Chapter Twenty-Four #3
‘I hear you,’ she said, and not risking so much as a pause for another breath, let their secret go. ‘You’re going to be a father, Robbie.’ Tears burned her eyes, her throat. ‘We’re having a baby, so you have to come home.’
More crackling.
Had he heard?
Had he?
‘Robbie,’ she said, frantic. ‘Are you there?’
Silence.
‘Robbie … ’
Then,
‘Iris,’ he said, and she could tell he was smiling. ‘That’s the most incredible news.’
‘The boys only gave up when our last engine did,’ says Tim, his voice raw.
‘We were gliding, still close to land. It was all so silent, except for the wash of the waves. On a clearer night, we’d have been able to see the coast.’ He pauses, and I can tell he’s picturing it: the swirling white air beyond the cockpit; his friends, brothers, looking at one another, accepting their time had come.
‘They took the chutes,’ he says, ‘even though they knew they’d do no good.
I couldn’t manage to go with them. They were …
wretched … about leaving me.’ His lips tremor.
‘Rob tried to take me anyway. He pulled me all the way to the forward hatch. But I told him to leave me, that I’d rather die quickly, than drown slowly.
He said that he couldn’t leave me to die alone, but I made him, told him he had to fight, for Iris.
For their baby.’ He inhales, breath scratching.
‘He should never have been in that plane. I forced him into bombing. I thought we’d be safe together.
But I killed him.’ He lets go a racking sob. ‘I killed them all.’
Helplessly, I stare at him.
I want to find the words to comfort him.
But I can’t.
It’s all too unbearable.
Too hopeless.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ Tim says. ‘I’ve never been able to make sense of it, but as soon as Rob went, the bombs dislodged, falling too, and the plane must have leapt up, gained enough height to clear the coast, because the next thing I knew I was crashing into land.
’ Wheezing, he fights another sob. ‘I don’t remember being found.
But when I came around in hospital, it felt like a punishment.
I couldn’t bring myself to talk about any of it, and everyone assumed I’d forgotten.
It was too easy to let them.’ With a trembling fist, he wipes his face.
‘Fifty-five-thousand men were killed flying for Bomber Command, and six of them were my very best friends.’ His face folds. ‘I’ve been drowning slowly ever since.’
‘Oh, Tim,’ I say, still with no idea how to go on.
And he hasn’t finished anyway.
‘Iris and Ellie never told anyone we hadn’t made it to Berlin.
They didn’t want me to have to fly my last mission, once I was better.
’ He wipes his cheeks again. ‘I’ve known for a long time I need to set this record straight.
Even before Imogen wrote her book. And I never imagined she’d think of making it Iris’s fault.
’ He reaches for my hand, gripping it with surprising strength. ‘I need you to believe that.’
‘Surely you could have asked her to change it … ’
‘I never read her damnable ending. The book was already in print by the time Ellie got a hold of it and told me what had been done. I didn’t even talk with Imogen about the ending.
I didn’t want to remember, and I was terrified of Imogen realising that I did.
’ His whole face droops. ‘I feel sometimes that I’ve spent my entire life afraid. ’
‘You weren’t afraid last time I saw you. You said then that you were already over England when Robbie radioed Iris.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. Felix thought you wanted it out.’
‘I do.’ He nods. ‘I’m glad I’ve done it.’
We fall into silence.
Outside, the weak winter sun shines.
Sightlessly, I look at it, torturing myself with the thought of Robbie, and all of them, disappearing into the black November sea, with their own bombs plummeting around them: I see them alone and cold, drowning, slowly, their lanterns blinking off, then illuminating again, returning them to warmth and safety; their mother’s arms, and fresh years of life.
It’s a wonderfully comforting idea, Ellen said.
I want to find comfort in it.
But I’m struggling to feel anything but the pain Tim feels.
The fear.
‘Would you stop it all from ever happening if you could?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ he says, without consideration, letting me know he’s asked himself the question before.
‘I’d never be so presumptuous. And there was happiness back then.
’ (Love too, said Ellen. So much love. Don’t forget that.) ‘I couldn’t steal that from them.
And if you’re right, and we do keep going, then maybe we’ll one day learn to do better.
Although …’ His voice softens. ‘… I don’t know where that would leave you or your picture. ’
‘I don’t care about the picture.’
‘I do. Very much. Like I said, we need to set the record straight. But, Claudia –’ he looks into my eyes, his own once again filling – ‘I care about you more. A great deal more. Your father, too.’
‘My father?’
Silently, he nods.
I frown, confused.
Why do you care about my father? I almost ask.
Why do you care about me?
But I don’t say anything.
I’m thinking back to his upset before, speaking of his unbiddable mind, and my dad’s being the same.
Noah, he said, in that sad, strained way.
‘Did you know him?’ I ask.
‘Just wait,’ he says. ‘I’ll get to that.’
‘Will you tell me straight away if anything happens?’ Robbie’s mother had asked Iris, back in February.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Iris had promised, knowing, even then, that the day would come when she’d be forced to keep her word.
She hadn’t forgotten it.
Her dreams hadn’t let her.
She was grateful for that, at least: that she’d never taken a moment for granted.
Moving mechanically, she’d left Doverley at dawn for Annabelle Grayson’s nursing home.
‘Where are you going?’ Ambrose had demanded of her, emerging through the cold morning mist to intercept her as she’d left the tower.
‘To where I need to be,’ she’d said, and, ignoring his orders to stop, carried on.
She’d caught the first bus to York from Heaton, then another to the home, where she hadn’t had to tell Annabelle anything, because the instant Annabelle had seen her in her doorway, her entire being had crumpled, and she’d known.
‘Is there any hope?’ she asked Iris, as Iris knelt before her.
‘There’s always hope,’ Iris said, offering her that comfort at least.
But there wasn’t hope.
Robbie was gone.
She knew it.
She felt it, in the hollow he’d left inside her: a space she hadn’t even been aware that his presence on this earth had been occupying.
A space that, here, now, kneeling beside Annabelle, she felt Robbie’s fluttering child turn and reach into, as though searching with its miniscule fingers for the touch of a father it would now never know.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told Annabelle, wanting to give her that comfort too. ‘He knew.’ Her eyes swam. That’s the most incredible news. ‘He was happy.’
‘Of course he was,’ said Annabelle, her own tears falling, laying her hand to Iris’s face. ‘You always made him the happiest. It was your effortless gift to him.’
‘He made me happy,’ said Iris, crying more. ‘Always.’
‘He’ll do it again,’ said Annabelle, her stare full of grief, but faith too. Hope. ‘He’ll find you again. You’ll find each other. I believe it. And until then, you’ll have your child.’
It was as Iris was leaving that Annabelle insisted she take her wedding band.
‘Robbie’s father was different when he gave this to me,’ she said, pressing it into Iris’s hand. ‘I received it in love, please take it with mine.’ Her swollen eyes glinted. ‘This world is far too judgemental a place. Don’t let it judge you. Not more than it already has.’
‘I won’t,’ said Iris, more tears breaking from her. ‘Thank you.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘Go back to Doverley, I suppose. Face Ambrose’s music.’
It was what she intended to do.
But Lord Heaton was in the home’s entrance hall when she got to it. She recognised him easily – he hadn’t changed, other than that he was wearing his silly show colonel’s uniform in place of faded tweeds – and, feeling no inclination whatsoever to speak to him, she walked past him.
‘Get out of there this instant,’ he’d yelled at her, the last time he’d spoken to her. ‘My god, is that you, Iris Winterton?’
‘Is that you, Iris?’ he said again now, pulling her to a halt.
And perhaps on another day, in another set of circumstances, she’d have been surprised that he still knew her.
‘You’re the image of your mama,’ he proclaimed, which might have surprised her too: that he remembered her mother.
But she had no capacity for surprise.
Nor could she muster the energy to care when Heaton told her that he’d just been visiting his sister.
‘What’s brought you here?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, since what would it mean to him?
‘You’re a WAAF at Doverley, I believe?’ he said.
That did take her aback.
‘How do you know that?’ she asked.
‘Gosh, I’m not sure.’ Was he blustering? ‘I must have heard it from someone.’
She frowned, and was about to ask him who he’d heard it from.
Then she realised she didn’t care.
‘I say,’ he said, peering at the tear stains on her cheeks. ‘Are you quite well?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘And I must get back.’
‘Let me take you?’ he offered. ‘I have a driver. He’s bringing the car around now.’
‘It’s fine, honestly.’
‘Please, my dear. I’d … like … to help you. You really don’t look well.’
She was about to protest again.
Then, she stopped.
Her mind was whispering again.
Go, the whispers told her.
You need to go.
She didn’t want to listen to them.
Not again.
Not any more.
And yet, they kept on.
On and on.
Go.
‘All right,’ she found herself saying to Heaton. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘It’s the least I can do. Driver won’t be a tick.’