Love, Iris

by Elizabeth Noble

  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?’

  He shook his head. ‘We can keep her comfortable here.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  He paused. ‘You should be prepared, Tess. In my opinion, it’s quite unlikely that Iris is going to recover from this.’

  ‘Whatever we do?’

  He nodded, choosing his next words carefully. ‘Care would be largely palliative at this time. Keeping her comfortable.’

  ‘That’s all she’d want. It’s all I want for her.’

  ‘We can keep her comfortable. She can stay here.’

  Tess stroked Iris’s arm.

  ‘How long?’ She didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed focused on Iris.

  ‘It’s hard to say specifically. Not very long, I would think. She’s quite weak.’

  ‘And will she be … is she likely to be responsive at all?’

  ‘Again, that’s hard to know at this stage. She’ll sleep, most of the time. We’ll be giving her something to help with that. But I can’t say for definite that she won’t wake. When was she last lucid?’ He looked from Tess to the nurse.

  Tess wished she could remember.

  The nurse shook her head gently. ‘She’s been very calm. I haven’t seen her distressed. She’s an angel to look after, aren’t you, Iris?’ She stroked Iris’s other arm.

  ‘This isn’t an exact science, Tess.’

  ‘But she won’t be in any pain?’

  ‘No. She won’t. She’ll slip away. I hate that expression, but it’s the truth. It is mostly very gradual.’

  Tess nodded, wanting to thank him, but suddenly couldn’t speak. This was it. It was better, she knew, this way. The residents’ lounge was full of people much haler than Iris. Living half-lives. This is what Iris would want, what she would choose if she could.

  The doctor and nurse went together into the hall, pulling the door to. She heard him issue instructions, saw the nurse make a note on her chart.

  Tess felt peaceful. There was nothing more she could do. This was it. All she needed to do was to be with her. She took her seat next to Iris’s bed. She’d need to text Donna. She’d need to do a lot of things. But, right now, she needed to be here.

  She whispered, ‘It’s okay, Iris. You can go. You can go.’

  Gigi

  Park benches were for covert conversations. They were where spies always met. Spies and lovers. Neutral ground.

  It was a beautiful day, mid-morning, and the park was getting full. It was too early for lunch, so the office workers weren’t here yet, loosening their ties and taking off their shoes and socks to let their feet luxuriate in the feeling of the grass. But there were mothers with toddlers, parking buggies and laying out blankets, and old ladies with shopping trolleys.

  Gigi had suggested they met here. It was a place she’d come to often when their kids were young. Usually without Richard. It was almost on the way home from school, if it was a warm day and you had time for a diversion. A bit further along was a playground with swings and seesaws and those whirligig things – the boys had loved those. There’d always been an ice-cream van parked along the fence on summer days. She remembered them wheedling for Fabs and Feasts. Meg in a buggy with a chocolate beard. The best years.

  Not such neutral ground. Infused with recollections.

  Gigi chose an empty bench and waited for Richard. She saw him before he saw her – his gait was so familiar to her. She watched as he scanned the benches, alighted on her, and approached. A million years ago, the sight of him might have made her heart jump. Butterflies. The whole thing. It had, right? It must have done. Ah, she was too old now for all that.

  She thought of Adam. Was she a fool? An old fool? Megan’s voice spoke in her head. ‘What are you doing, Mum? For fuck’s sake. What are you thinking?’ Emily’s: ‘You haven’t shut any doors.’ Olly’s: ‘You have the same right to happiness we all have, Mum. You just have to figure out what is going to make you happy.’

  And that was the hard part.

  Some cheesy song from the seventies played in her head. ‘Torn Between Two Lovers’.

  Snap out of it. You’re not torn between two lovers. Richard’s your husband.

  She’d tried to compartmentalize them. Richard as the past; Adam as the future. That didn’t work. Richard refused to stay in the past. Adam couldn’t deliver a future, not as a concept. She couldn’t imagine it. He was very much a present.

  And now Richard was here beside her on the bench, very much also in the present.

  She looked at him. He looked older. Tired. He was freshly shaven, but he’d nicked himself a couple of times – there was a drop of blood on the collar of his shirt, which was ironed, but not well ironed. He looked a bit thinner too, and it didn’t suit him. He looked diminished, somehow. I’ve done that, she thought. I’ve diminished him.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Not good, G.’

  Silence.

  ‘You know the best time I’ve had in ages? It was when we picked up Megan. Those few hours … when things were most like they used to be … that’s the happiest I’ve been since you went.’ Richard shook himself a little. ‘I’m sure I should try to be less pathetic. I’m sure it doesn’t help. God knows I don’t want to bare myself to you. But I’m not good.’

  She let him talk. She wanted him to talk. He didn’t look at her as he spoke. He sat staring straight ahead.

  ‘There’s no shape in my life without you, Gigi. There are all the things I’ve always done. Work. The kids. The house. Bloody golf. But when you’re not there, there’s no shape. It’s … bewildering. I’m not even slightly used to it, and it’s been weeks. Months. But we have had decades. My whole life, it feels like. So this is still so new and so bloody awful. I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t want to rearrange everything into a new shape if you’re not in it. If you need it to be a new shape, so you can come home, then I’ll do anything you want.’

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘No.’ He turned his head towards her, just briefly. ‘I want to say this. Let me.

  ‘I don’t know if this is repulsive to you. If I seem like a pathetic old man. I don’t care. I’m begging you. I’m begging you.’ His voice broke. ‘I know it hasn’t been good. I’ve had all this time to think about it. I know I haven’t been … we haven’t been … Maybe you think I don’t know what makes a good marriage, but I do, and I know ours hasn’t been, not for a while. A long time, maybe. And I know it’s mostly been my fault. But if I know what’s gone wrong, if I understand it, I mean, then I can try to put it right … but. You. Have. To. Come. Home. So I can try.’

  He stopped. She felt like he had more to say, but that the effort of saying what he just had was exhausting.

  ‘I saw you with him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I went to where you’re living. One night. I was driving around. I couldn’t stand just being at home, you know? Christ, that house without you in it. I wasn’t going to come in. I don’t think I was. I just … I just ended up there. Parked outside. God, that sounds stalkerish. There were no lights on. I figured I’d wait. Just to see you. You know, if you came home. I wasn’t thinking particularly straight. I didn’t even know if you were coming home.’

  Oh God.

  Gigi remembered. She remembered Adam paying the taxi. She remembered leaning on the car. She remembered him kissing her. And how sexy the kiss had been. How she would have let him come up – because she was tipsy and relieved that he found her attractive and because she’d felt lust for the first time in a long, long time – an
d how he’d stopped her.

  ‘Oh, Richard.’

  ‘I saw the two of you together.’

  ‘Nothing happened that night.’

  ‘I know. I watched. You kissed. That’s not nothing. It cut me like a knife. But you didn’t go in together.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But since?’

  ‘Have you been spying on me?’

  Richard laughed, but it was a small, bitter laugh. ‘God, no. You think that didn’t almost kill me, just seeing that?’

  Gigi felt small, and cruel.

  ‘I didn’t do it again, I swear.’ She believed him. ‘I didn’t want to know.’

  She remembered something else. ‘You sent flowers.’

  He nodded.

  ‘After that? You sent flowers.’

  ‘It was that or wait for him and punch his fucking lights out.’

  The phrase was so absurd, the swear word so out of character, spoken in his small, sad voice, that they both laughed.

  ‘Are you two … together?’

  There was no more lying now. She didn’t immediately know how to answer, but she wanted to be honest. ‘We could be. I think.’ Another long pause before he answered.

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s …’ He sighed, and the sound stopped her.

  ‘Can I tell you something?’

  She smiled ruefully. ‘I think we’re past secrets, don’t you?’

  ‘I was unfaithful to you, G. Once. One time.’

  Gigi took a deep breath. A few months ago, the very words would have been a body blow. Words signalling a cyclonic reordering of the universe.

  But everything was different now.

  She’d have had questions. Dozens. She’d have wanted to hear every detail. She’d have shouted, cried, screamed at him. She could almost play the movie of how it would have gone in her own mind. Almost hear herself.

  But it happened. Acceptance before understanding wasn’t something she’d expected of herself. None of this – none of how these last few months had played out was what she had expected of herself.

  She nodded slowly, looking at his profile as he looked down at his hands clasped in his lap. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  He gave a small, curt nod. ‘It was years ago. Before … before you were ill.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The boys were teenagers. Meg was little. Life completely revolved around them. Exams, university applications. Bloody sports teams. Ballet lessons. Endless birthday parties. They were all-consuming. I used to wake up on a Saturday morning and listen to my to-do list. Drive here. Pick up here. Fix this. I’m not blaming anyone but myself, by the way. That sounds like an excuse and it isn’t. It isn’t even a reason. I haven’t ever blamed you. But I sometimes think it’s an explanation. My life was … You didn’t see me, G.’

  Those last words resonated, reverberated around her head.

  She thought about those years. There’d been so much to do. So much to carry.

  ‘I should have tried harder. I know that. You were so busy. So preoccupied. But I should have made you carve out time for us. I should have made the time for us.’

  And so should I, Gigi thought.

  ‘We never had sex. Not for months at a time. We barely touched, sometimes. When we did, it sometimes felt like I was on the to-do list.’

  He was right – he had been. She remembered.

  ‘Who was it?’ She didn’t hear anger in her own voice. Her brain wasn’t frantically sifting through recollections, trying to figure it out. It almost didn’t matter at this point.

  Again, Richard’s small, sad laugh. ‘Well, I’m the biggest cliché in the book. There was a younger woman. Single. We met through work. Drinks.’ He shrugged. ‘Pathetic. She said there was nothing sexier than a married man. A faithful, devoted, married man …’

  He stared down at his hands.

  ‘It was once. At her flat. She had a flatmate, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t stay … afterwards. It was tawdry. It was just sex.’

  Adam wasn’t just sex. She wasn’t sure what he was, or had been, or could be. But it hadn’t been tawdry. It hadn’t been just sex.

  ‘That’s what people say, isn’t it? How many bloody Sunday night BBC dramas have we watched where people say “It was just sex.” What does Megan call it? That revolting expression. “Bumping uglies”.’ Gigi laughed, despite herself. It was so obscene to hear him say the words. Richard looked at her sideways, and then he laughed too. What else could you do? It was absurd. He stopped laughing first. ‘But it was, G. You and me – we weren’t having sex. Hardly ever. I missed it, G. You were always so tired. You never initiated it. Sometimes you submitted. That’s how it felt. Like you submitted.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He waved her apology away. ‘It’s not an excuse. For what I did. I hated it. It was bad.’

  ‘I never knew.’

  ‘I didn’t see her again. I was completely disgusted with myself … And then you got ill. And I know I didn’t get that right.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a wrong and a right way.’

  ‘There is. I was so scared …’ His voice broke again. ‘And you just moved further and further away from me. And I should have tried harder. I should have tried to get you back then. I was a fucking coward …’

  A young woman was walking towards them with a brand-new pram.

  ‘Gigi?’

  Gigi focused on her face, recognized her.

  ‘It’s Emma. Emma Flynn. You were my midwife …’

  Gigi smiled. ‘I remember.’ Richard sniffed, rubbed his hand under his nose. Then he smiled too.

  ‘And this is Callum.’ She wheeled the pram over to them and pulled the sunshade back, so that Gigi was obliged to peer inside.

  ‘He’s sleeping. He loves to be wheeled.’

  They talked for a few moments. Emma was in the baby-joy bubble, somewhat oblivious to anything else around her. Gigi didn’t know how to get her to go. Eventually, Emma looked expectantly at Richard. Constrained by convention, and damned manners, Gigi introduced him.

  ‘This is … this is my husband, Richard.’

  The woman beamed at him. ‘Well, I’m sure you already know, but I have to say that your wife is just brilliant.’

  He smiled back, as brightly as Gigi knew he was capable of. ‘I know she is.’

  ‘I’m serious. I could not have managed without her.’

  Richard nodded, his lips pursed tightly. Gigi knew he couldn’t trust his voice.

  Emma went eventually, when Callum started to wake up, with a bright wave and a quick, grateful kiss on the cheek.

  It wasn’t easy to get back to where they’d been before she interrupted. Gigi put her hand on Richard’s knee, lightly. For a moment his own hand hovered above hers, but then he changed his mind. ‘I’m glad you told me,’ she said.

  ‘Why? It doesn’t solve anything.’

  ‘Because it’s honest. I’m glad I know.’ She nodded her head. ‘So we’re even?’

  A wry, half laugh. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I need time.’

  ‘Would you tell me, now, if you knew it was hopeless? Would you tell me, if you knew you weren’t coming home?’

  She turned towards him. ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘So there’s hope?’

  ‘Richard.’ Gigi put her hand up to stop him, but he’d stopped himself already, nodding slowly.

  ‘Don’t answer that. I think I’m done with pathetic, for today.’

  ‘You’re not pathetic.’

  His gaze was sure and still. ‘I love you, Gigi. I’ve loved you all my life.’

  ‘I’m not sure this –’

  ‘Ssh. Listen. I’ve loved you all my life. I haven’t always loved you well enough. Shown you enough. Cherished you. I’m a pompous old fool. A coward. A bastard. But I have loved you. And I will love you for the rest of my
life too. Whatever you decide.’

  She smiled.

  He smiled back.

  ‘Good speech.’

  He laughed gently. ‘Don’t laugh at me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Richard leant closer to her, until their foreheads touched. He took both her hands in his, and they sat for a moment, foreheads together. Then he stood, still holding her hands, and backed away until their arms were fully extended, only dropping them when he had to.

  ‘Don’t choose him. I know it’s not just about that, that it’s so much more complicated and nuanced than that, G. I know that’s a hopelessly reductive request. But there’s a part of me that just wants to lie on the ground and hold your ankles and beg you not to choose him because he’s straightforward and there’s no history and he hasn’t caused you any pain. Don’t choose him.’

  Tess

  It was Oliver’s idea, to go to see the village where Iris had grown up, one Saturday. It was strange, she realized, that she’d never wondered why Iris hadn’t taken her. Now she knew, of course. She’d sifted through her memories, searching for clues. There were precious few in the encounters she remembered. Her overwhelming impression of her own childhood through the prism of Iris was the joy and the fun. And she was tremendously grateful for that, she really was. But she felt frustrated too that Iris had never shown her any of the cracks in her own well-being. She could barely conjure up a picture of Iris in her mind where she wasn’t smiling with happiness.

  There’d been day trips to London, when she was younger, when Tess remembered passing references to wartime London – how almost unrecognizable it was. She recalled standing on the middle of a bridge, it must have been Westminster, she supposed, and staring at St Paul’s Cathedral while Iris talked about its surviving being bombed. The story of the Queen Mother holding her head up high in the East End in the wake of the bomb damage Buckingham Palace sustained one night. With a child’s understanding, she hadn’t easily connected her grandmother with that war, but she’d always loved the stories anyway. All the little boats heading to Dunkirk, the woman Iris had known of whose fiancé died in the Battle of Britain, and who’d kept sheep on Clapham Common in the Blitz and never married. With a child’s acceptance, she hadn’t asked about the village of Iris’s own childhood. She hadn’t ever wanted to join up the dots until it was too late to do so, and now she never properly would.