by Louisa Young
Iris met her mother’s eyes. ‘He does?’
‘Mm.’
‘You in love with him Mumma?’
‘Always was, sweetie.’
Iris closed her eyes again. ‘Waited long enough,’ she murmured. ‘Can wait till morning.’
*
At the root of everything, a child wants its parents. But then at exactly the same root, a child doesn’t want its father suddenly to produce a secret girlfriend. When she thought about Tom and Kitty, Mabel had a very tight little feeling under her breastbone.
*
‘You mean you’re married?’ Riley exclaimed, when Peter rang him.
‘No!’ Peter said. ‘She won’t actually marry me until I’ve told everyone in my family and they’re happy about it.’
‘Ah,’ said Riley.
‘Oh don’t be like that,’ Peter said. ‘It’s lovely news and everyone will be delighted for us.’
‘No they won’t.’
‘Yes they will!’
‘Have you told your mother-in-law?’
‘Riley, don’t be unpleasant,’ Peter said.
*
Mabel was being alarmingly helpful. It was as if she was making up for the years during which she had said nothing. She wanted to be there when Peter and Iris met, to introduce them, to control it, to protect them from each other.
‘My dear,’ Peter said. ‘I know you want to help. And I dare say we will need your help. But for now, I would like to see my daughter alone.’ He saw her pupils shrink.
‘Our daughter,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
She smiled.
*
Peter met Iris in Piccadilly Circus – her choice. He saw her standing there in the middle, underneath the heavy grey Eros. She was upright and motionless in the swirling crowd: a tall calm girl, a little gangly, short hair under a little hat, a flowery dress with buttons down the front, a handbag held in front of her and a holdall at her feet.
Is she nervous?
Am I?
He wondered how he looked to her. Tall, a little gangly, short hair under his hat. He laughed, and walked up to her.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I think that’s what I said to you last time we met – of course it’s what people always say, when they meet, so I suppose there’s nothing particularly special – but it is perhaps worth noticing that it’s the only thing I’ve ever said to you …’
He ran dry.
Her face was long, like Mabel’s but bonier, like his but more beautiful. She had the slight indentations at the temple that his father had had; she had his mother’s wide, mothlike eyebrows. She said, ‘Well then, hello!’
‘I do have a plan,’ he said. ‘It seemed a good idea to, for such a momentous occasion. Of course we must have some lunch. But I thought we might go to the pictures or – more literally – to the pictures, I mean the National Gallery, if you preferred that, so that we would have something to talk about, if we found ourselves growing shy or overcome, or with nothing to say to each other.’
‘Oh don’t worry,’ she said. Her look was both mildly humorous and dead straight. ‘I have plenty to say to you.’
‘All right!’ he said. She made him feel bold. She was superb. He wanted to – take her arm.
‘I thought we might go to Sheekey’s,’ he said. ‘It’s a—’
‘Oh, I know Sheekey’s,’ she said. ‘I love Sheekey’s.’
You’re a mystery to me, he thought. A veil of wonder started to wrap itself around him, and infiltrate him. I adore you.
‘Come on Poppa,’ she said. ‘No need to stare.’ She was starting off up St Martin’s Lane. He stared.
She turned back, and took his arm. ‘Come on,’ she said.
*
Peter was well known at Sheekey’s. So, it turned out, was Iris. The maître d’ looked from one to the other, and furrowed his brow mildly.
‘Piero,’ she said. ‘This is my daddy.’ Piero eyebrows bounced around.
‘And this is my daughter, Iris,’ said Peter, courteously.
Piero blinked, and then rose like a zeppelin to the occasion.
‘So, a bottle of Krug 1909,’ Peter said. ‘We’ve only met once before.’
Piero nodded and snapped his fingers to a minion. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, and then with a slight edge of boldness, he said, ‘And will … Madame Zachary be joining you?’
Peter’s heart was pounding, soft, excited, healthy.
‘Not immediately,’ he said. ‘But in general, yes.’
They went to their table giggling.
Iris said, confidingly, ‘I think we’re doing very well so far.’
He could have wept with gratitude.
‘I always liked you,’ she said, factually. ‘Since I saw you in the square and thought you looked like Leslie Howard.’
‘Leslie Howard?’ he said. ‘Do I? Well I suppose I do—’
‘And I like him because he always plays the decent man.’
‘Yes,’ Peter said, and a fist squeezed his heart. ‘I’m not sure I have been decent, though.’
‘Well, you just haven’t been here.’
‘I—’ he said, but she continued.
‘Not your fault,’ she said. She had a square forehead, and tiny freckles on her cheekbones. ‘That’s Mumma’s fault.’
‘Well please don’t be angry with her about it,’ he said. ‘She did what she thought was right.’
‘But you’re a nice man,’ Iris said calmly. ‘And she knew I’d seen you. She should’ve told me who you were earlier. I am angry.’
‘Well if you are, you are,’ he said.
‘I am,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s ever going to be the same for me with her. She stole something pretty big from me, keeping us separate.’
‘She had reasons,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t always a nice man,’ and he stared at her frankly for a moment while a million things passed through his mind, and then he said: ‘Am I to treat you as an adult, or as a child?’
‘I’m eighteen,’ she said.
‘But where do we start?’
‘We’ve already started,’ she said. ‘I started with you a long time ago. In that way, I have the advantage of you. I didn’t know who you were, but I always knew you had to exist.’
That hadn’t occurred to him. But of course.
‘And will you help me?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘But I’m your father. I should be helping you—’
‘I’m sure you will. But you’re not allowed to boss me around.’
‘Jolly good,’ he said. He felt he could talk to this girl about anything. Anything! Look at her. What a blessing. She felt somehow like him. He could see his blood in her veins. How magical, that she should appear, fully formed, so unknown, so familiar. So like Mabel, so like him. All this time, they had been joined together by this third creature. So much herself. Sitting across from her at the clean white tablecloth, he felt it like a sacrament. I will do everything good and right.
The champagne arrived. The charming ceremonial of popping and aahing and pouring and clinking was achieved.
‘Now I don’t take this stuff any more,’ Peter said. He moved his glass a little away from him. ‘It’s not good for me. But I want its blessing and significance. So—’ he turned his head swiftly for a moment, thinking. Then he quickly dipped his finger into his glass and, leaning across, he gently touched it to her forehead, and to his own. ‘There,’ he said. ‘A sort of christening for us.’
She lifted her glass and said, ‘I’ve never had champagne before.’
He smiled. The tradition proceeded: the first sip, the bubbles up the nose and the giggling.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘speak to me. Tell me, ask me. Continue—’
‘I’m coming to live with you,’ she said. ‘I brought my bag.’
His head fell into his hands.
When he looked up he said, ‘Don’t celebrate finding me by losing her. Don’t do that.’
She w
as biting her lip, her face hard with unshed tears.
‘And anyway,’ he continued, ‘we’re getting married. Sort of all of us. You will have both of us.’
Even as he said it, he was thinking of Tom and Kitty. Three of them. A lot of ground to make up.
*
Something very unexpected happened. Mrs Orris, mother of Peter’s late wife Julia, went to a nightclub.
Julia, in her day, had rather liked nightclubs – or at least the idea of them. In reality, they had always been beyond her reach: not the sort of place a respectable woman could go, not the sort of place Peter, then, would have taken her. Had Julia lived into the 1920s; had Peter’s relationship with drink been different, had Julia not become jealous of everything he did that she did not understand, she might have found a way to lead a racier life, and sit listening to jazz late at night with a cigarette in a holder and a string of pearls down her magnolia back. But Mrs Orris? Never would such a woman be seen in a nightclub. Not even at the dangerous ages of twenty-one or thirty-five. And now, she was seventy-eight, as grand as ever, still with her air of a vast ship manoeuvring in three-point turns around the 1890s; still festooned in furs, her hats still unhappy, her voice still unleashed only in instruction, self-satisfaction or complaint.
Mrs Orris had been silenced, at lunch one day with a small friend, Antonia, by the small friend’s son. He was of what Mrs Orris considered ‘the unfortunate type’, which meant that though he came from a decent family, he had turned after the War to the motor business. He wore blazers, smoked in front of women, and his moustache was over-thought-out. Had Mrs Orris known that Percy would be joining them for lunch, she might have made her excuses.
Percy, over the vegetable broth, was keen to tell Mrs Orris the latest. He took the full facial-expression tour through doubtful, concerned and apologetic before throwing ‘the latest’ out between the three of them: Peter Locke was running round with a negro girl! Yes, Percy had had it on the most reliable authority. Frequently seen in public together. At clubs, of course, but also apparently … during the day.
Antonia almost quivered with schadenfreude, and immediately began throwing glances. Mrs Orris listened politely, and blinked.
During the day!
‘Well thank you so much,’ she let slip, pleasantly, in Percy’s general direction. ‘So many peculiar things people say, these days.’
‘When I say the most reliable authority, Mrs O, I mean, my own two eyes.’ He paused, and stared at her. ‘A “nightclub singer”, I gather,’ he said, with a knowing and vulgar emphasis on the words. ‘Rather well known! I saw her at the Serpentine Rooms.’ He leaned forward a little. ‘Jazz,’ he murmured. ‘You know, saxophones, that sort of thing.’
Mrs Orris murmured, ‘Indeed!’ and threw a look to Antonia, a woman-to-woman look which means, ‘Has he been drinking? Oh my dear, I am so sorry for you.’
Percy leant back triumphantly, and lit a cigarette. Mrs Orris was regularly a cow to his mother.
Mrs Orris gazed at him kindly. ‘Dear Percy,’ she said. ‘So kind of you to be concerned for me. But you know it is a very long time since I cared about anything Peter Locke does.’
Antonia looked a little shocked. ‘But your grandchildren, Jane,’ she said, quietly.
‘They are living very happily with Sir Robert Waveney’s daughter, and her husband the war hero,’ Mrs Orris said. ‘As you know, Antonia.’ This version had served her well for a long time. What would she do with children anyway? It had been bad enough having Tommy during the war, but there had been no choice then, one had to do one’s bit. Tommy and Katherine were charming children; their annual lunch together was hardly a burden to any of them. Peter, of course, was beyond the pale. So even if this was true, she didn’t care.
*
Only she did. Her dead daughter’s children! Which is why she and her fox stoles ended up at a small table at the back of the Serpentine Room, sarsaparilla and opera glasses at the ready, next to an orchid in a pink cut-glass vase. She had come alone. There was nobody with whom she could share this quest – and after all, she thought boldly, if one is forced to enter this modern world, one might as well take advantage of its liberties. Apparently it is all right for a woman to go out on her own. Very well. Mrs Orris would go out on her own.
She received many stares and the odd snigger. They fell away before her progress like the High Seas before the prow of the Queen Mary.
She settled herself, took a sip from her glass, raised her head and surveyed the room. The light was not very low, the tables well spread apart. The crowd looked thoroughly disreputable, the women half naked – but even Mrs Orris knew that things could be far worse. These were not common people, not cheap. The jewels were real, and the louche atmosphere was not vulgar. In fact, she recognised that it was rather fashionable.
She saw Peter almost immediately. He was unmissable, so tall and pale, like a heron. He sat down to the right, with – well. Mrs Orris took a deep breath. There he was, indeed, with a negro girl. She looked so young! Mrs Orris’s lips tightened, and she thought, for a moment, with what she thought was pity and loving sympathy, The fool! Can’t he see how ridiculous he is making himself?
Not that Mrs Orris would have known what one looked like, this girl did not look to her like a gold-digging floozie. A nightclub singer. An adventuress. Oh, say it: a prostitute. But perhaps not looking like one is part of it.
They were chatting easily – the girl leaning in and laughing, Peter looking fond, relaxed. Happy.
Oh my poor Julia, Mrs Orris thought (which was more than she had ever thought while her poor Julia had been alive). How thou art foresworn. A very strong strange anger was coming over her.
The light changed, the band hotted up. The compère announced the singer—
Mrs Orris was confused. She thought Peter’s – Peter’s – well, that she was the singer. But the girl stayed with him, looking up keenly at the stage, anticipating.
Someone else appeared on stage. An older woman, a blacker woman, in a gold dress and an unmistakeable cloud of glamour. A surge of applause rose around the room. Lazily smiling, the woman fluttered her fingers at Peter’s table, and the two there glowed back at her. She clicked her fingers to the band, shrugged her shoulders, and slid off into that world, the audience at her feet, following and adoring.
Mrs Orris lifted her opera glasses, and saw, circled in their lenses, the gleam and glister of sequins and gold fabric tight over flesh; then, higher, the glowing, moving face of the singer: a happy woman, a musician, a professional, an ecstatic. The circles moved across: the dark hands, gesturing and flexing by her sides and up by the microphone; the mouth, the lips, curving and mobile as she sang and smiled.
Well. She’d seen what she came for. Her grandchildren’s father with not one but two negro women, waving at one and laughing with the other, as if it were perfectly normal. She found she was giving little nervous tics of her head, shaking it. Leaving the room, shuffling through the shadows towards the exit, Mrs Orris felt a hundred years old. Only later, trying to get those sensual circled images out of her mind, did it come to her that the singer’s left hand, making that starfish shape as she turned her head to profile, had been wearing an engagement ring.
*
The tragedy of being an unkind person is you have no friends. Even if you do, they do not like you and you do not trust them. Mrs Orris had nobody to talk to. Not even a pet friend like Antonia, the sole purpose of whom was to agree with Mrs Orris, could do in this situation. There was precisely nobody to whom Mrs Orris could admit vulnerability.
She returned to Berkshire, and was even more unpleasant than usual to her servants. She stared out of the window, and thought perhaps the vicar? But no. Not the vicar. The shame!
She was terribly terribly angry. It couldn’t happen. It was unspeakable. Was it legal?
Did the children know? Did anybody know? The people in that unspeakable club? Did they accept it? An engagement ring – for all the world to see?
What kind of a world was this becoming?
Well, she wouldn’t let it.
She would speak to Peter.
*
Mrs Orris’s invitation to meet for a cup of tea was delivered with a tone of insistence, and seemed unavoidable. Peter rolled his eyes, and went along on the appointed afternoon to the Devonshire Street Hotel, the respectable little place where Mrs Orris stayed when she was in town.
The tea was hardly poured before she opened her mouth and started. It was unspeakable. It was outrageous. It was to be put a stop to immediately. Did his mother know about this? Did the children know? Had he lost his mind? To imagine even for one moment that such a thing could be countenanced, of course she was fully aware that society had gone to the dogs and there were no standards anywhere any more, but some things, Peter. Some dregs of respect, if nothing else, surely, for the memory of his dear wife, her poor sweet Julia—
At this he raised his eyes and stared at her.
She continued – would surely give him pause, make him realise what a cruel and foolhardy thing this was, bound only to cause – here she stopped and her lips curdled with distaste and the inability to express quite how – how—
‘Do be quiet,’ Peter said.
‘You’ve gone too far, Peter,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t seen for myself—’
‘Be quiet,’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’
She sat a moment, silent.
‘What? What is it?’
‘I hear you are getting married,’ she said.
‘I am. And?’
‘To a negro,’ she said, and her eyelids began to flutter, very fast. ‘A singer. A—’
‘To a woman,’ said Peter. ‘So, as gossip has told you before I had a chance to, there we go. I think that’s all, isn’t it?’ He stood, and looked to a waiter for the bill.
‘Peter!’ she pronounced, in a tone of doom.
He looked at her, there on the little hotel sofa, all bundled up like something nasty you found in the attic.
‘Peter!’ – in desperation now. ‘A negro!’
He leaned in. He couldn’t help himself. ‘Shut up, you horrible old woman,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a damn what you think.’
She blanched, jerking back as though stung. He turned. Oh Lord I’ve done it now.
