I was eight when I decided my mother needed flowers. Not wanted them, needed them. There is a difference a child can feel before he has the words for it. We were living in a small flat off the North Circular Road, the kind where the kettle seemed to be always boiling and the windows cried in winter. My mam worked mornings in a nursing home and evenings cleaning offices, and in between she made beans on toast, checked my homework, and smiled like it was another job she had to do.
That spring, her smile started arriving late. She would sit at the kitchen table with her coat still on, rubbing the red marks her handbag left on her shoulder. My father had gone the year before, not with drama, just with a suitcase and fewer phone calls until there were none. Adults tried to hide things from me, but silence has a shape. I knew when the bills came because Mam would open the envelopes standing up. I knew when she was tired because she stopped humming along to the radio.
Every Friday, my granda gave me fifty pence for sweets when he met me near O’Connell Street. I usually spent it before we reached the bus stop: cola bottles, a Drumstick lolly, sometimes crisps if I was feeling rich. But one afternoon I saw a woman on Moore Street selling bunches of daffodils from a bucket. They were bright and ridiculous against the grey pavement, like someone had dropped bits of sunshine into cold water. I remember thinking Mam had not had anything bright in ages.
So I started saving. I put the coins in an old jam jar behind my schoolbooks. It took me weeks. I said no to sweets with the seriousness of a monk. My granda thought I was ill. My friends thought I was saving for football stickers. Every so often I would tip the money onto my bed and count it twice, though the number never changed by magic. I had no idea how much flowers cost. To me, they belonged to the world of adults, like taxis and good shoes and dinners that came with candles.
On the Friday before Mother’s Day, I had four pounds and twenty pence. I went into town with my granda and asked if we could walk through Moore Street. He was a quiet man, my granda, but he had a way of understanding without making you explain. The flower woman was there, wrapped in a navy coat, her hands moving quickly among roses, tulips, and daffodils. I pointed at the yellow ones and asked how much. She said three pounds. Then she looked at my jam jar money, which I had carried in a sock because I was afraid it would fall through my pocket, and she added a few purple flowers I didn’t know the name of.
“For your mam?” she asked.
I nodded. I felt embarrassed, as if kindness was something private I had accidentally said out loud.
She tied the bunch with green string and told me to hold them upright. On the bus home, I guarded them like a holy relic. A man offered me his seat because he thought I was carrying them to a grave. I said, “No, they’re for my mam,” and he smiled in a way that made me look out the window.
When I got home, Mam was at the sink washing cups, still in her work trousers. The flat smelled of toast and washing powder. I stood in the doorway and suddenly felt foolish. The flowers seemed smaller than they had in town. The petals had bent a little on the bus. I held them out and said, “I got you these.”
She turned around, and for a second nothing happened
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