They’d found a larger flat together, one with two additional bedrooms. The smaller one they decorated as a nursery. Iris had thought Sasha would be dismayed by her pregnancy, but really you couldn’t have found a more eagerly expectant father. After the fifth month or so, he took to measuring her waist with a tape every evening when he got home, so he could tally the progress of their child, millimeter by millimeter. When he drank, he drank with Iris, and then not very much because the doctor said she should only have a glass or two of red wine or possibly beer, which promoted good lactation.
On weekends he would take her out of Rome, usually to the little villa in Tivoli, so she could breathe plenty of fresh air. He never said anything about marriage, and neither did she. Not until Christmas, when Iris was too huge to do much more than lie on the sofa like some sort of beached humpback, did Harry finally—and somewhat sheepishly—suggest some official recognition of their union. Iris had looked at Sasha and Sasha had looked at Iris. “I’m game if you are,” he told her, gallant as he always was in those days.
After Harry left, Iris told Sasha they didn’t have to get married if he didn’t want to. Wasn’t he against marriage on principle, after all?
“On principle, yes. But as a personal matter, I can’t think of anything I want more.”
Iris couldn’t speak. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
“Besides,” he murmured, “it’s better for the child. Children want their parents properly married.”
So they were married the next week by the ambassador himself, Harry as witness, and held a little champagne reception afterward for a very few friends. The next morning Iris went into labor and Kip was born twenty-six harrowing hours later—almost ten pounds of him—eight minutes before the end of 1940. Iris didn’t learn until later that the doctor had taken Sasha aside at one point and asked him if Iris’s affairs were all in order, and that Sasha was so drunk by the time the baby was born, he registered the birth as female—not by accident, but because he didn’t actually remember.
Iris found her husband in the foyer on the balcony with Burgess and the blonde in the turtleneck, smoking cigarettes and drinking gin. “I’m going to get my coat,” she told him. “Meet you outside in ten minutes?”
She turned and walked away before he could react. Before she could see the expressions on the faces of Burgess and the blonde—those expressions she knew so well. Oh, the old battle-ax. Wives spoil all the fun, don’t they?
Her raincoat hung from some hook in the hallway, identical to the others. She rifled through them all until she found hers, identifiable by her slim clutch pocketbook stuck into the right armhole, because she hated having to carry a pocketbook around a party. The coat was layered beneath a couple of others, and it took some effort to untangle them all. Somewhere in the middle of the struggle, a friendly American voice asked, “May I be of assistance?”
Iris jumped and turned. A man had appeared out of nowhere—a thick-shouldered, square-jawed, cleft-chinned all-American of a type Iris hadn’t seen in years. He showed her some friendly white teeth and continued in a slow country cadence designed by God to soothe skittish horses. “Say, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“Not at all.”
He reached up and removed her raincoat from the hook. Like a gentleman, he helped her into it, holding her pocketbook for her as she stuck in one arm and then the other. When she turned to thank him, he tipped his hat and wished her a good evening. She was still staring at the door when Sasha ranged up and asked her what was the matter.
Nothing, she said.
By the time she and Sasha arrived home in Holland Park at half past one in the morning, a light, miserable rain dropped from the sky. Sasha stumbled out of the taxi and told the driver to wait, he’d be back in a moment.
“You’re not going back out again, are you?”
“Burgess and a few others. Gargoyle Club. I won’t be long. I’ll walk you upstairs,” he added generously, as he gave her his arm to help her out of the taxi.
“No, you won’t. You’ll come upstairs with me and go to bed, like a decent husband and father. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“In point of fact, it’s already Sunday.”
“Sasha, please. Stay.”
She put her hand on his chest and did her best to capture his gaze, the way she used to do, but his eyes were drunk and blurry and he looked right through her.
“Darling, just for an hour or two. Back before you know it.”
“You know that’s not true. Don’t be an idiot, Sasha.”
The taxi driver tooted the horn.
“Christ, Iris. It’s just a drink.”
“It’s not just a drink. It’s your life, it’s your career! I’ve been hearing rumors—”
He seized her by the arms. “Rumors? What the hell are you talking about? Who’s spreading rumors?”
“Nobody! Just people, they’re talking about how much you drink, all these stupid, crazy escapades—”
He swore and let her go. He swung the taxi door open without another word and she wanted to scream after him, What’s wrong? What’s happening? Why won’t you tell me?
But it was too late. The taxi roared off. Iris stood in the drizzle and watched the headlights spin around the corner onto Abbotsbury Road, off to the Gargoyle Club in Mayfair, a different world from this quiet suburban neighborhood of wife and sons.
They lived on the fourth floor of a block of mansion flats called Oakwood Court, just off the grounds of poor ruined Holland House. Like the Desboroughs’ apartment, where tonight’s party had taken place, theirs was grand and spacious and in dire need of decorative updating. During the winter and spring, it was impossibly cold. Because the block had been built at the turn of the century, it did boast certain mod cons, as the British called them, such as central heating and hot water. But the ceilings were so lofty and the air outside so dank and chill most of the year that Iris never felt really warm until June, no matter how many cardigans and mufflers she wrapped around her shivering body, and she would dream of Rome or Ankara. She would remember the hot sun and pungent blue sky as you might remember a happy childhood, all the unpleasant threads snipped conveniently away.
The porter went home at eight p.m. sharp and would not return until six in the morning. Iris crossed the small, deserted lobby and took the lift to the fourth floor. It was the old-fashioned kind, so Iris had to open and close the door and the grille by herself. Her hands were shaking—her eyes stung with unshed tears. There were two flats on each floor, and the other one was empty. The family had moved out in January, suddenly and without explanation, and nobody had taken their place. Iris fumbled with the latchkey, tiptoed through the door, and shrugged off her raincoat. Mrs. Betts would be asleep in her small room off the kitchen; she’d have tucked in Kip and Jack at seven o’clock, and though they were good sleepers generally, parents could never be too quiet in the middle of the night, could they? Iris perched on the bench and wriggled off one shoe and then the other and sat for a moment—shoe in each hand—eyes closed. She thought of Sasha in his taxi, racing up the Kensington Road—no traffic, not at this hour—toward Mayfair and the Gargoyle Club. Iris had never seen the Gargoyle Club, but she had no trouble picturing it. Burgess and the others would be waiting for him, bottles ready.
Iris opened her eyes and rose from the bench. She stole in her stockings down the dark corridor and stopped by the door to the boys’ room.