What Was Promised (25 page)

Foreign stuff, she means. ‘It’s just chicken,’ Jem says. ‘Try it, you’ll like it.’

‘You don’t know what I like.’

‘I do. I remember. This is spicy.’

‘We didn’t have spicy then. We didn’t hardly have chicken.’

‘Try,’ he says, and Florence tries. She makes a so-so face and eats.

‘At ours,’ Jem says, ‘we had this for special.  You just never ate with us.’

‘Didn’t I?’

He laughs. ‘What, you don’t remember? You eating at ours, that would’ve been all kinds of trouble. Do you like it?’

She gives up the so-so face. ‘Yeah.’

‘Really?’

‘Really, yes.’

She watches him eat. He is tucking in, enjoying it now he knows she does.

‘Do you come here often, then?’ she asks, and smirks when he swallows hard. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Mostly it’s another place.’

‘You didn’t want to take me there?’

‘It isn’t near. Up Camden way.’

‘Is that where you live?’

He nods. ‘Work up there most times too. They don’t send me down here except when they need cover.’

They order more pop. In the kitchen a radio starts up, tuned to a pirate station, and a woman bawls at it, out of sight but operatic. ‘
How can I cook if I can’t hear myself think? You best get that out of my kitchen before I lose my patience with it
.’

Jem leans close, lowers his voice. ‘The other place is better.’

‘I like this one,’ Florence says, and saying it realises she does. ‘We could have gone, though. You could have taken me underground. I bet you could sneak me in for free.’

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, there’s too many people know me up there.’

‘Are you married?’

He shakes his head. He isn’t looking at her now.

‘I didn’t want them talking. They’d be talking about you. There are things they say, about women like you. I don’t mean –’

‘I know what you mean,’ Florence says. ‘I know what they say.’

‘But you’re not that kind of woman.’

I’m a woman
, she almost answers; but she doesn’t. It answers too much. There is only so much they can say, so soon, being who they are. Florence can see the fear in his eyes as he asks, and the hope with it.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I’m not that kind.’

‘I had a good time.’

‘It wasn’t nothing.’

‘Jem. I said I liked it.’

‘You got a different life now.’

‘So?’

‘Dressing up nice for dinner.’

‘So what?’

He stands in the darkness of the street. His face lies in stark shadow, lined with troubles.

You’ve grown so tall, she wants to say, and you’re still frightened of everything. It’s a kind of innocence. But it can’t be the whole truth of him, she knows. It can’t be true in the ways that matter. She thinks, You must have grown up fast. You must have, after, but I can’t remember.

‘So, can I see you again?’ he asks, and Florence answers.

They meet at cafés. Canteens. Sometimes at a bistro on Great Portland Street where Florence knows the owner. A pub would be cheaper, but few would welcome either of them. Only by virtue of being together might they seek to cancel out or pardon one another, and the truth is, it doesn’t work like that. There are words for men like him, and names for women like her.

Jem pays. Florence thinks to, once, but she stops when she sees the expression on his face.

‘Who do you see?’

‘Skinny waiters, fat businessmen. A floozy who needs to go on a diet.’

‘Floss! Boy, you’re rough on people.’

‘I’m Florence now. And no, I’m honest.’

‘I didn’t mean here, anyway. I meant from back then.’

‘God, no one.’

‘Your folks.’

‘No. I see Iris sometimes. Ever-so-sensible Iris, in ever-so-sensible suburbia. Or in town, if she’s feeling brave.’

‘How is she?’

‘Thriving. Keeping the family going. We don’t have much in common.’

‘Just her?’

‘Just her.’

‘Not your mum and dad.’

‘Not if I can help it.’

He doesn’t ask her why. They don’t speak of that yet. They skirt and skirt around death’s flame, but it is always there, a raw, incipient pain.

Fairgrounds are good to them. Fairgrounds at night are best, when the shadows mask them, and the lights of the attractions draw eyes away from them. The thunder of the Saturn Spaceships, the music of the motorcycle speedways and Golden Gallopers drown anything that might be said behind their backs or in their hearing. And the fairground people, with their greasemonkey skins and broken Polari cant, those people let them come and go without a second glance – so long as they pay their money, at least – having seen more otherworldly things than a black man and a white woman gawping at the Wall of Death, or sharing a toffee apple, or wheeling through the sweet dark air over the Kursaal of Southend, or the ponds of Hampstead Heath, or the banks of Battersea.

‘I’ve forgotten loads from back then. You and me and the Buildings.’

‘How come?’

‘I don’t know. It makes me angry, dragging it up. What Dad did,’ she says, and there is a bitter taste in her mouth, emetic, as if the chemistry of her feelings has leached into her saliva.

‘It was an accident,’ he says, as she has known he will.

‘It was his fault. He robbed some poor old man. He didn’t have to do it, did he? So what happened after, your mum, how is that an accident? It was all his fault. I used to think he was the best thing ever. He never cared about no-one. All he wants is money and the chance to push people around. I wanted to marry a man just like him.’

‘I remember.’

‘You shouldn’t. You don’t have to, I mean, if you don’t want to. You can just turn your back on it, forget it, that’s what people do. We’d go mad otherwise.’

‘You didn’t forget me.’

‘Well, of course I didn’t. That’s different, you’re not the same thing.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Don’t fish. Anyway, you wouldn’t understand. You go on like you remember everything.’

‘Not everything.’

‘I do remember some things.’

‘You remember the time we found the knife?’

‘When?’

‘Late on. You found this knife, and you made us promise.’

She scowls at him; though it’s hard not to scowl at everything, when you’re eating toffee apple. ‘You’re thinking of someone else. I’m not into promises.’

Jem stops, and she stops with him. His face is a mixture of things, gravity and laughter. ‘Florence, you did! You found us this knife, up in the attics, and then . . . and then we promised.’

‘Alright, I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. I suppose you’re going to tell me I promised you’d be my first.’

‘What? No!’

‘Lucky, you’ve missed that boat. So what was it, then?’

But what can Jem do but laugh? So he laughs and shakes his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘you never told me,’ and Florence hoots.

‘You made a promise and you didn’t know what it was? What kind of promise was that?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

But,
Maybe this
, is what he thinks, in long-surrendered, renewed hope. Maybe it was something like this.

Neither of them can cook for love or money, but anyone can make a picnic. They meet halfway in Regent’s Park, or atop Primrose Hill with London laid out at their feet, or by the Serpentine, where the cygnets loot their sandwiches.

‘Rascals,’ Jem tells them to their faces. He tears off crusts and offers ransoms, minding his fingertips. The cygnets hiss like dragons.

‘Ugh,’ Florence says. ‘Don’t feed them, you’re making them worse.’

‘They’re alright.’

‘They’re rude. Ugly. Not like those white ones out there.’

‘Those are the same! These just got some growing left. These are like the teenagers.’

‘Get off. Really? No. Go on, what are they, then?’

‘Swans! How come you don’t know that?’

‘Why should I? What do swans do for me? They’re still ugly, anyway,’ Florence says, and she claps her hands; but the cygnets are already leaving, now the sandwiches are gone. Florence lies back on the grass. She closes her eyes: she basks. When she wakes her head is on Jem’s lap. He is stroking her hair.

‘You were always clever,’ she says. ‘You went on to the Grammar, didn’t you?’

‘Not for long.’

‘Why?’

‘They hated me. I hated them, leastways. Got out soon as I could. It was better when I was earning. I get time to think, down there.’

‘Iris ditched University. She worked like a dog to get in and then she met Harry and that was that.’

‘She got kids?’

‘Girls. And you used to make up games. You were good at them.’

‘I don’t do that no more. Don’t play games.’

Florence sits up. ‘Well, what do you do? I mean when you’re not working?’

‘I see you.’

‘I know that, don’t I?’

‘I see my old man. My sister. They’re both close by. Camden way.’

‘What sister?’ she asks, and he looks at her.

‘Sybil. You don’t remember Sybil?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t remember nothing.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Later, packing away, she asks, ‘What’s she like?’

‘Sparky, like you. Younger than us, different that way. She lives a different kind of life.’

Florence laughs drily. ‘Trust me, I’ve seen all kinds. What does she do?’

‘Just now she sells holidays, you know those places? She lives here and there. Anyplace that doesn’t cost.’

‘Can I meet her?’

Jem shrugs uncomfortably, backed up against the truth. ‘She gets angry, you know.’

‘You mean about what happened,’ she says, and he nods. ‘It’s going to be hard, isn’t it? With our families.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Eight years,’ she says. ‘That was how long he was gone, in the end.’

She looks at Jem. He shrugs, but she can see him thinking, turning it over, the time her father served for his mother.

She thinks, I shouldn’t watch, it’s not my place. But she wants to know what he thinks. Eight years . . . was that right or wrong? Was it just, was it sufficient? Is it immaterial? She wishes she could ask. She wants to think that Jem has answers, but he doesn’t say anything.

‘We could see Iris,’ she says, to break the silence. ‘She’ll be alright. I’ll bet she’d love it.’

‘I’d like that,’ Jem says.

Later still, as he walks her home:

‘Stories. There, I remember that. You used to tell me stories.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you still do that?’

‘If you like.’

‘But you still do them, I mean? For yourself?’

‘Yeah,’ Jem says, and he presses her hand. ‘I still do them.’

The first time they make love. The sheer might of him; the long, dark musculature. The way he lifts her. The wet of his mouth on her tears on her face. The way he lifts her onto him. And when he lays her down. And the beauty of him.

She remembers those things. She takes care of them. She will remember them all for the rest of her life.

2. Iris in July

When Iris hears the news, her second thought (the first is
!???
) is, I shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing ventured and much gained; that’s how it is for Floss. Nothing nurtured, nothing tended, and the best things in life – the sweetest windfalls – falling into her lap all the same. I mustn’t mind, Iris thinks.

She’s with Mum when Floss rings. They’ve been to town, but it’s muggy, the weather having turned abruptly seasonable, and their plans for lunch and shops haven’t amounted to much. They’ve come away smelling of Tube, with an unsought haul of brochures, with frustrated appetites and a carrier of frozen foods Iris hardly remembers buying, and for which she ekes out room while Mum makes the tea.

‘Sugar . . . where’ve you put it now?’ Mary asks, and half to herself, ‘Look, here it is. You don’t need all this out, do you? You’ll fatten the girls if you’re not careful. Are you listening, love?’

But Mary’s love is on her knees, suppliant before the ice compartment. She grubs old stores out of the rime – Bird’s Eye peas, Findus fish fingers. She doesn’t mind it, this. It’s satisfying, digging, and there’s satisfaction, too, in the throwing out of old for new, and in the thunder she makes, which lets her off an answer: for a moment she’s absolved from talking to her mother.

Iris thinks, I used to be more patient. Or Mum was easier – one or the other thing, or both. These days, certainly, they find it hard to get on whenever Dad’s elsewhere. Still kneeling, it occurs to Iris that they’re too much alike, that it comes down to patience either way: her own with all those she cares for, and Mum’s with waiting for her man. They are the women who have endured, who have stood with Dad through the years of shame and loneliness, but somehow they need him all the more for that, are querulous without him.