Letters to Iris

by Elizabeth Noble

  Megan was not as ready as Richard had been. She wasn’t ready at all despite the hour. She answered the door in a dressing gown, her hair at its ‘hedge backwards’ best, her eyes bleary from the end-of-exam celebrations the night before.

  ‘Mum. Dad. Hello … you are …’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oh shit. Exactly on time.’ Her breath was boozy.

  She sent them to the café at the end of the road, promising she’d be entirely ready in the time it took them to order and drink a cappuccino.

  Gigi sat at a table in the corner and watched Richard order. Joke with the waitress about something. Search in his pocket for some change for the tip jar. He weaved through the tables with a tray and sat beside her. Two cappuccinos and two cakes. Eccles for him, a piece of carrot cake for her, with a perfectly iced carrot atop the cream-cheese icing. Her favourite.

  ‘I’m glad we’re doing this.’ He smiled at her.

  She smiled back. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Richard …’

  ‘You’re not just tolerating having to spend this time with me, for Megan’s sake?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘And really hating every moment.’

  ‘Of course not. There’s absolutely nothing to hate, Richard.’

  He smiled again, relieved. ‘We’ve done a fair bit of this, haven’t we? You and me.’

  Gigi laughed. ‘God. Bags of it. Literally. Bags. Although the boys never had as much stuff as Meg.’

  ‘No, but that bloody drive.’ Christopher had studied in Durham. Hours and hours, on the very best day, and the M1 didn’t have many best days.

  ‘And did we ever once get there and it wasn’t raining?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He loved it, though, didn’t he?’

  She nodded, remembering. ‘He did.’

  They were quiet for a few moments. They were both, she supposed, playing the cine films of their shared history in their own minds. Listening to the laughter, the map squabbles – the soundtrack of their past. Wondering when it went wrong. Wondering how the hell they’d ended up here.

  There was a rack of newspapers on the wall behind the table where they were sitting. The truth is, if they’d been here even a few months earlier, Richard would have taken one out and started to read it, his head and shoulders disappearing behind a broadsheet. Almost as soon as he sat down. He’d have been irritated that Megan wasn’t ready. Hell – he might not even have come: he might have been playing golf, asking her if she could manage without him. Which was really telling her that she should be able to. If he had come, he wouldn’t have bought her a slice of cake. Not without her asking for one, at least. She didn’t even know that he knew it was her favourite. They’d have been sitting at the table together but alone. Now he was watching her. Looking for reactions. Trying to please her. Eking out time together.

  Everything she’d said she’d wanted and needed. Only she could decide whether he was too late.

  Tess

  Week 30. Today you are about 3 lb. Sadly, the book says I only need 300 calories a day more than normal, even though you’re getting bigger so fast. I’m struggling to visualize you as a vegetable at this point, since the large cauliflower I picked up in Sainsbury’s as I waddled around (Yes, I waddle now. When I’m not peeing. Very attractive.) at lunchtime is round, and you are, presumably, longer than that. And less … leafy and florety. I’m not sure all this fruit and vegetable stuff is helpful. I weighed it, nonetheless, in the scales they have. Tried to figure out what you might weigh now.

  Tess hadn’t intended to drop in on Iris – she had had a midwife appointment that morning, and they almost always ran really late. This time, though, they’d been amazingly prompt – early even, as one of the mothers ahead of her hadn’t shown up. And, since the office wasn’t expecting her until lunchtime, she had decided to nip in for a few minutes. It was as much for her as for Iris – she felt peaceful, sitting with her grandmother. Good thinking time. She’d never raised Tom with Iris again, after that horrid reaction. She never would. It was more important to her that Iris stayed calm and relatively happy than it was to keep pressing her for answers to all the questions she had. She had to accept that she’d never get those answers. Had to acknowledge that Iris hadn’t wanted her to know, to understand – neither her nor Donna. It was hers alone. She thought of the bundle of London postcards she’d found piled with the Radio Times in Iris’s house. Had she stayed in London after that last letter, from her mother? Had she gone back for the funeral? The questions persisted, but Iris mattered more than the answers. Iris was speaking less and less, and, when she did talk, what she said made less sense than before, like she was seeing through a veil. Tess had almost, but not quite, stopped hoping. You probably never did. Like a gold digger, sifting through pans of grit and rock, hoping for a tiny, shining, valuable nugget of the good stuff …

  Donna had signed in the book twenty minutes or so ahead of her. She hadn’t said she was coming, when she’d seen her last night. She’d been working late, and Tess had made her a cup of tea when she came in exhausted at ten. Since Tess could barely keep awake after that time, they’d chatted only briefly, on the landing.

  Iris’s door was ajar, and Tess heard Donna before she saw her. She stopped, just out of view, and listened for a moment. Donna was telling Iris about the shoot yesterday – her voice gentle and soft – little stories about the anxious mother, who’d had to be sent out of the room before the children would do anything vaguely worth photographing, and the father, who was stiff and uncomfortable. Tess liked the tenderness and affection that were clear in Donna’s voice – both for Iris and for yesterday’s subjects.

  When she turned to enter the room, she saw that Donna was combing Iris’s hair. The sight of the two of them was so poignant. She remembered Donna in the hospital, when Iris was first ill, and this new reality of what she needed was presenting itself – that brittle, tense woman seemed like someone else entirely. It almost flooded her with relief, now, to watch them together, to be a part of this.

  Donna smiled at her. ‘Morning. Great minds think alike. I was going to sprawl in bed this morning, catch up on some rest … but then I just realized I’d rather be here.’

  Tess nodded. Words caught in her throat.

  ‘Are you okay? What did the midwife say?’ Donna’s face crowded with concern.

  ‘I’m fine. Everything is just dandy. It’s just nice, seeing you two …’

  Donna winked. ‘You’re one walking hormone at this point, aren’t you?’

  Tess laughed and sobbed at the same time.

  Iris smiled beatifically at both of them, vacantly happy.

  Tess went to the chair and kissed her grandmother’s cheek. ‘Sorry about the waterworks, Gran. Occupational hazard.’

  Iris seldom, if ever, acknowledged the pregnancy, but now she put one hand on Tess’s tummy and gently patted it. Which didn’t help.

  ‘I never knew you read to her. In the hospital. The nurse told me, after you left for Goa.’

  ‘Why would I tell you?’

  ‘I thought … I mean, I think I gave you a hard time … made out like you didn’t care as much as I did.’

  ‘It isn’t a competition, though, is it?’

  ‘But I’m sorry. You cared all along.’

  ‘Of course. She’s my mum.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you don’t need to be sorry. I got a lot of stuff wrong. You weren’t all wrong about me either. I was the reason that we weren’t close … me and her …’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Donna nodded. ‘I think so. I’ve had a lot of time to figure it out. It goes back a long way. She knew my truths. I was trying – for so long – to live a lie, and her truths, and her knowing my truths – that would have got in the way, while I was with Harry, at least. I shut her out to keep the honesty away. If that doesn’t sound totally half-baked. It was easier that way. And that gets habit-forming. It gets harder
and harder to let someone back in.’ Tess knew that was true. ‘And I didn’t let myself think about how that might hurt her, you know. And I’m sorry. So sorry. For that.’

  Tess nodded.

  ‘I think I told myself that I was making up for it by letting her be so close to you. It made me jealous, and a bit sad, and that was my penance, I suppose.’

  She sniffed hard.

  ‘And then I just left it too bloody late. You were going the same way … distant. I worked hard at not letting you need me, and then I was shocked when you didn’t … And when you get so far down that road, it gets bloody difficult to find a way back. And, once Iris was ill, it felt like muscling back in. I suppose I was afraid you wouldn’t want me, wouldn’t let me.’

  Tess wondered if she would have.

  ‘And so, because I had so bloody much to say, and no clue how to say it, and she couldn’t hear me anyway – not properly hear me – I read the damn book. My voice. Not my words.’

  ‘I believe she did hear you.’

  Donna smiled and squeezed Tess’s hand. ‘You want to believe that.’

  ‘No. I do believe it. I believe in the chinks and the moments. I believe the love she had for us is that strong … that it comes through cracks.’

  ‘You sound just like Iris. Her sermon on the strength and simplicity of love.’

  They both smiled. ‘She’s not wrong, though, is she?’

  ‘Ah – you’re right. There are the moments … Can I show you something?’

  Tess nodded.

  Donna went to her black portfolio. It was propped against the wall, by the door. Tess had seen it when she came in, assumed Donna was on her way to a meeting.

  Donna lay it down on the floor and carefully unzipped it, taking out a few pictures, face down. She brought them over to the table where Tess was sitting and turned them right way up.

  ‘I took these. I’ve been wanting to show them to you.’

  They were a series of Iris, close-ups, all in black and white. Some were of her asleep, her face relaxed. In some, she was staring at something unseen, eyes milky, her skin lined. There was an almost haunted quality to them – she looked lost and anxious – bewildered. And, in others, she was smiling, straight to camera, and she looked quite as she always had, to Tess. Like she was about to speak, or she’d heard something that amused her. Like she was waking Tess up in the single bed in Salisbury, about to ask what the plan for that day was. Those last ones were more moving to her than she could say.

  ‘Those are the moments, right?’ Donna put her hand on Tess’s shoulder. ‘There she is …’

  Week 31, darling. Starting to get squashed in there. I’m sorry. I hope you’re okay. I’ve a new, bad habit of reading about miracle babies on the internet. Babies born early. Babies who spend days, weeks and months in incubators, on sheepskin pads, with wires and tubes and nappies for dolls. Babies whose parents post pictures of them online lying beside iPhones and Coke bottles to show how tiny they are. Who grow up and go to school and are just fine. I try to count weeks, not days. The women who’ve suffered speak in days. They write on forums about being 23 weeks + 3 days. Like that. Because they know that, that early, days count. How afraid they must be. Once it’s happened once. I’m scared. But I’m scared of a loss I can’t understand because I haven’t experienced it. How much worse – how paralysingly, obsessively, chillingly terrible – it must be if you have. The acute fear I had about you after the stitch has softened over the weeks. You’ve stayed in. Clever, wonderful, amazing you. I just need you to carry on holding on. I don’t miss Sean. But I miss a partner who would know what I’m feeling. Who would lie beside me every night and see me wide awake and anxious and tell me I’m daft and silly and that everything is going to be fine. And make me relax. I miss that. Do you know when I feel most okay? When I’m with Olly. Ssh. I can’t say that to anyone else. He’s so calm and kind and he’s so sure, somehow, that the universe is good. Gigi called him her golden boy to me once. He is. He’s golden. I want to wrap his optimism around me like a cloak. But Olly isn’t your father. He isn’t my boyfriend. He certainly doesn’t lie beside me every night. I can’t rely on him. It isn’t fair and it isn’t sensible. You and me. You and me. They’ve made the appointment – the stitch will come out in a few more weeks. When it’s safe. When they know you’ll be all right. Hang on until then, baby mine. Hang on.

  Gigi

  Oliver had phoned the night before and invited himself to lunch after a visit to his grandfather, requesting his favourite salad and offering to bring dessert. The salad was modelled on something they’d ordered almost daily on a holiday to the Amalfi coast, years ago, when Megan had still needed a buggy and the boys had exhausted themselves running up and down the steps in Positano: farro, and tomatoes and basil, with Parmesan.

  Gigi had countered that James was also due a visit from her, and that she’d meet Olly there and they’d drive back to hers in tandem. She’d been out early to shop for food; made and refrigerated the salad, and laid the table, stepping back to admire the white linen cloth and two fat peonies in a small Ikea tealight glass. It all looked fresh and modern and pleasing. She loved that about the flat. That magazine look she’d never managed to achieve anywhere else.

  Sometimes, when she considered her domestic renaissance, she had the fleeting, worrisome thought that she might have achieved the same relief leaving Richard had given her if she’d just painted the whole of the old house in Farrow and Ball Skylight and smashed all her old, dated china so she could replace it with Sophie Conran. Maybe she was that shallow.

  At Clearview, James had been the same. Not worse and not better. Present-ish. Happy enough. Olly had been jumpy. Turned to look every time the door to the day room opened. Only half paying attention to his mother’s conversation with his grandfather, interjecting just slightly off topic, a beat too slow.

  She’d stuck her head in on Iris, when they were leaving, but she was asleep and Tess wasn’t there. Gigi was glad. She should be somewhere else on a Saturday morning, that lovely girl. Not hiding from the world in here.

  Adam was in the front garden when their two cars pulled into the drive. Gigi swore softly under her breath. He was wearing gardening gloves, scruffy jeans and a shirt buttoned up just one button out, so the hem hung unevenly and his collar gaped slightly. He was pruning and weeding – the brown wheelie bin was open next to him. He looked up with a smile when Gigi parked, and then looked momentarily confused by Oliver. He wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve and stepped out of the flowerbed, pulling off his gardening gloves.

  ‘Hello.’

  Oliver proffered his hand and Adam took it, shaking it warmly. ‘I’m Adam.’

  ‘I thought so. I’m Oliver. Gigi’s son.’

  ‘Good to meet you.’

  ‘You too. Hard at it?’

  ‘Not really. Staying on top of it is what I go for, when it comes to gardening. My wife had the green thumb …’

  It was a stark and odd sentence, presupposing knowledge on Oliver’s behalf that he didn’t have. Oliver didn’t really know how to respond, and Gigi didn’t know how to rescue the encounter.

  ‘We’ve been to see Oliver’s grandfather.’

  Adam nodded, smiled sympathetically. ‘How is he doing?’ Gigi saw Oliver notice that Adam did possess knowledge about Gigi and her life, and cursed quietly again to herself.

  ‘He was okay, today. Thanks.’

  ‘That’s good.’ The moment when Adam ought to have turned back to his task came and went. Oliver was now regarding him with real curiosity. Of course. She ought to have known that he’d sense something.

  ‘We’re just going to go up, then …’ She started towards her entrance.

  ‘I’ve been promised lunch.’ Oliver smiled. For a ghastly moment, Gigi thought Oliver was going to ask if there was enough for Adam, ask if he’d like to join them, but he didn’t.

  Adam turned, then, raising an arm in goodbye. ‘Good to meet you,’ he said again. ‘Enjoy your
lunch.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  Gigi had wittered once they’d got into the flat, attempting, she supposed, to distract him. He’d uncorked a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, admired the peonies and taken off his jacket, making himself comfortable in the armchair while she took things out of the fridge. But then he’d asked.

  ‘He’s a really nice man, Ol. He was widowed. A few years ago now. I think.’ She felt such a fraud adding the ‘I think’.

  She badly didn’t want to tell Oliver about Adam. And she wasn’t quite sure why. She was closest to him of all her children. Apart from Em, he was the most understanding, she knew, the most compassionate about what had gone on between her and Richard.

  She wasn’t embarrassed. Or ashamed. Was she? He was the least judgemental of her kids, too.

  Maybe she already knew it was over. Maybe that was why.

  Oliver looked at her speculatively. Like he was deciding which direction to head in. Made his mind up.

  ‘He seemed really nice.’ Then, ‘Now, where’s that salad you promised me? I am starving.’

  Tess

  The doctor listened to Iris’s chest. Two aides helped to lift her from the mattress, and a nurse gently pulled up her nightdress so he could listen to her back. Tess went to the window so she didn’t have to see Iris’s frailty. When they’d laid her down again, the nurse smoothed her hair, smiling tenderly at her. The doctor turned to Tess.

  ‘I’m afraid I think it’s pneumonia.’

  Tess took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Will she need to go to hospital?’