Devotion

by Louisa Young

  *

  It was still warm enough for lunch in the garden, and given the failings in communication beforehand, the lunch started well. Rose and Nadine had had several confabs in the intervening days. No, Peter had said nothing to Rose. ‘What!’ Rose had said. ‘I had no idea! Fiancée! Jazz singer!’ And she had whispered what Nadine had thought: ‘She’s not some terrible nightclub floozie is she?’ – which made Nadine feel a bit better about having thought it herself.

  She was able to reply, ‘I gather not. She’s made records! She’s almost famous, apparently! And Riley knows her! And likes her!’

  When Rose arrived she and Nadine stretched their eyes at each other in the hall, checking and confirming that their views aligned – my gosh, what will she be like? We’d better keep an eye on Kitty and Tom – and despite their maturity, they giggled. It was a very pure happiness they felt for Peter, and a faith, which each saw in the other, that now, he would have chosen well. And of course if Riley liked her then she was bound to be—

  Of course when Mabel came in and was negro, and had with her a young negro girl, their eyes caught and stretched a little further. There was a moment when everything hung, surreal – and in that moment Nadine realised that the grace with which Mabel waited, head slightly to one side, for her hosts to catch up was the same grace with which Riley waited for people to take stock of his scars: a grace which said: I know, I am not normal to you. You do not know what to do with a person who looks like me. Please, take your time.

  And so Nadine thought, This woman deals all the time with how she is seen, and the assumptions made. Just as Riley does – and the moment passed with Nadine rushing to Mabel, grasping her hands in hers with a true affectionate warmth, and blurting: ‘So it’s you, you are the reason he has been so happy after all—’ And then she felt something of a fool – but a good fool, and not embarrassed. Blather on, she thought. Why not. Unless – does it embarrass her? She doesn’t seem embarrassed. It seemed a pity that embarrassment was even a possibility.

  After that, courtesy and natural good character upheld the occasion, and nobody said or did anything thoughtless they were sorry about afterwards. If Rose was surprised to find that Peter’s beloved was a negro woman, she hardly showed it. If they were curious about the shy stately daughter not much younger than Kitty, that was only natural. After the blackness, a daughter was just another surprise. Peter, God bless him, seemed hardly to notice that it was an unusual situation, and Nadine shared looks with Rose: he’s so unworldly! Mabel, accustomed to being made a show of, behaved with perfect low-key courtesy, offering amusing asides, frank answers, and an appropriate domestic version of the charm which held audiences entranced. Nadine and Rose were duly entranced. Iris, dignified and girlish, said very little. Her eyes, Nadine noticed, were glued on Peter. And of course everybody was so engaged with all of this that none of the hosts noticed that the daughter did not address her mother once, nor even sit beside her; nor that the glances the mother cast towards the daughter were anything other than a mother’s natural concern for her daughter being in a new place among new people.

  *

  Kitty arrived just before the roast beef, swanning in in a rather sporty outfit, back early from her trip because she was longing to see her dad.

  She sort of jumped on him and wrapped his head in her arms as he sat, then looked up around the table, grinning proprietorially. ‘Hello,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m Kitty. Who are all of you?’ She was, actually, agog. A beautiful glamorous negro woman at Sunday lunch, with a young girl! She wondered if perhaps she was writing some kind of sociological book for Riley. A Guide to British Society and Culture for the Newly Arrived African perhaps. Though she was rather well-dressed for an intellectual.

  Peter stood up, and Kitty fell back rather, as she wasn’t expecting it.

  ‘Dearest,’ he said. ‘This is Mabel Zachary, and this is Iris.’ Kitty stuck her hand out gamely across the table, and said, ‘How do you do, how do you do.’ Mabel and Iris had to semi-stand, and there was a little physical awkwardness. Mabel said ‘How do you do’ back, with mild amusement, but Iris said ‘Very well thank you,’ so Kitty knew she wasn’t entirely educated. And the woman was American!

  Rose, very suddenly, with a very quick glance at Peter, tapped her fork on her glass and stood up.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said. ‘This is a very special family occasion, and Peter has something very special to tell us all.’

  Peter looked up. ‘Do I?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘You do.’

  Kitty said: ‘Hang on a mo, let me pull up a chair. This sounds good!’ She leaned forward, elbows on the table and chin in her hands.

  ‘Of course,’ Peter said, and blinked a little, and then stood up again, properly. ‘My dear family,’ he said. ‘Kitty, Rose, Riley, Nadine, and good old Tom in absentia. I have to tell you some astonishingly good news. Um. This lovely woman, Mabel’ – here he looked at her, so so did Kitty, and caught the expression of exquisite embarrassment and shy pride on her face – ‘has, rather to my amazement, agreed to marry me—’

  Kitty shrieked. She didn’t mean to but she did. She put her hand over her mouth immediately and whispered, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘—and before you get carried away,’ Peter continued, thinking quickly now, because Rose’s glare, Nadine’s silently imploring face and Kitty’s shriek had galvanised him into realising that he had almost everybody he loved in front of him, and hardly any of them knew anything, and it was rather extraordinary – he should have thought this out – ‘I would also like to introduce you—’

  He stopped suddenly. This is huge.

  No turning back.

  ‘—to someone who I have only known myself for a month or two – in fact, let me tell you – I’ve known Mabel for nearly twenty years,’ he said, and for a moment he seemed to be losing his composure – he was in fact thinking that losing his composure might be best – but then he fell silent again, and looked at them all, staring up at him. Mabel, alone, was looking at the table, with that humorous little smile on her face that she wore while waiting for people to get round to things she’d understood forever. She glanced up, and she winked at him.

  He took courage.

  ‘This is Iris,’ he said, helplessly. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  He gave them no pause after this, no comma or semicolon within whose reach they could make a decision or fall into a position, semi-informed – he pushed straight on through: ‘I didn’t know she existed. Mabel had her reasons for not telling me. Kitty, my darling, she’s your sister – Iris – this is Kitty. Rose, Nadine, Riley – this is Iris. Iris, this is my family.’ But he was not listened to now, because with the introduction Iris had glanced up at Kitty, and under the electricity of the gaze between Kitty and Iris everything was silenced. Kitty’s chin was up, her head back, and she stared down the table, blue eyes shining.

  ‘And did you know about me?’ Kitty said. ‘Iris?’

  ‘I was told two weeks ago,’ Iris replied.

  Kitty’s eyebrows went up. ‘Two weeks,’ she said. Her breathing was heavy. She looked around the group. ‘Gosh. Well, no reason I suppose why I should be told at the same time as you.’

  ‘Kitty,’ said Nadine.

  ‘Well, a funny way to go about things. Has anybody else got any announcements? Any more children to be produced out of the blue? I suppose by now I should be used to unexpected additions and unlikely arrangements.’

  ‘Kitty,’ said Nadine.

  ‘Take their side, Nadine, why not,’ said Kitty. ‘We all know you’re not interested in me and haven’t been for years.’

  ‘Now hold on,’ said Peter, and Rose said ‘Darling’ and Kitty made a face which said clearly, You see what I mean?

  Iris sat with her head down.

  ‘It’s not because you’re negro,’ Kitty said to her. ‘Don’t think it’s that. It’s because nobody told me. I find it faintly humiliating to have things foisted on me in fro
nt of everyone. I dare say some of you can understand that.’

  Her face was twitching a little; she could feel it. ‘Well,’ she said, with a brittle smile.

  ‘Nobody knew, darling,’ Nadine said. ‘I didn’t know. I – Iris,’ she said, with a warm and loving smile, just the word of welcome that the girl needed in this excruciating moment.

  Riley, watching, saw how yet again Nadine’s desire to give everybody what they wanted and needed tore her in half, because the needs and wants were conflicting, and Kitty would see kindness to Iris as cruelty to her.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Rose mildly.

  ‘Nor did I,’ said Riley, and so Kitty flinched and said, ‘Oh well then, I’m ridiculous, clearly. Never mind, Ridiculous Kitty, with her ridiculous feelings …’ Even though she knew she was making herself all the more ridiculous.

  Riley was the one to stand up and go round to Mabel, to bring her to her feet and embrace her, and then offer the same to Iris. ‘Don’t mind my face,’ he murmured to her. Nadine and Rose reached their hands across to her, and as each did so, the other held her hand out to Kitty.

  They all sat down. Nadine shunted up so that Kitty could sit next to Peter. They subsumed her, her shock and her disconcertion and her bad behaviour. Rose patted her knee. Riley winked at her. She thought, I know they mean well but I am not to be allowed to feel what I feel. This isn’t being loved. This is making do.

  She froze herself into position and didn’t let her shoulder touch her father’s, so that he would understand how hurt she was, and everything she was feeling.

  *

  Everything she was feeling?

  Kitty, in her bedroom, was bitter. She lit a cigarette and turned to the mirror to do her hair. There was a postcard stuck in the side of the frame; she’d bought it years ago at Porta Portese, the flea market: a sepia picture of a tragic lady clutching a flower and leaning against a window, with Tutta la mia vita fu amore e dolore in curled writing printed across the bottom. All of my life has been love and pain. She used to think love and pain would be rather glamorous – when will it start? Love, adventure, tribulation? – and longed above all for experience.

  When she was little she used to make lists of what she loved. Shepherd’s pie. Mummy, even though she’s dead. Daddy, even though I haven’t seen him for three weeks. Tom, even though he’s horrid to me. Nenna, even though she’s so far away. Chocolate. Max the dog, though he did die too. Nadine and Riley, even though they don’t really care about me, they just wish they’d had their own real child. Daddy, even though he’s marrying someone new and turns out to have had another daughter ALL ALONG.

  This other daughter …

  Iris …

  With her mother.

  How kind of you, Papà, not only to have another daughter all along but to have one who has a mother. A kind, beautiful, sensitive, tender mother all of her own.

  Iris. Her name is Iris. With her Mabel.

  Kitty hummed, and looked at her nails. She was still burning, and the burn was getting deeper. It wasn’t the shock of being told like that in front of everyone. It was the utter, profound betrayal. This girl was eighteen. Kitty had wanted to ask her birthday, but held fire.

  Well, I have had as ladylike an education as anybody but I’m not a fool. She didn’t know if everybody else was just too stupid to notice. Or if they genuinely didn’t care. This girl had been made while Mummy was still alive. Father had been with that woman not only while Mummy was alive, but the year she died. Tom said Mummy was bad but perhaps Daddy had made her bad. Perhaps she wasn’t bad at all. Because it’s pretty bad to go making a baby with someone else when you have a wife and children of your own already, isn’t it?

  And if he was well enough to be making babies with someone who wasn’t Mummy then that whole thing, that vast shadow over everything, when we were little – Daddy always in his study, Daddy in the cottage, Daddy doesn’t come out, Daddy doesn’t join in, leave Daddy alone, Daddy smells funny, Daddy shouting, Daddy’s damaged by the war, not all wounds show – well he was all right enough in 1919, wasn’t he? To make that glamorous woman sleep with him?

  And she’s not that old. She must have been very young then.

  And for all that time, this girl has existed – and even if Daddy didn’t know, that woman did.

  She was combing over what she knew to be true and what might be true. They must have been seeing each other. How could he have not known Iris existed? You can’t want to marry someone without even knowing they have a child. It’s absurd. He might have known them both, all along, all those years. My entire life.

  It all led nowhere, except to one very simple, very difficult truth: he might be lying.

  She glanced at herself and made a mean face. It looked good, with the lipstick.

  What do I love now?

  None of the above, none on the list, because They Don’t Love Me. Here then, though not in the expected form, is love and pain.

  She sucked in her cheeks, taking a drag on her cigarette. ‘Cigarette,’ she drawled, with the American intonation. ‘Vermouth.’

  I could, she thought. I might. She was thinking about running away to New York. Hollywood, perhaps, to be an actress. Though even thinking about being an actress was simply admitting she didn’t have a clue who she was or what to do. Trying on personas, trying on the persona of someone who tries on personas for a living … She tried to look at herself: you’ve finished school, you’ve passed a few exams, cheered at leaving the place where you never got very far beyond feeling inferior, and you’ve learned to type. Much of your attention is taken up by not eating. Your plans, such as they are, don’t involve being plump.

  She was bored with being resentful. What am I then? What am I?

  Hungry, she thought.

  Who knows what is going to happen? None of us. Look at Riley’s face and Mummy’s death and the many ways in which Daddy has changed. No one knows. Anything could happen. Like this war. People seem to think that because one’s young and female one is totally ignorant and dim, and doesn’t notice the slightest thing.

  She felt, really, like a table with too many wobbly legs. Nothing to trust. She had read somewhere that trust was a decision, and had been thinking about that. She didn’t think it was right. Trust is an instinct, she thought. You can trust someone you don’t much like; you can mistrust people you adore. I think I made myself trust Daddy – against all advice, really. I trust Tom. I think. She really really wanted to talk to Tom. Everybody else was falling over themselves to be good about this bloody wedding – because they didn’t want anyone to think they minded about the woman being negro, she thought, but she knew she was being mean. They probably liked her. Daddy’s over the moon, embarrassingly so, and no doubt she’s a perfectly nice woman. I wouldn’t know.

  Kitty hadn’t spoken to Iris or to Mabel since the lunch. Hadn’t approached either of them, hadn’t had any approach from them. She felt like the first wife in a tale of the Arabian Nights: her situation was respected; she had the power and the status – but the new wife had the attention from the king. Though in fact Kitty had no idea if Iris had attention from Peter. She didn’t know how they lived. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be involved. Or, more precisely, she wanted them to come and get her.

  And where was Tom? No letters, no response to letters.

  Tom, darling,

  Where are you and please will you write back? I know you’ve heard the news, I mean family news, not imminent war news – though you know as war is imminent it might be an idea for you to come home? Nadine told me she’s written to you and I can’t imagine that even in his clouds of amour Daddy would neglect to tell his only son – well, as far as we know his only son – that he’s marrying a coloured jazz singer and has had a child with her all along. Or perhaps he would. After all, he’s never told us before. Perhaps he has a Japanese child somewhere, and one from Borneo. Or Alaska. We could make cigarette cards of them in national costume. Please come home. I’m fed up
with the lot of them here. I dare say it’s all very nice for you just being in Italy and not having to face any of all this – but you are leaving me to deal with it on my own and I need someone to say horrid things to, as none of this lot are being less than saintly about it. ARE YOU COMING TO THE WEDDING? PLEASE COME. I terribly don’t want to go but I suppose I shall have to because bemused though I am by all this I don’t want to be the one to make a big fuss about it. Well I do, of course, but – oh look it would be much easier, my dear and only bro, if I had you to go with. Sending this now to catch the post. RING UP if you possibly can. COME BACK.

  Yr sis Kitty.

  *

  She did go to the wedding, without Tom. Westminster Registry Office, and practically nobody there beyond family. Nadine had been saying it should be church; he was a widower and she a spinster, why not, but Kitty liked that it was small like this. What did Nadine want, after all? Men from Peter’s office that he practically never went to, Granny in full fury, and rows of jazz musicians looking embarrassed? Dear God. Granny wasn’t there, in fact, so that was probably as well.

  Everyone seemed terribly happy. Not so much for the wedding, but with a sort of fluttering of possibility, with relief about the Prime Minister’s announcement. Peace with honour – no war! Everybody was talking about it: can we have faith in it? Will it be real? Is it strong enough to last? But overall, for today, be happy. It was as if they were instructing themselves. It bewildered Kitty, really. When something is so vast, what is the point of having an opinion? Let alone desires … The politicians will do what they do.

  Mabel thank goodness hadn’t put on a wedding dress, just looked rather slinky in cream satin and some lilies, her hair short, oiled and curled under a tiny hat. Iris dressed like an invisible person, Kitty noticed. She smiled at Iris as best she could and moved on swiftly, loosening her arms from Rose and Nadine, still both intent, God bless them, on making things nice. Sorry my dears I don’t feel nice. But she was aware none of this was Iris’s fault. This contradiction was giving her a headache. Iris had an intelligent face. I wonder what it’s like to be negro, Kitty thought. The only negro people she knew about were tribes people in magazines, grass skirts, or slaves in America in the old days. But Iris spoke and dressed like anyone else. I hate her.