Dear Evelyn, page 15
The lie had come about because Valerie had wanted candyfloss when they went to the circus on the common, but had no pocket money left and so pretended it had been stolen from her purse. Harry took this at face value and treated them all; later, Evelyn, feeling for some reason suspicious, searched the patent-leather handbag, a cast-off of hers, and found the lipstick, an expensive one in a gold-coloured holder, the colour rouge intense, printed on the base.
“You’re far too young for lipstick,” she said. “And no wonder you’ve run out of pocket money!”
“I was only wearing it at Angela’s, just for fun. She didn’t want to share hers with me because of germs.”
“How am I supposed to believe that? You told me you were going there to do math homework together.”
“We were, but we tried out the lipstick, too … I’m sorry. Very sorry.” The tears were real enough, but what other lies had she told (and what others were to come)? It was intolerable to be lied to, even if, as Harry (why must he always insist on seeing two sides to the thing?) said earlier that night, before she got up to clean the oven, that experimenting with cosmetics and dishonesty might well be a natural part of childhood. He was unable to understand why it upset her so much—was amused, even, by the idea of the two girls, scarlet-lipped, calculating the square of the hypotenuse or whatever it was.
He said he had done similar things—not with lipstick—but lies and even stealing, yes, and so, surely, had she?
“I don’t think so,” she had said, refusing to look at him …
“And the dentist says I clench my jaw,” she told Ransome.
If people do not stick to the rules, and if you don’t have the facts, how can you know what is real and decide what to do? If someone refuses—
“It’s probably nothing. I just thought I had better ask.”
“Always worth checking.” Ransome leaned back, whisked off his glasses, reached for a little square of cloth, polished the lenses as he continued: “Is this thudding at the normal rate, or would you say your heart is beating faster, too?”
“Just thudding.”
“How long has it been going on,” he asked. Because she had ignored it, it was hard to know. “Weeks, months, or years?”
“I’ve noticed it more this year,” she said. Ransome stood and reached into his drawer for the blood-pressure cuff. In silence, he slipped it on her arm, stood in front of her to pump the sleeve. They both waited for it to sigh and deflate. “Rather high,” he observed.
“How does your heartbeat feel right now?” he asked as he slipped the stethoscope inside the vee of her dress.
“Perfectly fine.”
“And so it sounds … How are your periods?” he asked.
“Regular. Heavier than I’d like,” she told him. She admitted to some moodiness beforehand, and a propensity to both irritability and tears, and yes, the thumping of her heart did occur during those times, but also at others.
“I think we had better do a proper exam. Take this, and pop behind the screens.”
Pop! she thought, what am I, a three-year-old?
The screens were wheeled metal frames with fabric stretched between horizontal bars. She had been behind them before, several times with Lily, who had disliked her new school to begin with and went through a phase of mysterious internal pains as well as an actual chest infection, chickenpox and so on. If something was going round, she would catch it. Valerie, on the other hand, was a sturdy child and rarely sick. A post-war baby, she remembered Ransome opining on a previous occasion, might well be healthier as well as more confident than a wartime one.
Slipping off her shoes, she noted the narrow, adjustable examination table, a standard lamp, and a chair, along with various supply cupboards and a place for the doctor to wash his hands. There is nothing wrong with me, she thought: certainly there could be nothing that merited the garment Ransome had handed her, a pale green thing with white tapes. Which way did you wear that? She removed the outer layer of her clothing, struggled with the zipper on the back of her dress, and then peeled down her roll-on girdle and stockings, deciding to retain her bra and underwear.
The examination table was awkwardly high and a portable step had been provided. She adjusted the thin pillow and pulled up the sheet.
Ransome scrubbed his hands vigorously with strong-smelling antiseptic soap, dried them on a blue paper towel. He then pulled the sheet down, lifted the smock.
“Oh,”, he said “All right. I’ll examine your abdomen first, but I can’t get to your cervix if you are still dressed. Could you please push those down a bit.”
What, she thought, can my cervix possibly have to do with my heart?
His fingers prodded the flesh of her lower abdomen, travelling systematically from one side to another, and then up a little and back the other way.
“Any discomfort?” No, though he seemed to be being excessively diligent. What was he expecting to find? She didn’t ask.
“Marital life satisfactory?” A rather intrusive as well as irrelevant question, but she nodded.
“I imagine you’ve finished your family now?”
“I think so.”
“Are you taking precautions?”
She would far rather have been asked about all this sitting up and clothed, but since it was easier than explaining in detail, and also because she felt that it was what he wanted to hear, she told him yes. It was not too far from the truth: she had used, intermittently for several years after Valerie’s birth, a diaphragm. A series of them, in fact, each falsely purporting to be easier to slip in and less of an interference than the last. To her mind, it took the remaining romance out of things, so they had abandoned it.
“So what if we have another?” Harry had said. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”
He didn’t do the having, though.
“Well, do be careful,” Ransome told her “You’re thirty-seven, if I remember correctly? Pregnancy is still possible, but not advisable. I’ll take a look inside now.” He vanished briefly while she removed her underwear, then returned, instructed her as to the positioning of her feet in the stirrups, washed his hands again, and, she was glad to note, ran the horrible-looking steel thing under the hot tap.
“Relax,” he told her, at which her heart began to thud in her chest: You try it, she thought as he bent over to push the thing inside her. “Fine,” he muttered, “fine …Very good.”
Back in the main room he congratulated her: “Everything in the pink. If the periods get any worse I can refer you to a specialist. As for the blood pressure, it could certainly contribute to what you’re describing. Best thing for that is exercise. But I tend to feel that while the problem could be part hormonal, it is mainly psychological.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when does it occur?”
“At all sorts of times.”
“But are there particular circumstances, moods, that you associate with it? Does it just happen randomly, or does something provoke it?”
“Well,” she said. “There is normally some particular thing that upsets me.”
“Well, that’s something to observe. What kinds of thing cause the stress that makes your body react this way?”
She stared back at him, unable to reply.
“And here’s something else to consider—and this is just a hunch—your two girls are growing up. You’re still young and energetic. Soon you will have more time on your hands. It’s fair to say that an intelligent, lively woman such as yourself may need something other than housework to occupy her time. I’m not necessarily thinking of paid work, of course, especially if that’s not necessary—
“It’s certainly not—”
Briefly, now, she recalled her desk in the reception room at Willis and Smythe: the ring of the telephone, the calm pleasure of answering it and of greeting the clients as they arrived for their appointments. She remembered going in to take dictation, the pile of typed letters to be checked and signed. Thick, creamy paper with the address embossed … Both partners often praised her work, yet they handed her a termination notice the moment she told them she was going to get married. Career or husband. Not both. Not then. How she’d wept. Though surely she would have tired of it. Would it be so very different now, even if you studied law at Oxford? And besides, what was so wonderful about work? Harry was not dreadfully enthusiastic about his.
Perhaps, Dr Ransome suggested, some sort of voluntary role?
“Please tell me how that is supposed to help with my heart thudding in my chest?”
“Just a hunch. Something to throw yourself into. The WI is rather passé, I realize. But I know the hospital always needs lady volunteers.”
“I’m not fond of hospitals,” she told him, aware again of her heartbeat strengthening, of the organ seeming to take up too much space in her chest. “They’re very depressing. Apart from the maternity wards, of course. All that disease and death …”
“I would say that most people come out far better than they went in,” Ransome said, peering at her in a rather unnerving way.
“My father hated them.”
“Well of course,” Ransome said, displaying his famous memory again, “Tuberculosis is much better understood and treated nowadays. But back then it must have been very hard for you and your mother.” He leaned in a little closer.
“Yes. He was in and out of doctors’ surgeries and hospitals and clinics for years,” she told him. “And of course, depending on your luck and who assessed it all, you sometimes had to pay, then, and my mother could ill afford it. He drank. And smoked, so that didn’t help. They did eventually put a stop to the TB, but then his liver failed …” Ransome nodded.
“Hmm,” he said, “very difficult.”
“My mother brought me to come and sit with him,” Evelyn found herself telling Ransome “He held our hands and cried. It was the most awful thing. I couldn’t think what to say.”
Back then, she had been terrified, furious, and sorry, all at the same time, but she had not cried. Now, without warning, her face was drenched with tears.
“It was ten years ago, and I’m not normally like this!” she told the doctor, patting her face with the tissue he provided.
“There, there. I’m sure he appreciated you being there … Good to get it off your chest,” Ransome said. “Clearly, volunteering at the hospital would not be a good idea, but I’m sure there are other things. Think it over. Meanwhile, I could perhaps offer you, just for a few months, a mild tranquillizer.” She dropped the tissue in the wastebasket, sat straighter in her chair.
“Isn’t that what they give mental patients?” He smiled in what she felt was a rather condescending manner, and glanced covertly at his watch.
“Not exactly, no. It’s a low dose, suitable for everyday problems. It can be very helpful to regulate moods and is increasingly used in this kind of situation.”
As if I were a cow or a sheep, to be subdued! Managed. Handled.
“I think I can manage without that,” she told him, understanding, as she spoke, what it was that made her heart thud: It was when people broke the rules, when they lied, when they ignored or seemed to mock what she had said, when they pretended a superior understanding they did not possess and when they tried to dismiss her, lord it over her, drag her down, or pull a fast one. It was when they did not and would not understand what she meant, and behaved appallingly, or idiotically, or in order to frustrate her—
She stood and he followed suit, offered his hand over the desk; when she took it, he brought up his other one—damp and hot—to give hers a squeeze. Uncalled for.
“Don’t hesitate to book a further appointment,” he said. “Always a pleasure, Mrs Miles.”
She should, for form’s sake, say thank you, but could not bear to. Did he take her for a fool? Why did he have to stick that damn thing up her when she was asking about her heart? And she most certainly would not be working in a hospital, or any other place, for free. What sense did that make?
By the time she reached the high street her face had dried. She purchased dust bags for the Hoover, a box of Surf, and a bottle of 1001 for the carpet upstairs, and then, feeling she deserved a treat before taking the bus home, stopped at The Silver Spoon.
An elderly waitress, wearing the café’s uniform of severe black dress and frilly white pinafore, came to her table bearing a tiny notepad and an equally diminutive silver-coloured pen.
“Madam?”
“I’d like a milky coffee and a buttered currant bun, please.” She watched the waitress retreat with her order: she limped a little and her thick, flesh-coloured stockings did not conceal the dark, almost green-looking, raised veins that writhed up one calf, or the way that her feet swelled over the sides of her shoes, despite how sensible they were.
Service was notoriously slow, so she left her table and went to downstairs to freshen up in the ladies’ room, which was papered in an embossed pattern vaguely suggestive of royalty. An area separate from the sinks and stalls featured three padded stools and well-lit mirrors above a shelf with brass hooks where you could hang your handbag, rather than put it on the floor. Surprised by how pale her face was and wanting to brighten things up, she delved in her bag and found, along with her own lipstick, the one she had confiscated from Valerie, rouge intense. On impulse, she uncapped it, leaned in to the mirror, and carefully followed the contours of her mouth before pressing her lips together to spread the colour. It was brighter than her own, yet also, in its way, just what she needed. Without asking herself why, she recapped the lipstick and tossed it into the wastepaper bin before stepping back to smile at the woman in the mirror, who stood straight and proud now in her belted, teal-coloured coat—the mother of two girls who would go to university—her black leather gloves in her right hand, the left slipped into her pocket, and absolutely nothing wrong with her.
Sounds
Valerie had Black Beauty open beside her plate and she had already started to eat. Bits kept falling out of her sandwich.
“Well,” Harry announced, “a good day so far.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Evelyn said, and, from midway between the doorway to the kitchen and the dining-room table, hurled a salad bowl in his direction. It was thick Spanish pottery, a present from the Hallidays, and when it hit the wall behind him, a foot or so to the right of his head, it did not break, but thudded and bounced forwards; it caught the corner of the table with a hard crack and split into several large pieces, which broke further when they landed on the parquet in a brief, brittle tattoo. Lettuce and cucumber that had erupted during the flight reached the floor at roughly the same time. There was a moment of absolute silence and then Evelyn, massive in her smock, burst into tears.
“I should have got that,” Harry said, pushing his chair back.
“I’m sick and tired of this whole damn thing! When is it ever going to be over?” Evelyn said. “Don’t you dare tread on that, it’ll ruin the finish on the floor!”
“Val—fetch the dustpan and brush, please,” Harry said, and his soon-to-become-middle daughter, coming up to thirteen, left the table and walked behind her mother to the kitchen to get them. Evelyn pulled out her chair and sat down. “I never wanted this,” she said, her cheeks glistening, her arms, a moment ago so tense, resting loose in her lap. Val began to sweep up the pieces.
“Thank you, dear,” Harry told Val. “Don’t worry, your mother’s just very tired because of the baby being late …”
“I know,” Val said.
“Do you want to eat something?” he asked Evelyn.
“No,” she said, as she picked up her sandwich and bit into it. “Val, remember to wrap those pieces in newspaper before you put them in the bin.”
“I know,” Val said again, and when she returned to the dining room it was only to collect her book and plate prior to vanishing upstairs.
“I should have done something about this baby!” Evelyn glared at the wall ahead of her, still eating, the first half of her sandwich almost gone. “Well, it’s too bloody late now.”
It was best not to touch her.
He stayed in his chair, watched her finish her lunch.
“I know it’s very hard …” How could he know? But still. “Of course it’s not fair that you have to do it all, the biological side of things … But I’m sure you’ll feel better once it’s born.”
“You are, are you?” She looked up at him, her eyes, always extraordinary, now dark and fiery and liquid all at the same time.
“Yes,” he told her, looking right back. “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” she said, and when she reached for his plate, he thought for a moment she was going to throw that, too.
He was pretty sure he knew the occasion. One Friday in July, they had come home in a taxi from a retirement party. The champagne cocktails served and the rumours of an ensuing promotion for Harry put Evelyn in a very good mood and, dressed for the occasion in high heels, a silver-grey, sheath-like dress, and a pearl necklace he’d splashed out on, she leaned against him and let her hand rest on his leg throughout the taxi ride home. It was a clear night with a half-moon, and once the driver had been paid off they walked through the quiet house and out into the back garden, which was at its utter best, lush even in the dark, and full of the smell of roses. The air was the temperature of skin, with just the faintest breeze stirring through the leaves, and they spent some time there, right on the lawn, kissing, until Harry had by chance glanced up and seen Valerie’s small face in the corner of her window, where she’d pulled the curtain back. The moment he saw her, the curtain fell and she vanished, but even so, he thought it was best to go inside. He was pretty sure that must have been the night.
They’d become rather lackadaisical about precautions and the pregnancy was, so far as he was concerned, a happy accident, but it had become, as he recently told his oldest, Lillian, during their weekly call from her college digs, a rollercoaster. His memory of the previous two, admittedly fading, was that Evelyn had become a softer version of herself when she was pregnant: still energetic, but less so, and at times almost languid. More sensual, too.
