My Name is Eva(80)

‘Mary,’ she calls, ‘I’m ready for you.’ She leans on her walking frame and eases herself onto the high padded seat in the bathroom. Thank goodness she has one of the few rooms at Forest Lawns with an adapted bath. She never could bear showers, damping one’s hair and spoiling it in between one’s weekly shampoo and sets.

Mary kneels on the floor to remove shoes and nylon popsocks. Evelyn would prefer to wear tights or even stockings, but they simply aren’t practical any more. She once tried wearing stockings with elasticated tops, ‘hold-ups’ the department store assistant called them, but they failed to grip her shrunken thighs and wrinkled their way down to her knees when she stood up.

‘We’ll have to ask the toenail lady to call in and see you again,’ Mary says. ‘She’ll be in on Tuesday.’

Evelyn’s toes are claws with thick ridged nails, but her hands, though veined and bruised, still have oval nails, buffed to a shine the way Mama taught her so many years ago, when nail varnish was considered vulgar. It’s one of the few aspects of her body that still pleases her, that and her silver hair with its neat curls, and her Cupid’s bow lips, always emphasised with Estée Lauder’s Rebellious Rose lipstick.

‘Shall we have lavender or peony bubbles today?’ asks Mary, holding two bottles of foaming gel over the bath.

‘Oh, I think I’d like to try that new lily-of-the-valley for a change instead. It reminds me of my youth, you know, when I wore Muguet. Such a lovely scent. Muguet des Bois… Hugh, my husband, loved it.’

‘We’ll use that one then. You’ll be smelling like a spring garden in no time, won’t you?’ And Mary holds out her hand to help Evelyn stand up as she slips the remaining garments from her frail body, then guides her into a sitting position on the moulded bath seat, with a towel round her shoulders to keep her warm while the bath fills. Evelyn would prefer to have her bath straight after breakfast or just before bed, but bathtimes at the home have to be scheduled around staff availability, not residents’ preferences, so her bath is run just before lunch. But then I shall be clean, sweet-smelling and well-fed for my visitors this afternoon. I’ll take a nap after lunch and wake refreshed to face my inquisitors. I’m quite looking forward to it now. They’ll interrogate me, but it won’t be like the awful interviews I witnessed years ago, where the prisoners were cowed and broken; I’ll be in control, not them.

As the water tumbles down, frothing into scented bubbles, Mary repeatedly checks that it is neither too hot nor too cold. ‘I used to love to swim in cold water,’ Evelyn says.

‘You never!’

‘Oh yes. They thought it was good for us. They said if the Germans caught us, they might push us into freezing cold showers, so we all got used to it, just in case. But this is just like Goldilocks,’ says Evelyn.

‘Goldy what?’ Mary asks above the sound of the bathwater running.

‘Goldilocks and the three bears. You know, dear, one bowl of porridge was too hot, then one was too cold and one was just right, like the temperature of the bathwater.’

‘You always make me laugh, you do,’ Mary shakes her head and hands Evelyn a clean flannel. ‘There now, it’s full enough. I’ll do your back and you do your bits.’ She puffs out her cheeks. ‘Tell you what though, this room’s too hot for me. It might be just right for you, but I’m sweating like a pig.’

‘I’m sorry, dear. That’s the trouble with having to wait for the bath to fill up. But I’m lovely and warm now, so why don’t you open the bathroom door for a little bit? Let a bit of fresh air in?’

Mary opens the door and fans herself with a spare dry flannel. ‘Phew, that’s better! Now let’s get you all cleaned up.’ The two of them rub away in silence. Mary reaches down into the water to scrub Evelyn’s feet and soap her legs.

‘You’d never think I was quite a good cricketer in my day to look at me now, would you?’

Mary laughs. ‘Go on with you, Mrs T-C. You’ll be telling me you played football as well next.’

‘I played cricket with my brother Charles. He was a terrifically fast bowler.’

‘We did rounders at school,’ Mary says.

‘Gosh, I haven’t played rounders since… oh, since the war. We didn’t have any cricket kit with us at the time, so we made up games of rounders. We had to make do with an old tennis ball and a broom handle. Such fun it was.’

‘Where was this then?’

‘In Camberley, during our training. We were all young girls, some straight from school – I think I was the eldest. I was widowed by then, so I was a bit of a mother figure to the younger ones, I suppose.’ Evelyn laughs as she wrings out her flannel. ‘Such high spirits all the girls had.’

‘I bet you were a one, eh? Probably the worst of the lot.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Mary. I was perfectly well behaved. I had to set an example to the other young girls. So young, no more than teenagers.’

‘Get away with you! I bet there were some lovely young men around in those days, all smart in their uniforms. We’ve all heard the stories.’

‘Well, we did meet up with some rather nice pilots later on. Especially the Polish chaps, they were quite charming and awfully handsome. They told us such extraordinary stories about how they’d escaped from Poland to reach this country. Some of them had walked all the way to France. Imagine that. Astonishing, isn’t it?’