‘Sit yourselves down then. Go on, Lu, don’t wait to be asked.’
Ted, May, Ann Carter, Ephraim, Harry, Young Gabe, Ray, Bonnie, Anthony in his crib, Eve and Dimitri.
There was an eager dive for the cheese tarts by the boys, and Dimitri, and a more sedate choice from the grown-ups. There was so much talk about the deliciousness of the food that it eased any awkwardness there might have been about the passage of time since Eve had last sat at this table.
Ken had been out when they had arrived.
Suddenly he was there.
‘Oh, Ken…’
‘Hello, Lu. Nice to see you back.’ A quick tight clasp around one another’s neck. How brave he had been as an International Brigader. She had seen his injuries, wrapped his frostbitten feet, yet here he was looking fitter and healthier than she could ever have expected. It was a dangerous moment for both of them. It would be easy to break down and weep for what they had seen, and done, and how they had failed. But her return was to the whole family, who did not want to be reminded that two of them had chosen to leave.
Ken was more emotional with Dimitri. For a brief moment they buried their faces in one another’s shoulders… a very un-English gesture, but a heart-stopping moment.
‘Salud, comrade.’
Spain set the three of them apart from the rest and could have easily made them spectres at the feast had it not been for Dimitri’s adroitness. ‘You see, May, we Russians are great dramatists. I think maybe it is embarrassing for English people. We Russians do not think that a book or an opera is worth anything if it does not rend our hearts in two.’ He held his heart and rolled his eyes ridiculously, making the children laugh, and the adults warm to him even more.
The weather being fine and mild, the door to the yard was open. A clatter of hoofs sounded. ‘That’ll be her.’
Eve dashed out, calling and waving.
Bar had dismounted and was fastening the gate. Babies had thickened her figure only slightly. She pulled off her battered riding hat and the black Barney hair sprang out in its crinkly mass. The two women clasped one another cheek to cheek and searched one another’s face briefly.
‘Oh, Bar! You’re just the same as ever.’
‘I got some grey hairs and I haven’t got a waist no more. Can’t say the same to you. You lost a lot of weight. Where’s your tits gone? And I won’t say nothing about your hair – you’ll go grey soon enough. Come on, help us put Fairy in her shed.’
‘Is she yours?’
‘Yeah, except that she’s really Duke’s – Fairmile Queen. Didn’t he have her before you went off?’
There was this about Bar. She wasn’t skirting around Eve’s absence as the others had. ‘You’m beautiful an’t you, Fairy. The major says I can put her with his Darkie – he’s a beaut – but I don’t know how Duke would take to that.’
Eve took some oats and Fairmile Queen nuzzled them out of her hand. Together Eve and Bar watered and fed the dainty mare, speaking mainly to her rather than each other. Bar wasn’t the same as ever. Now that the greetings were over she held her mouth in a tight line and, except to the mare, was strained in her replies, which were as short as when she and Eve had fallen out as children – a rare thing.
‘What’s up with you, Bar?’
‘Nothin’s up with me, Lu. More to the point, what’s up with you?’
‘Nothing. Here, let me do that.’
‘Come on… what’s up with you?’
‘Nothing, Bar. Really nothing. Perhaps I’m trying too hard to get back together.’
‘Here.’ Taking Eve by the shoulders she pressed her to sit on a hay bale by the stable door. ‘Fairy can wait a minute.’ Taking Eve’s hands, Bar looked straight in her face, her brow furrowing slightly, ‘What’s up with you is that you can’t pretend with me. I can see right through you. You been seeing Duke.’
‘Duke?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, you daft thing. Look how you’re blushing, and your aura’s glowing like a blooming neon sign. I know you saw Duke. What were you doing going back to Spain?’
‘You know that I was there? What was it, spirit messages?’
‘Don’t get sarky with me, Lu, Lady Morag lets me have telephone calls there sometimes. You been to Spain again. And you met Duke. Now, Lu, are you going to tell me?’
‘I can’t tell you, Bar. OK, you know I was in Spain, but I can’t say anything about why.’
Now it was Bar who was the sarcastic one. ‘Oh, so it’s all hush-hush, like at Brownsea Island where they’re breeding germs to spread on the Germans.’ Bar laughed, running her hands through her hair in a familiar gesture. ‘That’s so hush-hush that people in pubs is talking about it.’
‘Well, I’m not people in pubs.’
Bar took a place beside Eve on the hay bale.
‘That’s for sure. You’re people in posh cocktail bars.’
‘I’m still me underneath.’
‘No. You’re a changeling. As soon as I married your Ray, I was so happy. Then, to stop me getting above myself, the “Darks” come here, and what they did, they took away my best friend, Lu, and gave back Eve so I wouldn’t get too cocky.’
‘Don’t play with me, Bar. You’re too old to be talking like that now. Neither of us is twelve any longer.’
‘More’s the pity. When we was twelve, we was pure and innocent, and only the wood spirits was around us. Duke gave you the witchetty piece I made for him. Shows how serious he is about you.’
Eve hardly knew what to say.
‘What about your chap you’re going to marry? You both in the same line of work?’
‘I don’t know what Dimitri does.’
‘He don’t make your aura glow. What you marrying him for? You said you wouldn’t never get married. I wanted to, but you never did. You always said that you wouldn’t get tied down by no man. I was pretty shocked when your auntie got your letter. It didn’t make sense, not with knowing about you and Duke.’
‘There’s nothing about me and Duke.’
‘That’s not what he thinks.’
‘He can think what he likes – there’s nothing between us.’
‘That still don’t account for you marrying this foreigner.’
‘Come and meet him. You’ll like him. They have all taken to him; he’s a nice man.’
‘You’re really going to marry a nice man then?’
‘Of course I’m going to marry him.’
‘OK.’
‘What do you mean, OK?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Bar… don’t do this to me.’
‘Do what?’
‘I know we’re not kids any more, but what we used to say about us being two halves of one person… doesn’t it mean anything?’
‘You’re the half that went away.’
‘I know. But that’s not what’s up, is it?’
Long moments of silence fell between them whilst they both stared off into the distance.
‘No, if I’m honest, I was the first one to break us up when I married your Ray.’
‘We didn’t break, we just grew up; but that’s not to say we can’t talk to one another like we used to.’
‘Duke’s in love with you.’
‘No he’s not. Duke, he would never say such a thing.’
‘He did.’
‘He just wouldn’t.’
‘And why not?’
‘It would make him vulnerable.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘If he said he was in love with me or anyone and they didn’t love him back, he’d be humiliated, you know he would. He could never stand being rejected. He’s just too proud.’
‘All right, he never actually said it, but I could tell. Duke and you was destined for each other.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Bar, people aren’t destined. They just happen to come across one another and sometimes they hit it off.’
‘Then how come you just happened to come across him in a place where none of you shoul
d rightly be? That’s Destiny.’
‘I gave up thinking like that ages ago. Coincidence is a common thing.’
‘You’re marrying to a foreigner you don’t love.’
‘We have been together a long time, went through thick and thin, he saved me. So, I’m going to give May the wedding she’s always wanted for a daughter she never had, and I want Ray to take me down the aisle and Ken to be best man.’
Clearly changing the subject, Bar went over to Fairy and started seeing to her stable. ‘What d’you think of Bonnie? An’t she just the picture of a little girl?’
‘She’s amazing. I’ve never come across a child so young who could hold a proper conversation.’
‘That’s due to her two grandmothers. Neither of them’s ever babied her.’
‘And what about Anthony then? He follows everybody around with those lovely eyes. I don’t know who he takes after but it will come out when he loses all that baby chubbiness. Isn’t he a perfect little sweet?’
Bar didn’t answer, except for an absent- minded, ‘Mm… oh yeah.’ The atmosphere changed again, but Eve ignored it. ‘Well, let’s hope so. If he’d been a mongol like that Maurice, I should have drowned him like a kitten in a bucket.’
‘Bar! For pity’s sake, stop talking so weird.’
Bar was forking hay and clattering water pails with a vehemence quite out of proportion to the minor tasks of bedding and watering a small horse. ‘Don’t mention nothing about Duke, Lu. It’d hurt Ma if she knew about him wantin’ you and you marrying this foreigner.’
* * *
Supper was a success, laid out in the huge kitchen where the long table was covered with plain white paper held with drawing pins. Dimitri was in his element, helping the women. How he must miss his own family, Eve thought.
May’s hand was evident in the splendid home-made dishes, and Ann Carter’s in the little jars of summer flowers and leaves, and bowls of curd cheese and sweet goat’s butter.
Mrs Gunner, whom Eve could scarcely remember except that she was the wife of the land agent and had a boy who was ‘not all there’, joined the family, bringing a jar of rare wild-bee honey, which she and Maurice had taken from the hollow trunk of a rotted tree.
May said to Maurice, ‘You give it to this lady. She’s the queen bee here.’ Eve asked herself if May was nipping at her – or was she herself sensitive after the disturbing way Bar was acting? Eve thanked the boy – nobody would ever call him a man.
‘Ma, she kissed me. D’you see that? I was kissed by her.’
‘Now, Maurice,’ Alice Gunner said, ‘don’t get so excited.’
Eve held the youth’s hand. ‘My name is Lu, if you want to call me that.’
‘I will. Yes. I will call you by your name. Lu. ’Tis a queer name. You say Lu-Lu-Lu. ’Tis like a little owl.’ Eve thought about what Bar had said about drowning a mongol like a kitten in a bucket. How could she think such a horrible thing when she must see this boy all the time, and know that he enjoyed life?
Bonnie demanded that Maurice took her to the honey tree.
He took her hand. ‘’Tis a long way, you know.’
Alice held the two hands – one flaky-skinned and red, with blunt, flat fingernails; the other like a small, pink starfish. ‘Another time, Bonnie. Me and Maurice will take you there, but only when your pa says so.’
The flaky hand and the starfish settled for playing the old cross clapping game, making Alice Gunner as pleased with her son as was Ray with his knowing little daughter.
Eve watched and thought how fortunate Maurice was to have been born to such good parents who hadn’t sent him to the asylum.
But neither Eve nor anyone else, except Maurice, and possibly May, had any idea of what went on in the Gunner house, and that Alice sometimes kept at home until the bruises went down. But James Gunner never touched Maurice. Roman’s Fields was a haven to Alice, and May, being May, always welcomed a woman less fortunate than herself. May had a pretty good idea of what went on with Jim Gunner.
‘You been all right lately, Alice?’
‘Not too bad, May, not too bad.’ Which May knew was a lie.
Bar, now out of her stable clothes and into a black skirt and top much as she had always worn as a girl, picked up Bonnie and said, ‘How’s my girl then?’ Then she made a beeline for Dimitri. ‘So you’re the one then? I’m Bar.’
Dimitri stood hastily and shook Bar’s hand, making a slight formal bow. ‘I know from how you look. You are her best friend, and wife of Ray. And mother of two beautiful children. I am so pleased to meet you.’
There was something not right. At first, Eve had intuited it; now she noticed that Bar petted Bonnie, but didn’t even look in Ray’s direction. Eve glanced at Ray, who was watching but who quickly looked away, and fussed with the blanket covering Anthony.
Ted’s wines, made from his own fruit, were easy to drink, and they drank plenty. May was constantly urging Eve to eat something: ‘I made it special because you were coming’ and ‘I dare say you’ve got used to different food these days.’ Although said cheerfully, there was some resentment in May’s tone. Eve felt guilty and ungrateful.
Dimitri kept the atmosphere light. Ted, May and Ray were eager to hear about the Ukraine and Dimitri was happy to tell tales about his boyhood, in a place nobody had ever heard of.
May told how Lu had come to them as a sick child and gone home well.
‘That’s because I took her to the Swallit Pool.’ Bar challenged Eve with a look. ‘An’t that right, Lu? I showed her how to join up with the sky and she got better.’
Ted said, ‘Maybe, maybe, Bar, but I reckon May’s father’s tonics helped build her up. And May’s cooking.’
‘Don’t look as if it lasted. She’s thin as a rake. Come on, girl, eat up. You tell her, Dimitri.’
‘I? She will never listen to me, Lu knows what she wants.’
‘Well,’ May said, ‘I hope she wants the best wedding Wickham has seen in a long time.’
Eve, knowing what May wanted, stood behind May’s chair and bent down to kiss her cheek. ‘I do want the best wedding, and I know it will be because the best aunt has made it.’
Alice and Maurice stayed on as late as could be, enjoying the normality of the Wilmott’s, until finally, Alice said quietly, ‘Could you lend us a torch, Ted? I think Maurice and me will go down to one of my people in the village.’
‘If you like, I’ll walk you down.’
‘No, Ted, I don’t want James’s wrath to fall on Roman’s.’
May said, ‘Just let him try, Alice, just let him try.’
That night, and for many more, Alice and Maurice slept in one of the small cottages along Mill Lane. It was not as spacious as Keeper’s Lodge, but safe from the man who was more mental than his son.
‘He’s a sick man,’ Alice kept explaining to her son. ‘He can’t help hisself.’
* * *
The house was chilly and still smelled of wine and tobacco smoke as Eve went silently downstairs in bare feet and a cardigan over her nightdress.
She found Ray outside, sitting on a kitchen chair, feeding baby Anthony from a boat-shaped teat-and-valve bottle which allowed the baby to feed without coming up for breath.
‘He’s a hungry one.’
Ray looked up and nodded. ‘Sleep all right?’
‘Right through till the Barneys’ cock started up.’
‘What you planning to do today?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll need to go down to the vicarage. We’ve a special licence but I have to see the vicar about the bellringers and rest of it.’
‘May’s seen to all that. Can’t have no bells.’
‘Oh?’
‘Only time church bells can ring is if there’s an invasion or peace comes.’
‘Of course… stupid of me to want bells.’ She held out her arms. ‘Can I finish feeding him?’
‘If you like. Here, put this bit of rag on your shoulder. He’s a great one for sicking up when he’s winde
d.’
He gave her the chair and seated himself on the high stone step. ‘You have to keep the teat end up, else he’ll take in wind.’
Enveloping the baby closely in the crook of her arm, leaning over, Eve communicated satisfaction with her eyes and the baby returned the look. She was aware of Ray watching. In answer to his unasked question, she said, ‘I’m quite a professional, aren’t I? You’re surprised. I worked in a house full of babies and children who had lost their parents.’
He gave her a short look. Not anger. Possibly resentment or pique or injured feelings. They sat in silence until she pulled the teat from Anthony’s mouth, having left only enough milk in the teat so that he did not take in air.
‘There. Come on, young Wilmott, let’s have a burp.’ When the baby obliged she looked up and smiled at the ageing face of the man who, whilst still a boy himself, had done the same for her years ago. Her instinct was to put her arms round him. But there was too much Wilmott in Ray for that. She could do it with Ken, but not Ray.
When he had fallen in love with Bar, and had got over his initial guilt of her being so much younger, he became a changed man. Ken had gone, so the three of them had shared the old home in Portsmouth, and Ray had almost stopped feeling responsible for everyone.
‘How do you and May get on – all right?’
‘Pretty good. Bar wouldn’t be able to run the stables if it wasn’t for her.’
‘I expect it suits both of them.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘May having the children… and Bar having outside work that suits her.’
‘She don’t have to work.’
‘I know, Ray, I just meant that it’s an arrangement that suits them both. May was always mistress of Roman’s, and Bar was always a favourite.’
‘Not so much as you.’
‘But me and May living under the same roof was never anything that could happen. You all look pretty comfortable together.’
He appeared not to come halfway to reconciliation with her. She couldn’t complain. He had always put her first, but she had gone off to make a new life for herself and not returned until it suited her to.
‘How about Ann and Eli?’
The Face of Eve Page 31