“Alan hates the city. I did, too, until…” I waited for her to ask, but she only watched, a patient frown pulling at her lips, “until I saw how kind it can be.” I bowed my head. “Alan loves yellow.”
“Then we will get you a yellow dress to wear for the man you love and want to marry.” She rose and gestured to the shop. I blinked, my head feeling a little hazy and numb, but I’m certain she didn’t drug me. If anything, I was drugged by the image of my own face in red lipstick and a black hat. I followed the woman reluctantly, clutched my handbag and tried to fit my thoughts straight again.
She held up the yellow dress I’d hated when I walked in. “I like this one,” I said and gestured to the one I still wore, realising I hadn’t checked the price yet. When I looked down at it I noticed a tear clinging to the top of my peeking breast where it had fallen.
“It is not a city dress,” she warned me.
I shook back my hair bravely. “It doesn’t need to be. I won’t be coming to London again. I belong in Kepsdale. I like it so much better there. How much does this cost?” I asked, trying to reach for the tag.
“I don’t know,” she told me. “It’s not my shop. Let me check the label.”
“This isn’t your shop?” I bent down so she could read it easily.
“I am watching over it while my friend is away. One guinea,” she announced.
I sighed. Everyone in the country hates the pretentious guinea. For us the pound is plenty good enough. “I’ll go take it off so you can box it. Is your friend on holiday?” I pulled the curtain of the stock room closed behind me but listened for her answer.
“More on errand. I sent her to the continent to retrieve a young man.”
I laughed. “You make her sound like a Saint Bernard.”
“There is sometimes very little time for these things.” She said it just as I was pulling my arms from the sleeves and I pushed my hand to my heart.
“Little time for what things?”
“Telling the right people you love them. Saving the people who need to be saved. There was a boy who needed to be retrieved before time ran out.”
I sat down on a box, holding the crisp dress in my hand, the curtain still hiding me from her. “The war?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“The war,” she confirmed.
And strangely, it was the first time I believed in it. Despite Alan ripped to ribbons in hospital, the stream of uniformed young men down the streets and stern, brave speeches over the wireless, I still imagined it would not come. I put my own dress back on, tugging the seams straight against my waist.
The war would come. For Alan. For Marion. Perhaps William. I closed my eyes and forced myself to think of one more name. Jonathon. Quiet, awkward, graceful, gentle Jonathon. I even knew what his pillow smelled like (Pears’ soap and Liquorice Allsorts). Knew where he sat after a long working day in London. Knew what robe he wrapped in. I shook my head and saw the shaking was everywhere, running the length of me.
I yanked back the curtain like a Yorkshire farmer instead of a graceful Oriental. “Alan’s already been wounded. Perhaps he will stay home now and we will get married right away and save the farm. perhaps this was the best thing that could have happened.” As soon as I said it I was shocked I hadn’t realised earlier. If he were to come home would we be married immediately? A great shiver overtook me.
The woman nodded and fingered a silver pearl comb in her hair. After a moment of quiet, she held out a folded bundle in her arms and let it fall open into a silk dress of misty grey. “You should look with both eyes before you decide.” As it slid from her hands to mine it washed over my arms like falling water. I’d never felt a dress so weightless. The cut was so simple it looked shockingly rich with vertical pleats running up the chest and short, tailored sleeves. She took the red poppy dress from my hands and traded me for the one that reminded me of the morning fog creeping over the Pennines. “I’ll try it,” I agreed and turned back to the stockroom.
This time I took my lavender dress off slowly, shedding it like a fragile old skin. The new one fluttered over me, melting against my legs. The skirt had looked full, but it clung, rippling against me with every movement. When I got the courage to look myself full in the mirror I stared into the eyes of a stranger. Though they were as brown as ever, something in them glowed with colour, like the sky at night when the black has not entirely washed out the beryl hues. It wouldn’t do at all for a farm, but for walking to the cinema or driving to Harrogate for dinners it was stunning. I didn’t purposefully imagine it, but I saw myself standing in front of a great, black window looking out on a night punctuated with city lights. I recognised the flat immediately.
I removed the dress with reluctant fingers and tried to imagine what Alan would think of it. Would it look too modern to him? Perhaps he needed the bright red flowers to keep his spirits up. When I was dressed again I stepped out; the woman waited for me with the flowered dress. I looked from her hands to mine. “I thought the first one was perfect,” I said with a note of despair. “It looked so well. It looked…”
“Just like you imagined?”
“Yes. Only…it’s that…” My tongue tied round the words. “I wasn’t looking for one like the grey and it…also fit.” I looked up at her, begged silently for some resolution. “I should keep the flowered one. Once you’ve lost your heart to something, you should trust your first instincts. One’s heart shouldn’t move all about.”
The woman blinked at me, as if giving me a moment to say more. When I didn’t, she said, “I will put the other one away.” She reached for the grey dress, lifting it tenderly as if it concealed something precious in its folds. I opened my mouth to protest, but she moved with such finality. She wrapped the flowered dress with care, tucking it into an embossed box.
“How much did the other one cost?” I blurted as she counted out my change.
She did not look up from the bills as she shuffled them from one hand to the other. “More expensive, I am sure. Fine things always cost us dearly.” She placed the pounds into my hand, lifting her lashes to look into my stricken face. “But what would life be without fine things?”
“I’ve had so few,” I whispered, taking my purchase. “Thank you for the lovely tea. I’m sorry I blubbered a bit.”
“You didn’t,” she reassured me.
As I opened the door the beads clattered against the glass like laughter that is too loud.
“And yet,” she called after me, just before I let go of the handle, “it does move.” Her soft voice carried clear.
“Excuse me?” I turned back, my neck going cold like iceburn.
Her placid grin betrayed nothing but an innocent remark. I daresay I believe she knew something, though I don’t see how. “You say a heart doesn’t move,” she said, “but that would mean it is dead. Love should always move us.”
Only she was wrong because for one brief moment my heart didn’t move at all, it laid still as stone in my chest, as mute and blind as a statue of a telescope. When it started to hum again I could think of only one thing to say. “I hope your friend retrieves the boy.”
The woman gave me a radiant smile, her small teeth a row of pearls beneath her shell-pink lips and the wrinkles of her face like the ripples in sand. The door fell closed between us and I clutched my dressbox, startled by the fierce daylight and the smell of frying fish.
When Theo and I returned to hospital the woman at the desk handed us a slip of paper. “Mr. Doran left a note,” she said, hardly pausing her busy fingers. I watched her type, wonderfully glad to see she didn’t go any faster than me. Perhaps a typist position would be a fair way to get on for a bit should it come to it.
Theo opened the card and told me Jonathon had a meeting with Marion. “He says he rented a room for us at the Woolwich Hotel. He’ll be eating dinner there with Marion at nine tonight if either or both of us would like to join them. No reply necessary.” She turned it over to check the back. “That’s all it says. That
means eating with Marion tonight! It is a good thing they are not billing us for these favours!”
“Why is he doing it?” I asked. The woman darted a glance up at me and then shot her eyes back to her paper.
“Some people thrive on philanthropy. It eases their conscience. Class wars and proletariats and such…” Theo reapplied her crimson lipstick, looking vastly less concerned with proletariats than her dinner date.
“But the Dorans aren’t like that at all. I’ve met his mother. She was the least bourgeois lady, and the boys don’t throw their names about for anything.”
“That’s because they’re new money, of course. Keep your head down for several generations.”
I could tell we’d not agree on motivations, though I certainly didn’t have any idea why they were so kind. I only knew it had nothing to do with money or position. “I need to get back to Alan. Shouldn’t I be sitting beside him, sponging his head or something?”
Theo laughed. “Very Nightingale of you. I’ll just call you Florence. I think all he needs is a pretty smile and a distraction. Go put on your new dress.”
I used the restroom to change and came out feeling infinitely better. There was even a bottle of scent on the counter so I dabbed some beneath my arms. The dress looked wonderful but pulled even tighter than I’d realised in the store. I had to strain to move my arms all the way forward, but it did look lovely. Theo freshened my lipstick and gave my cheeks sharp a pinch.
“Ow, you needn’t do it so hard,” I reprimanded her.
“Don’t be silly. Beauty hurts and you look ravishing.” She wanted to see Alan also, so we agreed I would go first and she would follow after a respectable amount of time in case there was some lovering.
I entered the ward and the nurse looked pleased to see me again. “I’ll get you a seat. He’s still sleeping.” She carried a metal chair to his bedside and placed it with a clunk next to him. His lip moved a fraction, but he slept on. “You’ll be a vision to wake to,” she told me, but I had the feeling she was making up for flirting with my fiancé. It simply didn’t bother me much because he was too injured to care and it felt good to know someone smiled at him when I wasn’t there.
I sat beside him and took up his hand, not sure if I wanted him to slumber or wake. I wanted very much for him to see my dress, but I didn’t feel ready to speak to him yet. I studied him while I decided.
His bare shoulders were beautiful. One had a dark freckle that fascinated me because it grew exactly one hair precisely in the middle of it. Nothing about those shoulders felt like they belonged to me. When the nurse saw me sitting silently she told me the men like to be spoken to, even when it seems they can’t hear. I waited until she left and started in a whisper about the sheep. I told him we’d lost fifty-three, an almost impossible number and the ones left had a bad crop of wool. “It’s thin and wiry,” I told him. “And I think ten are blind or close to it. Mr. Weller says our only hope is to sell now and right away. But what would you come home to? I feel like the rest of us would muddle through, but not you.” It’s strange I hadn’t realised I felt that until I drew my mouth up close to his limp hand and dropped the words into his palm. “Alan, if not for the farm, what would you have? Where would you go?”
I checked his face to see if his eyes fluttered open but his breaths stayed deep and undisturbed. “I could beg the Dorans. I don’t know that they would do it, but they’ve hinted they might help us. But then the farm would be theirs and could you bear that? What good is saving it if I’m not saving it for you?” I tried to look into the crystal ball of the future, beyond the black years of war and foreclosure. I tried like mad to see green grass and Alan kissing me passionately, but it all felt like paper dolls jerking unnaturally in my hands as I tried to make the people do what I wanted. “I suppose you will have to learn to bear it, if it’s the only way. I’d never realised how much you hated rich men until I saw the way you looked at the Dorans. But I suppose it is natural for someone who has had to claw a life from nothing.” I pictured Jonathon and Marion as I’d seen them the first night at the Valentine dance, their faces flushed with dancing and drink and possibilities. “I don’t hate them at all.”
Then I tried to tempt him awake by telling him about my new dress and how we would walk out together. Keeping my voice low enough that it would not reach the other convalescing men I said, “I made sure to get one that swings when I step. And full of colour. And I do look grown up. It’s not a city dress at all. I thought you would like it that way.”
That is about the time Theo came and pouted sympathetically at him and even gave him a red kiss on his hair. “Feel better, dear,” she said to him. Then to me, “You know I think him dull as bread, but he is gorgeous when he sleeps. I’ll be terribly jealous of you every night and sincerely sorry for you every day,” she teased.
That made me laugh in the most guilty way and the nurse brought a seat for Theo and a deck of cards donated by one of the other patients, which I thought very thoughtful. We sat and played gin using Alan’s blanket for our table, and talked of normal things as if suffering did not hover in the air around us.
Theo gave up at half past three in the afternoon. After taking a tour round to the other men in the room and speaking with them she left for the hotel, telling me she would see me whenever I returned. I was bored to madness with cards and had nothing to read. I had closed my eyes, wondering if I would join the Dorans for dinner when a brisk voice interrupted my thoughts.
“How is the patient doing today?”
I jerked my eyes open and looked up at a middle-aged doctor cloaked in a white jacket with thinning hair and spectacles.
“He’s been sleeping for hours. He had trouble breathing earlier.” I tried not to dwell on the image of Alan’s eyes wide with pain.
“Are you a friend? We’ve listed him as having no family.” He said without looking up from his clipboard.
“Fiancée.” The word scratched against my tongue. I was certain his family still lived, but he must not have claimed them. I certainly wasn’t going to tell on him.
“Very good. You should know he suffered minor trauma to the head, face, and extremities.” He listed off Alan’s body parts like a dull nursery rhyme. “He suffered extensive trauma to the chest and lungs. One lung collapsed completely. The other partially. We removed all known debris and expect him to fully recover within two months. Barring any complications he will be back to duty when deemed fit. There should be no lasting effects.” He finally glanced at my non-plussed face.
“No effects?” I managed to choke out, but he had lost interest in me.
He tapped Alan’s foot rather hard. “Mr. Canavan? Are you able to wake up?”
He managed to shake Alan awake, putting me into a fury at the same time. Alan moved his groggy head to the side, finally pushing his eyelids open. He tried to focus on the doctor and me at the same time and grimaced. The doctor began asking him questions but it took several tries before Alan could answer instead of just stare up in confusion. He told the doctor he wasn’t in much pain, but all the while he clenched his teeth, sucking in breaths with a hiss. The doctor praised him on his “buck and cheer” and hurried away to another bed.
“He’s a beast,” I spat.
“You’re here.” Alan stared as if he didn’t believe his eyes.
“Of course, I’m here. Theo was here too, but she left to rest at the hotel.”
Alan moved his hand, looking for my fingers. I gave them willingly for him to squeeze. “How are you affording it all? We’re skint as paupers.”
I thought of the train tickets, the hired car, the hotel room, the borrowed flat. “Mr. Weller gave me five pounds to make the trip. But don’t you worry about that.” I stroked his hand, avoiding the tube running under his skin.
“Five pounds? You should use it for the farm. Eve, we have to save the farm.”
“Five pounds won’t save the farm. But it did get me here,” I pointed out.
He didn’t smile. H
e stared up at the ceiling and then back at me. “Is that a new dress?”
My face lit up with a smile and I cocked my head to one side, taking a bash at being coy. “Do you like it?”
“We can’t afford it.” Then seeing how the light faded out of my eyes he amended. “You already looked pretty in your old clothes.”
Moving my hand down my ribs where the seams pulled tight, I swallowed against the bitter taste in my mouth and nodded in agreement. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have…” I whispered. Then I cleared my throat and made my words come out strong. “There is someone left to ask for help.” I clamped my hand firmer on his, hoping to hold down any objections. “I can ask the Dorans if they will buy the farm and let us manage it for them.”
Alan flinched, his face hardening with unspoken words. He didn’t answer for a long time. “It’d not be use nor ornament to them, but I don’t see why not. If they want to buy our farm and let me care for it until I can buy it back it’s the least they can do. We all have to do our part.”
“They do do their part,” I responded quickly. “They’re not getting any gentlemen’s concessions, as you well know.”
Alan made a thick scoffing sound in his throat. “Then tell me ‘ow that wazzock is a second lieutenant already? I wonder ‘ow many more o’ us he’ll maim before the Huns get a go. And the older one is sittin’ it all out I hear.”
How ugly the words sounded in his mouth. I’d never heard Alan insult another man and didn’t wish to hear it again. Perhaps he’d learned too much in the army already. “Jonathon is sitting nothing out.” My voice didn’t rise in volume, but in urgency. “He’s overseeing land management and food production so the soldiers and people have food. A rather important detail, don’t you think?”
Alan’s eyes went from mocking to gravely serious. “Certainly a safe detail. They’re a bad lot, Eve. I don’t want you associating with them. Mary is said to have two girls in trouble.”
To Move the World (Power of the Matchmaker) Page 19
