream.

“And the food,” Dad continues to the cabin crew, “it was excellent, just excellent.”

All this over a ham roll and a cup of tea.

“I can’t believe I was eating in the sky.” He laughs. “Well done again, just marvelous. Nothing short of miraculous, I’d say. My Lord.” He pumps the pilot’s hand again, as though he’s meeting JFK.

“Okay, Dad, we should move on now. We’re holding everybody up.”

“Oh, is that so? Thanks again, folks. ’Bye now. Might see you on the way back,” he shouts over his shoulder as I pull him away.
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We make our way through the tunnel adjoining the plane to the terminal, and Dad says hello and tips his hat to everyone we pass on the way to the baggage claim.

“You really don’t have to say hello to everybody, you know.”

“It’s nice to be important, Gracie, but it’s more important to be nice. Particularly when in another country,” says the man who hasn’t left the province of Leinster for ten years.

“Will you stop shouting?”

“I can’t help it. My ears feel funny.”

“Either yawn or hold your nose and blow. It will help your ears to pop.”

He stands by the conveyor belt, purple-faced, with his cheeks puffed out and his fingers pinched over his nose. He takes a deep breath and pushes. He lets out a fart.

The conveyor belt jerks into motion, and like flies around a carcass, people suddenly swoop in front of us to block our view, as though their life depends on grabbing their bags this very second.

“There’s your bag, Dad.” I spot it and step forward.

“I’ll get it, love.”

“No, I will. You’ll hurt your back.”

“Step back, love, I can do it.” He passes over the yellow line and grabs his bag, only to realize that the strength he once had is gone, and he finds himself walking alongside it while tugging away. Ordinarily I would rush to help him, but I’m doubled over laughing. All I can hear is Dad saying, “Excuse me, excuse me,” to people who are standing over the yellow line as he tries to keep up with his moving luggage. He does a full lap of the conveyor belt, and by the time he gets back to where I stand (though I’m still doubled over), somebody has the common sense to help the outof-breath grumbling old man. He pulls his bag over to me, his face scarlet, his breathing heavy.

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“I’ll let you get your own bag,” he says, pulling his cap farther down over his eyes in embarrassment.

I wait for my bag while Dad wanders around the baggage claim “acquainting himself with London.” After the incident at the Dublin airport, the satellite navigational voice in my head has continuously nagged me to head back home, but somewhere inside, another part of me is under strict orders to soldier on, feeling convinced that this trip is the right thing to do. As I collect my bag from the belt, though, I am aware that there is no clear purpose for this trip. A wild goose chase is all it is right now. Instinct alone, caused by a confusing conversation with a girl named Bea, has caused me to fly to another country with my seventy-five-yearold father, someone who has never left Ireland in his entire life. Suddenly what seemed like the “only thing to do” at the time now appears to be completely irrational behavior.

What does it mean to dream about somebody you’ve never met, almost every night, and then have a chance encounter with them over the phone? I had called my dad’s emergency number; she had answered her dad’s emergency phone number. Surely there is a message in that. But what am I supposed to learn? Is it just a mere coincidence that an ordinary right-thinking person would ignore, or am I right to think and feel that something more lies beneath this? My hope is that this trip will have some answers for me. Panic begins to build as I watch Dad peering at a poster on the far side of the room. I have no idea what to do with him. Suddenly Dad’s hand flies to his head and then to his chest, and he darts toward me with a manic look in his eyes. I make a grab for his pills.

“Gracie,” he gasps.

“Here, quickly, take these.” My hand trembles as I hold out the pills and a bottle of water.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Well, you looked . . .”

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“I looked what?”

“Like you were going to have a heart attack!”

“That’s because I bloody well will, if we don’t get out of here quick.” He grabs my arm and starts to pull me along.

“What’s wrong? Where are we going?”

“We’re going to Westminster.”

“What? Why? No! Dad, we have to go to the hotel to leave our bags.”

He stops walking and whips around to push his face close to mine, almost aggressively. His voice shakes with adrenaline. “The
Antiques Roadshow
is having a valuation day today from nine thirty to four thirty in a place called Banqueting House. If we leave now we can start lining up. I’m not going to miss seeing it on the telly and then come all the way to London just to miss seeing it in the flesh. We might even get to see Michael Aspel. Michael Aspel, Gracie. Christ Almighty, let’s get out of here.”

His pupils are dilated, he’s all fired up. He shoots off through the sliding doors, with nothing to declare but temporary insanity, and takes a confident left.

I wait there in the arrivals hall while men in suits approach me with placards from all sides. I sigh and wait. Dad reappears from the direction he went in, seesawing and pulling his bag behind him at top speed.

“You could have told me that was the wrong way,” he says, passing me and heading in the opposite direction. Dad rushes through Trafalgar Square, pulling his suitcase behind him and scattering a flock of pigeons into the sky. He’s not interested in acquainting himself with London anymore; he has only Michael Aspel and the treasures of the blue-rinse brigade in sight. We’ve taken a few wrong turns since surfacing from the tube station, but Banqueting House finally comes into view, a seventeenth-t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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century former royal palace, and though I am sure I have never visited it before, it stands before me, a familiar sight. We join the deep queue already forming outside, and I study the single drawer that is in the hands of the old man in front of us. Behind us, a woman is rolling out a teacup from a pile of newspapers. All around me there is excited and rather innocent and polite chatter, and the sun is shining as we wait to enter the Banqueting House reception area. There are TV vans, camera and sound people going in and out of the building, and cameras filming the long queue while a woman with a microphone picks people out of the crowd to interview. Many people in the queue have brought deck chairs, picnic baskets of scones and finger sandwiches, and canteens of tea and coffee, and as Dad looks around with a grumbling stomach, I feel guilty, like a bad mother who hasn’t properly equipped her child. I’m also concerned for Dad that we won’t make it past the front door.

“Dad, I don’t want to worry you, but I really think that we’re supposed to have something with us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like an object. Everybody else has things with them to be valued.”

Dad looks around and seems to realize this for the first time. His face falls.

“Maybe they’ll make an exception for us,” I add quickly, but I doubt it.

“What about these cases?” He looks down at our bags. I try not to laugh. “I got them at TJ Maxx; I don’t think they’ll be interested in valuing them.”

Dad chuckles. “Maybe I’ll give them my undies. You know there’s a fine bit of history in them.”

I make a face, and he waves his hand dismissively. We shuffle along slowly in the queue, and Dad has a great time chatting with everybody about his life and his exciting trip
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with his daughter. After queuing for an hour and a half, we have been invited to two houses for afternoon tea, and the gentleman behind us has instructed Dad how to stop the mint in his garden from taking over the rosemary. Up ahead, just beyond the doors, I see an elderly couple being turned away. Dad sees this too and looks at me, his eyes worried. We will be up next pretty soon.

“Eh . . .” I look around quickly for something. Both entrance doors have been held open for the flowing crowd. Just inside the main entrance, behind the opened doors, is a wooden wastebasket posing as an umbrella stand. When we reach the doors, and while no one is looking I turn it upside down, emptying it of a few scrunched balls of paper and forgotten umbrellas. I kick them behind the door just in time to hear, “Next.”

I carry it up to the reception desk, and Dad’s eyes pop out of his head at the sight of me.

“Welcome to Banqueting House,” a young woman greets us.

“Thank you.” I smile innocently.

“How many objects have you brought today?” she asks.

“Oh, just the one.” I raise the bin onto the table.

“Oh, wow, fantastic.” She runs her fingers along it, and Dad gives me a look that, if for any second I had forgotten which of us was the parent, would quickly remind me. “Have you been to a valuation day before?”

“No.” Dad shakes his head wildly. “But I see it on the telly all the time. Big fan, I am. Even when Hugh Scully was host.”

“Wonderful.” She smiles. “Once you enter the hall you’ll see there are many queues. Please join the queue for the appropriate discipline.”

“What queue should we join for this thing?” Dad looks at the item as though there’s a bad smell.

“Well, what is it?” she asks.

Dad looks at me, baffled.

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” I say politely. t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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“I’d suggest miscellaneous, and though that is the busiest table, we try to move it along as quickly as possible by having four experts. Once you reach the expert’s table, simply show your item, and he or she will tell you all about it.”

“Which table do we go to for Michael Aspel?” Dad asks eagerly.

“Unfortunately Michael Aspel isn’t actually an expert, he is the host, so he doesn’t have a table of his own. But we do have twenty other experts that will be available to answer your questions.”

Dad looks devastated.

“There is the chance that your item may be chosen for television,” she adds quickly, sensing Dad’s disappointment. “The expert shows the object to the television team, and a decision is made whether to record it, depending on rarity, quality, what the expert can say about the object, and, of course, value. If your object is chosen, you’ll be taken to our waiting room and made up before talking to the expert about your object in front of the camera for about five minutes. You would meet Michael Aspel under those circumstances. And the exciting news is that for the first time, we are broadcasting the show live in . . . ooh, let’s see”—she examines her watch—“in one hour.”

Dad’s eyes widen.

“Do bear in mind that we have to choose from two thousand people’s items before the show,” she says to me with a knowing look.

“We understand. We’re just here to enjoy the day, isn’t that right, Dad?”

He doesn’t hear me; he’s busy looking around for Michael Aspel.

“Enjoy your day,” the woman says finally, calling the next person in line forward. As soon as we enter the busy hall, I immediately look up at the ceiling of the double-cubed room, already knowing what to
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expect: nine huge canvases commissioned by Charles I to fill the paneled ceiling.

“Here you go, Dad.” I hand him the wastebasket. “I’m going to take a look around this beautiful building while you look at the junk people are putting inside it.”

“It’s not junk, Gracie. I once saw a show where a man’s collection of walking sticks went for sixty thousand pounds sterling.”

“Wow, in that case you should show them your shoe.”

He seems to consider it for a moment.

“Off you go to have a look around, and I’ll meet you back here.” He starts to wander away before he even finishes the sentence. Dying to get rid of me.

“Have fun.” I wink.

He smiles broadly and looks around the hall with such happiness, my mind takes another photograph. As I wander the rooms of the only part of the former Whitehall Palace to survive a fire, the feeling that I’ve been here before comes over me in a giant wave. I find a quiet corner and secretly produce my cell phone.

“Manager, deputy head corporate treasury and investor solutions desk, Frankie speaking.”

“My God, you weren’t lying. That’s a ridiculous amount of words.”

“Joyce! Hi!” Her voice is hushed but still audible over the manic sounds of the stock-trading in the Irish Financial Services Centre offices, behind her.

“Can you talk?”

“For a little bit, yeah. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m in London. With Dad.”

“What? With your dad? Joyce, I’ve told you before it’s not polite to bind and gag your father. What are you doing there?”

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“I just decided to come over last minute.” For what, I have no idea. “We’re currently at the
Antiques Roadshow
. Don’t ask.”

I leave the quiet rooms behind me and enter the gallery of the main hall. Below me I can see Dad wandering around the crowds with the bin in his hands. I smile as I watch him.

“Frankie, have we ever been to Banqueting House together?”

“Refresh my memory: where is it, what is it, and what does it look like?”

“It’s at the Trafalgar Square end of Whitehall. It’s a former royal palace designed by Inigo Jones in 1619. Charles I was executed on a scaffold in front of the building. I’m in a room now with nine canvases covering the paneled ceiling.” What does it look like? I close my eyes. “The roofline is balustrade. The street facade has two orders of engaged columns, Corinthian over Ionic, above a rusticated basement, which lock together in a harmonious whole.”