Eve of the Isle

by Carol Rivers

  ‘Don’t you take no notice of her,’ spluttered Peg, almost choking on her words. ‘You’ve done a fine job with your lads. They’ll grow up to appreciate what you’ve taught them, more than all that chanting and praying will do. They’ve learned to stand on their own feet and use their brains. In a few years’ time they’ll be ’elping you or maybe they’ll be pushing pens in an office, or even bashing a ball round on a football pitch. But I can tell you this, whatever they do, they’ll be successful at it, just like their mum.’

  Eve put her arms around Peg and hugged her. ‘I feel so lucky.’

  ‘Yer, we all need a bit of luck in life.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for that old oven packing up and Mr Merritt wanting to sell and me being able to buy the lease on the shop with Joseph’s gift . . . then I s’pose I’d still be selling from me pitch.’

  ‘As I said, times change. And you come a long way gel, since Rattigan.’

  Eve shivered at the mention of his name. ‘Peg?’

  ‘Yes, ducks?’

  ‘Charlie is a good man don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s a good’un all right.’

  ‘I never said, but I saw him once, in a kind of vision. Like I was standing outside of meself, just watching. He saved me life, Peg, and it’s something I’ll never forget.’

  ‘A vision you say?’ Peg coughed and slapped her chest with her hand. ‘You sure you’re feeling all right?’

  Eve laughed. ‘I know it sounds daft.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you from getting hitched? You’d have a nice place to live above the bakery. It’d do fine for a family. Them nuns at St Saviour’s would soon change their tune if they knew you was living in such a posh place.’

  Eve smiled wistfully. ‘Nowhere could ever be like Isle Street. I can still see Raj walking down the hill, see his long legs in them cotton trousers, see the smile on his face when he saw us . . .’

  ‘Ducks, I don’t like all this talk about visions and . . . and ghosts. It ain’t healthy. You’re young yet, you ain’t supposed to cling to the past.’

  ‘Is that what I’m doing?’

  The two women looked at each other. Peg gave a sigh and nodded. ‘You’ll work it out, wait and see.’

  Eve looked around her and all that comprised her life. Thanks to Joseph’s gift, which she fully intended to redeem from ‘Uncle’ when she made enough profit at the shop, her life had taken on a new meaning. She hoped that her sons could learn a decent trade and perhaps Peg was right when she said whatever they did they would be successful.

  Eve thought with gratitude of Mr Merritt’s shop that was now hers, where she had begun to build up a thriving business. There was nothing she enjoyed more than opening the door in the morning and planning the array of flowers that would soon fill it. Her customers had followed her from the streets and brought new interest. The local traders elbowed each other for her stock. Queenie was sending down Archie each morning on a regular basis and sometimes even twice. When Eve turned the sign to ‘Closed’, the shop still smelt sweetly of her distinctive blooms.

  The arrangement had been satisfactory to everyone. Charlie and his brothers had been relieved to see their parents retire. George and Joe had even helped Charlie to redecorate the shop and Dulcie, Edwin, Pam and Eileen, with the children and baby Dulcie, had often come down from the upper rooms to admire the blaze of glorious colours that now replaced the floury shelves of the bakery.

  Eve sighed softly, bringing her thoughts back to number three Isle Street. She owed Charlie so much. She was grateful to him. But was Peg right? Did a small corner inside her still belong to Raj? Was it fair to deny Charlie all of her heart?

  ‘Oh, Raj,’ she sighed, ‘help me, tell me what to do!’

  Eve breathed in the soft April sunshine as her eyes fell on the muddy brown soil at the end of the yard by the dock wall. It was all that remained of her patch of cress. It was cracked and parched from the winter’s cold, but today there was something . . . a sparkle . . . a glint . . . a thread of moisture.

  She stood up and went over. At her feet, a bubble of water escaped the ground. Eve bent down. Stroking her fingers in the cold, clear water, she saw a green shoot.

  Her breath stopped. The stream had started again. And in its thrust one stout little emerald treasure grew.

  A tear of joy slipped down her cheek. Was this her answer from Raj? Like the cress, her first love had slipped away but was not forgotten. Was a new love now free to grow?

  Epilogue

  Tuesday 9th July 1929

  Charlie gazed down on the narrow street below and his heart gave a small twist. This was it, then, the day when his parents would go to live with Joe and Pam in Blackheath. The plan had been mooted last year when the old man had looked so tired and caught that chill. But until the stroke two months ago, when he’d lost his speech and movement in one arm, Joe and Pam’s suggestion hadn’t really been taken seriously. But his brother had a big, rambling house and Pam was eager to have her in-laws safe with the family. And as in-laws went, Charlie reflected proudly, his mum and dad were just about the best. They adored their grandchildren especially the star of the show, little Dulcie.

  He frowned as he saw the two strong figures of George and Joe lift the big couch into the removals van. This was the last real piece of furniture to be loaded before the journey to the auction house. There were just a few bits and pieces remaining, like his mother’s sewing box and his father’s leather bag crammed with his books. Although Charlie had insisted they could leave all their furniture since it wouldn’t be required by Pam and Joe who had a well-furnished home, they had refused, quietly maintaining that much of what they had kept over the years was purely sentimental value. The only things remaining were the beds and wardrobes, and the big kitchen table and chairs. The rooms now looked spacious, freed of their clutter, but he was missing the warmth and untidiness that had characterized his childhood.

  With their sleeves rolled up and their arm muscles bulging, Joe and George made his watching parents look suddenly frail. This move certainly wasn’t before time. With Joseph’s gift, Eve had bought the lease of the shop. His parents had no money worries now, and there was no threat in a future living in comfort and security with their son and his wife.

  A smile slowly formed on Charlie’s lips as he watched a trim figure join his parents. To him, Eve was everything he admired in a woman and more. Her fierce independence was what had first attracted him, but now it also alarmed him. Would she ever consent to be his wife?

  His eyes lingered on her figure: her straight back and the intimate tilt of her dark head that she always gave when close to his mother. They had become firm friends and Charlie knew that Dulcie’s earnest wish was to have Eve for a daughter-in-law. But even as Charlie watched Eve lay the bouquet of red roses in his mother’s arms, he knew in his heart that the woman he loved was still out of reach.

  Charlie dug his hands in his pockets and looked around him. He’d be rattling around in this place for months to come, no doubt. But he had several ideas; redecoration for a start, doing away with the old Victorian embellishments. He wanted to shed light into the rooms, to lift their spirits, but he was no interior decorator.

  Charlie turned away from the window and made his way towards the bedroom he had occupied since infancy. As he walked in he smelt the nostalgia of his youth, this place where he’d forged his dreams and aspirations. His books and magazines were lined on the shelves, each one containing the adventures and thrills that, as a boy, he believed really could happen. Beside these was a photo of him and Robbie as police recruits. He hadn’t been able to put away the picture, even though Robbie had disappeared to the other side of the world. He had been a friend, a sharer in his dreams for a while, but for Robbie the dream had turned sour. Detective Inspector Fleet had told him that Robbie had been fortunate to escape an investigation. And Charlie had kept all he knew to himself. For wasn’t the old saying, ‘But for the grace of God and there go I’?

>   He might well have gone the same way if he hadn’t met Eve. Or would he? Charlie wondered as he stared again into Robbie’s smiling face. Was his own character solid enough to have withstood the temptations that Robbie had introduced him to? He hoped so. He still had ideals, something that Robbie had grown to scorn. For if a man had no ideals in life, what then?

  A pair of his old football boots stood on the shelf below, pristine clean now, though the leather was cracked and the laces cut down. A team photograph stood beside it, this time of sepia faces of eleven-year-old boys smiling in their striped jerseys, arms folded over proud chests and the captain, himself, carrying the cup. He wasn’t much older than Samuel and Albert then. Next season, they too would stand in front of the camera. He had great hopes for his Millwall Under Elevens . . .

  Suddenly Charlie’s eye caught the flash of polished buttons and he turned to stare at the navy blue driver’s uniform that he had collected from the Yard last night.

  He’d still not absorbed the fact that his six months’ driving training at Central CID was now over. It was even more of a mystery to Charlie that the whole thing had started from the time Moody had suspended him and drawn Fleet’s interest. Charlie felt his cheeks flush with pride as he recalled their interview at the Yard.

  ‘How would you like to join us?’ Fleet had asked him as they sat in the detective’s small office. ‘We need good men like you to serve with the Squad.’

  ‘But sir, I’m suspended!’

  ‘We’ve taken care of all that,’ replied Fleet, waving aside the issue. ‘Sergeant Moody has been informed of your transfer to headquarters. That is, of course, if you’re up for the job, Charlie.’

  Charlie had stared in bewilderment as Fleet had continued.

  ‘You have the makings of a damn good Flying Squad detective. You followed your instincts in the Kumar case, determinedly pursued your quarry and collected information. And most importantly, Charlie, you drive and drive amazingly well. Speed is of the essence in the prevention of armed robbery and related professional crime.’

  Charlie had been so shocked by this, that Fleet had taken his silence for reluctance. A grin had come on the detective’s face as he added in a conspiratorial tone, ‘And I can let you into a little secret. This year the Squad is to be allowed forty handpicked officers in total, of which you will be one. We shall be known as C1 Branch. This is a remarkable achievement in a short time since it was only a decade ago that we started off with Detective Chief Inspector Wensley’s twelve inexperienced recruits.’

  It was then, Charlie reflected as his heart leapt yet again at the memory of the conversation, that all his dreams of adventure and honour had been fulfilled. Everything he had ever imagined and desired. All brought about by a twist of fate: the Great Flood and his rescue of a woman he was to fall deeply in love with and their efforts to seek the truth of the past.

  As he looked at the uniform, he knew that he was the luckiest man in the world. Yet, without Eve and the boys in his life, what would this mean to him?

  Just then, a hand touched his shoulder. He turned, slightly startled as he came swiftly out of his thoughts.

  ‘Charlie, your parents are just leaving.’

  He smiled, his heart doing yet another flip at the beauty of this woman. Her deep brown hair swept up behind her head in a style that added elegance rather than age to her years. The soft grey business suit that had replaced the shawl and traditional dress of the street flower-seller. Her startling amber eyes, as they smiled up at him.

  ‘I only wish I had a motor to drive them over to Blackheath in,’ he complained. ‘If I hadn’t wrecked the van . . .’

  ‘You’ll get another one soon.’ She took his face in her hands. ‘Charlie, I’m so proud of you. Detective Constable Merritt of the Flying Squad.’

  He laughed in embarrassment. ‘Not a detective yet. It’s only an honorary title. I’ve a long way to go before I’m plain clothes.’

  ‘Honorary or not, you’re our hero.’

  ‘Eve, perhaps this isn’t the right time to ask—’

  ‘Charlie, let’s go down and say goodbye.’ She looked up into his eyes and just at that very moment when he felt that there would never ever be the right time to tell her how much he loved her and just how much he wanted to take care of her and the boys, she drew his head down and placed her mouth to his. He held her so tightly against him that he felt he might break every bone in her body. And then, as the passion coursed through him and his heart melted, she breathed soft words in his ear.

  ‘And then I’m closing the shop for an hour. After all,’ she murmured, raising her mouth to his again, ‘I’m a shopkeeper now and I’ve got to take me perks where I can find them.’

  At this they began to laugh, laugh so desperately and deliciously that Charlie knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he would always have this woman beside him as they stepped into their long-dreamed of future.