What Was Promised (27 page)

Lazarus
, S., 124A Newling Estate, Columbia Rd., Shoreditch, E.2.

Lazarus
Watches (commercial), 24 Great Eastern St., Shoreditch, E.2

‘I beg your pardon? No, I’m sorry, dear, you must have the wrong number, I don’t think I know . . . Iris Lockhart? Iris Lockhart! Goodness, of course I do! Is it me? Well of course it’s
me
, Dora! How are you? And how’s your sister? How’s your mother?
I’m talking,
Solly! No, it’s Iris Lockhart. LOCKHART.  Yes! No, not that one, the other one.
What, dear? Oh, that would be lovely. Oh yes. Oh, you’d be welcome. No, you choose. You choose, I’m sure you’re busy, Iris, aren’t you? Thursday lunch . . . no, I’m available. You’ll miss Solly at the shop but never mind, I can tell him all about it later. No, don’t worry yourself. How nice! How good to hear from you! I’ll see you on Thursday. See you!’

She took a Dundee cake and flowers; white chrysanthemums and blue gentians. Meg needed walking to school that year, while Beth was still at nursery, and Iris left late and got the flowers in a rush at Golders Green station, dissatisfied with them but seeing nothing better.

She was halfway to Old Street, rearranging the blooms on her knees – the way Dad used to, nipping off the dead wood – when she realised what a foolish gift they were to be taking to Columbia Road. As if she’d never been before, and didn’t know where she was heading.

And then she got there and she didn’t. She hadn’t been back, then, since she was nine years old, not since Dad was sent down and Mum moved them away. Afterwards they’d sometimes heard bits about Columbia Road – the Buildings had been demolished, the dairy on Ezra Street sold on – but to Iris they’d seemed more and more reports of another world, a place she’d read about, not real or attainable. Mum never took them back and Iris never took herself – it came to seem almost forbidden – though now and then, in Holloway, she’d see someone on a Sunday morning, laden with pots and greenery, and she’d feel her loss.

She needn’t have worried about the flowers.

‘Oh, how lovely! You’ll spoil us. Let me find something for them. And shall I take your things? Look at you, Iris, all grown up!’

Dora looked the same to her: smallish, prettyish, foreign-ish. She had a pretty smile, too, but behind that welcome her face was waiting to fall back into a habitual unhappiness. And that was the same, too, Iris was sure, though as a girl she’d never seen it, or seeing it hadn’t recognised it for what it was.

‘Make yourself at home. You’ll be hungry, won’t you? I’ve made too much, I’m sorry . . . and you’ve bought this delicious cake . . . but I’ve only done sandwiches, and Solly likes them for lunches, so we don’t have to finish them, we can have cake instead, what a treat. How’s your mother?’ Dora asked, and she said that Mum sent love, though Mum didn’t, of course, because Iris hadn’t told her anything. What would have been the point? Love would have been the last thing Mum would have sent to anyone from the Buildings, all of them forever tarnished by association with the death of Bernadette, all despised for having been witness to Michael’s humiliation.

‘Have you come far?’

‘Yes. Well, just from Golders Green.’

‘Oh yes,’ Dora said, knowledgeably, respectfully. ‘Golders Green. I expect it’s nice there, is it?’

What did she answer? It doesn’t matter. She had followed Dora through into the kitchenette – making herself at home or useful – and from the window she could see the clearances. The slabs of half-finished cluster blocks and rain-stained high-rises, the vista of demolitions and great empty foundations with ironwork rising overhead like rusted spears or russet saplings; and inside, through the service hatch, in Dora’s boxy lounge, an upright piano, a pot of violets, and a picture in a prop-foot frame, its face turned towards the wall.

‘It’s changed so much,’ she said (not
What is that picture?
She didn’t know to ask that, then), and Dora tutted, busying herself with the teapot and cosy.

‘You shouldn’t look out there. I don’t understand it. They say they need houses and then they knock them down. Sometimes they come and say Shoreditch has to go, all of it. I think they hate it. I don’t know why, do you? What do they think is wrong with us? They promise to make it better, but it isn’t better, you can see. They’re too quick with their promises, that’s the trouble with politicians. And you know about the Buildings? A white elephant, they said. Even the baths, all gone. Still, we mustn’t grumble, that’s what Solly says. At least we have this, and the shop. There, the tea. Look at this cake!’

They passed trays through into the lounge. Their talk grew smaller as they ate.

‘And you’re married?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does your husband do?’

‘He’s a doctor, a surgeon at the London Hospital.’

‘Oh, you must be proud. My father was a doctor. And children?’

‘Two girls, Megan and Beth. Megan is five and Beth’s four.’

‘You’re very lucky.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well, here we are!’

Then Dora was quiet; as if, with nothing left to do, she had nothing left to say. When her cup chattered on its saucer Iris saw her hands were shaking, and she had to stop herself from reaching out and stilling them with her own. She didn’t know what to say herself. Dora’s nerves were infectious. The flat was unnaturally silent. It smelt faintly repellant: pipe smoke, egg and cress sandwiches, and two people no longer young.

She said, ‘You have a piano,’ and Dora looked at the upright with unnecessary gratitude.

‘Oh yes! Solly bought it for my fortieth. I learned when I was a girl. I used to play for Solly sometimes, when we met. My father was always there, of course . . . he made Solly so nervous. I could play Bach, but I daren’t now. Sometimes I do try Chopin.’

She got up, and for a moment Iris thought she meant to play – it might have been a relief – but instead Dora picked up the picture from beside the violets. ‘And this is Henry,’ she said, brightly. ‘You remember Henry, don’t you? Of course you do, you were always running wild together.’

Pond on a hillside, with a kite across his knees.

‘He made that himself, that kite. Solly was pleased, ever so. It was something they did together. It has two strings, you see, for tricks. You like the picture, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Iris said, ‘I do. It’s not how I remember him, but –’

‘No, because he’d be fourteen there . . . well, that’s what we called him, fourteen. That was his official age. You could tell he was older by then, you could see it in his face. He was always small for his age. You didn’t know him then. He got to be so clever. He caught up like anything at school. He wanted to be a pilot. Not an army pilot, because he was against all that. Fighting.’

She was speaking of him in the past. A chill went through Iris (the violets; the picture turned to the wall), and she searched out Dora’s gaze. ‘He’s not –’

‘Oh no, it’s not like
that
. We’d have heard, wouldn’t we, if it was?’ Dora asked, reasonably, and all Iris could do was nod into the silence that slunk back in between them.

They were side by side on the settee. She was looking back at Pond’s face, uncertain, trying to think what to say next, when Dora reached up and stroked her hair. It was a motherly gesture, an errant curl tucked back behind Iris’s ear.

‘So, where –’ she started, but Dora went on again, as if she hadn’t heard.

‘He missed you, after you’d gone. You especially. He liked you, dear. There was Bernadette’s boy, Jem, they stayed friends for a bit, but after Bernadette that was hard. And they went to different schools, and then the LCC men came and condemned the Buildings, and we were all moved out. We all went our own ways. I don’t know what happened to the Malcolms, I think they might have gone by then. You can have that if you like, the picture.’

‘Oh,’ Iris said, ‘I couldn’t,’ but Dora
tush
ed.

‘It’s no trouble, I’ve copies. I want you to have it. I’ve albums, too, would you like to see?’

They looked together. Pond as Iris remembered him; animal, whip-thin, all hollow and bone. Pond as Henry Lazarus, filling into hand-me-downs. Henry in uniform: cub scout, boy scout, school. On a beach, on a train, on a boat eating sandwiches (egg and cress, from the look of them). Henry eating spaghetti. Poised over a Christmas pudding and its spectral flame. On a hill, with a kite, smiling, his eyes still searching.

‘Where is he?’ she asked, when she couldn’t bear it any more, and Dora closed the album, patted it, and pushed herself back to her feet. She went to the service hatch, where Iris’s flowers stood in a cut glass vase, waiting for their right place to be found.

‘I’ve always liked ’mums. You don’t have to wonder about them, they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Some flowers are like that, aren’t they? They’re just pretty and that’s the end of them. Do you know what I mean?’ Dora asked, with such expectancy that Iris must have agreed, must have said yes out of politeness; but she can’t recall. Her own voice escapes her, though the memory isn’t so old, in the scheme of things.

‘We don’t know, love,’ Dora said then. ‘Henry went away. He went away twelve years ago and he never came back to us.’

Because it is unfinished. Because, when Michael Lockhart was found guilty on five counts of eight (
warehousebreaking with aggravation; stealing the contents of a safe; dangerous driving;
assault on a Peace Officer with intent to resist apprehension; manslaughter committed with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension or detainer of himself, the said Michael Lockhart
), being acquitted only of the attempted murder of John McEachan and two lesser charges, which malicious assault Norman Varney had admitted to his common-law wife; and when the Judge called Michael
A cold and violent man
, and sent him away out of the lives of all who needed him . . . because whatever Iris felt for Pond was unformed, then, only just beginning. Because those feelings were a bright point in the bright time just before the storm. Because she wants to know the end.

Perhaps that’s why she looks for him.

The names trouble her. There are too many to account for. He could be Something Pond. He could be Something Lazarus. He could go under Henry, and it still wouldn’t be his real name. There were names given him and lost before Iris ever knew him. Iris has found them. Pond could have found them, too: Dora says he looked for them, in the beginning. So many names are possible that he becomes anonymous.

And what
is
he? What has he become? He might have fallen through the cracks. He might be on the streets again, or sleeping in a hole in the ground. He might be a nobody, or wealthy. Wealth might conceal him. He might be dead. He might be flying.

When they were in Holloway Iris hardly ever thought of Pond. He was part of the lost world then, the world of Columbia Road, and like the road itself he seemed increasingly unreal. Iris doesn’t recall Mum or Floss ever mentioning him at home, and no one spoke of Pond to Dad on those days – rare as birthdays – when Mum took them along on visits to Pentonville (the doors and gates closing them in, the eyes of men dwelling on them, and Floss always terrible to Dad – embittered by lost faith – when she still visited at all). Even after Dad came home Pond remained one of many things never spoken of, the memories that might have lead to talk of Bernadette, and being unmentionable he faded away over the years almost to nothing.

It was only when Iris left home that Pond came back to her, or she to him. It was at college that she began to wonder, and it began with Semlin.

Imaginary friends belong to the hard chapters of childhood. They come calling when there are things which can’t be said to people in the flesh, or when the flesh won’t listen, or when what others say is dangerous to listen to, and only the whispers of a Semlin will drown the danger out.

Later there are real friends, and sooner or later doubt creeps in. It takes a child to make a Semlin and to go on believing in him. That’s what Iris thinks, because that’s how it was for her. Semlin came to her when Iris came to London, and all the friends she’d made in her first six years were left behind in Birmingham; and he left her in Holloway, where she grew out of him.

Or did she? Has she? In Holloway, Iris kept up the habit of talking to herself, a friendly to-and-fro murmur that made solitude comforting. Bit by bit, in North London, she stopped naming her comforter, but it was half-Semlin all the same, imagined at fourteen or sixteen not out of faith but with dim affection. Iris recalled her made-up friend long after she’d formally dispensed with his services; and even now, now and then, she converses with something, though it might be years since she put a name to her conversant. Iris doesn’t fear to be alone because she never feels alone.

They became intertwined, those things, though Iris hardly knows it. Her faithful echo became the sum of both lost friends; half-Semlin, half-Pond.

In 1958, two years after Michael came home, the Lockharts moved from their Holloway flat to a house in Highbury, and Iris went up to Leeds. She’d worked hard at school, had surpassed the expectations of her unexpectant Secondary Modern teachers, and had offers, for History, from two Universities. Leeds was the less prestigious, but it was her choice. Before her interviews she’d looked up her suitors on the map. Leeds was further and that was enough. Iris was less sure of herself then, more willing to follow Florence in her dogged flight from Michael and childhood. All through those years she thought she wanted distance.