Dear Evelyn, page 11
“Couch?” he asked, “Clock? Carpet? Chairs? Ceiling? But those all look just the same …”
“Daddy,” she yelled, “C-C-curtains!”
“Mrs Dickenson said I could take down those awful brown things, provided I replaced them. But you still can’t get decent fabric so I had to hunt around … It’s not too much of a pattern but a lot lighter … No lining, of course. I hope you like these fishcakes.”
“I like everything,” he told her, and went to wash his hands and unpack. The bottle of 4711 he put by Evelyn’s side of the bed, and since the teddy bear was unwrapped, he sat it on the dining table next to one of the plates. Lily eyed it warily.
“But is it a German bear?” she asked, peering at the label tied around its neck, which said Mein Name ist Hans. Maybe he should have taken that off.
“What about thank you?” Evelyn said.
She was rather strict, he thought, though perhaps it was the best way to be.
“It was made there,” he explained. “Probably before the war. Once that started they were too busy fighting and then rebuilding to look after their bears. And anyway, animals don’t really have countries.”
Still, she hesitated.
“If you don’t like it, someone else—” Evelyn began.
“The war’s over now,” he continued. “We can all be friends again. He’s a very affectionate bear, and you could always change his name … Aren’t these fishcakes delicious? I’ll finish yours if you don’t want it.”
“Why don’t you show Hans your bedroom?” he suggested at the end of the meal.
He followed Evelyn into the kitchen and offered to help.
“No thanks,” she said, as she always would, because it was easier to do something how you wanted it than it was to explain how you wanted it done, or be pleasant if it was done wrong.
“I’ll distract you, then,” he told her, and stood right behind her at the sink. He put his hands around her waist and pulled her close. She felt him harden, press himself into her buttock. He kissed her neck, moved one hand to cup a breast while the other settled into the vee at the top of her legs and began to stroke it through the thin cloth of her dress. It was silly, though admittedly rather nice.
“I’m washing up. And Lillian will be out again any minute.”
“But I’m desperate! I want you to take this damn uniform off me. I want you to do it.” She pushed back and turned around. He grasped her buttocks and pulled her close, nudging now where he had stroked. She leaned back and ran her hands down the row of buttons; she could understand him being sick of the uniform, though she liked him in it. The regularity of the garments—the way they fitted, the tidy ranks of buttons and the belt, balanced a certain irregularity in his face, the brightness of his eyes, the way he kept his hair just a little longer than others did.
“We’ll have to wait until she’s asleep,” she said.
“When is that?”
“Seven o’clock. Later tonight because we’re out. We’ll walk over there at about four. Stop now …” He would stop, she knew, and she appreciated it—though there was part of her, she sometimes felt, that would quite enjoy being overruled.
“Mum?” Lily stood at the door, watching them. “May Daddy and I go to the park?”
That evening they sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and his mother Adeline clasped him to her and wept: not something he could remember seeing her do before. Still holding him, she looked up, her face glistening. He felt his own eyes begin to water.
“Every day I made myself believe you’d come back. I told myself you would. And here you are. I couldn’t have borne to lose you,” she said. “I’d have gone mad, like poor Aunt Em. But, see, all’s well.” She looked over at Evelyn and smiled at her before releasing him. “Now you two can settle down,” she said. His father, just back from work, clapped him on the back and took to his chair to watch the festivities unfold. It was not much more than six months since he’d last seen them, yet both his parents and Evelyn’s seemed to have aged. They were somehow less defined than they used to be, like old photographs of themselves. It was the same with what had once been his home: the front room, twelve by fourteen and wearing the same, but somehow fainter, paper and paint, struggled to contain even a smallish crowd: him, Evelyn, Lily, his parents, his brother George, who had not left the country during the war, but moved to the Midlands and gave the impression he was involved in some kind of secret war work. Alternatively, it had been hinted that the secret was black marketeering … There was George’s wife, Alexandra, Evelyn’s mother May and her father Edward—currently just about on his feet—Josephine and Will, and the other tenants from upstairs, Fred and Lottie, also the left-side neighbours, Ernest and Margaret. The right-side neighbours were new and disliked. Not everyone had a chair. Periodically, when men went out back to use the convenience, or women to the kitchen to help with the food, others took their seats. There was ice in the kitchen, and beer and lemonade, and what his mother called “a small bit of a ham,” sliced very thinly, new potatoes from the allotment, some tomatoes, beetroot, lettuce, bread and margarine, and a cake made with saved rations. Things were still very scarce. Evelyn and Lily filled plates and brought the food around.
“So what’s next, Harry? What’s the plot?” George was the one who asked, but it was what everyone, and especially Evelyn’s mother, wanted to know. It was tempting to reply that he was planning on taking to the stage, running a brothel, writing poetry, or even turning into the laziest, fattest ginger tomcat possible, say, or a frog, a hare, or a butterfly, but he reined himself in.
“No idea,” he said, and took a half slice of cake from the chipped willow-pattern plate Lily offered him, “but something will turn up. Look at all the council houses and hospitals they say they’re going to build, at all the reconstruction that needs to be done. It’d make a pleasant change to build something instead of ruining it. Mind you, I’ve had enough rubble, sand, and dust, so I hope not have to get on my knees and lay the bricks.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty looking for work,” said May.
Oh, damn you, he thought. Look at who you married! But you’ll not change your mind about me, whatever I do.
“And I’m sure that’s true,” he told her, smiling.
“To the future!” George cut in, raising his glass. His voice was noticeably slurred. “Whatever it is!” No one dared, Harry noted, to ask him what he actually did.
Thanks, goodbyes, and promises to come round soon took a while. Everyone squeezed into the narrow hall for a last toast, and his mother came out to wave them down the street.
“Remember, whatever that lot say, it’s bye-bye, not boy-boy, and like, not loike, and had, not ’ad,” Evelyn told Lily as they turned the corner. “Sometimes I think Mum does it on purpose to annoy me …”
“The least of her crimes,” Harry said.
“And your brother was awful. We’ve got to get away from here,” she told him. “I can’t bear it.”
He loved how clear her desires were. She was right, of course, and he said so.
At home, he sat on the chair by Lily’s bed and offered to read her a story. She chose Peter Rabbit even though it was too young for her now; to make it more exciting, he changed the story to be about Peter Bear, who stole apples from Mr McGregor’s apple tree and narrowly missed being shot. She reminded him that she still had the velvet rabbit he sent her from the war.
“The label says made in Manchester, but I bought him in Cairo, and it feels like a very long time ago,” he told her. “Which of them do you want in bed with you?” She explained that she wanted both, but worried because rabbits and bears did not get along. That was so in the wild, he said, but when they were toys things were different.
Evelyn, in her dressing gown, looked around the door. It was very late, she said. They must turn out the light. In the half-dark, their faces illuminated only by the glow from the hall, Lily held on to his hand. Her eyes glistened, brimmed.
“Daddy,” she asked, “you are really back now, aren’t you? You’re not going away ever again? Promise me.”
“I promise,” he said, leaning in. “And now, you promise me to sleep. No getting up.”
“You’ll be here in the morning?”
“Of course.”
“Yes,” she said, “I promise,” and closed her eyes. He kissed her cheek and waited a little, imagining Evelyn at the dressing table brushing her hair, rising and turning as she heard him come in. He hoped she was not tired, or if she was, that he could revive her. He stood as quietly as he could and then crept away, closing the door gently behind him.
But Lily was far too happy to sleep. She heard her father go to her mother’s bedroom, their laughter. For long minutes they were quiet and there was only the flap of her curtains, a door closing downstairs, where the landlady lived, and distant voices from outside. Then the bedroom door creaked open and her father walked into the narrow bathroom between the two bedrooms. She heard him pee and flush. He splashed for a long while in the sink, draining and refilling it several times before finally cleaning his teeth. The bedroom door clicked shut again and after that they talked in low murmurs. From the start, the words were impossible to make out, but quite soon they were not even words, just sounds half-familiar, half-strange. Lily sat up in bed, and strained to hear more clearly. It was like the sounds of animals or birds, and at the same time, it was almost a kind of music. She was only a little bit scared.
Blue
Best Girl
“I hope we’re in time,” Evelyn’s mother said as they hurried along Westover Road. The rain had let up but the wind gusted still, tugging at their scarves and hair. Thank goodness it was a Saturday, Evelyn thought; Harry could cope for a while and then later on he could take Lily and Val to Irene and Bob … Her mother grasped her arm.
“I hope he knows you,” she said. “And I hope you can forgive him and say a good goodbye. But I’ve got to warn you, Evelyn, that it’s very hard to see what your father’s come to.”
Minutes later they pushed through the gate and into the dimness of the house, hung their coats on the hooks by the door, continued without pausing up the familiar narrow stairs. The district nurse had gone, and Fran from next door left as soon as they arrived.
“Teddy, dear, it’s Evelyn,” her mother said, beckoning her towards the bed.
He was yellow. Sunken eyes, huge. Loose skin. Yellow. Hollow cheeks, cords in his neck. Yellow. He hauled his breath in shallow, desperate gasps. Under the covers, the whole shape of him was wrong. A tube full of dark fluid snaked from beneath the sheets, disappeared under the bed: the source, probably, of the stench in the room. She would stop noticing it soon, Evelyn told herself, swallowing.
“Teddy, dear, Evelyn’s come to see you … It’s Evie, Evie,” her mother repeated, louder, and her father’s famous eyes—the whites of them now that awful colour—moved slowly towards her, as if pushing against an opposing force, then settled on her face. Did he see her? See something, at least? His face was slack.
“Say hello to your dad, Evelyn.”
Hello? It did not seem the right thing to say, yet what would be?
What would I have liked to say, Evelyn would ask herself when she thought about it later. Why the hell? What do you want to say to me? How dare you do this to my mother? I’m glad this is almost over. Are you?
Because it was a very long story. Because sometimes they didn’t see him for days on end. Because sometimes Evelyn, returning from school or an errand, would detect him in the crowd outside the Halfway House or the Leather Bottle and change direction so that he didn’t call out to her, and fairly often, her mother had to go and find or collect him.
When home and awake, he occupied the chair by the fire in the room next to the kitchen.
“Come to me,” he’d say, and get her to stand so that he could shakily brush her hair out of her face or wetly kiss her on the cheek, or rest his hand on her shoulder and solemnly, in slow, careful words, say how she was his best girl, and that he believed she had his eyes, which she did. Large, liquid-looking eyes, the irises a deep colour but somehow changeable … A handsome man, everyone said. That was why her mother had fallen for him. Fallen was the right word. Into a deep hole, almost bottomless.
I think I’ve got a present for you, he’d say, yet he could rarely find it. He’d left it somewhere, or he had sat on and broken it, and then he’d laugh and say never mind, next time. If he gave her money instead, she knew to give it straight to her mother, who said he couldn’t help how he was, and always believed his promises because she loved him. Her mother would wash him with a flannel when he was too far gone to do it himself, and kneel on the floor to undo his boots. Give Daddy a kiss to help him feel better, she used to say.
And then, one Saturday morning, downstairs in this very house: her mother at work and she, about nine at the time, sat in the sun on the back step eating a slice of bread and butter with sugar sprinkled on top. “Evie, help me!” she heard, dropped the slice of bread on the step and ran in.
He’d thrown his jacket on a chair and was on his hands and knees, doglike. Huge, barking coughs, in between them a terrible wheeze.
“Can’t breathe—”
“What do I do?” she asked and put her hand on his back, which arched and then fell as a torrent of brownish liquid gushed out of his mouth. What was it? She jerked her hand away. He turned his face up to her, gasping. Was he going to die?
“How do I get the doctor?’ she said.
“No!” he mouthed at her, “No bloody doctors,” his face slimed with mucus and vomit. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed red.
“Next door?”
“Help me, Evie.”
How?
He sat back on his knees, chest heaving. “Outside,” he said. He pressed on her shoulders until he was up. Took small, unsteady steps. Then sat on the step where she had been, right on top of her bread, his hands and arms shaking.
There were rags and a chipped enamel bowl under the sink so she got some water and did her best to clean up his face. But without warning he stood and made his way down the three steps and across the paving to the outside toilet. He slammed the door then, moments later, opened it and called for her again: he couldn’t undo his pants. “Hurry up!” he said, but it was too late; his warm pee drenched her hand, and then she had to pull up and fasten the soggy pants in case the neighbours were looking and get him back in to the house to take them off again. She put them and the awful underpants to soak in the bucket by the door, then threw the floor cloth over the worst of the vomit and scrubbed her hands with the bar of yellow kitchen soap.
Wearing only his shirt, her father crawled up the stairs to the bedroom with the faded pattern of bunches of violets, peeling away in one corner.
It hadn’t changed.
“Bronchitis” was what her mother had told her then, and “chest infection.” This was long before they knew he was tubercular as well as a drunk, long before he took to his bed, became a living skeleton, still smoking, still drinking, long before he walked out of the sanatorium that was treating him for nothing. That was twenty years ago, more, but she remembered it still. Her father had been dying all his life.
He had been listless and inactive over the summer, rarely leaving the bedroom, let alone the house. Often, even in broad daylight, he had been upstairs, asleep, or “resting” when she visited, but she had assumed he was, as usual, simply being lazy and leaving it to her mother to provide.
And then her mother had arrived, soaked, as they were having breakfast in the flat’s kitchen. She refused to take her coat off or sit down, but drank a cup of tea standing up.
“It’s terrible news about your father. The doctor doesn’t think he can go on much longer.”
“But I thought that the last treatment worked. They said his lungs were stable!”
“Yes, dear … But it’s his liver.”
“From drinking?”
“What does it matter what it’s from?” Her mother stepped forward, and Evelyn wrapped her arms around her and stroked her back as she sobbed her way through the rest of it: How he finally agreed to see the doctor last week. What an angel the district nurse was. How she’d said no to the hospital even though it was free now because Teddy hated them so.
He hated them because they wouldn’t let him drink, Evelyn thought.
The two of them stood, locked together in the kitchen. Evelyn’s own eyes smarted, but she kept her tears back. In any case, they were for her mother, and what she felt towards her father, now more than ever—even in the face of his terrible frailty, even though he was now, surely in his last hours—was rage.
“Say something to him, Evie,” her mother repeated, gesturing at the kitchen chair that had been brought up and put next to the bed.
She could hardly bear to look at him, let alone speak, but she stuck at it, and managed to break the silence.
“Dad. It’s Evelyn. I didn’t know you were so poorly.” It wasn’t a word she normally used now. “I’m very sorry, Dad.” His gaze slipped from her face. He tugged a bony yellow arm out from beneath the sheet and scratched at his chest, groaning as he did so; her mother reached forwards, took the hand, and held it still.
“He can hear you. I’m sure he understands,” she said. “Sometimes, at least, but the doctor told me his poor brain is being poisoned. And he’s got fluids building up inside. They try to drain it. He had an injection for the pain … Why don’t you take hold of his other hand, now.”
She didn’t want to, but did it for her mother’s sake. The hand was cool and damp, felt more than halfway dead. She knew he was not contagious, and saw how her mother pressed and stroked the hand she was holding, yet her own flesh shrank from the contact.
