by Gavin McCrea
A horn blast from the black Alvis in the queue behind jolted Doris out of her mirror-reverie and into the performance of those gestures, precise and brutal, that machines
—This fucking machine!
demanded of their operators: plenty of revving before the brake came off; full throttle and straight into third to clear King’s Cross and join Euston Road; fourth gear then and fairly zipping — Eva closed her eyes and unconsciously began to talk to her God — until they were caught by another light on the western corner of St Pancras Station as they prepared to turn right onto Midland Road.
As they braked, Eva was thrown so far forwards that she nearly knocked the front of her head against the back of Doris’s.
—Oh balls it, Doris said.
She drummed out her impatience onto the dashboard, jigging her legs so wildly that her knees knocked.
—Hot, innit?
She stretched her neck out of the open window and sucked in what she could.
—Ugh, said Eva. Yuck.
—You know what, said Doris, you’s right, and yanked the window shut.
Behind glass now, yet all too palpable still: the city. Given up to heat and welter, and to flies that refused to be waved away, and to a thirst that could not be quenched. The rise in temperature had not been sudden. Little by little, over the course of days, the light had brightened and the winds had warmed, as the forecasts had promised, yet the change, now fully experienced, took Eva by surprise. Life at Mountfield was built on routine and dates and timetables, yet everything passed so quickly — every day a thousand miles covered, life rolling on at the rate of a tempest — that the slow world of winter followed by spring followed by summer got passed over and forgotten. Yet now on Euston Road, in her father’s girl’s car, the real rate of things returned to her consciousness. Summer and sky and brick and stone, they were not going to change for her. Nor was her life going to become another’s simply because she was willing it to. Nor indeed was time going to stop so that she could be in two places at once: both here and anywhere but here.
When finally given way, they swung at full tilt onto Midland Road, scattering the gang of boys who had spread themselves in a loose line across the street in order to taunt them:
—Oi, missus! Come on then! Hit us with your hairdryer!
With a clear road ahead, Doris pressed the pedal to the floor, and they flew through the long shadows cast by the station, under the bridge, past the coal depot and into the terraces of Somers Town, where they soon got lost.
Doris slowed the car to a crawl and squinted about.
—Sorry about this, she said. I’s still finding me way.
She asked directions from a band of young men who were hanging around at the entrance to an alley. Once they had finished laughing and whistling, they, all five of them, accompanied the car by running alongside and banging on the roof when it was time to turn. Eva sank down into her shirt collar and hid her face behind a hand.
Scaffolding covered two-thirds of The East Wind façade. Men in helmets and overalls moved among the forest of metal poles, with the largest number congregated on the first level, drilling long panels of red plastic onto a metal frame to make a canopy above the main door. Home, it seemed, was a building site.
Doris jammed on the brakes, lifted open the roof of the car and stood up inside it.
—Oi! she called up to them. Simon! You up there?
—Jesus H Christ, Eva whispered to herself.
The young men from the courts, their cortège, stood around, watching, wanting to know what their business was. Doris did not send them away, and Eva would have been afraid to.
—Over here, Simon. Yeah, hi!
The drills stopped. The workmen turned to look. Simon stood up from kneeling and came to the edge of the wooden plank. To Eva he was recognisable from the manner in which his appearance diverged from her father’s. A nose that spread sideways rather than pointing out. A cleft chin instead of one that slackened. In the place of fleshy pouches, sad valleys running down his cheeks. He was wearing jeans and a vest, which she could not imagine her father in, and had a hefty, built-up frame, one simultaneously enhanced and undermined by his war injuries: his left arm severed at the elbow, an intricate web of scars on his neck and shoulders.
—Doris? he said. And look who it is! Eva’s back!
Unlike her father, Simon had retained his Yorkshire accent, which Eva thought he played up a bit too much.
He waved his stump:
—Back for the vac already, is it?
She flashed a hand, then quickly hid it away.
—Yeah, Uncle Si, hi.
—Simon, said Doris, can you do us a favour and open the warehouse door?
—All right, he said. But—
He drew a circle in the air around the King’s Cross boys.
—who are your friends here?
—These fine gents showed us the way.
He used the drill bit to push his helmet a little further back on his head.
—Yeah? Well, the gents will have to wait outside.
He gave his drill to one of the other workers and passed on some quiet orders. Came down the ladder two steps at a time, his stump running down the outside rail to keep his balance. Once on the ground he took his helmet off. A tuft of brown curls sprang upwards, which he rubbed with his palm in a quick circular motion.
—That’s it, boys, he said, approaching the King’s Cross posse. Show’s over.
When he walked, he landed more heavily on one foot than the other, as though his body were no longer at one with his will.
—I’ll take them from here.
—Thanks, fellas, Doris said. You’s have been a smashing help.
The young men shuffled about but did not retreat. Accidental witnesses to an uncertain scene, they nevertheless felt entangled in it, and thus obliged to accumulate their impressions, lest they be called upon for them in the future.
With a jerk of his head, Simon told Doris to follow him. She drove behind him in first gear into a lane that ran between the factory building and a piece of wasteland next door. Scaffolding overhead gave the effect of a tunnel. Doris turned on the headlamps. Ahead, it was as though Simon were emitting his own light; his strange contours appeared precise and sharp and close by. Eva did not like when her father expressed pity for Simon, she thought it a terrible emotion to feel for one’s brother, yet it was what she felt for him now. She challenged herself to feel something else. What materialised was a mounting sentiment of revulsion.
They came out into a courtyard bounded by the rear walls of the factory, the wasteland hoarding and the backs of two terraces. Simon guided her past a bank of skips and crates to a wide metal shutter, which, roughly but also with remarkable dexterity, he unlocked and pulled up. He went in and turned on a light, beckoned her to follow.
—Easy does it! Valuable stuff in here.
Scattered about inside were more crates, along with various cardboard boxes and tin trunks and empty costume rails. Leaning against the walls: flat wedges of scenery, and lengths of plastic and Essex board. From racks of steel piping, lanterns hung, their gaze lowered, extinguished.
—Put yourself in there, he said, pointing to a space between a fake fireplace and an old sofa.
There was enough room for the car, but not to open the roof all of the way, which made it difficult to get out. Simon had to hold the top while they squeezed themselves, one leg at a time, through a narrow gap.
Simon took Eva’s suitcase.
—Come on. I’ll bring this in for you.
They followed him through a low door, down a dark corridor, up a flight of steps, and finally into a large, high-ceilinged room with bare brick walls and a mezzanine. Doris ran straight up the mezzanine stairs and disappeared into the third of the five doors. Simon conducted Eva over to a bar that had been newly buil
t along the back wall. He dusted off the only stool.
—Sit. And don’t touch anything.
She watched him, now, ascend the stairs and disappear through the same door. When the door opened, voices rushed out; when it closed, the sounds became muffled.
A matter of seconds and Simon was coming back down.
—I’ve told them you’re here, he said. Good luck. We’ll catch up later, yeah? All good at the school?
She nodded.
—Glad to hear it.
He left by the same door they had entered.
Alone, she sat in a profound silence. The sound of drilling outside encased the room and made it seem even larger than it was, and overwhelmingly quiet. She had expected lots of people to be here, a community of actors filling all of the spaces and being annoying, so to find herself on her own instead, in this vast empty room, cold and damp in spite of the weather, well, that was annoying.
—Eva?
Her mother was leaning on the mezzanine rails and staring down at her.
—You got home all right?
Her mother’s voice sounded unreal after such loud thoughts in such a silent place. A clean blade of sound in the air. No echo. Nothing wasted. The actress.
—Mama?
Her mother closed her fingers over twice in quick succession, as if clapping with a single hand.
—Up you come, darling.
As she climbed the stairs, the blood in her body drained slowly downwards; her head grew lighter and her feet heavier with every step. When she reached the top, her mother said:
—This way.
And disappeared through the door, leaving it ajar behind her.
With hands that were icy and perspiring at the same time, Eva knocked.
—Oh, do come in, Eva, for goodness sake.
The rehearsal studio, into which she now soundlessly passed, was a large rectangular room, one wall of which was almost entirely taken up by windows, which magnified the sun and made it hard to make anything out at first. Once she had adjusted, she saw temporary markings in yellow tape on the floor. Judging from the shine and the smell of varnish that hung about, the boards had been recently sanded. Chairs were arranged around the walls and a large noticeboard had been hung up, and various notes and sketches pinned to it. In one corner was a rail of clothing and a box of props; in another, a refreshment table. To the right side, looking across the acting space towards the window, was the director’s table, on top of which sat several ashtrays and a clock and a roll of coins and foolscap pads and pens, and behind which sat her father and Max and, in between, Doris. Opposite this, against the wall by the window, was an upright piano, whose low stool was occupied by her sister, Iris. Her mother was standing on one foot beside Iris: her arm outstretched, a hand gripping the corner of the piano’s top board, her left foot held in her left hand and pulled behind her in order to stretch out the muscles of her thighs.
In the centre of the room, a masked actor was standing on a chair. Kneeling on the floor in front of him was a second actor, a grown adult man, wearing a brightly coloured silk shift over his civvies and a pair of heeled shoes strapped over his socks. The masked actor was declaiming a sort of poetry; his supplicant was emitting a sort of whimpering. The rest of the ensemble — about twelve or thirteen others, the women dressed in light shift dresses and short-sleeved blouses, the men with their trousers rolled up and handkerchiefs tied around their heads and ovals of sweat under their arms — were scattered around in various postures of observation; a number of them had lifted masks off their faces and had them sitting on top of their heads. After glancing at Eva when she came in, they did their best to disregard her, but she had already infected the atmosphere. A second then and the actors fell out of the roles. A collective moan was released.
Too enthusiastically, she said:
—Hi!
Everyone turned to take her in, properly this time. What did they see? In comparison to them, even after her journey in the heat, she was tidy and ironed and well arranged. Her blazer had not been unbuttoned at the front, nor had her tie been loosened. Her socks were staying up at her knee and had no wrinkles. Her loafers had little by way of marks or scuffing. The only disturbance, which Eva had noticed while staring at her own reflection in the car window, was some frizz in her hair which formed a delicate crown of light around her head.
—You’re here! her father said.
Purposely not rushing, he pushed his pen into the central fold between the pages of his script and dropped it — slap! — onto the floor beside him. He got up. Yawned. Arched his back. Ran a hand down the front of his trousers to smooth them. All of which delayed him in saying:
—Everyone, this is my elder daughter, Eva.
The group murmured.
—Sorry, said Eva. I don’t mean to cut in.
—No, darling, said her father. We’re glad to see you.
—Oh? So what’s all this then?
On this, Eva cocked her head towards Doris.
Doris shifted in her chair.
Eva’s father wrapped his arms around his body, embracing himself.
Her mother finished her stretching by dropping her leg and shaking it out:
—Welcome to your new home, my love.
—Some welcome.
Her mother was dressed entirely in grey, not that of drabness but of carefully adopted simplicity. Her silk blouse was collarless and had a loose body that hung low over a tight pair of slacks. She wore no jewellery except for a silver wristwatch and a slim wedding ring. A band kept her hair pulled remorselessly back. The effect was to exhibit the full, difficult shape of her face.
—Come here, darling, and sit with your sister by the piano.
Eva did not move, so her mother went to her. Pecked her just beside the mouth. Eva tilted her head to one side. Rolled her shoulder across her cheek to wipe it.
—Please, she said. You don’t have to.
Her mother stood in front of her and scanned her down. Eva squinted away her mother’s scrutiny.
—What, Mama?
—I’m just looking at you.
—Well, don’t.
Her mother hated — and Eva loved that she hated — that other people were raising her child. Her mother hated, too, that her parents, Eva’s grandparents, were paying the fees; hated that they had made boarding school for the children a condition of their financial investment in The East Wind theatre, as if they were buying Eva and Iris passage from an unsafe environment. But more than anything, her mother hated that Eva liked boarding school. That she thrived on all of the rules.
—Mama, you’re crowding me.
Eva stepped round her mother as if round a bothersome obstacle.
—Pickle, her father said, we must have a party to celebrate your return.
—Oh Papa, let’s not.
—Do you like the place? he said.
She shrugged:
—It’s all right.
—Nearly there, eh?
—Is it?
Max intervened:
—Look, Eva, it’s my fault. You can blame me. Your mother was on the way out to get you, but I insisted she stay and work on this silly play of mine. I’ll make it up to you, if you promise not to hate me.
—I was lit-er-ally the only girl not met.
Her mother laughed:
—Honestly, I doubt that.
—The only one. Orphan bloody Annie.
Eva turned to Doris for backing. Doris looked at the floor. Eva dismissed her with a swipe of her hand, and turned back to her public:
—Though, of course, I half-expected it.
—It was good of Doris to go when we asked, said her mother. You should thank her, Eva.
Eva took hold of her skirt and, as if a gown, swished it across her thighs, and in an accent taken from the American pictu
res said:
—Thanking you kindly, Daw-ris.
As she grew into the room, her sister shrank even further back. Which made it easy for Eva to leave her unnoticed.
—Aren’t you going to say hello to Iris? her mother said.
Eva turned, as if under duress, in the direction of the piano. Seeing Iris as she was, slouched forwards, a bruise on her face, her hair unbrushed, her clothes not quite clean, Eva felt a kind of shame. And also a sharp stab of envy.
—Hi, Eva said.
Iris lifted her eyebrows briefly in response.
Alissa tried again to usher Eva over to the piano, this time by taking her arm.
—Unfortunately, Simon is busy with the building work today, so he can’t look after you. You’ll have to sit here with Iris and be quiet. And I mean, quiet. We’ll have lots of time to catch up at supper. I bought a cake.
—Hang on. You want me to sit there and mind Iris? Is this what you expect me to spend my summer doing? Bay-be-sittin?
Eva shook off her mother’s hold. Glowering in mock seriousness, she sauntered through the acting space and wove her way through the actors. She looked over the shoulders of those seated to read what was written on their scripts.
—Eva, said her mother, don’t be a pain.
Eva picked up a spare script from the table.
—May I, sir? she said to her father.
—Go on, you goose, he said.
—Put that down, said her mother. I’m sorry about this everyone. It won’t be like this all summer. We’ll find an arrangement that works.
—Look, just ignore her, okay? said her father. Eva, sit where you like. Let’s get back to work. We’re wasting time with all of this.
Eva flopped onto her father’s chair and opened the script.