My Life With Eva

by Alex Barr

  Passing Oxford Road station he decided to take a train. He got on the one that was waiting, not bothering to see where it went. He stayed in the parcel van with the bike, peering out to see how much he remembered, but the scenery made no impression on his mind. His thoughts went in angry circles – the argument with Rosalind, the traffic jam in Hazel Grove, the failed business, the unknown future, Terry’s blankness, the man who’d nearly killed him. When the conductor came he asked for the next station and got off.

  It was Bramhall. It came back to him, as he passed through the village, how he used to cycle here in his youth, with friends. If he kept his gaze high, on the familiar roofscape, and ignored the brash new signs, he could imagine it unchanged. He took the road uphill towards Woodford, his thigh muscles tingling. The air smelt fresh, the wind was cold and bracing. The houses were neat behind well-kept hedges. It was all soft and green and muted, not hard and red and echoing like Manchester. I could live here, he thought. To hell with Roz, she can take it or leave it. He went over things she’d done, mistakes, omissions, to stoke his anger.

  Where the road levelled out there were fields on his left. It was still almost countryside. Beyond the fence to his right, JCBs at work. A new housing estate, perhaps. That was a pity, he remembered that field full of barley. Or was it wheat? Roz would know – but damn her, it didn’t matter. He turned right past cottages, nurseries, market gardens. Memories came back. He and John Rose had parked their bikes by an oak and wandered through these fields, pulling at grasses, talking about girls they admired, about the future, what they were going to do with their lives. Perhaps the oak was still there – after all, they lived a thousand years.

  It was.

  It hung – seemed to hang – on the edge of an abyss. An enormous channel, a new kind of space.

  The country lane was suspended over nothing. Aliens had loaded acres of greenhouse, wood, hedge, fence, and grass into a spaceship, and beamed in concrete to hold what was left together. Giant aliens, who lived at a different scale.

  The new road marched east and west. Now Bernard saw that what he’d seen from the other lane wasn’t housing. It was this road about to break through. Every path across fields had been severed like a nerve.

  He wheeled the bike through the back gate of Terry’s garden. It was a rectangle of coarse grass with one cherry tree and one mallow. As he shut the shed door on the bike Rosalind came down the five steps from the house and barred his way. Terry and Angela looked down from the kitchen window.

  “Jill’s gone,” she said. “Left for good.”

  “Good God. Has Terry just told you?”

  “No way. But he can’t tell me where the atlas is, or the ironing board, or the Joni Mitchell albums. You don’t take all that on holiday.”

  “Damn!”

  “Why couldn’t he tell us? Why?”

  Rosalind scrutinised his face with a hurt expression. Bernard felt scoured clean by her gaze. He had no secrets from her, or at least, only the one, the big one he’d have to tell her now. Because holding back had made it seem not real. Like not going to the doctor, because once you went you admitted you were sick.

  She looked into Bernard’s eyes. They were alike, the two brothers, but one hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed from childhood, whereas this one, the one she’d helped to mould, for him there was hope.

  He took her hands, steadying her as if to announce a death.

  “Listen.”

  “Go on.”

  He took deep breaths. “It’s just … oh Jeez. This is awful.”

  “Bernard, come on.”

  He cried out, “It’s a mistake. A terrible mistake, coming here. Oh God. I’m paralysed. I can’t think. I can’t imagine a new business. All I can think is places. Places, places, places. We don’t belong anywhere, not anywhere on this earth.”

  Rosalind’s eyes were wet. She kept her hands joined to his and pushed at him, wrestling him like an enemy. Terry and Angela continued watching as if it were a TV drama.

  “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you.” She twisted his wrists, trying to hurt him. “For keeping everything hidden and putting me through hell before you crack. Then you’re like a weed.”

  “This is awful,” Bernard said. There it was again, the scrunching between his heart and stomach. Wrong, it had all gone wrong. “And the boxes haven’t even come yet.”

  “Well that’s good.”

  He stared at her. What did she mean? That now she’d go off like Jill, maybe live in Italy with Lesley? And he’d say, like Terry, ‘Roz is on holiday.’

  “You think it’s good.”

  “We aren’t slaves to that stuff. To a cause. Or even to one another.” She was still trying to break his wrists and fingers. “Don’t call it a mistake. Just say we trialled and errored.”

  He laughed. Rosalind laughed. In the steamed-up kitchen Terry and Angela rubbed at the glass.

  She said, “Tried and erred. Wrong turning. Back to the junction, try again.”

  “Italy?” he murmured.

  Rosalind shook her head. “Lesley would feel dumped on.”

  “We don’t belong anywhere, Roz.”

  “We belong together.”

  Her words tumbled around in Bernard’s mind, not making sense. ‘I hate you.’ ‘We belong together.’ Distracted, he forgot to push. She drove him back until he was against the brick garden wall. She was gritting her teeth, and beyond her wild hair the sky was a mass of contrails broadening into scarves of cloud. He thought, I want clouds made by God, not man, and angrily shoved her backwards. In the centre of the sour-looking grass she matched his strength again. Stalemate.

  By now they were both in tears.

  “All—those—partnerships,” she gasped. Then after a deep breath, “Wayne—failed. Terry—failed. Look at him.”

  She sidestepped, turning them until Bernard saw the kitchen window framing Terry’s blank white cipher of a face.

  “Then Ken—no go,” she muttered.

  “I didn’t quite trust him.”

  “You don’t trust me. I’m your partner. I am.”

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks. The sad garden, the dark red bulk of the house, the dishonoured sky, froze like a painted backdrop, old and rumpled. Rosalind’s face was new, as if he’d never seen it before. The play of feeling around her mouth and eyebrows. The way her eyes burned into him.

  They heaved and heaved, and each felt the other’s power, and the grip of the other’s feet on the earth.

  The Visitor

  In a hospital bed in the north of England lies a very old woman. Her eyes are open and, yes, she’s smiling, even though in a hundred and fifty days she’s only had one visitor. Oh, there are chaplains and social workers and hospital radio DJs but they don’t count. A visitor calls you ‘Mother’ or ‘Gran’ or ‘Edie love’, not plain Edith. A visitor brings you a magazine he or she hasn’t read first, or a bottle of cordial, especially blackcurrant cordial. A visitor makes other patients nosy. Makes them glance across to see who it is and try to listen in to hear your secrets.

  The ward is like any other—a smell of hot pipes and some sweetish chemical. With cheery handwritten notices, clusters of get-well cards, a lot of cream-coloured wall.

  Edith is like many another very old woman, small with sunken eyes and a snow- white halo. When she isn’t watching the doorway, the windowsill, or the gulls, she lies on her side and watches one of her neighbours. They come and go: back home, or to a larger building also called a home, or to a Chapel of Rest. Sometimes Edith whispers to herself, “Chapel of Rest, Chapel of Rest.” It sounds like poetry.

  The latest neighbour on her right is an old man. Yes, the rules are different here. In her youth she wasn’t allowed to see a glowing young man in bed but an old one with parchment skin and bamboo legs, that’s allowed now. Maybe it’s supposed to be therapeutic. Another old man once got into this bed with her but only because he was confused. Her neighbour’s immobilised by tubes. His name’s Frank. Frank by
name, Frank by nature he tells her every day in case she forgets. He also reminds her often how Sergeant Swann said, ‘Pitch them tents down there, Corporal.’ ‘Not up there, Sarge?’ ‘No, down there.’ And of course a flash flood carried the lot away.

  Frank has regular visitors in different combinations. Some days a twosome, son and daughter-in-law, son and grandson, or daughter-in-law and grandson. Some days all three, other days just one, the son or the daughter-in-law. For some reason never just the grandson.

  Afterwards, Frank says, “No visitors Edith?”

  “No.”

  And he nods. Edith doesn’t know what it means, the nod. But it’s not surprising, visitors being in short supply. He does well to get three. Perhaps he thinks she should have played her cards right and stopped her children going abroad. But with him, Frank, to entertain her, who needs visitors? Now and then she feels he’s being smug and that upsets her. Just one visitor, she thinks. One would be enough and enough is a feast.

  The neighbour on her right is another small, very old woman. Her eyes are sunken even more than Edith’s. Her halo of white is very tenuous. Like Frank, she’s immobilised by tubes. She never speaks, just lies there, sometimes facing Edith, sometimes facing away. Her name is also Edith. It’s written in marker pen on a square of plastic above her head. Patient’s Name: Edith Lowe. Her name is also on a bottle on the locker beside her bed. Blackcurrant cordial brought by some great-nephew or grandson. At first, Edith eyed it with envy, then with resignation. Now with the get-well cards and the cream walls it’s just part of the view.

  The cordial remains unopened. Someone’s written Edith Lowe in marker on paper taped round the bottle but destiny doesn’t mean it for Edith Lowe. At two o’clock one October morning, Edith is woken by a bustle and a swish of curtains. Her view is cut off by green material. Raised on one elbow she waits but the effort tires her and she falls asleep. In the morning, the curtains are open, the bed empty and stripped.

  The cordial is still there on the locker. Edith squirms to the edge of the bed and reaches with both hands; she just manages to take hold. The crinkled foil at the top reminds her of Sunday School picnics. She moves it carefully across her body onto her own locker. She tries to tear off the label but her arthritic fingers won’t manage that. She turns it so the label’s away from Frank who when he wakes would feel called upon to comment. Ten minutes later, an auxiliary clears Edith Lowe’s locker. Ten minutes later still, an old man is in the bed, unconscious.

  Later, on her right, Frank’s son arrives for a solo visit. He reads a sporting newspaper and every so often Frank asks a question. His son reads aloud some numbers or a name. At the foot of Edith’s bed a figure appears. It’s the ghost of Edith Lowe, wearing not a white shroud but a purple tracksuit. She has to be Edith Lowe because she has the same profile, the same flyaway eyebrows. She’s been allowed to get younger, she’s frowning, looking at the cordial. She’s going to snatch it back to take for the angels. She’s going to freeze Edith rigid with her Chapel of Rest eyes. The ghost pulls up a chair and takes Edith’s hand. Edith flinches but the hand is warm. She’s forgotten having your hand held by someone not in uniform.

  “You look much better than I expected,” says the ghost, who can’t be a ghost of course, and must be a Chapel of Rest salesperson here to drum up business, disappointed to find Edith so perky.

  “There’s life in the old dog yet,” Edith says.

  The visitor asks, “Do you know who I am, Aunt Edie?”

  Edith can still put two and two together. “My niece.” Though really she has no niece.

  “Great-niece. I’m not surprised you don’t know me. I wouldn’t have known you. It must be thirty years. I’m Annabel.”

  “Annabel!”

  Edith smiles. A fake smile? No a real one. With her free hand she sandwiches Annabel’s. She isn’t to escape now. It’s not every day you catch an Annabel. She turns to look at Frank who’s staring across. Of course, this can’t last. Any moment a nurse will say, ‘Stop. Mistaken identity. Annabel: Chapel of Rest. Edith, give back that cordial.’

  She’d better enjoy it now—but it’s too late, Annabel is eyeing the white square above her head. Patient’s Name: Edith Edgar. She glances back to the bottle marked Edith Lowe. She smiles. “I never knew your maiden name was Edgar.”

  “Ah,” says Edith.

  “Did you know that’s what they’ve put?”

  Edith shrugs.

  Annabel says, “George told me you were in here. He said exactly where to find you—you know George. So I didn’t even need to ask at the desk.”

  “I suppose it’s a long way from …”

  “Dorchester, yes. I’m on my way to Dublin via Holyhead. I realised I could fit this in as a detour. I thought, How lovely to see Great-Aunt Edie again.”

  “Before she pops off?”

  “That’s right.” They both laugh. Edith remembers her power to charm. Long forgotten, especially since Gerry died.

  “Now, are they looking after you?” Annabel asks. “Are you getting all you need?”

  “No. They aren’t answering my questions.” Mistake. Annabel looks round; the doctor’s in the doorway. She’s going to get up and ask her sharply about Edith’s progress. ‘Edith Lowe? Chapel of Rest,’ the doctor will say.

  Annabel’s hand is sliding, sliding away. Edith clutches with all her might.

  “Not those questions. Why should I care what kills me or whether it takes another month or twelve?”

  Annabel frowns, her eyes grow moist. Frank strains to hear. Edith beckons Annabel closer and speaks low. “They won’t tell me what happens afterwards.”

  “Aunt Edie, that’s a very big question.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Edith feels like a child praised by the teacher. She waits for Annabel to say more but Annabel’s looking for inspiration among the big pipes below the ceiling. “I mean,” Edith explains, “what’s through the portal. Is there a portal, or are we just so much earth?”

  Annabel looks vacant. She chews her bottom lip. “Have you spoken to the chaplain?”

  “Yes. It’s like being sold insurance.”

  Annabel grins. “You’re a cynic. When I get home I’ll tell everyone, Aunt Edie’s a cynic.”

  “No,” says Edith, “I’m not. A chaplain only tells me what he’s paid to, only explains one policy. I want to know everything that’s on offer.”

  “I don’t think everything is on offer,” Annabel murmurs. “I mean, whatever actually happens it’s not as if you choose it.”

  Silence falls. The visitor’s hand feels limp. She’s still chewing her lip. This visit isn’t working, Annabel may as well go.

  Edith says angrily, “Well if I end up baked as a tile on somebody’s windowsill I just hope they keep me clean.”

  Annabel bursts out laughing. The whole ward turns to see where the musical laughter comes from. The whole ward sees that Edith has a visitor. “You might come back as one of those gulls,” Annabel says. “That would be fun, all that soaring.” They look appreciatively into each other’s faces.

  “Squawking,” says Edith.

  “Nothing to think about,” Annabel adds, “but food and mating. Especially mating.”

  They both laugh this time, then Edith grows solemn. “Tell me Annabel, ought I to …?”

  “To what?”

  “Prepare myself.”

  A pause.

  “Yes,” replies Annabel.

  “But how?”

  A longer pause.

  “I don’t think I know.”

  Edith withdraws her hands. Annabel gets up. “I have to leave you, Aunt Edie, still a long way to go.” Edith doesn’t look at her. Annabel moves away, then comes back. “I’ve just remembered a morning I spent with you.”

  “When?”

  “I was four or five. You took me rowing on some river and said things I didn’t understand. About not having to row all the time, watching the colour of the water, avoiding shallow bits—was that it?”
>
  “My memory’s bad,” says Edith, “and now you’ve given me more to think about.”

  “Oh God, Aunt Edie, I wish I could get you away from all this machinery and stuff. Take you to Ireland with me, walk you along the shore, show you the clouds flying and changing.”

  “I’ll try to imagine,” Edith says.

  They know they won’t see each other again.

  “Goodbye Aunt Edie.”

  “Goodbye Annabel.”

  Weeks later, Annabel will arrive home to hear Edith Lowe died peacefully in her sleep. It’ll appear she was the last in the family to see her alive. She’ll tell them she left her in excellent spirits.

  The visitors have gone and the light has drained from the sky. From the other half of the ward comes the babble of TV.

  “So, you had a visitor,” says Frank.

  “Yes, from Dorchester. Do you know it?”

  Frank shakes his head.

  “Were you never stationed there in the war?”

  “Never.”

  “Well, never mind,” says Edith. “Would you like some blackcurrant cordial? I could ask the nurse to pour some.”

  “Yes please,” Frank says modestly.

  Edith is sitting back waiting for the nurse and smiling.

  The Ones No-one Wanted

  “Need help?” Liz asks the student in the corner. The girl’s long rust-red hair strays over her drawing board. She’s reading a battered copy of Jazz UK which has a dusty footprint, as well as checking her phone. Taped to the concrete column behind her is a photo of The Shard.

  She looks up. Her eyes are brown lakes in a desert of acne. What can eyes do there but weep, thinks Liz. The girl isn’t weeping, just looking persecuted. Liz resists a desire to turn away. This is her first student, and there’s no-one else in the studio. If Liz gives up she’s a castaway among tilted planes of drawing-boards under cruel strip-lights.

  “I’m Liz, the new part-time tutor. Don will have mentioned me.”

  The girl frowns and takes music plugs from her ears.