The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton

by Catherine Alliott

  Pink Shawl looked startled, but not unduly displeased. She smiled flirtatiously, coquettishly stroking her upper lip. Suddenly she began to warble in a reedy little voice: ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World…’

  Noel Coward's eyes hardened to bullets. I turned and ran, fleeing through the happily still open front door, and down the path.

  ‘All right?’ said Felicity as I flung myself in the passenger seat beside her.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ I breathed.

  ‘Only she can be a bit antsy, the butch one,’ she said, as she shifted into first. ‘She threw a vase at your mother once, when she thought she was being over-felicitous with the one in the shawl, who, incidentally, claims to have danced with the Tiller Girls. If she starts singing “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” you're in trouble.

  I glanced back over my shoulder to see butch partner in the doorway, calmly loading an air rifle. She took aim.

  ‘Drive on!’ I squeaked.

  As she did, a shot rang out. Felicity looked at me in horror; put her foot down.

  ‘I, um, think you might have to smooth some troubled waters next week, Felicity,’ I said, hanging on to my seat. ‘I've upset her.’

  ‘Don't worry, it's easily done. And she'll have forgotten in a week's time. None of them remembers anything beyond tomorrow. Now,’ she pulled up further down the road, ‘Mrs Mitchell has a stiff drink on the dot of twelve every day, and since we're late,’ she consulted her watch, ‘she'll be away with the fairies by now. Chopped liver, red dot. And Mrs Mason next door is black dot.’

  I ran to the boot and hurried up the path, delivering to an old dear who was clearly flying – and why not, I thought, as she opened the front door with a flourish and swept me a curtsy. I hurried past her to the kitchen, put the box down, but as I made to leave, she stopped me by way of sticking an arm in my path, a glass of what was patently neat gin in her hand.

  ‘Definition of a teetotaller?’ she demanded.

  I plumped for one of two. ‘Someone who knows their day isn't going to get any better?’

  She threw back her head and cackled in delight, letting me pass: cheering me on my way as she knocked back the rest of the tumbler prior to settling down to her liver and bacon. Good on yer, girl.

  Next door, a frail, wraithlike figure with a vacant expression opened the door in a diaphanous nightie. She stared at me and my purple box in wonder.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she whispered. ‘I keep forgetting if I've had lunch or not.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I muttered, hurrying past her to put it on her table, then very quickly, out.

  ‘That poor old soul,’ I said to Felicity as I got back in the car. ‘Should she be on her own?’ I glanced back over my shoulder as I put my seat belt on.

  ‘What d'you suggest, a home?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘She'd hate it. No, the trick is, not to get involved. Just deliver them their nice hot meal and know you've made some sort of difference to their day. Now. Two to go. Mr Bernstein – no pork, pink spot – and Mrs Partridge, purple spot, everything puréed.’

  ‘Right.’ I tumbled out again as we stopped. Ran round to the boot. Two boxes left. One black spot, one green. Not pink and purple. I frowned. Shouted through the car to the front. ‘Sure it's pink and purple?’

  ‘Positive.’

  I opened the green box. Sniffed. Pork. Oh Lord. Opened the black one. It was very far from puréed. In fact, a fully dentured person would have trouble with the lumps in that.

  ‘Er… Felicity, I think I may have boobed.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘What did you give Mrs Mason?’

  ‘Well… purple. Isn't that no beans, no onions?’

  ‘No! Black is no beans – and Mr Clarke at number sixteen?’

  ‘Oh God – yellow. Oh, Felicity, I think I've got them muddled!’

  ‘Quick, get in.’

  I ran round, jumped back in, and before I'd even shut the door, Felicity was executing an immaculate three-point turn in the road. We roared off back to number sixteen. Dangerously close to the ageing lesbians, as far as I was concerned. I glanced nervously down the road to their bungalow. The front door was shut but I was convinced Noel Coward was at a bedroom window on one knee, taking up a sniper position. Felicity got out with me and we ran up the path as one; leaned on the doorbell.

  As Mr Clarke came to the door, napkin tucked in under his chin, knife and fork in hand, Felicity slipped past him.

  ‘Hello, Mr Clarke, have you eaten it yet?’

  I moved to join her as she spun around the sitting room.

  ‘What?’ He cupped his ear.

  ‘HAVE YOU EATEN LUNCH?’

  ‘Not yet, just about to. Looks delicious.’

  He shuffled past us through an archway to a tiny dining room and sat down in front of a full plate. Felicity lunged and whipped it away.

  ‘It's not. But this is.’ She gave me a nod and I quickly replaced the fish with the pork. Together we raced out. As I shut the front door I just caught a glimpse of his startled face, his mouth slowly opening and shutting. Then he shrugged and tucked in.

  Felicity was already a few doors down, ringing the doorbell. I took a short cut across the tiny front gardens, leaping over a few rose beds and chain-link fences to join her.

  ‘This could be disastrous,’ she muttered, leaning hard on the doorbell again. ‘Mrs Mason has the sort of flatulence that could propel a small moped. You've just given her puréed beans, onions and prunes.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘You bet. No plumbing in the civilized world could accommodate what she might evacuate.’

  Finally, after three more mighty rings, she came to the door beaming vacantly in her diaphanous nightie, a few telltale stains down the front.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Mason, have you had your lunch?’ breathed Felicity urgently.

  ‘Yes, delicious,’ she beamed. ‘And prunes for pudding. Lovely!’

  ‘Good, good,’ purred Felicity nervously. ‘Well, jolly good, Mrs Mason. Just checking you enjoyed it.’

  ‘It made a nice change, thank you, dears.’ She went very red in the face suddenly. Her flimsy nightie floated up at the back. Vrrrrrp! She looked astonished. And not a little delighted.

  ‘Mrs Mason,’ Felicity was rooting around in her handbag, ‘take a couple of these pills with a glass of water, hm?’ She punched out a couple of tablets from some silver foil.

  ‘What are they dear. Sweeties?’ She gazed at them in wonder. A spectacular smell was unfolding.

  ‘Yes. Sort of. But take them right now, hm?’

  ‘Oh, I will. Thank you, dear!’ And her face began to turn pink again, her nightie wafting up, as she shut the front door.

  ‘Don't be surprised if that bungalow takes off of its own accord before the Imodium kicks in,’ warned Felicity as we got back in the car. ‘We'll probably bump into it on the other side of Oxford.’

  ‘Oh Lord, I'm so sorry. How stupid of me!’

  ‘Don't worry, these things happen.’

  ‘But what about the last one,’ I wailed. ‘Mrs Purée? Mrs Mason's eaten all her prunes!’

  ‘We'll go to McDonald's and get her a strawberry milkshake and some ice cream. She'll love it. Oh, and a few chips to suck. Perfect.’

  ‘Right,’ I agreed faintly.

  When we'd delivered the fish to its rightful owner we did just that, and Mrs Purée did indeed seem to love it, greeting her more than usually decorative polystyrene box enthusiastically.

  ‘Ooh, look at that lovely clown's face on the top. A Happy Meal, it says.’ She opened it. ‘Oh, look, a robot!’

  ‘Yes, for your… grandson,’ purred Felicity.

  ‘Marvellous, I'll keep it for him. Thank you, my dears.’

  One satisfied customer at least. Albeit with quite a lot of sugar and additives inside her.

  ‘I'm so sorry, Felicity,’ I muttered as we drove home. God, I couldn't even get that right.

  ‘Oh don't worry, it's easi
ly done,’ she smiled. ‘Your ma's got them muddled up once or twice too.’

  Yes, I bet she had. Like mother, like daughter. Hopeless. And actually I was exhausted. Needed a little lie-down. Forty winks, as Mum would say. Felicity was consulting her watch.

  ‘Perfect. Well, we may have been erratic, but we were quick. I'm in bags of time.’

  ‘For?’ I turned my head wearily towards her on the head rest.

  ‘I'm delivering a lecture on the microbiotic principles of dormant white blood cells at Keble in ten minutes.’

  Of course you are. I faced front again. Shook my head in wonder. She dropped me back at the Civic Centre beside my car. I got out, then stuck my head back in.

  ‘I think you're marvellous, Felicity. Absolutely marvellous.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She gave a faint smile, shifting into first. ‘I can assure you, Evie, I'm not.’

  And off she went.

  Later, much later, on the other side of Oxford, a typically quiet evening unfolded at number 22 Walton Terrace. I was sorting through a pile of odd socks at the bottom of the laundry basket in front of the tiny television in the sitting room, the sound turned down low. Anna was in the far corner on her computer, Ant was in his study. After a bit, he came through to join me, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto wafting out after him through his open study door. I instinctively reached for the remote and hit the television mute button. He took his glasses off; sat on the footstool in front of me, coming between me and Corrie.

  ‘I've just had an email from Stacey.’

  ‘Oh?’ I glanced up from my basket.

  ‘She's asked us all up to Sheffield, after the summer holidays. At half-term.’

  I stared at him. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Not for all of half-term, just a couple of days.’

  ‘To stay with them? In their house?’

  ‘Yes.’ His eyes were steady. Kind. My heart began to pound. I was aware of Anna, her back rigid, as she listened in the corner on her computer, hand frozen on the mouse.

  ‘All of us? Or just you and Anna?’

  ‘All of us. What should I say?’

  I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. ‘Say yes. Yes, we'd love to come.’

  He smiled, leaned forward and kissed me.

  ‘Thank you, darling.’

  My heart was leaping in my throat now, like a salmon, and it had nothing to do with Ken and Deirdre Barlow sharing a tender moment in a quiet corner of the Rovers Return. Ant went back to his study.

  Later that evening, as I was drawing my bath, Anna came to find me.

  ‘Thank you, Mum.’ She put her arms round me from behind and squeezed me tight. A lump rose in my throat as I turned the taps off. I couldn't answer her. As I turned to face her, she stepped back and looked at me.

  ‘I know this is really hard for you, must be really hard for you, and I know I was a bit over-the-top the other day, but I just want you to know, what you're doing here is seriously awesome.’

  I took her in my arms. She rested her head on mine. ‘Thanks, darling. Respect?’

  ‘Oh God, yes. Respect.’

  20

  The Hamilton family were driving north. The early hours of the morning had been stormy, thunder and lightning erupting over our heads as we awoke. Now, mid-morning, the heavy rain had eased but the wind hadn't. It seemed the whole dirty sky was shifting fast as we drove with it, the last spots of rain drumming with soft fingers on the roof of the car. Ant and Anna were in the front since Anna was always car sick, and I was in the back reading old copies of OK! and sucking Werther's Originals, neither of which Anna could do without retching. So there we had it: the two grown-ups in the front listening to Brahms and chatting about – I glanced up from Liz Hurley's wedding, my finger marking my place as I strained to hear – oh, bird-watching, their latest shared passion; more starlings, fewer finches in the north, apparently, with Mum in the back, reading comics and eating sweets.

  We'd been lulled by the summer holidays, then distracted by the new term, then, as half-term approached, it had taken a frantic few days to get us to this ostensibly cosy, familiar point. Not withstanding the nervous flutterings of my heart, there had also been Hector our new dependant, to deal with. I'd first prevailed upon Malcolm to horse-sit, pretending that, since he was doggy, he might also be horsy. There'd been an astonished silence on the other end of the telephone.

  ‘How long have you known me, Evie?’

  ‘Er… twenty-two years.’

  ‘And in that time, have you ever, ever seen me with a horse?’

  ‘Um… no. I suppose not.’

  ‘Have you ever heard me mention a horse? Affectionately or otherwise?’

  ‘You told me Toby Brewer was hung like one.’

  ‘Don't be fresh. Comparative allusions aside, do the phrases “tacking up” and “trotting on” seem synonymous with one Malcolm Pritchard?’

  ‘Not entirely. But the horsy world's very gay, you know. Lots of leather? Tight jodhpurs? Might be right up your alley?’

  ‘You leave my alley out of it. Do you see me wielding a pitchfork, perchance? A dirty barrow?’

  I sighed. ‘It was a long shot, Malcolm.’

  ‘Longer than you'll ever know, sweets. Surely your horsy sister-in-law is the obvious port of call?’

  ‘Which is exactly why I don't want to ring her.’

  ‘Needs must, petal. Steel yourself.’

  I put the phone down. No. Out of the question. I sank back into my chair in despair and gazed bleakly at the kitchen wall. Years ago, of course I'd have rung Mario, Dad's farm worker. Dear, wizened old Mario, with his round walnut face and his eyes that all but disappeared when he smiled. Dad had liked the colour of them, he'd said, and his wife, Maroulla's, when they'd come to the farm one day looking for work. What, black? Tim and I had asked in surprise, and Dad had laughed. Originally from a poor village in Andalusia, they'd come across to work at the Triumph factory, planning to stay for five years and take the money back to Spain. Instead, they'd lasted one at Triumph, missed working on the land, come to the farm and stayed for ever. Mario had died just ten days after my father, and Maroulla had moved out of the cottage to live with her daughter. Whenever I thought of Maroulla now I felt a sort of non-specific guilt. No, specific guilt actually, because I knew she'd recently moved to a nursing home and I hadn't been to see her. I told myself I was wary of bumping into her children, who, despite having grown up with us, viewed us with suspicion – the rich, posh folk – but there was an element of idleness too. I sighed. But, yes, Mario would have looked after Hector like a shot. ‘Of course, Eviee – ees no problem!’ I could hear him saying in his severely broken English. ‘I look after thees horse for you. You go!’

  Instead I shut my eyes tight and punched out another number. Malcolm was right. Needs must. Caro was silent for a long moment when I'd finally gabbled and stammered my way through.

  ‘Well, I think you're very brave to go and see them. Where are you staying?’

  ‘With them.’

  ‘God, won't that be awkward?’

  ‘Well, I'm not exactly relishing it, but I promised. Can't go back on my word, can I?’

  I seemed to remember Caro saying something very similar about how she, A Good Mother, would never break a promise. Might as well earn a few brownie points in lieu of horseflesh.

  ‘Well, good for you,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Yes, I'll do Hector for you. Or you could even ask Phoebe and pay her. Children will do anything for money.’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘Of course, didn't you know that?’

  It occurred to me that Anna did hardly anything for money, since we gave it to her anyway. Well, she was an only, and we had plenty, but that wasn't entirely the point, was it? She wasn't learning the value of it.

  ‘Is she there?’

  ‘Hang on, I'll get her.’

  Phoebe came on, breathless. ‘Hi, Evie!’

  ‘Hi, Phoebs. Darling, I wondered, would you be an angel and look after Hector for a f
ew days? Only we're going away at half-term.’

  ‘I know. Mummy just told me. Does that mean Anna won't be doing Pony Club with us?’

  ‘Oh, some of it she will, just not at the beginning. But we'll be back on Tuesday, don't you worry.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Most of it's over by then.’

  As I secured a deal with her and put the phone down, it occurred to me she was bitterly disappointed. During the summer, Anna had practically lived at the farm, and these last few weeks after school had spent most afternoons there too, riding Hector, who, true to Camilla's word, always behaved beautifully and hadn't put a hoof wrong. The two cousins had trotted around the fields together on their ponies, Anna, nervous but getting there, Phoebe, encouraging her, revelling in teaching her cousin new tricks, and then together they'd mucked out, preferring to do it together in the light autumn evenings, the clocks not yet gone back, radio blaring, laughing and joking. I'd wondered how long it would last, but thus far, Hector had been a huge success. It occurred to me that Phoebe had been looking forward to this holiday, to see even more of Anna, show her off to her friends, and possibly show off a little herself too. But as I said, we'd be back.

  Right now, we were nearly there. In Sheffield. I sat up and looked around. I'd rather imagined it would be more built-up: rows and rows of little terraced houses snaking up hills as we approached, perhaps with a few disused pits and crumbling mills. More Lowry country and less, well, less beautiful countryside, which, as we cruised through it now, looked more green and pleasant than dark and satanic. As one lush field gave way to another, punctuated by a few dreamy-looking sheep and enclosed by neat dry-stone walls, I frowned.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’ I really was the nine-year-old in the back. And actually I needed the loo too.

  ‘Very. The next village.’

  I blinked. ‘But I thought they lived in Sheffield.’

  ‘No, close by. Their village is eight miles outside.’

  ‘Oh. You said Sheffield!’

  ‘Only as a point of reference. A bit like Tim and Caro living in Oxford.’

  ‘Down here, Daddy.’ Anna was navigating from her vantage point in the front, a printed out email in her hand. ‘And then left at the postbox, apparently…’ Ant swung the car obediently, ‘and then down the hill into the village…’