Letters to Iris

by Elizabeth Noble

  And so could yours. So must yours. You are alive. You are full of love to give. So full you’ll explode – I see it and I feel it in you, even if you cannot see it in yourself. You can’t save your poor Tom, or his Manon. You can’t live in their past and you do not honour their memory with a life half lived. You can only save yourself. And me, because my love for you won’t be stopped, and it can’t be given to someone else.

  If you let the fear of being hurt stop you, you might as well have died with him on that day.

  If it is not to be me, Iris, then please, at least, promise me it will be someone. I need to believe that it will be someone. I can live with that if I must. But love, Iris. LOVE. Love with all your heart, and with all of Tom’s and all of Manon’s. Love for them too. It’s the simplest thing in the world, my darling girl. The bravest and yet the very simplest thing.

  I won’t write to you again. I will hope so very much to hear from you, but, if I do not, then just know that I will always love you.

  Wilf

  Tears streamed down her face by the time she’d read it, and reread it. This was her piece of the puzzle. She was crying for heartbroken Iris, keeping a terrible promise to Tom, and for Wilf, the force of whose love screamed from every word.

  She didn’t see Oliver come in, didn’t sense his presence until he was next to the bed, and then it was too late to pretend she wasn’t crying. She didn’t even want to.

  ‘You poor thing.’

  And she was in his arms, heaving with sobs, his hand in her hair.

  ‘Mum told me. I came as soon as I got her message.’

  ‘She’s gone, Olly.’

  She pulled away, sniffing hard. ‘It’s ridiculous. She’s been gone for a long, long time, really. But this … this is so final … I didn’t expect to feel this way.’

  He pulled her back into his embrace. ‘You loved her.’

  ‘I loved her.’

  He held her for long minutes while she calmed down, and she let him, calm in his embrace. When she stepped away, back in control of herself, he smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ear, and gently rubbed a final tear from her cheek with his thumb.

  ‘I’m disgusting. Snotty and blotchy and pathetic.’

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘I found this.’ She handed him the crumpled paper. ‘It’s from my grandfather. It was in her handbag. She must have kept it with her always. For sixty years.’

  ‘I shouldn’t read it.’

  ‘I want you to. You’ve read the others.’

  ‘Okay.’ Oliver sat down in the high-backed chair.

  She watched him while he read. His mouth moved silently while he read the words.

  Then he exhaled and laid the letter on the bed. ‘That is quite a letter.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So it’s the last one?’

  Tess nodded. ‘I think so. My mum was born three years after it was written, almost exactly. They’d married that Easter, just after the letter. They were barely ever apart after that. Certainly not long enough for letters. At least, not that she kept.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You think this did it?’

  ‘It must have done. She carried it, for all these years. All these years, Olly.’

  ‘And she never spoke about it?’

  ‘No. I had never even heard of Tom until she started talking about him that time, in here. She kept him a secret all those years. By the time my mum was old enough to ask stuff, Iris’s own parents were dead. There was no one else.’

  ‘Why do you suppose that was?’

  Tess shook her head. ‘I had no idea until I read this. I feel like the letter makes sense of that. Like she finally accepted something about Tom, about his death. Left it behind.’

  Olly nodded.

  ‘It explains all sorts of things. Why she would never go to church. Why she never went back to the farm, even though she hated London.’

  ‘Does that make sense to you?’

  ‘It does. She was the most loving person I ever knew. My granddad was right – she was entirely full of love.’

  The baby kicked hard then. Tess gasped and put her hands on her stomach.

  ‘Okay?’ He was beside her at once.

  ‘Fine. She’s making her presence felt. All this talk of love.’

  Suddenly Olly was very close. She had taken his hand before she’d even realized it and put it on her belly, where she’d felt the baby’s foot.

  Olly stared down at his hand and then back up at her, his face full of wonder, and something else.

  ‘He was right, you know, your grandfather.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘It is the simplest thing in the world.’

  And suddenly, after all of it, even because of all it, it just was.

  ‘It’s you.’

  His lips were almost on hers, so she could feel his breath in her own mouth.

  ‘You’re the one.’

  They touched hers. The briefest of touches. Not even, really, a kiss. Then he rested his forehead lightly against hers.

  ‘You’re my one.’

  It was like he was waiting for permission. His hand was still on her bump. His face was very still.

  She kissed him back, gently at first, like his kiss had been, their lips just grazing, their breath merging.

  But then, and very soon, she was kissing him like it was the only thing in the world she had ever wanted to do.

  And, she knew, with all of her heart.

  GARROWAY, IRIS. Passed away peacefully on 18th July, aged ninety-six years. Much loved wife of Wilfred (deceased), and adoring sister to Tom (1918–1945), she will be much missed and fondly remembered by her daughter, Donna, her granddaughter, Tess, and her unborn great-granddaughter. She loved us all with all of her huge heart.

  Tess

  And then, just like that, it all got wonderfully, happily easy. She was going to be with Oliver. Forever. Just. Like. That. Not a scintilla of doubt. Not a shiver of fear about it. It was done. The quiet, calm joy of it smothered most of her sadness about Iris, so that, almost within days, what she felt was a bruise, and not a wound, where the blow of her grandmother’s death had landed. The future won out convincingly over the past, and it lay ahead, a clear and wide and sparkling avenue to happiness. Unbelievably simple.

  There were details to sort out. Where they’d live, and how. The baby. They didn’t matter, the details. She just knew it would all be okay.

  If Donna minded that the first she really knew of Oliver was a fait accompli, she was too careful and protective of their new relationship to let it show. He came to the house and she cooked them a cauliflower curry and he enthused about her photography and drank a bottle of wine with her. Tess sat and watched them getting on, sipping a mint tea and vaguely experiencing heartburn alongside the heart swell. She was fantastically proud of him, and that was a new emotion for her. When he looked at her, or touched her hand, she really did feel all those Disney-type butterflies and violins and stomach flips, and if it sometimes felt absurd to her that she felt them all despite the now vast belly and slightly swollen ankles, he never once made her feel like it was. Everything about him screamed that he thought he was the luckiest man alive. He crackled with happiness.

  Holly and Ben already loved him, it transpired. ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Holly exclaimed, when she told her. ‘About bloody time …’ Dulcie, exams and bullies behind her, begged to be a bridesmaid at their wedding, and Tess giggled, because, for the first time in her life, she knew there was going to be a wedding, and it hardly mattered at all.

  But she was anxious about Gigi. She couldn’t imagine she’d be what Gigi wanted for Oliver. Oliver wanted them to tell her together, but she wouldn’t go with him. ‘I want her to be able to react the way she really wants to. She won’t be able to do that if I’m there.’

  ‘You’re being daft. I know what she thinks of you, Tess.’

  Tess shook her head and kissed his cheek
gently. ‘You think you know what she thinks of the girl she met in the nursing home, the one who was visiting her grandmother. That’s not the same thing at all.’

  Gigi

  ‘I love her, Mum. She’s it.’ Oliver had swept into the flat and pulled her into a fierce hug. Gigi looked at her son and knew that it was true, then exhaled deeply.

  Her voice broke. ‘I’m so glad. She loves you too, I presume?’

  ‘She does. She bloody does.’ His eyes were shining.

  ‘So, why didn’t she come with you?’

  ‘Because she wanted me to tell you on my own. She’s afraid you won’t be pleased.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Gigi frowned.

  Oliver shrugged. ‘She thinks she comes with too much baggage.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s at her mum’s.’

  ‘Will you take me there?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ She winked at him. ‘Now.’

  Olly beamed at her and grabbed his car keys.

  Tess answered the door, looking sleepy and dishevelled. It was a hot afternoon, and she’d pulled her hair into a high bun to cool her neck and borrowed one of Donna’s voluminous cotton kaftans. It was stretched across her bump.

  ‘Gigi!’

  ‘I’ve come to tell you, my darling, silly, lovely girl, that I could not be more delighted that you and my boy are together.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tess’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘You’re perfect.’

  Tess laughed and cried at the same time. ‘I’m far from that.’

  ‘You’re perfect for him. It’s been obvious to me and to him for a while now … we just needed you to see it too.’

  Tess looked past her to Oliver, and nodded. ‘I see it too.’

  But it was Ava who gave the final, absolute seal of approval. Emily had invited Gigi, Tess and Megan to her house, exclaiming that she just really needed to meet the woman who had so bewitched her brother-in-law, and the four women were sat around a teak table in Emily and Chris’s back garden, drinking peach iced tea and chattering like old, easy friends. Each reflected in the pauses on how different this was from other similar situations: Sean’s competitive sisters-in-law; frosty Caitlin. Ava was in her mother’s lap when she suddenly lunged forward towards Tess, her pudgy little arms clinging to either side of Tess’s bump, and planted a long series of her wettest kisses on it.

  Week 40. We’re here. At the end of this beginning. I’m ready. You’re a watermelon. I haven’t slept all night for months. I pee every six minutes. I have cankles – actual cankles. My ankle is as wide as my knee. This is not a good look on me. Not your fault, but still … enough already. Oliver says I’m ridiculous and beautiful. Clearly he’s insane. Wait until he sees how I’m supposed to look … That sounds vain. But I’m okay in the half-light when I’m not in this state. I await the return of my waist, and the view of my feet, with some anticipation. But, really, I just want to see you. I’m so excited I can’t stand it. Don’t be late. Please. I’ve never been great at delayed gratification and I’ve already waited longer for you than I’ve ever waited for anything in my life. Except my driving licence. But that was only because I couldn’t master the parallel park. My point is … don’t be late. I want to meet you. It’s like we’ve been conducting our relationship on the internet for nine months and now we’ve agreed to meet in person, although there’s no way you can catfish me. (Dulcie taught me that word: Dulcie is going to be the coolest pretend aunt in the world, by the way. Or btw, as Dulcie would say. She will be your go-to person when I say no, and you hate me. One day you’re going to hate me for something … Oh God. Catfish is pretending you’re something you’re not, btw. Who knew?) You’ve been grey blobs on a screen. Pictures in a book, and on my computer, and diagrams in my midwife’s room. You’ve been fruit, for goodness’ sake. You’ve run the gamut from pomegranate to cherry to satsuma and now you’re a watermelon. You’ve been my dreams and my wishes and my hopes. You’ve been pretty damn disruptive, truth be told, but my life has arranged itself around you now. I’m ready. And I want to see you, not just feel you, although you won’t know how special and amazing and spooky it has been to feel you until you have a baby of your own. Which I hope you will … It’s one of a million things I want for you, my little girl.

  I so wanted Iris to meet you, baby mine. Even if she didn’t know you, I wanted to lay you in her arms, and I wanted to keep that image, of the two of you, four generations apart, in my mind forever. But it’s okay that it never happened. I have peace. It’s all unfolding like it was supposed to. God, I sound like a hippie. I’m more like Donna than I ever thought …

  It boils down to this – Iris figured it out. I’m sure she tried to teach me.

  May you know the trick of it better, or at least sooner, than I have done.

  Epilogue

  And so here you are. You tightly folded bud. My tightly folded bud. And you’re not the size of a honeydew melon, or the length of a stick of rhubarb, or the weight of bags of dried goods. Not any more. You’re here, and you’re nothing like fruit. You’re 7 lbs, 2 oz (I refuse to call it 3.232 kilograms) and you’re 49 cm (I know. I’m difficult. This I don’t mind in metric) long. Well within the ranges of normal. Your Apgar score was 8 at five minutes and 9 by ten minutes (no one ever gets a 10, your midwife said, but I don’t care anyway – I’m not going to be that kind of mum when it comes to test scores, I promise). You needed a bit of jostling before you cried, but not too much, nothing scary like you see on Casualty or Grey’s Anatomy, where doctors exchange anxious glances and babies are whisked away. It was all calm and peaceful, just us in the room. The midwife held you, your tiny back in one big, capable hand, and rubbed your chest for a few seconds, very gently, and then we heard it. ‘Come on, baby’, she said, and almost whispered, ‘Let’s be having you.’ It was nearly imperceptible, that confident gesture to get you to breathe – it happened on your journey up from between my legs to my chest – but I am not going to miss anything. Not now and not ever. And then I had you. And you had me.

  You have hair. Not masses of it, but a small whorl of dark-blonde, downy fuzz. You have quite long fingers and, when I check under the cotton towel they’ve draped over us, toes too. Long fingers and long toes. People will tell me you should be a pianist. But you will be a cellist, like your great-grandfather Wilfred, if you’re anything at all, and you needn’t be, if you don’t want to be. Your nails are going to need cutting, or biting, if the book is to be believed, soon. It’s amazing to me – that you have come out of me with these tiny nails already growing. Your skin is dry, a bit peely, like after a sunburn. White with tiny blue veins in some places, and blotchy, but the softest, most velvety thing I have ever felt. Your chest rises and falls with your breath and I can almost see where your heart is beating beneath your ribs.

  You’re a hedonist I think. The midwife wrapped you in a blanket and washed your hair at the sink in the room, holding you in one hand and making it look so easy. You loved it, craning your neck at the warm water, like a cat moving towards the stroke of a hand. She says you’re too young to smile, and I know it’s true, but the pleasure on your face was obvious.

  You are strong and you are fragile. I am capable and I am terrified. I have read about what comes next – the next hours, the next days, months, years. I have read it, studied it, but I know nothing. It’s the most exciting and the most frightening moment of my life, meeting you. And you have no clue about any of it. I’m arms, nipples, a soft voice, a gentle touch. Still, when you open your eyes, your blue, blue eyes (and they’re staying blue, I know), I’m sure they lock on to mine. Perhaps you know me already, darling girl.

  You missed your great-grandmother by just a couple of weeks. But that’s okay. I know how she would have felt about you. I close my eyes and imagine her holding you, but it’s not the Iris of the end, it’s the Iris of my own childhood holding you, strong and sparkling – and when her eyes meet mine over the
top of your precious head, I understand for the first time all the love in her face.

  I’m going to teach you what I learnt about love from Iris. I’m going to teach you right from the start – I wasted so much time, so much. I’m going to teach you that it’s the simplest thing in the world, and that you must do it with open arms and an open heart and no fear. Because it’s all that matters, at the end of the day. All that matters.

  We’re all alone now, just you and me. For a moment. The midwife has gone to make me the world’s most welcome cup of tea. We have this while, just us. There are people who are longing to see you. My mum. Holly, Dulcie. Gigi. Olly is outside phoning her now. He was brilliant. Of course he was. He never left us. He’s as excited and proud and emotional as if you were his own girl. I know now that I could have done all of this, and everything to come, without him, but I’m so, so glad I’m not going to be. We’re going to have fun. So much fun, my darling. They’re all going to love you so much, and that fun and that love are going to be the hallmarks of your whole childhood. I’m going to love you most of all …

  So here we are. At the very beginning, baby mine. You’ll always be baby mine. But now you have a real name. And your name, of course – and what else could it be – is Iris.

  Acknowledgements

  This book has been a very, very long time coming, and I need to thank everyone at Michael Joseph for their tremendous patience and understanding. In particular, I am grateful to the deeply kind and clever Louise Moore, who refused to give up on me, even when I had absolutely given up on myself. Thank you to Maxine Hitchcock and Tilda McDonald for your sensitive and insightful editing and warm support, and to Donna Poppy for your painstaking work on the manuscript: it is a better novel because you have all been involved. To Nick Lowndes, Jenny Platt, Ellie Hughes and all of the brilliant and talented Penguins – thank you for your efforts.

  I am thankful, as always, to Jonathan Lloyd and his team at Curtis Brown for everything that they do.