Chapter Twenty-Three
Iris hadn’t looked at the old tin for years.
She had been honest when she said she had completely forgotten about it.
It had been years since she’d looked inside it.
Grief could do strange things to your mind and it had obviously made her tuck this away and forget the sadness she felt when she learned more about her mother’s life.
It had been thirty years since her death yet the act of tracing her fingers over the old grooves of what was her mother’s old tea caddy brought everything back.
The memories felt as vivid as they did back then, completely undimmed by time.
She had managed to appear composed as she sat with Flora and ate the white chocolate ice-cream.
But inside her everything was unravelling.
Each bite of the lolly tasted sickly sweet, the chocolate sticking to the back of her throat; she ate it all knowing that if she didn’t, Flora would worry.
After they had finished, she reassured her granddaughter that she was going to sit quietly and read her book for a while.
But she must have been looking at the same page now for more than an hour, the words swarming in front of her.
It was ironic that she had just happened to think of her mother the other day when she sat here in the conservatory.
Memories of her mum, Maude, did come back to her sometimes, usually random little fragments of when Iris was growing up and then latterly when she was frail and Iris nursed her until the end.
Her father, Patrick, had always been a kind and loving man but he was diagnosed with cancer shortly after she and Frank became engaged, living long enough to walk her down the aisle when they married.
It was only later that she realised that her mother was mourning the loss of not one love in her life but two.
As she neared the end of her life, her mum’s memories and recollections of the past became lucid and vivid and she wanted to tell Iris everything.
It was as though Maude was baring her soul as she told Iris about her first love, Matthew.
He was a boy she had met at a dance hall in Glasgow.
They were engaged to be married and full of hope and excitement for their future together.
Then his draft letter arrived calling him to serve in the war and everything changed in an instant.
They clung to the rare moments they had together when he was home briefly on leave, never quite knowing when they would see each other again.
Then came the news that he had been killed in action.
But she had never stopped waiting for him.
She had looked out the window for weeks and months, hoping he would come back, that there had been a mistake and he was alive. But he never did return.
This was all news to Iris but it explained a lot about why her mum had been so distant growing up.
She wasn’t unkind, just quite detached, her mind clearly elsewhere.
Iris understood that part of her had remained nineteen when her world was shattered and her fiancé was killed.
‘Remember to fall for someone you love and who won’t leave you,’ she once said to Iris as she rubbed flour and sugar together with butter to make scones.
At the time, Iris didn’t understand. Why would she fall for someone she didn’t love? And why would they leave her?
Now with the benefit of hindsight she felt sad about what her mother had gone through.
She had experienced great love but also huge loss which had shaped her outlook on life.
She looked at the tin, sad as she remembered what was inside.
Love letters, faded and worn from being folded and unfolded and reread.
Letters full of love and memories and loss.