Iris and Ruby

by Rosie Thomas

‘Both.’

  ‘Mine is an acute trauma ward. He’ll stay there until he is stable and his recovery is predictable. Then he’ll be moved to a longer-stay ward, where I should think they’ll start trying to repair his mouth and reconstruct his jaw. Or maybe that will be too complicated and he’ll be sent by ship back to England for the work to be done there.’

  ‘Will he be able to speak again?’

  Ruth’s own lips twisted a little. ‘In a way. It will be a manner of speaking.’ He was perhaps twenty-eight years old.

  ‘Poor Albie.’

  She went on eating. ‘At least he’s alive.’

  Ruth was unsentimental and I could see how the work she did would absolutely require that, or else it would be unbearable. And as well as being distressing I could also guess how fascinating and even noble it must be, compared with what I did. I envied her.

  ‘Xan brought in another of his men who was badly injured at the same time. He died this morning, but I didn’t tell Albie. Maybe I should have done, though.’

  The way that Ruth talked – everything about her, her matter-of-fact dry manner and her precise way of moving as well as speaking – was changing my perspectives. The truth was the truth. There was no point in trying to hide or to soften it, perhaps especially from men who had been so severely wounded. I suddenly thought that to do so might be to belittle them.

  ‘Yes, I think you should,’ Ruth agreed. Her glance flicked over me. ‘Would you like me to do it, as your Xan isn’t here? What was the man’s name?’

  ‘Private Ridley. No, thank you. I’ll tell Albie myself when I visit him tomorrow.’

  The food was finished. Ruth and I sat facing each other across the rickety wooden table. ‘So I’ll see you then,’ she said.

  ‘Do you ever get a day off?’

  ‘Three full days and two halves out of fourteen. Subject to cancellation if we’re busy.’

  If the hospital trains and ambulances brought extra cargoes of men from the front. Uncomfortably I thought of my long lunches spent lazing beside the swimming pool at the Gezira Club, and my games of tennis with Sarah, and all the cocktails I had drunk and rich dinners I had eaten since coming to Cairo.

  ‘I’d like to do some work in the hospital. Anything useful. I’ve got plenty of spare time.’

  ‘There are women who come in with library books and magazines for the men, and they read to them. One lady has been teaching the convalescents to sew and knit.’

  Ruth must have seen my face because she added, ‘And there are the VADs, of course.’

  The Voluntary Aid Detachment provided nursing auxiliaries. I knew two or three of them; they were mostly young women from backgrounds similar to mine, and they were nothing like Ruth. Again, she followed my thoughts.

  ‘I am a trained nurse’, she said, quite patiently.

  ‘Where did you train?’

  ‘Glasgow Royal Infirmary.’

  ‘And your friend Daphne?’ The doctor. The surgical anaesthetist. I imagined Ruth’s slightly older sister.

  ‘Yes, she studied at Glasgow University and did her medical training at the Infirmary.’

  I took a piece of paper out of my handbag and scribbled my telephone number on it, then passed the slip across to Ruth. She took the pen out of my hand, folded my slip of paper and tore it very neatly along the fold line, then wrote her number in return.

  ‘Maybe if Daphne and I ever get the same day off, you could come and have something to eat with us,’ she said, without sounding convinced of either likelihood.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, my response sounding much too enthusiastic. But I was drawn to Ruth Macnamara. I hadn’t met anyone quite like her before.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  I offered to pay for Ruth’s dinner but she wouldn’t let me. She took her own money out of a small brown leather purse and counted out a tidy heap of coins, the exact sum required. Then we walked out together into the twilight. I wondered if Xan was reunited with his patrol, and if they were already dug into a wadi within sight of the el Agheila road.

  ‘Here’s my bus.’ It was one of the ancient dirty-blue Cairene boneshakers, crowded to suffocation point with Egyptians heading home to the city outskirts. Ruth climbed onto the step and somehow melted into the solid mass of humanity within. A second later I saw her face pressed against the murky glass of the nearest window. She gave me a smile that seemed to hang in the air after the bus had trundled on its way.

  I started to walk penitentially towards Garden City but the day had begun to seem like a very long tunnel. Riding home through the dawn with Xan felt like a week ago. A taxi loomed towards me and I flagged it down.

  ‘Yes, Madam, Shepheard’s Hotel?’

  ‘No.’ I gave the man the address, fell inside and dozed until we jerked to a stop outside the apartment.

  As I came in I noticed for the first time in months how opulent Faria’s parents’ furniture was, and how overstuffed the rooms felt.

  Sarah was sitting in a circle of lamplight, her knees drawn up and her bare feet on the crimson sofa cushions. She looked pale, but her hair was freshly washed and there was a slick of lipstick on her mouth.

  ‘Sarah! You’re back. Did you have a good time? You look much better.’

  Sarah held out her arms to me. ‘Here I am. And you. Faria told me your news. I’m so happy for you, Iris. I’m really happy. Come on, give me a hug.’

  I sat down beside her and we hugged and kissed each other. Sarah smelled of her favourite perfume but the bones in her shoulders and arms seemed much more prominent, and there was a veil of sadness in her face.

  ‘Are you really all right?’ I asked.

  ‘‘Course. And you’re going to be Mrs Alexander Molyneux. How exciting. Are you completely thrilled?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Can I be your bridesmaid?’

  Thinking about Ruth Macnamara I said, ‘Of course. You and Faria.’

  ‘What heaven. Not pink, please don’t say pink. Maybe palest mint green, what do you think?’

  ‘Where is Faria?’

  ‘Oh, out.’

  ‘Ali?’

  ‘Jeremy, I think,’ Sarah said. She must have bitten her lips from inside because they went pale under the lipstick. Then she stretched out her legs and jumped up with a little laugh. ‘Let’s have a drink. A drink to you and Xan.’

  She poured us a significant measure of gin apiece and tilted her glass.

  ‘To the two of you. Happy for ever,’ she called, and drank.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the restaurant, waiting for Sebastian, Lesley ranged her cutlery so that the pieces lay perfectly parallel and with the tails exactly half an inch from the table edge. The napkin’s white cone stood in the centre of the rectangle created by the knife and fork, and the autumn sun striking through the plate-glass window was reflected in a starry prism from the blade of her knife.

  ‘Don’t play with your knife and fork.’

  Lesley had been thinking of Iris and the voice in her head was hers. Her mother had been strict about table manners; suddenly Lesley felt her as close as if she were sitting in the opposite chair. Then she looked up and saw her ex-husband. He came across the restaurant, jacket flapping and a scarf trailing, arms out as if to catch the wind.

  ‘Lesley, hello, hello. Am I late? You’re looking fabulous.’

  ‘Am I? Thank you.’

  Sebastian aimed a kiss at her cheek before taking his seat opposite her, allowing a waiter to retrieve his scarf and carry off his battered leather briefcase, which was the size of a small suitcase.

  ‘Have you been here long? It’s one, oh God, twenty past. The bloody phone rang just as I was walking out of the door. An author having a crise. I had to deal with it.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  He leaned forward and put his hands over hers. The table rocked slightly.

  ‘Good. That’s good. Here we are, then.’

  She slid her hands away and replaced them in her lap. Sebast
ian glanced around the room, checking to see if he knew anyone.

  ‘Look at this old place. It’s changed a bit since our time, eh?’

  When they had first met each other, a year or more before they were married, Sebastian Sawyer used to bring her here for dinner. The restaurant was round the corner from his flat and he had been a regular, with whoever the current girlfriend happened to be. In those days it had been a checked-tablecloth French bistro, with the menu chalked up on a blackboard, and she had hardly noticed anything because she was in love with him. Now it was all blond wood and brown suede. Off-the-shelf restaurant design, Lesley noted critically, professionally.

  ‘You’re frowning.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘No, nothing. Well, except that I’m worried about Ruby, of course. You know that. It’s why I wanted us to have this lunch together. You are her father, and …’

  He held up his hand. ‘Don’t worry. We’re going to have a good long talk. Let’s order first, shall we?’

  Lesley picked two things off the menu at random. Sebastian asked the waiter where the beef was from and peered for long moments at the wine list. At last he folded away his reading glasses, took a mouthful of wine when it arrived and appeared to be chewing on it, then leaned back with a rich sigh.

  ‘Now then,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Ruby.’

  ‘Have you talked to her?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have. Since you and I were going to meet today, I gave our daughter a call last night.’ Sebastian twinkled at her. As a senior publisher with a large staff of young, attractive women, the twinkle was a well-used weapon in his armoury. ‘I couldn’t get her mobile, of course, so I tried the number you gave me and lo and behold, my ex-mother-in-law answered.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, I don’t think she had a clue who I was.’

  Lesley made a quick reckoning. Sebastian and Iris had met only a handful of times. Iris had come home from Africa for the wedding, and during the eight years before Ruby was born there had been maybe four or five other encounters. Iris came to London again soon after Ruby arrived, she was sure of that; there was a photograph of her holding the new baby and gazing unsmilingly into the camera lens.

  Family life hadn’t really suited Sebastian. When Ruby was three, he left home and moved in with a youngish novelist with a growing literary reputation. There had been a succession of other women since then, getting younger and younger. Ruby had resented this. ‘This one’s not much older than me. It’s pathetic, that’s what it is.’

  So far, Ruby was his only child. ‘Doesn’t need to have kids, does he? He just goes out with them,’ she sneered.

  ‘Iris’s memory isn’t good,’ Lesley said now.

  ‘Anyway, I asked to speak to Ruby and she came on the line.’

  Their starters were placed in front of them and Sebastian immediately broke off and dug a fork into his. Lesley looked out of the window at the crowds of shoppers and the buses trundling like giant logs in a slow current. It was odd to be sitting across the table from a plump, routinely genial stranger who had once been her husband. A man with whom she had had a child. But then she quite often looked up and saw Andrew and he seemed to be no less of a stranger, and they were also joint parents and she was still married to him. Much of her life, it seemed to Lesley, now had a flimsy, two-dimensional quality to it, as if you might walk round to take a look behind the painted flats and see another world altogether.

  The only real, solid, unshakeable constant was her love for Ruby. She loved Ed too, of course, but Ed was entirely knowable. He did what he was supposed to do and took pleasure in that, like his father.

  But Ruby …

  Lesley ached with longing for her missing daughter. Her shoulders bowed, curving inwards on the dart of pain that pierced her ribcage.

  She had to hold on to the leg of the table to stop herself flying out of her seat and rushing to Heathrow for the first plane to Cairo. The only thing that held her was the mental picture of herself arriving at Iris’s house, and the flat, baffled stares – one mirroring the other – that Ruby and Iris would give her.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Er, how did she seem?’

  Sebastian put down his fork, dabbed his mouth with his napkin. ‘She seemed perfectly fine.’

  Lesley waited.

  ‘She shouldn’t have run off. She shouldn’t have worried you like that. But she did get herself all the way to Cairo. She’s going to museums, she said, seeing the sights. She’s made friends with some people of her own age, they’re showing her the city. What’s the real problem with that? She’s with her …’ Even unctuous Sebastian couldn’t quite bring himself to say Granny, where Iris was concerned. ‘… With your mother.’

  And there you have it, Lesley thought.

  My mother, my daughter.

  I don’t think my mother ever loved me, otherwise she wouldn’t have left my father and me.

  I love Ruby more than anything and she doesn’t want my love. It chafes her, just like when she was a little girl and I took her to have her hair cut. The tiny ends of her hair worked their way inside her vest and itched and itched. Even though I undressed her and gave her fresh clothes, the memory of the itching still made her scream. I am the cut hairs, for Ruby. Part of her but not part of her, and an irritation.

  Iris and Ruby.

  Motherhood, or actually the denial of it, is the thread that connects all three of us. I wanted to spin a better, finer filament for Ruby and me, a gossamer link that wouldn’t drag between us and trip us up the way that Iris’s and mine always has done. But all I seem to have created is a different kind of unwelcome tie.

  Or look at it another way: perhaps we are like the same poles of a magnet, Ruby and me and Iris and me, always driven apart. And by the same analogy Ruby and Iris have leapt together, irresistibly attracted.

  Lesley was familiar with all the images of repelling and chafing and restraining. She had no need to ask herself what an analyst would make of them, she already knew the answer. Over and over again, whichever way she entered the circle, everything led back to Iris.

  Rejection has become my pattern, my expectation. Sebastian and Ruby have made their own flamboyant rejections. Andrew and even Ed, in their invisible and within-bounds way, make their own smaller gestures.

  ‘What is the problem?’ Sebastian asked. He was looking hard at her.

  Despair rose in Lesley. The food she was trying to chew turned to a thick paste on her tongue.

  What was to be done? Leave Andrew, dismember their son’s life, because her husband preferred his work and his boat and his yachting magazines to her company?

  What was there to do, except go on living and working and being grateful for all the benefits in her life?

  ‘Lesley?’

  She forced herself to swallow and then took a deep breath. She wanted to cry, but that was impossible.

  ‘I miss her,’ she said. It was only the thinnest, icy sliver of the vast glacier of truth, but she was offering it to Sebastian.

  He leaned back in his chair and let out a laugh.

  ‘Les, poor old Les. Of course you miss her. It’s what happens, it’s perfectly natural. We have kids, we give them everything we can, just to enable them to grow up and not to need us anymore. It’s harsh, but it’s the way it goes. Isn’t it the same for all your friends? Would you rather Ruby was some dependent little creature who didn’t want to take a step away from us?’

  Lesley lifted her eyes. What did he know? She saw Sebastian’s plump, well-fed face through a fog of rage. It was as if all the capillaries suddenly burst inside her skull, flooding her brain with black blood and madness.

  She picked up the knife from her plate. With a single swoop of her arm she lunged across the table and with all the weight of her body behind it she stabbed the point of the blade deep into her ex-husband’s left eye.

  Then she blinked and looke
d again. The knife still lay on her plate, Sebastian was still smiling broadly at her. Her hands shook.

  When she finally spoke, her voice came out as a croak.

  ‘We? Us?’

  Sebastian’s smile moderated, crimping inwards into a rueful, amused moue of roguish culpability.

  ‘I know. Of course. You’re quite right. I haven’t been much of a dad to her. I said so, you know, on the phone, and we promised each other that when she’s back in England we’ll spend some more time together. I’ve got to make a trip to New York before Christmas, seeing a couple of my opposite numbers over there. Maybe Ruby could come with me. She’ll have to amuse herself a bit during the day because I’ll have meetings, but she’s proved that she’s old enough to do that.’

  Taken with this idea, Sebastian hooked his arm over the back of his chair and regarded his ex-wife.

  She was broadening a little in the hips and her hair looked as if it was discreetly coloured to blot out the grey, but she was well-dressed and her jewellery was subtle but expensive. She looked exactly what she was, a prosperous wife and mother with her own business, who had driven up to London from the country to have lunch. With her ex-husband. She was a woman with a history.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think …’ Lesley began.

  The blood still hammered in her head, and the knife lay on her plate. She jerked her eyes away from it and they settled on his glass of wine, just refilled by the waiter. She eased herself out of her seat and slid her thighs into the narrow space between their table and its neighbour. Then she bent down so her mouth was close to his ear.

  ‘I think you are a selfish, self-satisfied, pompous idiot. You are a pathetic father and you were a lousy husband. Fuck you.’

  Then she snatched up the wineglass and tipped the contents into his lap.

  Even as he exclaimed and rocked backwards with wine cascading between his legs, she was stalking away across the restaurant.

  Waiters and napkins descended on Sebastian. He let them swab him down and as he was attended to he raised his eyes to the two men at the next table. They exchanged the briefest glances that said Women, and She always was a nightmare, before his neighbours discreetly resumed their conversation.