My Former Heart Page 3

  ‘For you,’ he said, pretending to produce the flowers from behind his back with an elaborate flourish.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Iris, smiling.

  ‘If you care to examine the specimens, you will note that there are several types of iris among them,’ Michael went on, as if he were a teacher and Iris his pupil.

  ‘Really? I wouldn’t have known. I only know the blue kind that you get in England. Oh, and those rather ugly tall brownish ones with yellow bits. I never care for them much; they look like dead leaves.’

  ‘These are Mediterranean ones. And wild. They’re quite different.’

  ‘This looks like a cornflower.’

  ‘Good girl! It is a close relative, yes. And this one is of course a kind of daisy.’

  Iris held the flowers to her nose, inhaling their trace of scent, not floral as much as like hay and blackberries: the smell of faraway English fields in autumn.

  Back in the car Michael leant forward from the back seat, telling them things. He said that one of the gorges leading down to the coast was where Adonis had lived, by the source of the river which bore his name. This was where the story of Venus and Adonis came from.

  ‘It’s terribly romantic, don’t you think?’ he asked Iris, his nose level with her ear so that she could feel his breath, slightly damp, tickling her neck just below her ear lobe. Iris smiled and carried on looking straight ahead.

  They stopped at the crusader castle and clambered up, disturbing flicking lizards and fat black beetles as they climbed. The mossy walls were covered in honeysuckle, the honeysuckle busy with sparrows.

  ‘What will you do when the war’s over?’ Digby asked her, the first question he’d put to her all day.

  ‘I don’t know. Go home, I s’pose. Carry on as before.’ She was aware of how ungracious she sounded, but a sudden lurch of feeling made her monosyllabic: even as she spoke the words, she knew that she would not be able to continue with her old life. The idea of that life filled her now with panic. There was nothing terrible about it, it was pleasant enough: she had a kind husband, a comfortable house, a child. But to Iris it all felt terribly wrong, as if she’d caught the wrong train and was now speeding, unstoppably, towards a destination miles and miles away from where she was meant to be. She could feel the colour coming to her cheeks and hoped her companions would not notice her blushing. ‘What about you?’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to travel. I’ve met some super fellows from New Zealand. Might go there for a time, see if I can help out at a hospital.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Michael interjected. ‘I know you, Digby. You’ll be tucked up safe and sound up north, same as ever. It’ll be a local practice: elderly ladies in narrow-brimmed hats with varicose veins, farmers with bunions. Anything for a quiet life.’

  Digby grinned. ‘We’ll see.’

  After the picnic she barely saw Digby for days. Two hundred Greeks arrived at the school, as well as a detachment from the SBS. The doctors had plenty to do, giving them all the once-over before they were sent out to train in the snow, and there was a lot of paperwork for Iris. When Digby appeared at the door of the room she used as an office, to ask whether she’d like to make up a four at bridge after dinner that night, she felt inordinately pleased to see him, as if they’d known one another for years. There was something very endearing about him, she found: his almost absurd height and the prominent bone in the bridge of his nose made him resemble a rather solemn wading bird. She liked his voice and his rather shy sidelong smile. She was fond of Jimmy, but he was always so busy and caught up with running things and anyway he was really from Edward’s past life more than hers. It was nice to find a new friend. This was the first time Iris had made a friend of a man: although she knew men, and liked them, they were generally friends of her husband’s or the husbands of her friends. Or else they hadn’t been friends but boyfriends, which was quite a different thing. Digby was the first man she’d ever made friends with on her own account. Most evenings after that they played cards, and when they had days or afternoons off they went down to the sea somewhere or to a café in a town. Occasionally Michael joined them, reminding Iris what it was like to be flirted with.

  ‘Has anyone ever told you what marvellous eyes you have?’ Michael asked her, one afternoon.

  ‘Now, what would you think?’ she said.

  ‘I think yes. But I bet no one’s told you what colour they are.’

  ‘No?’ She smiled.

  ‘Aventurine.’ He looked very pleased with himself, as if he’d produced a winning hand at cards.

  ‘But that’s cheating!’ exclaimed Iris. ‘I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what it looks like.’

  ‘It looks like your eyes is the thing. It’s tawny-coloured glass, with flecks of gold in it.’

  ‘Sounds lovely.’

  ‘It is. You are.’

  Iris blushed.

  As the spring went on, the snow around the Cedars began to shrink back, exposing ever wider strips of bare, rocky ground. The school was to remain open for the early part of the summer at least, training men in other aspects of mountain warfare, such as rock climbing. One morning, when Iris was at her desk, Digby came in without knocking.

  ‘Quick! You absolutely must come at once!’ he told her.

  She stood up, flustered.

  ‘Where? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about. Not anything like that, but you must come. Outside. Quickly.’

  She followed him along the corridor, out into the courtyard and round the side of the building to a spot where they could see straight down the valley, which sloped away towards the sea. There were already a number of people standing about, looking. And then Iris saw what they were staring at: below them, suspended in the air, hung a great dark cloud which writhed and tumbled in the cool air.

  ‘Look,’ said Digby, pointing.

  ‘Goodness!’ said Iris. ‘What on earth is it? Not locusts surely?’

  ‘If it’s a swarm of bees we might be well advised to get out of the line of fire,’ someone said.

  ‘They’re too big to be bees.’

  ‘You don’t think they’re bats, do you?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Are they wee birds?’ someone asked.

  ‘They must be,’ someone else said.

  Everyone stood still as the cloud danced closer and closer, until it was possible to discern individual shapes among its mass. Spots of colour on their wings flashed as they caught the sunlight; others were only white, fluttering upward like handkerchiefs blown from a washing line, caught in a current of air.

  ‘Butterflies!’ Iris laughed, delighted.

  There must have been hundreds of thousands of them, some flying only a few inches above the ground, others as high as a three-storey house. They flew up onto the plateau and then on, up towards the pass. It was as if some invisible dam had burst, and the butterflies were flooding the sky in a swollen river of flight. Almost as remarkable as the sight of them was the silence: they moved as soundlessly as a great shoal of fish. By and by, everyone in the building came out to look. Some of the men were holding out their hats, catching the butterflies in them as easily as if they had been shrimping nets, dangled in a shallow rock pool. Iris put her arm through Digby’s and they stood looking together.

  The butterflies kept coming for two days. Everyone talked of little else. Teams who ventured up towards the col said the upper slopes were littered with dead butterflies, their wings darkening as they blotted the moisture from the ever-retreating snow. Iris and Digby collected several from the ground in the courtyard and put them in cigarette boxes, to take to Michael. He’d be able to identify them, they were sure.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, the way Michael goes on?’ Digby asked her, as they drove down to the coast, a week after the butterflies had stopped, with the specimens on the back seat. ‘I mean, you don’t find it tiresome the way he …?’

  ‘Heavens, no,’ said Iris. ‘It’s all qui
te good-natured. Anyway, he’s amusing.’

  ‘But you’re not …’

  ‘Oh no. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Because of your husband?’ asked Digby. It was the first time in their friendship that he had mentioned her marriage.

  ‘Not actually.’ Confiding didn’t come readily to Iris; she preferred to live than to talk, but she felt she could trust Digby, that there was an understanding between them.

  ‘Look, the thing is that there’s been someone else. Someone since I was married, I mean. It all came to a head last year, while Edward was out of the country on service. Then things got rather complicated because he was sent away suddenly, and I didn’t know where he’d been posted – this other man, not Edward. Then I saw him, I was sure it was him, on a newsreel and it was all rather frantic, and one way or another that led me to Cairo …’

  Digby was silent.

  ‘Oh dear. Do you disapprove?’ asked Iris.

  ‘No. It’s not that,’ said Digby.

  ‘The thing is that I didn’t find him, and now I’m not sure that it would have been a good idea anyway. I’m not sure that I want to know where he is after all. I mean as long as he’s all right. I’ve been trying to forget about him. It was too much, you see. He isn’t free either, his wife’s … well, perhaps we needn’t go into that. Anyway, I … I certainly wasn’t thinking that Michael … I mean, it’s the last thing …’

  ‘No. I should think not.’

  ‘You’re the only one who knows. Jimmy doesn’t know anything about it, and I’d rather he didn’t,’ she said, suddenly regretting her unaccustomed candour. ‘It’s all been rather a muddle. I know I’m entirely at fault, but …’

  ‘No, of course. I’ll say nothing.’

  After this she began to see rather less of Digby. Their nightly card games somehow stopped, although they still kept each other company, not talking much, when they both had a day’s leave. In due course Michael went back to London. Among his luggage were several crates full of carefully wrapped insects, the shells of gastropods and of other molluscs, seed pods, snakeskins, and the butterflies his friends had brought him. Personnel changed too up at the Cedars; people came and went. By now there was a staff of some hundred ski instructors. Extra buildings had had to go up, to accommodate the two thousand students who were billeted at any one time. Jimmy offered Iris the opportunity to return to England if she wanted to, but she chose to stay on. Ruth was happily installed at her grandparents’, busy with her school and a best friend whom she evidently adored, to judge by how often she was mentioned in letters. It was rather a wrench, being away from her, but it was better for Ruth to have the continuity of her life in Malvern. Iris had learned to ski herself and found it exciting. Also, somewhat to her surprise, she realised how much she liked to work, to be of use. She was in no hurry to go back, uncertain as she remained about her future with Edward. She rather imagined she might end up alone, although the thought no longer troubled her.

  But in the spring of 1944, the commanding officer called Iris into his office to tell her the school would be closing down at the end of the season. Half the staff would go on to Italy, to continue their work there; the remainder would be going elsewhere. He was not able to reveal their destination, he informed her rather pompously. The thing was, there would be no post for her as of early summer. Something could be found for her in London if she liked.

  Jimmy already knew of course. He was going to miss the place, his dog especially: a local Alsatian had unofficially adopted him soon after he’d arrived, joining in on training exercises, knocking people over. The dog had become a sort of mascot to them all. The commanding officers came and went, but Jimmy had been here all along; the Cedars was really his thing altogether. He and Iris sat disconsolately in his office, smoking.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with myself quite,’ said Iris. ‘I’ve grown so used to being here, so fond of everyone.’

  ‘Mountains have a queer effect on people,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve noticed that in the mountains one can very easily come to love almost anybody.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about anybody,’ said Iris. ‘I’m not sure if I’d have loved Dumpling, if I’d met him at home.’

  They laughed. Dumpling was a thickset Italian who worked in the kitchens. He was notoriously bad-tempered. One breakfast, when someone had asked for an egg cooked for a shorter time, he’d made a fearful scene and shouted, ‘If you no like-a – go lumpy!’ It had become something of a catchphrase about the place.

  People were leaving by degrees. Jimmy was the first to go. He was to stop in London before joining some of the others in Canada, he’d confided to Iris. Digby was due to leave the week after. On her final evening, after dinner, Digby knocked quietly on the door of her room.

  ‘These books belong to you,’ he said, handing them to her. ‘And I’ve brought us a nightcap.’ He produced a flask.

  ‘I don’t know that I’ve got anything we can drink out of. Will my tooth mug do? We’ll have to share it, unless you prefer to drink straight from that.’

  ‘No, let’s share your glass. So long as it doesn’t taste of toothpaste.’

  Iris fetched it. He half filled it with clear liquid and handed her the glass.

  ‘Heavens! It’s strong. But delicious. It tastes of raspberries.’

  ‘That’s because it’s made of them. Chap down at the French club gave it to me. Good, isn’t it?’

  She smiled. ‘Very good. It’s wonderful to taste raspberries again, reminds me of England. I’d quite forgotten what they were like. Here,’ and she held out the glass to him.

  But instead of taking the glass, he took her wrist in his hand and pulled her gently towards him. Before she had time to protest, his face was against hers. She wondered how his nose would fit, whether it would jab her eye or cheek. Then she noticed the pleasing smell of his skin, like freshly sharpened pencils. As he kissed her, his eyes surprisingly open, she realised that she did not feel indignant or even embarrassed, that in fact she felt nothing but pleasure and did not want him to stop.

  ‘I didn’t think you …’ she said, as he took the glass from her hand and set it on a table and stepped across the room with her hand in his, pulling her down onto her bed next to him.

  ‘No, but I do. That is to say, I am,’ he told her, kissing her hair, her face.

  They lay side by side in the dark room, their clothes forming puddles of deeper shadow on the floor. Iris could not stop grinning, and she sensed that Digby was doing the same. She felt very wide awake and very, very happy, and the happiness was not a precipice, she realised, but a veranda, somewhere she need not fall from, nor scrabble to hold on to, but a place where she might stay and make herself comfortable. It felt like a sort of homecoming, to be naked beneath the sheets with Digby.

  ‘Well, there we are,’ said Digby at last, turning towards her.

  ‘Yes. There we are,’ said Iris. And she took his hand in hers and kissed his knuckles, one by one.

  Chapter 3

  The air in the house seemed to be heavy with steam and the sweet, rotting smell it carried. The only escape was to stay in the sitting room and open the French windows onto the narrow terrace, even if that did mean letting in the cold Northumbrian air.

  ‘Goodness, darling! Don’t have those windows open, you’ll make the whole house freeze,’ said Iris, sweeping into the room where Ruth was sitting at the piano. She was pressing single keys with one finger, before singing the eight notes up and then down each scale. She had already noticed, after only three days in the house, that Iris interrupted her whenever she sang or played. The given reason was that the sound might wake the baby, although Ruth wondered if there were not some other motive, as the baby’s room was surely too far for the music to carry. Iris shut the glass doors firmly and went to put a log on the dwindling fire.

  ‘It’s the smell of the nappies,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s like boiling beetroots mixed with cabbage. It’s worse than school.’

  ‘It is rath
er foul,’ Iris agreed, speaking as she always did, as though anything concerned with the practicalities of the baby had nothing to do with her. ‘But the draught’s not good for Birdle, is it, darling?’ she said, addressing the corner of the room, where a pale-grey parrot was watching her from a cage on a tall wooden stand. The bird was treading from foot to foot in agitation at the sight of Iris, who usually opened the cage directly she came into the room, allowing its occupant to clamber beak first out of its confines and about the room at will.

  ‘Do pipe down!’ said Birdle. The intonation was unmistakably Iris’s. She and Ruth both laughed.

  Birdle had been Digby’s wedding present to Iris. The parrot had become extravagantly fond of her, sitting on her shoulder in the evenings, constantly attempting to feed her pieces of seed or nut, quite possibly regurgitated ones. When she played patience Birdle often sidled down her arm to the table and picked up single cards with his beak, one after another, before distributing them at random across the thick felt, spoiling the game. If Digby came near his wife, if he tried to sit beside her on the yellow sofa, Birdle scuttled along the back, head lowered, and bit him. He shrieked whenever Iris came into the room, but only looked slyly and in silence at everyone else. The sole words he spoke were imitations of her. Ruth was secretly rather afraid of Birdle. She had held him once or twice, at arm’s length in case he tried to bite, and been amazed by the lightness of him: it seemed remarkable that so forceful a personality could be contained within so light a frame. Digby found Birdle endlessly comic, despite having been given a bleeding ear lobe on more than one occasion.

  Ruth had never been close to a baby before. She had caught glimpses of them, of course: pink little faces buttoned into knitted bonnets, their lower halves neatly tucked beneath ribbon-edged blankets, in their passing prams. But she had never held an infant, or even looked closely at one, until now. It was the Easter holidays of 1948, she was fourteen, and she had come to stay with her mother, to meet the new baby, a child who was, it still seemed astonishing to her to realise, her half-brother.