“…a wonderful new young professor who’s trying to rescue Pound’s reputation as a poet, while establishing one for himself, of course. It’s impossible, and much too clever for me, but it’s just so brash…it opens up the world fresh and new all over again, and I feel quite emboldened, Penelope darling, simply for having read it. I want to go learn all of Greco-roman myth or paint a picture or dance in Trafalgar Square or kiss a stranger. Oh, it’s lovely, it is. Or else it’s utter nonsense. But who cares?”
Iris is younger than I am by five years. She plans to marry a merchant seaman in the fall, who is currently circumnavigating the globe, hunting a sea plant they use in women’s cosmetics. Iris says she intends to go with him when they are married, to see the world for herself. I hope she does, but I do worry that she is vulnerable and could be hurt, the way people tend to look at her. And talk about her. Henry, her big brother, can’t seem to talk to her at all, only about her long after she’s gone, and then it’s with a strange and savage air, like when a pair of men, loitering somewhere, talk about a woman after they have solemnly watched her walk down the road, sizing her up for God knows what; only once she has passed do their faces open and do they say things to each other.
I for one will miss Iris terribly. With her I am completely safe.
“…I mean, he’s not new, and he’s such an iconoclast, always making somebody mad, even Mr. Eliot who used to adore him, il miglior fabbro and all that, but still. It’s such simply honest writing sometimes, such a smack of pure truth, well, I think so, anyway.”
I am shocked to realize that I know who she’s talking about. “Isn’t he that rather odd fellow who announced the whole world was stupid, and then moved to France? Didn’t he wear bright green trousers made of the cloth they cover billiard tables with?”
“Well, yes. A bohemian dandy, he was. They all wore outrageous clothes, that’s what intellectuals do.”
“But he’s a blooming idiot, Iris. I heard he hates the Jews besides.”
“Well. His poetry is genius.” Iris hates to be reminded she isn’t a blueblood. I think, in her imagination, she is storming the riverbanks at Oxbridge with a pack of Knightsbridge suffragettes, balancing parasols from Harrod’s.
“Do you ever try writing yourself, Iris?” The obvious question.
“Me? Well, yes actually, sometimes I do.” (The obvious answer.) “But I don’t think it’s any good. And I’m not sure I know what I want to say. When I feel the way I do today, for example, it’s so delicious just to feel it, to float down the street wrapped in glee, and let people stare, just allow them to think what they will. Sometimes it seems that the way a person walks down the street can make such an impact. What about you, darling?”
“What about me what? No one bothers to watch me walk down the street. Anymore. I could walk Brick Lane with my eyes crossed and a finger up my nose, no one would pay me any mind. They’d whisper behind my back, that’s all.”
Iris flips herself over so that she’s facing me, and peers right up into my eyes, making me giggle.
“Do you ever write, Pen?”
“Me? How on earth. I only have my Higher School Certificate. And that just barely. Besides, I was best at maths.”
“You do the bookkeeping here, don’t you?”
“Pshht.”
Iris always tries to convince me I’m more clever than I really am. I adore her for it. She flips over again, like a great elegant fish washed ashore, and puts her face right up close to the glass-top counter.
“If I find the reflection of my own eye, it’s like a Man Ray film.”
“I saw one with Rose last week!”
“Did you? Well done.”
“I didn’t understand what was happening, but I felt there was something important being said. Something beautiful. And sad. About the future! And I’ve never been to France, so it was a bit of a holiday.”
“Mmm.” She smiles dreamily. No one can smile dreamily like Iris; it really is one of her most attractive features. Dreamy and sad at once, like the Lady of Shallot. If I could smile like that, my life would be altogether different.
“Do you like working here, Penelope?”
“Do I? I suppose I do. I like the sounds the shop makes, and Lucy from next door, and Mrs. Roo from the laundrette. And I like to meet the different people who come in, even if they are largely unpleasant. Anyway, I won’t be here very much longer, not with the baby coming. And the new house.”
“Oh! I’d forgotten.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do. Sit at home and be pregnant, be the lady of the house, whatever that means.” I come out from behind the till, making sure Henry’s tucked well away in the back.
“Bloody new house. I mean, really, what am I supposed to do, gaze in contentment upon the china? Think of clever new ways to set up the nursery? Hire a nanny, and denigrate her to the next door neighbour as we chat across the fence whilst hanging the laundry? God. I guess I could listen to the radio and be one of those callers you always hear, who sounds nice enough and maybe even has something interesting to say but really, if she were anyone worth listening to, why would she even bother ringing an afternoon radio programme? Rose might ring in, I suppose, if she were adequately up in arms on an issue. Talking films. Charles Lindbergh. The Zionist cause, or some such.”
Iris just stares, agog.
“My God, Penelope,” she says. “You’re nothing but a sleeping tiger, aren’t you?’
“I suppose you’re being sarcastic.”
“No, I’m not.”
Henry reappears. “Hullo Iris,” he says.
“Hello,” she replies.
“Everything all right?”
“Everything is well enough, Henry. And you?”
“All right.”
“It appears congratulations are in order. On your new home.”
At this he glances at me, and then aims the narrow-eyed gaze he reserves for his sister back at her. “Still getting married?”
December 15, 2008
Goose Lane Editions Launches New Online Media Resources
December 15, 2008
New From Gaspereau Press
