by Anna Hope
“Yes,” she says. “See you tonight.”
He nods, goes, the back door shuts behind him and his footsteps disappear down the path.
Twenty-five years tomorrow.Twenty-five years since they went into the round chapel and said their vows. The day was as warm as springtime as she walked the uneven stone path to the door. Then, in the cool darkness within, she gasped, as though she had been plunged into water. She could hardly breathe, she was laced in so tight. For a moment she had the sense she was alone, until she saw the shape of him, standing next to the minister at the top of the aisle. Slowly, she could make out their guests, too, scattered in the rows on either side. She set her course for Jack and tried to walk straight.
“All right, there.” He took her hand in his and winked. “Here goes nothing, then.”
Ada opens her eyes. The morning kitchen is dim, but the squash he left her is a bright orange-yellow color, its skin seeming to pulse with the memory of sun. It will be one of the last pickings before winter attacks the allotment with frost. It fairly hums with life.
She picks up the breakfast plates, puts them in the sink, and goes outside, filling the kettle from the pump in the yard, then coming in and putting it on the range to boil.
From the back window she can see the fences and gardens of seven houses. She knows the names of all the mothers in this street and the next, all the children, all the men, alive and dead. She has lived in this house for twenty-five years. Jack even carried her over the threshold, the neighbors gathered, laughing, delighted at the unexpected show.
When the kettle is whistling she pours half the water into the washing-up bowl and the rest into the teapot, then scrubs the congealed remains of breakfast from the plates. She’ll use the squash tomorrow. A dinner to celebrate. Stew and dumplings. Buy some good meat to go in it. It pleases her, this plan.
When the plates are dried and stacked, she goes to move the squash from the middle of the table and put it in the pantry, when a sound comes from the front: a scuffling almost, as though an animal has come to the door. At first she thinks it must be Jack, come back for something he’s forgotten. But he’d never come to the front. A neighbor, then? Ivy? But she wouldn’t come to the front, either, not on a Sunday. Not on any day.
There’s a knock, and Ada jumps, moving quickly, taking off her apron, smoothing her skirts, and then going to open the door.
“Yes?”
A young man stands on the step. Thin sandy hair, pale eyes, an attempt at a mustache struggling over his top lip. Where his fresh-shaved skin has met the morning air his face is raw. He looks surprised, as if it were she disturbing his peace, rather than the other way around. He takes off his hat, holding it close to his chest. “Morning, Missus.”
“Good morning.”
His eyes flicker over her face and shoulder to the hall beyond. He clears his throat. “Do you live here, Missus?”
“Yes.”
“Then—w-would it be possible to trouble you for a minute?” He seems relieved when the words are out. What can he want? Then she sees the heavy bag at his feet. They are everywhere now, boys with bags like these: on every street corner, peddling everything from matches to bootlaces. Or begging. Knocking and asking for cast-off jackets or shoes.
“We don’t need anything.”
The boy stares. “Pardon, Missus?”
“We don’t need anything,” she says, moving to close the door.
He steps forward, and there’s panic in him. “Can I come in? Just for a minute? Please?” His voice is wheedling. He moves slightly, revealing his left arm beneath his jacket. She catches sight of the yellowed edge of a sling. She stays where she is: the door open a crack, the boy shifting his weight from foot to foot. Then something in her softens, and she steps back, opening the door a touch wider, letting the young man slide round.
The two of them are standing close. She can smell him, sour beneath the clean hard smell of the outside air. There are white flakes scattered over the shoulders of his jacket. They stand there for a couple of awkward seconds. She doesn’t want to take him into the parlor, but one of them needs to move.
“In here, then.”
He follows her into the kitchen. At the sink she turns to face him, arms across her chest. The boy hesitates at the door, seeming to wait for permission, and when she inclines her head slightly, he comes into the room in a series of odd, lurching movements. When he reaches the table he holds on to the back of the chair.
“Nice place you got here.” He sounds out of breath, as though the small effort has exhausted him. “Nice and quiet.” He stares at her as though he is expecting her to make whatever move has to be made.
“You’d better show me what you have,” she says eventually.
“Sorry?”
“In your bag?”
“Oh, right.” And he bends, lifting brown paper packages onto the table, each movement with a similar careful intensity, as if he cannot rely on his body to carry out the small commands he gives it. He reminds her of her son, when he was small: the jerky unpredictability of his limbs.
Shell shock.
One of those.
She looks at the well-thumbed packages in his grubby hands and knows that there will be nothing but cheap rubbish inside. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t need anything after all.”
He looks up at her, pale face tight, and nods briefly, as though acknowledging the futility of their exchange.
She waits for him to gather his things, but he makes no move to do so. Instead, he carries on, his voice rising a couple of desperate notches. “Dishcloths?” He opens one of the paper parcels to reveal a pile of loose-woven sandy cloths. “Everyone needs those.”
“I’m fine for dishcloths, thanks.”
“What about a tea towel?” He leans toward his bag.
The bag is large. They could be here all morning. “How much are the dishcloths, then?”
He jerks back up. “Dishcloths?” He looks surprised. “They’re—tuppence. Tuppence for five.”
“I’ll take them. Five. That’ll do. I’ll just get my purse.” She goes toward it but then realizes she is trapped—cannot get to her money without showing him where her purse is kept.
“Would it be all right if I had a smoke?” he says; that wheedling voice again. “Just a quick one? I’m fairly done up with the cold.” He moves quickly, before she can say no, taking out a packet with his good arm, shaking a cigarette into his mouth, and reaching into his pocket for a light. “Like one?” He holds them out toward her.
She almost laughs. “No, thank you.”
He nods and puts the pack on the table. “Can I sit down?”
Something strange is hovering in the air between them, something beyond the brazenness of this boy. Ada feels a thin sense of dread. But she nods, slowly, and he pulls out a chair.
“Thanks.” There’s the scratch of a match against the box, the small fizz of the flame in the room.
She goes over to the fire, gives it a quick stoke, then walks quickly behind him, toward the drawer that contains her purse. She turns to see if he is watching, but he has his back to her, smoking in quick, jabbing drags. She slides the drawer open as soundlessly as possible, lifting the purse out and searching inside, when there’s a sudden noise, a sort of strangled cry. She turns to see him staring at the air in front of him, curled forward, his whole body straining toward something she cannot see.
“Michael?” he says. Then his head jerks once, twice, as though caught in a fierce current, and is still.
Ada drops the purse back into the drawer. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” the boy flinches, shaking his head. “I never—I never said nothing.”
“You did.” She speaks slowly, though her heart is pounding. “I heard you.”
“I never.” He stands up. Stabs out his cigarette. Takes a couple
of crablike steps away from her.
“You said ‘Michael.’ ”
Then the boy begins to twitch, and the twitching spreads, until he is having a fit, almost, in awful spasms, and it is awful, and she should help him, but he is terrifying, and she cannot, and so she stands, stranded, until the fit has passed and he is still. It is a moment before she can speak.
“Why did you say ‘Michael’?” She moves toward him, trying to make her voice, light, easy. She wants to keep him here.
“I never,” the boys snatches up his packages. “I never did. I just knocked on your door. I’m just selling stuff, aren’t I?” And he holds his hopeless little packages out to her, before stuffing them back into his bag.
“You said ‘Michael.’ You knew him.”
“No, I never.” His head swings violently from side to side. “I don’t know a Michael. No.”
“Stop it,” she says. “Stop that. You knew him. You knew my son.”
But the swinging movement only gets faster and faster, until he takes a couple of steps toward her, grabs one of her hands in his, puts it onto his head. “I’m sorry.” He says, pressing her hand hard against his skull. “I’m sorry, Mrs . …” Then he stumbles from the room.
For a moment she is still, feeling the burning, buzzing touch of him against her. Then she runs, down the hall, out of the house, calling after him to stop.
But there is no one on the quiet Sunday street. The boy has disappeared.
As though he were never there at all.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Just outside the small town of Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, near Agincourt, on the road that leads to the coast, from her room in the barracks of the British Army, a young nurse watches a field ambulance arrive.
It is very odd; it is the fourth such ambulance she has seen today.
The nurse blows her nose. She has a cold and is out of sorts. She has been reading a letter from home, trying to stay as close as possible to the tiny little stove. The letter is from her fiancé. It is a perfectly pleasant letter, full of perfectly pleasant things. He is a perfectly pleasant man.
And yet.
She had her demob papers last week. One of the last left over here. She hadn’t been in a rush to go. Soon she will have to face him. This small, uninspiring man who was wounded in 1918 and whom she tended, and felt sorry for, and agreed to marry when all of this was done.
Since then the nurse had fallen in love. A French captain. She met him at a social. He calls her “Cherie,” like the fruit.
She knew the French captain was married. He never lied about that. But he did promise he would leave his wife. Then, last week, when she was out shopping on her day off in Saint-Pol, the ugly, bruised little local town, she saw them: the whole family. Two dark-haired little children, the Frenchman and his pretty young wife. All of them laughing, holding hands, jabbering away in a language she couldn’t understand. She hid in a doorway, mortified, till they were gone.
The nurse puts down her letter and goes over to the window, pulling her cardigan closer against the cold. A coffin is being unloaded from the ambulance by four men. All the other ambulances today have held coffins, too. She watches as the men lift the plain box and carry it into the small chapel that went up last week. That, too, was strange, since no one said why they were building the little Nissen hut, or nailing a cross above the door. They’ve managed perfectly well without a chapel until now.
She wonders who is inside the box.
It is odd to see a coffin nowadays. Not like before, when they loaded and unloaded them like so many loaves of bread. The nurse reminds herself to ask around—find out what might have happened that four bodies have been brought here today.
When the ambulance has gone she goes back over to the stove and picks up the letter. Then puts it down again. She will write to him later. For now, she cannot think of what she might say.
. . . . . . . . . . .
In her old bedroom at the very top of the house, Evelyn sits on the edge of the bed and smokes. She stares balefully at the rack of dresses in the open wardrobe in front of her, tipping the ash into her palm. Then she pulls open the window sash and throws the butt out.
In the distance she can see the blue-gray waters of the lake. It’s not really a lake; she grew up calling it a lake, but really, from up here, it’s just an overgrown pond. She can just about make out the red roof of the two-roomed summerhouse that stands on the reedy little island in the middle. There’s a fireplace in one of the rooms. She could sneak downstairs to the kitchen now and steal some wood, take the little rowing boat over there, light herself a fire, and spend the day hidden and reading. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s ducked out of a family gathering in the same way.
Rather that than enduring her mother’s birthday lunch; rather that than her cousin Lottie and her tiny bites of food, her tiny nibbles of conversation from her tiny, tidy mouth.
It’ll be ten times worse without her brother, too.
There’s a knock at the door. She pulls herself back from the window as a uniformed young woman enters the room. Evelyn doesn’t recognize her. She must be new. Her mother has always gone through maids like other people go through handkerchiefs.
“Yes?”
“I was sent to ask if you want any help.”
“Help?”
The girl blushes. “With changing, Miss.”
“Oh, right. No. Thank you.” She waves a hand. “Please tell my mother I’m more than capable of choosing a dress.”
The girl, looking relieved, disappears, and from somewhere deep in the house a gong sounds, insistent and low. Evelyn goes to the wardrobe and runs her palm along the rack of dresses, which bob and jingle on their hangers, pretty, pliant as puppets. She plucks out the most muted dress she can find, a green silk day dress she hasn’t worn for years, and pulls it over her head. It smells of must and mothballs. The color is all wrong, draining her already pale skin.
Bright chatter from the morning room spikes the hall as she makes her way down the wide main staircase of the house. She listens but cannot hear her brother’s voice , and so she heads across the hall to the dining room instead. They’ll all be in here soon enough.
Two young men, little more than boys, are putting the finishing touches to the place settings. They must be new, too, as she doesn’t recognize either of them. They nod at her, then turn and bow and slide away.
She walks to the window, looking out to where the lawn slopes down to the lake. She can just see the little boat, tethered up against the deck, and conjures the damp wood and varnish smell of it, the friction of the oars against the heels of her palms.
“Here she is.”
Evelyn turns to see her Aunt Mary, Lottie’s mother, plump and bejeweled, leading the march. She submits to being kissed, and then scrutinized at arm’s length.
“You look tired. Are you still working?”
Evelyn nods.
Her aunt’s face wrinkles. “And are you still in that horrible little flat?”
Despite herself, Evelyn smiles. “Yes, Aunt Mary,” she concedes, detaching herself gently from her grip. “I’m afraid I am.”
Then here they come, the rest of them, Uncle Alec, cousin Lottie, Anthony—Lord Anthony—Lottie’s husband. All of them pink and smug and smiling. No sign of her brother. For a brief moment she wonders if something is really wrong, but then they are upon her, and she steels herself, arranging her face to meet them, making the right noises as she progresses down the line, the sudden, reluctant welcoming committee to her mother’s birthday lunch. Her father nods at her, chin set, eyes locked, as ever, somewhere to the left of her head. But next to him, her mother’s gaze strafes her, head to toe. And in it is the inevitable, the illimitable disappointment. Better, says her expression, but still not good enough.
The family members take their places around the table, and t
he two young men reappear with the soup trolley, moving quietly around the room. Anthony takes the seat across from Evelyn. The space to his left is free.
“So,” says Lottie, to Evelyn’s left.
“So,” says Evelyn, turning to her cousin, who is resplendent in yellow lace.
“How’s London?” Lottie tilts her head to one side, as if London were a wayward old acquaintance she used to run around with but with whom she has lost touch. When she married, two years ago, Lottie moved from a short-lived flat share in Chelsea into Anthony’s ugly, crenellated Victorian pile. She is a Lady now. Lady Charlotte. Lady Lottie. Evelyn can only guess at the fury that engendered in her own mother’s breast.
“London seems well,” says Evelyn, taking a sip of wine. “Bearing up. Shall I pass on your regards?”
Lottie gives a little indulgent smile. “And are you still living with Doreen?”
They were all at the same school: Lottie, Evelyn, and Doreen—Evelyn and Doreen three years ahead, fused in friendship by their mutual loathing of everything the school stood for. When Evelyn inherited a small sum from her grandmother at the age of twenty-one, she bought a flat in Primrose Hill and invited Doreen to live in it, too. Her family couldn’t have been more scandalized if she’d announced that the two of them were planning to keep a brothel.
“Still living with Doreen,” says Evelyn.
“And is she still”—Lottie pauses delicately—“unattached, too?”
Evelyn meets her cousin’s watery gaze. “Yes,” she lies. “She is.”
There’s a flurry in the corridor. Her brother’s voice. Finally. She looks up to see him handing his coat to one of the young men.
“Edward!”
“Sorry, Ma. Got caught up. Missed the train. You’re looking divine.”
As Ed embraces their mother, her skin registers pink delight. He’s not looking his best—his jacket is creased, and his hair looks as though he wet it in the kitchens on the way through—yet, somehow, he carries it off. As the ripples from his arrival spread across the smiling room, Evelyn is struck, not for the first time, by her brother’s easy grace, his seemingly limitless ability to dispense charm. If it were she, late for a family gathering in this way, she’d have been cut out of the will.