She watched her own hands moving lightly on the keys. Green veins visible through fragile pale skin, a broken blood vessel between the third and forth knuckle of her right hand. Nails cut short for the piano. They would soon be the hands of a grandmother. The whole household would be beginning all over again, like it or not. James had swept into her life and made her feel young and hopeful, and in an instant Gwen had once again reminded her she was ancient. She turned the music back to the first page and began to play.
The phone ringing came as an otherworldly intrusion, and she answered only to make it stop. There was a scrabbling sound and then Iris, panting and shrill: “Julia! Thank God.”
Julia roused herself unwillingly from the treacle depths of the second movement—the pure, sweeping romance, its grand and unapologetic sentiment. When she raised the handset her own damp cheek surprised her; she had not known she had been crying.
“Are you alright?”
“No, I am absolutely not alright. I am the opposite of alright. I am absolutely— This is intolerable, and your concealment is unforgivable, after all our confidences—”
“Iris, hold on, what are you talking about?”
“He’s seeing somebody!”
“What?”
“He’s met someone. He’s got a secret good-time girl, and I don’t know who the hell you think you’re protecting by playing ignorant but I know everything. I’ve just driven past him on Hampstead High Street having coffee with some ghastly, trashy, dumpy blonde and holding hands.”
It was as if she’d had a whiskey and a Valium on a night flight, and was now being shaken urgently awake in order to pilot the plane. Julia blinked and tried to focus. Her eyes moved forward through the music, still listening. She closed the pages and looked down.
“Was it Valentina? He’s back at school; he shouldn’t be anywhere near the High Street. Please don’t tell me—”
“What? Who in God’s name is Valentina? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nathan’s ex-girlfriend. Italian. Fake blonde. Bit trashy, as you say. But they can’t have been holding hands, were they? Seriously?”
“Whose— What the hell are you talking about? Philip Alden’s on the High Street with a woman. And don’t tell me you don’t know, I’ve no doubt you’ve all been cozy as ever whilst I’ve been sent to Coventry for something trivial from the Stone Age. Who is she?”
“Philip? I don’t know anything, honestly, I’ve no idea—and we’ve not seen him at all, he’s all but disappeared on me. He’s in touch with Gwen; I know they e-mail, that’s it. The first time I’d seen him in ages was the other day and I suppose he was being a bit mysterious but I was so distracted and we only talked about Gwen . . . I did see someone dropping him off, but—”
“Blonde?” Iris demanded, “Moplike corkscrews of yellow sheep’s wool? Outrageous, greasy dark roots? Fat? Clad in jeans?” This last spat like poison, as if jeans on such a person were tantamount to an SS uniform.
“I didn’t see her legs, she was driving. But yes, curly blonde hair. I don’t know who she is, I assumed she was a neighbor giving him a lift.”
“Well, they looked very neighborly indeed just now. Very neighborly. My God, the man’s a quick worker. Although for all I know it’s been years—”
“You sound upset. Come round, where are you?”
“I am not upset!” Iris roared, “I am incredulous. I am at home—ha! How ludicrous. It’s a travesty to use that word to describe this sterile, anonymous green-carpeted brassy wasteland of a building. I am in the spare room of my spare new abode. I’m in Room 101 of my sanitized, elevator-enhanced, elderly-friendly, Finchley-Road-accessible, joyless, white-walled jumbo-sized coffin. I’m in a box, surrounded by boxes. I’m filed.”
“Come over, get a taxi. Come.”
“I’d like you to tell me why in God’s name I am living in this purgatorial block if he doesn’t need me to? Why, may I ask you, am I here? Why, if not to care for Philip Alden in his dotage, did I sell my beloved house with all its very challenging stairs?” Iris shrieked, with climactic hysteria. Julia struggled with this series of questions and the nested series of revelations embedded within them. Iris had only ever mentioned wanting financial freedom to enable Gwen’s future; Julia had not understood that Philip’s, too, had been planned for and secured, had possibly weighed more heavily on Iris’s conscience even than her granddaughter’s. Yet several things now made sense—the urgency with which she’d sold her house, though James and Julia had expressed every intention of taking care of Gwen and Nathan’s needs themselves; the odd location of the new flat. Gwen’s pregnancy seemed only the impetus for executing a plan long brewing. Had Iris actually expected him to move in with her again? Through the phone Julia could hear a musical scale of crashes, as if objects had fallen, or been hurled.
“Come over,” Julia said again, gently. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
“There’s no need to speak to me like an invalid. And he stopped using his cards so I’ve not had the faintest idea where he’s been or what he’s been doing and until I clapped eyes on him just now I’ve been beside myself that he was starving in a gutter. He’s not even been to Sainsbury’s. It would have been considerate for someone to tell me that I no longer needed to expend endless time and energy worrying about him. Now I see I went above and beyond to even give it a second thought.”
“What cards?”
“Bank cards,” said Iris impatiently. “I’d hardly take an interest in his library cards.”
“But how do you see his—”
“Well, we have a joint account, obviously,” and then before Julia had a chance to absorb this startling disclosure about a couple who had been separated since time immemorial, went on, “and now there’s all that money from the house just sitting in it that he hasn’t touched while he makes some sort of moral stand, and he’s probably still got his thermostat on fifteen, for God’s sake, while he entertains his lady friend, and I live in an old people’s home that he won’t come to. It’s quite hilarious.”
“But Iris, you don’t really hate that flat, do you?”
“I do,” snapped Iris, tight and decisive. “I hate it. I loathe and detest it and now it’s where I live and that’s the end of it. More fool me for feeling responsible for a doddering old imbecile feigning interest and dependence. Perhaps I shall move to France. Camilla never goes; she’s always offering the house. I’m coming round. May I?”
Julia had never before known Iris to ask permission for anything, and it moved her. “Of course, come right now. I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure he was just with a friend.”
36.