After You Left

by Carol Mason

  On her twentieth birthday, Evelyn’s gran had pushed a tidy sum of her savings into Evelyn’s hand and said, ‘You can live your life or you can waste your life.’ She had squeezed her fingers tightly closed around Evelyn’s, like a clam. ‘Don’t waste your life.’

  Her gran had always known her well. She had sensed a restlessness in Evelyn that didn’t seem present in other girls Evelyn’s age. Evelyn was world-weary of where she lived, given that she’d been visiting Newcastle bars since she was fifteen years old, and had tried on for size a variety of menial jobs that other girls seemed so satisfied with – hairdresser in training, hostess in a prim hotel restaurant, perfume demo girl in the region’s number one department store – jobs that she could never make fit. She should have gone to college, but grammar school had eluded her by a painfully narrow margin. She’d had some vague idea she’d quite like to write books, but whenever she’d voiced it, her family had scoffed at her, so she had learnt quite quickly to keep that sort of silly idea to herself.

  As Matthew passed her the splendid bouquet of red and white roses, the knuckle of his index finger deliberately grazed her breast. To think she’d had a bit of a crush on him when she’d first arrived. She didn’t know what to do or say, so she pretended it had never happened. She clutched the flowers that burst with fragrance, anxious to open the small white card.

  ‘It’s from Mark Westland,’ Matthew informed her, petulantly, as though she should know the name. ‘Seems you’ve got yourself an admirer.’

  ‘What? Wish he’d sent them to you instead?’ she quipped. She was dying to ask him who Mark Westland was, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Walking into reception, she tore at the card, sensing the breathless weight of having been noticed by someone possibly important; the possible grand, great romance of it all. Since moving to London, into the flat-share of five girls that had been already set up before she’d even left the North, by the sister-in-law of a friend of a friend, her life hadn’t quite lived up to the hype she’d expected. It had so far been a lot of work for very little pay. Perhaps things were about to turn around.

  Please have dinner with me this Saturday. Annabel’s. 7 p.m.

  Yours, Mark Westland.

  ‘Yours, Mark Westland?’ Matthew put on a girly voice. He was craning to read over her shoulder.

  ‘Go away.’ She flapped him off. ‘It’s none of your business. You child!’

  Matthew gave a mocking laugh, deliberately sweeping his eyes over her breasts again, as he stupidly blushed the colour of a beetroot. She suddenly despised him – all men. What right did they have to try to intimidate women and get away with it? Well, she despised all of them except, perhaps, for Mr Westland.

  It was enough to be sent flowers. Let alone to be going to a posh new private members’ club. She didn’t realise it at the time, but for the however-many hours that Mr Westland’s invitation was in her head, Eddy wasn’t.

  It was a shame that she had a train ticket to go back up North that weekend. She wouldn’t be going now. She only hoped Mr Westland wasn’t fat.

  Or old.

  Or had a wart on his cheek.

  Holy Island. 1983

  When she heard the knock shortly after dinner, she somehow knew it would be Eddy. She opened the door, and he was standing there, smiling.

  ‘Forgot my rake.’ He leant against the doorframe with his left shoulder. ‘Does that sound like a pathetic excuse to come back and talk to you?’

  ‘Extremely.’ She tried to sound like this sort of thing happened every day. She must have looked as red as someone being held over a fire.

  He had changed into a long-sleeved, green jersey T-shirt that emphasised his muscular upper body. He was as fit as someone half his age. His black cap almost blended in with his dark hair, except for the few grey curls at his temples. She wondered what excuse he’d given his wife.

  ‘Did you really just come back here to see me?’ she asked, guilelessly.

  ‘Yes. From the minute I left here, it was all I could think about.’

  They held eyes. Something in the way he was trying to lean casually against the doorframe told her that he wasn’t doing this quite as effortlessly as he would have liked. The tendon in his neck kept flexing.

  ‘You’ve brought a lot of memories back for me, Evelyn. I’ve been reliving them all afternoon.’

  ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’

  He laughed, perhaps recalling how they had joshed all those years ago. ‘Apparently not!’ His eyes were full of warmth for her – the warmth that speaks of a disarming narrowing of the distance between the past and now. ‘Actually, the older I’m getting, the more I tend to think about days gone by.’

  ‘You’re a bit too young to be doing the “in the olden days” thing, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’re right. Sad, isn’t it?’

  She wasn’t sure if he was teasing. He would be in his mid-forties now. He was five years older than she was. Turning forty had been a wrench for Evelyn. Her thirties had blitzed by, and perhaps for the first time she had truly taken stock of her life. I’ll probably never bear children. We’ll probably never adopt. I’m sure we’ll stay together forever if we’ve made it this far. It’s unlikely I’ll ever fall in love again. The last one had been a rogue thought, and she had wondered why it had even entered her head.

  ‘Anita and Billy were only married for three years, you know. I knew it wouldn’t last,’ he said.

  Eddy had been Billy’s best man. Anita was friends with Evelyn’s friend Elizabeth. ‘I wasn’t even supposed to be there!’ Evelyn found herself thinking back. It was as fresh as yesterday. ‘If Elizabeth’s boyfriend hadn’t run off with someone else, I wouldn’t have been dragged along in his place, and you and I would never have met.’ The past was hurtling back to her, details slightly softened by that one incandescent memory of how bowled over by him she had been.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘Go to the wedding?’ She knew he didn’t mean that.

  ‘Stand me up.’

  ‘Eddy . . .’ It was so unsettling to find herself having to explain the unexplainable all these years later. She had often grappled with it: with why. ‘I don’t quite know how to say this,’ she said, honestly. ‘When I met you – that night – I was leaving for London exactly one week later. Through the very generous referral of a total stranger, I had a flat set up, and I’d paid a deposit on the rent. I had a job! When you asked me out, I should have just told you that, but in the moment, everything was so magical I couldn’t have it end on that note. You had made such an impression on me. I didn’t want to say goodbye.’

  She was surprised to find herself becoming ruffled, slightly short of breath. She had time-travelled back to twenty years ago. She could recall the tug of her dilemma as though she was in the grip of it right now. ‘But then leading up to it . . . I just thought, there’s no point. It was the craziest idea for us to see one another again. I needed so badly to leave. Back then, and I know it sounds dramatic, I wanted to be so much more than there was opportunity for – even though, to be honest, I didn’t know what the hell that something was. So I just thought, why on earth would I risk going out with someone who . . .’

  ‘Might make you want to stay?’

  ‘Please don’t look at me like that.’ She shielded her eyes, briefly. She just remembered thinking, What if I fall in love with him? I can’t fall in love with him because I’m leaving. I’m twenty years old and my future can’t be here, for the simple reason that I’ve already decided it won’t be! How many times had she looked back over the years and been completely unable to identify with the girl who had thought that way?

  ‘I went back to your house a second time, you know. I knew that business of you having to work late was a lie. Your mother told me you’d moved to London. I’m sure she could tell by my reaction that you weren’t just a passing fancy for me. I think your mother was quite intuitive.’

  Evelyn hadn’t known this. Her
secretive mother had never said.

  ‘I’m not proud I stood you up, Eddy. I’ve never done that once I’ve made a promise. It was a horrid thing to do.’

  ‘So I was just the unlucky one, eh?’

  He might have been faking hurt feelings, but perhaps that was wishful thinking; Evelyn saw genuine regret in his eyes, and she was a little dumbfounded by it. ‘It was twenty years ago, Eddy.’

  ‘I was devastated when I knocked on your door and you weren’t there. I was surprised I could be so bothered about it, actually. And it was more than just a pride thing. It was because I’d expected better of you – of the situation. I thought meeting me had left you feeling the same way it had left me. I remember dancing with you and thinking, Right at this moment, looking at this girl, this could be what holding The One feels like. That’s how big of an impression you made on me, Evelyn.’

  ‘You’d probably just drunk too much.’

  He looked neither disappointed nor surprised that she was making light of it, just reflective. ‘Anita said you were always a bit uppity and high on yourself.’

  Evelyn’s jaw dropped. ‘What? How dare she? She didn’t even know me! I’d never even met her until her wedding day!’

  His serious face burst into a smile.

  ‘You’re teasing me!’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Good heavens, you haven’t changed one iota!’ He was exactly the same Eddy.

  ‘Yup, I bet you left for your nice life in London, and you never even gave me a second thought!’

  She extended him one of her withering blinks. ‘Actually, when I left, I had no idea what sort of life I was leaving for. I just wanted to get away from here at the time; that was all I’d ever wanted for some insane reason – to not have a life like my mother’s, and like that of every other woman I saw. Though right now, I’ve no idea what was exactly wrong with it. But can we please stop trying to make me feel bad? It’s becoming tiring.’

  ‘I was only getting started.’ Again, that smile.

  ‘And if you must know, I didn’t leave without a backward glance. I had some serious misgivings. I think I had a very strong sense that, in order to go off and pursue what I thought I wanted, I was walking away from something . . .’ She couldn’t find the right word. Something monumental. Someone who perhaps only came your way once. ‘I suppose right when I thought I’d been everywhere, seen everything and done everything in my home town, you came along and you were different to the rest. And strange as it was, I never really knew you, yet I felt the loss of you as I was leaving. And I went on feeling it for a long time after I left.’

  She remembered sitting on the train thinking, Why am I not exhilarated about what’s ahead? Why am I thinking of what might have been? Why is it that I want to pluck him up and take him out of the North East? Why is it that I can’t? And, finally: Why am I so damned messed up?

  ‘But you obviously found what you were looking for, because you never came back.’

  She wondered if he were referencing Mark now, if he were remembering him from that one time at the Mayfair.

  She pulled her tangerine cotton cardigan tighter across her chest. He seemed to notice her every move. His eyes kept casting over her hair. She had taken it out of its ponytail earlier, and it hung freely around her shoulders. She wondered if he was faithful, if he was still attracted to his wife, what kind of husband he’d have made.

  ‘So you’re really going to sell this place?’ he asked, and she was relieved he’d changed the topic.

  ‘I don’t think I have much choice.’

  ‘You don’t sound too enthusiastic.’ His eyes circled her face like a hummingbird around a petunia.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve always loved Holy Island. It’s such a part of me. Of course, I didn’t know that until I left. I sometimes think my heart will break to see the home where I grew up go.’

  She remembered those trips back here in the early days of her marriage, when she had an inkling that she wasn’t as happy as a new bride ought to have been. Being here made London and Mark feel like another life. And it always saddened her that she missed neither in the way that she believed she should have. She and Mark had met six months after she had arrived in London. She had always imagined she’d have had a few more dalliances first. And yet Mark had qualities she could never have hoped to find in one person. While she was living alongside him, she could never make sense of her discontent, especially given that she had a privileged life, one that would have been unattainable for most girls of her background, and it was in Evelyn’s nature to be grateful. Plus, she loved him. Yet as soon as she came home, she saw it straightforwardly. She had gone to London not really knowing where life would take her. But somehow she had arrived too quickly, and found out too soon.

  ‘Don’t grieve for a house, Evelyn. It’s just a structure. The really important stuff is locked away in here.’ He tapped his temples. ‘You carry this with you always . . . If you’re happy with your life, it’s best to let your past stay in the past and just treasure it from a healthy distance.’

  Her brows pulled together. ‘This is making me sad.’

  ‘Don’t be sad. You have great memories, and nothing can take them away. And you’re lucky, you know. That’s more than many people have.’

  She was touched by his words. Meeting his eyes, she registered the unsteady pencil line around the possibility of his having been The One, if only she had stayed. ‘Perhaps we would have hated one another if we had gone on that date,’ she said.

  ‘We wouldn’t have. But that’s in the past now.’

  She looked around at the garden, and the sudden weight of inexplicable regret dragged down the corners of her mouth. ‘Lindisfarne is the most magical place on earth. I’m torn between bursting to tell everyone about it and desperately wanting to keep it secret.’ Tears came to her eyes. ‘Sometimes, I wish the tide would close us off permanently from the rest of the world and I’d be captive here, even though as a young woman that used to be one of my worst nightmares!’

  ‘You’d eventually wither and die, or start swimming and drown. Then your children would be bereft.’

  ‘I don’t have children.’

  ‘The earl, then.’

  They looked at one another again. The casual way he made reference to Mark made her remember something. He was someone else’s husband. She was someone else’s wife.

  ‘You probably need to get off home now,’ she said.

  ‘You mean you want me to get off home now.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He studied her for a moment, then started walking to the garden gate, seeming to naturally assume she would follow, and she did.

  It didn’t feel like it was just today that they had met again, that today they had talked for the first time in twenty years. There was an ease between them, an ease that you wouldn’t have thought could be there, but it was. ‘My dad grew those in his greenhouse.’ She pointed to three or four mounds of frothy pink-and-white bell-head fuchsia by the gate. ‘When he died, Mam planted them here, not really expecting they’d take off, but they did. I think my dad must have been giving her green thumbs from heaven.’

  He bent down beside one of the bushes of red and purple ones, and carefully held a flower head, and the memory of his hands came back to her with a rush. ‘These are called Lady’s Eardrops because of the shape. But some say they resemble a ballerina. See, the stamen look like the legs of a dancer, while the petals are the dancer’s tutu.’ He inadvertently glanced over her legs, and it sent a small charge through her. She remembered how desperately she’d wanted to sleep with him, but she was a nice girl and it had felt like the wrong way to behave.

  ‘You’re right.’ She gazed at the small and vibrant flower in his upturned palm. ‘It really does look like a ballerina.’ She pulled her eyes away from his hand.

  At the gate, he hesitated. ‘So, Countess of Lindisfarne, if you’re planning on doing this place up, I could help. I’m quite handy.’

  ‘I�
��m just going to paint it. Nothing huge.’

  ‘I’m great with a paintbrush.’

  ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

  ‘You didn’t. I volunteered. I could even start tomorrow, if we want.’

  We want? She almost laughed. ‘Don’t you have other gardens to do?’

  ‘It’s going to rain.’

  ‘Is it?’ She looked up, doubtfully, at a bright blue sky.

  ‘I’m going to pray for it.’

  She did laugh now. His boldness was still there, and it was refreshing. She experienced a flash of herself as that twenty-year-old woman again. That’s what was missing from her marriage: Mark no longer wooed her. He no longer thought he had to, or that it mattered. He would probably have never guessed that she even missed it.

  Turn him down, she was thinking. Or no good will come of this. But she had reached a precipice and was catching herself in the act of jumping off into thin air. She would either soar and fly, or crash and burn. But either way, the movement was exhilarating. ‘Well, I could certainly use the help . . .’

  He studied her for a moment as though he might back out, then said, ‘Tomorrow then?’

  Pressuring her like this made her slightly delirious. She could almost feel her mother looking on, with bated breath, saying, See! Second chances . . . ‘Tomorrow,’ she said.

  He reached to shake her hand. It was an oddly formal gesture. She registered the strong clasp of his fingers around hers. And, as she looked into his eyes, she suddenly possessed a discomfiting perspective on herself. Her life felt like a grand mansion built without any proper foundations. It could crumble with the right little earthquake.

  TEN

  Alice

  Our relationship started like a runaway train, with no brakes and no one driving.

  There was nothing particularly original about it. We met in one of Newcastle’s busy, uber-trendy cocktail bars. I was with Sally, who rarely got a night out because she worked unsociable hours and was a parent.