In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  “I loved him, David.”

  David nodded. “I’m sure you did. Do you remember his full name?”

  “He was Alastair Joseph, the Joseph after the patron saint of a peaceful death. I’m Iris Josephine. I wonder does it mean I’ll have a peaceful death.”

  “I hope so,” David said. “But let’s get back to the task at hand.”

  I gave him my birth certificate, the old passport, and our marriage certificate. He looked at the certificates, marking things off on the form. “You were married just after the war,” he said. I nodded. “And when was Rose born?” He was smiling.

  “After that,” I said without returning the smile.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll do the backyard now,” he said, putting his hat back on.

  Dear Al,

  I received your letter this week and I’m glad things are going well. All is well here too but very busy.

  Do you remember when you said to Tom that if everyone refused to fight there would be no war? I think they were close to achieving that in the early days. It was the first Christmas, so long ago now, and they stopped fighting, just for that day. Imagine if they’d stayed that way. For if they’d stayed that way the terrible wounds would stop. Oh Al, if you could see these boys, for some of them are younger even than Tom, if you could see what they’ve been through, what they endure, you’d ask how it can be allowed to go on. The worst are the Africans who don’t even know why they’re here. It’s terrible to see the fear in their eyes.

  Among the women, there are a few who still see the war as justified, who say the Germans started it and we must fight them, although most now see the war as wrong and even those who don’t would agree the authorities are failing the soldiers. Miss Ivens has been to The Hague where there’s talk of an international women’s association for peace. We won’t join at this stage but Miss Ivens now says it’s women who will stop the war. She’s been awarded the Legion of Honour, we’ve just found out. We’ve had a job talking her into going to Paris for the ceremony. She’s so very humble and has only agreed so as not to snub the French.

  We are all of us, to a woman, committed to helping these poor men and boys who have been injured through no fault of their own. While I agree with you that without soldiers there would be no war, the Germans are the aggressors here and we must remember that. We hear stories about what they do in the villages. We had a boy in from Senlis, a little town to the north, and he says his parents and brothers haven’t enough food. They have German soldiers living in their house and while the Germans eat their bread and potatoes, they are left with a stew made from the potato skins. The Germans have imposed a tax on the townspeople, he said, and if they don’t pay up when required the men are imprisoned.

  I have been working double shifts—we all have—to cope with the wounded, and still they pour in.

  You ask me how long I think I’ll be here. I can’t give you an answer. I feel I must stay while I’m of use. I have seen quite a bit of Tom these last months. He is happy to be here too, although he wants to see some fighting. He is still with the postal service and looks set to remain with them.

  I know you feel strongly that the war is wrong and that by doing anything we are supporting it but on this I cannot agree with you. I am doing something, some little thing, to ameliorate suffering.

  Yours,

  Iris

  My dearest Iris,

  I think about you daily, and wonder what you’re doing.

  I am not trying to pressure you to come home. I just want to know where we stand. When you left Australia, you were returning by Christmas with Tom. Now almost three years have passed and the one thing you don’t mention in your letters is coming home.

  It’s almost as if the war can’t go on long enough for you. I cannot understand it.

  You know my thoughts on the matter of war. I am sorry if that makes me a coward in your eyes. Perhaps you can join the dozens of people who feel moved enough by my cowardice to send me white feathers in the post. I have a rather large collection I can show you when you do come home.

  I know I sound petty, Iris, but I miss you. I miss you terribly.

  Come home safe.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Alastair

  Dear Al,

  I have never thought you cowardly and believe I have respected your right to hold your own views about the war.

  As for disagreement, as far as I can tell, the only difference between us is that I have come here and have found myself useful. In the end it doesn’t really matter how that has come to be. It just is. Miss Ivens needs me and while ever she needs me I intend to stay here.

  I will understand if you are not willing to wait. I don’t know the situation with the girl you left in Sydney but perhaps if she is still free she would entertain a proposal from you. If that is the case, you are free to do so, as far as I’m concerned.

  Please stop asking me to come home. Between you and Daddy, I feel I have no friends in the world except the ones I’ve made here at Royaumont.

  Iris

  My dearest Iris,

  I have written this letter fifteen times over and have decided, instead of relying on the usual niceties, to speak as plainly as I can.

  That you would suggest I might want to break off our engagement makes me sick to my heart. You are the woman I love. But if what you are really saying is that you no longer want me, then please make your views plain. I have a life and while it will be less of a life if it is not with you, I would rather know than deal with these shadows that plague my nights right now.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Alastair

  My dear Iris,

  I have not heard from you in such a long time and when I saw your father—he came down to town for the show last month—I asked after you. He’s had letters every month, he said. Hadn’t I? I said nothing, of course, or told a lie, actually, that we’d been writing. But we haven’t. Or you haven’t.

  I would never try to pressure you to do something you don’t want to do. But I need to know, Iris. I need to know where my life is heading.

  Al

  A fortnight after Al and I arrived home with Rose, I went to a sewing group with Claire. Mrs. Carson was there. When she said, with a gleam in her eye and through a tight mouth, “You and that husband of yours didn’t waste any time, did you, Iris?” there was silence among the other women. They all looked at me. Claire went to speak but I cut across her. “Add it up, Joan.” I’d never used Mrs. Carson’s Christian name before. It was a mark of disrespect, intended. “As I’m sure you already have. Can’t be nine months from the wedding to the birth, can it? You’ve guessed right, the lot of you, so let’s just get on with our stitching and stop supposing.”

  The other women remained silent and no one looked my way except Claire, who smiled and shook her head slowly in that way she had. On the way home in the trap, she said, “Iris, you shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why ever not? They make me sick with their supposing.”

  “But think of the child in years to come.”

  “Rose? She’ll have to put up with worse. Hang them.” The child giggled at something that tickled her. “That’s right, Rose. If only they knew.” Suddenly, I felt like crying.

  Claire put a hand on my arm. “How are you managing?”

  “How do you expect?”

  “I expect you know it’s not your fault.”

  “Oh but it is.” The tears were coming now and I could barely get the words out. We crossed the Severn River, the river in which Tom and I had learned to swim, had raced one another from one side to the other, the first day he beat me clear as day in my mind, when his boy’s body overtook my girl’s. The river under whose bridge we’d both had our first kisses, me with one of the Carsons, I can’t even remember if it was Ray or Henry, he with Jessica who would have been h
is bride, borne his children. The memories flooded back in a swirl like the river water itself and I felt sick to my stomach.

  Claire pulled up the horse under a willow and took my hand. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Iris. Your father doesn’t, not ever. We can’t be responsible for other people. You were a mother and sister both to Tom, but you shouldn’t have had to be. And even mothers, we only do what we can. You feed them and hold them close and sing to them. But what they do, that’s theirs.”

  “I could have stopped him.”

  “Could you? Could you really have stopped him? Think about it. You might have delayed him by telling your father. But Tom was going, one way or the other.”

  “I could have brought him home.”

  “Oh Iris, if you keep this up all that will happen is your heart will become hard like a peach stone and you’ll never be able to feel anything again. Please don’t.”

  Three years after we arrived home, Al and I moved to Brisbane. We bought the house in Fortitude Valley and Al set up a surgery underneath. I called the house Sunnyside because in the mornings the winter sun came streaming through the slats onto the verandah on the eastern side. We were a long way from Risdon, the fresh smell of gum trees taken over by the pungent smells of mornings in a large town, the boiling hops at the brewery, the smoke from fires, the fumes of motorcars. I was happier to be away from all my memories, happier to be away from the person I’d once been.

  Things were better for us after we moved. No more eyes watching me all the time. Of course, there was the question of children. Why weren’t there more children? Al and I only spoke of it once. We were blessed with Rose, he said. “Is it enough?” I said. “Of course,” he said. “She’s enough for any father.”

  Grace

  She woke to crows calling across the back verandah. David had bought a water pistol with a view to squirting them every time they did this, but they either didn’t wake him or by the time he got out there, they’d gone. He wouldn’t let the kids play with the water pistol—Philomena was particularly keen—because he was opposed to children having guns as toys. On the one occasion he made it outside while a crow was in sight, he missed by miles, the crow and friends cawing on their way off as if to say ha ha you fool. It made David angrier than Grace, who never minded being woken and just wished he’d give Phil the water pistol so she’d stop whining about it.

  David had already been over to mow Iris’s lawn. They could have employed a gardener, but he didn’t mind, he said, and if he didn’t do it Iris would have insisted on doing it herself to save the money. David told Grace mowing was like praying. “Good for the soul.”

  “Tell that story at the pearly gates,” Grace said. “I’m not sure gardening qualifies as a novena.”

  After David finished mowing, he and Iris had a cup of tea. “She said today she’s forgetting words. I think the trip is worrying her. She was quite confused when I first got there, thought I was her husband and then poured me a glass of what I’m pretty sure was vinegar.”

  “Well, I didn’t want her to go on the trip. You were the one who said she should go. What did you do with the vinegar?”

  “Down the sink when she wasn’t watching. I do think she should go if she wants to, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be stressful. I was thinking we should all go, take the kids, visit the Emersons. They’re somewhere in Burgundy I think. Early holiday. It would be great.”

  Grace was about to say let’s wait until we see Ian Gibson but stopped herself. “It is a good idea. And then, if anything did happen . . .”

  “We’d all be there.”

  “What about Henry?”

  “Least of our worries,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder.

  Mia, who’d been watching television rather than listening as far as Grace was aware, wandered over. “Why are we worried about Henry?” as if she were another adult joining the conversation.

  Grace looked at David. He said, “I wouldn’t say we’re worried. Henry’s not doing things at the same rate as you and Phil. Sometimes that happens. We just want to check that Henry doesn’t need any help.”

  “What things?”

  “You know how he gets sore legs and can’t walk far?” She nodded.

  “I don’t think it’s anything to be worried about,” Grace said.

  “Okay,” Mia said, looking at them both carefully before wandering back over to the television.

  Grace and David exchanged a look. “She doesn’t miss anything,” Grace whispered. She got up to put on the coffee.

  “Hey, what was your mother’s birthdate?” David asked her.

  “Maybe May 1919?” Grace said. “I don’t remember the exact date. Why?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Do you know when Iris and Al were married?”

  “August the year before, I think. I always wondered why they didn’t have more children. But you can’t ask Iris about stuff like that. She didn’t even like me saying ‘vaginal’ when I asked her about delivery.”

  David nodded. “I think she was pregnant before they were married.”

  “Iris? Never. She’s too proper.” Grace had been so heavily pregnant when she and David married that the ceremony had had to be interrupted for her to do a wee. “Remember she was pretty quiet when I told her we were having a baby? Asked if we were planning to marry before I ‘showed,’ and then later went on and on about my final exams, said I couldn’t possibly manage them.”

  “Vaguely. But conceivably, if you’ll forgive the pun, once she was a girl with passion.”

  “What makes you think she was pregnant before they married?”

  David went to speak and then stopped. “I was just thinking. Don’t mention it to Iris.”

  “I wasn’t planning to. She’d hit the roof. Sometimes you come up with the weirdest ideas.”

  “I do. But you knew that when you married me. So that makes you weird too.”

  Iris answered the door, looking tired. She’d sounded vague on the phone the night before, calling Grace Rose and talking about Tom her brother but without correcting herself like she normally did. Grace was planning to go into the hospital but after what David said when he came home from mowing, she wanted to make sure Iris was all right.

  There was a musty smell in the hall. The sugar glider. “I forgot about taking it to the vet,” Grace said as she kissed Iris. “Is it still alive?”

  “Of course it’s still alive.”

  “I’ll pop by on the way home and pick it up. I think the vet’s open today.”

  “No, Grace.”

  “What?”

  “I said no. I want the glider to stay here until it’s ready.”

  “Fine. Care for a sick animal. Is that why you can’t come to the coast?” They were planning to go away to Byron Bay next weekend and Grace wanted Iris to go with them. But Iris had said she wasn’t up to the drive. How she thought she’d be up to all those hours in a plane was beyond Grace.

  “I’m just tired,” Iris said.

  “When are we due to go back and see Dr. Randall?” the heart surgeon who’d seen Iris the year before. Not so much a murmur as a chorus of angels. Grace hadn’t laughed along even when she’d got the joke.

  “I’m not sure. It’s written up on the calendar.” Iris didn’t get up to look herself, which unnerved Grace. She wasn’t a good colour either.

  “Iris, are you all right?”

  “I’m old,” Iris said without smiling. She didn’t resist when Grace went to take her pulse. It was thready and weak.

  “I’m not happy about this,” Grace said.

  “My heart?” Iris said.

  “Don’t worry,” Grace said. She sat Iris down in the lounge, put on the kettle for tea, and went into the bedroom to make the bed, already made, typically Iris. She refolded singlets in the chest of drawers to no purpose. She dusted the dresser, looked around the ro
om, which had a calming effect. On the way back out, she noticed a black and white photograph on the floor and reached down to pick it up. Four women, standing in the snow in front of an old truck. One of them might have been Iris as a young girl, wearing a big wool coat and mittens. In one hand she held what might have been a snow ball. On either side of her were women Grace didn’t know.

  She went back to the lounge. “Is this you?” she said to Iris.

  “I need my glasses.” Grace fetched them from the bench. Iris really was a poor colour. Grace would call Mark Randall when she got to work.

  Iris looked at the photo. Grace didn’t speak, hoping Iris might. Finally, Iris said, “You don’t always know the best thing in a situation. You can’t really be sure, I mean really sure, of what might happen. He was a good brother. The boys at school used to make fun of us, our hair. They called us names.

  “There was a group of boys we often passed on our way home, hanging around the bridge. One afternoon they were rude to me.” Iris paused and Grace could see tears welling in her eyes. “One of the boys asked me if I had red hair all over, if . . . you know what I mean, and I was so embarrassed.

  “Tom heard them and turned around and asked them what they’d said. I tried to stop him, I knew it wouldn’t do any good but here he was, all of six, defending his sister against these much older boys. Tom was small for his age and he’d always been so frightened of trouble. But something cracked in him. It took all three of them to wrestle him to the ground. I screamed at them to leave him alone or I’d tell our daddy and he’d come over and shoot them. That stopped them.” Iris smiled. “My father was a quiet man but he had a temper. He really had taken a shot at someone once. Those boys scattered quick-smart.

  “Poor Tom. They’d hit him and kicked him when they’d got him to the ground like the cowards they were. And yet, when he stood up and dusted himself off, the first thing he said was, ‘Are you all right, Iris? They’ll think twice about saying those things to you next time.’ And while I thought he was wrong, that the boys who’d taunted me and had beaten Tom up would surely only get worse now, they did stop then, as if my small brother’s willingness to take them on had convinced them.”