After You Left(72)

‘I don’t think I can face another cup of tea,’ Evelyn says. ‘How about a whisky?’ She walks over to a small drinks cabinet. ‘Or maybe a sherry, at this hour, is more civilised?’

I laugh. ‘I think I’d like the whisky, if that’s fine by you.’

Evelyn reaches for the crystal decanter. I am fascinated by her classic furniture and taste, the air of good breeding that hangs around her, even as she does something as rudimentary as pour us both a drink, placing in each glass one perfect-sized ice cube. ‘I came back four years ago, after Mark died. He had pancreatic cancer. It was very sudden. He was only seventy-ONE.’ She hands me a glass. ‘We weren’t the kind of couple who went around declaring our feelings, you know. Mark wasn’t a true romantic, whereas Eddy had it in his soul. I never knew if Mark had any idea how much I loved him. If he thought I’d stayed with him only because I’d felt it was the safer of two options.’ She looks fondly over to the bay window, and I realise that the man in the photograph is, of course, Mark. ‘So I stood over his grave and I told him how much he’d meant to me. Everything I could never say to his face.’

This threatens to break my heart. ‘Did you ever sell your Holy Island house?’

Evelyn smiles. ‘Not right away. It was rented out. Always nice tenants. They took good care of the place. I moved back in for a time. With some savings, I was able to afford to take Eddy out of the home run by social services and put him in Sunrise. It was mainly the gardens that attracted me to it. I knew they would give him pleasure. I visited as often as I could. But the journey to and from the island was too much, so I decided to sell the house and buy this place, so that I can walk to Sunrise.’ She pulls a joyless smile. ‘He’ll never know I came back to be close to him. Nor will he ever know that I lived with one man, whom I loved dearly with my whole heart, yet I thought of Eddy every day from the last day I saw him. How messed up is that for a life?’

‘You don’t know what he knows, Evelyn.’ It was depressing, though. To be such a capable, vibrant person with so many passions, then have the entire story of your life go missing from your mind.

Evelyn doesn’t answer. She just stares at the cube of ice in her drink, and chinks it against her glass. ‘I once read that very often we assume when we get to a certain point in our life that it’s all over. We’re done for. But so long as one person remembers you, it’s not over.’

‘So the visits to the gallery, Christina . . . You’re doing it because you want him to know it’s not over?’

Evelyn gives me an enigmatic look, then smiles.





THIRTY-ONE


Mark

London. March 1984

When the letter came, Evelyn was in hospital. She had a cyst on her ovary that they discovered was cancerous. The doctors removed her womb, to be on the safe side. The stay in hospital was protracted because she had lost a lot of blood. While she was there, the magazine forwarded the limited contents of her postbox to her home address, along with flowers and a note saying, As you don’t drop in for messages like you used to, we thought we should send this letter on to your home.

Mark received the delivery. He took the flowers into the hospital for her, of course. Evelyn loved flowers, and filled their home with fresh ones weekly. But the letter, well, that was a different matter. He hadn’t opened it. He wouldn’t do that, not even when it was addressed to someone who had once betrayed his trust. But he had seen the postmark. It was easy to guess who it was from. She was recovering from major abdominal surgery. They had begun to put all this behind them. Giving it to her now just didn’t seem like the helpful thing to do.





THIRTY-TWO


Alice

A couple of days later, we arrive at the entrance to Sunrise. Evelyn was right about it being a pleasant place. I’ve only once been in a care home, when my stepfather’s mother was admitted to one, but it hadn’t smelt as nice as this one. A receptionist greets us, and Evelyn enters our names in a guest book. ‘Is Michael in?’ I ask the girl.

‘He just went for lunch. Probably be back in an hour,’ she says. And then, to Evelyn, ‘He’s in the garden. Lawn day.’ She takes the flowers that Evelyn brought, says, ‘Oh gosh, aren’t these lovely?’ and gives her a fond smile.

Evelyn leads the way down a narrow hall that exits through a glass conservatory, where three or four elderly men sit around a small, antique table playing a board game. They look up and greet her as she passes, their curiosity quickly turning to me. Evelyn nudges me. ‘Careful. You’ll be setting off heart palpitations all round. And, in here, that’s a frightening prospect.’

We find a seat on a wooden bench overlooking a large, well-manicured lawn, with flowerbeds, and two parallel oak trees, like goalposts, either side. It’s extremely private and pretty, and the air is spiked with the scent of flowers and a salty sea breeze. The gardener is riding his lawnmower, and, sitting beside him, his frame towering over the gardener’s, is Eddy. The man waves when he sees Evelyn.

‘Look at him! He’s so happy!’ The sight of him makes me smile.

‘This is what he loves most, just being out there with the gardener.’

We sit quietly for a while, just watching him, listening to some squalling birds having a fight at a feeder on a nearby tree.