by Louisa Young
It’s going to happen. There will be war.
He was full of desires. Edgy, irritable desires. Now what? Now what? Every day that passes it would get more difficult.
I will go back. As soon as I can, however I can. So go back. Go back now. Jump off the train.
No, I’ll go back with a British passport for her, and visas for the family. Riley can offer Aldo a job. Susanna can be – oh I don’t know. Something.
Or am I scared to go back? Scared she’ll never say yes? Scared the squadristi will beat me up – that I’ll get a manganello in the mush?
Because I’m going to have to deal with fear, before all this is over. Aren’t I?
By my age, Riley had finished his war.
*
He wrote to her again on the train, a long letter, his handwriting jiggly, and posted it the moment he arrived in London. It ended:
The thing is I love you, and this situation is insupportable. Violence and the law (!) may have chucked me out for now, but God only knows what will happen – if anyone does – and so all things are, in theory, possible. When I think of your courage, and your position, my beautiful girl, I think above all of the strength there is in you. All that you devoted to your father for all these years – all the passion and power you put into being wrong, will now help you as you turn around. Believe it. Don’t be scared. I do believe that your father will see sense, and if he can’t, that you will recognise it, and make the decision about your own life. You are not only their daughter. You are your own extraordinary self. These circumstances which entangle you are not all you are. And if that’s not enough – Nenna, my old friend, my new love – I need you as much they do. I will not be able to go into this war with you over there. You belong here. Not by birth, but by your heart, which is just, and no longer fooled by what it was brought up in. Do you remember you spoke about the garden you were planted in? Time to leave the poisoned garden. I could start to run wild here with the imagery – tendrils round your ankles, creepers tying you down, those who are too deep in the rampant undergrowth for you to pull them free – darling – I know. Of all people, I know. Tell me you will do it. Machete at the ready if need be. Nenna – my friend B’s uncle was turned in by his own relatives. It is no longer possible in these times to put family first and that is not your fault, nor the fault of any other decent human being. But you must do something about it. Sides are lining up. You cannot be – you are not! – on the side of the violent, the unjust, the Jew-haters, the liars.
Darling. Come.
*
And there, in London, sat his old life. It was, if he chose it, pretty much as it had been before – if I forget about Italy, I could just go back to work and carry on following my immediate nose.
But my immediate nose wants to lead me back.
I can’t believe I have left her there—
He went back to his job on the paper.
After work one dingy dark evening, rain diagonal in the streetlights’ glow on the huddled overcoats scurrying to get out of it, Peter took Tom to meet Mabel. The Serpentine was a haven of warmth and escape, and the gold-digger idea flew out the window at the first sight of the relaxed, professional way Mabel clicked her fingers to her pianist. Tom clocked the strong arms, the green sequins, the lazy smile, and leant over to whisper, ‘Gosh, Dad!’ Peter, it seemed to him, was excited, and apprehensive – waiting for approval? For my approval? Tom thought. Well that’s new. He withheld it for a while. She looked to him interesting and independent; she sang, it turned out, beautifully, in that way that sculpts you inside and changes something there.
As the second song closed he leaned over to Peter and murmured over the nightclub buzz and clatter: ‘She’s bloody marvellous.’
Peter was smiling like a boy. ‘She is, isn’t she?’
And then she sang, oddly enough, ‘I Thought About You’. So Tom thought about Nenna. In the lull after she finished, Tom leaned over again.
‘Dad,’ he said. ‘I’m marrying out, too.’
Peter raised his eyebrows.
‘Nenna,’ Tom said. ‘I’m going to do it. Papers, passports, petitions to the Home Office.’
‘Well I’ll help in any way I can,’ Peter said, and each had the same little furrow in their brow during the next few songs, as their private complexities shifted and lifted and disappeared like morning dew.
Later, over sole at Sheekey’s, Tom told Mabel how he had seen them on the corner of Lexington Street.
‘I saw you too,’ Mabel said. ‘On the corner. For a second I thought you were Peter. But Peter was standing right by me.’
*
He had gathered that Iris and her mother were on some kind of complicated terms, but his own approach was simple. He rang, Iris said come to tea, he went.
She was tall and nervous, and offered him cake immediately she opened the door of the flat in Eaton Square.
‘Do you live here alone?’ he enquired, looking around, and she blushed, just a little, so he said, ‘Sorry, not my business,’ and took his coat off and went through to sit down. Gas fire, books, piano. Long white curtains drawn already. Midwinter.
‘Well!’ she said.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Was Kitty horrid to you?’ – whereupon Iris laughed – a single bark.
‘She’s such a—’ Tom said. ‘At least she can be. Prickly sensitive little thing, Kits. Don’t worry. Soft as a sausage inside, just self-obsessed – and it’s contagious! Look, we’re talking about her, when we should be saying, Good Lord, I have another sister! Or, you know, you can say, I have a brother, and we should just be being sort of being amazed at each other.’
‘I am amazed,’ Iris said.
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Do I look all right to you? I do hope so. Must be a bit of a shock.’
‘You look all right,’ she said, warily.
‘You look all right to me too,’ he said.
There was a silence.
‘Is that it then?’ she said. ‘We agree we look all right?’
‘Well, we could have cake.’
She started laughing then. Her rather steady face cracked up into movement and he liked her.
‘You are so like my – your father,’ she said. ‘Our father.’
‘I’m bloody not,’ Tom said – and stopped. She’s family. She’s new but she’s old. This is very very strange.
‘Am I?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes,’ and her smile flickered, and she swallowed, and said, ‘Tea. Let’s just … have some tea.’
It seemed to him she might be the sort of girl he might make friends with. If he’d just happened to meet her somewhere, he would have wanted to talk to her. Well thank Christ for that. Ha!
*
Nadine and Rose were all over him, and Mrs Orris was leaving messages. Kitty was trying to get hold of him but it was all complicated. In the end they met at the American Bar at the Savoy.
‘What’s all this about you living at Granny’s?’ he said. ‘Everybody’s rather upset with you.’
‘Serve them right,’ Kitty said. She had a very smart little hat on.
‘Why?’
She shot him an awfully forlorn look. ‘Because of everything! Daddy just – oh for God’s sake, Tom, you stay away for months and then just swan back—’
‘Am I missing something?’ he asked. ‘Dad got married, he’s happy, so what?’
Kitty blinked at him. ‘He lied,’ she said. ‘To us, to our mother, to everybody – he’s been with that woman for years—’
‘Not interested,’ said Tom. ‘Sorry, but really. Here and now, darling. He’s been miserable almost his entire life, so let’s just let him be happy for a bit, shall we? You can amuse yourself dragging it out, but to be honest I don’t think anyone’s noticed it’s a protest vote against the new Mrs L.’
She frowned.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Kit, don’t tell me you’ve turned into some kind of racialist?’
‘It’s not that!’ she cried, indignantly.
> ‘Well you’d better move back home then, before anyone starts thinking it is. Is it about money? You think he’s going to leave everything to them? He can’t – I’m still the eldest son.’
‘Thank you Tom, I am neither a racialist nor some gold-digger inside my own family.’
‘Well what is it then?’
‘I thought you might like to come and live there too,’ she said quietly.
‘What, with the Mastodon?’ he barked. ‘No bloody thank you. Perfectly happy with Riley and Nadine for the moment. Hardly ever there anyway.’
Kitty raised her eyebrows and took out a cigarette. She waited for Tom to light it, and kept her nostrils a little flared.
‘And what did you make of Iris?’ she asked.
‘Nice girl,’ he said. ‘Thought we should all go dancing. What do you say? Break the ice?’
Kitty blew smoke down her nose, a measured move, a dragon breath. He knew exactly what she was thinking: Typical! Nobody gives a damn about poor me. The old ‘Poor Little Kitty’ performance.
‘How about Friday night?’ he said. ‘Iris and I are going anyway,’ he lied, making it up as he went along, knowing she wouldn’t be able to resist. ‘I might bring along some of the chaps. Johnny’s in town. Go and hear Mabel sing, then go on somewhere. Make a little party of it. Come on Kits, you know you want to …’
He smiled at her, and she melted a little, and he was glad to see that she still melted at it, and still pretended not to.
*
Iris was delighted at the suggestion of going dancing, but very much wanted to hear another singer; would they mind awfully?
Well, Tom had promised the chaps they’d be seeing his new stepmother – it was rather the point.
‘Of course,’ said Iris, and Tom could hear her adjusting her expectations. He rang Peter later.
‘Do Iris and her mother not get on?’ he asked, bluntly.
‘Slightly minds that Mabel and I knew each other all the way through, and Mabel didn’t tell her about me,’ Peter said. ‘You know how girls don’t like to feel left out.’
‘Well then they’re all in a flap,’ Tom said. ‘Kitty’s livid about Iris. I’m trying to take them out, in a brotherly manner—’
‘D’you want me to come?’ Peter asked.
‘Good Lord no,’ said Tom.
*
The chaps were Johnny Carmichael and Vernon from the paper, spruced, joshing, and torn between flirting and talking European politics. Kitty, of course unable to resist, arrived in dusty pink chiffon, glowing; Iris was lean and elegant in a white dress of her mother’s, let down and taken in, with her hair oiled and a flower behind her ear. Kitty immediately felt fat. Iris breathed very carefully on this, her first proper social outing with people sort of her own age. The chaps blinked, and opted absolutely for flirtation.
The Serpentine Club was busy: glittery, smoky, scent and laughtery; bias-cut satin and scurrying waiters. They had a table with a velvet banquette, near the front; the table Iris usually used to go to, with Peter. Mabel knew they were coming; a small fuss was made.
They drank cocktails and smoked (not Iris though) and Carmichael entertained them with improper tales from the Embassy in Rome, at which Kitty shrieked with laughter. Vernon couldn’t take his eyes off Iris, and asked her so many questions that he might as well have been interviewing her. By ‘What was your favourite subject at school?’ Tom stopped squashing his irritation, and asked her to dance. They glided out: the music was light and instrumental; waiting for Mabel to come out and electrify the scene.
Holding Iris, out on the hardwood floor, Tom had to remind himself that she was his sister. He found himself looking at her and sensing her flesh under his fingers: flesh of my flesh. So different! He glanced at her hands, her fingertips on his.
‘Are you searching for similarities?’ she asked him, leaning away a little to match his gaze.
‘Tall,’ he said. ‘Slender.’ And then he was stuck. Not fair, not bony, no blue eyes, no thin mouth, no floppy blondish hair, no dark circles under the eyes.
‘Intelligent,’ she said. ‘Musical. Little bit repressed and moody. Keen on Greek and Latin.’ She gave him a slight curl of smile, and it was – it was! – the identical of Peter’s charming smile – Tom’s own charming smile.
He gave her the same smile back, and saw that she recognised it. For a moment there, circling in each other’s arms to the faintly depressing strains of ‘Melancholy Baby’, hardly dancing at all, they just looked at each other, smiling.
‘I wish we’d known you before,’ he said simply, and her eyes filled with tears. He squeezed her hand, in a buck-up, brotherly sort of way, and she blinked, so then she had to go to the powder room, and he squeezed her hand again as she went, and worked his way back to the table.
‘Lovely girl, our new sis,’ he said, and Kitty smiled politely.
‘I gather she’s not talking to her mother!’ she said. ‘Imagine, all those years without a father and the moment she gets one, she stops talking to her mother! Didn’t even talk to her at the wedding. Ridiculous girl.’
Johnny was kicking her under the table and Tom said ‘Kitty!’ warningly, but Iris was there, behind her by the banquette, and heard enough.
‘Came back for my bag,’ she said, expressionless, and Vernon located it and passed it across to her. She turned away, back rod-straight, and Tom was preparing a most withering condemnation but then Iris turned back, and looked down at the back of Kitty’s head. ‘I gather you’re not talking to your father,’ Iris said, calmly, not unkindly. ‘Had him your entire life, and the moment he finds some happiness you turn your back on him and make sure he’s still got something to be miserable about. Didn’t even talk to him at his own wedding. Taking him for granted, I suppose.’
Kitty didn’t turn round. Her eyes were fixed on the table: the tiny vase of carnations, the candle, the cocktail glasses gleaming in the low light, the ashtray with Carmichael’s cigarette burning down. The moment hung in the air.
‘Well,’ Kitty said, and started to bustle on the velvet seat, looking for her bag. ‘You stay and listen to your mother sing, why don’t you, how lovely. I think I’ll—’
‘Oh for God’s sake Kitty, don’t—’ Tom started, but Johnny broke in, taking Kitty’s arm and saying, ‘Come on darling, it’s our foxtrot!’ which of course was ridiculous, because it wasn’t a foxtrot, and she wasn’t his darling, but he pulled her out from behind the table and on to the floor, and in a moment had her fully enclosed in his arms, safe in the familiar pattern of nondescript English dance steps, her head hidden on his chest, her tears unheard and unseen.
‘You’re a lovely girl, Kitty, a lovely girl,’ he murmured. ‘Something of a little fool, sometimes … but a lovely girl.’
Kitty looked up. Her mouth was tight. ‘Thank you Johnny,’ she said. ‘But I don’t care to be patronised.’ She extricated herself, went back to the table, and picked up her bag. Her heels felt perilous beneath her. She snapped goodnight to Vernon, and to Iris, sitting down now, she said: ‘I’m right, though, aren’t I? Still, at least you’ve got a mother.’ She shot a look of pure venom at Tom, and turned to fight through the crowd.
She almost missed Iris’s valedictory shot. ‘Oh sure, honey, we’re both right’ – as if rightness was the least of it.
Tom rolled his eyes apologetically at the chaps. Vernon said, ‘Shouldn’t you …?’ but Johnny was already going after her. On the little stage the musicians had stood down their instruments, but they picked them up again now as the pianist leaned in, and said, ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen – hell, do I even need to say more? The woman we’re all here for – our endlessly, blessedly, helplessly recklessly, heavenly velvety ebony speciality – Miss Mabel Zachary!’
She slipped on, sweeping the room with a lazy smile and those dark eyes that hardly anybody knew were looking for Iris.
Before the song started up, before Mabel even saw where they were, Tom leaned over.
‘I do
n’t know what it’s all about,’ he said to Iris quietly, firmly, ‘but for what it’s worth I’m glad to have you both, and I wish you’d make it up with her.’
‘Kitty’s made it clear—’ Iris began.
‘Not Kitty,’ Tom said. He nodded his head towards the stage. ‘I’d love to be able to call Mabel my mum and you my sis,’ he said. ‘Two new dreamboats in the family … Dad happy … Everything in the garden lovely.’ For a moment, that phrase, Everything in the garden lovely, made him blink—
He pulled himself together, and looked at Iris, a little sideways. ‘Don’t you think?’
The players had started up, a slinky rhythm.
Iris met Tom’s gaze, and rolled her eyes, and Mabel started to sing: When they begin … the Beguine … it brings back the sound of music so tender
Iris choked back a little laugh.
‘What’s funny?’ he said.
It brings back a night of tropical splendour
‘That was my lullaby,’ Iris whispered. Tom, glancing up at Mabel, caught a little recognition in her eye as she watched them, as she saw Iris smile and speak.
It brings back a memory evergreen … Mabel’s voice, as she sang, tendrilled among the velvet seats like cigarette smoke, entwining and embracing every person in the room, their pasts and their futures, and none more than Iris and Tom.
*
Johnny caught up with Kitty as she stepped outside.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and she shivered, ascertaining the level of London night chill: considerable. She could already feel the cold of the pavement through the slight soles of her evening shoes. ‘Strange days!’ she said, gaily. ‘Heightened emotions!’ She made an amused ironic face, like a madcap girl in a comedy romance. Myrna Loy, she thought. Though Myrna Loy never made stupid outbursts like that.
‘Bus?’ he said. ‘Or nightcap?’
She turned up the collar of her coat.
‘Both,’ she said, and glanced over at him. ‘Nightcap first.’
