In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  “Fair enough,” he says. “Do you want me to call someone?”

  “I’m perfectly capable of using a telephone, Geoffrey. I just told you because you asked.”

  He nods. “You’re out of sorts today too, Iris.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just don’t seem your normal self. A bit grumpy perhaps.”

  “It’s my brother Tom,” I say. “He keeps turning up unexpectedly.”

  “That’s brothers for you,” Geoffrey says. “Whenever my brother turns up all he wants is money. What does yours want?”

  “I don’t know, Geoffrey. That’s the problem.”

  “Well, Iris, I never knew you had a brother.”

  “Nor I you. What’s his name?”

  “George. George and Geoffrey Johnson. He’s one year younger than me and since our mother died he thinks I’m a substitute. Yours?”

  “Tom, and he’s a grand boy.”

  “How old is he then?”

  “Eight, I think.”

  “Iris, are you sure you’re all right today?”

  “Well, of course I’m all right, Geoffrey. Now off you go.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve an international letter for you. Quite the celebrity this month.” He gets a blue envelope from his satchel. I put out my hand and take it but don’t look at it. If Geoffrey thinks this odd, he doesn’t say so. When he leaves, I drop the envelope into the glider’s box, feeling better to leave it there for now.

  I forgot about the envelope altogether until I went with some cut-up apple for the glider. He chewed hungrily. He wasn’t unwell, I decided, just moving on from milk and sugar, growing as he should. I found the envelope in the box and wondered at first how it had got there. Then I remembered.

  I knew without opening it who the letter was from. Who else would write now? And when I looked, I could see it was her writing, less sure of itself, fewer flourishes, but Violet’s lovely hand. She hadn’t written for over fifty years and now she sent one of those impossible to open aerograms where the paper is also the envelope. It took me five minutes to get it open without tearing it and by the end I just wanted to rip it up.

  Dear Iris,

  I was thinking of you tonight and I can’t sleep which is nothing unusual these days but I’m writing in the hope that after all these years, I’ll hear back.

  Do you remember, Iris, the night we had the fight with the cream? You’d been working in Blanche—it always sent you a little mad—and I’d done nineteen hours without a break or some such. We were in the kitchen, the little one off the staff dining room, and Quoyle had whipped cream for a trifle and I took a fingerful and flicked it at you, just a little really, but you flicked a little more back, and on and on until we were throwing great handfuls of the stuff and laughing like children. We made such a terrible mess. Remember? I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life as I did when we were friends, Iris.

  It was all too serious, that was the trouble. I was too serious and I truly believed it mattered. And all that mattered really were those laughs. That’s what I think now.

  You weren’t made for bitterness, Iris, dear. You were made to be happy, I think. Are you happy? I’d like to think you are. I hope you’ll come to Royaumont with me now and we’ll laugh again together. It would do us such good, dear friend.

  It really was just water under the bridge.

  Miss FB

  In the years after I came home from Royaumont, I tried to reply to her letters. Dear Violet, I started again and again. Sometimes I wrote what I thought I should. All those things you mentioned happened such a long time ago I barely remember them. Sometimes I wrote what was in my heart and it pierced through a gloom. I loved you so, like a sister. I have never had another friend quite like you. But what I did was terrible.

  In the early days after I arrived home, I’d go somewhere that noise would drown me out—under the railway bridge at the Warwick Road—and I’d call his name. I’d scream his name. It soothed me to say what no one else would say.

  “Do you remember when we brought Rose home to Risdon?” Al said the day we came home to Sunnyside with Grace all those years later. I didn’t. “I remember your daddy’s face, like we’d brought some disease into the house. He wouldn’t go near her.”

  I did remember Daddy when I first came home, the look in his eyes. It wasn’t like Al said at all. It wasn’t disdain on Daddy’s face. It was such a mix of pain and joy, I could hardly bear it. I burst into tears, handed Rose to Al and ran to Daddy. “I’m so sorry.” He didn’t respond for a full minute and I could see his struggle. Then he said, “Iris, it’s good to have you home.” It was me who couldn’t bear the weight of Rose in my arms that day, not Daddy.

  He could have said I’d failed. I knew it well enough. He could have refused to take me in. But he didn’t. A week later, we went out riding together, up the hill to Holding Rock where he thought some lambs had wandered. We stopped for lunch at the top of the rock. We could see Risdon below and the neighbouring farms. Daddy had written Tom, he said, six months before the telegram came. “I just decided I couldn’t stay angry at him anymore. He’d always been one to make up his own mind. And by that time . . . he was near enough to manhood. It wasn’t up to me anymore.

  “I told him I was proud of him for sticking to what he believed in. I’m glad I did, Iris. I’m glad I made my peace . . .” His voice failed him.

  “This is a roundabout way of saying you mustn’t blame yourself,” Daddy said. I didn’t reply, wasn’t ready for the conversation. “It was the worst decision he could have made, but he made it, not you.”

  We found no lambs that day and I took little comfort in Daddy’s words. I had blame enough in my heart for both of us and more.

  Violet, do you remember that summer? Do you remember the day, Violet, that we walked from Royaumont to Chantilly? The morning had started with a fine cloud covering the sky and it was brisk. The flowers covered the fields. I couldn’t believe they grew on the side of the road although no one tended them. We get nothing like that here. Those are iris, you said, common as weeds. No offence. None taken. By eleven the sun had come out in a perfect pale blue sky, hopeful as I’ve ever seen the heavens. We sang as we walked.

  We met Tom and Dugald in Chantilly and the four of us found a spot under some trees by a little stream for lunch. It was in the forest around Chantilly, those tall stately trees you loved, I don’t recall their names now, you would know them. You and Tom wandered off for a walk after lunch—”to leave you two lovebirds alone,” you said to me.

  “Will you walk with me?” Dugald said. We set out through the forest, walked among oak and poplar newly green. The spring had eased into summer, our world lengthening and warming once again. The war always seemed preposterous in summer.

  Dugald stopped on the path and turned to me and took my hands in his. “I will never forget these hands,” he said. “They are like art.”

  I laughed and took my hands from his. “They are not,” I said. “They are like a nurse who doesn’t use enough barrier cream.” My hands had dried out like raisins, the nails chipped and broken. “Rough as hessian.”

  “Who said art was smooth?” he said, taking one hand again, turning the palm in his own. “The thing is,” he looked away, “I’d rather I didn’t have to forget your hands, Iris. I’d like a daily lesson in them.” He looked at me briefly, checking my response, smiling gently, looking away again. “Except . . .” He didn’t finish.

  I made to move on, to keep walking, and I will never understand what I did instead. I turned to face Dugald and I kissed him and all the passion of my life was in that kiss. And he responded. We moved off the track and down into the forest. I remember the smell of the pine needles which covered the ground beneath us, his sweet grateful face as his hand first touched my breast and the charge that went through me as his hand moved down my
belly. I remember looking upwards towards the sky and noticing a cloud drifting quite quickly past us. It was a perfect cloud, fat and white and alone. And here we were below it and on fire.

  I used to think of Dugald in the years after the war. He went to America and served again and was killed in the Pacific. He’s buried in the sea, nearer my home than his own. I like to think of that, Dugald near me once again. I’d like him back, I’d like them all back, all the people I loved at Royaumont, just for a day so I could tell them how much it mattered, so I could close my eyes and take in the smells—the clean hospital, the spring blooms, Dugald’s face—and convince myself that yes, yes, that was me. That was Iris. I was she. And oh, it was wonderful.

  My body made its own decisions about what happened that afternoon, almost in spite of me. I suppose I’ll never fully understand the Iris who did those things. As we grow old we are given opportunities to let go of our sins. My sin with Dugald hardly deserves the name now. He didn’t write me after I went home, and I wasn’t inclined to write him. He would never have taken on the child and we’d never have survived if he had. You don’t need much to raise children, as I’ve learned, but you do need love for one another that runs deeper than the scent of pine.

  But when he kissed me, Violet, I thought my heart would never beat again. It stopped for that moment and oh, I thought I loved him. I already told you that, in the evening of that day, late, when we were sitting up drinking hot chocolate and watching the moon. I was honest with you, Violet, told you everything. We both know that those trees and fields around Royaumont had other secrets they could tell, and they saved more than a few of us from despair. I remember in that awful winter that followed our balmy summer, when we couldn’t keep up with the wounded again, that constant stream of raw stinking flesh, of men we couldn’t make whole, those fields were a haven where one’s jangled nerves could be quieted. But that afternoon with Dugald, I felt a recklessness I’ve never felt since. Dizzy with my own power. Frightened by what it meant about me.

  Paris 1918

  What will you do when all this is over?

  Be with you.

  She shook her head lightly, smiled.

  Seriously.

  Seriously.

  He took a lock of her hair that had fallen onto her face and put it behind her ear. Do you remember the first time?

  This is a quaint room, she said. Out the grimy window they could just make out the spires of the cathedral. As they’d made love, she’d opened her eyes and watched.

  The first time, she said.

  Chantilly, he said. I’ll never forget.

  She shook her head as if she didn’t remember. She turned away, blushed to think of the raw feeling that had taken her over. She’d felt like an animal there among the leaves. But she couldn’t stop. Whenever she saw him, she wanted him.

  She’d decided she would end it today. She would do the right thing. She booked the room, telling herself she couldn’t very well finish it on the street. Monsieur and Madame Zabé, the names they’d always used. She picked up the key and went up in the elevator and waited for him.

  It was his face, when she saw his face, the trust in those eyes, that melted her. He took her in his arms and kissed her for a long time. She could smell his sweet smell, sense his body moving with hers. He danced her into the room then, like a boy might. I’ve never been so happy, he said. And when they made love, slowly, tenderly, he cried, his tears falling onto her chest. This is the most beautiful . . . I’ve never . . . No words, he said.

  She’d put a finger to his lips. No words is good, she’d said. And they’d kissed again, a long kiss, not a good-bye kiss. It had been the wrong time, she’d known that. She should have stopped. She should have stopped but she couldn’t. It was as if their love was written long before they ever met, as if the child they would make was a star in the heavens that singled them out and said, yes, you and you, I choose you. Too bad if you have other plans.

  I’m going to be a doctor, she said.

  He laughed. You’re too beautiful to be a doctor, he said.

  And you’re too stupid to be a lover, she said, getting up from the bed and pulling on a robe.

  I didn’t mean . . .

  What didn’t you mean? she said. I’ve had enough of you. I’ve had enough of the whole bloody lot of you.

  Do you ever think . . . he started.

  No, she said. Never.

  Do you ever think if we died, if we died right here, it would be enough?

  I don’t ever think. That should be obvious to anyone. I don’t ever think.

  Iris

  I woke to the sound of a bird that at first I thought was the blackbird that sang in the winter evenings at Royaumont. But I knew that couldn’t be right. I thought I heard a noise in the kitchen and just for a moment I was sure it was Tom, he’d soon call out for me to get up and come for coffee and after the bitter hot drink—he always made it too strong—we’d ride out together to join Daddy at whatever he was doing. We’d take cheese and rye bread from the German baker and we’d breakfast together on some rock Tom liked and we’d talk about nothing important—the lambs soon to come, the milker who was off again with the moon, which chicken I should kill for Sunday lunch—and we’d part and go about our separate days, as if there was no need to mark this day as anything special, as if the number of days just so was limitless and our lives would go on and on unchanging.

  But of course it wasn’t Tom in the kitchen. It could no more be Tom than the bird could be a blackbird. I sat up and turned towards the window behind the bed. I parted the curtains and flattened my palm on the glass. It was warm to the touch. I’d expected it to be cold. I should get up and check that Rose was warm enough. But of course Rose was dead too, had been dead for years. Where was I? Just then, the singer let out another long line of notes. I could see now it was a butcher-bird, a male, high in the gum tree in front of the neighbor’s house. He dipped his head as if to acknowledge his audience, and then raised it again, up and out, pulling his tiny body to its full height, filling his chest cavity with enough air to bring morning to the world. He made a long sweet song that was answered by a mate in a neighbouring tree. They sang to one another, back and forth, and for no reason I understood, quiet tears filled my eyes.

  I thought I heard the back door open and gently close. Was Al up already, going out for the firewood? Poor man had enough on his plate without having to worry about filling the stove. I wiped my eyes with the front of my nightgown and turned from the window to Al’s side of the bed. His pyjamas weren’t there. Normally they were neatly folded on top of the pillow. I put my hand under the blanket and on the sheet where he’d slept. It was cold, as if he hadn’t slept there at all.

  I was sure I heard the back door close again, and then the squeak of the old stove door, the chuff of a log hitting the fire, the other logs chuckling their way into the box like disobedient children, Al trying his best to keep them quiet. Then the kettle scraping across the trivet, the puff of the larder door. I turned back to the window. The world was softened by fog suddenly, heavy as a blanket in the low areas. The butcher-birds were quiet for now, contemplating the fog, perhaps their first. Above the line of fog, you should be able to see the iron lace on the top verandah of the Grand Hotel, the clock tower on the post office, the spire of St. Joseph’s, but they weren’t there. These three tall characters, which summarised perfectly the life of Stanthorpe, always seemed lonely in the first fog of the winter. But they weren’t there.

  I heard Al’s feet in socks on the floor in the hall, the house moving under his weight. I lay back down on the bed and turned away from the door and closed my eyes. He’d stop at my door and then at Rose’s door. He’d go in there, perhaps pull the covers over her, whisper a good-bye. I heard Rose’s door gently close and a few moments later the squeak of the chair on the front porch, Al pulling on his boots with a sigh. As I heard the front door key turn
in the lock, I had an urge to run out to him in my nightdress and kiss him good-bye, or pull him inside to bed to warm each other, but I held back.

  I listened for the front gate closing. Again I had an urge to run out to Al, easier to resist this time. I looked at the clock on the wall but the clock was gone. It had been a wedding present from Al’s mother. I hadn’t wanted it in our room, but Mary had supervised Al putting up the hook when she visited and I would have looked ungrateful if I’d said no. Some nights, before we turned out the light, I would see the clock and understand why Mary had wanted it there in our bedroom. It was like a beacon to remind me, should I need reminding, that Al was not mine, not really, that he belonged to Mary and the hospital and the world, and that I would only have little snatches of time when we’d be together. But the clock was gone now.

  I fell back into a deep sleep. When I woke again, I was in my bed in Paddington and someone was knocking on the door again. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone?

  It was David, come to mow. I went out to greet him and set him to work straightaway so I could give myself time to wake up properly. I didn’t want to say anything unwise. When I went back inside, there was no one there, no Tom, no Al. Oh, just those minutes. I wish they’d gone on.

  The sugar glider was much better, I thought, although still sulking in the box. When David had finished the front he came upstairs. I asked his advice. He looked inside the box and said anything that smelled so much ought to be living in the outdoors. “I really don’t know what to do, Iris,” he said. “We didn’t study much about marsupials in Cambridge where I did medicine.”

  I always kept some apple juice for David so I poured him a big glass with plenty of ice. He’d brought some papers with him which he’d left on the table. We sat down.

  “I made those inquiries we talked about,” he said. “We can organise a passport by post, but I need some documents, your birth certificate, a photo—we can get one next week—and a couple of other things.” He’d filled the form out as well as he could, he said. “I wasn’t sure of some things. What was Al’s full name?”