Letters to Iris

by Elizabeth Noble

  The girl crouched at Holly’s feet held up the bottle of dark-red polish for confirmation. Holly nodded. Tess’s girl was still bent studiously over her cuticles. It wasn’t an entirely comfortable sensation. Not nearly as comfortable, truthfully, as sitting in a deep, upholstered booth at the pub with a small bowl of ready-salted crisps in front of you, but Tess didn’t want to be churlish.

  ‘My favourite ex utero person, absolutely. Indubitably, in fact.’

  Holly narrowed one eye. ‘Never really knew what that word meant, to be honest.’

  ‘And you a teacher! The shame …’

  ‘Piss off. I mean, I’d just about got rid of that Sean character. The pesky kid is still months away … I was in, man. Right in.’

  ‘You’ve always been right in, Hols. Despite my best efforts to get rid of Ben and Dulcie.’ The two of them laughed at their own banter.

  ‘And now Donna is doing a passable impression of being your mother.’ Holly was allowed: she’d been around for years. Tess laughed. ‘Muscling in on my person action. I mean, I was going to suggest myself as your doula,’ Holly told her.

  ‘You what? What’s one of them?’

  ‘Like a midwife, but not. A birthing companion.’ Tess nodded, and considered the proposition.

  Holly’s face was suddenly more serious. ‘I mean, if you were worrying about being by yourself …’

  ‘I wasn’t, until now.’ Not quite true. Being alone and in labour was one of the late-at-night thoughts Tess had.

  ‘I mean, strictly at the head end. I’ve gone this long without seeing your bits, despite some memorable nights out and Turkish baths, and I can go longer. But I’m serious, Tess. If you wanted someone with you …’

  Tess squeezed Holly’s hand where it lay on the armrest between them. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I can peel grapes, count gaps between contractions, put flannels on your head. I’ve watched an awful lot of One Born Every Minute. I’m practically qualified, I think.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She was still holding Holly’s hand. When she looked at her friend’s face, Tess was surprised to see tears in Holly’s eyes.

  ‘Oy. I’m supposed to be the one with hormones all over the place. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. I just … I just love you. I don’t want you worrying about stuff like that.’ Holly rubbed a tear away roughly with her free hand. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I love you too. Can we stop this now, please?’ She moved her hand away. ‘I have a far more pressing issue …’

  Holly looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Dark red. Or bright pink? For my toes. While I can still see them?’

  Gigi

  Gigi had been to a Pilates class. She liked how that sounded when she said it in her head, so she said it out loud, in the Geordie accent the guy from Big Brother had. ‘Gigi has been to Pilates.’ She felt Amazonian. She hadn’t been to an exercise class for years … since leotards went right up your bum, and Olivia Newton-John might well have provided the soundtrack. But she’d gone once, several years ago after Megan had nagged her into submission, to a Zumba class at the local sports centre. Megan had been developing the Victorian pallor of the GCSE student, and she’d gone only to ensure Megan went, afraid she’d lose the use of her lower limbs and develop rickets if she sat in the study one hour more. Nothing other than the love of mother for child could have persuaded her to don sweat clothes and enter the terrifying cacophony of ‘Zoe’s Zumba …’ The less said about that display of mal-coordination the better. But suffice to say Megan had laughed for some hours afterwards.

  But she’d gone to Pilates this morning entirely voluntarily. It was much better than Zumba. Alone, unprompted and with no one nagging her. Okay, so she’d chosen a pitch right at the back of the hall, and okay, so she’d lied through clenched teeth to the willowy instructor and said she could ‘feel it’ in her ‘inner corset’, which meant she was doing it properly. She was more of an outer-corset Spanx girl, and hadn’t felt all that much except stiff, and slightly anxious about the possibility of public farting. But it was a start, and she was sure she would feel it soon enough, if she kept going. Correction, when she kept going, for was she not Gigi of the Fresh Start? She felt, sitting in the car, drinking from a bottle like a toddler’s sippy cup that she’d bought at the same time as her new, brightly striped ‘athleisure wear’, rather modern, and rather pleased with herself. This might be just the beginning. Maybe she’d get Kate, or Emily, or both – a gang – to sign up and do the Moonwalk with her. Or even one of those Tough Mudders that looked so much dirty fun if you could do them without hyperventilating or actually dying. Maybe there was a slim, sporty woman trapped inside her after all, who might have endorphins, and she’d just been keeping her anaesthetized with gin and cake for all these years …

  Her mobile phone rang from the dark recesses of her new hobo handbag. She rifled and failed to find it, eventually upturning the bag impatiently, spilling its contents across the passenger seat in the car, and grabbing for the green button just before the call went to voicemail.

  Gigi had answered the phone to her boy a thousand times over the years, and she had a mother’s sixth sense, gleaned from the simple tone of his voice, or just a pause, about when Oliver was in trouble. There’d been a few heart-stopping calls in his younger, adventuring years – he’d crashed a car, run out of money, fallen off a motorbike in Thailand, decided he’d had enough of uni … Mostly he’d needed practical help, or sensible advice, admonishment, even, just to prove the universe was as it should be, but sometimes, she knew, just to hear her voice, when something was wrong …

  And today, something was. Her self-deprecating Pilates humour would have to wait.

  She hadn’t bugged him since the conversation in the coffee shop a few weeks ago. She hoped she’d planted a seed, and she’d left it to germinate. She couldn’t control what happened. She’d spoken her truth, quietly and calmly, and let him speak his. She’d thought about it every day, but she knew she couldn’t push. Her son was fighting a battle between what he knew to be true and what he thought to be right. He was the man she’d raised. She couldn’t join the fray. But maybe this was it …

  ‘What’s up?’

  Oliver laughed wryly at being so well understood. ‘I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell you.’

  ‘Just talk to me.’

  The laugh again, a bit forced. ‘You think it is that easy, huh?’

  ‘Not easy. Spent decades trying to get your father to do it. But you’ve called me. So shoot.’

  She waited, and heard him take a deep breath. ‘Caitlin has left me. Broken up with me. Broken it off … the whole thing.’ There was quiet surprise in his voice, but no break or wobble in its timbre.

  ‘Darling!’ Gigi was genuinely shocked in the first instance. Her own feelings about the development, surging in the back of her mind, were rightfully filed behind an immediate concern for her son. This was unexpected. Caitlin had a demeanour – that time at lunch, before that at Christmas – which suggested she’d made up her mind and was not for turning. What had changed?

  ‘I’m okay. Surprisingly okay. Unsurprisingly surprisingly okay. One of those anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  The deep breath was now a deep, slow exhalation …

  ‘Big question for the phone, Mum.’

  ‘Sorry … Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m at work.’

  ‘Shall I come?’

  A brief pause. ‘No need for that.’

  The pause was her permission to push. ‘I’m coming. Meet me for lunch.’

  ‘For you or for me?’

  ‘For me of course. I need to see you.’

  She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Then let me come to you. I’ve got the car; it’ll be quicker.’

  She knew her boy. She knew he wouldn’t ask. But he wanted to see her, and she was glad to be that lucky.

  She thought quickly. They both had a car. ‘Meet me at Wisley?’

 
‘It’s not a nice day.’

  ‘It’ll be quiet, then … Bring a hat.’

  They’d spent years walking the acreage of the RHS’s gardens at Wisley together, Gigi and her brood. James had given them an annual family membership for Christmas every year since the boys were small, and, although they’d visited other gardens over the years, on holiday in Devon and Cornwall and the Lake District, it was Wisley, with its orchards and its rock garden, that they knew and loved the best. As boys, Christopher and Oliver had been fascinated by the tropical foliage and the unseasonal warmth in the enormous greenhouses, and Megan had learnt to run on its lawns one hoary, frosty autumn morning. As a six-year-old, Oliver had once been saved by a passing man who grabbed his ankle just as he almost tipped himself into the large lily pond one hot summer’s day: his sun hat had floated into the middle, out of reach, all of them laughing, helpless with gratitude and relief. It was one of the golden memories they all shared. Not Richard – he’d been at work, of course. But her and the children. It was their space, and it had been their time. Its orchards and rose gardens were full of happy ordinary family memories.

  Oliver had been right about the weather, and Gigi about the visitor numbers. It was cold in the dampest, greyest way it could be. Drizzle threatened. The gardens were almost deserted, save a few hardy types who strolled through the grounds determinedly. Gigi bought tickets – their membership having lapsed years back – and was waiting by the entrance with two hot cups of tea when Oliver arrived. She held the cups away from her body while he gave her a bear-hug, and then took one from her gratefully. The collar on his Crombie coat was turned up, and he hunched his shoulders inside it against the chill wind.

  ‘No hat.’

  ‘No hat. I’ll see if there’s one in the pond …’ It was a family joke.

  She linked her arm through his, and they started walking.

  ‘When shall we discuss the sports kit?’ She hadn’t gone home to change, just pulled on her coat over the leggings and hoodie.

  Still the old sparkle in his eyes.

  She mock-punched his arm. ‘How about never?’

  ‘You look good, Mum. You look great.’

  Now she rested her head against the same arm, for a brief moment, grateful for the compliment and the affirmation.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She found me out.’

  ‘Oliver. You didn’t …’ Now she was really shocked.

  ‘No, no. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’d never –’

  ‘You haven’t messed her around?’

  ‘Not like that. Not with someone else … of course not. You know that.’

  She had, deep down. ‘Then?’

  ‘But I have, haven’t I? Messed her around.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles, my boy.’

  ‘I mustn’t have been hiding it. Those doubts and stuff we were talking about. Not that I should have been hiding it. I should have been fucking honest about it.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’

  ‘I think I was trying to find the way to say it … or being a massive coward. Bit of both.’

  ‘You’re being quite hard on yourself.’

  ‘I’m being as hard as I should be. It wasn’t fair, I knew all along. I’m not some naive kid. I know how it works. I said yes. I went along with all of it.’

  ‘So if you didn’t say anything, what happened?’

  ‘She said it for me.’

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘She said … well, she said a lot of stuff.’

  Gigi refrained from saying that she couldn’t imagine Caitlin saying ‘a lot of stuff’ all at once, and patiently listened.

  ‘She knew I wasn’t all in. She said she’d known for a while, and thought she could change it. But she’d realized.’

  ‘Not all in?’

  ‘That it wasn’t right. She said she knew I’d go through with it, because I was a good guy, and she knew a good guy when she saw one, because she’d met enough bad ones. And she said she was tempted to go along. She said she thought she could try enough for both of us.’

  Gigi felt a wave of sympathy lapping at the edge of her feelings for Caitlin.

  ‘But she’d woken up … that’s what she called it – waking up – and she’d seen it wouldn’t work. That she was setting me free to find a person I really loved. That she wanted to wait for someone who really loved her. That we both deserved better.’

  Thank God. Gigi couldn’t help thinking it, although she could and would stop herself from expressing it now. She sent a silent prayer of thanks for whatever gave Caitlin the revelation. Hadn’t she loved Richard more than life itself when she married him? Hadn’t he been her sun, moon and stars? And look – even that wasn’t necessarily enough. Starting out in a marriage without that … it must mean you were doomed to broken lives and smashed hopes.

  It was that, predominantly, that had made her so uneasy about the engagement. The other stuff – the jarring effect she feared Caitlin would have on their family – was secondary. And hadn’t she jarred the hell out of it all on her own? It was the fear of the unhappiness Caitlin and Oliver would be storing up for themselves that had kept her awake.

  ‘Do you know what happened? To make her change her mind?’

  ‘No. She blamed herself. Not me. There was no ranting and raving. No big fight. No tears. I got home and she had packed what little gear she had at mine. She was sitting waiting for me on the sofa. I kissed her hello. Then it all came out. And she left.’

  He pointed at a bench, and they sat down side by side. Gigi felt the cold wood through her Lycra and shivered. Oliver put an arm around her.

  ‘So that’s that?’

  She felt him shrug. ‘That’s that, I think.’

  ‘Poor girl.’ Gigi didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘I know.’

  They sat in silence for a while. She wanted to tell him it would all be okay, but it seemed better, for now, to stay quiet. For Caitlin, for him. There’d been times in her children’s lives – all three of them – when she’d wanted a fast-forward button to press, to whizz them safely and quickly through something difficult, knowing with her mother’s wisdom that it would be okay on the other side, knowing that they didn’t necessarily believe her when she said it was true. Attacks of croup, exams, heartbreak, spots and braces … You couldn’t. All you could do was be there.

  He needed to let himself off the hook, was all. His heart had probably always been safe, in this relationship. It was his conscience that was the problem.

  She stood up eventually and offered him her arm. He allowed her to pull him up, never actually letting her take his weight. ‘So … I’ve started Pilates.’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘First class this morning. Hence the attire.’

  He smiled and nodded.

  ‘Gotta be good for a slice of carrot cake in the café, I’d have thought?’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘Definitely, you mad old bag … most definitely.’

  Tess

  April

  It was a while until Tess saw Oliver again, and when she did it was at the train station, not Clearview. It was early one Wednesday morning. She was coming, he was going.

  It was always bizarre, in somewhere like Waterloo Station, teeming with thousands of people, to bump into someone you knew. Stranger still to see someone in such an unfamiliar context. Sometimes you’d spot a face and spend a few moments processing whose it was, where you knew them from. Not now. Not with him.

  Tess had just gone through the ticket barrier. Oliver was standing about twenty-five yards in front of her, arms folded, looking up at the information screen, wearing a deep-blue suit, a brown leather messenger bag across his body and holding a Pret à Manger coffee cup. Tall and good-looking.

  Tess realized she’d stopped walking when she heard the tut of a commuter to her left. That was the trick, really, in the city, wasn’t it? Keep moving at the same pace as everyone else. Don’t get in anyon
e’s way. But she had.

  Hoping he’d notice her.

  Sad.

  And he did. His eyes left the board, scanned the surroundings and then alighted on her. His face was neutral at first – then showed recognition. His eyebrows went up and he smiled broadly.

  And Tess felt warm.

  She smiled back, and then took two, three steps towards him. He did the same. Then they were in front of each other.

  ‘Tess. Hi.’

  ‘Morning. Where are you off to?’

  ‘Andover. Got a meeting. You?’

  ‘Work. Holborn.’

  He nodded.

  It was the same sensation she’d had with him before. Hard to describe. She wanted to talk. Wanted to stay in his radius. Maybe that was what people meant when they talked about other people having magnetic personalities. She’d never really known. But maybe it was this. She was disproportionately pleased to have bumped into him. She hardly knew him at all. But she wanted to stay like this.

  ‘What time’s your train?’ Why was she asking that? What was she going to suggest? Breakfast at the café on the concourse, for God’s sake?

  Oliver looked at his watch. ‘About seven minutes.’ She heard regret in his voice, and felt it. Not long enough for breakfast. Not even long enough for coffee.

  Neither of them moved. They looked at each other. Dozens of people milled about them, but it felt to her like they were very still, in the eye of the storm.

  ‘How’s your granddad?’

  ‘Good, I think. The same. Your grandmother? She’s … better?’

  Tess nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good.’ It was the smallest of small talk, but it felt big. She wouldn’t have been able to explain it. Even to Holly. Who’d probably make Brief Encounter references anyway.

  He spoke first this time. ‘I wish I had a bit more time. I’d love to grab a coffee …’

  She looked pointedly at his cup, smiling.

  ‘Another coffee.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe even a croissant.’

  It was flirting. She remembered flirting, though it had certainly been a very long time since she’d done any herself. But maybe Oliver was one of those people who flirted with everybody.