No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [53]
“Are you looking for me or for you?” Penny queried.
“Ah, stop it!” Josie said. “For you, of course… Still, the one in red with the black and grey speckled hair, the sharp jaw and the dick the size of a large foot towards your left looks interesting.”
Penny and Jamie’s heads spun towards the man in question. “I believe that’s his hand rather than his foot in his pants.” Penny squinted to negate the double vision.
“Oh, my God!” Jamie spluttered, and Bacardi Breezer dribbled from her delicate nose.
“As I said before, the best ones are taken and the rest are handicapped.” Penny smirked.
The two girls were crying with laughter when she called for more drinks.
12. A diamond day
The next morning Mary woke up around seven. She was meeting her dad at the bar at eight. She showered quickly and fed Mr Monkels, who seemed sleepier than usual. He ate his breakfast and flopped back into snoring. Sam hadn’t woken so she closed the door to the kitchen and quietly ironed a shirt while she had a slice of toast. She drank her coffee in the car.
Her dad was standing outside the bar. He waved and got in. They hugged.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Morning, love.”
They drove to the graveyard in silence. Mary parked the car and lifted the large bouquet of her mother’s favourite flowers from the back seat.
Her dad smiled. “It seems to get bigger every year,” he remarked.
Mary inhaled the lilies as they walked together through the little iron gate that brought them to the grassy hill, covered with graves. Like the living inhabitants of Kenmare, the dead also overlooked the water. Mary and her father strolled along the narrow paths, making their way to the family plot. The sky was white and the water glistened, as though fresh from a diamond downpour. Mary held on to her dad so they didn’t trip over the rocks that poked intermittently through the hardened mud surface.
When they arrived at the grave they began their yearly ritual. Mary would lay the flowers on it and her father would bless himself. They would stand in silence for approximately five minutes, although on a rainy day this was cut to between two and three because Mary’s dad was susceptible to bronchitis. Then he would signal that it was time to say goodbye. Mary would lean down and place a black marble pebble on the white marble gravestone to signify the passage of another year, and her father would blow his wife a kiss.
“She turned out all right, love,” he’d say. “You’d be proud of her.” He’d take his daughter’s hand and they’d walk back to the car.
Years before, when Mary was a child, her father had decided that to avoid his daughter enduring the pain of her mother’s anniversary on her birthday he had to separate them. Of course, it was impossible to change the date of his child’s birthday or the date of his wife’s death. The only answer was to change the day on which he remembered her. Every year on his wife’s birthday he and his daughter would lay flowers and remember her so that Mary’s birthday was for Mary alone. That way the dead could rest and the living could get on with it. And he had decided that because his daughter had been robbed of her mother he would ensure that on his wife’s birthday they would spend the day together, and each year he would tell Mary something she didn’t know about her mother.
It had been a great idea and had worked very well, especially when she was a teenager. If she was going through an awkward phase he could pick a memory of his wife that would speak to her even if he couldn’t. Of course, as the years passed it was harder to find a memory he hadn’t already shared. Sometimes he might think of one during the year and write it down in preparation but then he’d lose it – he’d never been known for his organizational skills.
They drove to the Silver Strand and took a walk on the beach. A man was throwing a stick for his dog – she was pretending she hadn’t noticed, preferring instead to rub her face in the sand. They didn’t talk on the beach, just listened to the wind, the waves hitting rock and the birds screeching,