Lifesaving for Beginners (49 page)

It’s the thirteenth of March.

It’s Tuesday.

Things are not bad.

In fact, they’re all right.

I haven’t had a drink for twelve weeks.
In return, Ed’s pacemaker has settled in fine.
He’s had a check-up and the doctor says he’s in great shape.
I think I probably could have a drink and Ed’s pacemaker would still be fine, but if it wasn’t, I’d have only myself to blame.
That’s what happens when you make a deal with someone that you don’t quite believe in.
You can’t take the chance.

I look at the calendar.
Six weeks since Faith and Milo were here for a weekend.
Four weeks until they’re coming back for another weekend.
Easter.
Rob is coming too.
They’re staying with me.
Milo is staying with Ed.
In the top bunk.
Ed is delighted that Faith is not staying.
He likes her and everything but, this way, he doesn’t have to tidy his room.
Milo told him that there was no need.
I haven’t met Rob before.
I’m predisposed to disliking him.
That’s just the way I am.
Minnie says that I’m to count to ten before I open my mouth.
Every time I go to open my mouth.
Count to ten.
I’m practising.
It’s difficult.
But I’m trying.

Fourteen weeks till the baby’s due.
Minnie’s baby.
It’s a boy.
They got a 3D scan.
A handsome boy, Minnie says.
‘He’s got a brilliant side profile,’ she says and she shows me a photograph, and it’s true, the baby has a side profile that is nothing short of brilliant.
It’s remarkable, really.

I’m forty now.
I turned forty nine weeks ago.
It was pretty low key in the end.
Me and Minnie and Ed and Mum and Dad went out for dinner.
The only thing I insisted on was no champagne.
I said, ‘You can drink anything else you like, I don’t care.
But no champagne.
This is not that type of celebration.’

Ed says, ‘What type of celebration is it, Kat?’

‘It’s an “I’m not dead, I’m forty” celebration.
So, you know .
.
.
low key.’

‘That sounds good.
Not being dead.’
When Ed smiles, I smile.
I can’t help it.
Milo is right: I do look like Ed when I smile.

That’s when I say, ‘You’re bloody well right, Ed,’ and I clap my hands together and roar, ‘CHAMPAGNE!’
and because it’s a pretty posh type of a place, the staff don’t comment on my rudeness.
Instead, the waitress rushes out with a bottle of chilled champagne and five flutes.
I fill three of the glasses with champagne and order fizzy water with a splash of blackcurrant for me and Minnie.
Then we raise our glasses and Ed says, ‘Here’s to being forty and not dead.’

Everyone says, ‘Being forty and not dead.’
We clink and drink and that is the end of that.

Eight weeks since Minnie rang with the news.
She didn’t tell me straight off.
We talked about all sorts at first.

We talked about baby names: Maurice if it’s a boy and Minnie if it’s a girl.

We talked about my efforts to track down Elliot Porter.
So far, I’ve managed to speak to two of his ex-wives and a couple of ex-girlfriends, and have reason to believe he may be prospecting for gold in South Africa.
I just want to tell him about Faith.
I should have told him a long time ago.
I should have done a lot of things a long time ago.
But all I can do is start from here.

We talked about Minnie’s recent craving for yams.
Turns out they’re pretty hard to get your hands on at this time of year.

It’s only when I say I have to go because I’m meeting Ed for our next lifesaving class, that Minnie brings it up.
She says, ‘I suppose you’ve heard?’

I say, ‘Heard what?’

Minnie says, ‘About Thomas.’

My stomach does its usual backwards somersault.

‘What about him?’

‘The engagement’s off.’

‘With the
Farmers Journal
?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.
One of his colleagues told me.
He didn’t go into the gories.’

I want the gories.

Minnie says, ‘Are you glad?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Tell me!’

‘I think so.’

‘You made a right hatchet job of that.’

‘I know.’

Her voice softens.
‘Maybe it’s not too late.’

‘I’m pretty sure it is.’

We leave it at that.

And Killian Kobain?
Well, it’s been just over eleven weeks since I dropped that particular bombshell.
Eleven weeks of the media jumping out of various bushes and popping up behind me in the queue at the supermarket.
I have to be careful what I put in my basket now.
No more family-size pepperoni pizzas.
How would that look in the ‘Guilty Pleasures’ section of the
Metro
?
Yes, they still hang around the car park of the apartment block, on slow news days.
My neighbours know most of them by name now.
Mrs O’Dea insists on ‘outing’ them.
‘I see you there, Paddy Miles, you dirty little scut.
You should be ashamed of yourself, writing for that rag of a paper.’
Paddy – who is a dirty little scut – gives her the one finger and she, quick as a flash, gives him the two.
She means well, Mrs O’Dea.
She really does.

And twelve weeks since I saw Thomas.
At the hospital.
He was my lesson, I suppose, and I learned him off by heart.
That’s just a fact.
Twelve weeks since I started moving on.
I’m still moving on.
It’ll take a while.
That’s what Minnie says and she knows everything.
I’ll just keep on moving on until I don’t have to move on anymore.
Maybe I might even meet someone.
Milo says that his teacher, Miss Williams, has a boyfriend and he reckons she’s even older than me.

Ten weeks since Nicolas from number thirteen sold his story to the the
Irish Daily Mail
.
They called it ‘My night with the Wild Kat’.
Someone gets paid good money to come up with headlines like that.
I swear to God.

Today, I’ve done four things.

I have spoken to my mother on the phone.

I have arranged to pick up Ed at the café after work and bring him to our next lifesaving lesson.

I have gone with Minnie to one of her ante-natal appointments because Maurice couldn’t – some Genius convention in Geneva – and because, it turns out, the most independent woman in the world doesn’t like going on her own.
So I went.
And we both looked at the monitor and admired the baby’s brilliant side profile.
It really is something else.

And I helped Dad in his garden.
He says there’s not much to be done there at this time of the year but we did things anyway.
There is something calming about pushing your hands into the earth.
It’s getting the muck out from behind your nails afterwards that’s the problem.
We saw the tips of green shoots pushing their way up through the muck.
Dad said, ‘They’re the first of the daffodils.
Your mother loves daffodils.’
This is something I did not know.
I am moving on and learning things at the same time.
You’d hardly know me.

Actually, five things.
I emailed Faith.
We email a lot.
Nearly every day.
I’m better on the email than the phone.
I’ve always been better on the page than in real life.
But I do my best to be as honest as I can.
I want her to know me.
The proper, horrendous me and not some fictional account of me, because, let’s face it, we all know how good I can be at that.

‘Verrucas, corns, bunions and all.’
That’s what Minnie says.
It’s not easy showing someone your bunions.
They’re not pretty.
But that is what I am trying to do, nonetheless.
It’s pretty exhausting but then, when I get an email from Faith that says, in the subject box, ‘SOMETHING AMAZING JUST HAPPENED!!!’
in capitals and exclamation marks, it’s worth it.
It really is.
She tells me about Rob.
About the band.
The tour.
The conflict with Rob about the band and the tour.
She hasn’t got it worked out yet but I have.
I haven’t told her.
I’ll wait till nearer the summer, when things are a bit safer between us.
But I have a tour of my own planned.
For Milo.
Some time in Scotland with his little brother and his dad.
And then some time here with his uncle Ed.
In the top bunk.
They have taken to writing to each other.
Proper letters with stamps and what have you.

So tonight, I’m tired.
It might not seem like much but that’s a lot of activity for a writer with writer’s block who is moving on and learning one new thing every day.

I lie on my couch and work my way through a bowl of Funky Banana – Milo gave me the exact recipe – and that’s when it happens.
That’s when the idea comes.

It’s not like my usual ideas, which are more like fragments of ideas.
This one is more than that.
It is fully formed.
I can see the beginning of it.
The end.
Even the middle.

I move to my desk.
Quietly.
As though the idea is like a wisp of cloud that will blow away at the merest sound.

I sit down.
Open a notebook.
The one Ed gave me for my fortieth, even though I don’t use notebooks.
But this idea seems somehow too fragile for the laptop.
Oddly, I find myself thinking – believing – that this story needs the gentle scratch of a pencil against the page.

‘Jesus wept.’
That’s what Minnie would say to that.

I pick up the pencil.

I begin.

13 March 2012; Brighton

Mr Edward Kavanagh

24 Howth Road

Raheny

Dublin 5

Ireland

Europe

The World!

The Universe!!

The Galaxy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Ed,

Thanks for the football for Christian.
I gave it to him when he visited us last weekend.
Celia took the batteries out of the puppy that I bought him.
I don’t think she liked the barking or the song.
She likes peace and quiet.
I don’t know why she got a baby because babies are pretty noisy, most of the time.

I’m sort of supporting Chelsea now too.
You’re right.
That penalty shouldn’t have been allowed.
Damo says the ref should have gone to Specsavers, ha ha!

No, I’m pretty sure the Valentine’s card wasn’t from Carla.
She didn’t go red or anything when I showed it to her.
And she said it was slushy.
Maybe it was Lorraine.
She’s always talking about love and stuff and the other day, during break, she kept chasing me even when she wasn’t it.
Faith said I should keep it because it’s my first card, but I put it in the bin in the library when me and Carla were there, helping Miss Rintoole.

I think the jump you’re talking about is the straddle jump.
It’s when you jump into the pool and try not to let your head go under the water.
I can’t believe you and Kat are learning that already.
We didn’t do that one for ages.
Coach has arranged for the intermediate class to visit the Brighton lifeguard station next Saturday.
I can’t wait.
They’re going to bring us out in the lifeboat if the conditions are calm.

Faith told me about the plans for the Easter holidays.
That’s legend.
I’ll bring my goggles and my togs and maybe we could go to the pool and practise lifesaving.
And you can come to Brighton to visit me and Faith sometime.
You could meet Damo and Carla and we could go to the Funky Banana.
Jack owns it now but he says I can bring my friends anytime.
Even Damo, so long as he promises not to touch anything again, or talk to any of the customers.

Have to go now.
Faith and me are cooking fajitas tonight, which happen to be one of my all-time favourite dinners.

Ant and Adrian are coming home at the weekend.
Ant is bringing a girl and I think she’s his girlfriend.
Her name is Julia but Ant calls her ‘Mouse’.
I don’t know why.
Maybe she’s really small.
Or quiet.
Rob said he will come to our house and cook something special for all of us when Ant and Adrian and Julia/Mouse get here.
He says he’ll bring dessert too, which will probably be Mars bars even though Faith says Mars bars are not dessert.
Rob is mad about Mars bars.
So am I, especially Mars Duos.

Yours sincerely,

Milo McIntyre

PS.
I’m putting in a Petr Cech card because (1) he’s the best goalie in the entire universe and, (2) I have two of them now.

PPS.
Hunger Games
is coming out in ten days!!!!!!!
It’s 12A but Sully is coming home from the war next week and he said he’d come to the cinema with us, to make sure that I get in this time.

PPPS.
Tell Kat not to worry about being the worst in the class.
Coach says everyone can be good at lifesaving so long as they practise a lot.