My Name is Eva(65)
They had planned a romantic reunion at their London flat – an Italian supper in Soho, a show and dancing. Clothes were hard to find too, but she had adapted her black cocktail dress and created a sweetheart neckline to flatter her creamy skin, with two diamanté buckles from an old belt of Mama’s. She had planned to curl her hair and create a victory roll to frame her face, with a teasing wisp of net attached to a darling little hat that she knew Hugh would love. But in the end, that was not to be. Hugh did not return, at least to her arms. He managed to escape, but in doing so he was shot, her darling Hugh; an incidental casualty for those who were careless with lives, a shocking tragedy for those who loved him and others like him. She never did wear the shoes in the end; she couldn’t bear to put her feet into shoes that should have danced with delight while she was held in her husband’s arms, but which hobbled her feet when she was barely able to walk even a step without sobbing uncontrollably.
Where did they go, those beautiful shoes? Given to a girlfriend or a charity, presumably. But the dress she kept, ripping off those ridiculous clips, restoring its sober modest neckline. All that remained of her once-glamorous ensemble was the shoebox, crammed with handwritten letters from end to end. Some were those Hugh had sent from France on tissue-thin government-issue letterhead, bearing an etching of the Arc de Triomphe and the legend, ‘Somewhere in France’, written sometimes in pencil, other times in pen. But there were also those she had written herself in later years, after he had gone, telling him everything, opening her heart to him and him alone, when she couldn’t ever reveal her secrets to anyone else. The shoebox carried a picture of the velvet shoes, the shoes that never ran to meet him, never stood on tiptoe to reach his lips and never danced in his arms.
But now even those letters had to go. Evelyn had been attempting to tidy the house ever since she had recovered from her fall. It was a warning sign to be taken seriously; she could not know how much more time she had to prepare or to continue keeping watch.
So, on a cold but bright spring day, she built a bonfire on the old tennis court, just beyond the apple orchard, with its neglected, unpruned trees. It was sad to see them so abandoned, but they hadn’t fruited well for the last few years and she really couldn’t cope with applying grease bands and lopping branches any more.
And the tennis court had not seen a game for many a year. This was where she had learnt to play, with Charles yelling at her to keep an eye on the net, and later she had played with Hugh, pausing to hug and kiss him when she retrieved the ball. She could still hear the shouts and laughter if she paused and, over there, the bench where a hamper sat, with strawberries and lemonade for the players. Now, the tarmac surface, once clearly delineated with white lines renewed every season, was thickly matted with cushions of dark green moss and creeping yellow buttercups.
Evelyn gathered dry material from the borders, cutting away dead stems of delphiniums, lupins and phlox to encourage healthy new flower shoots come summer. She never cut down her perennials in autumn as so many gardeners did, reasoning that dead wood protected the plants through the winter in the frost pocket that is Kingsley, where tender plants could burn as late as mid-May during the days she had come to know in Germany as the Eisheiligen days, the days of the ice saints. Such a picturesque way of describing the dreaded late frosts of springtime.
She trundled another barrow-load of cuttings across to the growing heap. The pile was all tinder-dry and it was a sunny day for early March. No sign of winds and showers, perfect for spring cleaning, as Mama would say.
The previous night she’d read all the letters again, one by one, sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of amontillado sherry helping her find tears to remember. She’d put Hugh’s letters to one side and bound them with a red ribbon. Those I’ll never burn. They will stay with me for ever, she said to herself. Then she read her own letters again, her lips mouthing some of the words and whispering others, particularly every time she read, Ps I love you. Those letters she returned to the shoebox, still crammed full despite the removal of the ones she’d received all those years ago from Hugh, and then she taped it shut.
And at last the moment arrived. The pyre was ready to burn as soon as she put a match to the Zip firelighter tucked into its heart. But first, she poked around the base with a broom handle, just as the old gardeners had taught her, in case a creature had crept in there for shelter while she had been collecting kindling. Nothing darted out, so she pushed the shoebox right into the centre, on top of old newspapers, stained seed catalogues and diaries from years past, then struck a match. It caught instantly and soon all was blazing with flames three feet high.
‘Goodbye, darling,’ Evelyn murmured. ‘Ps I love you.’
60
Evelyn, 29 October 2015
The Final Fall
Evelyn strained to reach the handle of the second suitcase on top of the high wardrobe. The first case had crash-landed on the floor, but luckily the lock didn’t burst open and spill the long-forgotten contents. She stretched again, as far as she could. All she had to do was pull the leather strap towards her; then she eased it across to the side and whoosh, it slid down and onto the floor, landing with a thump. But the second case was much heavier than the first and caught on the carved pediment that adorned the front and sides of the mahogany wardrobe.
Evelyn tugged at it again. Damn it, she had to get it down today. Now she’d remembered them after all this time, she couldn’t leave the cases where they were any longer. She’d almost forgotten all about them, but then the other night, when she was kissing the photographs of her two dearest loved ones goodnight before going to sleep, it all came back to her. When she had finally come back from Wildflecken, after being away for so many years, Mama was unwell, Papa was in hospital and there was so much to do, so much demanding her attention, that her cases were never fully unpacked. They were stowed away and then forgotten. A bonfire had consumed all her letters to Hugh, as well as a large number of photographs, but she had not thought about the suitcases and their incriminating contents for many years. She couldn’t even be sure exactly what they contained, it was all so long ago, but she could picture a passport, documents placing her at Bad Nenndorf and Wildflecken and photographs, some innocent, some not so. Oh, and yes, a sweater and trousers with tell-tale stains that could reveal everything.