how long exactly, but it must be months. Whenever we do talk there are always polite words that fail to build a bridge. And the space between us, that has always been there. From the very beginning.
Lesley was born in the middle of a grey, sad English winter. My pregnancy had been unplanned, my husband and I hastily bought a house to be a home for our unexpected family. From the windows there were views of sodden fields, and ponds mirroring the weeping skies. In this house, the baby and I spent long days alone together while my husband was working in the City.
Lesley cried unceasingly, for no reason that I could discern. I had completed my medical training by that time, and raw as I was as a doctor I knew for certain that she was not ill or even failing to thrive. I couldn’t feed her myself, although I persevered for almost a month, but she accepted a bottle. She gained weight and passed the developmental milestones at the right times, but she was never a placid or contented baby.
I don’t deny the probability that she absorbed my unhappiness and reflected it back at me. I tried to hold the infant close, tried to soothe her yelling by rocking her in my arms as I paced through the silent house, but she would not be pacified. Her tiny body went rigid and her screams were like scalpel blades slitting my skin. When Gordon came home he would take her from me and she would whimper and nuzzle and then fall asleep, exhausted. The silence came like a blessing.
As soon as I could, I found a nurse for her and took a job at the local hospital.
And from there we have gone on.
‘Well?’ Ruby demands. ‘Can I stay?’
I turn my glass, looking at the dimples of light trapped within it.
‘Can I?’ she repeats.
‘What did your mother say to you?’
An exasperated sigh and a shrug. ‘She said she was about to call the police and report me missing. She said I am irresponsible, and thoughtless, and if I can’t think of her I could perhaps consider my little brother, who was worried sick about me. I don’t think he was, by the way. Worrying about people’s so not Ed’s thing. She said I should go home and behave better and get a job and dah dahdah, be a different person. Get a personality transplant maybe. I’ve heard it all before, about five zillion times.’
‘She was worried,’ I repeat.
I’m on unsafe ground here, caught between what I know I ought to say and what I feel. Which is recognition and a certain amount of sympathy.
We look at each other over our whisky glasses.
‘You see, the trouble is that I’m crap at everything,’ Ruby quietly says. ‘At least, all the things that Lesley and Andrew rate. Not that I’d admit that to very many people, actually.’
‘I don’t think you are,’ I tell her.
‘Thanks.’ Her tone is dismissive but her eyes implore me.
‘All right,’ I say slowly, because it is dawning on me that I do rather want her to stay. At least, I don’t want her to go right now. It’s not that I am lonely, but I would like to hear her talk some more. ‘I will telephone Lesley again, and ask if you may have her permission to spend a few days with me.’
She hugs her knees and rocks on the stool. ‘Fantastic.’ She grins.
I finish my whisky first. My hands are steady now.
Lesley answers the telephone. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s Iris,’ I repeat.
‘Mummy, tell me what’s really going on?’
I never felt comfortable with mummy; it was Lesley who always insisted on it.
Into the space I say careful sentences about it being a pleasure to meet Ruby, how Lesley would be doing a favour to me if she were to allow her to stay for a few days in Cairo. Now that she’s here, I say, we might as well turn it to advantage. The Egyptian Museum. An outing to the Pyramids at Giza. Maybe even further afield, ancient history, archaeology. And so on.
Although nowadays I hardly leave the house, I find myself almost believing that Ruby and I will make these excursions together.
‘If you agree, that is, Lesley. You and …’
Her husband; second husband, not Ruby’s father. I have met this one two or three times but I find that I can remember nothing about him, not even his name. It’s impossible to work out whether it is my forgetfulness that is to blame, or his unmemorableness.
‘Mummy, what are you laughing at?’
‘I’m not laughing.’
She sounds uncertain. ‘Are you sure it won’t be too much for you, having Ruby there?’
‘I don’t think so. If it turns out to be, I promise I’ll say so.’
‘Well … it’s kind of you to do this for her. Thank you. After she’s just turned up like that, uninvited. Andrew and I had no idea, one minute she was here and the next she’d vanished. It never occurred to me … she bought an air ticket, just like that, took her passport …’
‘Enterprising of her. But she’s not a baby, is she? Young people skip around all over the world these days. And as I said, she’ll come to no harm here. Boredom will set in before too long and then you’ll have her home again.’
‘I expect so. We’ll see.’ I can hear that Lesley badly wants Ruby to go home, but she knows better than to insist on it. I find myself admiring her adroitness. ‘Thanks again for taking her in.’
‘What else would I have done?’
‘I don’t know, Mummy.’
The bridge of careful words begins to creak and sway, and we both step hastily backwards.
‘I’ll make sure she behaves herself,’ I say.
‘I’ll call again tomorrow,’ Lesley insists.
We quickly end the conversation. Now, and for the next few days, I am responsible for Ruby. When I return to the other room she is holding up the bottle that Mamdooh left on the tray.
‘Top-up?’ she asks.
Lesley looked around the quiet, lamplit room. Andrew was working on his laptop, Ed was upstairs in his bedroom.
‘She said Ruby’s not a baby anymore.’
‘Quite right.’
She wanted to explain to him something about how, in one corner of her mother’s heart, Ruby would always be an infant. That was how mothers functioned. She believed, too, that in some recess deep within themselves, daughters also yearned for childhood again.
But Andrew would not be interested in her theories about mother love. He might put his work aside to discuss the new electronic chart plotter to be installed in his boat, but not much else.
‘Are we going down to the Hamble at the weekend?’ she asked.
‘Depends
