It was the telegram in the Post Office that threw Iris off balance – not that it took very much to do that these days – the telegram that led her into the piped-music-washed womb of the coffee bar.
It was a very ordinary telegram clipped to the top of a pile of them on the clerk’s side of the counter. It was upside down and she read it through the glass partition. The coding at the top and the time of despatch were of no interest. It was the message that sent her into the valley of despair, hurrying to the solace of coffee and cheesecake and the acquisition of goodness knew how many undesirable calories. ‘All my love, Roy’. Four words.
She turned from the counter without buying her stamps, walked agitatedly down the street, sat down at the nearest table in the nearest coffee bar.
‘Yes, dear?’
The waitress, no more than nineteen, had black-ringed eyes with lashes so heavy it was a wonder to Iris she could see.
‘Coffee, please.’
Iris followed her gaze to the trolley laden with over-creamy cakes in papers, chocolate layer cake, humpbacked shiny éclairs, cartwheels of Danish pastry.
‘I’ll have some cheesecake.’
The girl scribbled on her pad, tore off the sheet, folded it and slipped it under the glass of paper serviettes. As she did so the man came in. They both saw him together, became linked, the nubile girl and the middle-aged woman, with a common bond of desire.
He walked like a panther, light and boneless, carrying his six feet like a feather, broad chest narrowing to slim hips, elegant suit following his every move. An actor, Iris thought, or could have been, more probably, an executive: authority radiated from him. He wore a red carnation in his buttonhole as if by right.
The waitress, rooted to the spot, sighed. ‘They always sit at Jean’s table. There’s no justice.’
‘Coffee and cheesecake,’ Iris said. She was used to dealing with daydreaming juniors.
‘Not one of our regulars. Wouldn’t mind taking him home.’
‘I am in rather a rush,’ Iris said.
He had sat down and was studying the menu while the sharp-nosed Jean waited patiently by his side.
‘I’ll have a Welsh rarebit, and coffee.’ He smiled dazzlingly at Jean, then, to her utter amazement, he smiled at Iris.
All my love, Roy. All her life, more often of late, she had longed to receive and, even more, to send so simple a message, so few words in which were implicit so infinite a meaning. All my love. She had so much to give, so very much. Sometimes it overflowed and engulfed her, reducing her to tears. She’d look in the mirror then, to dry her eyes and see what they all saw, a stout woman of middle age whom love had passed by.
It seemed incredible to Iris, incredible and indescribably painful, that no one realised that inside the fat and ugly body were thoughts, deeds, hopes and fears identical with those beneath the bosoms of the slim and beautiful. There was so much love within her unprepossessing exterior that sometimes Iris feared it would break its bonds and flow in a glorious river of beauty to swamp the nearest stranger. So much gentleness, so much compassion, she sometimes willed it to wither and die so that she might be left in peace.
The girl was right. There was no justice. She knew how to treat a man, had more love to give than the hard-faced bitches working through their second and third marriages, pitilessly reducing their mates to size; more than the pretty dollies who took and took; more than the moaners, the naggers, and the succulents who grew fat on the lifeblood of their men.
She knew they were weak and that she was strong, that they needed the comfort of her arms, the tranquillity of her bosom. She would be quiet, unshakable, always ready to give. She knew the secret, the strength, the ability to give and to give and to give … He was still looking at her, more gravely now. She was undeceived by his air of authority. She knew he was tense, nervous, angry, demanding, thoughtless, selfish; that he was weak….
‘Coffee and cheesecake,’ the waitress announced.
‘Pardon me?’
Iris looked at her. ‘I didn’t say anything.’
The blank, sooty eyes examined her.
‘It was cappuccino you was wanting?’
Iris looked at the frothy, steaming cup. ‘Yes, thank you.’
‘The cheesecake’s fresh.’
She smiled dismissal at the girl, and together they both had a final look at the man. He was waiting for his Welsh rarebit and still looking at Iris in what she could have sworn was an inviting way. She felt a slow blush creeping up her neck in the manner of a young girl, which she was not. Most decidedly was not. She started on the cheesecake. Perhaps after all there was going to be someone.
His order had arrived. She liked the way he ate, unhurriedly, calmly. He caught her looking and she turned her attention to the coffee, uninteresting and too weak. We would have a little house, she thought, perhaps by the river, not a so-called ‘town house’ made of matchboxes, something older, more mature, that’s what she was, but that was what a man needed, someone to rely on, who would always be there.
She would give up work – he looked as if he could keep her – and economise by making things for herself, the house, growing vegetables if there was a tiny garden, she’d always had green fingers. They wouldn’t need many friends, not when she had someone of her own, they’d be self-sufficient, stay at home most evenings, people’s eyes would light up with envy – ‘my husband, meet my husband’.
He was smiling openly now, she smiled back, her heart singing. The cheesecake was gone but she scarcely recalled eating it. He had finished, too, except for the last of his coffee. His smile was a bit lopsided really, rather attractive; lazy, dreamy eyes. He beckoned to Jean for the bill.
Iris called for hers, her hands shaking a little as she fumbled in her purse. Would he come over, or would they meet outside? She wished she’d worn her new suit, nearly had, but it still grew chilly in the evenings. All my love, Iris. On cards and telegrams. On birthdays and anniversaries, and sometimes on nothing at all.
He was standing up now and looking straight at her, or rather at her right ear. She glanced behind her, and a girl with green eyes, bathed in auburn hair, tall and reed slim, was getting up from her table. She wore a pale pink suit and her legs seemed to go on for ever. She insinuated herself past Iris’s table and went over to the man. Together they walked out of the shop, he holding the door open for her. They stood for a moment on the pavement laughing into one another’s faces, then disappeared down the street.
Iris waited for the pain, which started in her throat, to recede …
It did so, slowly numbing as it went.
She was nothing; a fat fool. How could she have expected him to see inside her where lay all the love? Had there been a mirror opposite she would have been all right; would never have made such a stupid mistake, believing that she looked as she felt. In dissection she and the green-eyed girl would prove identical, except in Iris there would be more tenderness, more compassion, more love.
He probably hadn’t even seen her at all, sitting there fat and flushed with her coffee and her cheesecake, and her kind but untidy face.
She saw the green-eyed girl in the house by the river. It would have to be the town house though, and no vegetables, quite definitely no vegetables; you couldn’t grow courgettes and avocado pears. She’d lie there in a leisure gown waiting for him to come home; if he was late she’d scold and he’d soon grow tired. Tired of her green eyes and her auburn hair and her scolding, and their voices would rise, and they would live in toleration not in love, and most probably when his hair grew grey and she’d sucked him dry she would put on her town clothes and leave the river, and sit in a coffee bar where a man would smile at her …