She could see signs everywhere and
arrows and exits. There were members of staff stood around not doing much at
all and others who looked rushed off their feet, so she wondered why they
didn’t get better at sharing the workload. The first bag came around the corner
and a very happy couple grabbed it finding it hilarious that they didn’t have
to wait and could beat the traffic queues. Mary hoped that the smug couple’s
car battery had run down like it had on her mum’s car when they were due to go
to her gran’s once or that they couldn’t find their keys. Then she silently had
a word with herself for being so cynical as they were probably lovely people,
she was just bored of walking then waiting then walking so much.
Once they had grabbed their bags and Séan had figured out taxi numbers and prices with the very
helpful lady in the tourist information centre, they headed to the rank for
another waiting episode during which Mary observed maturely the goings on
around her. She often did this and anybody who she openly spoke to about what
she perceived would tell her that she had an old head. She never knew what they
meant by this expression but nodded and continued her inspections.
The taxi driver was very nice, but he
too had that funny accent the same as the man on the passport desk. The taxi
was also something new and one thing about England that she had seen
photographed – the black cab. She couldn’t remember where she had seen it and
gathered that tourist shops in Ireland wouldn’t be promoting very English memorabilia,
but she had definitely seen a picture of the famous British feature. She
thought it was surreal to be witnessing the reality of these vehicles and
cooler still to be travelling inside one.
Mary had always felt that the traffic
was bad in Dublin but London trumped Dublin’s busiest times. For the entire
journey all Mary heard was the beeping of horns from angry drivers. She found
it funny to watch the anger show all over their faces and in the dramatic hand
gestures which were sometimes quite rude. What all the fuss was about she
didn’t know, nor could she understand why people thought that making this
commotion inside your car would help the traffic move more smoothly.
Luckily the two of them were in no
rush so the traffic was ok. It will be different when her dad begins work, she
noted. This train of thought entering her head made her wonder what her dad was
planning to do for work over in London and whether he had sold McDintons or
kept it in case they decided to move back home.
All of these questions she stored
away for a later date because she felt it too soon to be bombarding her dad
with them. Besides, for all she knew he could be feeling quite nervous too.
She couldn’t believe how absorbed in
the goings on back home she had been not to notice conversations about the pub
or her dad’s work. She was used to listening in on her parent’s conversations
always wanting to know absolutely everything but without her mum she figured
that no conversation was interesting enough for her to care about anymore.
The chat between her dad and the taxi
driver was pretty boring in Mary’s opinion which was why her mind was focussed
on other topics. She hadn’t been in many taxis in her lifetime because mostly
they spent their free time in the city; if they had gone away it would have
been with an auntie or her parents, so they would have taken the car. She did
remember in the few taxi rides she’d had there were similarly dull discussions
during them though. It was full of what she understood as being small talk. She’d never wanted to travel
far if she was with her mother because she worried it would get awkward as her mum
often ran out of things to say. Séan on the other hand never had this
problem and was the king of this small talk which he was demonstrating in the
current situation.
As they got closer to their
destination which was unknown to Mary, the houses became larger and less
cramped together. The tacky looking newsagents which were cropping up every
other building before had vanished and the dirty streets had become much
cleaner. Some of the fronts of the buildings looked more like palaces than
people’s homes and Mary wondered which one the queen lived in. Perhaps it was
one of those. Perhaps they were to be staying with a member of the royal
family. She swiftly stopped those thoughts knowing with certainty that the
Queen lived at Buckingham Palace and hoped that her dad would take her there
quite soon.
Even though it had been drilled into
her from a young age that she had Irish blood and the English were very much a
separate entity, one thing she had always loved about England from the little
that she knew was the royal family. She had watched Princess Diana and Prince
Charles’ wedding on her auntie’s television during the summer holidays. She sat
there for the whole day being fed ice cream and fruit but not moving her eyes
from the box. Her aunt was having a party which most certainly was not in aid
of the wedding, but Mary removed herself from this and was utterly absorbed by
Dianna’s beauty and the sheer Britishness of it all. She realised that this was
going against all morals that her parents had taught her but, in that moment,
she didn’t care at all.
