My Life With Eva

by Alex Barr

  After the funeral, when the children, grandchildren, and friends went back to their normal lives, and he was left to deal with his new one, he put the jar on the kitchen windowsill. It would drive home, while he washed up, the fact that things were different. That when he saw youths in baseball caps leap over a neighbour’s wall, he couldn’t ask Vera’s advice. That when he thought of a plan to save money he needn’t go halfway along the hall before turning back. The jar looked strange dusted and fully lit. It unnerved him that the red line edging the label was still clear. That the glass reflected the cacti on either side.

  When the cacti collapsed like leaky balloons he threw them out. It had been Vera who watered them, forbidding him in case they got sodden. He couldn’t break the habit of keeping his hands off. Without the reflections the jar looked forlorn. He wanted to cry, looking at it. The sight of the windowsill with jar and cacti had already become familiar. It shocked him how long it had been like that. It was summer already. He wiped the sill clean and left it empty. The jar he put in a drawer behind his socks.

  It was a year before he looked at it. He’d tried to be busy, joining clubs, visiting the children, even seeing his estranged brother in Wales. The anniversary of Vera’s death didn’t disturb him. In January it was a struggle just to keep going, to feed himself, and he slept a lot. It was the anniversary of throwing out the cacti that shook him. He couldn’t sleep. Sometimes the nights were hot, and the noise of aircraft, of groups of youths and girls shouting after closing time, pressed in through the open window. On the TV news there were pictures of dying children. Someone urinated through the letterbox. Then there was heavy rain, drumming on the skylight over the stairs, leaving a brown stain on the bedroom ceiling.

  He huddled in the bed that seemed incredibly wide. He stared at the wall, the chest of drawers. The light from a streetlamp laid a bright strip across the sock drawer. It was a sign. Now must be the time to open the jar.

  The day he met Vera his boots were falling apart. He was out with the local rambling club, and although it was a fine spring day he regretted coming. The blue and white mottled sky, the clear rugged lines of gritstone edges, didn’t cure his vexation. Through the worn soles he felt every stone, and whenever the group forded a shallow beck his socks took up more water. He’d ordered new boots weeks ago, and to his disgust they still hadn’t come. Also, his left hand was bandaged from the acid burn at work. It throbbed, but the chief technician’s comment bothered him more.

  “Good thing it was just your hand, eh? That it didn’t ruin that film-star profile.”

  He knew he wasn’t good looking: face too thin, nose and ears too big. If he asked a girl for a dance there was always that telltale moment before she said brightly, “Oh, all right.”

  When the group rested he sat alone with his lunch-box, grimly studying the long horizon. This walk was pointless, like the route marches in the Air Force, when all he’d wanted was to be in the hut varnishing propeller-blades. Someone came over and sat on a rock beside him. A girl with a big mouth, wearing a Fair Isle jumper. He ignored her.

  She said, “Hold this, could you?”

  The strap of her canvas rucksack had come unstitched. Someone had to take the weight and steady it while she sewed it. She worked away, now and then giving it a tug. Arthur tugged back as a joke, cautiously at first. It became a game between them.

  He said, “You’re efficient.”

  She looked at him, not sure what he meant, and when he met her gaze he felt he’d been picked up and shaken. After a long pause he said, “I mean, carrying needle and thread.”

  “I like to keep things together.”

  She asked what happened to his hand, and Arthur even dared to include what the chief technician said. She laughed. Her mouth was definitely too big.

  She said, “He’s envious. He’d rather be you.” And added, her mouth suddenly small and prim, “Sarcasm’s the lowest form of wit.”

  The rest of the walk they couldn’t stop thinking of things to say. When the party got off the bus they stood for a moment, then both spoke.

  “Would you like to—”

  “Do you ever—”

  He said, “I was going to ask you to the pictures.”

  And she: “I was asking if you ever go roller-skating.”

  His new boots didn’t arrive for another fortnight. He collected them on a Saturday. The evening before, for the first time, he’d kissed Vera. First on the neck, among the wisps of loose brown hair, then on the lips. He couldn’t believe how soft her mouth was.

  He took the boots out of the box and tore away the tissue. He felt so full he might explode. He put them on, laced them, strode up and down. It was like walking on clouds. They were exactly right. It was fate. He’d saved for months, hardly going out, having a thin time. Now they were paid for. He thought, And there’s Vera. Even at work—especially at work—he’d stop, finger frozen on a pipette or among his notes, thinking, And there’s Vera.

  The boots had an unusual smell. A broad, fresh, expansive smell, no doubt from the tanning. It had nothing to do with his life so far, with the engine oil and aircraft dope of the Air Force, the chemicals in the lab, the sphagnum moss of the moors. It made him think of unknown farms, with dogs and horses and hay, of distant forests of oak or pine, of deep river-pools full of trout. Words like hide, resin, saddle-soap, failed to come near. It was simply the smell of happiness.

  There were the boots, and there was Vera. His life was full. He knew it wouldn’t last, that this was a peak he’d have to come down from. He wrapped the boots, and on Monday took them to work. He stood them in an old fume-cupboard, seldom used, and beside them a clear glass jar. Over boots and jar he inverted a cardboard box lined with waxed paper. He closed the cupboard, hoping the chief technician wouldn’t press his nose to the glass. He didn’t.

  Arthur removed the boots on Friday, very early. It was the ideal day: the lab surrounded him like a palm-house, full of planes of bright glass. The chemicals in their jars were the colours of birds of paradise. The evening before, he and Vera had confessed that they were in love. He couldn’t believe it. All week he’d been sure something would go wrong, that they’d lose each other. They didn’t. It was only well after they married that small betrayals and resentments gathered, and they went through times of coldness and isolation.

  Now he set aside the box and quickly screwed the lid on the jar. The smell of the boots had concentrated under the box. Already it took him back to the time when he first kissed Vera, made his heart race with the danger, fear of rejection, crossing the line from ordinary friendship, dizzy surrender to fate.

  He tightened the lid till the rubber seal squeaked, then hurried to the bench, and inverting the jar, plunged the top into molten wax. One eye on the clock in case the chief technician appeared, he dipped repeatedly, letting each coating harden. When he was satisfied he taped brown paper over to protect the wax. He stuck on a blank label and wondered what to write. Boots. But this wasn’t really about boots. Vera. But over the years (if there were to be years) the pleasure of saying her name would give way to habit. In the end he just wrote the year, forty-eight.

  When they got engaged he showed her the jar.

  Vera said, “What are you trying to hold on to?”

  “Happiness.”

  She laughed. “And can you?”

  “The memory of it, yes.”

  She said, “Eh, it’s a strange man I’m marrying.”

  Now, a year and a half after her death, he felt at the back of the drawer. There was the jar, round and still; the glass cold, inscrutable. Behind it the air of forty-six years ago. The smell of the boots that opened up on Crib Goch and ended in a Welsh dustbin. Long since replaced. He knew he’d have to be quick, breathe in the precious fumes before they diffused. Perhaps if he closed it after a second he’d get another taste, but that would be all. The smell of happiness, magic carpet to forty-eight, would be lost.

  The thought made him cry. He sank his head in the
pillow and sobbed as he hadn’t done since Vera’s death. He thought of things she’d said. ‘I like to keep things together.’ He wished he’d remembered more, written them down, because now there were no new ones, just heavy silence. The tears left him drained, purified. He’d open the jar when his need was greater.

  A few months later, after picking up his pension, he walked as usual down a path between gable ends. Three youths in baseball caps ran at him. He might have seen them before, he couldn’t tell. Not satisfied with his money they pushed him to his knees, and with their knees battered his chest. He thought he was dying. Perhaps he’d see Vera again, perhaps not. The chaplain who called in intensive care didn’t seem sure either. He was more concerned for Arthur to forgive his attackers. Arthur couldn’t deal with such meaningless ill-will. He got through the time in hospital by thinking about the jar.

  The house felt bleak. It smelt of stale sink-water. When his children finished sorting him out and left he went to the drawer. The jar was there, no-one had stolen it. He sat at the table and picked at the sticky tape with trembling fingers. He loosened a corner and pulled, but instead of peeling it flaked, brittle with age. He tried again, more urgently; impatient, now the years of waiting were over, to revive his withered memory. The jar slipped from his grasp and rolled across the table. He grabbed at it and pain grasped him by the ribs. Gasping, he caught the jar one-handed right on the edge. It was a while before he could bring his other hand round to secure it.

  He learned from that. Why open the jar when desperate? Better when calm, waking perhaps from a peaceful dream. And not now, in autumn, when the sun didn’t clear the roofs till ten, or stayed a mysterious bright patch on the clouds. He locked the jar away. When the laburnums were hung with warm yellow he took it out. He placed it ready on the bedside table, on what had been Vera’s side. He gathered implements, a penknife, a tool for opening jars.

  The thought of the opening made his heart unsteady. Sometimes, in anticipation, he tried to remember that marvellous week, the journey from awkward loneliness to excitement, hope, to knowing he was loved. All he could bring to mind were tired images from photos. One of Vera opening a Thermos, her face in shadow. Another at a dance, her shoulders very white, frowning against the flash.

  One morning he woke late. Outside, a wood pigeon repeated its ridiculous call. He kept his eyes shut, convinced that he heard Vera breathing beside him. He wanted to reach out, but feared she might disappear. If he kept still in the hot bed she might hook her bare thigh over his, rub her face against his shoulder. The feeling faded. He opened his eyes and saw the jar. If there was a time to open it, it was now.

  Ignoring the tape he cut through the brown paper. The wax was intact, a little darker than on the morning in the empty lab. It would all be there, the smell of the new boots, the memory of youth and happiness, the sense of an endless future. He dug his fingernails into the wax—and stopped.

  This was the future. He’d remember the new boots, but could he forget throwing them away? He’d feel the joy of thinking: And there’s Vera, but also their anger with one another over misspent money, his attitude to the children, her always wanting to move house. He’d remember their first long walks, but also Vera’s failed hip, the walking stick still there in the wardrobe. With the flat of the knife he smoothed the wax.

  Over the years the wax darkened more. The cut edges of the brown paper flaked and split. The label faded, and he forgot the year it had recorded. Some summers, in early morning, the glass reflected a bright square of curtain. Some winter mornings he thought there was something in there, but wiping off the condensation he saw the jar was empty. The air inside was as clear as ever.

  Acknowledgments

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to all the editors of publications or programmes in which these stories first appeared or were broadcast:

  The Affectionate Punch: ‘Doing It’

  BBC Radio 4 Morning Story: ‘The Visitor’, ‘The Smell of Happiness’

  Bridport Prize Anthology: ‘The Fan’

  Iron: ‘And Gnashing of Teeth’

  New Welsh Reader: ‘Theory and Design in the Age of Innocence’

  Paris Transcontinental: ‘Snaps’

  Scribble (USA): ‘Creels’

  Soundwaves (Federation of Writers Scotland anthology): ‘Worthy’

  Stand: ‘Romey and Jullit’, ‘Trouble’

  Staple: ‘Whole’

  Willesden Herald New Short Stories 5: ‘Homecoming’

  ‘Whiskey and Halva’ won first prize in the Doolin Writers competition.

  ‘My Life With Eva’ was shortlisted in the Ilkley Literature Festival Competition.

  ‘Worthy’ won third prize in the Federation of Writers Scotland short story competition.

  ‘Doing It’ was performed as a monologue by Loose Exchange Theatre Company at the Soho Poly Theatre as part of Improbabilities.

  Thanks also to John Ashbrook, Elizabeth Baines, James Barr, Ann Byrne-Sutton, Deborah Freeman, Christine Harrison, Helen O’Leary, Ann Stephens, and Peter Oram, and especially my wife Rosemarie, for interesting discussions and useful comments on my work over the years. And thanks to Ilona David for the excellent cover painting. Special thanks also to Richard Davies and Carly Holmes at Parthian.

  Parthian, Cardigan SA43 1ED

  www.parthianbooks.com

  First published in 2017

  © Alex Barr 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBNs:

  paperback: 9781910901984

  ePub: 9781912109739

  mobi: 9781912109517

  Editor: Richard Davies

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