In her place was the Iris who sprinkled tea-leaves in the ashes when she cleaned the grate, who rolled pastry with a bottle, who remembered to heat the knitting-needle before she tested the cake, who banished iron-mould from the tablecloth with lemon juice and salt.

This Iris was my grandmother. She ruled the house, shielded from the fickle arrows of fortune by a potent armoury of remedies.

She told me: ‘To revive a sick aspidistra, push a rusty nail into the soil and keep it well watered. A discoloured neck will become as white as snow with a bleach of equal parts of glycerine and lemon juice applied before retiring. A few drops of castor oil on the roots of ferns will produce an abundance of new shoots. Cold tea-leaves bound on a burn take the pain away at once. A small piece of orris-root placed in the copper will impart a lasting fragrance to handkerchiefs and lingerie.’

Charles Ebenezer’s wedding-ring still bit her finger next to the diamond, and she even had a marcasite eternity-ring she bought herself. But her fingers were red and slippery, and had broken nails and sometimes a plaster. They went puffy in winter with chilblains and when she did the washing they were pleated like the end of the copper-stick, stained from the blue-bag. And I watched her all humped with her stomach sticking out as she rubbed at the wash-board with Velvet soap, and thought how funny it was that she should ever have been another.

(I was deceived by familiarity. I didn’t see, couldn’t hear, forgot to reason.)

Inside the workaday Iris of the ruined hands, the young girl lived on; protected by the blur of memory, chaperoned by the constant shadow, Reece. She was there for me to see in the innocent blue eyes (I didn’t see); there for me to hear in the hesitating, childlike voice that surprised me on the telephone (I didn’t hear). She was there in the terrible depressions, smothering possessiveness, crippling self-pity that baffled me. She accounted for the copies of True Romance, True Story, True Confessions that were hidden beneath the mattress as surely as she did for my grandmother’s shyness that isolated her, made her lonely.

And I knew her not. I only saw the Iris whose shoulders drooped from the shopping bags; who looked after Reece for forty years; who was my grandmother.

Iris is my grandmother. She has forget-me-not eyes, bushy eyebrows, rosy cheeks, silver hair she hides behind a rinse. Her face burns to brick in summer, but her body under the dresses that are always wash-day damp is white.

I know, for I slip into the bathroom when she forgets to lock the door; inspect her as she lies beetle-helpless before me: the flannel over her privates, pearls still round her neck, Palmolive balanced on her chest. Through half-shut eyes she seems to float in a white frock: where the sleeves end her throat is turkey-red and wrinkly. Through open eyes the white frock is her body.