Chapter Five #3
Iris had known instinctively that he’d be too proud to admit to Robbie that he’d stooped to such a visit.
She hadn’t mentioned it to Robbie, either.
It was the first secret she’d kept from him, and she hadn’t liked doing it, but when, the following afternoon, she’d returned from school and found Robbie waiting for her at Heaton bus stop – taller, suddenly broader; grinning as she’d run from the bus stairs – she hadn’t been able to bring herself to make him sad.
Instead, she’d thrown herself into his hug, knocking her hat sideways, and, feeling the vibration of his laugh, laughed too, loving that he was home.
It had since dawned on her that he must, of course, have already known that their friendship had become a prohibited thing.
His father would, undoubtedly, have had his own conversation with him.
Robbie had never betrayed a hint of that to Iris, though: protecting her, just like she’d wanted to protect him.
She could imagine now, all too easily, the scenes he must have endured that Christmas, behind the dower house’s thick sandstone walls.
But, every morning, he’d come knocking for her, a smile on his face, ham and cheese sandwiches in his pockets, ready for another day in the old gamekeeper’s cottage, where they – still children – had played much as they ever had, but with an unspoken awareness shadowing them: that their closeness had become a thing to hide.
Mr Grayson hadn’t given up on trying to get between them.
He’d never got wise to their correspondence, Dear Clarence, so hadn’t known to put a stop to that, but for as long as Iris had remained in Heaton, he’d kept on at her to keep away from Robbie, intercepting her in the laneway, and after church, and at her bus stop – even, once, at her school gate – berating her for trying to drag his son down to her level.
‘I don’t understand why he thinks I’d want to hurt him,’ Iris had said to her mum, after the long summer break of 1931, the autumn she and Robbie had turned thirteen. ‘I never could. He’s my friend.’
‘You’re both getting older, Iris,’ her mum had replied, patting her cheek. ‘Friends have a funny habit of turning into something else.’
Iris had pulled a face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘No.’ Her mum had laughed. ‘You’re not old enough for me to tell you that.’
By the following Christmas, when Iris and Robbie had reached fourteen, Iris had begun to understand.
It had been bitterly cold all through the holiday, but they’d spent as much time as ever in the gamekeeper’s cottage, no longer playing their games of make-believe, but talking, of so many things, and especially what they might do after their school certificate.
Iris had drifted apart from Tim by that point.
They’d tried to stay in touch too, when Tim had first left Heaton, but he’d always been a much better talker than writer, and, as the years had passed, their letters had, without either of them intending it, petered out.
But Robbie had remained close with him, visiting him on exeats, and told Iris that Tim always asked after her, just as she always asked after him.
He’d moved house again, apparently, into the centre of Oxford, and Robbie had cooked up the idea that they should all apply to study at the university together.
‘We can ride bicycles on cobbled lanes,’ Iris had said, on the third frozen day of 1933. It had been the afternoon before Robbie was due back at school, and the pair of them had been kneeling in the cottage’s old kitchen, building a fire.
‘And row,’ Robbie had said, stuffing leaves beneath her sticks.
She’d nodded. ‘I’ll give that a go. And after, we can read poetry on riverbanks … ’
‘Beneath a willow tree?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What kind of poetry?’
‘Any kind.’
He’d smiled, turning to her, and, in the half-light of the cottage’s shell, she’d been struck by how grown up his face had become: stronger, like his body, the boyish curves of his features given way to a new, far from displeasing, definition, that had, out of nowhere, caused heat to rise in her own skin.
‘I can picture you with a book beneath a willow tree,’ he’d said.
‘Can you?’
‘Yes, Clarence.’
‘Well, you know you’ll be welcome to join me.’
‘You know I will,’ he’d said.
And, at the idea, she’d felt her flush deepen.
Robbie had noticed; she’d been certain of that from the questioning slant that had entered his smile.
But he hadn’t appeared embarrassed, or asked her what was wrong.
He’d just held her gaze, his own bright, and, beneath her thick pullover, her heart had thumped.
She recalled how, high above them in the winter’s sky, a goshawk had sounded its call; for those few moments that that bird had sung, and they’d continued staring at each other, it had been as though time had shifted, dropping a curtain on their shared yesterdays, whilst lifting another, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of their adult tomorrows.
Leaning into that glimpse, into each other, they’d tilted their heads, until just a whisper of air had been left between them. Their lips had almost, almost, touched.
Then, ‘Is there someone in there?’ had come an incensed shout, making them both leap in their skins. ‘There is. There’s someone bloody in there.’
Barks had followed: Lord Heaton’s setters.
‘Quick,’ Iris had said, scrambling to her feet.
‘Come on,’ Robbie had said, at the same time.
‘Get out of there this instant,’ Lord Heaton had yelled, his head poking through the hole that had once served as the kitchen’s window. ‘My god, is that you, Iris Winterton?’
And, exploding with laughter, children once more, Iris and Robbie had run for the door and out of the cottage, racing, lungs burning, through the frosted woods, not stopping until they were safely back in their laneway – where, amid the white hedgerows, they’d reluctantly said their goodbyes, promised to write, and mentioned not a word of their almost kiss.
They hadn’t mentioned it in any of their letters either. For the next month, they’d ignored what had nearly happened so completely, that Iris, replaying it constantly, had almost started to wonder whether she’d imagined the entire thing.
Then, at the start of February, she’d stopped thinking about it at all, because her whole world had crumbled, her heart with it, when her mum, her beloved, wonderful mum, had died, suddenly and without warning, of an embolism, walking home across Heaton Green from another day’s cleaning.
Father Bannister had been the one to see her fall, and had run out to her from the rectory, then carried her inside.
Vaguely, Iris recalled him arriving at the cottage to break the news of her death to herself and her gran, but she remembered little of what he’d said.
She had no recollection of the funeral either – which had once again emptied the rainy-day jar – other than that Robbie hadn’t been there, because his father had refused him permission to come.
(I’m sorry, Robbie had written, I am so sorry.) Looking back, she’d held on to almost nothing of that dark, desperate time; her mum had been gone, just like that, and she hadn’t been able to bear it – she still couldn’t – so she’d buried it instead.
But her death had been the end of Iris’s dreams of Oxford (they had, after all, been make-believe), because, without her mum’s support, she’d had no choice but to give up school and earn a wage.
She could have stayed in Heaton to do that, but she’d been desperate only to leave, run as far as possible from her mum’s headstone, the room they’d shared, the sight of her school bus, and the eyes of everyone – Robbie’s father especially – who’d watched her catch it, so proudly.
And although she would still have remained in Heaton if her gran had asked her to, her gran, shrunken by grief, had insisted on leaving too.
Saying that the cottage held too many memories, and would inevitably need to be sold by Lord Heaton anyway, she’d had Father Bannister arrange her a place in a Harrogate church rest home.
‘It’s what I want,’ she’d told Iris. ‘I won’t have you fight me on it.’
Iris hadn’t had any fight in her. Numbly, she’d packed up the cottage – donating almost everything to the rest home, in lieu of her gran’s first month of board – and, using a copy of The Lady loaned to her by Father Bannister’s housekeeper, she’d applied for domestic positions far and wide, accepting the first one she’d been offered, as a housemaid for a Lord and Lady Somers in Surrey.
‘Don’t lose heart,’ her gran had instructed her, the last evening they’d spent together by the cottage fire.
‘You’ve got places to go. It’s your path that’s changing, not your destination.
’ She’d fixed Iris with her beaten eyes, and, unusually for her, reached over, resting her twisted hand on Iris’s arm.
‘You save every penny you can in Surrey.’
‘I’ll be sending my pennies to you,’ Iris had said.
‘I won’t need much,’ her gran had replied.
Iris would have gladly given her everything she had.
But the fight had been gone from her too, and before March had been out, the unthinkable had happened, and she’d joined Iris’s mum in whatever world she’d vanished to, leaving Iris numb with devastation in hers.
Her gran had been buried in Heaton, next to Iris’s mum.
Father Bannister had paid for that funeral from the church’s collection fund.
Iris had attended the bleak, colourless service – Lord and Lady Somers, not unkind people, had advanced her the money for the fare – but hardly anyone else had been there.
Robbie had still been at school, unable to get away (I’ll never forgive my father for this, he’d told Iris), whilst most of the rest of the village, Robbie’s parents included, had remained at home, not deeming Iris’s gran worthy of their goodbyes.