In the little living room, on the table next to Iris’s chair, there was the book she’d been reading, a new Mary Stewart.
She took Henry’s hand to lead him back to the bedroom, not quite sure who was providing comfort to whom. “Okay,” she said. “Granna will look different. She won’t be breathing and that will look strange. And her skin will be a different colour.”
“What colour?”
“A bit bluey grey, not white.” Henry nodded solemnly. They stood at the door to the room for a moment before entering. Iris was lying on her back on the bed. She normally slept on her side, Grace knew, so maybe the doctor had moved her. Iris’s arms were outside the sheets by her sides. The bed was made around her. It was like Iris and not like her at all. No matter how much preparation Grace had done for her grandmother’s death—hearing the advice from Mark Randall, seeing the way Iris had been leaving by slow accretions, her increasingly confused state—nothing would have prepared Grace for this. She let out a gentle sigh. There was nothing she had left to say, none of the unfinished business her friends talked about. “I just wanted you to stay,” Grace said as she approached the bed. She sat down on the little chair, noticed the shoehorn hanging off the back of it. She pushed a wisp of hair off Iris’s face. Her eyes and mouth were closed and rigor was setting in.
“Where’s the bullet hole?” Grace had forgotten about Henry. He was standing beside the bed, peering at Iris.
“What?”
“The bullet hole. Where’s the bullet hole?”
“What do you mean, Henry?”
“Where they shot her.”
“No one shot her, Henry. She just died. She was very old.”
He looked more closely at Iris’s face as if he didn’t really believe Grace. “I know. So where’s the bullet hole?”
“No, Henry, they don’t shoot people for being old.”
He nodded. “She looks the same as asleep. Let’s go.”
“A minute,” Grace said. “You go out to my bag and find the chocolate. I’ll be out soon.” He toddled off. “Iris,” she said. “You had so much left to live for. It’s selfish, I know, but I just wish we’d had you with us a while longer.”
As they were leaving, Grace caught a whiff of the sugar glider and remembered she hadn’t done anything about it. She looked in the umbrella box but it wasn’t there. Iris had said she was planning to let it go soon. Perhaps she had already. The glider was nowhere in the house when Grace looked so it must be out in the world somewhere. “Good luck,” Grace said. “I hope you remember who cared for you.”
When the girls got home from gymnastics David and Grace told them about Iris. Mia cried while David held her. Phil cried for a minute or two and then busied herself interrogating Henry about the body and what it looked like.
In the bath later, Henry told Grace he’d need a new Superman suit soon. The current one was a pile on the floor. “It’s getting tight,” he said. “Is that because I’m growing?”
“Yeah,” Grace said. “You’re getting bigger all the time.” She smiled at him.
“There’s something wrong with me,” he said.
Grace breathed and focused on her hands on the washcloth so she wouldn’t cry. It had been such a long day, finding out about Iris, such a long month, knowing about Henry. Grace didn’t think she could cope with this. Had he heard them talk? Had he guessed something, noticed the other kids at day care were stronger? It wouldn’t help to cry, she told herself, narrowing her eyes and holding her emotions in check. “There’s something wrong with me too,” she said, mock flippant. “I think I’ve got a cold.”
“That’s not what’s wrong with me,” Henry said. Grace didn’t respond. She wasn’t ready to go here now. “My penis is wrong.”
“How do you mean?” Grace was racking her brains for DMD effects on penis growth.
“It doesn’t have a button at the end. Like the other boys.”
Grace felt relief flood through her. “Circumcision, Henry. Did I not explain this?” He looked up at her, his clear green eyes on the verge of tears. He shook his head no.
“Okay,” Grace said. “They sometimes cut some skin at the end of baby boys’ penises. There’s a whole lot of reasons people think it’s a good idea. But me and Daddy didn’t want to do that to you.” David hadn’t been circumcised. He’d been in trouble when he first came to the Mater for telling couples it was a barbaric practice, that babies felt pain, that there was no reason you’d do that to a child. Grace had had no strong views either way, but with David as his father, Henry was never going to be circumcised. “Daddy’s the same,” she said now. “They didn’t do it to him. When they do it, boys look like they have a button.”
“I want a button.”
“Yours is better, like Daddy’s.”
“No, it’s not,” Henry said. “His is all furry.”
Grace smiled. “That’s just because he’s a grown-up. You ask him, get him to show you. The other boys, they’ve had some skin cut off the end. You haven’t. That’s all.”
Grace leaned back and sat down on the floor. She’d nearly rushed in and talked about DMD when Henry first said he wasn’t like the other boys. She’d nearly told him. Grace had always been honest with the children, answered their sometimes uncomfortable questions about their bodies with accurate science. The children had a right to good information. It hadn’t been her experience as a child. She’d often felt that Iris only told her some things, that important information was always held back. She looked at Henry, so little and thin. Already his muscles were letting him down. Grace wasn’t sure she could get through this.
Henry knew he was different. That’s what this was about. He was starting to see the differences between him and the other boys. Let him learn slowly, Grace thought, at his own pace. And just answer every question as honestly as you can. She wouldn’t lie to him but she wouldn’t burden him with the reality of his disease until she had to.
In bed that night, David told Grace that Iris had left instructions with him about her remains, that her body was to be cremated, that she didn’t care what they did with the ashes.
Grace wondered why Iris had talked to David and not Grace herself. “You didn’t want her to go,” David said. “And I didn’t either but I could accept it, I suppose, because she’s not my mother.”
“Grandmother,” Grace said.
“Mother,” David said, taking her in his arms. “She was every bit your mother, and a wonderful grandmother to our children.” There were tears in his eyes. They cried in one another’s arms, Grace sobbing, David holding her gently. She leaned up and kissed him. He responded, a powerful charge between them. They made love as if it was the first time, in constant contact as they took off their clothes, reaffirming life, after Henry, after Iris, after everything.
The funeral was held in the little stone church of St. Patrick’s in Fortitude Valley and Grace was surprised at the number of people, over a hundred from across Iris’s life, her half brothers and their families, Dr. McKellar, and various neighbours and friends from Paddington and the Valley. Grace wrote a eulogy but couldn’t bring herself to read it so David read, his English accent strangely suited to the material. It was a hot day promising a hot summer, the sun high in the sky by 10 a.m.
In the eulogy, Grace had focused on Iris as a mother and grandmother, how much she’d given to Grace and David and their children. She’d been surprised at how raw her emotions were as she listened to David read. She’d known Iris would die, she was prepared for the funeral, but her death left a well of loneliness Grace didn’t understand. She found herself sobbing, biting her lip hard to stop.
David added some anecdotes that captured something of Iris, the day she charmed a police officer out of giving her a ticket for speeding through a red light which should have meant she lost her driving licence—how will I get to morning mass if I can’t drive, Sergeant?—the
day she’d helped the girl who’d lost her plane ticket, her kindness. The children lasted through the entire service, Henry trying to get high enough to see into the open coffin, probably hoping to discover the bullet hole that had eluded him.
The day after the funeral, Grace went over to the house on her own. She couldn’t bring herself to go through Iris’s things, not yet. She cleared out the refrigerator and pantry, cleaned the bathroom and swept and dusted. She stripped the bed and covered the furniture. As she was leaving the bedroom she noticed something under the bed she hadn’t noticed before, a box that had been hidden by the bedspread. Grace slid it out. She’d never seen the box before. It was a dark wood inlaid with ivory, about two feet long and a foot deep. Grace tried to lift the lid but the box was locked. There was no key. Grace pushed the box back under the bed. She’d face all this some other time. She put the umbrella box out on the verandah, locked the house, and left.
Just under two months later, they were on the plane. It was David who said they should go. He and the children would stop in Cambridge and see his family. Grace would go to Paris and attend the ceremony on Iris’s behalf. Grace wired the foundation and they wired straight back that they’d be only too happy to have her attend.
She arrived at the abbey midmorning. She’d spent the night in an airport hotel, jet-lagged and unable to sleep. She and David and the children had flown together to Heathrow and then he’d rented a car to go to Cambridge and she’d flown on to Paris. That first night, she couldn’t get him on the phone and found herself worried suddenly that something had happened. And then he’d phoned, they’d been out for dinner, that was all. She was so relieved.
Grace was surprised at how quickly the compact city of Paris gave way to small fields. She turned off a four-lane highway and drove along a country road to the town of Viarmes. She stopped for directions at the tabac, asking, in a little French but mostly English, for Royaumont. The boy behind the counter went to find his mother, who told her in better English than Grace’s French which road to take.
She drove slowly through a heavily wooded area. She passed a large house, eighteenth century by the look of it, and pulled over to consult the map the woman at the shop had drawn. She pulled away again, came around a bend, and there was Royaumont Abbey.
Grace had seen castles in England and Scotland, and David had an interest in Gothic architecture. Royaumont struck her immediately. Whether it was the setting among the trees or the single remaining tower leaning into the abbey, as if nudging it to tell a secret, Grace stopped and got out of the car. It was a sunny day with a lingering fog that gathered around the base of the abbey so that the stonework appeared to float out of nowhere. It glowed, she thought, like something alive.
Grace returned to the car and took the long drive, parking in front of the abbey, her car—a bright red Renault—completely wrong in the medieval setting. This had been a hospital? she thought. Royaumont was a cultural centre now, Grace had read, mainly music and dance. Inside it was beautifully if sparsely furnished, tapestries on walls, dark wood furnishings, modern lighting, a perfect balance of old and new.
Grace found a reception desk, all modern glass and wood. She rang a bell and waited. It was perfectly quiet. She looked up the long staircase. Did they carry patients up those stairs, or have lifts? Iris had told her the hospital was run entirely by women.
A girl of seventeen or so, translucent skin, hair pulled back, rosy cheeks, came out of one of the rooms to the left of the entry hall. “Can I help you?” she said in French.
Grace struggled to explain in French who she was until the receptionist switched to English. “Ah, you are with the Scottish women,” she said.
“Not really,” Grace said. “My grandmother was with them.”
“Yes, I know. She is the one called Iris.”
“How do you know?”
“Iris Crane. She was the hospital administrator, yes?” Grace nodded dumbly. “My great-grandmother did the laundry for the hospital,” the girl said. “Mended uniforms and washed the men’s clothes. Emily Fox?” as if Grace might know her. “She died last year. But she knew Iris Crane well.” The receptionist smiled. “I am sorry. You did not know your grandmother?”
Grace looked at her. “I thought I did,” she said. “Any messages for me?”
“Oh yes, Dr. Heron wishes to speak with you. She told me she will be in the cloister. It’s a beautiful day.”
Violet Heron, Iris’s mysterious friend. As Grace went up the long staircase, she tried to imagine Iris here, a hospital here, but found she couldn’t. The layout would be difficult, if not impossible. You couldn’t move the stone walls, and the long staircases would be hard to negotiate with stretchers. And the abbey would have been so cold within. Would they have had electric light then? It must have been terrible.
Grace’s room was small and austere but strangely inviting, a plain spread on a single bed, little table, chair, and lamp, with an en suite bathroom. They wouldn’t have had the bathrooms in Iris’s time, Grace thought. Before she went downstairs, she looked out the window to the cloister. The grass was brown, garden beds bare now in winter. In the centre of the cloister was a little fountain surrounded by stone benches. David had told her that the Gothic had perfected built space. Grace hadn’t known what he’d meant, but the cloister looked like a place you’d want to linger in the spring when the grass was green and the beds planted with flowers. A group of women gathered around a modern table in one corner. She could hear their laughter but only saw the tops of their brightly hatted heads. There was another woman on one of the benches around the fountain, sitting alone reading. Grace could see wisps of curly white hair under a purple beret and legs too short to reach the ground. Violet Heron.
Grace went downstairs. The women in the group had hair in various shades of blue and grey under their colourful hats and woollen coats, like a bunch of bright flowers in a vase. They looked up at Grace and smiled, trying to place her here. She smiled back but didn’t stop to talk. Across from them was Violet Heron, frizzes of curly snow-white hair puffing out from under the beret. She wore large-lensed purple-tinted glasses, the purple beret, and a long purple coat, skirt, tights, and boots. “You must be Violet,” Grace said when she went over.
“I must be,” she said. She looked up from her book and closed it. “And you must be Rose.” She smiled and Grace could see a hint of the younger woman she would have been. She spoke slowly in an upper-class English accent and put effort into enunciation.
“Grace. Rose was my mother.”
“Of course. Grace. Do sit down. I suppose I’m just a little nervous.” Violet was staring at her and Grace wasn’t sure if she was quite with it. She patted the seat beside her and smiled again.
Grace sat. “My grandmother very much wanted to see you again,” she said. “She was coming because of you, I think.”
“I imagine.”
“She said you were a very good friend.”
“I wasn’t. But tell me about you. I believe you’re in obstetrics.”
“I am,” Grace said, wondering why Violet would care.
“What do you do about incest?”
“Sorry?”
“What do you do about incest? You must have come across it.” She had a businesslike manner, sharp. She’d annoy people, Grace thought.
“No, I haven’t,” Grace said. “You mean in gynae?”
“Yes, and obstetrics.”
“I haven’t had to deal with it that often. We get referrals from psych from time to time. You dealt with many cases, I believe.” Grace hadn’t expected to be talking about this subject and wondered again if Violet was quite with it.
Violet lifted her hand as if to dismiss the question. “Do you remember your mother?”
“No, she died during my birth,” Grace said. “Did you meet her?” Iris had said something about Violet coming to Australia when Rose was a baby.<
br />
“She was a beautiful baby, perfect. I can remember her face like it was yesterday.” If she’d been sharp before, now her features dissolved and tears sprang from those old eyes like tiny diamonds. “I just want to touch you.” She reached her hand across and caressed Grace’s face. Her hand was cold.
Grace pulled back at her touch instinctively, then took Violet’s hand in her own and held it. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure if you realise who I am. I’m Grace Hogan, Iris Crane’s granddaughter. You knew Iris.”
“I didn’t expect you’d look like me.” Grace looked at her. I don’t look like you, she wanted to say. She had the strangest urge to get up and run.
Violet had been holding a small photo album in her lap. “Well, here goes, as Iris used to say.” She opened the album at a page she’d been holding with her finger. She pointed to a photograph of two women and a young man sitting at a café table. It looked just like Les Deux Magots. Their heads were thrown back slightly as if laughing at something the photographer had said.
Grace noticed the young man first, his smile, and then peered more closely at the women. “Is this you and Iris?” Grace said. Violet nodded. “She’s smoking.”
“That’s me,” Violet said.
“Oh, sorry,” Grace said. “I thought that was Iris. Let me have another look. I do look like you after all.” Grace laughed nervously. She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had she eaten this morning? Violet was nodding and looking at Grace very solemnly. “Is something wrong?” Grace said.
In Falling Snow Page 36