The Miseducation of Evie Epworth

by Matson Taylor

  ‘Little madam,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, her quick bright eyes narrowing slightly. ‘I knew something was wrong, dear. I can read you like a book.’

  (I’d love to be read like a book. I’d be something experimental and French, tricksy and clever, something that never uses the letter M or full stops. Or maybe something northern and gritty, something set in a bicycle factory with lots of moral ambiguity and A-line skirts. And what about everyone else? What sort of book would they be? Arthur would be the Wisden Almanack, of course, or maybe a history book or a biography. Mrs Scott-Pym strikes me as a World’s Classic, probably with a leather cover. Margaret would definitely be an encyclopaedia – full set – and Mrs Swithenbank would be something hefty but no-nonsense, like a dictionary. Vera already is a living, breathing book of bingo cards. And Christine? What would she be? Gothic horror.)

  Mrs Scott-Pym sighs. ‘I must say I’m disappointed in your father, though. Very disappointed.’ She gets up, making another disapproving noise (half groan, half tut), and walks towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll get you some tea, dear. Keep an eye on Sadie for me, will you?’

  I take Mrs Scott-Pym’s place on the sofa. Sadie is oblivious to her new sofa companion as she has just buried her head deep in her belly and is manically snorting around her nethers. I try to pull her head away but she’s having none of it. She has the single-mindedness, not to mention technique, of a pig snuffling for truffles (noun – a rare underground delicacy often found with the aid of trained swine). It’s probably best just to let her get on with it so I sit back, relax, and flick through the Radio Times, hoping to find something on Adam Faith.

  *

  After a few minutes, Mrs Scott-Pym comes back into the room carrying a tray. I start to stand up so that she can resume her previous spot on the sofa but she tells me to stay where I am and instead comes and sits next to me, shunting Sadie along a bit.

  ‘Now, dear,’ she says, putting the tray down on the small table in front of us. ‘I’m going to talk to you about something important but I want you to promise not to tell anyone.’

  Oh no. She’s not going to talk about Sex, is she? I couldn’t bear that. Margaret’s mother had a long talk to her about Sex a few weeks ago and Margaret still can’t look her in the eye. (Apparently the talk started with a detailed explanation of Margaret’s ‘womanhood’ [in the manner of an engineering report], then moved on to an elaborate metaphor involving the correct technique to stuff and plump cushions, before finally ending with lots of talk of buds of passion and life-giving fluids.)

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I say, trying to sound nonchalant.

  ‘Good,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym as she pours some tea from the pot, catching a few stray leaves in a tea-strainer that she’s perched on the rim of a china cup. ‘Well, it’s a rather awkward subject,’ she goes on, adding milk to the tea and placing the cup and saucer down in front of me. ‘And I’m not really sure where to start.’

  Right, it’s definitely Sex, then.

  ‘Well, I suppose I should start back in 1936, when Mr Scott-Pym and I were trying for a baby.’

  (I wish I could do Arthur’s trick and hide behind a

  Yorkshire Post.)

  ‘I was forty-two. Far too old to have a child really. We’d wanted children for a long time but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen.’ She hands me a plate with a large slice of madeira cake on. ‘We’d more-or-less given up. It hit Edward even harder than me, I think.’

  Edward was Mrs Scott-Pym’s husband. He died before the war so I never met him but I know what he looked like because there are some photos of him on the sideboard. His lovely old car is still parked up in Mrs Scott-Pym’s garage, unused, packed away like a museum piece.

  ‘Well,’ continues Mrs Scott-Pym, ‘one day I received a small package in the post; it was a couple of books and a letter from my old nanny’s legal executor. Poor Nanny Thompson had died and she’d left me the two books. She was seventy-six, I think. A good age. She was always in such good health.’ She looks lost in thought for a moment, transported back to another age until I slurp my tea and bring her back to 1962. ‘Anyway, one of the books was a collection of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales that we used to read together in the nursery; it had beautiful illustrations. Quite decadent. All very Aubrey Beardsley.’

  I nod, even though I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘And this is the other book.’ She picks up a small leather-bound book from the tray. ‘A book of Yorkshire magic. You reminded me of it the other day when you were telling me about Christine and your father. You said something about her casting a spell on him. Black magic, wasn’t it?’

  Yorkshire magic? Black magic? I suspect this is possibly more like sherry magic.

  ‘Anyway, Nanny Thompson was always talking about faeries and spells and the magic of olde Yorkshire. Every story seemed to involve some kind of hocus-pocus. When we went on walks, she’d point out elf trees and enchanted streams and go on for hours about the spirits of the air. It was all terribly exciting when I was young, of course, but as I grew older I used to think that she was perhaps a bit gaga. Poor old dear.’ Mrs Scott-Pym looks down at the book and turns it over in her hands. ‘Naturally, by the time I was sent the books I thought the whole thing was absolute rot so I just put them on a shelf and got on with my day.’ She puts the book of Yorkshire magic down on the table and tucks a stray wisp of white fringe back under the silver clip in her hair. ‘That evening, Edward came back from work looking terribly fretful. I knew something was wrong as soon as he walked in. I was sitting here, you know, on this very sofa,’ she taps the sofa, ‘reading and having a sherry.’

  I try not to look at the half-empty glass of sherry currently on the table in front of Mrs Scott-Pym and instead ask her what was wrong with Mr Scott-Pym.

  ‘Well, Edward was a journalist, a staff writer for the Yorkshire Post. That day the Spanish generals had launched their coup and it looked pretty certain that there was going to be civil war. The editor wanted someone over there, boots on the ground as it were, so he asked Edward to go to Madrid. He was one of the few chaps at the paper with no family so it just seemed the right thing to do. He was worried about leaving me alone, dear man. That’s why he looked so anxious. I expect he was worried about walking into a war too, of course, but he never spoke about that.’

  I had no idea about any of this. A journalist! A war correspondent! Spain! Mrs Scott-Pym was already the most interesting person in our village by far and now she’s got the added glamour of journalism and the Spanish Civil War.

  I’ve got a million questions in my head, not least how does any of this connect to the magic book, but I think it’s best to start with the basics. ‘What happened to Mr Scott-Pym?’ I ask. ‘Did he go Spain?

  ‘Yes, he went. He had no choice really. When an editor says jump, you jump. At least that’s how it was in those days.’ She stops to have another mouthful of sherry. The house is so quiet that I can hear her swallow and then lick her lips. ‘Anyway, when the shock had worn off, he asked me about my day so I told him about the package from Nanny Thompson and showed him the books. We had a jolly good laugh about the magic book – Edward was a rationalist to the core – and then that was that. Within a week, he was off.’

  ‘So he went, then? Over to Spain. To the civil war. That’s incredible.’

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose it is. We did a lot of incredible things in those days.’

  Mrs Scott-Pym looks out across the room and sighs. I look too and see hundreds of tiny particles of light (or, as Christine would call it, dust) floating in the solid beams of sun which stream in though the large sash windows, each speck bobbling along on its own random drifting journey. Glimmering little boats searching for a port.

  I wonder why Mrs Scott-Pym hasn’t told me before about her husband and the Spanish Civil War or his job as a journalist. I know some things about him, of course: where he went to university (Durham); his first dog (chocolate lab); his favourite colour (navy blu
e, like me). But not much. Just a few incidental facts (more scattered jigsaw pieces). But then, I suppose, how well do we ever really know anyone? How well do I know Margaret or Mrs Swithenbank or Christine? How well do I know Mrs Scott-Pym? As a real human being, I mean, not just as a lovely old lady who lives next door and gives me books and cake.

  ‘Evie, dear, would you like some more tea?’ Mrs Scott-Pym has stopped looking out the window and is staring straight at me. I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve been daydreaming.

  ‘Ooh yes, thanks, Mrs Scott-Pym. That’d be lovely.’ I pass her my cup and lean back on the sofa, trying to look as though I’ve been paying attention. ‘Did Mr Scott-Pym write many stories about the war? Was he in Spain long?’

  ‘Well, he was meant to stay there for however long it lasted,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, pouring more tea into my cup. ‘Everyone said it would all be over in a few months but it got very nasty and dragged on for more than three years. Terrible thing.’

  ‘Three years! You didn’t see each other for three years?’ I am seeing the Yorkshire Post in a new light.

  ‘Three years?’ repeats Mrs Scott-Pym, sounding puzzled. ‘What, Edward? No, it was much less than that, dear. He was only out there a few months.’ Sadie is lying with her head in Mrs Scott-Pym’s lap, a skein of dribble stretching from mouth to skirt. ‘He came back early,’ she goes on. ‘He had to, you see. I was expecting.’

  My mouth drops wide open (I hope I’m not dribbling like Sadie).

  ‘You look shocked, dear,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, smiling and stroking Sadie’s head. I could swear her eyes are twinkling.

  I am shocked. And confused. My head’s full of questions again, pinging around like giddy marbles. ‘What happened?’ I ask Mrs Scott-Pym. ‘Was everything all right? Were you okay? Did you lose the baby?’

  I didn’t mean to ask that last one. It just came out.

  ‘Lose the baby? No, dear. Not the baby. I lost my husband. Poor Edward,’ she says, wiping Sadie’s dribble from her skirt. ‘I sent him a telegram, of course, as soon as I had confirmation from the doctor. He was overjoyed. He got straight on to his editor and was given leave to come back. They sent another chap out there. Edward set off home immediately, carefully making his way through Spain, then over the Pyrenees and across France to London but then, just outside Kings Cross, hanging around for a train to bring him back to York, he was knocked down by some drunken fool in a coal lorry.’ She stops talking and exhales deeply. Poor Mrs Scott-Pym (and poor Mr Scott-Pym, too). ‘It’s ironic really. We’d all been worried about him going over to Spain and the war but in the end he was killed in a wretched road accident here at home.’

  I don’t know what to say, so I just say sorry. Several times. In several different ways.

  Mrs Scott-Pym reaches over and holds my hand.

  ‘Oh, it was a long time ago, dear,’ she says. ‘Life goes on. It always does. And of course, I have Caroline now.’

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘Yes, Caroline. My daughter. Our daughter.’

  A daughter! Just how many secrets can one person have? Especially a nice old person who wears tweed and listens to opera.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a daughter, Mrs Scott-Pym,’ I say.

  ‘Well, one never really talks about one’s children very much, dear. It’s not the done thing, is it? Anyway, she lives up in London and has her own life there.’

  London.

  A scent of something glamorous and sophisticated wafts into the room.

  ‘Come with me. I want to show you something,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, taking my hand. She leads me through the sitting-room door, into the hallway, and then up the stairs. This is all very exciting because I’ve never been upstairs in Mrs Scott-Pym’s house. Downstairs is like a second home to me but somehow upstairs has always felt more intimate, private, something to be glanced at only from a distance. As we’re walking, Mrs Scott-Pym tells me about her daughter.

  Apparently she lives somewhere called Holland Park and works in Chelsea ‘doing something in fashion’ (which Mrs Scott-Pym says in a way that makes it clear she disapproves). She moved to London straight after boarding school and did a secretarial course but ‘never got very far with it’ (more disapproval). And she’s twenty-six.

  She sounds amazing.

  By now we’re in Mrs Scott-Pym’s bedroom. I feel like an Elizabethan ambassador, led through various public chambers and into the Queen’s inner sanctum. Mrs Scott-Pym sits on the edge of her bed and beckons me to sit next to her.

  ‘Here. This is Caroline,’ she says, passing me a large photograph that she’s taken from her bedside table. The woman in the photograph is staring right at the camera and laughing. She’s beautiful. She’s wearing pedal pushers and a stripy T-shirt and she’s swept a huge pair of round black sunglasses back onto her hair, like an Alice band. She’s standing in the middle of a small street somewhere, surrounded by shops and mopeds and life.

  ‘She’s lovely, Mrs Scott-Pym,’ I say, stating the obvious. ‘Really beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, dear, she gets her looks from Edward. He was such a handsome man.’ Mrs Scott-Pym laughs. ‘The most handsome man in Yorkshire, my mother always called him.’

  I can see that there are more photos of Caroline on Mrs Scott-Pym’s dressing table. Baby Caroline. Caroline in school uniform. Glamorous Caroline looking very grown up in a ball gown.

  ‘Well, the reason I’m telling you about Caroline now is this book,’ she says, waving the book of Yorkshire magic. ‘Edward’s news that night when he came back from the office saying he had to go to Spain really hit me. I knew that I was on the cusp of being too old to have children but the thought of him going off to a war seemed to make it all so definite. We would have to resign ourselves to the fact that it would be just the two of us forever and I’m not sure I was quite ready for that. When he was upstairs changing, I sat on the sofa trying to make sense of it all. The book was still there from when I’d been showing it to Edward earlier and so I started flicking through it. Of course, I thought the whole book the most frightful nonsense but I just needed something to take my mind off the day’s news.’ Mrs Scott-Pym laughs to herself. ‘Well, it certainly did that; it’s all such mumbo-jumbo. At the top of every page there are these dreadfully fey titles: songs to do this or songs to do that. Look, I’ll show you,’ and she opens the book randomly at several pages. ‘Yes, here’s a good one. Songs to Turn a Bad Man Good. I think we should send that one to Mr Macmillan, don’t you? And look, here’s another one. Songs to Drain a Cuckold’s Rage. Really! One for Sir Clifford Chatterley I think, dear,’ she chuckles. ‘Well, I ask you, what poppycock. The book was so absurd that at least it stopped me thinking about Spain and the bally war. But then something caught my eye. I’ll never forget it. Songs to Make a Childless Couple Sing. I knew that it was all hogwash, of course, but I couldn’t help but read on.’

  Mrs Scott-Pym pauses and starts flicking through the book again.

  ‘Ah, here it is! Look,’ and she passes me the book, open at a page that has Songs to Make a Childless Couple Sing written across the top in ye-olde-worlde writing.

  I look down at the book and read the first line. Take 6 leaves of barrenwort and 2 cloves of nutmeg. It sounds like a pretty bad song.

  ‘Are you meant to sing this, Mrs Scott-Pym?’

  ‘Sing it? No, of course not, dear. They’re not really songs. Whoever published the book just called them that to make them sound more mysterious. They’re more like recipes and lists of things to do.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I say, as though it all suddenly makes sense (which it doesn’t). ‘What happened next? Did you follow the recipe?’

  ‘Well, yes, I did actually. Despite thinking it was all a waste of time. What did I have to lose? Getting all the “ingredients” together was something of a trial, though. I seem to remember running round after oysters, sows’ whiskers and all kinds of nonsense. And then I put it all together and made a . . . well, a potion I suppose. I took the horrible thin
g every morning for the next few days, read out a few silly rhymes and that was that. Edward went off to Spain. Of course, I didn’t say anything to him about it. He’d have thought I’d gone completely mad.’

  Quite.

  Mrs Scott-Pym looks at the book and puts it down on her bedside table.

  ‘A few weeks later, I started to feel off colour,’ she continues, ‘and then it just got worse and worse so I went to visit my doctor. When he told me I was with child, I couldn’t believe it. The rest of the story you know. I sent a telegram to Edward telling him about the baby and he came straight back to be with me. And then suddenly he was gone.’

  Just like that.

  It’s all so unfair. Just as everything looked like it was going so well, it all went horribly wrong. (Now I can see why Mrs Scott-Pym likes opera so much.)

  ‘No, dear, come on, don’t cry,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, looking up at my watery eyes. ‘No need to be maudlin. I’m only telling you all this because I have an idea. Something that will help you.’ She holds my hand again and rubs my fingers with her thumb. ‘You see, I was very old when I had Caroline, far too old to have a baby really. It was only when I followed what was in the silly old book of Yorkshire magic that Caroline came along.’

  ‘Oh. So the magic in the book makes babies then?’ I ask (this is very different from what Margaret’s mum said).

  ‘Well, no. Not quite, dear.’ Mrs Scott-Pym gives me a doubtful look. ‘But the book must have helped. It must have done something, you see. Some magic or whatever it is you want to call it. There’s something there. Something that works. You reminded me of it when you were telling me about Christine using magic to snare your poor father.’

  ‘But I was only joking, Mrs Scott-Pym,’ I say. ‘Christine’s the least magical person I can think of. There’s not a whiff of mystery about her. There’s more wizardry in our old Hoover than there is in Christine. I don’t really think Christine used any magic to charm Dad,’ I add. ‘I think her charms are more . . . humdrum than that. More . . . obvious.’