In Falling Snow (35 page)

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 his 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.”

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 room, 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.”

Iris was raving. Grace had got up and was checking the fridge—old milk she'd bought last week, the eggs she'd bought the week before, untouched, jam, butter, also bought by Grace, also untouched. She turned to look at Iris, who was looking out towards the backyard, talking more to herself than to Grace. Grace felt a sudden pull of sadness. She knew Iris was between worlds now, not quite with them anymore. The Byron weekend somehow symbolised the loss that would come. “Come for the weekend,” Grace said. “The kids love you so much.”

Iris looked at her as if in a dream. “What? What did you say?”

“Byron. Come to the beach. I promise you can sleep all day. The sea air will do you good.”

Iris looked at Grace as if she was having difficulty placing her. “I did love him, you know. I really did.”

“Tom?” Grace said.

“Al,” Iris said. “I loved Al.”

It was a Sunday morning and I went out to the verandah to tell him it was time to get ready for lunch. Grace was still at the medical school but she'd be home by one. Al looked peaceful enough, sitting there on the chair, book on the table beside him, the bookmark returned, page 347 of a biography of Abraham Lincoln I'd bought for him. He loved the American presidents. Truman was his favourite, although lately he'd said he was becoming a Lincoln man. I like to think he marked his page and put the book down on the table so as to have a little snooze before lunch as he often did on a Sunday. It was a roast we always had, with baked vegetables. I'd called him perhaps half an hour earlier to help me get the meat out of the oven. I'd hurt my shoulder the week before and had been shy of lifting, and when he didn't answer and I'd called again and he still didn't answer I thought nothing of it other than that he must be asleep, and I pulled the roast out and was quite pleased really because it didn't hurt my shoulder, so I knew I was on the mend. After I turned up the oven to finish browning the potatoes I thought I should wake him. You don't want Grace thinking you're getting old enough to sleep on a Sunday morning. I heard the chapel bell up at All Hallows', I recall, and I wondered why. A wedding, probably, some past pupil so dedicated to the school she wanted her marriage there.

Al was so obviously dead. His eyes were closed, which lent support to my notion that he'd died in his sleep. His right arm was resting across his chest, his left hung limp by his side. His skin was grey. His lips were dark, blue-purple. His jaw was slack. I wiped my hands on my apron and closed his mouth, which made him look much more normal. His skin was faintly warm to the touch. And then I heard a hound baying in the distance, as if it knew, and that almost undid me.

Later Grace asked, delicately, whether I'd tried to revive him. I hadn't, intentionally. Al had come out to the verandah at around ten. He'd not heard my calls at eleven and it was nearly twelve when I found him. If by some miracle I'd managed to force his poor heart to pump again, what would I have left but the idiot he would never want to be? I thought as clearly as this in those first few moments, however much I regretted not trying to drag him back to life in the days and weeks and months that followed.

I sat down on the floor beside his chair. “The veggies are nearly done,” I said. I'd parboiled and scored the potatoes so they'd have the crisp skins Al liked. “And I've done onions, love,” which I knew he'd enjoy even if later he'd suffer with gas. I took his hand, cooling now. I held it in both of mine as if to warm it. I said, “I hope your soul hasn't flown yet. For I want you to know that I love you. It took me a long time to know it myself, so I hope you know it too.”

I sat by Al while sunlight came through the blinds and stretched itself across the coverlet like an old cat. “Oh Al,” I said, “how will I go on without you to guide us straight? Do you remember the time you and Tom went swimming in the dam at Risdon in shorts? It was the first time I saw you naked or near enough to naked. You were so complete in yourself, I confess I wanted to touch you, I wanted to put my hand to your breastbone. You felt it sooner, that heat between us. You were young, in love with medicine, in love with life, in love with me, as you've said. You never gave in to despair like I did.

“And you were right. I didn't love you, not then. I liked the square set of your shoulders, the compact power in your chest and middle. I'd have wanted you if I'd known the feeling enough to name it, but I didn't love you.

“And if I hadn't gone to Royaumont, hadn't learned about a world where women sat rather than served at table, I'd never have had cause to complain, never have known what I missed. You bore the brunt of the anger of a million women whose lives were something like mine. And it was never fair.”

Just then I imagined Al stirred as if to protest, so I paused with my thoughts, but it was just a trick of the light or my eyes.

“I know when I came home I was unkind. And I don't know why you stayed by me. But I'm fortunate you did. Because, Al, and this has been a roundabout way of speaking the truth, I came to love you and I love you still and if Tom had lived in the flesh instead of in the dark sadness of my heart, I'd have loved you better.” I was crying as I spoke. I knew this was weakness twice over—to burden Al with my confession in order to relieve my own conscience, and to tell him in death to avoid his response.

“Let me tell you when I knew I loved you,” I said. “It was that day at Pyramid Rock. Do you remember?” It was nothing in particular that happened, no great life change. A day for a picnic, Rose at two—a beautiful child—Al with a rare midweek day off, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his strong fair forearms. Rose had been up in the night with dreams. I was tired but not so tired as I'd been, it seemed, for years. I'd woken in the morning in bed with Rose and I'd had a peculiar feeling, something like that after a journey back from somewhere far away when the familiar of home seems bright and new. The smell of eucalyptus struck me as I was hanging the sheets in the morning. I heard a butcher-bird high in the dead gum at the front gate. I remember the sun that day as it rose pink and gold on scuddy clouds. It struck me as so beautiful and yet I'd seen sunrises just like it perhaps a hundred times since Royaumont. It was as if I was seeing the world again for the first time.

Al sensed the change. After the long walk up the rock, Rose on his shoulders when she tired, we ate our lunch—cold chicken and potato salad—and lay down together under a tree. We all slept, I woke first, and when I looked across at Al and Rose, their faces so free in repose, I swear I felt I was the luckiest woman alive. Al woke too and something in the expression on my face melted something in him and while Rose slept we held one another and kissed and renewed the bond that made us man and wife. And then in the afternoon, we wandered home at Rose's deliciously slow pace.

It didn't end right there. There were nights still when I woke in a sweat of anguish or fear. There were days when all I could manage to do was go through the motions of being Iris Hogan. But that day was the point at which the life I lived, the life with Al and Rose, became the life I wanted, and the life I had been living, in my fug of guilt and resentment and pain, became the life I wanted to leave behind me.

“That's when I knew I loved you,” I told him now.

When Grace walked in and saw Al, she panicked, or perhaps it was me on the floor beside him that frightened her. We'd been there a good while and we were quite settled. She grabbed Al's wrist and said, “Oh my God, he's dead. Quickly.”

“Why?” I said.

She looked at me as she had when she was three, summing me up. “Shock,” she said and ran inside to call an ambulance. I didn't say not to, although I prayed they wouldn't try to revive him even as I wished they would. For the beginning of realisation was with me. Death as the end of someone, and I didn't want to let him go. Looking back now, Al, I'm glad I gave you that one gift. I let you go.

I was left to myself, more or less, while Grace and the ambulance men talked in whispers about me. They thought me mad, I'm sure, but I just wanted to sit a while more with you Al, before you went over. I just wanted to be able to smell your dear coconut oil head for a little longer before you went away forever.

I believe that loss brings memories of loss, and in the months after Al died I grieved for both of them, him and Rose, as if they'd both just died, even though Rose had died over twenty years before. I suppose I never had time for grief when Rose died, for there was Grace to be cared for and I didn't have much energy left for anything else. And so it was Rose as much as Al I wept for in the months that followed his death.

Violet and I had been in Paris with Miss Ivens the day before. Violet was having some work done on her car and Miss Ivens and I had to see the Croix-Rouge. We'd seen Dugald in the afternoon—he'd come to the meeting and he and I had to pretend we hardly knew each other—and then he and I met again that night after Miss Ivens retired. I felt awful to deceive Miss Ivens about our relationship and guilty about my feelings for Dugald. They seemed duplicitous, selfish. Miss Ivens and I caught the train back to Royaumont and I know I was distracted. I couldn't concentrate on the figures we were working through, trying to increase the hospital's capacity ahead of opening Villers-Cotterêts.

Violet had stayed on in Paris for an extra night, as they needed parts to fix her car. I hadn't had a chance to tell her what had happened with Dugald, how difficult it had felt to be in the same room as him and pretend I hardly knew him.

Violet wasn't expected back before morning. I woke in the dark, from a dream I couldn't remember, unable to shake a feeling of foreboding. In the dream, there was a funeral in Asnières but I didn't know whose funeral it was. Daddy was there and Claire too and the twins but not Tom. As I woke fully, the feeling of foreboding centred itself on Tom. I felt in my bones that something terrible had happened to him.

I was wide awake now, my heart thumping, my belly filled with fear. I looked over and saw in the faint light from the window that Violet had come in after all and was in her bed. I got up, lit the lamp, and shook her awake.

“I'm worried.”

“What about?” she said, blinking in the light.

“I had a dream. I can't talk about it. Please will you take me to Chantilly, to Tom?”

“Oh Iris, I only got back three hours ago. Can't it wait?” She turned over to go back to sleep.

“No, Violet. I think something's happened.”

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “To Tom,” she said flatly.

“Yes.”

“He's a postie, remember?” She smiled hopefully, blonde curls all over her face. “Iris, he's all right. How about I tell you I saw him yesterday and he was fine?”

“Did you?”

She looked at me and didn't answer straightaway. “No, of course not. But really, he's all right.”

I shook my head, close to tears.

“Very well, Iris, let's go and get the postie out of bed.” She got up, pulled on her long pants and boots, grabbed her coat, splashed water from the bowl on her face, and followed me out into the pre-dawn morning.

On the way to Chantilly she talked cheerfully, as if I hadn't just dragged her out of her first long sleep in two weeks. In the dim light I could make out the huge craters in the earth where shells had exploded. Violet saw me watching. “He's going to be all right,” she said finally. I said nothing.

We arrived just as the sun was coming across the muddy field, and went straight to the barracks. I found a soldier I'd seen with Tom on one of my visits. “Where's Tom Crane?” I said.

“He's in bed, I think,” the soldier said. “He came in late but I'm pretty sure he's not working today.” He must have read something in my face. “I'll get him.”

What seemed like an eternity later, Tom came into the canteen, half asleep, hair a curly mess, a dark red stubble covering his cheeks and chin.

“Well, Tom, you've had your sister worried again,” Violet said. “You've got me out of bed, and here you are, sleeping like a baby.”

“What is it, Iris?” Tom said. I couldn't speak. I just looked at him.

Violet got up and poured Tom a cup of tea from the pot on the stove. “Drink this, sunshine. It'll wake you up.”

Tom took a sip and spat. “It's got no sugar.” He rubbed his face.

“Oh pet,” Violet said. “Grown-ups don't have sugar in their tea.”

“Tell that to our captain. This is his second war. He's been injured three times and he has more sugar in his tea than I do. Sunshine.” But he smiled as he said it.

I got up and put milk and sugar in Tom's tea, trying to shake off whatever was left of my feeling of foreboding. Tom held the mug in both hands and looked at Violet. His sweater hung loosely off his shoulders and wasn't long enough in the waist. “You've not a skerrick of extra weight on you, Tom,” I said finally, as if our dawn visit had no purpose other than to tell him to eat more. “It's no wonder you're feeling the cold. Do you remember when you were little and wouldn't wear your coat?”