Dear Evelyn, page 8
“How’s it over at the Saunders’?”
“Good, thank you. Not quite so busy as last week.”
“And your mother in London?”
“Pretty well.”
“No letter for her? How she must miss you and the baby. And your husband in Tunisia, still? From what they say, we’re pushing those devils to the edge.” Mrs Mathieson, small, silver-haired, touched Evelyn’s hand. “Everything will be all right, dear, and I think a letter went out to you today.”
For some reason, tears sprang to Evelyn’s eyes.
She stopped by the river, sat on the bench with Lily on her lap. The poor thing’s hair was stuck to her scalp with sweat, her face very red; Evelyn removed the little yellow cardigan, and blew down the back of her daughter’s neck. She broke the crust she had in her pocket in half and mimed how to throw it to the ducks; when Lily tried, her first attempt landed on the grass and she wailed in disappointment. Even so, the ducks chuntered closer.
They moved right to the water’s edge for the second attempt, watched the birds jostle and squabble. A man with an eyepatch who had been sitting on the other bench strode over and remarked on the fine weather. She felt compelled to reply since he had seen her feed the ducks, technically a prohibited waste of food—but of course he then wanted to know what she was doing this evening.
“If it’s any of your business,” she said, “I’m looking forward to bathing my baby then reading a letter from my husband.”
“I only asked,” he said.
“Not all there,” Evelyn told Lily once they were clear. She peered in under the pram’s hood. “What shall I sing to you? You’re very hot, still. Are you coming down with something? Please don’t.” Her hands and jaw tensed up—but it was important to remember, she reminded herself, deliberately relaxing them, these things usually turned out to be nothing much.
“I hope you’ve had a good afternoon,” Mrs Saunders said when they arrived back. She peered abstractedly into the pram, where Lillian lay, red-faced, damply asleep. “But I’ve got to remind you about the floor. It needs washing every day, or we get ants.”
“Do you want me to do it now?”
Mrs Saunders sighed. She was wearing her cooking apron, but, Evelyn noted, her hands were filthy, especially under the nails.
“You’ll be under my feet. After supper.”
“And then again in the morning?”
“Like I said, every day,” said Mrs Saunders. It was a stone floor, and looked bad whatever you did to it. To her surprise, Evelyn’s eyes again pricked with tears; she stopped them in their tracks by thinking that if she and Harry ever had a house or even a flat of their own there would be proper tiles, or linoleum. Also, an electric stove and a fridge, a big window with a blind, and an immaculate stainless steel sink. It would be as clean as a hospital.
Her letter, a proper one, not just a card, lay on the shelf by the front door.
“Dinner then bath,” she told Lillian as she lifted her from the potty, but when the food was ready Lily turned her head away from the spoon with its mush of carrot and minced meat.
Evelyn couldn’t help but follow the puckered little mouth with the spoon, even though she half knew it was the wrong thing to do. A child must eat! “For heaven’s sake!” she said, when the food she’d managed to slip in came back out, spattering the tray.
“Leave her be,” Mrs Saunders butted in.
“Thank you! I do know how to look after my own child.” She went to rinse the bib under the kitchen tap and get a cloth to wipe the high chair. “If she doesn’t eat, she’ll be hard to put down. Will you keep me some supper, please?”
Mrs Saunders didn’t reply.
“There’s sick in your hair!” she told Lillian. It was in the creases of her neck, too. The smell appalled Evelyn, almost turned her stomach. She wiped away the worst of it, filled the little tin bath, tested it with her elbow, and slipped Lillian in. Her dress was soaked by the time she’d washed and dried her, emptied the bath on the herb garden, and hauled Lily upstairs to the attic, where, despite the open window, all the heat of the day had accumulated. She settled Lily, stripped to her underwear, and lay on top of the bed. Mmm, mmm ma, ma, maa, Lily said, over and over, her tone low, but relentless. Now and then she coughed. Waves of hot air rolled through the room.
Well, Evelyn thought, as Lily’s cries peaked, then gradually diminished, you’ll probably be better in the morning. She allowed her eyes to close, fell instantly asleep. When she woke in darkness, Lily still slept beside her. Holding her flashlight in her mouth, Evelyn used a nail file to open Harry’s letter.
12 April 1943
Dear Evelyn,
Thank you for 59 and 60. And thank you for sending the parcel, which needless to say, has not arrived. I live in hope, and I love to hear of you both.
I don’t know which letter you mean, and certainly don’t feel offhand. If I sometimes seem strange or cold, I am just low and worn out, too tired to feel anything much or just not able to write very well. We are very busy and often on the move. When we stop we can do nothing but sleep, night or day, which is my excuse for writing few letters. And there are other times when I feel angry or depressed and do not want to infect you with my misery.
It has got to the point where all emotions connected with home are of necessity remembrances. And perhaps memories become less accurate, and less full, over time. If you try remembering me now, you’ll probably find the picture beginning to blur. Perhaps certain details stand out, and other things you have to reconstruct. Photographs are a great help, so please send any new ones you have! And please understand, the conditions are such that it is so difficult to really feel love, or anything, out here. We are hard at it and not getting much sleep so we don’t—can’t—feel much. So if I say, “I love you,” it is a kind of shorthand and it really means “I do remember that I love you.” So, shall I say rather “I will love you”? Because I know I will. But does this sound too hard? And perhaps you will not love me when I return? I hope not, but suppose I don’t coincide with your memory of me? I am prone to dark thoughts.
The hairs rose on Evelyn’s arms as she read this, because she had been thinking, as she read, how this Harry was not exactly like the one she remembered. This man was less practical, less positive, and less affectionate … Exhausted or not, she had the feeling that he was writing for himself, rather than for her. She abandoned the letter, switched the flashlight off, lay back in the dark, and deliberately remembered the brisk sounds of Harry washing and dressing in the morning. How he brought her tea, and told her she was beautiful.
She remembered that she was supposed to do the floor, and the dishes, but did not go down until four, when Lillian woke, coughing and crying. Drinking cooled boiled water sweetened with a drop of the cordial that Mrs Saunders kept in her pantry only made her worse.
“Burning up,” she told Mrs Saunders at six. “It hurts her to cough.” Two of the land girls had something similar, Mrs Saunders commented. These things never happened in a slack period. It would pass. There was no need for a doctor.
Evelyn washed the floor as quickly as she could. Lillian’s eyes were pink and watered profusely. When she fell into an exhausted sleep, her face crushed into Evelyn’s shoulder, Evelyn carried her upstairs. Sleep at least was a good thing. Despite the reluctance she felt, she unfolded Harry’s letter again.
So I hope you understand. I know that I love you. And I know that I love Lillian, even though my memory of her is nothing like what she now is and I am sure she has no memory of me.
Yesterday morning, I had a rather nasty adventure, but don’t worry—I am here to tell the tale. It was my turn in the observation post, out ahead of our infantry, which is not anyone’s favourite place to be. At seven, the time when I was due to be relieved, nothing was happening. I was desperate for an end-of-shift smoke, and had no tobacco. I set off back towards the lines to cadge some. I met my replacement, Anderson, coming down, but he didn’t have any either. “Never mind,’ I told him, and clapped him on the shoulder. Minutes later came a horrible thud, and that observation post, and Anderson, were blown out of existence.
She put the letter down. Yesterday morning? she thought, while I was peeling potatoes? But of course, it was not this yesterday. It had happened the day before the twelfth of April. Almost a month ago. And he was all right. Or had been. Where was he now?
A grisly business. I’m pleased that in this case tobacco saved me, but terribly cut up about Anderson. Of course, there’s no justice or meaning to who gets it or doesn’t.
But the point is, Evelyn thought at him, you are alive! Surely it made bad things worse to think about them so much?
I’m stuck with the memory of him walking away. Suppose I had said more? But I didn’t want to keep him and leave the post unmanned, and I wanted to fill my pipe, so we both went on our ways.
Ever since, when I have the time to feel anything at all, I’ve felt rather low, but this afternoon cheered me up because we visited a mobile bath unit. The equipment was Italian and quite good and it is lovely to feel clean again. It was the nearest thing I’ve had to a bath since leaving Cairo, in November. Normally I am very dirty. You would not want me near you, darling.
Well no, she would not.
A rash blossomed behind Lily’s ears and under her hair.
“Measles!” Evelyn told Mrs Saunders, who was filling the oven with bread and listening to the news. I should never have come here, Evelyn thought. It was a stupid thing to do.
“We’ve all had it,” Mrs Saunders replied, as she closed the oven door. “You don’t help by fussing.”
“Fierce fighting continues north of Enfidaville,” the radio announcer told them, “with our artillery pounding enemy positions in the hills.”
“That’s your Harry,” Mrs Saunders pointed out, needlessly. The woman was even worse than her mother, who at least cared for her and for Lily, however foolish she was. Who, if she had been there, would have taken her in her arms … Her child and her husband, in danger. Suppose she lost one of them? Suppose Harry was shot while she stacked plates in a wooden rack? Suppose she lost both—but that kind of thinking got you nowhere. Harry had survived this far. He was a lucky man, and said so himself. She’d had measles herself as a child and made a full recovery.
The nausea she felt was only nerves, and she said nothing of any of this in the quick note she wrote to Harry, concentrating instead on how proud she was of him, how she would not complain again about his smoking, and telling him the tale of the unwashed floor. There was no point in worrying him with the measles. He had said he wanted a picture of her feeling and thinking, but suppose he had to wait weeks to hear how it turned out?
Lillian, wearing only a vest, lay limp on top of the quilt with a towel under her in case of accidents. The rash had invaded her face, neck, and chest; “Poor monkey,” Evelyn told her, dabbing her skin with a spongeful of tepid water. She sang Rock-a-bye again and again … Lillian, damp, blotched, stared up at her, her hazel eyes swimming, her mouth slack. Evelyn kissed her then stood, stretched, and looked out at the fields and the sky, the swallows swooping over the garden; from inside the dark attic it seemed like another planet. There was an odd sound, half gasp, half thump, from behind her and she spun around: Lillian’s arms and legs thrust stiffly out. One foot beat the towel in a rigid dance. The whites of her eyes gleamed under half-closed lids.
“Lily!”
She gathered the child up, and, holding her as still but also as gently as she could, ran down the treacherous stairs. Mrs Saunders was pulling her gumboots on.
“Please get me a doctor!”
“All right,” Mrs Saunders said. “I’ll send for Bascombe. But it’s you he’ll charge, and you’re likely wasting your money.”
Money? She would have given her life. Why had they ever come here?
When, a few minutes later, Lillian relaxed, Evelyn thought she had died, but first one eye, then the other righted itself.
The doctor arrived, on a bicycle, his bag strapped to the rack. He was dressed in a suit and, oddly, a motorcycle-dispatch-rider’s helmet, army-issue. He set his bag on the hall table while he wiped his shoes on the mat. “Bascombe,” he said, offering his hand, then removed the metal helmet to reveal a mess of wiry grey hair. He handed the helmet to her; she hung it on the coat stand.
“If you had seen as many head injuries and fine men turned into cripples and cabbages as I have, you wouldn’t wonder at my wearing such a thing,” he informed her. “It’s cork-lined, very hot, but the best they can do.” She burst into tears. He offered her his handkerchief. “Somewhere to wash my hands? The sick child?” he prompted, and followed her into the kitchen and then to the sitting room where she, crying harder now, sat down on the end of the couch where Lillian dozed and explained about the fit.
“Eleven months. The fever started yesterday. She had a fit. Her eyes rolled back! And also she suddenly seems awfully thin—”
Bascombe lowered himself slowly to his knees, shook the thermometer, slipped it in Lillian’s armpit. She seemed to half wake; he kept his hands there, steadying it.
“I dare say the worst is over,” he said softly, “though you were wise to send for me. Occasionally measles can affect sight or hearing and, at this age, it’s hard to tell. Encephalitis and meningitis are very rare but I want to keep an eye on her … 102 is still high.” He felt Lillian’s neck, under her arms, his hands enormous on her tiny body, but very clean, Evelyn noted, the nails trimmed and filed.
“From London?” he asked as he worked. “And your husband?”
“With the 8th Army, in the Artillery. In Tunisia.”
“There’s nothing to be gained by worrying,” he told her as he unpinned the nappy she’d put on as a precaution, though Lillian was already pretty much potty-trained during the day. It was still dry.
“Urine?”
“Last night. Dr Bascombe, will she be all right?”
“I expect so, but she must drink … Little and often. A bottle, a pipette, or a teaspoon. Or let her suck a clean wet cloth. If she doesn’t produce urine within the next four hours, I’ll need to know … How do you find it here?” he asked, still kneeling in front of the sofa.
“The countryside’s very pretty.”
“Have you made friends?”
She shrugged.
“Do you have family?”
“I wanted to get away from my parents,” she told him, surprising herself. “My father is in and out of the hospital for treatments for his tuberculosis. I don’t want him coughing over Lillian, and my mother telling me what a mistake I’ve made marrying and all that. But of course it’s just as filthy here as it was at home! I’m sorry,” she said, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. The doctor shook his head, grasped the sofa arm and, with some difficulty, stood.
Lily, unbuttoned, fragile, still half delirious, stared at the ceiling.
“No one likes to lose anyone, mothers included,” Bascombe said. After a pause he added, “Keep up with the sponging. Call if she’s still dry by six, or if anything seems worse. Otherwise, I’ll come by tomorrow at this time of day.”
On the face of it Bascombe had done nothing but take Lillian’s temperature, but Evelyn felt a gush of gratitude and affection towards the man. He refused her offer of tea.
“What do I owe you?” she asked.
“I’ve been here five minutes and it’s on my way home … I’ll not charge you this time, though I would charge Lord George Whitmore if he deigned to use me, or Mrs Angela Badcock, who does so frequently, though she is perfectly well.”
Back in the hall, she handed him the helmet, noticing as she did so the thick leather ear covers, the tang of sweat and Vitalis. He reminded her in some way of Harry, and at the same time he was, she realized when thinking about it a little later, the kind of man she’d have liked to have had for a father: an odd thought, and one she dismissed.
“Remember to rest yourself, too,” he said as he put the helmet on, then picked up his bag and left.
No one else was in. She checked Lillian again and then fetched the newspaper. German and Italian forces continue stubborn in their resistance, she read, but are cut off from their supply chain and their defeat is inevitable. The Allies will not let them rest … Moments later, she slept.
On his third visit, Dr Bascombe pronounced Lillian out of danger. Her appetite had returned. The pink tinge had vanished from the whites of her eyes and she sat up, happy despite the rash.
“Mrs Miles,” the doctor said, “You know, it might be better for you to go home. Saunders keeps a very clean herd, but cows are not the best company if you’re anxious about tuberculosis. And I think there’s something I might be able to do for you. A friend of mine runs a residential treatment centre for patients with lung disease, and is sometimes very understanding about the fees.”
Dear Harry, she wrote at the end of the week, addressing herself to the Harry she remembered, not the brooding, rather unsettling man who had of late been writing to her.
Dear Harry,
I am still here, though only just. Lillian had the measles, but has recovered now. For a while I was worried but the doctor assures me that it is over, though she may need glasses later on. You will not catch it from a letter. The doctor was very kind. He came three times from Stow and did not charge. I hasten to add, he is an old man.
I said I am still here, but not for long. Dad has been offered a paid-for convalescent place in the Lake District, starting in a fortnight’s time. I told Mum I would consider returning if he accepted it, and she saw sense and put pressure on him, so, since all these stairs are an awful nuisance with a baby and also, I don’t feel that Mrs Saunders, especially as regards hygiene, is a significant improvement on my mother, I plan on returning home, though only temporarily. I’m determined to find a flat.
