I smile. ‘I like that idea.’
‘But that doesn’t make it any less painful. Not when you make the wrong choices in your personal life.’
She’s on the brink of saying more. I’m dying to say, What choices that were so wrong? But I’m not sure I dare go there. Am I finding myself caring about an elderly woman’s troubled love story as a distraction? Or is it to gain some kind of corresponding clarity about my own?
I give her back the photograph. ‘It’s beautiful, Evelyn. I’m very happy you showed it to me.’
‘This is where it all started,’ she says. She stares at the photograph the way you might study something that’s slightly mystifying to you. When she looks up, her lovely green eyes are flooded with tears.
‘Where what started, Evelyn?’
I scrutinise her pale face, but she is gone now, gazing off into the distance, like someone searching for that childhood best friend she never forgot. I’m not even sure she’s heard me.
Then, after a moment or two, she says, ‘Where I met him.’
‘Who?’ I ask, already feeling I know the answer.
‘Eddy,’ she says. ‘Though I’d met him long before then. I suppose what I’m saying is this garden is where something began that would change the course of our lives, and I don’t know that either of us was quite prepared for it.’
She glances at me now. ‘I’ll tell you, if you’d like.’
‘I would love that.’
She looks at her watch. ‘But you are probably due to go home now.’
I think of that lonely flat and another long night of my own company ahead. ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I have nothing to rush home for. Would you like to go get a cup of tea?’
She smiles. ‘That’s a wonderful idea.’
TWELVE
Evelyn
Holy Island. 1983
He came to her shortly after nine every morning. The weather had answered his prayers; it had poured down virtually every day.
She had chosen sage-green paint for the kitchen, and a rich cream for the rest of the main floor. He would do the detail, then she would apply the roller in long strokes. He gave her lessons in the proper way to do it. Once, his hand rested briefly on her upper back while they assessed her progress, and she registered that it was the first time he’d touched her in twenty years.
They talked a lot about their childhoods, their not especially happy school days, his dreams of playing professional football that ended when his dad lost his job in the pit closures. ‘My dreams didn’t matter when you couldn’t pay the rent. I went into the shipyards as an apprentice, but then, of course, that was another one of the North East’s industries that came to a sad end. So I decided to try gardening.’ He ended it there. ‘Tell me about your life in London,’ he said. ‘I’d like to try to picture you . . .’
She told him about where they lived, about their country home, the gardens, her writing job, dance classes, friends and their gossipy lunches. She told him how she skied mainly because Mark had insisted she learn, and she went sailing, even though she found nothing enjoyable about being bossed around on a boat. He laughed. ‘I can’t imagine anybody bossing you around, Evelyn. You’re a force to be reckoned with.’
One day, when the sun broke out, she made them a lunch of local speciality crab sandwiches and a beer. They ate in the garden, and talked about dreams again. Nat King Cole sang ‘Unforgettable’ on the radio. Eddy told her about how he was going after a large contract for the civic green space.
‘I thought you were happy with your job the way it is? Don’t you employ four men and look after the hospital grounds and a local park?’
‘Yes. But my wife wants a better house and more clothes, plus I’d like to give my daughter a better life. I’d hate her to ever have to give up her dreams to support us, like I had to do. I could never let that happen.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Five.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘April.’ He smiled, proud. ‘She hates April. No one she knows is called April, you see. She likes to copy things she knows. I keep trying to tell her it’s always best to be different, but she’s too young to understand. She’ll get it one day, I suppose.’
The heads of the fuchsia had been weighted down from all the rain; the flowers had been drooping like exhausted ballerinas. But now hosts of them were glissading and pirouetting in the breeze that blew across the Cheviots, a living painting of pink and white, and purple and red – shoulders low, heads high, in floating arabesques.
‘I was telling my wife that I’m working for Mrs Coates’ daughter, the one who ran off to London.’ He glanced at her boldly. ‘Of course, I didn’t mention that she was the girl who once stood me up and left me a wilted, withered, broken-hearted, bitter, distrusting mess.’
She tutted at his exaggeration. ‘What did your wife say?’
‘She asked if you were pretty.’
If only there was a way to stop a rampant blush when you felt it coming. ‘What did you tell her?’ The stray cat her mother used to feed, who was kept alive now by a kind pool of neighbours, meandered around Evelyn’s bare leg. Eddy watched.
‘I told her you were. And lovely on the inside, too.’ He met her eyes in a way that made her burn.
She blinked. ‘You told her that?’
His face burst into a smile. ‘No! But I did tell her you were pretty. Because it’s just the truth, isn’t it? It’s the first thing anybody would say about you.’
She held his gaze until the bold intention of his stare made her look away.