“Only if something goes wrong? If Philip seems tired?”
“Nothing will go wrong, but yes, if it makes you feel better, I’ll take him should it seem necessary. Now go, and have a lovely time. Don’t let the ex-wife intimidate you. Remember she’s ex for a reason.”
James had come in and was miming his intention of taking her bag out to the idling taxi.
“Mmm. I can’t really discuss that right now.”
“How subtle you are, darling, a veritable Enigma code. Bon voyage. And bonne chance. And for the love of God have some fun.”
“Thank you. Lots of love, Iris, thank you.”
From upstairs Gwen shouted, “Is that Granny? Can I speak?”
“The cab’s here! Sorry, Iris, one sec, Gwen’s yelling at me.” Mother and daughter met in the hall, where Gwen, still shoeless, was extending her hand for the phone. Her hair was in a fat and sopping plait from which a halo of drying curls escaped, glinting copper and gold; she held three packets of polymer modeling clay in white, cherry red, and peacock blue. Nathan thundered down the stairs, flung open the hall cupboard, and began throwing out items, like a dog turning up garden dirt. A pile of hats and gloves and scarves grew behind him.
“Mum, are these ‘gels or liquids,’ d’you think? Can I carry them on the plane?”
“Please put some shoes on. Iris, sorry, I’ll call you when I’m back.” As she was speaking she heard Nathan, his head deep between coats, muttering, “I think it ought to be fairly clear they’re not liquids, given that they’re solid.” It was going to be a long weekend. “Found my scarf!” Nathan added, in triumph, and disappeared outside to the waiting car.
Gwen put a sharp little chin on her mother’s shoulder and bellowed, “I’ll call you from the airport, Granny! Love you!” as she handed her deafened mother the plastic-wrapped clay and then slid off down the hall in search of her sneakers while Julia poked in hopeless uncertainty at the thermostat. It read ++ENTER SUMMER MODE?++. That would have to do.
In her kitchen in Parliament Hill, Iris poured herself a second cup of coffee and dialed Philip Alden. Someone in the family had to listen to sense.
? ? ?
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Philip had been napping. Since his eightieth birthday sleep had been an evasive and unsatisfying business and he now rose each morning at five a.m., unable to bear the racing of his mind while trapped in stiff and supine immobility. Better to be in physical motion, however tentative and ponderous. By now—just after eight a.m.—he could sometimes manage forty winks in a chair.
His basement flat was touched by brief morning sun, thick yellow beams that poured in through high windows and showed, briefly, the motes of dust that swarmed and rolled in dense clouds around the battered furniture. Otherwise the living room was murky, illuminated only by a pair of fringed, tangerine silk bedside lamps that had been re-homed on the large and middle-sized segments of a nest of laminate tables on either side of the sofa, a low-backed cube upholstered in threadbare, milk-chocolate velvet that had been the proud centerpiece of the Aldens’ living room in the seventies. An Anglepoise stood beneath the bookshelves, raised off the floor only marginally by four hardback copies of the Physicians’ Handbook of Obstetric Intensive Care, VI Edition, edited by Philip. Last summer Gwen had taken quilting lessons in a Kentish Town church hall, and her only quilt now lay across her grandfather’s knees, a garish herringbone of purple and mustard cotton stuffed with a sheet of thin foam. “I love you, Grandpa” was embroidered in its center, surrounded by glittering, cross-stitched hearts pierced by glittering, cross-stitched arrows. In his lap a printout of a short story by Stefan Zweig, e-mailed to him by Iris with instructions to analyze it so they could disagree about its intention.
By the time Iris had swept into his life Philip was a confirmed bachelor of thirty-six, a new consultant in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department of University College Hospital, his limited spare time spent overseeing a clinical study of the use of forceps in persistent occiput posterior births. Iris was interviewing physicians for a feature on the first anniversary of the Pill. She had whisked Philip to the Pillars of Hercules, fed him whiskey, made him laugh. She had sharp gray eyes and glossy hair, carbon black, that slipped like satin through his fingers. She was furious, vivid, fearless, young. He had awoken, and learned happiness. Iris had brought a wonder and confusion that had thrilled and dizzied him, but he had never trusted that it could be his, lifelong.
When after three decades their marriage had finally ended, when Iris had decided that Philip ought no longer to ignore her long-standing affair with Giles Porter, her section editor, Philip had acquiesced without great protest. He bought a modest basement flat on Greencroft Gardens, off the Finchley Road. It was a return, in some senses, to a familiar routine. He knew life to be quiet, to be a serious and solitary business. His late son’s family, as well as his friendship with Iris, were precious beyond measure and more than he had ever hoped for, or expected.
Iris remained in the house in Parliament Hill, with Giles. The three had maintained a cordial relationship, and Philip had still, on occasion, come for dinner, or cocktail parties, or for drinks on the terrace of the garden he had planted. It was Iris and Giles who had started to argue almost as soon as they had begun to live together, and three years later Giles retired permanently to his house in France after which the fighting had stopped, aided by the civilizing separation of the Channel. When Giles had died not long after his move to Provence (a maddeningly predictable heart attack, Philip felt, after years of taking dogged, perverse pleasure compounding atherosclerosis with bacon sandwiches and unfiltered cigarettes), Philip had been genuinely saddened, and sorry. If Iris had had other relationships since then, they were not discussed, and though he visited Iris often, Philip had seen no evidence.
? ? ?
MANY NIGHTS ON CALL had trained him; the phone would be at his ear, the other hand dutifully taking dictation of a patient’s name, her complication, the state of the baby, before the fog had fully lifted. He sounded awake, professional.
“Iris?”
“Gwen is still bullying the American. And I have a bad feeling about this Boston business.”
Philip considered. “Surely not bullying.”
“She barely speaks in his presence, and she still won’t touch his cooking, or even Julia’s cooking if he’s served it to her. And now apparently she pretends she hasn’t understood anything he’s said because of his accent. That part is rather ingenious, actually, but it can’t go on. And they’re meant to be going for a jolly weekend jaunt with the insufferable son.”
“I really don’t think James can be bullied. He trained under Steingold at Harvard, after all.”