When my parents died, I searched for the memory of them in St. Ann’s Square, where each step I made disturbed the pigeons, lifting them high into the crisp bitter morning air. Faces with a miscellany of expressions abounded, with gaits and strides defying unison. Suede shoes and working boots, intermingled with red-soled ladies’ shoes and airs of hauteur usurped the standing places of humility, with attitudes of indifferent entitlement. We once had a tradition of walking its peacefulness on Christmas morning, where no soul or sound would disturb. Where serenity had for a short while reclaimed its almost obliterated heart, and gave it a temporary tranquillity far removed from the hustle and mayhem of just a few short hours previous.
Unsuccessful, I searched through onto a busy Deansgate, with its familiar architecture and flagstones. Since my last visit, a Banksy of a boy with a lollipop holding a balloon on a string watched the determined footsteps of commerce dash by dispassionately in blue pinstriped suits with eager determined faces.
I stopped by the little tweed shop on Market Street that still displayed things my parents loved. From a distance I imagined them chatting together as they walked peacefully into the smell of yarn. Left and right my eyes tried to prise the shoppers apart on Cross Street to see if they would appear through the crowds. But they didn’t. I searched until my eye’s lost focus. Enquiring faces stared at me, but I kept scanning for that break in their ranks to see if the faces I love would appear and say a thousand words with just one smile.
In Prestwich I imagined I would find them, walking up that steep leafy hill together on Sandy Lane, looking out of place on city streets. They were far removed in nature from the street wise city life that circumstances dictated they submit to, for a brief while. Later, I stood at the arched window of Acorn Antiques on Bury New Road, that was long overdue another coat of red paint, to see if I could see them inside, browsing just like they used to. Their treasured booty could vary from a pewter setter to an inkwell with so many unusual combinations in between, and the chosen item would be admired and moved about the house for days after, looking for “just that right place”. In my mind’s eye I could see Dad, in his cap and tweed jacket, and Mam in her big brown hat and long green coat. I was sure they would appear together from amongst the crowd and give me that smile that would melt my heart one more time, but that moment prized more than life itself never arrived to lighten my weary soul.
I thought certainly I will find them in Kinsale, where so many happy memories too beautiful to fade must still live in some perfect dimension of time, a place where nothing beautiful dies. So, I searched the narrow streets and coffee shops, eating cake and drinking americanos at familiar tables. On occasions I imagined I could smell Mam’s “Poison” perfume, and believed its cocooning fragrance may have been just around the next corner, but each time its presence, whether conjured up by longing or for real, was only momentary and vanished in the fresh sea air. The bench near The Blue Haven where we used to have our 99’s, that always melted dripping down to the pavement in white dots, was wet from rain, empty and unwelcoming. Boland’s wool shop with its dented brass doorknob that had greeted so many shoppers with its cool touch, surely, I imagined, they would be there. Mam looking for warm pullovers for Daniel and Jennifer, while Dad looked on, his hands filled with shopping bags, his fingers red from the strain of their strings, as he complained occasionally to deaf ears. The shiny timber floor in Boland’s was still as noisy to footsteps, as it gave off its intimate feeling of bygone antiquity. The uneven timber surface was worn by a century of those eager to peruse, but of all its splendour, it couldn’t offer me my one desire pearl.
I rambled on deflated of spirit to a deserted Garretstown beach, with its lonely cold waves and icy breeze that tore its way to my skin through my light jacket. So different now from those long heady summer days with our green deck chairs and cool box filled with ice cream and sandwiches. The sand that intimately knew those footsteps I loved, was smooth and cold now, its past memories erased by the unsympathetic tide. All was forlorn and empty here, except for the sound of the crashing waves and ireful gulls. I cast my treasured memories out onto the turbulent waters, hoping for a consoling reply, but they returned as bitter cold sea spray onto my face and mixed with tears to end my search in this place.
The evening fragrance of the Blush roses beneath the statue of Our Lady at the grotto in Ballinspittle was as ever beautiful. Even the old man with the seafarer’s complexion, who lovingly carried out the maintenance, was there with his little worn-out motorbike, but his kind eyes didn’t recognise me. My smiling hello was met with a friendly but distant reply. He would have remembered Dad and Mam though, and as always would have chatted with them for longer than I had preferred on most occasions. Sometimes he would cut a rose with the utmost reverence from beneath the statue for one of Mam’s intentions. He would delicately hold the rose out to Mam’s waiting hand, as though he were offering Our Lady’s grace and succour inside that one tiny bloom. She would then wrap the rose with equal devotion and carefully place it delicately in a box to post to her deserving cause.
The once favoured empty table and chairs by the window in The Speckled Door were unchanged and waited patiently. Its oak stained surface had endured many a hot plate attack since my last visit, and displayed the scars like a mark of culinary accomplishment. The cracked jardiniere with Renoir’s Dance At Bougival badly embossed on two sides still lived on the window ledge, and was as ever contemplating the best view of Cork. Fresh flowers for its adornment must have been that one task too many for the owner of The Speckled Door, as the dusty plastic red roses knew me all too well. That familiar smell of fresh fish cooking in the kitchen tantalised the four diners at the table by the crackling fireside. They were humourless short haired Americans, and ticked off an item from their bucket list as they passed around a single pint of Guinness between them. Their insipid facial expressions displayed no delight in the taste of Irishness as the glass churned its way round and round the table until its head went brown. The remembered sound of laughter flooded the little room that evening, but only I could hear its reminiscent melody.
Surely on Grafton Street I would find them – on an October day where the golden leaves finally let loose their grip, and nervously whirled around in circles, lost in the autumn breeze, in a new an unfamiliar world. Maybe in Marks and Spencer, Dad yet again carrying lots of bags and wearing his brown Peacock’s jodhpur boots with the long scratch on the toe that they acquired on the first day of wearing. “Let’s have a little coffee” Mam would always suggest, so it would be americanos with mushroom toasties and lemon cake. Maybe it was our luck but the brown leather sofas at the furthest end of the seating area were always empty, as though waiting for us as welcome friends. The brown leather sofas were still there, shabbier than I remembered, cracked and torn in places, after a lifetime of giving comfort to weary legs, but it seems time had taken its toll on all of us. I stared at the lemon cake, and coffee until it went white and cold, and leaving them behind, I said goodbye.
Dad and I would wait to one side by the tall glass front door, while Mam went back in for “just one last thing”. We would chat and laugh as we stood by waiting and watching the world race by. Nothing could hinder or change our perfect world then, except time, and time’s dilatory wheels did indeed grind fine, and carried out its bidding without care or concern to past sensibilities or dignities; with no recourse, fiercely ignoring the feelings of gentile lives lived. Plotting and manifesting endings so alien to past times spent. The door and that spot where we used to stand still looked the same, but the memories there are now hidden from the passing world and known only to me.
We only meet in dreams now, and we meet very often, but welcome as these nocturnal encounters are, they pale in comparison to my forever present real-life memories. I will keep searching though, and one day I will find them, walking together towards me through the crowd. Dad with his cap and tweed jacket, and Mam in her big brown hat and long green coat, and they will give me that smile that only God knows I long for more than anything in this world, and this time I will go with them, and we will no longer just meet in dreams.
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