A Winter Flame

by Milly Johnson

  ‘I’ve got to go home,’ said Eve.

  ‘Whatever it is you think you have to go home for, it can wait,’ said Susan, lifting up one of the bottles of pills on the bedside table and unscrewing the lid. ‘I don’t know, I hardly see you for years and you’re in a hurry to get away from me. Anyone would think this was a remake of Misery. I might have to hobble you if you decide to escape again.’

  Eve might have laughed at that had she not felt sick and as if someone had stolen all her bones and replaced them with jelly.

  ‘Anyway, you timed that fall out of bed beautifully, your next meds are due. I hate having to wake you up to give them to you. I remember Jeff saying that sleep was as good as it gets when you have shingles.’

  ‘The candle flame will go out,’ said Eve. She felt so weak and wobbly and useless as the tears began to flow out of her eyes.

  ‘Ah,’ said Susan, understanding now. ‘Well, I’ll ring Violet, shall I?’ She lifted a tablet to Eve’s lips and then a glass of water. ‘Don’t you worry about your flame, we’ll sort that out. You need to rest. Take a drink, love, then settle back down. I’ll try and get hold of her now.’

  ‘The house keys are in my bag.’

  ‘I’ll find your keys, don’t you worry. Now, don’t you dare get out of that bed again. You sleep, young lady.’

  Eve heard her aunt on the phone talking to Violet. ‘It’s urgent,’ she was saying. ‘It’s the candle.’ She was once again asleep before she heard any more.

  Chapter 16

  Violet clicked off her mobile and looked across at Pav who had his big strong back towards her as he painted the fifth snow pony onto the wall. It reminded her of when he was painting the walls of Carousel. Except he was working considerably faster in her cousin’s café than he was in her own. A point which she felt duty bound to mention.

  ‘Ah, but I wanted to hang around in your café as long as possible,’ he said, turning around and grinning at her. ‘Here is it not so important to be slow because when the work is done, I know I will still see you.’

  ‘Crafty,’ Violet smiled as he winked at her. As always, being in his presence made her feel so warm and loved. Alas she did not add ‘safe’ to the list. One day, when she was forty, Pav would have his head turned by someone twenty years younger than her, she was sure. He was hers to enjoy for a little while, then he would go and leave her heart in pieces.

  ‘I’m going out for a bit,’ she said. ‘I need to collect some things from Eve’s house.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Pav. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Wobbly,’ said Violet. ‘And fretting about the flame. Poor thing.’

  As she opened the door to go out, Jacques had his hand on the other side of the handle to come in. She had only been introduced to him days ago and yet she felt as if she had known him for years. Both she and Pav found him affable, cheery and charming, and anything but the annoying twerp that Eve had painted him as. Around the park people referred to him as ‘Captain’ because they found him to be an able leader, a confident and capable boss. He was well liked, he rolled his sleeves up and wasn’t above being hands-on. She didn’t buy into Eve’s theory that Jacques and Major Jack were one and the same. Con men like that wouldn’t risk exposure by working front line with lots of people.

  When he entered the café his grin seemed to make the temperature rise by ten degrees.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi and bye,’ laughed Violet.

  ‘Something I said?’ chuckled Jacques.

  ‘I’ve got to go and pick some things up from Eve’s house, and I need to do it rather quickly,’ Violet said.

  ‘How is she?’ asked Jacques.

  ‘Poorly,’ sighed Violet. ‘I can’t imagine she’s very pleased about being incapacitated.’ Actually, that was an understatement. She imagined that if Eve was in any state of being compos mentis, she would be furious to be confined to bed. Not least because of what her partner would be doing in her absence – and with good reason. The man was a walking dynamo. Eve was going to be livid when she found out what he had been up to in the past few days, left to his own devices. Huge wooden candy canes had appeared everywhere, and he had been experimenting with adding glitter to the snow machines so the snowflakes were extra sparkly.

  ‘Did Eve mention anything about some papers she took home to sign? She said you’d get them for me, Violet. It’s quite important I have them,’ said Jacques.

  ‘I’ll have a look, of course,’ replied Violet, thinking that she wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking for those. She headed out to her car, only to find that it was blocked in by two of the workmen’s vans. The people working on the park seemed to be doubling by the day. She would have to ring for a taxi – it would be quicker than trying to find out which workmen the vans belonged to.

  She doubled-back to the ice-cream parlour to ring for a taxi because her mobile was low on battery. She found Pav and Jacques engaged in merry conversation. Jacques was fascinated by the white horses that Pav was painting on the walls. Violet was dreading telling Eve that ‘the Captain’ had decided the ice-cream parlour was to be called ‘Santa’s Snow-Cones’, although she loved the idea. Jacques seemed a genuinely great bloke and she wondered how Eve could possibly have taken such a dislike to him – she was usually a very good judge of character.

  ‘No need to ring for a taxi, I’ll drive you,’ Jacques volunteered. ‘My car is parked at the front. They wouldn’t dare block me in.’ He laughed his big booming Brian Blessed laugh and Violet followed him out.

  His car is just like him, thought Violet as they headed off down the main road. Warm, clean, big and safe. It smelt lovely too – the air in the car was scented with his pine-forest aftershave. She liked a man who carried a nice scent – Pav always did.

  ‘So Eve is going to be off work a little longer than she anticipated, then?’ he asked, interrupting her musings.

  ‘Yes, and I’m not really surprised,’ Violet nodded sadly. ‘They say you can get shingles if you’re run down and that’s what I think is wrong with her. She never lets herself have any rest.’

  ‘Workaholic, eh?’

  ‘Too right,’ Violet agreed. She knew that Eve kept herself busy so she wouldn’t have time to think too much. Eve wasn’t very kind to herself and a little part of Violet was actually glad – in a strange way – that she was being forced to recharge her batteries. She hadn’t grieved over Jonathan’s death. Grieving was a way of letting go, and Eve refused to grieve because she hadn’t let him go.

  Eve’s house was only a twenty-minute drive away from Winterworld.

  Jacques looked at the house he had just pulled up in front of. ‘Darklands’, read a sign above the doorbell. It was a large Victorian villa with a huge front picture window. It wasn’t at all what he expected of Eve’s house. He imagined something swish and stark and pristine, not a tired-looking building with a scraggy front garden.

  As if Violet knew what was going through his mind, she said, ‘I wish Eve would sell it and buy something easier to manage. The back garden is enormous. She keeps saying she’s going to get a gardener, but it never happens.’ She always thought the name of the house summed it up perfectly. It was a dreary place and a bit spooky, if she was honest.

  ‘It has a beautiful façade,’ said Jacques kindly, accentuating the positives.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ nodded Violet, looking at the ornate stonework above and around the door and the bay window. It was grand, there were no two ways about it, but it wasn’t ‘Eve’. At least not this present lonely Eve, who should have been in a cosy cottage – like Violet’s own beloved Postbox Cottage. The vivacious, laughing Eve, with the wonderfully clever soldier-fiancé, who was going to restore the house to its former glory fitted here – but that Eve with the big smile was as dead as the dashing soldier was.

  ‘Would you like to come in with me and see if you can find your papers?’ asked Violet. She hated the feel of the cold house and the comforting presence of Jacques would be a
blessing. Her mum had told her to bring some clothes for Eve too whilst she was there.

  Jacques seemed only too happy to accompany Violet inside. He was intrigued to see more of the house. He’d always believed a house was a reflection of the people living in it.

  Violet unlocked the heavy front door and pushed hard at it as there was a bank of letters behind it. She picked them up and put them in her handbag to take to her cousin. Jacques strode in behind her, looking at the chunky oak staircase and the photos of Eve and Jonathan that hung on the walls. Ah, that’s what she looks like when she smiles, he thought to himself. Smiling, happy Eve looked years younger than suspicious, over-worked Eve. Whilst he was looking at the photographs, Violet went into the office to sort out the candle. Not only was it still lit, but there were days of wax left. The candle took a month to burn and it wasn’t even halfway down yet. She looked on Eve’s desk but didn’t see any of the papers which Jacques might be looking for.

  ‘I can’t find any documents in her office, so try looking in the kitchen. I think Eve works on the big table on her laptop in there,’ said Violet, pointing to the kitchen door. ‘I’m just going upstairs to get some clothes.’

  There was nothing on the kitchen table, so Jacques took it upon himself to look in Eve’s office for himself. It was a large square room with a high ceiling, dominated by a big wooden desk already gathering a sprinkling of dust. He found what he was looking for weighed down by a heart-shaped frame on a shelf. The photo inside was the handsome soldier and a grinning Eve. Jacques picked it up and studied it. Her hair was loose and the wind was blowing it. Her eyes were cat-green and sparkling with life. She hadn’t a clue what was around the corner in that photograph.

  Just after Violet had filled up a small hold-all, the realization hit her that she had permitted a total stranger to walk around her cousin’s house – a stranger that Eve didn’t trust. Eve would have been furious to think that Jacques Glace of all people was looking at her things, her photographs. I really shouldn’t let him roam around the house unaccompanied, she then thought to herself, and hurried down the stairs to find Jacques in the kitchen looking at a sepia photo of old Evelyn on the wall, and not burgling the place. He was holding some documents under his arm.

  ‘You found them, then?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. I’ll countersign these so they can be actioned. I have some papers in the car that Eve needs to sign pretty quickly too,’ said Jacques. ‘They can’t wait for her to get fully better I’m afraid.’

  ‘Give them to me and I’ll get her signature for you.’

  ‘She was a lovely old lady, wasn’t she?’ he said fondly, glancing up again at the photo on the wall.

  ‘I never met her,’ said Violet. ‘But I know how incredibly fond of her Eve was. How long did you know her?’

  ‘About a year and a half.’

  ‘How did you meet her?’ asked Violet, in her gentle conversational way that bore no hint of prying.

  ‘Hospital visiting,’ said Jacques. ‘Bringing a bit of company to the infirm. She made me smile a lot, did old Evelyn.’

  ‘Ah,’ Violet said. So there was no more mystery to it than that. She smiled, recalling Eve’s wild theories that Jacques had hypnotized Aunt Evelyn or tricked her, Harold Shipman style, into leaving him half her fortune, when the reality was that he had simply done a stint at being a hospital visitor and ended up chatting to a lonely old lady. That would tie in with the time when Evelyn went into hospital with the mini stroke that seemed to give her a new lease of life.

  ‘I know it was her fantasy to build a theme park; she had a great deal of fun planning it in hospital. She had books full of drawings and ideas. I must admit, though, I never thought her dream would leave the paper,’ said Jacques, a smile curving his lips. ‘It was as big a surprise to me as it was to everyone else, and I certainly never expected to inherit half of it.’ He seemed to be making the point quite clearly.

  ‘It was Evelyn’s money to do with as she wished,’ said Violet in response. ‘She was a woman very much of her own mind.’

  ‘Like her great-niece then,’ said Jacques. ‘Only softer.’

  He said it factually, not unkindly, but still Violet felt duty bound to jump to Eve’s defence.

  ‘Eve’s not hard, Jacques, however she may come across at the moment. She’s just . . .’ Violet realized she might be saying too much. Jacques was too easy to talk to, to trust. If he was a con-man, he’d be really good at it, Violet thought. She shut up and walked over to the fridge to check for out-of-date food that might need throwing away.

  ‘You were saying,’ Jacques prompted her. ‘About Eve?’

  ‘She’s hurting,’ said Violet. She had no intention of spilling her cousin’s business and being disloyal, but at the same time she didn’t want Eve to be judged harshly. ‘Eve hasn’t been Eve since her fiancé Jonathan died. He was a soldier, killed in Helmand on Christmas Day, five years ago.’ She tipped some rather rank milk down the sink and ran the tap to sluice it away.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jacques. ‘And she can’t move on.’

  ‘No,’ said Violet. ‘She can’t.’

  She hated the thought that Eve was existing until the day she died to be reunited with Jonathan. She had often thought about blowing out the candle, hoping that Eve would see that as a sign from Jonathan that they must part and she should start to live, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it and betray her cousin. She didn’t know if that was the right thing to do or not.

  ‘She was always so smiley,’ said Violet, not liking that the Eve of today wasn’t the real Eve. ‘Okay, she always hated Christmas and probably with good reason . . .’ Violet pulled the rein hard on herself. Eve’s rotten upbringing with a purely selfish mother wasn’t her story to tell. ‘But she was – is – a great person, with a big heart, a kind, sweet soul. She’s just stuck in a rut. And she won’t get out of it whilst that flame is still burning.’ And it will burn forever and Eve will end up like Evelyn – mourning until she is an old lady.

  ‘Flame?’ inquired Jacques.

  ‘The candle in her office,’ said Violet. ‘As long as it burns, she reads that as a sign that Jonathan is still hers and she is still his.’

  ‘Oh no. I’ve just blown it out,’ said Jacques with a gulp. ‘I thought it was a fire hazard.’

  ‘Oh God. We have to relight it.’ She turned to the drawers behind her and started hunting around for a match. Jacques took the cupboards above.

  ‘Got some,’ said Violet. ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell Eve what you did. In fact, don’t tell Eve you were here at all. She’ll kill us both.’

  They both walked back into the office to see the strangest thing – the light was back and dancing on top of the candle.

  Chapter 17

  When Violet arrived at her mum’s house, Susan was sitting at the kitchen table, laughing at today’s apology in the Trumpet.

  ‘Listen to this,’ she said. “In Saturday’s edition, it was reported that Mrs Christine Buckley was always renowned for being an elephant lady. We did, of course, mean that Mrs Buckley was always renowned for being an elegant lady. We apologize to Mrs Buckley for any distress sustained.” I’m sure none of them read the newspaper before it goes to print.’

  Violet chuckled.

  ‘They must print an apology at least three times a week. Sometimes they have to apologize for the apology because the apology ends up being worse than the original mistake.’

  ‘I should cut them out and collect them,’ said Susan, pulling a mug out of the cupboard for her daughter. It was the one with butterflies on it – Nan’s old cup. ‘I wish I hadn’t thrown that one away now that advertised the special weekend offer for an eleven-inch, crusty penis with five toppings of your choice. The owner of Luigi’s must have gone barmy at that.’

  Violet laughed heartily then clamped her hand over her mouth because her old room was directly above. ‘How’s the invalid?’

  ‘Asleep. I’ve just been up to check on her. Don’t go up, Vi
olet, in case you wake her. As you know, I’m a great advocate of sleep for the poorly.’

  ‘I promised Jacques I’d get her to sign some documents,’ said Violet. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  A few minutes later, Violet had returned, hating herself for having had to wake up her cousin, stick a pen in her hand and watch Eve sign her name before flopping back on the pillow again. Eve hadn’t even checked what she was signing her name to, which was most unlike her.

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Violet, lifting up her cup. ‘She’s zonked out.’

  ‘Nothing better than sleep for the poorly,’ nodded Susan, and Violet thought back to the days when she was young and not so well, and Mum tucking her up in bed with a fat, cosy, hot-water bottle. You get to sleep and let the fairy nurses make you better in your dreams, Susan used to say.

  ‘I’ve made sure the candle is fine, and I’ll be off in a moment to take these forms to Jacques. He wants them quite urgently.’

  ‘Oh, her favourite person,’ said Susan. ‘What’s he like, this Jacques Glace? She’s got a real bee in her bonnet about him, hasn’t she? She woke up yesterday shouting out his name, and not in a very complimentary way.’

  ‘I think he’s lovely,’ said Violet. ‘Big, cheerful, friendly, handsome too. He’s got short grey hair and nice shiny eyes and big solid shoulders like Pav. He winds her up terribly,’ said Violet. ‘He is an imp. He keeps making flirty jokes and saying that he’s going to marry her. It doesn’t go down very well, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Susan. Then she fell so quiet that Violet knew there was something Susan wasn’t telling her.

  ‘Mum, what is it?’

  Susan didn’t answer. She just stared at her cup for a few minutes and seemed to be building herself up for a massive revelation.

  ‘Mum?’ prompted Violet.

  Susan lifted her head. ‘Patrick. Patrick. Patrick,’ she stammered.

  ‘What’s this – butcher’s Tourette’s?’