thing is, Lesley and Andrew didn’t really know about Jas. He wasn’t the kind of person they would go for. Don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t anything bad about him. He was kind, never wanted to do anything to hurt people, and he was funny, but he wasn’t plugged in to things most people care about, like money and jobs. I suppose some people might have thought he was a bit messed up. Lesley would have done.’
Ruby sighs. ‘She’s my mother and all that, and you know how that works.’
Her expressive hands sketch in the air, miming a smooth ball and then suddenly turning into claws, raking the layer of space trapped between them.
‘Lesley likes everything to be in order. She’s really controlling. I suppose it’s partly her way of keeping us safe, looking after us. But it can be a real pain. For example we’ve got some glass shelves in the kitchen at home, and all the mugs and milk jugs and stuff are kept there. But they have to be in a straight line and they have to be plain white. You know? They’re just mugs for drinking tea out of, but if there’s a patterned or coloured one it has to be kept out of sight in a cupboard. You can’t really drop someone like Jas in the middle of a world like that.
‘So I kept him separate. I liked having him all to myself, anyway. I’d just go off from Will and Fiona’s place and stay with him. He had a room in a squatted house, but he’d made it nice. He’d decorated it with postcards and pictures of flowers and leaves and trees, cut out of magazines, stuck all over the walls, on top of each other, so the whole room looked like a garden that had exploded. We’d just lie and look at it. He used to say, “It’s just the two of us, babe. Just you and me. This is our Garden of Eden.” I loved that. But then, after he … died, it was like he’d never been there. That was really hard. I didn’t want to think that he was so close to nothing.’ Her voice sinks to a whisper. ‘As if I was the only memorial he had.’
Now I can see the shape of ideas crossing her mind. I am sad to think that Ruby might have been allowed to believe that she is stupid, because she is anything but.
‘Are you afraid of death?’ she asks.
‘No. Nor will you be, I hope, when you get to my age. But I am afraid of what might intervene between now and then.’
Her hands move, trying to catch a slippery shape in the air.
‘I know. Of forgetting.’ Her eyes flick briefly towards the open door of my bedroom where Xan’s photograph stands on the table next to the bed. ‘Has anyone close to you died?’
‘Almost everyone,’ I say drily.
She laughs and then guiltily catches herself, reckoning that amusement is inappropriate in this context. What she is trying to do, as gently as she knows how, is to give me the opportunity to talk about Xan. She’s curious about him on her own behalf, but it’s also part of our odd bargain. I am supposed to reminisce and she will remember for me.
But it is hard.
Ruby put it well. I wanted to be the memorial, not to Xan himself because his family and his friends and his regiment remembered him too, but to our love. I had nothing else of him, and for a long time looked for nothing else.
For sixty years, the best part of a lifetime, I have jealously guarded these memories. I never spoke of them to my husband, or to my daughter, and I am aware that that was an act of selfishness. Lesley always knew, with the inarticulate, visceral intuition of a child, that I withheld myself from her. Even by the time she had learned to speak, the distance between us was almost palpable.
And if I believed that I might be punished for what I have failed to do, or believed in anything except the random cruelty of life, I would agree that the slow burial of my memories under the desert sand of forgetful old age is an exquisitely appropriate form of punishment.
Ruby is watching me, trying to work out where I am, waiting for me to say something. I have forgotten what we were talking about a minute ago.
In the end she prompts me, ‘I met Ash’s mother and his grandmother.’
Yes. The cemeteries.
‘Ash’s grandfather must be buried there,’ she adds.
‘Perhaps.’
Silence falls again while we separately speculate.
The desert is one immense tomb, unmarked.
‘I can see in a way that must be quite comforting. You know, having everyone really close around you, dead and alive, the family all together. With no – what’s the word – taboo about it, like we have. And I suppose you don’t feel lonely, either.’
She is making a direct comparison, Ash’s grandmother with her own. Yes, I have been lonely. And I am so used to it that it is only the lessening of loneliness, through her company, that has made me aware of it. I have not always been so brusque, in my words or in my judgements: this is what too much solitude does. You forget how to be tactful and gentle. But Ruby doesn’t seem to mind and I’m glad of this.
She leans forward, tilting her chair closer to mine. ‘Iris? What happened? Why don’t you and Lesley get along?’
I want to answer her, but the words and reasons and recollections jumble together and then swirl away, out of my reach …
… No. That won’t do. It would be easier to take refuge in the windy spaces of forgetfulness, but this truth is still sharp enough in my memory and I have to admit it: I didn’t want to be a mother. Not then, not to Gordon’s child, not to Lesley.
Maybe I never was cut out to be anyone’s mother. Even if everything else had been different, my lack of maternal inclination might have been the same.
I was a good doctor. I loved my work and surely I must have been good at it. To one or two people, maybe, I was a good friend. Can’t that be enough?
‘I think Lesley and I respect each other,’ I say.
Ruby feels rebuffed, I can tell. Silence spreads through the room as I try to work out a way to undo this.
Outside, the sky is overcast. Winter is coming, and it brings a damp chill that seeps through Cairo like mist off the Nile. I don’t mind the heat of summer, spending the days as I do within these thick walls or in the tiled shade of the garden, but nowadays I am like Faria – I feel the cold.
I try to ward off the automatic shiver. Ruby is here, and I can imagine how the silence in this old house must be dispiriting for her. Ideas suddenly jostle in my head and I clap my hands, making her jump.
‘When did you get here?’
She looks startled. ‘What? Do you mean, when did I arrive? Um, it was twelve days ago.’
‘Is that all? It seems longer than that.’
‘Does it? I mean, I don’t want to get in the way or anything, just say if I am.’
‘In the way? Of course you are not in the way. I am only thinking that you have been in my house for nearly two weeks and I haven’t taken you anywhere, or shown you anything except for that one outing with your friends, and it is high time that I did. I promised your mother that I would educate you.’
I clap
