by Barrie Shore
They come so close, I can see the black little heads on their nose and one of them’s got a brownie spot on her chin with a whisker that waves whenever she talks. The whisker puts me into an irritation so I pinched it in my nails on a day to make it pull out, but I forgot about her dignification and she slapped me. It really hurt, so I yelled until the Man came. The fuss women told him that Eva was in an assault and they didn’t like it, and the Man noddled his head in a great seriousity, then he winked me his eye behind their backs to make me laugh. So I did. I chuckered and sang and it put him in a cheer and he kissed me, not a lip kind of kiss, only a cheeky one. But he still didn’t tell me who Eva is, nobody did.
Now here is a secret I’m going to impart, dear baby of mine, but you mustn’t pass it to anyone else. Do you promise me? And the secret is this…
I knew a girl called Eva once. She lived in a place called Bethnal Green. I used to sit next to her in school. We went to a broading place somewhere or other, it might have been a slop. Salop. Slopshire, that’s where it was. Eva won a thing called a ship because she was oh, such a clever, but everyone knew she was a working class, and the reason they knew was because her uniform was much too much of a bigness, it was a second-hand, and there was a button wrong on her blazing, the one in the middle. She had a horrible voice in a too, like gravel that’s grated, and she didn’t know about aitches. She said orrible and haitch. And once she said blimey in class and somebody gave her an hundred of lines, I expect it was Miss… Miss Thingummybob, the one that was another kind of ship that was a headship. So Eva got rid of the haitches in an urrification and said rain in Spain, all stupid and stosh like a ladle-in-waiting. But she still had a massivity chip on her shoulder because of the Bethnal place, you could see it sticking up through her jumper, all angular and angry.
I felt sorry for Eva but I didn’t like her of a much. Nobody did. She made it out she wasn’t in a care if we liked her or not, but I think she did and a really. She sat at the back of the class and hid in the lavvy when it came to recess, but everyone knew where she was and they picked and pocked to make her cry, which she did and a lot, great big tears in a salt on her cheeks. Until and she found one day a very good trick. And the trick was this, that she didn’t exist. How much and so ever any girl or Miss Thingummydo or Miss Thingummyda went into a goad, Eva kept in a quiet and still and turned her tears inside of herself so that nobody knew they were there, so that then the doodahs and dumdums got into a bored with themselves and went into a skulk.
Never skulk, baby dear, it’s a very unpleasant and makes your mouth turn into a sour.
Sulk.
That’s what I mean.
I never sulk, baby doofah of mine. Not even the times when the fluff women come. I keep very still so they’ll forget to remember I’m here in a present. Not a past, in a presence, the presence tent, like in a class that was Latin.
Amo, amas, amat.
Who was the man who told me that? Amamus, amatis, amant. And they did.
Hello?
Hello?
You see? No one’s of a listen, not even the Man. I think he’s in a sleep. And a forgetting. Amabamus. That’s what we did once on a time. But there was no futurosity in it. Amabimus. Like flowers that die.
Do you like brimroses, baby dear? I do. I ate one at a station a long time and ago, before you were born, when… when something happened in a dream I had on another one time. It tasted so sweet, like honey in spring, and promises. But you must never eat a primrose, baby dear, because they make you misjudging.
Eva’s mother had a primrose. She kept it in a bunch on a sill in a window in a kitchen in a cup that had lost its handle, but they always went into a wilt in the end and so did she, she shrivelled to a nothing. She was a woman with a nicety in her, the mother of Eva, gentle and sad. She didn’t say much or a lot, she didn’t have time or an inclination. She kept her properly life inside her head and it was full of conversation and enlightening. What I’m trying to tell you, baby dear, is that she wasn’t in a reality world at all, the mother of Eva, she was in a pretending. That’s how Eva learned it.
And shall I tell you another curiosity thing, oh, baby of mine? I was always in a seeing of Eva but nobody else was, not even her mother. Not even herself in a later on time when she went and lost sight of herself, of a who and a why and where she was going. It was before that. She used to play a game at school that put me into a crying of laughter. She used to sit in a still, still as a mouse that’s fearsome, and make herself into a disappearing, first her toes and heels and then her legs and upward upstairs to the top of her body till every last hair of her head was a figment, which is a good thing for hair to be because then you don’t have to be in a bother to wash it on Sunday. So and then, do you see, not one of the grills knew where she was, so they weren’t in a pot to provoke her. A plot. She did the disappearing at home as well so that her father would leave her alone. What a horrid he was, that father of hers, all bashing and beery. It worked out in such and a well that he left her alone after that, but so did her mother too and that was a tearful thing because her mother was lovesome, only stupid and weak like a butterfly trapped in a window.
And then what happened? Something. Something or other. Like a future. The future. I wonder what it was.
The Man says, ‘Come on, little bird,’ and I like that, so I drink the beaker he brings. It’s supposed to be tea but it tastes of gnats which makes me think it’s a poison chalice so I spit it out and he sighs heigh-ho and doesn’t blame me. And he should, he’s too passivity. And now he’s gone.
I wonder where the Man’s wife is? If I were his wife, I would mend the Man and make him happy again, I’d brew the tea and wipe his tears and we’d have such a happiness together. But I never got married. No one ever asked me and I didn’t want to anyway.
Eva got married in the end, but that was much later, after the war.
She won another ship before that, a ship that was called Applied Mathingummies at St Somebody’s College. Was it St Jude’s? Something obscure. Oh, and didn’t her father go into a raging. He was ashamed, as if she was a freak and people would point and blame him. He hissed in her ear and belittled her with his huspy breath and fouling words. He was a deadly, the father of Eva, a bully and a boor. Or was it a bear? No, not a bear. Bears are beamish, like babies. Like a frog, that’s what the father was, with no finesse. She hated him. And so did her mother. And so did I.
Finesse. That’s a good word, I shall say it to the Man when he’s looking in a sad. ‘I finesse you,’ that’s what I’ll say, and then he’ll be in a cheer because he’ll think I’m in an observation with him. Only I’m not, I’m only in a pretend to be. That’s what you learn when you’re in a live with an opposite and have to make an adjustment. When the bloom’s gone off and one of you’s in a frustration and one of you doesn’t know what to do. Or both. Or neither. But don’t be in a worry, baby dear, it doesn’t happen with babies. Babies are a bless-me because they haven’t got points to prove, they’re in an innocence all of their own. I wish it would keep.
Did you ever see a child on a swing? A child on a swing in a park with his mother? Who pushes him with one hand and talks to her friend with the other and doesn’t notice how pretending he is, the child, the son, the son of the mother, how frightened he is, how trying to laugh and make out that he isn’t. I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t not notice how frightened he is. Eva did. Didn’t notice. She wanted to go to a college instead. That’s why the baby died.
Is that what it was? I can’t remember in a precisity. And in an any and way, what does it matter because she never went to St Macthingummy’s in the end because of the husband. No. No, I’ve got it all in a wrong. Because of the war, that’s what it was. She went to a country called Kent to be a girl on the land, and I went too. We went to Kent, we kent to Went. We planted potatoes and turnups and learned to milk cows. I liked the cows, they were hefty and warm, you cou
ld lean your forehead on their flanks and pull the teats and smell the milk pingling into a bucket, all frothy and sweet and steamery hot. It was a fine time, gladsome and bad. The people were grand and working class, only countryish in their ways, Kentish ways, not city and smart like us. They smelled of hops and sweat and they laughed in a lot. But they cursed when the bombs flew over their heads for the blitzing, and their spirits were black as the dung in the fields of Dungirk.
And the Dodo was there. She was a landing girl too. Dodie the Dodo. She looked like an ugly duckling but she was a swan in disguise. A swan with a name that was called Edgar. Eva made a friendship with the Dodo at once because she was a Londoning too, but not East End. She was North. She worked in a shop so she wasn’t plosh but she was tremifically grand, she walked the floor and told the customers where to go in a dulcet tone and crossed her eyes behind their backs. She was calloomy. We used to sleep in a barn with the hops, and drink tottings of cider to keep in a warm, and told risqué stories till we burst out in a shrieking, and we made plannings together for after the war, about swans and edgars and a riotous future with lots of money and no mention of morals. What a crumpety time we had, it was mumptious.
But there was a mother who got in the way of the plans. She didn’t mean to. Some mothers do and some mothers don’t, and the mother of Eva was one of the ones who didn’t. Didn’t mean to, I mean. She was too niceness for that, like a woman in the moon with innocence in her.
She was killed by a bomb that fell on a butchery shop. She was in a queue with a book that had rationings in it and she bought a mutton chop for her husband’s tea. There was only one ration and one mutton chop, so he was to have it and she went without. Except that he never did in the end because of the bomb. She was butchered by the bomb, butchered to death. Everyone else didn’t die, they only had scratchings. Mr Baker, the butcher, didn’t rescue the mother of Eva, but he rescued the chop and he minced it up and sold it for sausages, that’s what they said. The butcher’s wife, Mrs Baker, she was called, had a fit of hysterics when she found out, but Mr Butcher the Baker, gave her a cup of tea with a double ration of sugar, he gave her his ration as well, and she was in a much better after that, and they played happy families for a while. And everyone else turned their blind eyes and ate the sausages because of the war.
Mother?
Are you there?
Mother?
Perhaps she’s gone out.
Eva left the landing in Kent and went home to her Dodo. Her Daddy, I mean. She got them mixed up and so did I. She was going to stay for a week, maybe two at a pinching, but her father put a stop on her. He sat in his chair by the range in a sobbing, and she felt so sad for her mother’s remembrance that she stayed for an ever. The Dodo told her not to and so did I, but she said she must do her bit for the effort of the ear. The war. So she got a job in a munition that made spits and fires for killing the Germs. They gave her handfuls of nails and a hammer and she thought that the heads of the nails she hammered were her father’s heads. He only had one head really, but every time she hammered it, he grew another, like a hydrant.
I wonder how many people she killed? I hope there weren’t any babies. How many babies did Eva kill?
I’ll ask the Man, he’s sure to know.
Nobody liked her at the munitions the same as nobody did at school, and that was because she was an amazement at sums and knew about Latin, and because she kept all her haitches in place, never dropped them, not a one, she wished she could but she’d forgotten how because of the girls at school and Miss Thingummybum. Poor Eva, she was like a flish flipped flibbertigibbet out of the water that couldn’t get back.
We went to see her after the war, the Dodo and I. The houses were bombed to bits in the green place. What was it called? Bethnal, like the place in the Bible where the baby was born. But Eva’s house stood up in the ruination like a damaged thumb, freezing and mouldy, no coal, no comfort and cockroaches creeping and beds of lice. I didn’t know Eva at first because she wasn’t Eva any more, she was her mother. And the father wasn’t a frog any more, he was hunchy and puffed like an old crow. He watched Eva with beadly eyes, waiting to peck her, peck her to death.
‘Will somebody come…’
Someone, anyone, any poor fool, any woman would do.
‘Will somebody come.’ Like a caw in a crowing, that’s what he was.
‘Yes, Dad. I’m here.’
‘Who are you? Where’s Myra?’
‘I’m Myra. I’m in a Myra now.’ That’s what Eva said. It was homerically sad and I wanted to cry but I didn’t because of the Dodo. She was a finnicky, finery friend but she was always unsentimentality and cross with the trouble I made her.
Myra.
That’s a nice name. If I have a baby, I’ll call it Myra, and if she’s a boy I’ll call her…
Jack?
Are you there, Jack?
Oh.
No, it’s only the clock. The clock is tickling. Click-clock. Why is it clocking? What is it clicking?
Clock-click.
At the third stroke…
Clickety-clack…
The time will be…
A hundred and four and a half, said she.
I listen to the tock of the clock and I make shadows in my head. I try to make Eva, but I’m in a forgotten what shape she is.
I wish my mother would come, she would put me in a remembrance.
Or the Man, he could tell me, except he’s in an anger because of the bell that rang. ‘Damn the woman,’ that’s what he said. He’s thuddering about downstairs now, perhaps he’s looking for something. Looking for Eva.
Oh, baby, my dear, I forgot you for a while. Were you there at the end of the war, when the bombs stopped? When nobody died any more? Did you come with us when we went to the palace to see the king and a queen on a balcony? Eva was there and so was the Dodo and I was too, I know that I was because a sailor kissed me in Piccadilly. He tasted of salt and sweat. We went to the Dodo’s after that and cheered the peace with cherries and brandy. The Dodo had a flat in a Camden Town and a Pension Plan, it was very implosive. And you weren’t there on that time and occasion, baby dear, I wouldn’t have let you, because we were all such in a merriment of wondering how a man might look without any clothes to cover himself. Oh, what a shuddering time we had and a shrieking.
‘I shall never get married.’ That’s what the Dodo said.
‘Neither shall I.’ That was Eva. ‘I hate men.’ That’s what she said but she wasn’t in a mean of it, it was only the cackling crow that she meant, the crow that was her daddikins dear.
‘And what about you?’ The Dodo again, in a challenge to me. ‘What about you and your drunken sailor? Is that what you want?’
‘Yes,’ said I, and my mouth was cherry sweet, like a primrose in a gallery. ‘I shall marry a man who looks like a lion, and we’ll have lots of children, half a dozen at least.’
Six would be better, don’t you think?
Who said that?
Somebody did.
And oh, ho, how we all laughed.
Tick. Tock.
Hello, clock.
What happened next?
Somebody died after the war. The children in Germany. No, the crow. The crow that cackled and croaked his last. And Eva got married in a soon after that, to a man called Someone. Something or other. I think they went to live in a dreaming place that was filled with spires and aspimirations, but maybe they didn’t. I’ll ask the Man when he comes back.
‘Man,’ I shall ask him, ‘what was the name of the husband of Eva?’ And he’ll tell me. And then I’ll say, ‘What happened about the dreamery place? And the aspimirations?’ And he’ll read me a story from one of his books, about a woman who married a man with no name, and they lived in a bliss, toasting their slippers in front of the fire, and the magical way that babies appeared. There were half a
dozen at least but both of them said that six would be better, so they had some more. And the children grew up to be beauty and bounteous, and they all lived in a happy and an after.
The End.
The Man likes stories better than anything, better than my thumb, better than me. He has books in his pockets and stuffed up his sleeves, he smiles at the pages and pats them like children, as if he’s in a protecting of them.
It’s funny that Eva got married and I didn’t. I hope she was happy.
Tick, tock.
What was that game that we used to play? What’s the time, Mr Clock? But it isn’t a suitability game for you, baby, my dear, because of the wolf waiting to gobble you up if you get the mananswer wrong.
There was another game too. It wasn’t a happy family game, and it wasn’t the chess game either, it was something else that I can’t remember. I never was in a like of chess. Eva did, when she was married, first married, to the man called whatever his name was. The pawns reminded her of babies, so those were the ones she liked the best. She gave every one of them names for themselves. She could be very silly that way. She had a reality baby once only she went and lost it, that’s how stupid she was. You won’t catch me being so careless, for my baby is a bonny, with bells on his fingers and rings on his toes. I shall guard him close to my chest until Eva comes, and I’ll tell him a story to keep him warm.
This is the first part of the story, baby dear, and its name is Chapter One.