by Faith Hogan
‘I can’t sit around here all day waiting for the baby to arrive,’ she said one day to Pamela, and it was true. The apartment was quite small and it did not take long for the two girls to feel cramped and bored.
‘Perhaps you could get a little job?’ Clive said that night as they sat down to dinner. Clive, for his part, had been very nice. Everyone had been very nice. Iris was all too aware that what she deserved was a good telling-off and to be thrown into a convent in the back end of nowhere and forgotten about. Instead, Clive made her feel like she was a valued guest.
‘I don’t even speak French, how could I get a job?’ With Marianne, her French was improving each day, but she was nowhere near ready to call herself proficient.
‘Well, neither of you are going to learn just sitting here all day,’ he said, laughing, as he tucked into dinner. ‘Why not take a walk about the hotels and guest houses and see if they need an English-speaking receptionist?’
So, that was what they did. After a week or so, with very tired legs and a growing French vocabulary Iris managed to get a job in a nearby cookery school. Initially, she set about clearing up after the men who were learning to become great chefs. Soon she managed to secure a position that meant she could spend her time assisting in the classes and she enjoyed watching the lessons and improving her French.
Pamela wasn’t successful in securing any employment, but they both knew that was probably a relief to Clive anyway. The following week, she realized that she too was pregnant. A honeymoon baby. Clive was over the moon and Iris was more delighted for them than she was worried for herself.
Each night Iris would lie in her little single bed and try to figure ways she could hold onto this baby a little longer. She tried hard to make peace with having to give it away to strangers. She fell asleep tired but content with the days she had spent learning far more than she expected to. Clive and Pamela were the initial beneficiaries of her new unofficial education. She regaled them with stories and kept a journal of each recipe she assisted with at the school. She was full of energy, while Pamela had a terrible time between morning sickness, cramps and heartburn. They were polar opposites when it came to being pregnant. Iris bloomed, while Pamela wilted. Iris dreaded her baby arriving because she knew that she would have to give it up, while Pamela couldn’t wait for her child to arrive.
‘You could get a job at the Ritz at this rate,’ Pamela said one night, but of course, they both knew she couldn’t. There were only chefs, no chefettes in Paris. The Ritz and any of the other big hotels wanted a real chef, not a cook from a guest house on the wrong side of the river Liffey. They would never want someone who brought such terrible shame on herself, even if her family had managed to keep it secret.
*
It was late on a Sunday evening when Iris felt the first gnawing pain at the base of her spine. She ignored it for an hour or two. She knew she would have to tell Pamela. She and Clive were attending a reception to celebrate a West German visit to mark their World Cup win a few months earlier. By the time Pamela arrived, Iris was in the throes of labour. There was just time to get the local midwife, an English woman called Henrietta who had delivered babies in the blitz. She was neither a soother nor an ally. Instead, she was a no-nonsense woman with limited time and even less patience. They were all glad to see her leave.
Iris held her baby boy close to her for as long as they would let her. She marvelled at his dark hair and eyes. He was his father’s son – a real heartbreaker from the start. Iris thought he was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. If there were any choice, they would not give him up.
‘I’ve had an idea, but I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it,’ Pamela sat on the side of Iris’s bed. The baby, Mark, was just two days old and Iris knew her heart would break when she had to say goodbye to him. ‘Clive has agreed and…’ she cleared her throat and Iris had a feeling that this was something that she had been thinking about for a while. ‘If you let us, we will adopt Mark from you. It would all be completely legal, all above board.’ Pamela reached her hand out and placed it gently on Mark’s head. ‘The truth is, I love him too much to let him go, Iris. We could say I had twins, look at me, sure there’s only going to be a matter of weeks between them and in a year’s time you won’t even see that.’
‘I…’ Iris did not know what to say. Surely anything was better than never seeing Mark again? It was, probably, an ideal solution, better than any she dared to dream. But how would they go through life and keep this secret? How would she manage to see him and not reach out and pull him close to her? How could she give him away to anyone? Then she realized, it was her best option. If he were put up for adoption here, in this city that she had grown to love, but that she would soon leave, she would never see him again. This was the best chance for both of them. He would be loved; he’d have a good life, every opportunity. Perhaps it was far more than she deserved for him, but she had to take the offer. ‘Oh, Pamela, I don’t know what to say. Yes. Yes. I couldn’t ask for a better home for him.’ It was true. This was best for everyone. His blood relations would surround him and there would be no scandal.
Clive had come later and explained that she could stay until Pamela’s baby was born, but then she would have to go home. They would be a family, a real family, with twin babies and she would return to Dublin and make the best life she could for herself. ‘You’re still young and lovely, you’ll meet someone decent,’ Clive said. She had a feeling he wasn’t just saying it to console her. He actually believed that the boys would be lining up for her back in Parnell Square.
The days that followed had a surreal quality to them. Sometimes, Iris would hold Mark close and dream that there was some way she could keep him. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes at night, she couldn’t believe how lucky she was that he would have such a good home. In those days, her heart grew in heaviness; it was the weight of love, more than guilt. She knew her purity was gone on every level. She had experienced love in all its forms, sadness too, and knew they both had many layers. She knew instinctively that her heart would never be the same again. A big part of it was parcelled up in her perfect lovely son, her emptiness the price she gladly paid for his future.
When Pamela’s baby arrived, he was nothing like Mark. He was small and fair and, it seemed to Iris, already far more bad-tempered – perhaps that came from his blue blood. The midwife took one look and pronounced, ‘colicky,’ as though that would explain the huge gulf of difference between two children who were destined to be brothers. It made no matter, Clive set about organizing his family and made it clear that Iris had to go. He was pushing her out, but only because he thought it would be easier for everyone – maybe even for Iris.
‘Do not worry, I will take special care of Mark for you,’ Marianne whispered in her ear as they embraced before she headed for the airport. ‘I will write and tell you all about him.’
‘Promise?’
‘It is my word.’ Marianne hugged her tight and Iris had to pull hard to walk away from that little apartment.
*
It was a cold and wet April day when she arrived back at Dublin airport. She left behind not just her sister with her lovely ‘twin boys’, but her heart too in that beautiful city far away. Her ‘whole life stretched before her’, as Clive put it, and she supposed this was true. But the ache in her heart for her Mark had emptied her soul. It felt like she stood on the precipice of a very deep canyon into which she might fall endlessly for as long as she was away from him.
She resumed her duties at the guest house, but now she ghosted about the old house like a lost soul in search of an anchor. Maureen Burns did not quite know what to do with her.
‘I’m worried about you, Iris. You only work. You spend your time in your room. From what I can see you are pining your life away, looking out that bedroom window for something that you can’t possibly find.’
The letters from Paris told of a happy family, growing quickly and seamlessly closer each day. Clive made it clear
that there was no going back. All the same, when Marianne wrote, in her curling stylish hand, Iris could almost imagine that she was right beside Mark. Marianne’s letters told her all the things that Clive and Pamela left out. In trying to be kind, they managed to cut her off. She knew from Marianne that Mark was growing fast and his hair was dark. He liked peas and pears, but sometimes he refused everything unless he was sitting on Marianne’s lap. He was growing into a little boy, intent with purpose. He was not as jovial as his younger brother, Crispin, but very charming all the same. He was the burlier of the two. By comparison, Crispin was the paler, less vigorous version. Iris sometimes thought, they both took after their fathers, but then she would push all thoughts of Willie Keynes from her mind. Oddly, she found herself praying that Mark would grow up to be the decent kind of man that Clive had turned out to be.
‘Perhaps a change of scenery,’ her mother said as they cleared away the breakfasts. There was a distant cousin of Miss Chester’s in County Sligo, far enough removed from life as Iris knew it to make a new start. ‘A summer in that little seaside hotel with the Atlantic air to brighten your cheeks and she has two sons…’ her mother said lightly. Iris had no interest in the sons. She had met Archie Hartley a couple of years before. True enough, he seemed keen on her then, but they were only children. Then, they spent more time racing bicycles about the square than they did anything else. This time she was nineteen going on forty-nine. She was jaded and cynical after her brush with William Keynes. Sometimes she thought of him, living in a country so far away, oblivious to the birth of his first child. Iris thought about Mark all the time, it seemed odd that William didn’t even know about him. No doubt, Clarissa would have already presented him with a lovely baby by now. Iris pushed their situation from her mind as hard as she could.
‘I’ll go.’ She had nothing to lose; perhaps she might make something of it. ‘I will go as a cook, tell them I have trained at one of the best schools in Paris.’ She said the words with far more determination than she felt about anything since before that night when she’d headed off with William Keynes to the Forty-Seven Club.
8
Kate
It didn’t take Kate long to get everything sorted. Ten days in London and she’d put her flat on the market. She drew up the papers for the purchase of the bathhouse and arranged for her belongings to go into storage. It was an unexpected relief to be rid of most it; even the wedding dress that she had stored so faithfully for the last decade. It was Dior. Even if she wasn’t one for labels much, she still caught her breath at the exquisiteness of the gown. It was more than she could have dreamed for in a wedding dress; a silk sheath that fell across her body like a white morning rose. It was empire line, soft and ivory, with akoya pearls encircling like tender stars around the bodice.
‘Pearls are for tears, you know that?’ her would-be bridesmaid had said. She got married the following year to an accountant from Bristol and they had hardly spoken since. Kate did not look at the dress in years. It hid in a heavy travel bag at the Narnia end of her wardrobe.
The temptation was too much when she pulled it out, it still fitted perfectly and she glided about the flat for almost an hour, the sadness somehow quelled now. She stood before the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her bathroom door, took in the full effect. When she knotted her fair hair on top of her head, she could almost be the same person she was then. On closer inspection, a tinkering of fine lines danced now at the corners of her blue eyes. Shadows beneath them spoke of the long hours she worked because there seemed little point in much else. But the vibrancy in her eyes was returning and this made her smile as though she had a secret that was bubbling up inside her. The bathhouse was igniting something in her, calling her to something that had eluded her for at least a decade, she suspected maybe longer. In the end, she hung the dress back in the bag and left for the Oxfam shop; someone was in for a very pleasant surprise. She wished its next owner well.
Lyndon Tansey pushed the boat out for her farewell party. They spent an afternoon knocking back champagne while every other barrister in Britain was vying for a piece of the forthcoming divorce of a young Royal and a playboy. Instead, the workforce at Newbury, Crocket and Tansey Lawyers feasted on sushi and spoke maudlin words on the passing of time and the loss of good friends.
‘You know that if it doesn’t work out, your place is always waiting for you,’ her boss said to her many times over those last few days.
‘I know that, and I’m grateful, but I’ve a good feeling about this, I need to do it, I feel like it’s where my future lies,’ she smiled at him, ‘if that doesn’t sound too clichéd.’
‘No. You need a change, I can see that. I think we’ve all seen that these last few years and I’m glad you’re getting the chance, it’s just…’
‘You’ll miss me?’
‘Don’t be so big-headed!’ he joked. ‘It’ll be hard to find anyone as good as you; we won’t replace you, you know that.’
‘Thanks for that.’ She sipped her champagne, looked about the foyer that she passed through every day of her working life. ‘I promise not to set up in competition, if that makes you feel any better.’
‘Of course it does, I would hate to be facing you across a courtroom, for all our melancholy, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of divorcing wealthy spouses who will breathe a sigh of relief.’ They both laughed at this and Kate realized she would feel a little sad leaving this place.
*
As it turned out, there wasn’t much time for sadness. Packing up the flat, saying her goodbyes, ten days flew by maybe more quickly than she wished when she was walking along that deserted beach.
Her mother thought she was mad. But then, she’d lived her whole life in city suburbs, perhaps the idea of all that space scared her.
‘It sounds like a real adventure,’ her mother said drily when she rang to tell her of her plans. Adaline had always believed her daughter was a jolly hockey sticks, secret seven sort of girl. That was probably down to boarding school. ‘You’re really sure about this?’ she asked her. Of course she’d never met Iris or Archie and she’d probably never understand the beauty of Ballytokeep. ‘Crispin,’ his name sounded strange when she said it, ‘your father, he never mentioned this Aunt Iris?’
‘She’s nothing like him, Adaline.’ Adaline made no secret of the fact that Crispin had been a bad lot, maybe Kate couldn’t blame her, after all he was a drinker, a gambler and, by all accounts, a terrible womanizer. ‘She’s nothing like my grandmother either.’ That was true, Lady Pamela was just that, a lady. Sir Clive made all the decisions and the only part he wanted to play in his grand-daughter’s upbringing was to pay for her education in a school that kept her well away from any of them. Maybe it was the pain of losing their son in a car crash – but their distance was hard to take, after all, she had lost her father too. ‘I feel there’s a real connection here.’ She knew Adaline wouldn’t get it in a million years, she’d think she was mad for throwing in her career for a run-down old bathhouse. ‘I know I need to do this, I’m as sure as I’ve ever been about anything.’
‘I’ve often wondered about you, you know after…’
‘Yes, it’s been the defining part of me, hasn’t it?’ Everyone in England knew Kate as the girl Todd Riggs ditched at the altar before heading off to Copenhagen with a Russian bimbo.
‘You mustn’t think that, Kate. You’ve had a stellar career, the kind of stuff most girls only dream about.’ Adaline never had a career. Kate assumed she’d never wanted one. She played a secondary role to her second husband’s corporate career; in many ways, that was her career.
‘I suppose I want more now. Time’s moving on and I’ve made as much money as I need to set me up and keep me afloat for a few years.’
‘You could always go back, set up on your own, if you wanted.’ Adaline really thought she had a choice. But then it was a long time since they’d actually spoken about much more than Adaline’s holiday plans.
‘I
need to get my life sorted all round, before it’s too late.’ It was true, the open sea air, the rushing tides, the sand slipping beneath her feet had all reminded Kate of the passing of time.
She invited Adaline to stay for summer holidays and maybe someday she’d genuinely hope to see her. Their relationship had never been easy. Adaline married young and her family thought well. It turned out she married a playboy who didn’t understand loyalty and knew even less about responsibility. He spent his life chasing the next horizon and died long after he left them, but much too soon for a man who seemed always to have somewhere else to be. Kate’s memories of him were scarce. Those of their times together as a family, made her feel nervy. These days, she put that down to the uneasiness she felt with her mother. It was obvious to Kate, even from a very young age that she would never quite measure up to her father’s family’s expectations. She doubted her father did either. So, once she hit her teenage years, she just stopped trying. She attended her grandfather’s funeral alone, surrounded by a couple of faded hangers-on who meant nothing to her and probably less to her father. Kate told her mother that Iris was nothing like her sister – Lady Pamela, but Adaline just laughed. ‘Oh, Kate, you’re just too naïve.’
*
Her final morning in London dawned bright and crisp. The flat was fully packed up with only the sheets on her bed and the clothes for the journey left to be sorted. She had not as much as a pint of milk in the fridge for coffee. She ambled down to the little bakery a couple of streets away for breakfast. There were a few hours to kill before her flight, so a leisurely breakfast and the morning papers were just the ticket. She picked up a broadsheet without noticing the headlines.
