My Life With Eva

by Alex Barr

  At the time of my first waltz with Eva my girlfriend was Deirdre, though ‘companion’ is a better word. We controlled ‘defects of loneliness’ in one another. We kissed, I felt her breasts through her jumper, and that was all—my grandchildren’s generation would think that strange. But then the least contact between bodies was exciting—in the dance ‘Hands, knees, and bumps-a daisy’ for example, where we turned and bumped bottoms with our partners. Deirdre’s bump was far from equal and opposite, so I nearly knocked her over, whereas Eva—ah, Eva!—connected with such a satisfying thump I could imagine the firm but yielding flesh of her whole body.

  I remember Deirdre at those hops for young people as a round-faced ash-blonde girl sitting upright with hands neatly in her lap, looking up at me when I first asked her to dance as if surprised, and murmuring, “Oh. All right. Thank you.” Whereas Eva often sat, if there was room, with her long legs propped on the neighbouring chairs, and once, when I sat with one space between us (too shy to sit beside her) she lifted her silk-stocking calves across my thighs and said with a cheeky grin, “May I?” But Deirdre was already my girlfriend, the ground beneath my feet, while Eva, who I’d hardly spoken to, was the moon and stars.

  I wanted sex with Deirdre, but in that pre-pill purgatory condoms weren’t handed out free by GPs or displayed in supermarkets, and I had yet to overcome the blushing embarrassment of asking the barber for something for the weekend. The female form too was a mystery (naughty pictures were airbrushed to look like Victorian paintings), and although when Deirdre wore tight trousers I studied the curves of her lower body I could never quite picture her naked. Sometimes when my parents were out she consented to come up to my bedroom, where after she had tidied up my scattered clothes and books (I can almost hear her voice asking which drawer some item belonged in) we lay on my bed together and kissed and cuddled. Sometimes she allowed me to put my hand (if I warmed it) inside her jumper, but if I tried to lift her skirt she laid a cold hand on mine and whispered, “No.” So it was surprising when one day something changed.

  But all that is long ago, and after a life of work in various countries, where Eva studied the local textiles and folk patterns and I took photographs for the books we wrote together, and decades of work on this smallholding which will now go back to nature when we sell our Jacobs sheep and angora goats, we have given up spinning and dyeing wool, and a few chickens will be our only companions. Our parents have died, our children left home long ago to raise children of their own, and although the good earth may soon swallow us we accept our end knowing we made the very most of our life together. So here I lie daydreaming under the night sky (cloud is hiding most of the stars now) until Eva turns off the light in her studio and calls me to join her for our nightcap.

  When our parents die we step into the front rank facing death. I liked Eva’s parents, her father who repaired stringed instruments and whose workshop smelled of hot fish glue and wax and shavings of aromatic hardwood, her mother who had sung in opera and now gave lessons to pale intense aspiring singers, in that cluttered converted Victorian schoolhouse on the edge of our industrial town, where the high peat moors rolled to the skyline and sometimes favoured the breeze with the scent of sphagnum moss.

  Deirdre’s parents’ suburb was in the same town but felt like a different country. Neat nineteen-thirties Ideal Home Exhibition semis, around a green, kept moors and mills at a distance. When I went in through their front door I was greeted by a strong aroma of air freshener. The parents, who both worked for the local bus company, he as an inspector, she in the finance department, looked at me with suspicion as if divining my desire to seduce their daughter. They approved of my apprenticeship in a mill machinery firm, but looked worried when I brushed off their enquiries about my ultimate ambitions. I was never at ease with them. Eva’s parents—I was going to say ‘accepted’ me, but that implies some kind of transition, whereas the first time I met George in his workshop he started on to me about the seasoning of oak as if continuing a previous conversation. As for her mother, Grace, her first words to me, after finishing the piece she was playing on the piano and standing to kiss me on both cheeks, were, “I see you like Satie, Peter.”

  My memory is unreliable now. Was it Grace who urged me to do the same course in textile design that Eva was taking? Or was it Eva herself? Never mind. All that matters is that the projects we’ve collaborated on have been as numerous as … what? As the stars I still see between the spreading clouds? And if I hadn’t held back that day with Deirdre, I might be somewhere else in a very different life.

  We were on my bed, engaged in the usual skirmishing, but somehow something had changed. Was Deirdre aware of my growing interest in Eva? The fact was that when I lifted her skirt, for once I met no resistance. She squeezed her eyes shut with a slight movement of her head, her fair hair contrasting with the dark blue of my pillow. I was in a state of excitement. It was the first time I had stroked the tender skin of a girl’s inner thighs above her stocking tops, and through soft fabric the surprising hardness of her mound of Venus. I hooked my fingers into the elastic of her panties, the smooth skin of her belly against my knuckles, and gently drew them off her. I paused, expecting some protest, but she merely sighed.

  And then again something changed. Let me try to remember this clearly. I think I was about to undo my trousers, but the thought of entering her must have been blocked by another. If I carried on without precautions and made her pregnant, I would have to marry her. Did I really want to be committed to this girl (‘I liked her a lot’ as the song says) who was a good enough companion, whose body attracted me, but whose conversation compared with Eva’s was less than thrilling? On the other hand, excitement made me long to proceed, to touch the core of her womanhood (I already scented a change in her) and put a dénouement to our irritating fumblings.

  I thank heaven that I held back. The details are hazy, but I know my restraint must have cost an effort worthy of Saint Anthony. What I remember clearly is standing by the bed fastening my trousers while Deirdre stared at me with an expression on her face I had never seen before, a congested, misty-eyed look. I kissed her and murmured something, probably that I respected her too much to take such a serious matter lightly, and then I was free, free to be with Eva for a lifetime of challenge and joy.

  Sometimes in the heat of some desert I have now revisited on TV, with an irritating commentary by some self-satisfied bastard being paid for the privilege, I would stop and wonder, with the Atacama, the Sonora, or the fringe of the Sahara all round me, what life with Deirdre would have been like. We would certainly have stayed in that northern suburb to be near her parents and cousins, and instead of studying textile design and writing books with Eva I would have been drawn into working for the bus company (the mills having closed when the cotton industry moved east). I would be retired from the post of depot inspector inherited from my father-in-law. Oh, it’s an honourable job—buses have to run, taking folks to work or to go and see their auntie—but my furthest horizons would be Bolton and Halifax, the limits of the company’s bus routes (apart from the odd Blackpool run) instead of the remote parts of other continents. I might be secretary of the local bowls club, while Deirdre walked our two Labradors. I would be flayed by the memory of Eva’s grey eyes piercing my soul as I walked away from her to marry Deirdre. Instead it was Deirdre I walked away from—the details are no longer clear—to marry Eva in a fairytale wedding, our lovemaking like a dream, our lives together blossoming.

  Our garden featured recently on Gardener’s World. There they were, all the plants we collected on our travels flanking that sunlit curving path we sweated to create, the hebes and euonymus glowing with pride, and there in close-up were the lilies, her great enthusiasm, and Eva herself (suddenly older than I’d realised, having seen her change so gradually from day to day), with that characteristic curl to those lovely lips and the energy she puts into the least remark. Yes, our garden, created with much digging and barrowing and agonising over choic
es until one day we could stand wiping our brows with our arms around one another, suddenly thinking, Done!

  And the visitors came, in ones and twos, then coachloads. Some have just arrived, I think, because I hear voices and the sound of a trolley, which means someone is buying plants from our nursery, listening to Eva explain about semi-shade and alkaline soil, although that voice isn’t Eva’s—maybe it’s that foreign girl who sometimes helps.

  The night is over now. There’s brightness but little warmth, and without my glasses I can’t really see the sky. Strangely the recliner I’m on is moving, and one of our visitors in some uniform (an off-duty nurse, perhaps?) is looking down at me. I must call to Eva and ask what’s happening, but ah, no need, because the visitor is saying, “Peter, your wife’s here.” And Eva’s hand is on my arm, but I need my glasses to see her face.

  “My glasses! My glasses!” I murmur, and someone puts them on me, and there smiling down at me is my wife Deirdre. “You’ve had the operation, Peter,” she’s saying. “Your heart is mended.”

  Creels

  Jane, Christopher, you wouldn’t believe how I’ve agonised over this. Which is ridiculous—I might never post it. It may not arrive. Or you may not be ready to read it, and find it after thirty years in a world of different people.

  You may not remember what I look like, and I’m old now. A woman of seventy, less tall but still strong, with long unruly hair not entirely grey. I rarely look in a mirror, afraid it will crack. But the window in front of my work table reflects a vague outline.

  That window looks onto a quayside where fishing boats are moored. There are creels piled everywhere. The rounded ends with crisscross ropework must seep into my brain, because they’re often a motif in my work. I would very much like to give you one of my embroidered wall hangings. They’re in demand, so it would be a real gift, not an unburdening.

  On my right another window looks onto a small garden filled with colourful annuals. It’s triangular, bounded by the quayside and a road that converges with it. Don’t worry if that’s hard to imagine. If only you could come here and see it! But life is full of if-onlys.

  The road is piled with creels like the quayside. In the distance is a flagpole. The blue flag with its white diagonal cross is tugging at its rope, as if to escape. Some mornings the sun sprinkles the sea with a million lights, and pours through the window to warm me as I work. Then moves to warm me through the other window. But usually clouds intervene. And often the wind moans and the sun never appears.

  What do I think about as I work? On the wall in front of me hangs a photograph, your frozen selves in a moment long gone. Sometimes a movement on the edge of my vision tells me a fishing boat is heading out. This reminds me of the toy fishing boats I once bought you, which on my last visit I found in your garden, broken. But I don’t pursue that thought.

  Sometimes I think of your Grandpa, and how my life once had another dimension, of trees laden with apples, days filled with the rhythm of work, evenings rich with possibilities. His photo hangs near yours, never changing. Jane and Christopher, try to remember him.

  A friend from the village, another artist, has just dropped in for coffee. I wanted to share this writing with her, but lacked the courage. And I wish I’d told her about my last visit to your father.

  Ben lives—you may not know—in a mountain village in northern Greece. The scent of hot pine trees, the taste of fresh olives, frame our last encounter. He hid his eyes with sunglasses. He and his Greek friends played endless games of backgammon. The Euros piled up his side of the table. He said his success was based on probabilities. ‘Suppose you need a six to hit an opponent’s blot. What are the odds of getting it?’ He wrote all possible die combinations on the café menu. ‘There—the odds are seventeen divided by thirty-six.’ All this in his head of course—he only wrote it down for me.

  I tried to discuss you with him, but not even his Greek friends could persuade him to take me seriously. You must understand that your father has suffered—through nobody’s fault—and learned to defend himself behind a stubborn wall. Perhaps he feels he doesn’t deserve you. But I deserve you, Jane and Christopher. I do.

  I hope I’m a good person. And in case you get me wrong, I think Kay and Roger are good people. For reasons too deep to fathom, good people don’t always understand one another. One night Kay and I sat up till two. This was early on, soon after Ben’s breakdown, and before Roger.

  Kay was in her white fluffy dressing-gown with the purple and orange spots. I was in my old nightie with a tartan blanket. The traffic slowly faded from a grumble to a whisper. I found it hard being in a city. We listened to Andrea Bocelli. She made cocoa, which we kept allowing to go cold, so she had to warm it again.

  She kept sighing, “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know, Kay?”

  She talked on as if to herself. Whenever I replied she looked at me as if I’d appeared by magic. She brushed her blonde hair off her face with a distracted gesture. Each time the CD ended she started it again. If I listen to those songs now I feel the chill of knowing there was nothing to be said.

  Night has fallen in this village far from your home. I drew the curtain on the south window but left the east window bare. I have eaten a simple meal and am ready for the task I couldn’t face before. To record my last visit.

  I arrived after a long drive and was greeted by … No, no, I have to tell it as if I’m someone else.

  The woman arrives and is greeted by Kay and Roger. Roger introduces himself in a friendly way, asks about her journey, and makes sympathetic remarks about long drives. Then stands back, stroking his beard, weighing up this person he’s heard about. Kay is wary, fingering her beads. Baltic amber, a present the woman gave her before she married Ben.

  The afternoon passes calmly. The adults join you children to watch cartoons. Then the woman is given the privilege of reading you a bedtime story. She thinks something you hardly understand is the best sleep-inducer, so reads Four Quartets. And, bless you, you listen, perhaps absorbing the rhythms. Kay meanwhile has dinner ready, but is loath to interrupt the sleep process. After another half hour, though, she hurries up to check.

  The two of you have been fast asleep for some time, little angels’ heads on white pillows. Kay’s heart catches at the sight of you, so vulnerable and precious. The woman, leaning over you like an alien presence, is halfway through reading Little Gidding. There’s something disturbing about the way she looks at you, as if you not dinner were on the menu.

  The meal goes well enough. Kay mentions the reading matter, and the woman is embarrassed, but Roger laughs and defuses the tension. There’s polite conversation about gardening, the state of Highland roads, the uncertainties of mobile signals. The woman has brought a present of whisky, from a distillery on her route south, and the three of them settle down to sample it. It’s ‘cask strength’, more potent than they realise. The conversation moves on to higher education. Yours. Should Kay and Roger one day move back north of the Border? Of course, that’s way in the future, and the future is an icy hand stroking the woman’s heart.

  Roger is speaking. “Too many youngsters apply to universities when they’d be better off going straight into work.”

  “Straight into unemployment,” says Kay.

  “Well at least they won’t have unreal expectations.”

  Kay shrugs. The woman frowns, anxious in case an argument is brewing. Roger asks what she thinks.

  “I don’t have much experience of the issues.”

  “But your son went to university. And did well. A First in mathematics. Was he motivated? Did you and your husband have to push him?”

  “Push him?”

  Kay says, “He doesn’t mean pushed, he means encouraged. Don’t you, Rog?”

  Roger waits for the woman’s answer. She takes too big a swig of the spirits and starts coughing. This brings tears to her eyes. It’s just a physiological reaction.

  She says, “You think that’s why he
had a breakdown. That I couldn’t rest until he could call himself ‘Doctor’. That it’s all my fault.”

  Your mother and stepfather shake their heads and murmur, “No, no,” but there’s a kind of volcanic eruption in the woman’s chest.

  She goes on, “If someone goes off the rails people look at the parents. Oh my God, what did they do wrong? Not enough love, not enough discipline, unhappy-marriage debris piled on the little ones’ heads. Well I hope you two are never in that position. But I can tell you, neither John nor I pushed Ben to do a PhD when he already had children.”

  Kay has turned very pale and is shredding a red paper napkin. Crimson blobs litter the carpet.

  “You think I pushed him.”

  She mutters this. The woman doesn’t quite catch what she’s saying and doesn’t reply. By the time it registers, Kay has left the room. When she doesn’t come back right away Roger goes to find her.

  Oh they aren’t out long. When they come back it’s with cups of tea and polite smiles. They aren’t in the least unfriendly. The chill in the room is just the onset of autumn. Next morning the woman offers to babysit while Kay and Roger go to work, but they tell her the children are expected at the day nursery, and anyway, with a long drive ahead of her, best get it done before dark.

  Midnight. The dark presses against the window. Sometimes I fear it will burst through. But I keep the curtains open to see the lights on the fishing boats.