‘Clara,’ Tim echoed, his voice thick with tears. ‘It suits her.’ He touched his finger to hers. ‘And if she’d been a boy? Would you have called him … ?’
‘No,’ Iris said. ‘I couldn’t have had him thinking he had to replace him.’
‘No one could.’
‘No.’
And for a second, they were silent.
Listening for his voice, even knowing it wouldn’t come.
Across the ward, another baby cried.
Over by the door, an orderly arrived, wheeling a tea trolley.
‘Iris,’ said Tim, drawing her gaze back to his, so dark and sorry, staring out from his bandages. ‘Whatever you need from me, it’s yours. Always.’
He hadn’t told her what had happened inMabel’s Fury.
He wouldn’t, Iris knew that.
Just as she wouldn’t press him to, even though she was certain he’d forgotten nothing.
What would the point be in that, other than to cause him more pain?
He’d lost his photo of his father that night, along with everyone else.
It had melted, next to his heart.
Look after that boy, Clare had said to Iris, the night of Jacob’s birthday.
‘You never have to give me anything,’ she said to Tim now. ‘Just keep being my friend, please. And I’ll do my very best to be yours.’
‘I loved her,’ Tim says. ‘I loved her to distraction. So, I was her friend. As good a one as I knew how to be.’
Haltingly, he tells me the rest: how, after the war, Iris moved with Clara to York, near Robbie’s mother, whilst he went overseas with the foreign office, returning to visit as often as he could. Ellen visited Iris too, and so did Beth Twinton. He doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but from what he does say of those years they all had together – full of birthday teas at Bettys, seaside holidays, country walks, frozen Guy Fawkes nights, school plays, and summer picnics – I can tell how happy they were.
And also, how guilty that makes him.
‘Clara was wonder itself,’ he says. ‘She was fun, and stubborn, and warm, and smart, and very cheeky. Rob would have been so proud of her.’ He stares down at his mask. ‘I never forgot that every moment I had with her, with both of them, was a moment I’d stolen from him.’
‘I’m sure that’s not how he’d have seen it,’ I say, hating that he’s believed this, for all these years.
‘It’s the way it was,’ he says.
He finishes his tale with devastating brevity. Iris died in 1962, the same year Robbie’s mother went. Clara had started at Oxford – just as Iris and Robbie had hoped to – and, during her first term, whilst Tim was posted in Brussels, Iris discoveredshe had a tumour at the base of her skull. ‘The doctor’s said if they’d caught it sooner, they might have operated, but it started to grow, too fast, and then … she was gone.’ More tears blur his eyes. ‘She went peacefully. Clara and I were with her, and I don’t doubt it broke her to leave Clara behind, but, at the end, it really was as though she knew she had a welcome waiting.’ His chest heaves. ‘I’m sure she did.’
‘Yes,’ I say, gripping my hands into fists, trying to keep myself under control.
‘She asked me to look after Clara,’ says Tim, ‘but Clara didn’t want to be looked after. Not by me, not by Ellie or Beth. She wanted her mum, and she’d lost her, which made her so … angry.’
I nod, understanding that.
‘I’d lost her too.’ His voice catches. ‘I’d lost her, and I knew I didn’t deserve to be the one of us still left, so when Clara kept asking me to leave her alone, I did the worst thing possible and gave in.’ He draws another rasping breath. ‘She went back to Oxford, and I went to Brussels, where I drank too much and told myself she’d call when she was ready.’ His shoulders slump. ‘She never called. I think she was too ashamed. Things were said, and I don’t think she forgave herself for them.’ He bows his head. ‘I should have told her there was nothing to forgive. But I let her push me away, when I should have pulled her in. Iris and Rob would have pulled her in.’ He grips at his mask. ‘Ellie tried to warn me. She told me to pull myself together, get on a plane, that Clara didn’t need time, she needed me. But I wouldn’t hear it. Couldn’t believe it. Then Clara … ran. She left Oxford, turned from everyone who cared for her, leant on a man who wasn’t good, when she’d only ever deserved the world, fell pregnant with your father, then died too.’ His eyes spill. ‘She died, all alone, and she didn’t need to, but she went anyway.’
I don’t ask what happened to her.
I already know that my father’s mother, ill with pneumonia when he was born, died in hospital two days later.
