by Gavin McCrea
—Iris, he said, you’re in a—. What is that you’re wearing?
She put down her fork.
—In common English it’s called a kaftan.
He swished his hand effeminately.
—Oh stop talking like the telly.
She gulped down a mouthful of tea. Over the top of the cup, she glared out of the window.
Faced with the side of her head, her father now appealed to Keith:
—What do you think, Mister Keith?
Keith stopped chewing.
—Can you see what I’m saying?
Keith shrugged.
Her father nodded as if receiving Keith’s accord telepathically.
—You seem like a nice chap. Come to this country to make a better life. I for one am glad you’re here because I have a question to ask you. Do you see my daughter? You see her there?
Slowly Keith slid his eyes towards Iris and swallowed.
With a shake of her head, Iris instructed him not to humour her father.
—Take a look at her, please, Mister Keith, and tell me, from your perspective, what do you see? The hair. The clothes. What do you make of it?
Her father’s rejection of communism, which was late but sudden, coincided with his conclusion that his daughters were sloppy and immoral. It was not a great distance to travel from there to guilt, and from guilt to an embrace of Catholic Christianity. As for Iris, she would have liked, once in a while, to be to blame for her own life.
Keith cleared his throat:
—I, uh—
—Do you have girls like her where you’re from? I’m guessing not. I’m guessing there’s nothing of the sort. And there wouldn’t be any here either, not a one, if we, in our ignorance, hadn’t raised them the way we did.
He pointed a finger of one hand at Iris, a finger of the other at himself, in accusation.
—They’re the way they are because that’s how we made them.
Then he extended his arms out wide, as if to invite the whole world into them.
—We did it. Us. It’s our fault.
She banged down her cup:
—Papa, look at me.
Her father turned, his maniacal face now framed between outstretched hands.
—What happened with Doris?
Hearing the name, and instantly weakened by it, he let his face slacken and his arms fall to the table.
—What do you bloody well think happened? She went to Paris.
—Did she invite you to go with her?
—Not with so many words.
—With any words?
—I could tell she didn’t want me to go. She doesn’t exactly make it difficult to understand.
—What did she say?
He rubbed his eyes with a savage force:
—She said she can’t work when I’m around. That I’m a weight on her. I’m suffocating her. She has to go away, on her own. Her opportunities lie elsewhere, and I’m keeping her from them.
—So, the usual.
He pressed his temples as if trying to remember:
—No, no. This time she had something new. Let me think, what was it now? Your egocentricity is beginning to threaten my capacity for work. I have to remove myself from your influence.
Iris had to fight back a smile. Everything considered, she liked Doris. Or rather she liked her for her father. She could not advise her father to stay in a marriage that was not working, yet she knew that if he lost Doris for good, that would be the end of him. He would use religion to take his suffering away, and eventually, with no one there to hold him back, would surrender his whole self to it. That had to be prevented.
—She’s done this before, Papa. She probably just needs some time. Are you sure she’s not just taking a break?
—Did you hear me? I have to remove myself from your influence.
—I doubt she meant, you know, permanently.
—She broke up with me, Iris. This is it. Fin.
Iris pushed her plate away and tapped the table impatiently:
—You’ve got to lay off with the God shit.
He shook his head solemnly:
—That’s not it.
Iris leaned back on her chair and reached for the packet of cigarettes on the counter.
—Well, if you ask me, Doris will stay in Paris only until the party ends. Then she’ll be back.
—No, not this time. She’s always wanted to get out of England. This is her chance. She’ll meet someone, a Frenchman, and that’ll be it.
Iris lit a cigarette. Then pocketed the packet and returned the lighter to its place in her pouch.
—If you really didn’t think there was a hope of her coming back, why did you send Eva and the others to find her?
Her father’s face arranged itself into a look of anguish:
—God, I wish Eva hadn’t gone.
—What’re you talking about? You were at the commune a few days ago, telling her to go. Too scared to chase after your own wife yourself.
—I went to the commune, as you call it, because I knew Eva would be tempted to go, and I wanted to dissuade her. I was trying to stop her!
Iris gave her cigarette to Keith to drag from.
—Simon told me a different story.
—Simon? He wasn’t even there. He was hiding upstairs in his lair.
—That’s what he told me.
—And you believe him over me?
She waved away the smoke that Keith blew over the table:
—I suppose I do.
There was a long silence then.
Eventually she said:
—You should visit him more often.
—He could come here too, couldn’t he? What’s stopping him?
—Papa. He’s your brother.
—Look, I know. I will.
He bowed his head.
—I should be more Christian. When you think about it, Jesus himself was a madman.
Straightening up, he spoke now with practised smoothness.
—Do you believe in God, Keith?
Keith finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in a pot on the windowsill: no plant, just hardened soil and a hoard of fag ends.
—Sure, I believe.
Her father gave her a look of triumph, as if in that moment he personally had instilled in Keith the Spirit of the Lord.
—Iris thinks the Catholic Church is against progress. Against the twentieth century. And I say, so what if it is? So am I, if the twentieth century means the crazy world I see about me.
Like a holy simpleton, he signed himself with the cross.
—Oh for fuck’s sake, said Iris.
Her father patted the pockets of his cardigan, looking for his cigarettes. Not finding them, he went glum.
—You know, I worry about you, Iris. The drugs and the places you go at night.
—Drugs? I don’t know what put that into your head.
—It’ll be the end of you. I hope you’re careful.
—I can look after myss—
Abruptly Keith stood up and began piling the plates. Took them to the sink and turned on the tap.
—Yeah, we should go, said Iris.
Her father accompanied them down to the front door.
—Thanks for the food, said Keith, and went up the area steps to wait on the street.
Her father hugged her.
—You’re good to come round.
He pressed a banknote into her hand.
—You know, don’t you, that you won’t be able to stay in that building much longer?
—I know, Papa.
—They mean to put up flats. Your mother is serious about selling it.
—Have you been speaking to her?
—I had to let her know Eva had go
ne. In case anything happened.
—Nothing’s going to happen.
She crumpled the money and put it away.
—See you, Papa. Take a walk or something.
—Your dad is heavy, Keith said on their way back down Caledonian Road.
—What he needs is a trip and a fuck.
When they reached King’s Cross, Keith said:
—Well, it was nice, thanks a lot.
—Where you off to now?
—Back to the Hill.
—This about my dad?
—Nah, I just need to get back. Got my own shit going on.
—You can sleep at mine. My dad gave me some cash. We can get chips on the way. And go out for breakfast tomorrow.
—More food? You starve me for hours and now—
—Come on, Keith. Just tonight. Then you can go back.
Keith shrugged, okay.
They had chips from a shop opposite the station and bought two more bags to take home. At the theatre lodging house, the Indian students, Neel and Sid, were cooking in the kitchen. The corridors were filled with smoke and with the smell of spices. Iris and Keith went straight up to her room. Iris locked the door and jumped into the bed. Lit the candle in a lantern, one that her mother had given her years ago, which instantly heated the air.
—Home sweet home, she said.
In contrast to her own careless appearance, she put a lot of thought into her living space. She enjoyed the small, well-defined limits of her room, and she liked to have it neat. Keith ate from his bag of chips as he inspected pictures on the walls and the objects on the shelves; her personal archaeology. He brought his nose close to the psychedelic posters and the framed pieces of Chinese calligraphy. Lifted the minerals and the crystals to test them for their weight. Fanned through the pack of tarot cards. Iris welcomed his attention. She recognised herself in her objects. They were materialised bits of her soul.
Keith took her doll from the shelf.
—That’s Mao, she said. I made it when I was a kid.
—You said Mao was a bloke. This looks like a girl to me.
—It is a girl. But I called her Mao.
He put it back:
—Freaky.
After putting more chips into his mouth, he ran a greasy finger along her line of books. Overlooking the Confucius and the Tao and the I Ching and the early leather-bound edition of The Idiot, he went straight for Capital. He put the chips down on the shelf so that he could use both hands to flick through the book.
—Where’d you get all this? he said, putting the book back.
—From Uncle Max, mostly. Who’s not really my uncle.
Keith pointed at the framed professional photo of her mother:
—Who’s this?
—My mother.
—Wha!
—I know.
—What you said about her before, at the party—
—I don’t remember what I said.
—Probably for the best. What happened to her?
—What do you mean?
—When did she, you know, pass?
—She’s not dead.
—Oh. I got the impression.
—She’s dead to me. That’s the impression you got.
Suddenly tired of talking about her things, she rooted in her stash box and found a leftover morsel. She broke one of her father’s cigarettes into a rolling paper and began to burn and crumble the hash on top.
—Come here, she said as she rolled.
Keith transferred his unfinished bag of chips from the shelf to the desk and came to sit on the rug by the bed.
She licked the paper, smoothed the finished joint and handed it to him with the lighter.
—You light up.
—Nah, thanks.
—You don’t smoke?
He shook his head.
—What’s your weakness, then? You’re not into junk, are you?
—Fuck off, I don’t do junk.
—Yeah, stay away from junk.
From kneeling, she fell onto her back, stunned:
—Hold on, you’re straight?
—These days, yeah.
—I don’t believe it.
—I take a drink, but I try to stay away from everything else. I’m on a new leaf. Keeping the head clean. Staying out of trouble.
—But how d’you do it, being straight at a party like that?
—I like people who are high.
—You do?
—When you’re there, and everyone’s tripping, it’s like a closed world. A no-sense world. Maybe if you’re someone who needs people to say the same things all the time, or if hearing fucked-up things makes you nervy, maybe it’s not for you. But—
—You like it.
—Yeah, I like it. I like to listen. And look. And think.
He smiled:
—I got plenty of thinking done over you.
She sucked on the joint and thought about this.
—I dig it, she said.
In San Francisco, everyone would be just as they were now: no one forcing them into doing what they did not want to do, no discrepancy between rich and poor, black and white, the freedom to do what you wanted, to take drugs or not, to stay up all night, to work your own hours, to be non-regimented, not to have to prove one’s worth by dressing a particular way or catching the seven forty-five to Waterloo.
—So why do you take acid? Keith said.
—Insight, she said, pulling in some more smoke. You got a guru? Like, someone who you get completely, and who gets you?
He thought for a second:
—Not in one person.
She nodded her head for a long time.
—Yeah, man, I hear you. Not in one person. Fragments. Here and there. That’s what it’s about. Like flashes when you’re listening to music or reading a poem, and something flares up and that’s you.
She put the joint in the ashtray and lay down on the pillow.
—You’re cool, Keith, you know. All we’ve got to do is make you so that you know what’s happening.
Without taking off her clothes, she pulled the blankets over herself.
—That reefer made me sleepy. You want to share the bed?
—You don’t want me kicking you.
—I don’t care. Kick all you like.
—I’m fine here on the floor. Plenty of cushions here that I can use.
She curled up. Moaned with pleasure.
—I always look forward to sleep because I’m going to dream.
—D’you have nice dreams?
—I don’t know.
—You don’t know?
—I mean, I know I dream because everyone dreams. But I never remember them.
—Why d’you look forward to them then?
—I guess I like knowing that I dream. It doesn’t matter that they don’t stay with me. Will you watch me?
—While you dream?
—I don’t mean all night. Just if something happens.
—Is something going to happen?
—Probably.
—What am I to do?
—Watch I don’t fall. Or bang my head.
—All right.
She blew out the candle and closed her eyes.
—Does it hurt, he said after a while, when it’s happening?
She opened her eyes for a moment and looked into the dark.
—When I wake up I feel strange, but when it’s happening, I can’t feel anything.
—Am I to wake you?
—Just let it waste.
—There’s nothing I can do to stop it?
—Nothing. So don’t bother trying. It’s useless to interrupt.
After her expulsion from boarding school, she was made to sleep in he
r mother’s bed, supposedly so that her mother could keep an eye on her, though in reality it was Iris who ended up looking out for her mother. Her mother’s routine, on waking in the morning, was to roll over and write her dreams into a journal she kept by the bed. Then she got up and prepared a bowl of hot water. Sitting at her dressing table, she covered her head with a towel and breathed the steam into her lungs. When this got too much, she tilted back and doused her throat with a prescribed spray. Then, sucking on a Nigroid tablet, she massaged her neck, seeking herself.
Iris, woken by her mother’s movements, would go to rub her shoulders. She did not say a word while she did this, for mornings were meant to be mute; no chatter. Through the mirror in front, her mother would blow her a kiss, which was a sign for Iris to dip her index fingers into a tub of hot ointment and draw circles with it on her mother’s temples, applying as much pressure as she could, following an instruction once given her. When her mother had had enough of this, she would take Iris’s hand and put it over her nose and mouth, and breathe in its smell.
After a light breakfast — toast without butter and no milk in the coffee because it produced phlegm — they went to the piano. Singing was something they did together every morning since Iris began to be schooled at home. During the refurbishment the piano had been kept in the bedroom, but as soon as the new rehearsal studio was completed, it was moved there: a much larger space which required her mother to increase her range if she did not want to sound diminished; and a more public space, too, more exposed, which demanded that Iris overcome her impulse to sing in a half-voice out of fear of being overheard. Here, they had to perform.
By the time they arrived, Simon would already be in the studio, preparing it for that day’s rehearsal. He would have already cleared away yesterday’s mess, mopped the floor, checked the markings, polished the windowpanes, arranged the chairs, tidied the noticeboard, set out the props; or, at least, on the morning that Iris remembered more clearly than any other, he had already done all of this, and was now preparing the refreshment table in the corner.
Iris ran over and gave her uncle a brief hug, before going to the piano, lifting up the keyboard cover and sitting down in front of it, ready to be directed, eager to get it over with. Her mother put the final duet from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea onto the rack, and took her place to Iris’s right, facing the room. As Iris played the first notes, her mother’s mouth dutifully opened, and an unbelievable sound came out.