“I think hearing about any of it would make me mad, too. Julia’s just upstairs, by the way, fixing some sort of formatting issue on Iris’s laptop.” James set a glass down before Philip, but at that moment everyone came in together, Iris shooing Julia and Gwen before her and demanding, “Can we sit down now?” as if it had been someone else occupied upstairs for the last half an hour.
They sat, and raced through a perfunctory Haggadah reading led by Philip, prompted intermittently by Julia. Iris had forgotten the horseradish and they were forced to settle for the closest thing in the refrigerator, a squeezy bottle of yellow American mustard. It was then discovered that she did not have a shank bone either, but after scrabbling in the cupboard Iris presented Philip with an organic lamb-flavored stock cube, wrapped in shiny purple foil. She had not cooked, but instead had bought lime-marinated chicken wings and red quinoa studded with tart currants, premade, in the Selfridges Food Hall. Philip had two helpings of salad, which he did not prepare for himself at home, so felt duty bound to consume for its phytonutrients when it was served to him elsewhere (and for the same reason, he had taken a punishingly large piece of parsley during the Karpas). Work had seemed a neutral topic and he enjoyed a quiet discussion with James about a VBAC uterine rupture earlier in the day, called to a halt when Gwen, overhearing, said it was gross and could they stop, please, and he had then realized his own insensitivity. More than once he noticed James and Julia holding hands, beneath the table. By contrast, Julia and Gwen did not speak to one another directly, except for a brief, bitter exchange overheard as they were ladling out soup together. He sensed Iris’s mounting incredulity that Julia, while clearly seething, would not allow anyone to acknowledge the pregnant teenage elephant dominating the room. The evening had a hallucinatory edge—conversation was polite, brittle, utterly empty. Between Julia and Gwen hummed invisible electric wires of resentment, studiously ignored by everyone else. It was painfully, ludicrously English, and he wondered how James could stand it. James’s praise for everything on the table irritated Iris, he noticed, though she demanded this same excessive flattery from her own family. Later James helped to clear the plates, and Philip observed Iris’s disapproval of this, too, watching her dismiss it as both unseemly and overfamiliar. His son had compromised her granddaughter—he was implicated, and culpable, and entirely unwelcome at her dinner table. Philip wished sometimes to be liberated from his understanding of Iris—when they were in company together her feelings sometimes crowded his out; spoken in her rich and strident voice, they were frequently louder inside his head than his own mild thoughts and observations. He was tired.
30.
The announcement, later in the evening, came as a surprise.
“We are all family here, after all,” said Iris, looking with undisguised irony from Julia to James, who paused, arrested in the act of reaching for another macaroon. Her eyes slid over Gwen, who was sitting primly, hands folded in her lap, and came to rest finally on Julia again, who was refilling Philip’s water glass.
“As everyone’s assembled I would like to say something important. I’ve decided I’m selling the house.”
“You always say that, Granny.”
“There’s no need for you to move just yet, is there?” Julia asked.
“It’s not a question of need. I’m moving. I’ve got a good buyer, a developer. She’s the right person.”
“What do you mean, you’ve found someone already? When?”
“As it happens we exchanged this morning. She’s happy not to dawdle, which was exactly what I asked for. There’s really very little to do, if I’d known how easy it would be, I would have done it years ago. I want options, and I want to be in a position to—who knows what the future holds.”
Nobody spoke. Philip, Julia saw, looked stricken. He said nothing, but was now gazing down at his hands, their joints stiff and swollen, though he would rarely admit they bothered him. She felt an urge to defend him but could think of nothing to say that would not diminish or shame him. He did not move or look up. Eventually Gwen said, “But, Granny, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to move; everyone loves your house, and you’re so close to us.” More quietly, “And it’s where Dad grew up. Don’t sell it. I think you should think more about it.”
“Where will you go?” James asked.
“I’ve found a flat in St. John’s Wood. Well, off the Finchley Road, in actual fact. Really, I don’t know why you are all gawping at me; you can’t have thought I’d stay in this enormous house forever and I’m not waiting until I’m wheeled out of it. I want to be able to walk to Regent’s Park. I want to be closer to town. I liked Giles’s flat in Bayswater before he gave it up; it was convenient, and I want to have a management committee to deal with the roof and the hallway carpets. I want the financial freedom to be able to— I don’t intend to spend my seventies enslaved to the running of a house, I have far better things to do.”
“But it’s your seventies, Iris, not your nineties.”
“Regardless,” said Iris, primly.
Beside her Philip still had not spoken. It seemed he’d known as little as anyone else. Surely this house was his, too? How could Iris just sell it without his consent? And why? Strolling through Regent’s Park was not a convincing argument when she currently lived on Hampstead Heath. Gwen had not understood what it meant to exchange contracts, Julia saw with exasperation, and it would have to be broken to her that her grandmother’s house was all but gone, and further discussion pointless. Gwen needed support and stability to face the choices ahead, not further upheaval and insecurity. At that moment, Gwen scraped her chair back.
“I’m desperate for the loo,” she announced unnecessarily, and then trotted out into the hall, one hand cupped against an invisible bump.
Iris tutted. “What a mercy she reminded us all she’s pregnant, we’ve been talking about something else for all of twelve seconds. How remiss of us.”
Julia caught James’s eye and began, despite herself, to laugh. James shook his head; he, too, was fighting a smile. Just as Julia felt that giggles might overwhelm her Gwen returned and James straightened his face and stood up, abruptly. “It’s been a great night, thank you. Le shana haba’ah be Finchley Road. And it’s getting late. Philip, shall I give you a ride back?”
Julia and Iris looked up at him in surprise. Gwen stood in the doorway yawning, widely.
“That would be lovely, thank you,” said Philip. He had not joined in the laughter. He leaned heavily on the table and rose, slowly, to his feet.
? ? ?
WHEN THEY WERE ALONE, back in their own kitchen, James asked Julia, “Did you know she was doing that? Philip seemed stunned, in the car.”
“I don’t understand; surely it’s half his. She can’t just sell without asking him. He bought it before they even married, I think.”