“This is no good, you know. By the time we reach the front it will have started,” Iris complained, shifting irritably from one foot to the other and peering around the group in front of them, searching for the source of the delay. She was with Philip at the O2 Centre cinema on Finchley Road, waiting in line to buy their tickets for a documentary he was keen to see, about whales. “Wales?” Iris had asked, puzzled, and Philip had clarified. On the assumption that an independently made wildlife documentary was unlikely to cause a box office stampede they had not booked in advance, but when they arrived the line snaked disconsolately around a Pac-Man configuration of security barriers. Iris glanced again at her watch.
“I don’t think it matters a great deal if we miss five minutes. We know the gist.”
“You know the gist. Until five minutes ago I thought it was about scaling Snowdon.”
“If you prefer, we could go downstairs to one of the places for some supper?”
Iris wrinkled her nose in distaste, as if he had suggested they forage for their dinner in the shopping center dustbins. “Can’t we go somewhere civilized every now and again? Coming to the pictures here is one thing but it’s not exactly a culinary destination. In any case, I’ve utterly lost my appetite. This morning has quite literally sickened me. I feel ill.”
“Gwen seems—”
“Gwen is behaving like the stubborn infant that she is, and the most heartbreaking part is that she’s so pleased with herself, and all the while she’s careening toward a cliff; you should have seen her cooing over those baby clothes. She’s overjoyed to be the center of attention and what she doesn’t realize is that she’s simply ensuring in about seven months she will never be the center of attention again. And that friend of hers is sweet enough but utterly air-headed and childish.”
“Well, they’re children, so if they’re a little childish, you’ll have to let them off.”
“I’d feel more comfortable if she had some contemporaries with a brain cell between them. Peer pressure ought to be what changes her mind. If she had some friends with a little ambition she would have made entirely different choices. If Julia had sent her to a decent school—”
“She’s got a wonderful mother. And a kind stepfather. And us.”
“She’ll need more than just us.”
They shuffled forward, the queue diminished by several faint-hearted patrons abandoning their positions, rather than any real progress at the tills. Iris tutted and moved her handbag from one shoulder to the other. “Really, you would have thought the elderly ought not to have to stand around like this. That someone might let them— Oh, thank you so much. Yes, thank you. That’s very kind. Come on,” she commanded, striding forward, “Thank you, yes. Thanks. Now’s the time to say if we’re seeing this or not. Quick. Marine life, or we could give up and call it a night. Perhaps we should call it a night.”
“We’re almost there.”
“I know, but I think I’m too depressed for fish. There are not one but three obstetric practitioners in Gwen’s immediate family circle; I cannot understand how this was allowed to happen. How was it not put right, having happened? It’s derangement. It’s a tragedy. How am I expected to care about whales?” She had become grandly theatrical, which was a bad sign. But they had reached the front of the line, and the moment had come to decide.
“I know. I do—we can give it a miss if you’d like.”
“I’m very tired,” said Iris, which was true, but an uncharacteristic admission of fallibility. She stepped aside, back into the cheery mezzanine of the shopping center. Philip followed her, apologizing to a number of other patrons who had ceded their places to them.
They rode the escalators in silence. Then Iris said, hotly, as if he had contradicted her, “It’s a travesty. Gwen doesn’t deserve—she’s an innocent. She’s an innocent and she has no idea, absolutely not the faintest idea, what’s about to happen to her life. She thinks she’ll have a dolly and all this gratifying attention she’s commanded will go on and on, and instead her life is going to be torn limb from limb by ravening—I was going to offer anyway but if she nips it in the bud, then I’ve told Julia I’ll put her through art school. Tuition, accommodation, extra for blackmail, whatever it takes.” She stepped off at the bottom of the escalator and with an irritable gesture offered Philip a hand to disembark, which was accepted without comment. “Are you walking or am I driving you?”
“You’re driving me if you wouldn’t mind. Of course it’s a very generous idea, if they’d like it.”
“They’re a bunch of ostriches, and I’m including the so-called adults in this situation. Mass inertia. Needless. Needless. And if she really goes through with this entirely dishonorable kamikaze maneuver, I’m going to hire and subvention a nanny myself.” Iris began to hunt in her handbag for her car keys and Philip felt suddenly relieved to be going home. The whales could wait. He was weary, and Iris was in a dangerous temper.
“Do you remember that Italian au pair?” he asked, hoping to draw her back from the brink. It was sometimes possible to soften her, with care. “May I hold your umbrella? You’ll have a hand free. She was a nice girl. It was very helpful having someone.”
“Gioia. She was a bloody idiot,” said Iris, shortly. She had located the keys and set off at a clip into the dark parking lot. Philip strained to keep up, his knees singing in protest as he marched stiffly behind her, the umbrella angled forward to shield Iris from the drizzle. A moment later she drew to an abrupt halt.
“Where is the bloody car?”
“Over there, I think. She was only homesick, wasn’t she? Daniel liked her, which was what mattered. She was good with him.”
“She left me high and dry, five minutes before I was due to join you in Paris for the weekend. Can you hold that thing a little higher; it’s starting again. She was a selfish little girl. Ah, I see it there, thank goodness for the beeper thing. Giles had to bring Daniel out on his way to Bargemon.”
“Giles had to—what?” Philip slowed. He struggled to recall a summer, a weekend many years ago, a story from their canon of cherished stories. We were happy: here is Exhibit A. He lowered the umbrella, which was hurting his wrist. “She brought him to us in Paris on her way to Naples. Gioia.”
“She was meant to, yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, darling, it just didn’t line up.” Iris glanced at him, impatient or possibly wary. She seized the umbrella and held it rigidly upright in both hands. “There was a coach that left from London and she was absolutely adamant about making her parents’ wedding anniversary or some nonsense. It all ended on bad terms because she was a fool and I was cross and then I was absolutely in a fix. I couldn’t leave the boy to travel by himself on the ferry.”
“Well, of course not but— I don’t entirely understand. You left him with Giles, is that what you’re saying? When you came to Paris?”
Iris had begun to walk again but Philip didn’t move, and she was forced to turn around to address him. She had begun to look indignant. “Yes, Philip, there’s no need to sound so outraged; that’s what I did. On balance it was expedient. You and I had had that awful row before you left and then you’d written a sweet letter about the two days you’d planned for us and I didn’t think I ought to let you down. It’s raining; can we talk about this in the car? Well, come and stand under this bloody umbrella then. Oh, really. Things were feeling a little unsteady. And it wasn’t even a change of anyone’s plans at all in the end; Giles just drove a slightly longer route to Bargemon; he was coming to France anyway. I couldn’t exactly leave Daniel with the au pair when there was no au pair to leave him with. Look, I didn’t want to cancel, and Giles offered to help me out of a fix and that was that. Why do you look so cross? He took his charge very seriously, I assure you; they had a wonderful time. Daniel told me all about it.”
Philip rubbed his eyes, slowly, and did not look up. “You lied to me.”
Iris could think of no appropriate answer, for she and Giles had both lied to Philip a hundred times over the years, mostly about sex at parties or on assignments or for weekends in the Cotswolds, or late nights at work. She had always assumed Philip had taken for granted these many small deceptions. Calculating now, she realized that this revelation dated her affair with Giles long before it might otherwise have been suspected. Certainly years before the official record.
“You and Giles lied to me,” Philip repeated.
“It was only— This is madness, you and Giles were great friends later on. Please get under the thing.”
“You made my son lie to me.”
“Well, darling, there were other little white lies flying around in those days.” She halted, suddenly uncertain. This was dangerously close to heresy in the sealed, private world they’d spun; she was in high winds, and playing precariously near to the cliff edge. The enchantment had kept them safe for almost five decades, a flexible, devoted love and companionship, enfolded in a cloak of tacit understanding. She fell silent. The rules were the rules.
Philip said again, “You made Daniel lie to me. He was a little boy. You put a lie between me and my son.”
“We had such a wonderful time that holiday, the three of us,” Iris said, weakly. Philip’s voice had broken as he spoke this last, awful, and surely disproportionate accusation; she felt a tickle of panic that he had so misunderstood. “He adored you, how can you think that anything could come between you.”
“Iris.” There was a pause as he removed his glasses, streaked and beaded with raindrops, flashing amber and saffron in the reflected light of slow-passing headlights.
“Better you had stayed with Giles,” he said, quietly. “Better some truth, finally, so there would be no, no wound between me and my son. Better anything than distance with my son, than a lie between us. He must have been so bewildered and you colluded with him, you and Giles, and made his father into a— I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t understand. And Daniel isn’t here. He isn’t here for me to tell him not to worry.” He took several steps backward, unsteadily, away from her.
“We’ll talk more in the car; come on,” said Iris, turning decisively. “Darling, this is madness, he was a child, he’d forgotten it by the time he’d had a crepe and seen a little of Paris.” She felt perilously close to a full-blown row, something that had not happened, she realized, since the day they’d finally signed their divorce papers. Or perhaps not since the day he had shouted at her for shouting at Julia for wearing black to Daniel’s funeral. In any case, she couldn’t stand to see him standing in this downpour, could not bear the way the rain had plastered his fine, white hair to his scalp, the way fat drops slipped down his cheeks like tears. Without glasses he looked vulnerable, and very old. How could Philip Alden be so old? He should not be out in this weather, at this time. She put her head down and strode the few remaining steps to draw him with her into the car. She turned on the engine, the heater, the heated seats. The first thing was to get him warm and dry, and then she could explain. But he had not followed her.