Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance. Rosie Thomas

wanted to scoop up her grandmother and hold her in her arms. But even as she chased this thought to its logical conclusion – Iris would not appreciate being handled like a rag doll – the old woman seemed to summon up some surprising inner strength. She hoisted herself upright against the cushions and fixed Ruby with a glare.

      ‘Have you spoken on the telephone to my daughter?’

      Ruby quailed at this sudden direct challenge. ‘Um, no.’

      ‘You are disobedient.’

      ‘I didn’t say I was definitely …’

      ‘Why have you not done so?’

      There was now the opportunity to make up some excuse, or to try a version of the truth. Ruby understood already that it would be advisable to aim for the truth, at least where her grandmother was concerned. She withdrew her hand and took a breath. ‘It’s really because I don’t want to go home. I was hoping you wouldn’t make me.’

      Iris studied her. Her gaze was very sharp now, all the weariness and confusion seemed to have evaporated. ‘Why is that?’

      ‘It’s quite a long story. If I could stay here with you for a while, I could maybe tell you …’

      ‘That is not possible.’

      Ruby bent her head. The sonorous, amplified chanting that had woken her this morning suddenly filled the room again. ‘What is that?’

      ‘The call to prayer.’

      ‘Oh. All right, I’ll ring Mum and tell her where I am and there’ll be a mega fuss and outcry, and I’ll go home. But if I could stay here, just for a few days or so, not a lifetime or a year or anything, then maybe I could help you.’

      There was again the steady gaze. ‘This morning, with my shawl. You did a little … almost a dance. I liked that.’ Iris smiled at the remembered image. ‘Did I?’

      ‘How do you think you can help me?’

      Now it was Ruby who made a small unconscious gesture with her hands, as if trying to catch darting fish. ‘You told me you are sometimes forgetful.’

      ‘Yes. So?’ Sharply.

      ‘I walked round the house this afternoon, and you don’t seem to have any belongings, the kind that help you to remember the past.’

      ‘I have lived a long life, in different places. Most of them primitive. I have learned that so many material possessions are just that, material.’

      She was saying almost the same as Jas; it’s just stuff, baby. There were connections here, twining around herself and Iris and the old house and even Mamdooh, and Nafouz and his brother, and the old men in the café. Ruby wanted to stay, more than she had wanted anything in a long time.

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘I thought, I wondered, if you told me what you want to … to capture, maybe I could be the keeper of it for you. I could be the collector of your memories. I could write them down, even. I could be your am … what’s the word?’

      ‘Amanuensis.’

      Ruby’s pale face had been animated, but now a heavy mask descended. She turned her head and looked out of the corner of her eyes. Iris hadn’t seen her look sullen before.

      ‘Not that, maybe. I’m dyslexic, you know. Bit of a drawback.’

      ‘Are you?’

      ‘It’s not the same as being thick. But sometimes it might as well be. To all intents and purposes.’

      ‘Thank you for making that clear. You don’t seem thick to me.’

      ‘But maybe we could tape-record you? Like an oral history project. We did one at school, with the old ladies from the drop-in centre, about the Blitz.’

      Iris laughed at that. Her hands loosened in her lap, her face lost its taut lines and her eyes shone. Ruby suddenly saw a young girl in her, and she beamed back, pleased with the effect her company was having.

      ‘How useful to have previous experience.’

      ‘I didn’t mean to compare you.’

      ‘Why not? I remember the Blitz. The beginning of it, anyway. Then I came out here, to Cairo, to work.’

      ‘Did you? How come?’

      ‘That’s the beginning of another long story.’

      They looked at each other then, as the last notes of the muezzin crackled and died away.

      It was Iris who finally broke the silence: ‘Go and talk to your mother. You may use my telephone, in the room through there. And when you have finished I will speak to her myself.’

      Ruby stood up and went through the interconnecting door to Iris’s bedroom. It was very bare, containing nothing more than a bed swathed in white curtains and a couple of wooden chests. A telephone stood on the table on one side of the bed, and on the other there actually was a framed photograph of a man and a woman. Managing not to stare at it, she walked deliberately round to the opposite side and picked up the receiver. After two or three attempts, she was listening to her mother’s mobile ringing.

      Lesley answered immediately, of course.

      ‘Ruby? Ruby, are you all right? Thank God you’ve called. Tell me, what’s happened? Where are you?’

      Ruby spoke, briefly.

      Her mother’s voice rose. ‘You are where?’

      She closed her eyes.

       Chapter Three

      When I replace the receiver I see that my hands are shaking.

      I return to the other room where the child is waiting for me.

      ‘What did she say?’ she asks.

      The anxiety in her round face tells me how much she does not want to be packed off back to England. I sit down to collect my thoughts and she fidgets with impatience, twisting her legs and picking at the stud in her nose.

      I can give her the gist of my conversation with Lesley, but there is so much else that I would find harder to put into words.

      ‘Leave your nose alone or you will set up an infection. Your mother has been worried about you. I told her that I thought you would be safe enough here.’

      At once, the anxious expression breaks up into a smile that contains glee and satisfaction and a measure of triumph.

      I am beginning to understand that Ruby’s innocence is shot through with calculation. Maybe the innocence itself is calculated. And I realise that the notion interests me more than anything has done for quite a long time.

      ‘So I can stay for a bit?’

      Our separate conversations with Lesley have had a further curious effect, of course. That she is in opposition to both of us makes partial allies out of Ruby and me.

      ‘I would like a drink. A proper drink, I mean. Will you call Mamdooh?’ I say.

      I am stalling for time because with part of myself I fear the loss of privacy that having her here will inevitably mean. I want to be alone to concentrate on the past, in order to hold on to it for as long as I can. Yet maybe the offer of help that Ruby made is less naïve than it sounded; maybe there is something in her idea.

      Wearing his disapproval like an extra robe, Mamdooh brings in a tray with two glasses, a jug of water and a decanter with a couple of fingers of whisky in the bottom. I have no idea when I last drank Scotch.

      ‘Mum-reese, you will have plenty water with this?’

      ‘No, thank you, I’ll take it neat. And a decent