This year’s Christmas story is about a father who finds himself incapable of giving up on his missing child, even though it feels like a lost cause. You can hear my reading of the story on the Christmas Special episode of the podcast.

Arrivals

There wouldn’t be words. Everything that could be said had been. She stood at the window clutching her mug close to her chest.

“Is there tea in it?” he asked.

She didn’t turn to face him.

“Sorry, you’ll have to make a fresh one.”

He grabbed his flask from under the sink.

“Do you want a top-up, or will I just look after myself?”

Nothing.

“Are you okay for a hot drop?”

“I’m grand.”

Half a cup was enough for him. He didn’t want to have to stop for a pee break. He made sandwiches quickly and filled his flask. Taking his coat from the hook he stood in the doorway and looked at her.

“I’ll be back when I’m back, then.”

“I know that.”

Not very Christmassy, he thought as he pulled onto the road. It was pitch black. There couldn’t have been much of a view out the window she was staring at. She’d already be back in bed anyway. Sleeping or reading or doing what he couldn’t say. Going over this again, possibly. This. An unpleasant and awkward dance that had them moving through an ever more isolated choreography, taking every opportunity to speak less and touch not at all. And yet there she was at four in the morning to bear witness to what they both knew was now a ritual. Hers was more an act of protest. It was cool and passive, especially when he compared it to previous years, but she wasn’t there for no reason. She was letting him know he still didn’t have her approval. He wasn’t going to be let slip out of the house like everything was fine.

It was as quiet as he expected. Hardly any traffic at all. The last thing he saw before going to bed was the forecast and they were giving snow, but it didn’t seem cold enough for it. No sign of it at that hour, anyway. What he did see were two foxes in different spots along the back roads. Hunting, scavenging, going home. Not casual or random, he thought. A fox couldn’t afford to be accidental, no more than he could. Follow the scent. Stick to the known territory. Not scattergun. Intentional. Hope was for chancers.

“For God’s sake Michael, he’s not going to be there!” she snapped. “You’re only torturing us with this. Why do it? It’s just more upset for both of us.”

“I’m not upset.”

Could that have been true? The exchanges blended into a single collated memory, and he couldn’t distinguish one from the other because they were all versions of the same thing. The sentiment no longer needed to be verbalised. It was understood. She thought he was a stubborn fool, and he thought her anger was misplaced.

“People are laughing at you.”

“I doubt they’re laughing, Nuala. Not about this.”

“Well, they pity you, which is worse.”

Yes, he thought, those first years definitely had more heat in them. But time was doing what it did. Shuffling the deck. Nothing was in order anymore. In many of the homes he passed, trees inside and out were lit up with festive lights, some white, some multi-coloured, all achieving the desired effect of painting the darkness. The memories were like all those pretty little lights – where would you even start trying to put them in order? A Pushmi-Pullyu problem, is what Nuala would call it, long after having left her career as a primary school teacher. He’d remind her that he was no longer in High Infants and would not be charmed by tales of talking animals. Although he did wonder what the foxes would say to him if they knew what he was doing. It struck him that he would be no less likely to see foxes once he was closer to the city. He imagined they kept well away from the airport though.

The drive was uneventful. His mind wandered this way and that, but he mostly let the road hold his attention.

“Nuala, if you were told a ball would one day fall from the sky and at exactly three o’clock land on your doorstep, would you not open the front door and put your hand out to catch it?”

He regretted sharing that one with her. He should have kept it to himself. But he was so convinced of it. Surely she’d understand. Surely then she would get it.

She did not. She thought he’d lost his mind. She looked at him without saying a thing and then turned and walked away from him.

He didn’t lay out any more rationales after that. Not to her, anyway.

It had become a ritual. One that he stored deep inside himself for most of the year until it rose in him of its own accord. He didn’t need to look at the calendar. A ritual? More like a pilgrimage. Pilgrims sought affirmation of their faith. They journeyed to a place of cleansing. Or else the journey was the cleansing. Endure, persevere, last. They weren’t his terms, but what he was doing could be seen in that light. And what did the pilgrim have to report upon their return? In what way had they changed? She expected him to be shaken. And then to be put off. But he’d only become more determined. And it seemed to infuriate her. Nothing had been shown to him. No ball had fallen from the sky. And she wanted him to respond accordingly. She wanted him to wear his destroyed heart the same way she did. But he didn’t know who that was for.

He did what he’d done since he started making the trip seven years before and parked on the roof of the short-term car park. He didn’t want to be mickeying about with a shuttle bus if Ger made it. He hadn’t yet, and he couldn’t pretend the drive back home wasn’t when his destroyed heart let him know exactly how he felt. But maybe this year would be different. Maybe this year the ball would fall from the sky. That was the only reason he was there.

“I’ll be back Dad, don’t worry. It won’t be summer, it’ll be Christmas. You’ll pick me up, will you?”

“Would you not hitch?” he joked.

“I will if I have to!”

“That’s a wait and see situation, so.”

As he watched his only child move briskly to the departure gates, he almost choked on the dread that suddenly flooded his body. His son had outgrown him. He was a big man who moved with the easy confidence of an athlete. But of course, he still saw the little boy in the man’s body. The gansey on him. The big hurler’s head on him. The grin on him that he’d had since the muscles in his baby face knew what they were there for. And he just let him go as if he was on a night out in the town with his pals from the club. As if he’d be in his bed in the morning waiting to be called down for a cooked breakfast. As if he’d be sitting at the kitchen table charming his mother and making her laugh with his stories and his plans. He drove home in a daze of impotence. He’d been telling himself it would be grand, that somehow the right course of action would present itself. Nuala asked him why he hadn’t stopped him from going. And then she didn’t speak or leave the bed for three days.

It took ten months to get to the first Christmas. When he came home alone from the airport that time, he saw her looking out the window as he pulled up in front of the house. She let the curtain fall back in place and was sitting there in the lightless front room when he came in. She wouldn’t let him flick the switch.

“You’re not to do that again,” she said. “You’re not to do it again.”

The airport was hopping. It was the only time of year he was there, but he was assured by busier people than him that the airport was never not that way now. He didn’t need to be told. It was as plain as the nose on your face that Ireland was a completely different beast to the country he grew up in. Even as far away from the capital as they were, the changes were impossible not to notice. It wasn’t just an attitude, or a way of talking, it was what people talked about. So much of it was about money, cars, property – things that had never been of particular interest to him. People seemed incapable of not saying what they’d got, or what they’d done, or where they’d been. Money was the purring engine beneath it all. He imagined the chatter turning silent if those subjects were taken off the table. What would people talk about then? They’d go back to how it was before and talk about everybody else instead of themselves. Ger and his mother rarely missed a chance to roll their eyes at his antiquated view of things.

“We were all better off in the good old days when we had nothing but an inferiority complex to keep us warm, is that it, Dad?”

“Honest to God Michael, are we not better off being better off? At least young people today can fly off anywhere they choose, and it’s not because they have to, it’s because they want to!”

Well, this time of year was when they all came home. Over the past seven years he’d seen thousands of sons and daughters and grandchildren come through the arrival gates to every manner of welcome. From shrieks and sobs to handshakes and high fives. From hugs, kisses and prolonged embraces to the barest of head nods and perfunctory smiles. Tears, screams, and laughter were commonplace. Balloons and banners and bouquets of flowers. Prodigal sons and daughters and their partners and spouses from different shores meeting their Irish families for the first time. Babies and children being scrutinised and doted upon. Lovers reunited. The ones that made the biggest impression on him were the old boys and old dears who came through in wheelchairs or with oxygen attached and looked like they had just made their last ever major journey to be with family one final time. They were received and handled with a level of care that suggested both their fragility and their mortality. And there were those who seemed to be returning for reasons more grave. Weary and evidently burdened, faces pinched and drawn as they made their way onwards to a bedside vigil or to unpleasant logistical obligations. No banners for them, no trolley laden down with innumerable gifts. We’re good travellers, he thought, but we’re also good at welcoming home those good travellers. Not everybody had someone to meet them. You had people who looked more like commuters in work mode, or people who may have been in transit, or backpacker types who for some reason chose Ireland for Christmas. And not everybody who was waiting had someone turn up.

He remembered one young man standing expectantly with an extravagant bunch of roses. Over the course of no more than an hour he watched the young lover slowly deflate as he realised the intended recipient of the flowers hadn’t arrived. There was increasingly frantic checking of his phone and the many screens displaying flight information, but no matter how much he scanned the words and numbers, the result was the same. He was going to be leaving the airport the same way he’d arrived; on his own. As for himself, not all Christmas Eves had been the same. Each year he’d come up, he’d had a feeling one way or the other that dictated how he’d be. The first Christmas, he knew in his gut almost as soon as he parked up that Ger wouldn’t be home. But he saw out the day dutifully, aware the entire time that it was an excruciating charade. Partly, he stayed to justify the trip up, rather than returning home immediately and exposing to Nuala how wrong he had been. He had to play the long game, but it was a miserable drive back. Looming beside him in the car like an unspeaking passenger was the knowledge he’d have to wait another full year before trying again. The following Christmas he travelled with genuine hope, believing there was a real chance Ger would make it. But he did not. When he didn’t surface again the following year, it was a setback he wasn’t sure he’d recover from. He had to come up with a counter-mantra to protect himself from the disappointment. Each subsequent Christmas, no matter what his gut was saying, he would recite three simple denials.

He is not coming.

He will not be there.

You will not see him.

And it worked. It made the journey home more bearable. He had successfully laid the ground to cushion his subconscious. Although he questioned what his subconscious conviction really was. It came down to two choices. Was Ger dead or alive? If he was dead, he definitely wouldn’t be coming. And if he was alive, it was only a matter of time. At no point was there definitive proof he had been killed. They’d get word of an Irishman, an Englishman, a Westerner, a white European. Or was he Scottish? Or Canadian? Or Dutch? From Ireland, or Holland? Ger was gregarious and made friends easily, but unlike so many of his peers, he wasn’t someone to spend loads of time online giving updates of his whereabouts.

“It’s all shite, Dad,” he’d say. “Life doesn’t happen on Facebook or whatever – it’s out there, right in front of you, every day you want to grab it. Grab a hurl, grab a pint, grab a stick, grab a girl!”

“You’d better get their consent before you go grabbing any girl,” his mother would chime in, at which point Ger would launch himself at her and dance her around the room, wilfully ignoring her laughter-filled protests.

He rejected the possibility that the boy didn’t want to come home. It didn’t fit. He was looking for a challenge, an adventure, something to really take on, but he wasn’t unhappy. There was no bad blood. People would come at him with theories in their attempts to offer comfort, but they were often over-complicated, or too analytical, or fixated on imposing the latest pop-psychology on the story. It was well-intentioned, but he listened only out of politeness. He saw Nuala being a bit more open to that sort of thing, but to him it was simpler. Yes, Ger had a huge heart, but he was no eejit. He was resourceful and dogged. And he’d never seen him break his word. Not once. If he said he’d be home, he’d be home, that was it. So how could he not go to the airport to try and catch a ball from the sky?

But he had to be cute about it. It was his own mission, and not one he shared with the different consulates and embassies and agencies that they were in touch with regularly. They all had their own protocols and networks and a certain amount of good faith meant their calls and emails were answered with reassuring speed and courtesy. If they had reason to think he was some kind of lúdramán indulging in magical thinking, it could affect their standing with the people who were best able to help them if the worst came to pass.

There were two or three back in the village who never shared their speculations with him. They didn’t direct him to features or programs about radicalised young men – yes, even in Ireland! They didn’t offer thoughts on Islamic sleeper cells – yes, in south County Dublin! Nor did they tell him of websites that were shop windows for Jihadists – yes, on the internet in your own home! The odd time they would ask him if there was any word and leave it at that. That was about the right balance, disturbing him as little as possible.

He didn’t seek out conversation at the airport. He wasn’t looking to lay out the situation to strangers and detract from their happy reunions or festive optimism. Not that everyone was looking to strike up a chat. Quite the opposite. As there had been the previous years, there was an extremely enthusiastic group of tinsel-clad carol singers practically bouncing off the floor with glittery Santa hats and unceasing bells. He threw a few coins in one of their buckets for whatever their chosen charity was. He marvelled at their giddy energy so early in the morning. He observed many people studiously avoiding them, maintaining their trajectory with laser-like focus. He found a seat where he could keep a good eye on everyone coming through arrivals. He felt good this year. Things felt aligned. He quietly recited the mantra before pouring himself a tea and drinking slowly as he watched the steady stream of passengers proceed through the gates. He’d familiarised himself with the airlines and routes that serviced the most likely countries he’d be flying out of. These were the logically connected routes, not backdoor entries or weird pinball charters that zigzagged all over the map of the world. Ger would be too impatient to not to travel as directly as he could.

“Is Santa coming?”

He felt his sleeve being tugged. Looking down, he saw a young boy at his side stuffed into a big blue padded jacket topped off with a busy scarf around his neck and a chunky bobble-hat on his little head. Droopy legs covered in brown corduroy hung slack over the edge of his seat. A woman he presumed to be the mother was on the other side of him speaking English into her phone and then French off it to an older woman beside her.

“Is Santa coming?” the boy asked again.

“Why are you asking me?”

The boy frowned.

“My daddy says you shouldn’t answer a question with a question.”

“Is that right? Why is that, then?”

“Because people might think you’re being rude, and also a smartarse.”

“A smartarse.”

The boy nodded gravely. “Yes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want that. That’s good advice from your daddy.”

The boy contemplated this before resuming.

“So, is Santa coming?”

“Can you be more specific? Sorry. I would like you to be more specific.”

“Is specific like exact?”

“It is.”

“Is Santa coming here, to Ireland? And to be more specific, is he coming here, to the airport? Because I think we might be staying here tonight.”

“Oh. Well, I think yes is the answer, because Santa somehow manages to go everywhere he’s expected, no matter what. He always has. I don’t see why he’d stop now.”

“Well, that’s good,” the boy said with relief.

Before he could engage him further, the boy’s mother, who was still fully immersed in her phone conversation, took her son by the hand and walked off with the older woman. She hadn’t looked over once to see what he was doing or who he was talking to. She didn’t look then, and she wasn’t looking now. As the boy was being dragged away, he called out a merry Christmas to him. He gave him a cheery thumbs up and responded in kind. He didn’t recall he or Nuala ever being so stressed that they would be oblivious to Ger’s behaviour when he was right beside them. He recognised it when he encountered it, but he couldn’t put his finger on why things should feel so different now. People didn’t look like they were either happy or in control. They were endlessly stressed. Some sort of higher power had them in perpetual motion and refused them permission to stop. It was like the fairy tale about the spoilt girl who couldn’t stop dancing once she’d put on a coveted pair of red shoes. He remembered telling Ger a version of that story, but he made it about a young hurler who refused to come off when he was subbed. He ended up unable to stop playing until he was so exhausted he was useless to his teammates. He had been trying to get Ger to keep an eye on his competitive streak.

“But Dad, what if I was so fit that I could play forever?”

“Well then we’d have to chop off your feet so some of the other lads could get a game.”

“Chop off me feet! Are you mad?”

“You’ll undo the good you bring to the team if you’re only thinking about your own game. It’s hurling, not tennis or golf. Lads need to know they have a stake in the outcome.”

Ger told him he’d have to think about it. He came back a couple of days later and looked him in the eye.

“I think you’re right, Dad.”

The morning came and went. Without clockwatching, he was surprised to realise it had already gone five o’clock. He hadn’t dozed off, but he couldn’t swear his mind hadn’t wandered. He’d had more tea. He’d had half the sandwiches. He’d paid three quick visits to the toilet. Otherwise he’d been there, watching and waiting. He was accustomed to an afternoon nap, but it was when he felt his eyes getting a little heavy that he took himself to the toilet to splash water on his face. He had remained vigilant. There was steady movement, but it wasn’t like it was an unbroken march of endless passengers. There were little lulls here and there. Also, baggage landed on the carousels at different rates of efficiency, so stop-start was very much the pattern. There was nothing metronomic going on. He wasn’t sure that concept existed in Ireland. His senses would instantly sharpen when he thought passengers fit the approximation of a profile he had in his head. He knew himself he was guilty of what was called ethnic profiling, but he justified what he was doing because he wasn’t coming from a punitive, or vengeful motivation. He wasn’t trying to catch anybody. The way he thought about it was that if for some reason Irish people were being profiled, he’d be an obvious subject. Irish people looked Irish, he reasoned. Is that something to be offended by? Then he remembered travelling to England in the 60s and 70s and the way he’d be regarded and interviewed by police. That was profiling, although they didn’t call it that then. Did he like it? No, he didn’t.

He was annoyed with himself for exposing his own faulty logic. Get on with the job in hand, he thought. This happened every year. He’d hit a certain point in the day and the tiredness and crankiness would kick in, and bring with it the self-doubt. That’s why he needed the nap! He shook his head and sat up straighter. Passengers started to come through who felt like they’d be on a Ger flight. He scanned and scrutinised bodies and faces, discounting women and children and old people. It was men of a certain look, build and age he was after. A prickle of energy bristled across his back. Was that him? He stood up to move closer. He blinked his eyes. The shape was right. The clothes were different, which made sense, but a scarf and beard were making it hard to identify him immediately. There was more right than wrong. He started walking towards him. The man turned his head in his direction. He felt his son’s name form itself in his mouth and he was just about to say it out loud for the first time in eight years when the man’s face broke into a huge smile. He extended his arms and a little girl leapt into them and clasped her arms around his neck. It wasn’t him. Of course. Of course it wasn’t.

He is not coming.

He will not be there.

You will not see him.

He returned to his seat and slumped down into it. He closed his eyes and tried to reorder his energy. Emotion surged in him. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. He was so angry. And so sad. For a moment his brain felt like it was going to unhinge itself as it tried to grasp the full, humiliation-drenched impossibility of what he was attempting. He stared blankly, seeing nothing, hearing nothing as he retreated mentally and emotionally from this defeat.

That was it. That was the cosmic moment. That other man, who was almost his son, was the ball that dropped from the sky. But he dropped for someone else. For that little girl. He looked up and saw a woman there too, equally excited for the return of her man. He dropped for her too. That man. That not-Ger. He continued looking at them until they hurriedly made their way outside, he carrying both his luggage and his daughter, she linking his arm and planting yet one more kiss on his cheek. And then they were gone. Order restored.

He felt dizzy. That was enough for this year. That was too close and nowhere near close enough. If he got on the road in the next little while, he’d be home by midnight or thereabouts. He collected himself and acted out the performance of preparing to leave at just the time he expected. He affected an air of calmness and blithe uninterest as he slowly moved in the direction of the toilets. Washing his hands, he examined his reflection in the mirror and with a puzzled expression tried to find Ger in his own features. But Ger looked like his mother, not him, so he didn’t materialise. Lost in thought, he turned the wrong way leaving the toilets and started moving further from where he needed to be. When he realised what he was doing, he had brought himself to the entrance of the airport prayer room. He walked straight in and sat down in a little alcove that was one of a few dotted along the walls of the room. He had an impulse to recite his mantra again but instead chose to practise a meditation technique Nuala had put him onto to help him sleep at night. All it was was concentrating on the breath, rising and falling with it while allowing everything else fade into the background. Thoughts, emotions, anxieties, issues – all the great interrupters. He visualised a huge waterfall that would reverse its flow in total silence on his in-breath, and then cascade with ferocious volume on his out-breath. Silence. Then noise. Noise. Then silence. There was a balance in that which he found very appealing. The relentless falling of the water calmed him. Its power and velocity were so undeniable that giving into it was the only choice. To him it was serenity. It was a deafening torrent that obliterated all sound. It refused entry to his anguish, his tears, his rage, his impotence. It was a place to hide from his guilt. He closed his eyes and rolled through one breath after another until he could feel the weight of his legs beneath him and the weight of his feet on the floor. When his chest softened and his shoulders sagged, he was ready to leave.

As he stood up to go, he noticed a small man standing up from a prayer mat in the corner of the room. He took out a phone and held it over the mat before putting it away and gathering his belongings. The man made eye contact and nodded politely before moving towards the door.

“Are you Muslim?” he enquired.

The man stopped and hesitated a moment before answering.

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you mind me asking what you were doing with your phone there?”

Again the man hesitated.

“I was using an app to make sure the qiblah was the right way.”

“The what?”

“The qiblah. It’s the direction we face to pray to Mecca. I was making sure the sajadah – the praying mat – was in the right direction.”

“Would you not have done that before you prayed?”

“That would have been disrespectful.”

“Your phone – an app, was it?”

“Yes, an app. With a boussole – eugh, a compass. I’m sorry, I have to catch a flight.”

He went to move on.

“My son is fighting for your part of the world, you know.”

The man looked surprised.

“Your son is fighting for Paris?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m from Paris. I’m sorry, I really have to go.”

He dashed out the door and was gone.

Crossing the concourse to get to the car park gave him a taste of the snow that had been forecast. The temperature had dropped significantly and he clutched his coat tighter around his neck as he made for his car. He turned it over and got the heater going. Never been to Paris, he thought. He exited the airport slowly and enjoyed looking at the flurries of snow swirling around and beneath the streetlights. He was in no hurry and was happy to take it easy on the long drive back. Remembering a short cut a worker at the airport had told him about, he turned right instead of going straight on and trusted he would correctly recall the rest. Even though it wasn’t that late, there were almost no cars on the road. Must be the conditions, he reasoned. Or else the short cut wasn’t well known. The snow was falling heavily enough that visibility either side of the road was very poor. He drove past something on the left that was uncomfortably close to the car. He’d gone about thirty metres when he realised it had been a hitcher holding a sign. He slowed down and looked in his rear-view mirror. The night was awful. The figure was still there, waiting for the next car to come along, holding his sign up in hope.

“Christ.”

He put on his hazards and came to a stop. He beeped the horn and slowly started reversing back the road to where the figure stood. He stopped just beside them and the passenger door was opened, immediately letting a blast of snow and wind announce itself.

“Thanks so much,” a grateful voice shouted, “I didn’t think anyone would come along here, let alone stop.”

As he looked towards the open door, a haggard-looking young man stared across at him in disbelief.

“Dad?”

“What the hell are you doing out hitching on a night like this?”

“I’m trying to get home. I told you I’d hitch if I had to.”

“Get in out of that weather!”

He bundled into the car and closed the door quickly behind him. He looked at his father staring at him in total silence.

“Dad,” he said quietly, “It’s me, it’s Ger.”

His father turned his head slowly and looked up out of the windshield.

“It’s snowing, Ger. Look at the snow. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it look so beautiful.”