That Part Was True

by Deborah McKinlay

  “I am tired,” she said eventually. The tears reduced somewhat, she sniffed, but she made no clear move toward hanging up and Jack didn’t feel that he could initiate one without setting her off again.

  Three o’clock in the morning, he thought, and I am sitting on the edge of my bed in my underwear listening to a woman sniff.

  Chapter Three

  The Salt Zone, and above, larger, “Jackson Cooper.” In fact, it said, “Coop,” the “er” having been obscured by a gold sticker proclaiming best-seller status. There was an illustration, too—all moody deep blues and dusky indigo—of a man with a gun standing over a pretty girl. The pretty girl was dead.

  Eve thought the book’s cover calculatedly masculine, pointlessly so, and wondered idly how these things came about—covers and titles and so forth. Not the sorts of things she’d ever thought about before. Certainly she had not been thinking about them when she’d brought that first novel of Jack’s—not his first, but the first she’d read—home from the Red Cross.

  Eve, who had read a great deal since childhood, intensely if not particularly widely, had felt tired that day, one of the few she’d spent at the shop in the previous six months. It was a Friday and the weekend had loomed, friendless, in front of her, but she had not wanted to spend it in the company of another, fictional, woman, unhappy in love or battling lightly with life. She’d wanted a companion with energy, a story she wouldn’t have to work at, or weep over. She’d already taken two paperbacks from the “Books” shelf, but they were both battered and exuding the faint, morbid aroma of damp, and she knew already that she lacked enthusiasm for either.

  Then an attractively disheveled woman had come to the shop doorway and called, “We’ve had a clear-out.” As if this was a mildly amusing statement. She’d dropped a pile of books and a bulging plastic sack full of bric-a-brac on the floor and rushed off again. Her car was double-parked outside.

  Eve, watching her, acknowledging the donation with a small smile and coming out from behind the counter to collect the items, had thought: That’s a woman with a husband—a husband and a noisy family and probably a dog. She could imagine the woman complaining about them all, with the sort of cheerful relish that the complaining of people who have nothing really to complain about is always infused with. She had lifted Jack’s book from the top of the things that the woman no longer wanted and held it to her chest, closing both hands over it while the car pulled away, as if to catch some of that blithe busy-ness. Then she had dropped it into her bag and, dutifully, put a pound into the cash register to cover its cost.

  She’d read Dead Letters in almost a single sitting, allowing herself the great luxury of two chapters in the bath—a small defiance, it was the kind of thing that Virginia, for all her own self-indulgences, would have berated her for. Then she’d sat up in bed with two pillows at her back while Jack’s hero, Harry Gordon—a dry-witted sleuth with gourmet tastes and a talent for observation—battled a bitter mother-in-law, a suicidal ex-wife, the traditional forces of law, and his conscience for three hundred pages.

  At first she’d read fast, as if she were clinging to a moving vehicle, pulled along by the pace of the plot. But then she’d slowed, deliberately, to appreciate the writing—the humor in the choppy sentences, the evocative descriptions of meals and scenery. She’d felt the heat when there was heat, and the fear when there was fear, and the loneliness that underlay the story coming off the page. It had done what good stories always do, made her forget her own.

  Eve put her glass down now and lifted The Salt Zone from the table next to the sofa. On the back of it there was a photograph of a man, in his late thirties maybe—a ruggedly handsome man wearing a blue open-necked shirt and chinos. He had soft brown hair and a relaxed smile and eyes the color of a spring sky—there were creases at the corners of them. He was tanned. He had looked as relaxed in his skin as an old Labrador even then, ten years before she’d even heard of him. Jack. Her Jack.

  “Just move that, Mummy, if it’s in your way. It’s Ollie’s.”

  Eve put the book down hurriedly. “Jackson Cooper,” she said, lingering over the name as if it were a foreign word she was taking care to pronounce correctly.

  “Jackson Cooper?” Ollie repeated, coming into the room, sitting with his drink, “The Harry Gordon novels. They made the movies out of them.”

  “Movies?”

  “They’re Boy Films. All gritty men and nervy women,” Izzy explained to her mother.

  “You enjoyed that last one,” Ollie protested.

  “Did not,” Izzy said, arranging and rearranging herself on the sofa. She made a little grunt as if the cushions had set out to irk her.

  Ollie ruffled her hair, then smoothed it again, invading that fine carapace only gently, temporarily.

  “Did so,” he said.

  They both laughed. A single, out-of-place strand of Izzy’s hair still clung to her cheek. Eve was pleased to see that she did not dislodge it. She felt warmed by the witnessing of such a light moment between them. They had come down for the night so that Izzy could discuss wedding plans with her. Eve was not eager about the prospect.

  Ollie, the bonus guest, cushion between the two women, dropped himself into an easy chair, all dangly charm and winsome scruffiness, and said, “These cheese straws are fantastic, Mrs. P. You ought to get some sort of award for them.”

  Eve smiled. At least their visits gave her people to cook for, a bit of purpose. Her house would take no more of her trim domesticity; it was already delightfully decorated. She had a conservatory full of freshly painted Lloyd Loom, a well-ordered linen closet, and a pantry full of preserves. There wasn’t a whisper of dust on the silk lampshades, the magazines on the ottomans were neatly stacked, and the silver lay polished, wrapped, and labeled in the rosewood sideboard. The Georgian dining table, which, with spare leaves inserted, seated twelve comfortably, glowed permanently, with a watchful sheen. Eve’s was a perfect family home, with no family in it.

  She offered Ollie a dainty mosaic of hors d’oeuvres and he lifted a miniature tomato tart delicately between two fingers and held it to the light.

  “It’s like a jewel,” he said. Then he tossed it up into the air and caught it in his mouth—a boy, his brown curly hair overdue for a cut.

  He’s good-looking, Eve thought, and sweet. Virginia, who’d met Ollie twice before she died, had declared him “manageable.” It was a compliment, but Eve had heard in it criticism, not so much of her own choice, but more her skills where managing men was concerned. Had Simon been manageable? Or sweet? She couldn’t remember. She’d been so blind-sided by the romance of him, she hadn’t paid much attention really to his personality. And then, so soon, he’d been gone. She tried not to think about it.

  “What do you call your own mother, Ollie?” she asked. The prospect of being called Mrs. P. for the rest of her life had limited appeal.

  Ollie laughed. “I call her Ma, but it infuriates her. She’d like us to call her Adele, and pretend that we were her nephew and niece. She can get away with telling people she’s thirty-nine except when Cassie and I are around.” Cassandra was Ollie’s sister, two years his senior, and a painter. “Cassie goes along with it, of course. I’m the black sheep.”

  Eve, who had an outsider’s ear for nuance, immediately sensed the insecurity in this. “She must be very proud of you,” she said, aware as she spoke that it was a meaningless platitude. Her own mother had never been proud of her.

  “Oh, I’m not so sure. She thinks my work is pretty dull. The corporate banking world isn’t exactly her thing. Cassie’s the one who’s fulfilled her expectations.”

  Eve wanted to reassure, to say something kind and sustaining, but she did not want to say something else that was dishonest. She had heard those sorts of things enough herself, from well-meaning types, parents of school friends, her husband even. People were extremely loath to accept the notion that a mother, particularly, might not love her child, but Eve knew it could happen, and full
of sympathy and more, empathy, for Ollie at that moment, she was shocked to find herself thinking not of her own mother’s feelings for her—which she had accepted, if never exactly come to terms with. But, rather, of her own relationship with Izzy.

  Did she love Izzy? She remembered her birth and her lack of preparation for it, the terror she’d felt when the tiny screaming infant had been laid in her arms afterward. The difficulties of breastfeeding and joyless, sleepless nights. She had read since about postnatal depression and been sure that was what she had been suffering from. No one had said such a thing to her at the time.

  Eve thought now about the way Gwen had talked about visiting her daughters after their babies, Gwen’s grandchildren, had been born. How she’d told Eve animatedly that she’d put a duster around, or sorted laundry while the new mother caught up on her rest. That she’d left a stew, or a pie in the refrigerator. Eve knew that she was not that sort of mother to Izzy. Was that what Izzy wanted?

  Ollie interrupted her thoughts. “I expect you’ll meet her before the wedding,” he said. “She comes over to shop from time to time.” He laughed softly.

  Eve wondered what Adele would make of Izzy when they did meet. It sounded as if she might not approve. Izzy had her grandmother’s forceful personality, but she was conventional. Like me, Eve thought, strangely pleased. She smiled at Ollie, realizing for the first time that Izzy was probably a stalwart ship in the unsteady sea of his life. She hoped that it would work out. And then she hoped that when it didn’t, nobody would be too badly hurt.

  “But, Mummy, of course you must come,” Izzy said, pouring herself some tea from the pot the next morning. She was leaning against the Aga; Eve kept it lit year-round. She turned with the fresh cup full in her hand and lifted it, watching Eve over the rim with an expression that was sapping to opposition.

  “It must be a hundred miles from here,” Eve said.

  “Eighty-six. We’ll leave in half an hour and be back for supper. Then, tomorrow, Ollie and I will get up early and drive back to London. You can make us a picnic breakfast for the car if you like. Put some of these in it.” Eve had made cinnamon rolls; Izzy gestured to the one in her hand.

  “Izzy, you and Ollie are quite capable of choosing your own wedding venue. You don’t need me along.”

  “No, we don’t, Mummy. But that’s what mothers do, isn’t it?” It was a small flare. She fanned it. “Gin-gin would have loved to come,” she said. But her best goading had never got the sort of reaction from Eve that she’d been able to ignite in her grandmother.

  Eve, dusting cinnamon and crumbs from the work-top into the palm of her hand, simply said, “Yes, I expect she would have.” But she knew that the argument, weak in any case, was lost.

  The day promised warmth. Eve dressed in simple, white cotton, lace-edged underwear and a light blue dress with a square neckline and no sleeves. Her arms were slim and tanned from the little gardening she still did. Light work—weeding, watering, and deadheading—was what she enjoyed. She left the rest to Mr. Feltnam, who’d been working for her for years and needed no instruction—something that Eve was glad of, since instructing people had never been her strong suit.

  She had worn the dress only a few times before, and reaching back to zip it up, she looked at herself critically in the full-length mirror in the small rectangular dressing area adjacent to her bedroom. Then she brushed her hair with a silver-backed brush, inherited from a grandmother on her father’s side whom she had never known, but who, in the two photographs of her that existed, bore a striking resemblance to Eve: slight, almond-eyed, with high cheekbones and a long neck.

  The dress suited her; she could see that. But she wasn’t sure it gave her any authority—the sort of authority that she associated with mothers of brides. She unzipped it again and took it off, sliding it down over her legs to the floor. Then she hung it back on its padded hanger and removed a white skirt from a different one that she teamed with a lemon twin-set and two strands of pearls. She wasn’t particularly fond of pearls, but they went some way at least toward achieving the look she was striving for—capable.

  The woman in the neat trouser suit whose job it was to show them around Hadley Hall and point out details such as good places for receiving lines, and photographs, and all those other things that Izzy seemed as familiar with as she, was formidable, but no match, Eve noted, for Izzy.

  Ollie, winking theatrically at Eve at one point, said, “Lucky it’s not up to us, Mrs. P. We’d be in a tent on the green with a fish supper.”

  Eve smiled—he really was endearing—and said, “I like a fish supper myself.” She was feeling relieved. The drive up, music in the car and one stop for some awful coffee and packets of peppermints, had been uneventful, pleasant even. She was hopeful.

  “Ollie, are you listening to any of this?” Izzy said crisply.

  “Yes, beloved, every word.”

  They stopped in a nearby village on the way back. Izzy wanted to look at bed-and-breakfast places, for friends who would stay after the reception. Eve was amazed at how much thinking she’d given to the thing already. They had six months yet. It was to be a winter wedding.

  “In the snow,” Izzy had told her over the phone.

  “I’m not sure you can bank on snow,” Eve had suggested tentatively. Izzy, if always daunting, was doubly so with regard to her wedding plans.

  “Well, it’s not as if I can bank on sunshine in July, is it,” she’d countered. They’d had two weeks of rain. Outside, as they spoke, it was pouring in Dorset, so Eve had agreed and written lightly “Order snow” on a page in her file.

  Now Izzy set her bulging ring binder down on the wooden bench table outside the village pub. It was a lovely day, the sky mellowed by dainty clouds—an English day. And the pub, like its surroundings, was postcard perfect with a small, pretty garden. Ollie went in to buy the drinks, and Izzy, settling herself once she’d written some notes under the heading “B & Bs,” said, “Do you think I should bring Daddy out here, before I book it?”

  Eve was too shocked to reply.

  Izzy, as insensitive as she was by nature, may have caught this, the tip of a splinter, because when she went on, she sounded slightly apologetic. “Well, he’ll be paying for it after all.”

  “Will he?” Eve replied weakly as she bent and moved her handbag under her seat, buying time.

  “Of course.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  There was a pause before Izzy said, “I telephoned him to tell him that I was engaged.”

  Eve watched a fat bumblebee make its ambling way along the table edge.

  “I thought he might want to know,” Izzy finished. There was some defiance in her tone now. Eve was not sure at whom it was aimed.

  “And did he?” she asked softly.

  “Oh, yes. He was delighted, absolutely delighted.”

  “That’s nice.” Eve could feel her breath quickening.

  “Yes, and he said that he would help with the wedding costs. That was why I thought he might want to see Hadley Hall. You know…before The Day.”

  Eve, for the first time, realized that Simon might come to the wedding. With his wife. Not the one he’d left her for; there’d been another since then. But there he’d be, with his wife—Simon the father, the host; a novelty and a star in Izzy’s eyes. And she, Eve, would be what she’d always been—the background. She felt crushed. The great, lurking boulder of the past had loosed again and tumbled down on her.

  “I got you a cider, Mrs. P.,” Ollie said, returning with the three glasses pressed gaily between his two hands.

  Eve barely nodded and didn’t reply. All the contentment of the day had been expelled. She tried to pull herself together, but she kept imagining Simon in that receiving line, looking marvelous in his morning suit. He had always been glamorous. She was such a fool not to have thought about it before. She was a silly, idiotic fool.

  She got up hastily, intending to escape to the ladies’ room, and caught the edge of h
er glass. Cider splashed all over her skirt.

  “Oh, Mummy!” Izzy said, her own tension squeezing her voice so that it came out as a squeal.

  A large group of attractive, well-dressed people arrived in the garden just then. The clatter of the glass and Izzy’s exclamation drew their attention. Eve, mopping hopelessly at her hemline, could feel everybody looking at her. Blood rushed to her face and her temples felt hot. Leaning forward to shelter herself from view, she was aware that she could not see clearly. Aware of a chaotic aria of discordant, tormenting voices building in her brain, she kept flapping frantically the light fabric at her knees. Until she was unable to catch her breath, entirely unable. She knew she was going to faint, to pass out on the grass in that suddenly crowded little garden, in front of everyone. A small, wretched noise escaped her, high and wild, like the far distant shriek of an ocean bird.

  “Mummy? Mummy…?”

  “Mrs. P.?”

  Eve could hear the voices, but was unable to respond.

  “I’m a doctor,” a man’s voice said. “Your mother, is it? What’s her name?” He was a middle-aged man in a golfing shirt. Izzy let him move her away from Eve, who had crumpled with one leg bent back, the way that legs on chalk illustrations in old-fashioned television mysteries always are.

  “She’s Eve. Mummy…?”

  Eve’s breathing was uncontrollable now; she was gasping, great labored gasps.

  “Eve? I’m Matt. I’m a doctor. Can you hear me?”

  Eve could. She turned her face to his with stricken eyes.

  Maybe she wasn’t fair. Maybe she was dark and round. Everything about her was comforting. Her simple name, the recipes, the way she wrote. She wrote well—plainly and directly, but at times lyrically. His food friend. It seemed at times his best friend. Mutton is good with plums, she’d said.

  I liked hearing about the plums, he wrote. Eve had told him about the tree in her garden. She could see it from her kitchen window and she marked the seasons by it. She could not bear waste, she said, and maybe the love of cooking had started there. She never wanted to see the fruit, the beautiful rich ripe fruit with its soft bloom, lying abandoned and rotting. She liked something to come of it. She liked to see the jars of preserves lining her larder. Took real pleasure in it—the regularity of it. And then, of course, the taste. The closer the cook was to the picking, the better the taste was. The intensity of flavor was lost so quickly.