Iris swept Gwen and Katy upstairs into her bedroom, where the beveled-glass doors of the empty, lilac-papered wardrobes gaped open and the windows were now uncurtained. Bonfire heaps of clothing lay on the bed, on the floor, on the armchair, and on one bedside table stood a tower of small white boxes ominously printed in red with the words MOTH KILLER. Each pile had been labeled with torn sheets of lined paper on which Iris had written queries and imperatives such as “Charity?” “Keep!” “Do Not Throw!” “Maybe for summer?” “Gwendolen?” in her tense, listing copperplate.
“You may take anything except from that chair; those I still wear. And if you would like anything from that heap by the wall, then please show me first; there are a few pieces for your mother; the trousers would be far too short for you in any case. I can’t wait to see the back of it all. I feel freer and freer as this exercise advances, I ought to have moved years ago.” She swept her arms out wide, a conductor acknowledging her orchestra. “Anything you don’t want just pop into that empty box over there to take to Norwood, with a few sachets of the moth murderer. I’m scrupulous but it would be mortifying to infect the charity shop.”
Gwen looked over at the cartons uncertainly. On each was printed a red bull’s-eye and a rigid insect, various legs radiating in odd directions as it suffered electrocution or rigor mortis. “I don’t think I should touch moth-murdering stuff, Granny, it might be toxic.”
“As you wish,” said Iris, tightly. She turned to Katy. “The world seems filled with gestational hazards these days. When I was pregnant with Gwen’s father I was desperate to go to Vietnam and everyone was terribly difficult about it, worrying about stress and helicopters and gas, and nonsense like that. I’d never actually been a foreign correspondent; in truth I don’t really know what came over me but I was suddenly longing to go and it was still early days but it was clear that that was where the action was, especially after the Gulf of Tonkin. Of course the paper wouldn’t have it. I told them, my husband is my obstetrician and he says there’s no reason why not, women have babies in Vietnam, one’s brain still functions after all, but then they gave me my column and that suited me far better in any case. And Philip Alden was awfully good about my wanting to go but of course men are always happier to have one stay at home, whatever they say.”
Katy tucked her hair behind her ears, smiling in admiration and with an evident fear that she might be required to respond intelligently about Vietnam, or pregnancy, or men. “Yes,” she said, dark eyes blinking. “Gosh. You were so brave.”
“Women must be brave, Katy darling, if we are to achieve anything at all. Cowardice and skinlessness are the enemies of female success. If one cares at all what others think, one’s done for. In any case, there will be crumpets in the bread bin when you pause. Assuming,” this to Gwen, “that your mother hasn’t done another wonderfully officious sweep around my kitchen and packed the bread bin. When you have a cache call me up.”
Alone in the bedroom, the girls exchanged incredulous glances. Iris had always had exquisite taste, even in the days in which she and Philip had been supporting his parents as well as managing their own mortgage, and she had kept almost everything. Already Gwen could see two BIBA dresses, one in burgundy, the other lilac jersey, and, from a still earlier era, a yellow poplin blouse with an oversized Peter Pan collar. A vision of her future self arose—she could become stylish and eclectic and enviable, and could sashay to school next year in lace and silks. By then she would have an unimaginable new life, and a new, more sophisticated wardrobe seemed only fitting.
They began clearing the bed. Ruthlessly they discarded cotton shirts and office slacks. Then Gwen unearthed a boxy sweater in pale peach mohair and moments later Katy held up a slippery fuchsia blouse which Gwen, who did not wear pink, said she should keep.
“So how long will you be able to wear normal clothes?” Katy asked, folding the blouse with care. Gwen had confided in her only a week ago, swearing her to secrecy, and they had talked exclusively and exhaustively of the pregnancy ever since.
“Dunno, forever probably, because I’m so insanely tall. I don’t want to tell anyone at school till the end of term. My mum will tell the teachers then, and start planning next year and stuff.”
“Is there anything at all yet? Like, a minibump?”
Gwen lifted up her sweater and Katy peered speculatively.
“Nothing, you’re still superskinny. It’s just so crazy. I think it will feel more real once you look pregnant. Is Nathan getting excited?”
“It’s a bit early for all that,” said Gwen, suddenly vexed. She pulled down her sweater and returned her attention to the bed. This was a provocation from Katy, she felt, who was well aware that excitement had been thin on the ground in the Alden-Fuller household. In any case, how could anyone be expected to get excited about something more than half a year away? She dropped a belt into a pile of rejects.
“I’ll take that if you don’t like it.”
Gwen handed her the belt, and then returned in silence to her own heap. Katy’s questions always pertained to Nathan—how did he feel, what did he want, would he “stand by” her—closed-minded Katy had instantly reverted to the language of another century. Gwen had had to explain that pregnancy happened to two people, it was not for a woman to be “stood by” or otherwise, and that she and Nathan were in total accord. This last may have been a slight exaggeration for he had so far resisted her attempts to bring him round to the idea of fatherhood, even in the abstract. The last few times they’d talked he’d grown panicked, twice had cried, and each time, to comfort and convince him, she assumed a depth of conviction she did not feel. But unlike the parents he never seemed angry, nor did he seem to blame her. Something had befallen them both, and he said he believed she was trying to make the best of it, even if his best and hers were not (yet?) in concert. He was still her boyfriend. Relations between them improved when she realized that all he wanted was to discuss it as little as possible; if she adhered to that stipulation, everything continued between them, if not exactly, then almost as before. That morning she had taken time away from her own work to bake raspberry and white chocolate muffins that might fuel his; he had eaten three and lifted her heart by declaring them (and herself, she inferred, by proxy) “awesome, thanks.” When he was home he no longer chided her nor even seemed to notice if she played with her phone or doodled blog designs on the corners of her notes and this, conversely, encouraged her to focus in order to win back his notice. At first his disengagement had unsteadied her but she knew him, and knew how it would be. He would be incredible, once it became necessary for him to be incredible. The male instinct was to deal with what lay immediately ahead; he had exams and university decisions and these were all-consuming. Nine months of pregnancy would take them to Christmas; it was now only May. Katy had sworn secrecy and support and undying friendship, but today she was filled with irrelevant, childish questions, and Gwen had begun to wish she had not told her.
“It is actually ages, isn’t it? I guess you found out majorly early.” Katy was twirling a glossy lock of dark hair round and round the end of her nose, thinking. Then she ventured, “Aren’t you scared? You must be, a bit.”
“I’m really not. I’m just excited to meet my baby.”
An opportunity offered, and rejected. Katy recognized the lie, for behind her eyes Gwen saw a willing empathy shut down; instead, disappointment that she, long-trusted, wasn’t to be trusted now. Katy would have said, “I know,” she would have stroked Gwen’s hair and said again, stoutly, You’ll be wonderful, you’re doing the right thing. It’s natural to have wobbles, it doesn’t mean you’re making the wrong choice. No one else would offer this reassurance. But how could Gwen confess that she struggled to focus upon what would inevitably follow this pregnancy? It was there in her peripheral vision, but when she turned her head it slipped away like a phantom and her mind would skip elsewhere, distracted, relieved. Far easier to daydream about how her classmates might react upon finding out, about how she might look by late summer, a neat, startling bump, a badge of distinction; a commanding unequivocal sign of adult womanhood. It was the pregnancy for which she had fought. What must come next—a baby, motherhood—was hazier, and harder to comprehend. Ludicrous, even. But to admit fear was to admit doubt, and if she admitted her doubts aloud, she knew, her outward conviction might crumble.
Katy held up a polka-dotted handkerchief, a peace offering. “This is megacute; maybe you could put this on the baby’s head, like a bandana. It’s all just so crazy. You have to tell me everything. I want to know every single thing.”
“Then stop talking so seriously about everything,” said Gwen crossly. But then she relented and said, “Obviously I’ll tell you everything. But you’ll see, so you’ll know it all anyway.”
“I told you I’ll come every day on my way home, I’ll be, like, the fun auntie. And I want to come with you when you have scans, and help you buy things and get ready and everything.”
“I feel sick again, I’m sitting down. You can hold stuff up and show me.” Gwen sank heavily into the armchair, on top of an untouched pile of coats. It helped to imagine a future with Katy always there, involved. With her friend by her side it would be far less frightening to do whatever needed doing.
They worked on, exclaiming intermittently about gems found and horrors unearthed. At the back of a wardrobe Gwen spotted a small, scratched leather suitcase and she humped this onto the duvet. Katy was holding up a pair of white silk trousers when Iris herself appeared and took these from her reverentially. She wore a misty-eyed expression, as if an old lover’s photograph had slipped from the pages of a battered paperback.
“I bought those on holiday in Nice one summer. I’ll keep them, I might wear those again. Ah, I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each, though they’re not flannel, thank God, they’re Pierre Cardin. Where on earth did you find that case? You’ve no reason to concern yourself with that,” she snapped, laying down the trousers, but Gwen, who considered her grandmother’s presence to be sufficient permission, had already clicked open the thick brass buckle. The lid of the suitcase flopped back to reveal its torn and faded paisley-print lining, and six neat stacks of pressed and folded baby clothes.
“Granny!” Gwen breathed. “Were those Dad’s? Oh, please can I have them?”
“Absolutely not,” said Iris, firmly, but was met by imploring looks from both girls, and a quivering lower lip from her granddaughter.
“No. Oh—fine. But I’d like to be clear that this does not constitute endorsement. Katy, I have not yet heard your opinion on the matter but I shall tell you for the record that I believe continuing with this pregnancy to be an act of self-sabotaging imbecility on my granddaughter’s behalf, as she well knows. You may keep them if you insist. Lord knows what’s in there. Your father’s baby clothes, a baby blanket, and if I recall, an elaborately hideous collection of rather itchy cardigans knitted by Philip Alden’s mother, who had, as you will soon see, a great deal too much time on her hands.” She turned to go. “I sincerely hope if they do anything, they drive home a little reality. Those are clothes for a human, not a plaything. I am displeased.”
It was Katy who a moment later was wiping away tears and this decided Gwen’s own course of emotional action, till then uncertain. She had many precious artifacts, but it had been so long since she’d unearthed something new of her father’s. A lump had risen in her own throat, but when she saw Katy crying she said firmly, “Don’t be silly.” Her father as an infant had not yet been her father; these were adorable but did not represent a person she could reasonably miss. She put her arm around her friend and realized, with a pounding heart, that it was possibly her first spontaneously maternal gesture.
Katy nodded and sniffed, wiping invisible mascara smears from beneath each eye with her ring fingers. “I’m sorry. It’s just, it’s so nice. You might have pictures of your Dad in some of these little outfits, and I just thought that when your baby comes you can take the same pictures, and—and that’s really special. Oh, no, Gwen, please don’t cry, I’m so sorry, please don’t cry. They’re beautiful. They’re happy, as you said.”
They sat for a moment with their arms around each other. Gwen reached out reverentially to stroke a tiny playsuit in smocked white cotton, uneven mother-of-pearl buttons down its front. It was utterly unthinkable that a human was at that moment gestating within her, and would one day grow to fit these garments. Her throat constricted. She did not want to picture plump limbs within these tiny sleeves, nor the hot monkey cling of a tiny body. She wiped her nose inelegantly on her sleeve and said, “I have to tell my mum, like, now, she’ll be so shocked that there’s stuff she hasn’t seen, she’s going to freak. And look at these, they’re so gorgeous. I hope she’s okay, she gets upset about my dad, you know. If she comes straight over when I text her and she’s supersad, do you mind hanging out with my granny just for a bit? Just for like, ten minutes?”
Katy said that of course she wouldn’t mind, Gwen’s granny was fantastic, but that she would soon have to go in any case. Actually now, in fact. This had become urgently, pressingly true ever since Katy had seen those tiny, yellowing clothes, museum faded, inert, as lifeless as the man who’d once worn them. She was desperate to get on the Tube back to Totteridge where her own father, full-bellied and balding and a hale and hearty forty-five, would be there to give her a hug and to promise her, Scouts’ honor, that he wouldn’t die. Gwen’s suitcase of Gothic, desiccating sleep suits, like the dead husks of abandoned snakeskins, was intensely distressing.
“It’s a sign,” Katy said firmly, retrieving her own sweater from beneath a pile of pillows. “Even if your granny didn’t want you to, your dad meant you to find them; even though he passed away he’s looking over you and the baby.”
Gwen said, “Mmm,” not very convincingly. She loathed such specific and improbable states as “looking over,” which evoked a nosy neighbor peering over a picket fence. She also disliked “a sign,” and particularly “passed away,” the latter because she felt it sounded somehow passive and a little foolish, as if her father had accidentally missed an exit on the motorway when, if anything, to die was to take the ultimate definitive action. And she did not like to have the pregnancy connected to her father. She had tried to tell herself he would be proud of her for choosing a hard, brave path but still, it seemed unlikely he’d go so far as to send gift baskets from on high. The only person who understood the delicate vocabulary of her bereavement was her mother. Gwen needed urgently to speak to Julia. The girls parted, with equal relief. As soon as she could hear Katy downstairs taking polite leave of Iris, Gwen picked up her phone.
It rang, and rang. Gwen hung up and immediately called back. Where was her mother? And why couldn’t she sense, as of old, that she was needed? Gwen threw her phone onto the bed. The endless steady nausea was insupportable. Without Katy she no longer had the motivation to continue, and she felt hot, and teary, and possibly in need of a nap. She would take her treasures home, and she would wash them and iron them herself, and keep them in her room and she wouldn’t allow her treacherous mother even to look at them. They were precious, and she could not let them frighten her with intimations of a flesh-and-blood reality to come. Julia did not deserve such relics. She was building a new life, and Gwen must do the same.