What Was Promised

by Tobias Hill

  Afterwards, walking to Connie’s bike, Iris remembered the unasked question. ‘How do you know where I live?’

  ‘I’ve seen you around. You stand out a bit, always by yourself. It makes you look brave.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You look it. Women are expected to seek safety in numbers, one way or another. You don’t do what’s expected of you. That’s bravery, isn’t it? And I suppose you won’t take it the wrong way if I say you dress a little differently. The grammar school girls all look the same. Like eggs. No, hens – pushy, pecky, henpecked hens. I’ve digs at Moorfield Lodge. We’re almost next door neighbours. The Lodge is a pit.’

  ‘The Grange is too. I don’t have any friends there. I couldn’t tell anyone about you, even if I wanted to.’

  ‘You could always tell me instead,’ Connie said. ‘I’ll laugh at myself tomorrow. I will, you wait. I’ve had plenty of practice.’

  It wasn’t common ground, Kirkgate market. Connie didn’t belong there, and never went back again, but nor did she share much with the other girls (studentesses, Iris’s tutor called them). Her father was a diplomat, twice unhappily married, and his only child had grown up with consequent unhappiness at an expensive but ill-suited range of international and boarding schools, in Manila, Yorkshire and Sussex. Connie felt as far beyond the small worlds of the Lodge and the Grange as Iris felt below them.

  A fortnight after they met, Iris went with Connie to the halls of the Leeds School of Medicine. Connie had set up dinner with her man, Richard, and a friend, at an Indian restaurant not far from East Parade.

  ‘His name’s Harry. I think you might like him, but – listen – dinners can be awkward. They’re a shade too obvious, and I don’t want that making you nervous. We’d do better to mix it up a bit.’

  ‘I’m not wearing mesh stockings, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘I wish you would. No, I’ve a plan. I bought some fizz up for the term, look here, there’s still a bottle to go. We take it and infiltrate their halls. The night porter’s darling, he’s let me up before. We catch the men half-decent and force the drink on them. Inevitable merriment ensues. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Don’t think. Trust me, it’s ironclad. Ready?’

  They were scrunched up in front of Connie’s mirror, Connie dazzling in the forty-watt light, Iris all done up, unsmiling, bereft of herself.

  ‘Connie, I think I might just go home. You won’t mind, will you? I’m not like you,’ she said, and Connie cocked her head at their dim, different reflections. She reached up and stroked their necks. One hand on Iris, one on herself.

  ‘You can’t now,’ she said. ‘You’re too beautiful for home. Look at you. My angel.’

  The night porter wasn’t darling. Iris stood on the lamp-lit steps while Connie argued, and by the time she’d given up they were late for the restaurant and had to make a run for it, clutching their handbags and the bottle, excusing themselves through the evening crowds and the things the crowds called after them, and it was awful, but at the end of it was Harry.

  He wasn’t much to look at then, although he has one of those faces that gain with age. Now, ten years on, Iris finds herself – against the odds, she thinks – married to a handsome man. It seems a mistake to her, the way their looks have diverged, an error on the part of nature. It’s a glitch that – bit by bit – is driving them apart. She has been hurt by Harry’s looks, more than once, but she takes pleasure in them all the same. The pleasure surprises her, as hunger often does: sometimes, when Iris is looking after those who count on her to do so, she’ll forget to eat until the small hours, when the pangs strike through her. She should take better care of herself, Iris. Or someone should.

  In any case, he wasn’t handsome then. Then, in a wet October, in a Leeds curry house, he was rising to meet her from a chair of thinning velvet, Richard rising beside him, both with pipes, both – in light of lateness – with the correct expressions of grateful concern, with giveaway eyes twinkling in insolent amusement, and Harry beardless and chinless, with nothing much to say for himself, because Richard forgot to introduce him until the glasses arrived for the fizz, just as Connie forgot to introduce Iris.

  ‘Blast! So sorry, head like a sieve. This is Harry, my friend and accomplice. Also a genius.’

  Sorry! Connie said with her eyes, and at the same time Harry said, ‘Harry,’ and held out his hand. ‘You must be Iris.’

  ‘What kind of genius?’ she asked, and he let go of her and rubbed at his hair, which was thinning, like the velvet.

  ‘No kind at all. I don’t know what Richard’s on about.’

  ‘The top of the class kind,’ Richard said. ‘Harry’s every teacher’s pet. He can do things with a scalpel you wouldn’t believe. He could be doing them now, under the table. You’ll stand up to go, Iris, and find yourself with a beautifully turned false leg, and all along you thought Harry was just playing footsie.’

  ‘Richard!’

  ‘It’s true, darling. And worse still, he’s for the NHS. Harry’s not in it for the money, are you? He won’t touch the stuff, will you?’

  ‘I won’t say no, if you’re offering.’

  London, Iris thought. The milder, less flashy sound of the south or the estuaries. Not moneyed, not even comfortably off. Not comfortable at all. Impatient with himself, maybe with all of us. But here he is, all the same. He must want to be with us. Perhaps he even needs us, Iris thought, and she wondered what it was he thought he needed, besides the obvious.

  He was busy with his food by then – wary of attention, she thought – but when he glanced up again it was to meet her gaze straight on. His eyes were grey, gently questioning: Now then, what are you looking at me for? There’s nothing to see here, is there?

  His eyes were always beautiful. They’re still the best part of him, Iris sometimes thinks, but she keeps the thought to herself. It’s not the kind of thing she’d say. It’s the kind of thing Floss would say. Besides, who would she tell, now Semlin is real and gone?

  By then the dreams had begun. Sometimes they started out with Iris opening the Semlin door, but not always: nor was Semlin in everything that followed, though Pond was, always.

  In the first dream they were playing Troll. They were children again, but it wasn’t just the four of them. Now they were six: Iris and Floss, Pond and Jem, Harry and Semlin. Iris was the troll.

  I don’t want to be, she said, and Floss put her arms akimbo.

  Well you are. It’s decided. You have to do it now.

  She got under the bridge. It was cold in the echo place. Water shone down the bricks. The others were out of sight, waiting to play, even Semlin. Without him she was alone. She didn’t want to be without him, but to get him back she’d have to win.

  Who goes on my bridge? she called, and hearing them she leapt up and caught them one by one. Only they weren’t all there any more.

  Where’s Pond? one of them said, and only then would Iris see that he was no longer with them. The trolls have got him, someone said.

  Then they looked. They called his name. We have to find him, Iris told them, but it was never any good.

  In the second dream it was just the two of them, Iris and Semlin. It was the day Bernadette died, and they were climbing down into the pit in Long Debris, looking for their friend. They’d searched for Pond everywhere else, and they were worried something might have happened to him.

  The water was black where the pit had filled. Their hands sank into clay. They came to the mouth of a hole in the wall. It smelt of rats, the awful smell of dead rats, like rotten cabbage.

  Don’t be scared, Semlin said, I can see in the dark, and he took her hand and led her in, but the hole went on for a long time, down and down.

  I don’t think he’s here, she said, but Semlin said, We can’t give up. Try calling his name, so she did.

  Iris? Pond said. What are you doing here?

  I came looking for you. Are you alright?


  Yes, thanks, Pond said. It’s alright down here, except I don’t have any friends. Do you have yours?

  Yes, Iris said, he’s holding my hand.

  What’s he for?

  Oh, he’s just for playing. What’s yours for?

  He looks out for me, Pond said, and that was where the second dream ended.

  In the third she was making love to him. She took his hand and led him in. She wanted it so badly, so badly that even as they did it she still wanted him to hurry up and begin.

  Doesn’t it hurt? Pond asked, and she shook her head.

  Not really.

  It must, you’re bleeding.

  It’s not bad, she said. It doesn’t matter.

  We have to stop, Pond said. I have to go.

  And she told him not to. She always told him, but he always did.

  She heard nothing from Harry for a week and then he turned up at the Grange out of the blue and took her dancing. She liked it and thought he did too. Afterwards he walked her home. It was the end of autumn.

  ‘Bit of a problem,’ he said, ‘if we go on like this.’

  There’s someone else. That’s what she thought. She didn’t even know him yet. He wasn’t even handsome yet, and there wasn’t anyone else, not then, so far as she knows, but that’s what she thought all the same. And she was right to think it.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Neither of us being much of a talker. Connie does half of it and Richard fills in the rest. You and me, we don’t get a word in edgeways.’

  She asked, ‘What shall we talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know. What are you thinking about, walking along there, quiet as a mouse?’

  ‘A door,’ she said flatly, and of course he laughed.

  ‘You could put a fellow’s back up, thinking about doors with him. What is it, Ten Downing Street?’

  ‘No. When I was little, I was . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Please forget I mentioned it.’

  ‘Oh no, you can’t stop there, I won’t get any sleep. You could have been anything. Chimneysweep. Cat burglar.’

  ‘I was always imagining things. I had this made-up friend. There’s a door here with his name on it.’

  ‘Go on. Where?’

  ‘Moor Grange, up in the Garrets. Someone called Semlin lives up there. That’s what I was thinking about. You did ask.’

  ‘Semlin?’

  ‘It was my name. I mean it was the name I made up. It wasn’t supposed to be real, I thought I’d imagined it.’

  ‘Fancy that. Must have given you a turn.’

  ‘Yes, it did.’

  Quiet streets. The must of leaves. Harry beside her, going miles out of his way, out of need or the kindness of his heart.

  ‘So what was he like, then,’ Harry asked, ‘this friend of yours?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I hadn’t thought of him in years, not until I came up here.’

  ‘He.’

  ‘Yes. He was mousy. Skinny.’

  ‘Not a looker, then. Good.’

  ‘And he was always hungry, so I used to save food for him; and he lived underground . . . no, that’s wrong. I don’t know, it’s hard remembering him now.’

  ‘Like a dream,’ Harry said.

  ‘Like that. But he mattered to me. He was there when I needed him and I did, a lot.’

  ‘Where was all this?’

  ‘Shoreditch. Where were you?’

  ‘Catford, after the war.’

  ‘Didn’t you have someone like that? Something like that, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said, and he put his arm around her. It was a cold night, after all. ‘But I wish I had.’

  His hands. She remembers, after she let him – the first time – pulling his arms around her, and seeing that his nails were polished. Not just trimmed but shining, smooth. The rest of him was rough against her, wire-haired and wet, animal, but his hands were always surgeon’s hands.

  She remembers she could feel him smiling. It was already dawn and snow shone light up into the room. Her man was smiling, and down below a bike went past, whistling.

  They were married in December, in London, in the holidays. Of the day itself Iris remembers almost nothing (Dad’s gaunt hand, giving her away; a ceremony through which she moved in a Delphic trance of nerves, the answers to all questions coming to her unbidden), but in the golden months afterwards she was happy, as happy as she’s ever been in the years since Bernadette. By Easter she was pregnant. Harry was in his final year, and got them a flat together around the corner from the School of Medicine. Iris thinks perhaps Dad lent them something for that.

  The day she left Moor Grange, Iris went back up to the Garrets. There were girls coming down the stairs, but their conversation died away behind as she reached the top, and the corridor itself was quiet.

  She went up to the door. The scrap of paper was gone, but she knew the door as if it were her own. She had to steel herself to knock. There was a scuffling when she did, perhaps of rats or birds – it wasn’t a human sound – and that was all. No one answered. She never stepped inside.

  At first Harry was all she needed. Harry was enough for Iris when she was enough for Harry. Before she understood she wasn’t – before she knew there were other women, that the women he shouldn’t have were what Harry needed most – she began to look for Pond. In that way it was like an instinct.

  And then it was when the girls were small that she began. Why then? Because, Iris thinks, that was when the life she’d made was supposed to have reached fruition. She was meant to be satisfied then, to be sated by the fruits, and sometimes it was almost true – some days Harry and the girls filled her thoughts and hours – but in the end it never was. If those loved ones were enough she would have known it then, when the girls still clung to her and Harry never strayed. There is more she needs. Pond is the form it takes.

  On 5th May, 1952, Henry Lazarus was up with the larks. He was never much for lying in, but that morning he was down to eat before Solly left for work. Dora made them tea and porridge. Henry had golden syrup with it. And they had the wireless on, remember? The Black Dyke Mills were playing Fletcher. Dora recalls Solly and Henry admiring the performance: Solly recalls that Dora talked all over it. Henry had a test at school, and Solly quizzed him on the Stuarts and the Tudors. They talked about Petticoat Lane, about Henry helping out on Sundays, and the chances of getting to Southend or Brighton in the holidays. No one was out of sorts, were they? Dora thinks Henry seemed excited that morning – more talkative than usual. Solly went off to the Lane. Henry kissed Dora goodbye and left for school. He never arrived and never came back.

  He took no money and left no note. He was wearing his duffle-coat and uniform. He went on foot. The school was less than half a mile. His teachers were surprised – Henry had been getting on well academically, if not always with his fellows – but the police were matter-of-fact. It does occur in such cases, one told Solly. Solly asked, What d’you mean, such cases? Abnormal ones, the policeman said. It’s nobody’s fault, sir, in this kind of situation.

  Pond had lived with Solly and Dora for four years. On paper he was fourteen. Iris’s best guess now is that he was getting on for three years older. In his satchel, in lieu of books, were two changes of clothes missing from his wardrobe, and, though it was a warm day, a scarf, a hat, and a pair of gloves Dora had knitted for him, and into which she had stitched the name, Henry Lazarus.

  She wishes she didn’t, but Iris talks in her sleep. Her talk takes the form of questions. If Harry is awake he sometimes answers them, and his voice stays with her later, where hers alone does not.

  Where are you? she’ll murmur, where’ve you gone? Why? And Harry will pat her, grumbling back, I’m here, you daft love. I ain’t going anywhere.

  Only twice, over the years, has she found anything of Pond. They’re only glimmers, these things, but they give her hope, they lead her on.

  The first glimmer was Dora. Iris has seen her only three times,
once with Solly in attendance. She makes them painfully nervous – Dora shy, Solly curmudgeonly – by which she understands they’d rather be left alone. She reminds them too much of Pond, Iris thinks, or maybe of her father, and either way of unhappiness. She misses them, misses the way they cherish one another. It wasn’t the son they lost, she thinks, so much as the years of childlessness, before and after, that make them close, that draw them together.

  The second glimmer was Pond’s real name. That’s how Iris thinks of it, though she could be wrong. In any case, it only matters if Pond finds it too, and takes it back.

  Iris found the name two years ago. She couldn’t have done it without Harry.

  ‘That pet project of yours. Operation Pond.’

  ‘Don’t call it that.’

  ‘Alright, I was only trying to help.’

  ‘No, you weren’t, you were putting it down. Meg! You’re not to go in the tunnel without me.’

  There is a walk they used to do with the girls, when they had more time for leisure. They would drive out to Hertfordshire and park by an old railway line. No trains have gone that way for years, and at the end of the line is the village where Connie and Richard still live, near Richard’s practice; and the line was green and lovely in any season, even winter, with holly and ivy and fir bowing down around them all the way, except in the tunnel, and that never felt too long. The girls would hold their breaths until they came out safe again.

  ‘Thing is,’ Harry said, ‘I had a thought. I was down in the basement, and there are all these official papers –’

  ‘They’re in the spare room. What are you on about?’

  ‘Not ours, I’m talking about in the hospital. We were down there yesterday –’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and the caretaker,’ Harry said, and when he went on he did so more carefully. ‘Nice chap. He’s been sorting it out. It was a mess down there after the war, but he reckons he’s got it straight.’