My Name is Eva(78)
After her refreshment Eva strolled along the little alleyways and lanes, snapping with her new camera: a quaint rustic doorway, a window box filled with red geraniums, a neat row of beanpoles. And finally, she saw her. A chubby blonde girl, plaits wound around her head in the traditional style, dressed in a dirndl skirt and a white blouse. With dimpled arms half covered by short puffed sleeves, she tossed a ball to another child in the cottage garden. She laughed, she ran, she jumped as she caught the ball bouncing on the path.
She’s happy here and she’s healthy, she has a good life, Eva thought. How I long to scoop her up and whisk her away with me. No one would see, only the other child would know a strange woman had taken her. I could run, run to my car. We’d be gone in minutes and then we’d be together for ever. But I can’t. Her family love her and she loves them, that’s clear. How could I destroy the life she knows, where she belongs? If only I could kiss her, if only I could hold her once more, but I know I can’t. All I can have are my memories of her and a picture I can keep for ever.
Snap went Eva’s Box Brownie camera. Snap of the garden, snap of the ball, snaps of the golden hair, the cheeks, pink from running and jumping in play.
Now I shall have her for ever and always. And if I can’t kiss the real child, feel her soft cheeks, her silky hair, smell her sweetness, I can kiss a photograph and know that I let her stay and be happy.
She took snap after snap until her film was all gone. The children were still playing and when the ball rolled into the dusty, unmade road, Liese chased it out through the open garden gate, stopping by Eva’s feet. She looked up at the well-dressed woman who had been watching their game.
Eva tucked the box camera strap over her shoulder and bent down to pick up the ball. She held it out, thinking, quickly, take her, then run. But as the girl held out her hand, Eva caught sight of a movement out of the corner of her eye. The door to the cottage opened and a woman’s voice called out, ‘Lottie, hier bitte.’
Eva took one last aching look at her daughter, skipping over the grass to her adoptive mother. Then she forced herself to turn away and as her steps gathered pace, she bit her quivering lip to stem the tears coursing down her cheeks, knowing she would never see her child again.
72
Eva, 20 February 1952
The Final Return
Eva took a taxi from the station and as she stepped out, woodsmoke and wet leaves scented the air. She was home with her cases and her memories. And after all those years away, how little had changed. Mama was older and sadder, Papa was older and frailer, but Kingsley Manor still frowned beneath its drapes of wisteria and climbing roses. And in the gardens carpets of snowdrops still scattered the lawns with their modest white heads of blossom and pheasants still cried in alarm as she walked the grounds. The woods and copses seemed strange at first, but then she realised it was because all the oaks, beech and chestnut were bare and she had become used to the ever-present dark green of the secretive forests around Wildflecken.
‘You’re very welcome to stay here with us, darling,’ her mother said when she talked about finding work in London. ‘We’d love to have you living back home. Anyway, you don’t have anywhere else to live after the mansion flats were torn down.’ Her mother was stabbing at her needlepoint, stretched on its stand, her little wire glasses perched on her nose, but when she spoke she peered over the lenses.
‘I know you never approved of the flat, Mama, but I would have been quite happy to go back there if it hadn’t been damaged in the raids. I need to do something constructive, you know. I have to have a life. I can’t just stay here passing on your orders to Mrs Glazier in the kitchen and I certainly can’t eat her lovely steamed puddings day in, day out. I’d end up being an enormous lump and it would drive me – and all of you, come to that – absolutely mad.’
‘But why ever not, darling? There’s plenty of room for all of us. You can have friends to visit, you know we wouldn’t mind. We want you to be happy, darling. And you’d be such good company for Marion. It’s been so hard for her being alone with dear little Patricia since Charles was killed. I know she’d appreciate having you here.’
Eva paced up and down the room, from the crackling fire to the breakfront bookcase and back again. I can’t bear to see the child. Pat, just three years younger than my little girl. And I can’t explain. I can’t tell Mama she really has a second granddaughter and that it breaks my heart every time I see or hear small children.
The gilt ormolu clock tinkled. It was four o’clock and dusk was falling. Mrs Glazier would soon enter, pushing the tea trolley as if she was offering a selection of delicacies worthy of tea at The Ritz, when all post-war rationing could offer was toast with a scraping of margarine and a mean smear of bramble jam. Eva was already missing the good bread baked at Wildflecken and the hearty meals served by the NAAFI in the British army bases in Germany, where she had lingered before finally coming home.
‘But, Mama, times have changed and I have changed. I know before the war it wasn’t unusual for unmarried or widowed women to continue living with their parents, but it doesn’t feel right now. I’ve been alone ever since Hugh died and I’m used to being on my own now.’
‘Well, darling, all I can say is I lived with my family till I married and no one thought that was at all strange.’ She tucked her needle into the canvas and removed her glasses, staring at her daughter almost as if she no longer recognised this strong independent woman who had left England a saddened widow.