“Listen, the baby’s fine. We’re both fine.”
“I can’t…it’s the responsibility, Sam…”
Gently and coaxingly she had lectured him on how he was eminently suited to taking up that responsibility. He knew that already; what he meant was, Sam’s recklessness terrified him. It was almost more than he could take.
Three days later he disappeared. At first Sam thought it had nothing to do with the baby; she gave him a fraught twenty-four hours and then called the police to list him as a missing person. That was when Bob came to the house to take her statement.
“He just popped out to the all-night garage for cigarettes,” she began, as they both sipped their tea. She was hugging a cushion to her stomach, she realised; for comfort and practice.
Bob nodded at her, hung on every word, writing down every scrap she uttered. She was fascinated by his chin and the vivid red of his hands. She could see the white flex of his knuckles working beneath as he scribbled. I’m going off my head, she thought. It’s all too much.
“You hear this all the time, don’t you?”
Bob smiled reassuringly. “Every case is different.”
“No, but the ‘he just popped out’ bit.”
“Well, it turns up quite often, yes. But how else do people disappear if not by popping out? They never have a fanfare. They all do it quietly.”
“But you think he’s upped and left me.”
Bob carefully brought her round to describing her husband and mentioning any distinctive marks he might have. It was ten minutes later when she suddenly burst out, “But he’s got all-over body tattoos! You’re bound to find him!”
The policeman was young and eager and very considerate. Sam told him about the pregnancy and, as time passed, about Mark’s evident qualms, their story, their song, his bisexuality and her doubts that he could hack it. Bob was appalled.
“How could he go after anybody else with a beautiful wife like you?” he said, in the high-pitched voice people often put on the denote incredulity. On Sam it worked and she smiled tearfully. “And as for going after—” he shuddered perceptibly—”queers, well, that’s revolting. I shouldn’t say this, but I think you’re well shot of him.”
Sam was torn. “You think he’s gone off with someone, with some man?”
Bob shrugged diffidently; a man-of-the-world shrug, a we-see-all-sorts-of-queer-buggers-down-the-station shrug. And here he was, six years later, shrugging at her again as he tucked himself into his trousers and stood up in the basement of the shopping arcade.
“It’s off some bloke?”
“It’s off the bloke. The fucking love of my fucking husband’s life—Tony. I thought we’d heard the last. He’s been writing to him the whole time.”
Bob handed back the letter. Suddenly he looked sick. “You think he’s still…seeing this Tony, on the sly?”
She snorted. “Hardly. Tony’s in prison, has been since before we were married.”
She watched what she was saying; not ‘almost at the same time as we were married’. She never told Bob that their getting married in the first place could be attributed to an imprisoning offence of Tony’s.
“Your fucking husband!” Bob spat. He had met Mark only once, and hated him. Mark had returned after three days of hitching around the country, ‘getting his head together’. He came back filthy and found his wife being comforted by the law. Luckily the law had his clothes back on.
“I couldn’t have lived if Tony hadn’t been away,” Sam said. “I didn’t think they were in touch. I didn’t even know they let prisoners send letters out into the outside world.”
Her policeman nodded wisely. “Oh, yes.” He watched her crumple the letter.
“He’s so vile about me.”
“Twisted.”
“Prison must turn them…”
“Turned from the start, if you ask me.”
She sighed. “Don’t start on that. I’ve accepted Mark. He’s safe, we’re all safe…if I can accept his…” She gasped; Bob had seized her wrist.
“I’ll tell you one thing, pet—you don’t get lilac-coloured notepaper and envelopes in prison.”
“You what?”
“The bastard’s lying or he’s mad as a bloody hatter—but he’s not in gaol; I’ll tell you that for nowt.”
EIGHT
THE WORLD IS VERY SMALL, OR SO IT SEEMED TO IRIS. SHE WAS PEELING vegetables on Christmas Eve. She whittled and rolled a smooth yellow potato round in her hands, until it disappeared almost into nothing.
These were preparations for tomorrow’s dinner. Tonight they were eating out, but Iris liked to have things ready.
Yes, it’s all so small and, really, if one puts one’s mind to it, well, anything can be accomplished. We arrive at the states we are in through a simple matter of choice, whether conscious and rational. Her life had been a ragged and bumpy, but ultimately safe, progression towards this point: living happily with Peg in this cosy house on the outskirts of a new town in the northeast. It was a small, ossified and provincial corner of the world, but she had chosen it, she thought.
The idea of choice is a terrifying one. The roads not taken are dizzyingly profuse. People choose too early if they are lucky enough to panic and choose at all. They pick one turn-off and stick with it.
Iris liked to think of her style of living as rather like the way she had observed working-class people eating spaghetti. Not teasing out and winding up strands, but using knife and fork to chop it into shreds, then wolfing the whole lot down. Certainly that was the way Mark Kelly had eaten spaghetti, at their last meal together.
In the end, though, you have to limit yourself. God knows, life imposes its own limitations, but you must make your own, too, so you don’t send yourself bananas in the vertiginous buffet of lifestyle options. So yes, she could see that she was, in a sense, exiling herself to this place and this life, but she thought that was probably all right. She was happy and she was aware she was limiting herself for the right reasons; she was in love.
Iris plunked the shaved potatoes one by one into the pan to save them
