All this cohabitation was new. The house in Queen’s Crescent had been home to Julia Alden since before Gwen’s birth. She and Daniel had bought it when she was heavily pregnant, moon-faced and cumbrous as she unpacked boxes and helped Daniel to paint the baby’s room in pale willow and stronger mint greens. The room would become a grassy landscape against which their tiny, red-faced, orange-haired daughter would resemble a furious, insomniac leprechaun, demanding and bewitching in equal measure. When Daniel died five years ago, succumbing in six months to the efficient liver cancer he had long before managed to beat with such misleading ease, Julia could not bring herself to move. Queen’s Crescent was where he was, or wasn’t, and his palpable absence had been all that she and Gwen had of him. She was no longer on speaking terms with her own bitter and disappointed mother but Daniel’s parents, Philip and Iris, had helped her with the practicalities. How they felt about this latest development was an uncertainty that made her anxious; asked directly, they were unfailingly elegant and generous. Iris Alden had for some time been suggesting, hinting, commanding that Julia ought to “move on.” It was unhealthy for Julia and Gwen to live in such intense and inward symbiosis, Iris had reproved her daughter-in-law, and each now needed a man around, for different, equally valid reasons. But “moving on” was abstract, where “moving in” was concrete, deliberate, and unavoidable. Julia had first met James through Philip Alden, who had befriended him at an obstetric conference. This ought to have eased her conscience, but didn’t. Philip had recommended her to James as a piano teacher, not a life partner. When she found the time Julia worried for her in-laws, in between worrying about everything else.
Along with five suitcases, several crates of expensive red wine, twelve cardboard boxes of books (many of which proved to be the U.S. paperback editions of novels already in the house), an elaborate sound system with large, freestanding speakers, and a cherished American coffee maker, James Fuller and his son, Nathan, had arrived one afternoon in the balmy golden light and warmth of early September, and for the eleven weeks since then, the household had been black with tension and thunder. Gwen was constitutionally incapable of concealing her loathing and distress; Nathan, a year older and slightly more socially sophisticated, was equally unhappy but would not admit it. To Julia he was obsequious and detectably patronizing.
Alone with Gwen he mostly ignored or bullied her, idly, correcting her grammar or mocking the blog she kept, on which she re-created key scenes from her week with miniature plasticine figures staged in elaborate shoebox sets. James was represented by a Lego figure of Darth Vader, black-helmeted, sinister, wreaking destruction. Nathan appeared in clay, always hand in hand with his girlfriend, Valentina, a polished and imperious little sprite who stayed over whenever he was home for the weekend from boarding school. Gwen had made Valentina beautiful, had faithfully rendered the girl’s silky blonde hair and prominent bust, but she always made the couple’s clothes match, and put them both in sunglasses, even inside, even at night. This was a clever and irreproachable way of making them look slightly ludicrous. Julia, Philip, and Iris made frequent use of this blog to gauge Gwen’s mood. Once upbeat and sunny, it was now unfailingly despairing, since her mother had fallen in love with Darth Vader.
• • •
“I JUST WANTED TO SAY bon voyage, darling.”
Julia wedged the phone between ear and shoulder and continued to do battle with the zip of her luggage. Poised and unflappable, unfailingly judgmental of those who were neither, Iris had an unerring instinct for Julia’s most chaotic moments.
“Thank you. The voyage part might be a bit stressful, we’re late already, nobody’s downstairs. You’d think we were preparing to go away for a month.”
“Under the circumstances three days may come to feel like a month. Have you and Thing planned anything à deux while you’re there? A little breathing space?”
“No, I don’t think it’s possible this time. It doesn’t seem fair to the kids.”
After a heavy silence Iris observed, “Traveling with babies can be so wearying.”
“Iris”—Julia tried once more and the zip slid effortlessly up to its hilt, several fine threads of her favorite wool scarf snared halfway down between its teeth. She lowered her voice to a whisper: “I took on board what you said. I’m trying not to infantilize her, but there will be a lot happening for her—”
“There will be a lot happening for you, too. Last time I checked you were meant to be having some fun.”
“We will.”
“Well do, please. No martyrdom while you’re there, it would be very unfashionable, Americans don’t believe in it. Channel the national spirit. Be plucky and aspiring.”
Julia promised to try. Neither of these characteristics came easily to her, though they were the twin peaks dominating Iris’s own natural territory. Julia poured the remains of the milk down the sink, scanning the surfaces for anything else that might turn into a disaster in three days of neglect. When the doorbell rang she was squeezing a perfunctory spray of kitchen cleaner onto the hob where light splashes of Nathan’s porridge had already set, hard as concrete. Iris was now describing her own most recent trip to America, and a production of Indian Ink on Broadway. Julia of all people really ought to get tickets to the BSO, and Thing loves music, too, doesn’t he? Couldn’t they sneak off to the Symphony Hall? Didn’t Julia think she might deserve it?
“Oh, God, sorry. Cab’s outside, I’d better go. Oh, wait! Iris?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“Are you sure Philip can handle the dog? I know how much he loves him, but Mole’s just so big . . .”
“Philip Alden will be just fine, it’s good for his knees to walk. He’s always threatening to rescue some abandoned scrap from the pound, you know how dotty he is about anything with four legs. They’ll be two alte Kackers together.”
Julia bit her lip. An image arose of the dog bolting after an insouciant London squirrel, pulling slow-moving Philip to the pavement and thence to broken ribs, pneumonia, death. She suppressed this. Mole had not bolted for many years, and his cataracts occluded large items of furniture, so he was unlikely to spot squirrels. His arthritis rivaled Philip’s own.
Julia turned her attention to the thermostat. It had a holiday setting, she was certain of it. She pressed buttons, experimental, pessimistic. Iris interpreted her silence, and responded.
“You want me to say I’ll take him if it doesn’t work out. Julia, that animal reeks. In fifty years I’ve never let a stinking beast into my beloved house.”
“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.”
“But she can’t get a taste for it. These early days matter.”
“He’s got teenagers of his own, he must know she’s having a hard time. He’s a very nice man, Iris. I liked him long before—before all this.”
“Yes, well. I’m not interested in him,” said Iris, primly. This was an outrageous lie. Iris was consumed with curiosity about James Fuller and his family. “I’m interested in Gwen’s happiness, and she can’t be allowed to behave so badly he finds her intolerable. People have long memories for that sort of thing. And now they’re going to be piled on top of one another, and this evening they’ll be fresh off the plane and going to Give Thanks at his ex-wife’s house. It’s a thoroughly bizarre expedition. If they wanted a romantic break, then Julia and Thing should be off frolicking in a country hotel somewhere, not forcing their warring children to pretend to be civilized.”
“I think he wants to show her a little of Boston.”
“Yes, well, that’s one thing, but showing her the ex-wife is quite another. Why do they have to see her?”
“She’s Nathan and Saskia’s mother. And they’re apparently on very good terms.”
“It’s distinctly odd,” Iris declared, with finality. Neither alluded to their own long years of devoted and easy friendship, risen as it was from the ashes of their intermittently tempestuous marriage. It had long been agreed that they were the exception. Instead, Iris moved swiftly to the purpose of her call. “I want Gwen to come to the Puccini with us next week, not that her taste for melodrama needs encouragement. I plan to stage a subtle intervention.”
“Your interventions are never subtle. Will you ask her, or shall I?”
“You’ll ask her. They’re en route to you as we speak, to deliver the slavering beast. Now listen, I know you adore that creature but if Mole wears you out, stick him in a taxi to me. And don’t invite. Insist.” She rang off.