I pushed through the front door, feeling more like a person trying to walk across the bottom of the ocean instead of a hospital lobby. Every step required effort and sounds died away before they reached my ears. Even the walls of the room blurred as if I were looking through water. Theo led us downstairs, past the irate nurse who didn’t worry me at all anymore, and to Alan’s bedside.
“I should let you two have this moment alone, but since I came so far…” Theo landed herself in the chair beside him, looking eagerly between the two of us.
“Did you hear?” Alan’s voice scratched from his throat, raw and filled with wonder.
I nodded as he reached out to me. His hand felt too thick in mine, like a stranger.
He shook his head in disbelief. “Car batteries, of all things, when our farm only ‘as ‘alf a car to its name.” He smiled up at me. Our farm. The “our” chafed my ear like a buzzing fly. “We’ll make them pay dear and start a new strain of sheep with the money. One of the new rams is still strong and this might be a chance to fettle the finest wool in England.”
Theo huffed in irritation and I threw her a look, but Alan didn’t notice. “It’s all the best of news,” I agreed.
“And William will go back to school and be ready for university, after all. And your dad won’t be popped into some poor row house.”
“They’ll both be so pleased.” The words came without thinking, without feeling.
“And I’ll know you’re cared for and the sheep are cared for,” he added, stroking the back of my hand with his calloused finger.
Theo rose all huffed. “Honestly, I expected much better,” she announced. “But if you are only going to talk only about your great, white lopballs I will excuse myself.” She gathered her handbag as if we’d insulted her. As she turned to go she cast one last irritated glance at us. “If you were a picture show that would be the worst love scene of all time.”
Despite the numbness in my limbs I couldn’t resist the smallest smile as she sashayed down the rows of admiring patients, her platinum hair shining. I took a moment before I returned my eyes to Alan’s face. The creeping purple of his bruised cheek beneath the aqua of his eyes reminded me of a sunset.
I studied my hand in his, sad to see they were equally calloused. We belonged to the same tribe, Alan and I. “I still haven’t got a ring,” I told him.
“I’d forgotten all about that part,” he admitted, touching my bare finger. “Would you like one now? There must be a way once the sheep money comes in.”
I pulled the chair so close to him my knees pressed against his bed. He adjusted his shoulders with a wince until he could look at me, but I ducked my head. “I don’t think I would,” I whispered. I stared hard at my fingertips, my chipped nails testifying of long nights in the barn and rock-hard balls of lye soap that refused to lather in the cold bucket water.
“Wouldn’t like a ring?” he said teasingly. “Or wouldn’t like it now?”
“Perhaps both,” I said quickly and quietly, not certain he would hear. Not certain I wanted him to.
“What’s the matter, Eve?” His voice fell deep and bright, like a penny dropped in a well. I imagined it tumble into nothingness and wanted to cry.
“I think I’ve cold feet.” How cowardly that I lied. I should have said instantly I was not truly in love with him. Not the way a woman should love a man.
“How cold?” he asked.
My eyes flashed to his, suddenly startled. “Not cold at all. The words are all wrong,” I exclaimed in my quietest, fervent voice, so as not to make a spectacle of us. “I feel everything warm and nice for you, Alan. You’re the soul of faithfulness and hard work and pleasant in every way.” I imagined his handsome face because I hadn’t the courage to look. “I do love you. In so many ways.” My face was hot with the word. It burned as I spoke it. “But when I think of truly being married I’m worried it’s not the right kind of love.”
His eyes drifted to the ceiling above him, so absorbed I looked up at the brown water stains, counting off moments until he finally spoke again.
“You needn’t be embarrassed. Those things sort themselves out,” he said. I expected his face to be as crimson and pained as mine, but his eyes were relaxed, his expression assured.
“I’m sure they do. But I’m not sure they will. For us.” I wondered if I could escape this conversation without hurting him with the truth, but the corner I was cowering in was growing sharper and harder. There was only one way out. “I think I might feel that way for someone else.”
I dared a look to see if he glared at me in revulsion or betrayal. Still his eyes gazed calmly upward. “Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“Who?” he repeated softly.
My heart jolted in fear. “Jonathon Doran,” I whispered.
Alan shook his head slowly, a sad grin tugging at his lips. “You can’t, Eve. It’s a bad job. He’s a rich man and goin’ in thirty and knows nothing of our ways. You’ll be hurt or made a fool.” He said it so gently as if explaining to a child, but it didn’t soften the sharp stab of truth.
One tear spoke for me as it ripped itself free and plunged to the spotless floor. “I suppose I haven’t thought about how he feels. Only that it’s not right to marry you when I…” I wanted to say I loved Jonathon but it was too foolish to finish, when everything Alan had just said was undeniable.
We sat in painful quiet while he blinked and I watched the bandages on his chest move up and down with his breaths. “Were it somewhat I did?” he asked the ceiling.
“Not at all. In any way. I am a wicked girl. I led you to believe…but only because I believed it too. For a bit. I thought it was a passing fancy..”
Alan sighed and his face looked so changed. “I don’t think you know what you’re on about still. I won’t hold it against you when you’re so young and nowt can come of it,” he promised. “It changes nothing for me.” He looked at me, so full of determination that a scalding pain rushed through my lungs, as if I were the one blown through with shrapnel instead of Alan.
“It changes everything for me.” My words shuddered with grief. “I’m so sorry. Just when everything was looking right for you and the farm. You’ll always have a place there, I swear it.”
His expression transformed as if I’d struck him. He tightened his lips and turned away, his bruised hands holding to his blanket.
“I should go,” I said, remembering the nurse’s scolding, and rose to my unsteady feet. “I wanted to tell you later. Or never. I wish it were never, Alan. I did fight it.” My voice dripped with shame because as soon as I said it I could think only of the times I hadn’t fought at all, only smiled at Jonathon and let him creep slowly into all my thoughts.
Alan’s face struggled between hard and vulnerable, each twitch of muscle a mighty battle beneath the bruises. “Eve, you mun know it can’t never be. And you may need me when he breaks your heart. I will still come ‘ome to you.” He gave me a brief, direct stare to let me know he meant it.
I closed my eyes against the impossible agony of it all and leaned over to kiss his forehead. “But I won’t be there.” I hid my eyes behind a tissue before we each saw how stricken the other was.
I didn’t mean to say I was running away. It was deeper and more permanent than that. The girl in the coveralls who lived only for sheep and Alan didn’t exist anymore and he’d not find her again, wherever I was, wherever he looked.
I walked away with a ducked head, my face hidden between my tissue and my hair. If he had called after me I would have turned back, not because I had anything else to give him, but because I couldn’t stand to deny him any kindness short of passion. Instead he let me go quietly with only my whimpering guilt making any sound inside my crowded mind. The nurse scowled at me as I passed, but I deserved it. How I could leave him in such a state… I stumbled up the stairs where Theo lounged against the rail.
“I’m a beast,” I confessed, rushing past her. “A wicked beast.”
“Eve.” Her pumps tapped out an urgent rhythm behind me. She grabbed my shoulder but I shrugged free. “Eve!” Into the harsh summer sun and down the pavement, she tried to dodge in front of me, but I would not halt. “What happened?” she begged. “You’re anything but a beast.”
“I’m getting on the train and going home,” I told her.
“But it doesn’t come for two more hours.” She squeaked in pain and I nearly stopped when I saw her hobble over a wrenched ankle, but anyone as terrible as I would keep going so I did. She tried to fix her loose buckle and keep up with me. “Eve, stop!”
“I’m sorry. I have to… If I don’t go I’ll burst.” Where exactly I had to go was impossible to know. I felt only a churning force of need in my chest. At the moment it told me to run. It would have felt marvelous to throw myself across the pastures, never stopping until I collapsed between the distant hills, but it was too absurd in the middle of sturdy Woolwich.
Theo rubbed her ankle and gave me a look so full of pity I hated myself. “Then go. I didn’t damage anything,” she reassured me.
So I walked furiously, my face blank and grieved all at once. “I’ll be at the train,” I called to her before I broke into a run just brief enough to hide myself around the corner of an ally and come out on a different street, until I knew I was alone. Gone was the fear of dangerous men in the city. I nearly wished someone would grab me and beat me senseless. Only when I heard the sound of motor cars and busses did I recognise the smell of frying fish. I was nearly to the square with the tiny dress shop. I turned wrong once, coming out on a farther street than I expected, but made my way there with the same blind determination that had swept me from the hospital and Alan and Theo.
I studied my heart more intently than ever before, searching for some reassuring vibration to tell me I’d done the right thing. I felt only the jarring beats of bewilderment. The nameless dress shop stared at me from a block ahead. It is to that unremarkable landmark I pointed all my energy. When I got to the door I pried it open, wanting a place to hide much more than a place to shop.
The same woman was folding a stack of blouses at the counter and raised her elegant head, smiling gently as soon as she recognised me. I hadn’t rehearsed at all what I would say but the words came like they’d been crouching on my tongue, plotting their escape.
“I bought the wrong dress.”
Neither of us moved. She saw my flush, my panic, my dread, but none of it disturbed her calm expression. Her smile only melted into a sympathetic line. She paused her work and gazed at me.
“I believe I bought the wrong dress,” I repeated, not sure if I was right or not. “I changed my mind.”
“It is hard to know the right one when you’ve shopped so little, yes?” She nodded, agreeing for me.
She finished folding a shirt and set it aside. “I worried you wouldn’t come back.”
I blinked in confusion. “Was I meant to?”
Her free hand slipped under the counter and returned with a white box in her hand. “Yes, I hoped you would come back. For this.”
She handed it to me and I knew without lifting the lid. I stared without accepting it. “How did you know?” I whispered, shaking my head.
“I didn’t,” she reassured me. “No one really does. But one does get so good at guessing.” With one smile her face shattered into happy lines all pointing to her dancing eyes.
Instead of taking the box I set my battered handbag on the counter and opened the clasp so we could both see the meager pile of paper bills. “Can I afford it?” I asked her.
“I have always found regret much costlier,” she confided.
My voice lowered almost to despair. “What if I’m not meant to have this one either?” I was so turned around, I wanted to ask her if she knew I wasn’t talking about a dress at all, but surely we couldn’t have gotten this far on a misunderstanding.
Her eyebrows bent together in concern and she put one finger on my wrist. “I think this: our hearts move just like the Earth—circling, circling. It is as hard to change their orbit as it is to move the world. Eventually, we must look up and see what it is we are circling.” She reached the same finger up and stroked the comb in her hair.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
She stared at me, her dark pupils calling me a liar as surely as if she spoke it aloud.
I exhaled. “What am I supposed to be circling?”
She returned my clasp. “Who are you circling?” she corrected.
“Oh.” I hung my head, the truth of everything heavy and precious and terrible. I laid the bills on the counter, realising they were nothing more than paper. Money never looked so meaningless before. “I’ve hurt someone dear,” I whispered as I studied the brown carpet.
“For all the right reasons, I’m sure.” Her eyes betrayed sadness, both time-worn and present. “There is kindness to that, too, though it doesn’t seem so at the time.”
I had an impulse to embrace her but I wasn’t sure it was the way of her people, and it certainly isn’t the way of the English. Instead, I extended my hand and took hers with all the feeling I could fit into my fingers.
She let go and gave me an encouraging nod toward the door. When I reached for the doorknob, I was the one to pause and speak this time. “I’m not sure it’s right- what I did.”
She looked at me like she pitied me very much, but said nothing.
I squinted as the sunlight bounced off the front window into my stinging eyes. “Did your friend retrieve the boy?”
“She will,” she promised. “I have no doubts. But I think you have your own task to see to now.”
I nodded and left. The door closed behind me as I thought of how good the word “task” sounded in my ears. It spoke of hard work and long days that wrung the thoughts out of me. To be so tired I had no time to think of hearts and love seemed a better motivation to save the farm than any other.
When I reached the hotel room Theo was nearly all packed. We stared warily at each other, both afraid to speak first.
“Did you buy something?” she asked as she resumed tucking her toiletries into a pocket of her case.
I glanced at the box in my hand. “Yes.” Not ready to show it to her or even look at it myself, I set the white box on the sofa behind me. “I’m sorry I ran away. I owe you an explanation.”
“I don’t need one,” she told me. “I went back and asked Alan.” Her nervous eyes didn’t meet mine, even though she said it casually enough.
“Did you?” I was happy to hear it, hoping for some clue how he was doing. “And how was he?”
“Looked a bit as if he’d been blown apart. Again.”
I groaned. “Theo, I wouldn’t hurt him for the world. What did he say?”
I sat down at her feet as she lowered herself onto the coffee table. “He said you thought you loved Jonathon. I can’t believe you really went through with it,” she said in awe.
“And was he furious?”
She smoothed out one of my curls before answering. “No. He was utterly bewildered. He’s convinced it’s calf love and you’ll crawl back after you’ve chased a rich man.”
I bristled, trying to tell if the cruelty was from Alan or Theo’s retelling. “I’ll chase no one,” I retorted. “And I certainly won’t crawl anywhere. If he thinks I love Jonathon because he’s rich...”
Theo interrupted me with a hardness in her tone. “If you don’t try to end up with Jonathon then what is the point?”
“The point is I didn’t marry a man I don’t love.”
“And you mean to throw everything away for someone who has no intention of marrying you? We’re just a game to them.”
“Listen to you. You told me not to marry Alan.” My voice expanded in the close room.
“I know,” she agreed. “I just didn’t want you to trade boredom for heartbreak. I’m certain the Dorans are bound to break hearts. Marion because he’s a rascal and Jonathon because he’s too kind. I thought you knew it was a
joke.”
I shook my head and stood to pack my things. As I retrieved my wrinkled clothes from the wardrobe I examined the raw bruise that used to be my heart. There was almost a life to the pain, something far more interesting than the ordinary business of life. I told myself heartache had a certain satisfaction to it and I thought I’d learn to live with it.
“It has never been a joke,” I murmured. “Not for you or for me.”
Silence. “I know.”
CHAPTER 11
20TH JUNE 1939
It took me nearly three weeks of stolen moments to type even the smallest part of my trip to Woolwich. Even now when I read it I think of a hundred things I didn’t tell. But they already feel like they happened years ago and hardly matter at all. Last weekend the feed company dropped off new feed and our barn is packed with it, smelling as fresh as it ever has when the summer heat soaks into the bags of grain. Dad sat down and calculated the average weight of wool from each sheep lost over the course of a year, including the few we sell to farmers looking to breed and the handful we send to slaughter. The feed company wrote a cheque for the entire amount, plus our vet fees, without an argument. There is no money to make up for the nights of terror while the herd dropped dead around us (not to mention the suffering of the poor things), but the memory grows more distant every day.
After a flurry of letters between Alan and Dad which discussed every attribute of every breed of sheep known to mankind, they decided to try blending a finer, denser wool for knit quality instead of the coarser blanket wool we’ve done in the past. We have three Shropshire sires and ten new Hampshire Down ewes arriving next week and Dad looks like a boy in britches waiting for Christmas. I looked over his letters from Alan when he wasn’t around and found only the slightest mention of our engagement. Alan wrote that “Eve is feeling overyoung and skiddish about the wedding. I think it best to make plans after the war.” Then he went on and on about the benefits of merino versus coarse wool. Dad must be too embarrassed to ask me about it, or simply too distracted by our miraculous turn of fortune, because he’s said nothing. If only Alan knew I feel neither too young nor too skittish. If Jonathon asked me to marry him I would pack my bag and race for the altar. But that is neither here nor there since Jonathon has apparently concluded his business with us.
To Move the World (Power of the Matchmaker) Page 23