That I do, of course,Iris had replied.And you a bit, too.
I miss you a bit as well, Clarence.Ten sleeps until Christmas…
Now just eight,she’d written back.
Now five,he’d said.
Never had she looked forward to a holiday more.
It had been on the evening before Robbie’s return that his father had called at the cottage for the first time, ordering Iris to leave his son alone.
‘You’re not children any more,’ he’d said, even though Iris and Robbie, barely twelve, absolutely had been. He’d towered over Iris, who’d been sitting at the kitchen table doing her maths. ‘And you’re not in his class.’
‘No, I’m in Miss Rogers’,’ Iris had said, misunderstanding. Against her will, her voice had trembled. She’d hated herself for that: being scared of him, after all.
‘He doesn’t mean that kind of class, pet,’ her gran had said, her own voice hard.
Mr Grayson hadn’t flinched. He’d scrutinised Iris, with his eyes that had been as blue as Robbie’s, but hadn’t seemed to really look at her. Rather, she’d felt as though she was being erased beneath his dispassionate gaze; like her face had disappeared, her body too, and all Mr Grayson had been able to see of her wasless.
‘Get out,’ Iris’s mum had told him, raising the knife she’d been chopping carrots with. ‘And don’t you dare speak to my daughter again.’
‘Watch your tongue,’ Mr Grayson had told her.
‘You watch yours,’ Iris’s gran had replied, ‘and your hands while you’re at it. Don’t think we don’t all know what you are.’
At which he’d raised his brow, letting Iris’s gran know how little her opinion meant to him, and, instructing Iris to be a good girl now and know her place, limped away.
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,lovingthat 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 myfriend.’
‘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.’
