‘I saw you just as you were about to disappear from view,’ he said, leaping out. ‘You silly girl, you’re soaked through.’
She allowed him to hurry her through the gate, and he held her in the kitchen, rain puddling beneath her, steam rising from her as she soaked his chest. The idea of the boy in the house now seemed absurd. She looked up at him finally.
He lifted her hand, and kissed it.
‘Mrs Crale,’ he said.
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said rapidly.
‘My darling Rowena.’
She let her breath out.
‘Are my eyes like pandas’?’
‘Yes.’
‘And my hair has all fallen down.’
‘Yes.’
‘And look at me. Oh God, I am wet through. I am barely seemly.’ She covered herself with her hands.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I have never seen you so gorgeous.’
‘God. Greg,’ she said.
‘Why the dickens have you been avoiding me?’
She felt herself blush. ‘You know—’
‘Yes, I know why,’ he said, taking out a cigarette and lighting another for her.
‘Lana might see us!’ she said, looking up and starting.
‘Only if she walks to the bottom of the garden through torrential rain with an ability to see through semi-darkness into an unlit kitchen,’ he said, and she laughed, then hiccupped.
‘Excuse me.’
‘Come out with me tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Where? Where could I possibly go out with you?’
‘To a candlelit restaurant far away from here, in – in Hampstead, in Bond Street – where I can gaze at you and hold your hand and tell you that I never saw anyone like you in Crowsley Beck.’
‘I’m not sure that’s much competition,’ she said, her mouth twitching.
‘In all of South Herts!’
She smiled, gave a moue of objection.
‘You’re the most bewitching creature I ever did see,’ he said, his voice breaking up as he said it. ‘We need to spend more time together. I will think.’
His words carried her through the afternoon and evening as she nodded and smiled absently at Bob, and then the twins came back from fetching the baby, trailing vast puddles as they wheeled her in. Caroline gurgled, and was fatter and more contented since she had started going to Mrs Pollard’s.
‘Where is Eva?’ said Rowena. How many times did she say that? Where is Eva?
The twins shook their heads, spraying rain.
‘Hot bath,’ murmured Rowena, taking a wet Caroline out of her pram and stripping her down.
Evangeline had gone. Could she say those words? She couldn’t. ‘Evangeline,’ she called, knowing it was useless. She stood on a stool in Eva and Caroline’s room, lifted the window and let the rain tumble on her head in arrows that pelted her. She looked uselessly through the torrents on the green.
She habitually barely saw her own strange daughter, but there were glimpses, sightings, the odd meal taken, nights in her own bed before an early departure. But even the twins were not now reporting seeing her at the Pollards’. She glanced at the clock. She was waiting for the yardarm, she realised.
‘Douglas,’ she said when he returned from work. ‘I don’t know where Eva is.’
He made an impatient plosive sound and shrugged, handing her his jacket. ‘Who ever does?’
‘Yes, but – Yes, but—’
He suddenly leaned over and kissed her, as though remembering you were supposed to kiss your wife when you returned from work; or, she thought, he had caught sight of the anxiety she must be betraying, and he felt a moment of sympathy. He occasionally did.
‘She’ll come back,’ he said. ‘She always does.’
‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly. ‘You’re right.’
She appraised her husband. He looked the same as he always had, immune to all the changes that were at large in London, Liverpool, Washington, outer space. He was of medium height, a fact that clearly aggrieved him, as there was an air of strutting self-importance to his gait; he held himself as high as possible, his chin tilted in a slight thrust. His mid-brown hair was still sensibly cut, not so different from when he had been at school. The faintest pot belly was forming, visible only in his white shirts. He was a decent husband, thought Rowena. She loved him.
With Caroline at Mrs Pollard’s for a few hours, she had managed to prepare a shrimp mousse. Lana Dangerfield served a starter and a proper dessert every evening, apparently, though Lana Dangerfield had a nanny and a cleaner. Rowena had thought Douglas would be pleased with her effort, but he barely noticed, then cursorily thanked her when she asked him. She raced up between courses to put baby Caroline to bed, and while the chops browned she looked swiftly in Eva’s trunk in case there was some unlikely indication of her whereabouts, but all she saw was a scrumpled layer of the terrible clothes, wrinkled and grubby, and she shuddered with distaste, and hated herself for a transient sense of something close to relief that she was not having to bear the social shame of Eva, the stares and puzzled faces. Once the new term started and Eva was secure in Ragdell Place, life would be easier. But in the meantime, where was she?
She ran back through the pool of darkness by Bob’s room, and blame emanated from it at her: blame, blame, guilt.
It was picturing that old woman’s face turned to the wall in despair that made her want to cry, to curl up and hide; or, on different days, to protest, justify, explain.
But, she thought, she was old; she was ill.
So shouldn’t they have looked after her in her own home? Of course they should have. But in the daze of nappies and gripe water that followed Caroline’s birth, the idea of caring for a half-demented mother-in-law almost defeated her. Douglas, she noticed, did not appear to shoulder his share of guilt for the painful decline of his own mother, occasionally barking out an ill-considered statement of regret, while Eva was always there to punish her.
‘Please, Douglas, can we get rid of that staircase?’ she said as she sped back down to the sizzling meat.
He laughed at her. ‘You can’t just chop out a staircase,’ he said. ‘My daffy little love.’
‘It doesn’t feel right.’
‘There’s no problem with the staircase. Just this goddamn unexplainable leak.’ He gestured at the ceiling. ‘Use the other stairs if you’ve taken against these ones.’
They went to bed. Now that Mrs Pollard was feeding Caroline by bottle – and she would secretly use any excuse to get her off the breast – perhaps her former body would return to her.
‘Darling,’ she said tentatively to Douglas, trying hard to do her duty, but he had drunk several glasses of whisky after supper, and she turned her head so she couldn’t see the determined look in his eye as he gave her a series of amorous embraces that led to nothing.
10
‘LOOK FOR EVA,’ she said the next day to her older girls. ‘Please. Tell her to come home if you see her. Doesn’t she help with Caroline and the other babies?’
‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Jennifer.
But there was no sign of her that evening, so the next day, Rowena went to Mrs Pollard’s herself. Smoke emerged from the window of a large shed, its wood damp-greened, and thuggish-looking cats mewed.
‘Rosie!’ cried Rosemary.
‘Ginger!’ cried Jennifer.
‘Come here, my dear,’ said Mrs Pollard, crooning with baby Caroline in her arms and stroking Jennifer’s head as she passed.
‘Has Eva – Evangeline – been here?’
Mrs Pollard looked at her blankly with her saucer-of-milk eyes, her face so plumply smooth, she looked as though she must be faintly retarded.
‘She’s a helpful girl,’ she said.
‘Thank you. Yes. Has she been here?’
‘Of course.’
‘When? When did you last see her?’
‘She just left.’
Rowena paused, relieved but puzzled.
‘But it
’s only half past nine,’ she said.
Mrs Pollard met her gaze. ‘Why yes, Mrs Crale. Evangeline is an early riser.’
‘She stayed the night here?’
There was the faintest pause.
‘I don’t really know, my dear. She may well have. She knows that any room she wants is hers. There’s many a bed here.’
‘I see,’ said Rowena. ‘Can you send her home? Next time.’
‘As you wish. Of course.’
Rowena paused again. Mrs Pollard was smiling at her placidly, and she suddenly felt reassured and faintly ridiculous for worrying. It was the summer. Eva ran somewhat wild in the school holidays, and the countryside would afford her infinitely more opportunity, but the terms tethered her to more of a routine.
‘Eva likes it here, Mummy,’ said Rosemary.
‘I’m sure she does.’
‘She says Freddie is here, dear,’ said Mrs Pollard.
Rowena paused for longer. She coloured faintly. ‘Well . . . always? Is he always meant to be here?’
‘No. Just some nights. At other times, apparently he goes home without her! There now, my dear, Freddie is one child you do not have to worry about!’ She winked, slightly, from under her bristling fringe.
‘Shall we take Caroline round?’ said Rowena, and began to wheel her towards the side of the house.
‘Oh, come in through the front door, not the long way round,’ said Mrs Pollard in her comforting sponge of a voice and led the way through the hall, which featured several telephones from different eras, some with their wires cut; tools, boxes, hooks, old carriage clocks and sacks piled up among out-of-date catalogues and envelopes. ‘Excuse the state of it, please, Mrs Crale,’ said Mrs Pollard. ‘It’s all Arthur’s flotsam and jetsam. I only usually show visitors my garden, my parlour and my dining room. This way.’
They entered the dining room, where Mr Pollard’s bunches of plastic roses sat in vases on doilies all about the sideboards and his Welsh landscapes decorated the chimney breast.
‘Very nice,’ said Rowena. The sounds of infants drifted through the open window.
She glanced at the other end of the room and gave a gasp. There on the wall was an oil painting of her daughter. Jennifer Crale gazed into the room with eyes so large and intensely blue, she looked almost inhuman: improbably beautiful. Her plaits were caught up in hangman’s nooses, their perfect loops like two sides of a bow. She gazed into the room, a dimple on her cheek, the glisten of imminent laughter animating her mouth, and all of life was there ahead of her in her crystalline eyes and in the smile that danced over her expression. Rowena recognised her pink gingham dress with the rick-rack collar, her yellow cardigan, faithfully reproduced. The painting was skilled but wilful, crude and odd, so vast-orbed its subject recalled a Harlequin Waif or an alien doll.
‘My . . . that’s Jennifer,’ she said eventually, torn between pride and a kind of possessive anger.
‘It certainly is. Dear Jennifer. Arthur painted her nicely. I hope you’ll agree.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Rowena, frowning slightly. She was suddenly worried, but tried to reassure herself.
‘And I can see where her glorious beauty comes from, my dear,’ said Mrs Pollard, glancing at Rowena with a smile from beneath her fringe.
‘She doesn’t look like me,’ said Rowena bluntly.
‘No, but the material’s all there,’ she said. ‘It’s strange that she doesn’t look directly like you. But you’re a fine-looking lady, Mrs Crale. And it’s a pleasure to make the acquaintance of the Crale family. Come on now, little Caroline.’
Evangeline was not at home when Rowena returned. But the boy was. It was always when she entered the house or another room that she had a faint awareness that someone else was there, somewhere, just in the periphery of her vision or forgotten in a different room. He watched and retreated, followed and waited. It made her count her children in her head, with a plunge of worry for Eva. Bob barely had friends yet, merely alliances fabricated by her and the other mothers in the Wives’ Association, a round of teas and cookery afternoons when local women put their vaguely contemporary children together to squabble, then hug goodbye. Was she looking after one of those children? Had she forgotten who was in her charge? She saw the shadow, almost a dandelion seed, floating past the corner of her eye. More often, it was simply an awareness, a nagging of something she had forgotten. Was it really Freddie she was imagining? Was her own mind playing tricks, contaminated by Evangeline’s? What was Freddie supposed to look like? She would ask Bob again.
She dreaded the moments she put Bob down for his nap after his lunch. She used the staircase in number 2, walking him all the way along the narrow corridors and round the corner to his bedroom at the far end of number 3, but still the sourness was there on the landing, an underlying mouth-coating of mould, urine, protest, as there had been in the wall that had died. No, it hadn’t died, she told herself. They had knocked it down. But it had, hadn’t it? It had had life to it, in some inexplicable way. It had cried out. Its stiff edges were the crusts of a carcass, and it was still seeping the life blood that it had once had. Today, the perfume lay in fitful drifts over the shadows.
I want to get out of this house, Rowena thought with heart-sinking realisation.
A brief summer downpour hit the village again and someone appeared on the green, a sole figure out in the rain, and Rowena gazed, barely focusing. It was a girl, making her way from behind the war memorial across the grass. She was so thin that she looked barely human, but rather a half-drowned creature, hair plastered, long frock soaked grey beneath a clinging shawl, the day so leached of colour, she appeared as a Victorian waif in a black-and-white photograph. She was holding the hand of a young child. No, she wasn’t; she had merely swung her arm near the little bridge that traversed the stream, where children threw sticks. But was it Evangeline? She seemed thinner, noticeably slighter, and grubbier. It was a girl in a long dress and apron: it could only be Evangeline. Rowena felt relief tangled with anger at her disobedience.
Douglas had provided more housekeeping money for increased hours at Mrs Pollard’s while the builders were working on the house, to enable Rowena to supervise every aspect of its decoration, and so Evangeline’s absence was not as noticeable as it would have been in less busy weeks. The decorating helped Rowena to keep away from Gregory, for she was resolved again, ricocheting between horror that they had kissed and simple fear. The twins reported seeing Evangeline, yet they, especially Jennifer, were vague, and the sightings, by their account, had been brief.
Later in the week, she saw Eva twice through the downstairs window of number 3, but she was yet thinner, and once she turned with an even scrawnier face to look at the house from the green, and Rowena was shocked.
Ignoring the possibility of discovery by Gregory or Lana Dangerfield, she raced out on to the green. ‘Eva, Eva, come back home,’ she called, but it was dusk, and the shadows were long, the elm shade knotty, and Eva had flickered away. There was a boy there. On the other side of the green. But he too left, down where the stream was.
‘Eva, come home and eat,’ Rowena called. ‘Darling,’ she shouted, sounding like a madwoman. ‘Evangeline,’ she said.
After a fortnight’s work, the builders had made a breakfast nook, complete with delightful red tiles, a wood-effect surface, and a matching red floor. Mrs Crale’s old kitchen with its smoking range was turned into a playroom, her pantry into a downstairs lavatory, and the kitchen in the original number 2 had been entirely remodelled. But still the damp oozed, bubbled, crusted. Rowena heard footsteps; she was sure she did, but it was her own poor imagination. Now she was left in the house with Bob, the others playing, a pump chugging, a polythene membrane added, clay air bricks inserted, and the lovely wallpaper entirely ruined.
‘Eva has gone, do you understand that?’ said Rowena to Douglas later that night. ‘She doesn’t come home.’
He shrugged reflexively. Then for the first time, he looked worried.
/> ‘I’ll ring the police station in the morning,’ he said.
11
‘MY DAUGHTER HAS gone,’ Rowena said to the doctor, because Douglas had advised her she should make an appointment. She wasn’t sleeping, and she was jumping at shadows. Dr Crewe gave her some Librium that would help her, and added a prescription to precipitate the loss of baby flab.
‘Your daughter is a runaway?’ he said to her.
She paused. ‘I – I hardly know how to answer,’ she said, plucking at her skirt. She pressed on her fingernail so hard it broke.
The policeman from Radlett came and asked questions to which Rowena and Douglas could only provide answers that sounded, even to Rowena’s ears, culpably vague. But to explain the nature of Evangeline was difficult. Was she a backward child, he wanted to know? Was she handicapped? A candidate for electroshock treatment? Evangeline did not fit easily into any category, and yet she was considered mentally subnormal by those who saw her slipping, murmuring, sidling through the village in her ghost frocks. The villagers had plenty to say to the police about Miss Evangeline Crale. The station at Radlett brought in another officer from Watford. They rifled through Evangeline’s trunk, contacted her old school in London, and interviewed all the neighbours. They spent the most time at Brinden, where the Pollards were apparently happy to answer questions and give them the run of the place, and they came back full of tales of Mrs Pollard’s rock cakes and Mr Pollard’s sloe gin.
‘Have you seen her this week at all ?’ Rowena asked the twins, and dreaded the answer.
‘No, Mummy,’ said Rosemary.
Jennifer shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. There was something shuttered about her eyes.
The hay meadows were dozing, and the Dangerfields went to Cornwall, which meant that Rowena could wander freely. She resolved to keep Bob out in the sunshine and baby Caroline in the fresh air when she was not with Mrs Pollard. The village was a little emptier. She had hoped for a bucket-and-spade holiday perhaps in Essex or Suffolk, but Eva’s absence rendered this an impossibility, while the expenses of the house prohibited it. ‘Eva, Eva,’ Rowena called, whenever no villager was near her. The police asked more questions and returned an officer to Brinden, but the frequency of Eva’s past absences made them confident of an imminent return.
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