‘Did you get it right the first time, Evelyn?’ I wonder why it is that I find myself so curious about her.
For a moment, I’m sure she’s not going to answer. She dips into her bag and pulls out a white cotton handkerchief with pink embroidered edges, then just holds it, tightly, in her slightly trembling left hand. ‘That’s such a very difficult question. To say I didn’t would be desperately unfair to someone I loved. And in a way, it wouldn’t even be true.’ She meets my eyes, steadily. ‘There are so many different aspects to love that render it all so very complicated. And sometimes you are just simply . . . torn.’
I think about this. The words for everyone’s sake come back to me. I stare at her miraculously unblemished little white hand holding the pretty handkerchief.
‘You know what I discovered a very long time ago?’ Evelyn’s eyes have shifted to Christina again.
I am aware of how surprisingly keen I am to hear what Evelyn has discovered.
‘If you want to be in love, you have to accept that you run the risk of having your heart broken in such a way that it’s almost impossible to mend. Some of us can live quite happily without that wretched experience. But some of us can’t. We have to put ourselves through it to feel we’re alive. We thrive in the extremes of unparalleled joy and abject misery. What we can’t much tolerate is the middle ground.’
Evelyn looks distantly across the room, in unfinished thought. ‘I suppose what I’m saying to you is you have to take your love story, and you have to take how it ends, too. It’s called life.’
I know she isn’t talking about me, per se, but she might as well be. ‘Did you have a love story that ended, Evelyn?’ I’m fairly certain she was talking about Eddy.
Evelyn doesn’t answer. I feel bad. Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to force intimacy.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, at last. ‘I have a story, and it’s definitely about love. But in some ways it hasn’t ended yet.’
‘Interesting,’ I say.
She looks in her bag for something, and pulls out a small Polaroid. She hands it to me.
‘Good heavens! I haven’t seen one of these in years!’ I can’t help but smile at the black-and-white image with its thick white border. ‘What is it?’ I ask. The picture quality is poor.
‘Christina’s house.’
I wonder if Evelyn is just one of those people who enjoys being mysterious. But for a moment I believe it might be Christina’s farmhouse, that Evelyn has some strange connection to the painting, or to Wyeth. Perhaps she’s going to say she’d been Wyeth’s lover, or Christina’s cousin, or that she had lived there, in Cushing, Maine, not far from the weather-beaten farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. In my longing to believe something, I might be inclined to believe anything.
But it isn’t Christina’s house, though there’s a similarity in the atmosphere and content of the two images. It’s a picture of a small stone cottage with a dark front door. In the background, at the top of the attractive garden, a slightly built girl with long, dark hair stands casually and unsmilingly, with her hands behind her back.
‘Is that you, Evelyn?’ Like Christina, the girl has a woeful aura about her. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ I’m so touched and flattered she would show me this! I can’t help but think, Ah, maybe one day I’ll be like Evelyn – alone and desperate for someone to tell a hand-me-down story to. ‘Is it where you lived, Evelyn, before you moved away? Where you grew up?’
‘How did you know I moved away?’ Her cat-like green eyes widen in amazement.
‘Just the way you look. The way you speak. Everything about you says you don’t really belong here.’
‘But I do! I very much belong here! I always did. Even when I left here, I was pulled back. Just like Christina. The way she’s staring at that house – I can fully relate to that feeling, because that has been me my entire life!’
She looks so zealous. I hope I haven’t upset her.
‘Do you ever feel highly nostalgic for your upbringing, for things gone?’ she asks. ‘Nostalgic to the point where you can barely recover from the ache?’
I realise I’m not required to answer.
‘Nostos. Algia. Means homecoming. Pain and suffering. Some doctors believe nostalgia is a neurological disease. Did you know that? You see, we long to go back, but we can’t because the past didn’t actually exist. It’s only a composite of what we remember, and, of course, it’s always the “feel-good” memories we hang on to. We filter out the negative ones.’ She nods briefly to the painting. ‘That’s what Christina is doing.’
‘Where was your picture taken, Evelyn?’ I ask her.
‘Holy Island, where I grew up. Back then, I’d decided living on a tidal island was the singular most depressing thing on earth. So I moved to the part of the country that Northerners love to hate.’ She smiles. ‘I was a journalist for a publication in London. Do you know a magazine called Cosmopolitan?’
I place a hand on my chest. ‘Good heavens! You wrote for Cosmo?’
‘Yes. When it first launched in the UK. In 1972.’
‘That must have been so exciting, and glamorous! Impressive back then, too.’
‘I wrote a book as well. A novel.’
‘You wrote a novel? Seriously? Was it published? What was it about?’ This woman is an endless revelation.
‘Of course it was published!’ Evelyn seems surprised by my surprise. ‘It was about, well, let’s just say, moral dilemmas and the difficult choices we make for love. Maybe you will read it one day, if I ever find the one remaining copy.’
I’m flattered she implies our acquaintanceship may have longevity. ‘You’re an intriguing lady, Evelyn. I’d absolutely love to read your book.’ I briefly touch her hand. ‘Do you ever think that sometimes you have to meet people for a reason?’
Evelyn seems beguiled by me again. ‘I do. Everything happens for a reason. It’s not a cliché, I can promise.’