“But she can’t get a taste for it. These early days matter.”
“He’s got teenagers of his own, he must know she’s having a hard time. He’s a very nice man, Iris. I liked him long before—before all this.”
“Yes, well. I’m not interested in him,” said Iris, primly. This was an outrageous lie. Iris was consumed with curiosity about James Fuller and his family. “I’m interested in Gwen’s happiness, and she can’t be allowed to behave so badly he finds her intolerable. People have long memories for that sort of thing. And now they’re going to be piled on top of one another, and this evening they’ll be fresh off the plane and going to Give Thanks at his ex-wife’s house. It’s a thoroughly bizarre expedition. If they wanted a romantic break, then Julia and Thing should be off frolicking in a country hotel somewhere, not forcing their warring children to pretend to be civilized.”
“I think he wants to show her a little of Boston.”
“Yes, well, that’s one thing, but showing her the ex-wife is quite another. Why do they have to see her?”
“She’s Nathan and Saskia’s mother. And they’re apparently on very good terms.”
“It’s distinctly odd,” Iris declared, with finality. Neither alluded to their own long years of devoted and easy friendship, risen as it was from the ashes of their intermittently tempestuous marriage. It had long been agreed that they were the exception. Instead, Iris moved swiftly to the purpose of her call. “I want Gwen to come to the Puccini with us next week, not that her taste for melodrama needs encouragement. I plan to stage a subtle intervention.”
“Your interventions are never subtle. Will you ask her, or shall I?”
“You’ll ask her. They’re en route to you as we speak, to deliver the slavering beast. Now listen, I know you adore that creature but if Mole wears you out, stick him in a taxi to me. And don’t invite. Insist.” She rang off.
3.
It was James who knocked on the door of Gwen’s hotel room and announced they were ready to go. She presumed it had also been James earlier, tapping a maddening military tattoo on the interconnecting wall, which she had ignored. The fight, for the moment, had gone out of her, but she would not join in with the pretense that they were all together on some sort of fun-filled summer camp. So far there was nothing sunny about being here—needles of icy rain had stabbed their faces on the short dash from the airport terminal to the taxi, and the early evening sky was not promising. Nathan’s complaints about London weather did not, on first sight of Boston, make any sense whatsoever.
Gwen stepped into the hallway, where thin floral carpets met elaborately paneled, dark green walls, and pulled the door shut, not quite a slam. Julia stood behind James looking apologetic and, on second glance, unexpectedly stylish. While getting rid of James was her own, ultimate goal, nonetheless Gwen did not want her mother bested by the mysterious Pamela. She knew James’s ex-wife was English (James obviously had a fetish)—this did not stop her from picturing her as American, and therefore sophisticated. Nathan had once hinted that his parents had divorced due to an unmanageable excess of sexual chemistry, and that he would not be surprised if in the future James and Pamela were reconciled. Gwen had not shared this threatening information but had protected Julia from it, and acted on her behalf. She felt a twist of guilt and tenderness for her mother, who seemed vulnerable without her layers and folds of cocooning wool and denim and ancient, sensible silk vests. Instead she was in a black silk shirt with a wide, soft collar, and a black wool pencil skirt that almost, but not entirely, revealed her knees.
Julia had a neat, wiry figure and a clear, very pale complexion. Everything about her was pale—her veins showed grass-green through translucent skin, her eyes were palest blue, and her eyebrows and lashes were almost invisible, a defect that she had long ago given up bothering to correct. Her thick hair was a forgiving ash blonde, the right shade to camouflage, for the moment, the streaks of gray that had appeared by stealth over the last few years. She wore it too long, because she rarely felt strong enough to argue with her hairdresser about highlights and layers, and the other age-appropriate measures he wished her to take, and so avoided going as much as possible. Once employed only for actual hiking, her ancient boots had, somewhere along the way, been appropriated for daily wear, practical both for arch support and for indicating, as clearly as a sign hung in a shop window, that she had closed for business. At forty-six she had known her romantic life was over, and to dress as if she hoped otherwise felt pathetic, and unseemly. Then James.
Julia found herself attired to do battle. Her legs, so long concealed beneath thick, bobbled tights, or shapeless trousers, or sometimes a practical layering of both, were now required to compete. They must look not only amazing, Gwen had decreed, but more amazing than Pamela’s, and as neither of them knew what Pamela looked like, they could not know how high the bar was set. Gwen had insisted that they go shopping, and had folded herself cross-legged on the floor of the small changing room in Whistles on Hampstead High Street, hunched over her phone, tapping, looking up only to issue brief, strongly worded and—Julia had to concede—accurate assessments of various garments. Of the outfit they had eventually chosen Gwen had pronounced, “With heels it will make your calves look amazing. Shoes next,” and had marched her mother up the road to Hobbs. This was the closest Gwen had come to supporting the relationship, and it had at first moved Julia and then seduced her into a folie à deux of anxiety. “You have to wear the heels we got, it’s what they’re for!” Gwen had screeched when Julia, having second thoughts, had begun to pack a pair of black, lace-up flats, rubber-soled and sensible. “Those are like nun shoes. You have to be sexy!” Gwen almost always addressed her mother in the imperative but had seemed even more urgent than usual, and this anxiety was contagious.