“It’s just so nice to meet you.” Joan’s loose nest of blonde curls bounced as she nodded. Over the crook of her arm was a pink paper bag, from which white creamy shredded paper overflowed. In her other hand was a bunch of tall sunflowers, which she pressed shyly into Julia’s hands.
“Thank you so much, they’re beautiful. Come in,” said Julia, brightly and irrelevantly, since they were already in. For Philip she had resolved to make this new woman feel welcome, but could not shake the fear that she had entered accidentally into an illicit affair. “If she tells you to call her ‘Granny,’” Iris had told Gwen, “I’m calling the lawyers.” Iris had visited only that morning and her presence still hung in the air, like woodsmoke. Julia wondered if Philip could smell Chanel No. 5 and lingering, imperious disdain. But Philip, holding a coat and a small, mint-green ostrich-leather handbag with a long gold chain, had barely taken his eyes from Joan. His hair had been swept up and forward, in a rather stylish cut. He was, Julia realized, startled, wearing jeans.
Footsteps thundered above them and Nathan appeared, striding into the hall with a hand already extended to shake Philip’s, as if about to welcome him into a glass-walled corner office for an interview. Gwen padded down after him, drawing with her a scent of nail polish and acetone. The fingernails of one hand were painted green, with white polka dots; Nathan, too, Julia noticed, had a single green thumbnail. Julia made introductions, and they made their way to the kitchen, where James was making a pot of tea and unwrapping a banana bread from the market. He wiped his hands and came forward to greet them.
“How is it to be free, at long last?” Philip asked Nathan. He was still holding Joan’s light mackintosh, which he smoothed every now and again, a patient, attentive valet. Julia took it from him and hung it over a chair, along with the handbag. Joan fussed and protested and said she mustn’t worry, but then began to move kitchen chairs around so that Philip might have one with arms.
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Nathan told him. Gwen came to sit beside him and from the pocket of his jeans he produced her bottles of nail polish, one green, one white, and set them before her. “Delivered. You remain unsmudged. I never intend to do any exams again. I’m not going to medical school, I’ve told my father already. I’m going to become a crab fisherman in Thailand.”
“When my boys were doing A levels it was a nightmare,” said Joan, accepting the mug of tea that James handed her before sliding it immediately toward Philip. “But then it’s all over before it’s begun, and suddenly that’s it, before you know it. And all these doctors in the family, you’ll sail through.” She looked from James to Philip, and back to Nathan. “Isn’t it a funny thing, all these obstetricians in the family? Both your parents and Phil.”
Iris would die, thought Julia, turning away to hide her smile. She would spontaneously combust. Philip Alden. Phil.
“On a good day Obs and Gynae is the best job in the world,” James told her. “On a bad day I wish I was a plumber.”
“Will you deliver babies, like your parents?”
“No,” said Nathan, rather too firmly. “I’m going to do oncology.”
“Oh, isn’t that wonderful, we need young men like you.” Joan pressed a hand to her heart. “My Steve had lung. And your Daniel had liver, Phil said.” She turned to Julia, who nodded, though her eyes flew to Gwen, who did not take kindly to discussions of her father’s cancer, certainly not to such abbreviated, familiar references to it. But Gwen was at the sink rinsing strawberries and either hadn’t heard or hadn’t minded.
“What a mensch.” Joan looked around for affirmation and found it in Gwen, who was looking at Nathan with an irritating pride. Nathan himself looked down modestly at his hands. He rubbed a finger over his green-painted thumbnail and it smeared. Gwen giggled and dispatched him upstairs for polish remover and cotton balls.
“Where will he study next year?” Joan took Philip’s hand across the table and squeezed it. “Josh, that’s my eldest, was at Guys and St. Thomas’s and he made some lovely friends, though they did work him very hard. I must say, I know it’s not what matters but it’s nice for the parents that all the medicine’s best in London, isn’t it. He did six months of cleft palates in Guatemala, but mostly he was just down in Lambeth and even that feels far away when it’s your eldest and you’re used to having them upstairs. Aaron went to Birmingham. Has he decided?”
“He’s got a place at Oxford,” James told her, while at the same time Gwen said, “He might stay in London.”
“My goodness, isn’t that something?” Joan blinked and nodded several times and looked rather uncertainly from Gwen to James.
James said nothing but stood and moved to the head of the table where he began to slice the banana cake rather formally, as if carving a side of roast beef. Gwen began to run her finger round and round the edge of her empty plate. There was no longer any reason for Nathan to stay in London; Gwen’s convenient misfortune had liberated him. He would go to New College, Oxford, and Gwen, with one more year of school to go, would pine.
James distributed slices of cake and then left for the hospital, apologizing to Joan, who apologized in return for having taken him away from his patients for even this long. After he’d gone Joan gave Philip a small querying glance, received a nod, and then turned to Gwen. She was still holding a paper bag on her lap and this she handed over, hurriedly.
“I hope it’s alright, but this is just a very little something, I had a pattern and I just thought, something cozy. Good for snuggling on the sofa.”
The gift turned out to be a white knitted blanket with a perfect rainbow cabled into its center. “It’s gorgeous,” Gwen breathed. “This is amazing, I can’t believe you can do this! Thank you so much.” She hugged Joan, who flushed, looking pleased.
“Oh, it’s only practice it needs. I can teach you if you’d like; you’d pick up cable in no time. Phil told me that you liked rainbows, so.”
“I do, and I love knitting, I just haven’t had that much practice. I do mostly polymer clay, and a tiny bit of oils. But knitting’s cool ’cause you can do it while you do other stuff, like watching TV or whatever. I’ve been sitting at home a lot for the last few weeks; I could have knitted myself, like, a whole house.”
Joan’s expression softened. “You know, when I first married I had baby fever, and I thought it would be easy-peasy. I got pregnant straightaway and at eight weeks I had a mis.” Julia froze, horrified. Gwen was looking down at the folded blanket on the table, unmoving, and it was impossible to see her face. “The hardest time of my life, till then. And back then no one talked about it, we were just meant to get on with it, pull your socks up, try for another, make it right that way. I don’t know why anyone thinks that’s the answer; it isn’t. Or isn’t for everyone. I didn’t want to try again so we didn’t, not for two more years. I was scared that maybe my body couldn’t do it and it would all happen the same way. And I was very sad for a time. So sad. But then I started to get better and then all those years later when I lost my Steve all I could think was, ‘We had those precious years together first, just the two of us, just to be married.’ And I’ve got my boys, and that time we had, back then I wouldn’t have chosen it for all the world I was so desperate to have a family, but they were beautiful years. We got to know each other. We grew up. I can’t wish it differently.” She ran her fingers idly over each colored arc of the rainbow, in turn. “I like rainbows, too, you know. They’re hopeful. My first Schnauzer dam was called Rainbow because she had these lovely stripy markings, not really what you’d want in a pure Schnauzer, very odd; that’s why I got her in the end; the breeder said no one would take a funny-looking scrap like that so she was left on the shelf, but in the Poodle crosses it just came out beautifully. And what a temperament. Twelve, she lived to. She was my precious girl, she saved me, after Steve. She saved me.”
Julia was cringing, waiting for some unforgivable rudeness, and felt a rush of anger when Gwen raised her head and she saw a tear slip down her face. But Gwen was looking at Joan intently. She said, “We had Mole, and he saved me, too.”
“They just know, don’t they, dogs,” Joan agreed, and she and Gwen smiled at each other.