“I’m sorry,” said Philip, words he’d spoken to Iris so often that they had become a ritual of greeting. “I need just another moment.”
Iris ensured that her heavy sigh was audible before hanging up the phone, and Philip returned to the shoes he had been laboriously tying. This adventure should have begun some time ago but he had been on the computer for most of the afternoon, hunting down and then printing out an essay on Beckett to read to her. It was a habit they had developed early on in their relationship, started in imitation of Philip’s mother who’d been a determined autodidact and who, in her rare moments of liberty, would take herself off to the Swiss Cottage Library. Her English had eventually been excellent but drama had always remained a hurdle, so if she took Philip to queue for returns, it would be for a play about which she had already spent snatched moments reading. Denied so very many avenues of education by gender, circumstance, and war; now, newly British, newly emancipated, she would not sacrifice a single drop of insight or pleasure by failing to understand a nuance, a reference, a history. At first amused when she’d discovered what she referred to as Philip’s homework, Iris had then begun to depend upon him whenever they went to the theater.
“Oh, Philip will tell us all about it,” she’d say, idly. “What do we know about the play, Philip?” And Philip would produce his notes from the inside pocket of his jacket, folded sheets of scrawls and citations, the fruit of an afternoon’s study.
Today, it was true, he had lost track of time. It would not help to suggest that she come in and wait in the living room while he finished putting on his shoes and then found his scarf and located his other glasses (mysteriously absent from the coil pot Gwen had made to house them). Instead she would sit, idling in a taxi vibrating with the diesel engine and her increasing vexation, for as long as it took him to emerge. She was happiest when he’d anticipated her early arrival and was waiting for her on the pavement when she swept up, barely needing to stop before they could motor away from this scene of his embarrassing isolation. The existence of this modest flat irked her.
“What were you doing?” she snapped, when he joined her in the taxi.
“I thought you’d like Harold Bloom for the interval. On The Lady with the Dog.”
“Ever since the Lessing comment I’ve gone off him, though perhaps it’s time to make up. Thank you for the James Wood, though; I read it this morning. Oh, and I’ve booked us smoked salmon, for the interval.”
“Thank you,” said Philip, humbly.
“How did you like the Rosamond Lehmann?”
“I’ve only read the introduction so far, I will get to it, I’ve been doing a little research that distracted me. Pamela Thing emailed me.”
She glanced at him, sharply. “Thing’s wife?”
“Ex-wife. Yes.”
“I can’t think of a benign reason to be emailing your former husband’s new . . . what is she, girlfriend I suppose—girlfriend’s former father-in-law.”
“It’s professional. She’s asked me to critique a paper she’s writing. We’re not former, Iris.”
“Oh, I know, I know. Christ, on what?”
“Orgasmic childbirth. I think she’s decided I exemplify everything she hates about the—what did she call it?—medical patriarchy, and so she wants me to comment and show her the holes they’ll all find when it’s published so she can plug them in advance.”
“Was ‘holes’ her word? She can’t be a very rigorous academic if she can’t find her own holes. Nor a very good gynecologist, now I come to think of it.”
“She said something along the lines of never being able to anticipate the sly ways in which the Establishment seek to quash the revolution—”
“Oh she didn’t! Does she listen to herself?”
“I assure you she did. I think I embody The Man. Because of the forceps.”
“But that doesn’t mean you actually have to do it,” said Iris, irritated. Philip’s acquiescence to the exploitation of others made her own dependence upon him less comfortable, and also less a mark of distinction somehow. “You can just say, ‘No, you crackpot, I’m retired.’ Also, it’s perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain that there are certain moments a girl doesn’t want to be thinking about sex, and I need not tell you that childbirth is among them. Why does she think the so-called establishment should be hell-bent on depriving women of their right to orgasm during childbirth in any case? Actually don’t tell me, I really couldn’t care less.”
“I’ll send you the paper to read.”
“Please don’t.”
“She also said something about Gwen and the boy.”
Iris’s ears pricked up. “What boy? Gwen’s got a boyfriend? How unbearable that that busybody should know before we do. What did she say, who is he? Is he from school?”
“Not a boy, the boy, their son. Whatshisname. Nathan.”
They had drawn up outside the theater, where the bright bulbs of the awning cast a gleam into oily, puddled gutters. Iris paid for the cab while Philip set about the awkward business of clambering out of it—on the one hand easier than the low-slung seats of a normal car; on the other more challenging for the larger step down to the pavement. Iris managed to stay occupied until he had succeeded and had straightened up, restored to dignity, and then slipped her arm through his. They made their way into the heat of the foyer.
“What did you mean?” she demanded, when they had settled in their seats, picking up where they had left off after various digressions and excursions for programs, bathroom visits, procuring of reading glasses in order to see their phones clearly enough to turn them off, and some inquiries to ascertain in which bar Iris had booked the interval refreshments.
“She seemed to imply that there was some sort of romance going on between Gwen and her son. It seems rather unlikely.”
Iris stroked the glossy program that lay in her lap and considered.
“It’s horribly likely, when you stop and think,” she said, eventually. “You throw two teenagers together, curiosity and hormones flying about, and it suddenly seems obvious. They’re tripping over each other, it’s bound to cross their minds eventually.”
“You don’t think it’s true? Gwen’s such an innocent.”
“If it hasn’t happened already, we should warn them that it might, so they can head it off at the pass,” Iris whispered, as the lights fell. “Despite Julia’s best efforts, Gwendolen can’t be expected to remain twelve forever.”
17.