My Life With Eva

by Alex Barr

  In the front row a small woman lifted her face like a young bird to be fed. As if appealing to hear words of wisdom. If Carys was a slender herbaceous plant, this woman was a succulent, firm and fleshy. Dark hair in some unfamiliar style. Feet together like a child on her best behaviour. I thought the words of a cantata would go straight to her heart.

  “Which are soloists?” I asked.

  “Him. Him. Her. Her. Me, obviously. And if I get my way, Martha soon will be.” Her slim finger with its pink nail lighted on the bird-woman’s face. “I’d ask her and Ted to dinner, but Ted has this thing with other men. Has to dominate them, and if he fails he sulks. And you’d go all prickly.”

  “And what do they do to earn a crust?”

  “He’s an estate agent, she runs a café in Milford Haven.”

  I’m trying to remember how I felt, Harvey. I think I envied Carys the satisfaction of helping someone become a soloist. Even though I knew envy is unskilful.

  By the time I was ready for work she’d spread the table with books and essay notes.

  “Yet another assignment on War and Peace, Carys?”

  “This one’s about Borodino.”

  “Remind me.”

  “The battle where Napoleon overreached himself.”

  I drove to work. I knew Carys needed the degree to get a better job, but I envied her the time. Yes, there it was again.

  The defendants in the smuggling case were out on bail, so I could have called them to the office. But I wanted a break from box files and law reports. I thought sea air and a change of scene would do me good. And it was interesting to stroll among boxes of fish, oddly-shaped warehouses, pungent smells. The trawlers, yachts in the marina, tankers at the oil jetties, all gave me a sense of adventure.

  The wheelhouse of the Rosie Gomer smelt of damp wool and engine oil. I could understand why my clients found heroin more profitable than haddock. The skipper and his brother had big noses and droopy eyes. Probably not very clever, I thought.

  “I done nothing,” the skipper complained, “and yet here I am charged with conspiracy.”

  I took some details.

  He groaned. “Johnny got us into this.”

  “Is that the young deckhand?” I consulted my notes. “John Carew?”

  “That’s him. Fancied himself as an entrepreneur and got into debt with villains. Not as clever as he thought, eh?”

  The brother said, “Yeah, we tried to help him out of a tight corner. Realised too late what he’d brought aboard.”

  I decided to confront the boy another time. The interview took till four thirty, so it wasn’t worth going back to the office. It was then I first went to the café. We’ve talked about ‘investigation of states’, haven’t we, Harvey? I felt that’s what I was doing. Comparing perceptions. The Martha of the photograph, Martha in the flesh. I felt secure in my insight.

  I went back a few days later to interview the young deckhand. His eyes roamed the wheelhouse, avoiding mine. He had bad skin and lifeless hair.

  I said, “I need the name of your contact.”

  “Contact adhesive,” he said brightly.

  “A name, John.”

  “Evo Stik.”

  “No. Your supplier.”

  “B and Q.”

  “Please! Be serious. If you reveal your contact it will help your case.”

  “My Dad used it to mend his case.”

  I gave up. Nonsense answers have always been a ploy to avoid incrimination. Afterwards I went to the café. I told myself my last encounter with Martha had been too brief for detailed observation. Yes, Harvey, I told myself. Or someone inside me told me. I thought it might be the voice of wisdom, the inner voice that says, ‘Hold on, David, you’re on the verge of anger, step back from it before you make things worse.’ Because I knew it was so easy to make things worse and create more suffering. The same voice seemed to say, ‘Yes, David, you’re secure, by all means investigate.’

  Even so I was unprepared for the jolt when I saw Martha. This time her hair was pinned up, exposing a smooth neck. The place was empty and it was she who brought my order.

  “So what brings you to these parts?”

  I smiled. “The long arm of the law.”

  “Ah. My son wants to join the police. I tell him, ‘So do homework instead of Facebook.’”

  I laughed.

  She asked, “Have you got kids?”

  “Two, just gone off to college.”

  “Are you strict, or lax?”

  “I have no formula. I deal with what’s in the moment.”

  “That’s impressive. My friend in the choir has two that age. Says she and her husband haven’t a clue how to treat them.”

  I shivered. For a moment I’d forgotten her friendship with Carys. The reminder startled me. Silence fell. Martha stayed where she was, close enough for me to feel heat from her body. I smelt sweat as well as perfume. I told myself—yes, that phrase again—I was unmoved by these physical effects. Martha was merely bones and sinews, blood and urine. So my mission was proceeding well. I could learn about her from a psychological distance.

  She said, “So, the law. Investigating a crime?”

  “I am conducting an investigation. But I can’t divulge the details. Sub judice.”

  “Wow, Latin, it must be serious. I suppose you’re undercover. Better not ask your name.”

  I laughed again. “Better not.”

  Maybe I should have been an actor not a lawyer. I began to enjoy the idea that I was a secret agent, as if in a film. I tried to stand back from this feeling, to become the Watcher, that part of us you said keeps things on an even keel. I tried to be mindful, Harvey.

  And it wasn’t investigating Martha that drove me back a third time. No, no, I had to inspect the shed where the contraband had been stored. That was the main reason, I decided. But of course, there was nothing to stop me calling at the café.

  Martha seemed to expect me. She sat opposite and let the Polish girl bring us tea. Her dark brown eyes held mine with a candid look. It made such a change from the guardedness of colleagues and the evasiveness of criminal clients. She clearly had a need to pour out her feelings, and I was glad to listen. I had a reputation for being wise. Carys always told me so. It was fascinating to hear a different woman’s needs, and see how her mind worked.

  She said that, ironically for the wife of an estate agent, her house was in need of repair. She envied her friend in the choir, a better singer with a nice modern house, married to a man who was highly respected but sadly not a lover of concerts. I felt a warm trickle of satisfaction on hearing that.

  Martha said Ted treated her well, but with other people he would sound forth about this and that, oblivious to stifled yawns. He took refuge from the decline in house sales by watching endless rugby on TV. As for her son and daughter, one moment they were all hers, then suddenly twice the size complaining she was interfering.

  I was glad she was very much a wife and mother. That made her safely remote, on a high branch out of reach, so to speak. I could listen to her musical voice as if in a hide.

  She said she did once see a tall three-master in the waterway, but it was fake, part of a film.

  At home I studied Carys to see if her sixth sense had registered my café visits, but she was deep in study and showed no sign, and I had no desire to distract her with my thoughts.

  But I did ask, “How’s the choir?”

  “Hard going. Mozart’s Mass in C.”

  “If it’s in C it’s easy, surely?”

  “Glad you think so.”

  She sucked the end of her pencil and smiled. I asked why.

  “I think Martha may have an admirer.”

  I felt a shock through my body. Jealousy? Surely not, I was only observing the woman. If she fell in love I could note the difference. I felt a need to change the subject.

  “You were telling me about Borodino.”

  “At the start of 1812, Napoleon dominated Europe. By the end of that winter h
e had destroyed one of the largest armies Europe had ever seen. By invading Russia.”

  “I thought he was a military genius.”

  “So did he, David. He hoped for a swift victory to bring the Tsar to heel, but that was the limit of his planning. Any other goal was poorly defined. He hardly had enough supplies for even a short campaign.”

  “And Borodino?”

  “A frontal attack, not his usual style. Panicky, perhaps. He won, but with terrible losses.”

  “I’ll leave you to your essay.”

  “Thanks.”

  The thought that Martha had an admirer intrigued me. I thought it would be interesting to note the change in her. Would she be excited, or mellow? Either way, I felt confident that I could be secure and detached in my observation. The Watcher would notice any slip into unskilful mind-states. Meditation had instilled the habit of mindfulness—that’s what I told myself.

  Martha was neither excited nor mellow but distracted, a state I hadn’t foreseen. Perhaps she was in love with this admirer. I decided to approach the topic obliquely.

  “How are your friends?”

  “What? Which friends?”

  “Whichever are uppermost in your mind.”

  “You make me sound like a bookcase.” There was an edge to her voice I hadn’t heard before. She was tearing pieces off a paper napkin. She said, “Uppermost, since you use the term, would be Carys. Know what she told me? The sopranos in the Mozart have a harder job than the altos. Do you know the Mass in C? What do you think?”

  The topic made me uncomfortable. I shrugged. I had to change it.

  “You said your house needs work doing. What exactly?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you asking?”

  I shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

  “You don’t make conversation. It happens or it doesn’t.”

  She was shredding another napkin. Gently I took it off her.

  She said, “My house. Let’s start with the window. The thing that’s meant to hold it open, doesn’t.”

  “The casement stay?”

  “Ah, the power of knowing the word. The casement stay won’t go down on its pins. On warm nights the window bangs in the breeze.”

  “It keeps you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Just me.”

  There was a pause. A very long pause. I looked at the coffee-soaked sugar in the bottom of my cup. Listening to Martha, I hadn’t stirred it in. I could sense dark eyes boring into my skull.

  In a low voice she added, “The casement stay is very stiff. If only the pins went into the holes.”

  “Oh dear.”

  Another pause.

  “Perhaps you could take a look.”

  Her face was flushed—but it was a warm day. The sun beat on the windows. I knew her home was nearby on The Rath, a dignified crescent overlooking the estuary. Interesting houses which might be worth seeing. In asking advice she was like others who appealed to my wisdom. I felt solid and self-contained. It would be rude to refuse.

  In her house I fiddled with the front room window.

  “That’s not the one keeping me awake.”

  “Which one is?”

  She led me upstairs. To the bathroom, a box room, or a bedroom? If a bedroom it wasn’t a problem because I told myself she was just a combination of elements, subject to decay. I laughed gently to myself as we entered a room with a super-king-size bed on which was a frilly duvet with pink and white candy stripes. All very feminine, but not enough to unbalance me. I thought of the psalm: I shall not be greatly moved. I thought of Gandhi, who tested his resolve by sleeping between virgins. I know, Harvey, I know. But he said he could lie naked with naked women, however beautiful, without being sexually excited, and still progress towards God.

  I went to the bay window and examined the stay.

  “Come away from there.” Martha’s voice was so thick I hardly recognised it. “What if the neighbours see you? ‘That Martha, well! A man in her bedroom!’”

  I moved away and looked at the William Morris wallpaper, sun-bleached in places, and an ill-composed painting of Cadair Idris. The room darkened. I turned and saw in Martha’s hand a remote control. She had closed the curtains. I made a mental note to buy a remote for the curtains at home, and was turning to go out when Martha hissed, “Wait!”

  “Who? When?”

  Carys had seen a mark on my shoulder-blade. I twisted to look in the mirror: a faded heart in lipstick.

  “That conference on the Terrorism Act in Cardiff.” I was surprised by my quick inventiveness. Now I had been discovered I was a cause of suffering. I had created karma with bad results. But I thought Carys would suffer less if my misconduct had been distant.

  I said, “It only happened once. I was lonely.”

  “Lonely for one weekend?” Her eyes bored into me. “Did you talk a lot?”

  “Not much.”

  “So when you’re lonely the cure isn’t talking but mindless drunken sex. At least I hope you were drunk.”

  “Extremely.”

  Drunk with my own wisdom, I reflected.

  “What was her name?”

  I wondered whether I could still take back the lie.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Oh come on.”

  “Sara, I think.”

  After which Carys cried a lot. After a few days she said she thought she might forgive me. After a week, when she felt like sex with me again, she saw the ghost of the lipstick heart, still there despite several showers. She ran downstairs and swept the ‘improving books’ you gave me off the bookshelf.

  “They didn’t improve you, did they David? I thought you believed in mindfulness? I thought you thought drink clouds the mind? Did you have to check whether it’s true?”

  The night was hot, and even with the window open the bedroom was stifling. There were distant shouts and the revving of motor-bikes.

  I walked the streets beside Carys in a state of tension, like someone expecting an attack. In the supermarket I checked each aisle like a spy before rounding the corner. Waiting outside the changing-rooms in dress shops, I hid my face with a newspaper. I jumped when the phone rang or my mobile buzzed with a message. I wanted to be invisible, like a flatfish on the sea-bed. Seeing nobody, being nobody. But I accepted this, because I knew I deserved it.

  When choir resumed after the summer Carys said, “There must be something in the air.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You aren’t the only one who’s cheated.”

  “Why, who … ?”

  “Martha. She had an encounter with some detective.”

  A hot tremor of jealousy ran through me. It took me without warning. Yes, Harvey, my mind, which had once been so clear, had become muddy. After a moment I realised who the ‘detective’ was.

  “And?”

  “Got what he wanted then ditched her. How like a man.”

  This is so painful, Harvey. Each word is like a cut. But I have to tell you how the car made a hailstorm of gravel as it slewed into the drive and stopped with a screech. Carys got out like an automaton and rushed past me into the house. Things began falling from a window. It was the window of my study. I almost laughed because it was so bizarre.

  I tried to tell myself this was serious, this was dreadful, but something inside me had shut down. I saw my laptop upright in a flower bed like a drunken gravestone, and near it, in a drift of scattered clothing, the shirt Martha unbuttoned that afternoon on The Rath. Carys’s silence was appalling, like the silence of someone drowning. There was nothing I could say. I picked up my laptop and the most vulnerable of my clothes and papers. I walked to the end of the road, called a taxi, and went to a hotel.

  Carys divorced me as you know. I contested nothing. When I called on her to collect my things she studied me like a phrase in some unknown language. Her eyes were the colour of winter sky. She told me her so-called friend had left the choir.


  Jane tapped the desk with her pencil, pursing her lips.

  I said, “I’m trying to work out where it went wrong.”

  “You briefed John Carew’s counsel to plead guilty. Despite the boy’s severe learning disability and inability to read. You believed the false evidence from the skipper and his brother and assumed they were innocent. Fortunately counsel got the real picture in time. Entrepreneur indeed! John Carew can barely sign his name.”

  “I realise—”

  “These are from Carmarthen branch.” She made a fan of client files on the desk. “Where they’ll give you an office. Delyth takes over criminal work here.”

  They were requests for will writing. I had slipped back twenty years.

  Jane said, “Take your pick.”

  Harvey, you asked me to spot the point of no return. I’ve spent many lonely evenings wondering. Was it going up to the bedroom? Surely that was innocent curiosity. To see the different style of another couple’s bedroom. Maybe the change in Martha’s voice—‘Come away from there!’—unbalanced me. But I was about to leave. What stopped me? Surely not Martha saying, ‘Wait!’. Was the habit of obedience so strong? Or was it curiosity again? Because I couldn’t think what she was about to say?

  These investigations tire me. What are they supposed to teach? How to act on some unlikely future occasion? In my celibate life I find myself dwelling—oh yes, guiltily!—on the memory of that afternoon with Martha. When she took off her blouse, could I still have left? When she bared her breasts, wide eyes challenging me to touch her, could I have held back? Her smooth brown skin, her large dark areolas, were too much. Her bare arms gleamed in the half-light. Her skin was hot, with a film of sweat. Her eyes half closed with pleasure, her mouth opened as if to sing. It was a parallel universe. The world beyond the curtains was unreal. The scent of sweat and perfume undid me.

  But into that memory another swirls its poison. A sunset with red-tinged cirrus. A car with a gash all along one side slewing into the drive. A study window spewing clothes, books, papers, laptop. And even the curtains on their pole, like the dishonoured standard of a beaten army.