After You Left

by Carol Mason

  He seemed subdued, perhaps by her bringing Mark into the picture.

  ‘What’s your biggest fear in life, Evelyn?’

  ‘Oh!’ she blanched. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps never knowing the answers to all these questions I keep torturing myself with!’

  He interlaced his fingers behind his head, and her eyes followed the one pronounced blue vein that ran down his inner arm. ‘Mine is looking back at my life and thinking how one wrong choice ended up defining everything that happened to me.’

  ‘Urgh!’ She shuddered. ‘Let’s not think about wrong choices.’

  London. 1963

  She arrived at Annabel’s in an emerald-green, ankle-length dress from Harrods. The price tag still dangled on a string down her back; she’d return it the next day. She recognised him as soon as she saw him, of course. She’d seen him many times around the hotel: seen him, without really seeing him.

  He leant a little closer to hear her over the music. ‘I had to really work up the courage to ask you out. In the end, I could only do it with flowers. I don’t find these things easy, I’m afraid . . .’

  She believed him. He was a little clean-cut for her tastes, but he was modest and unassuming, and she liked him instantly. He had warm, honey-brown eyes, a quiet charm and a confidence that would work well on women who would have normally been out of his reach. He smoked Cohiba cigars, and she remembered thinking he was probably the only man who could hold his pinkie-finger in the air and still look masculine. She would always remember how he looked at her that first time, as though she was the springboard for a sudden shift in his priorities. It all felt very signed and sealed, very fast, and in the dark crevices of her mind she was thinking that if only she had felt more infatuated, it would have been storybook.

  On their second date, he took her to Hyde Park for a picnic. ‘There are people starving all over the world, and we’re feasting on all this!’ She had never tasted expensive champagne, let alone eaten caviar or oysters. ‘There are things in that hamper that I’m not even sure are edible. I think we’re eating hamper bunting!’

  ‘You don’t have to eat it, if you don’t want to.’ He playfully tried to snatch a small lamb chop from her hand. She laughed. They sat by the Serpentine in the dappled shade of a tree, only her bare feet spot-lit in a random patch of sunshine. People passed by and looked at them. She felt like Eliza Doolittle at the races. He kept watching her wiggle her toes. Once in a while, he would meet her eyes. He was studying her, as though he was trying to work out how not to lose her.

  One month after their first date, he slipped her best cerise cashmere cardigan from her shoulders. Underneath, she wore a simple cream shift dress that she’d teamed with pearls. She remembered his gentle kisses down the back of her neck, and thinking that she’d never been so tenderly picked over by anyone. He was patient with her when she told him that she didn’t have vast experience. In being trained by him, she somehow became his.

  He took her everywhere. A whirlwind of ‘in’ bars and members-only restaurants. She rubbed shoulders with shipping magnates and European royalty. They had front-row seats to witness Beatlemania before the Queen and Princess Margaret at the Prince of Wales Theatre. He took her shopping on the King’s Road, where she bought one of the first-ever Mary Quant miniskirts. ‘Why do you never wear that stunning dress you wore on our first date?’ he once asked.

  She told him how she’d had to return it.

  He took hold of her hand. ‘I promise you, Evelyn, if you stick with me you’ll never have to return clothes again.’

  Part of her loved this idea; the other part was the one she was frustrated with.

  For Christmas, he bought her a car: a newly launched Rover P6. In the new year, he suggested she leave her job at Claridge’s.

  And then Mark Westland had his bride on his arm. Evelyn’s head was still spinning when she entered the small Gloucestershire church, the day that Elizabeth Taylor first married Richard Burton. ‘I love you, Mrs Westland,’ he said.

  ‘I love you, too,’ she replied. And she meant it. But serenely, without fireworks.

  Mark had introduced her to his parents just one month before the wedding. It was then that she understood how rich he was. He had kept it from her because he so desperately wanted to be perceived as ordinary. He was the youngest of four children, and she later learnt that he barely got on with his siblings. Only in time did she understand how he could occasionally be stubborn, and that this could cause rifts among his family that he did little to rectify.

  Her parents came to the wedding. There was a marked divide down the centre of their photographs, especially the ones of the happy couple flanked by both sets of parents. She thought she’d never seen her mother look so pretty, and yet so weathered and out of her depth. Her father’s rugged fisherman’s complexion beside the insipid fairness of Mark’s father said it all without words.

  ‘You should have got married in your own church,’ her mother reprimanded her. ‘That’s what brides do. They marry in their own home town.’ Her mother was right. Evelyn regretted that all her life.

  ‘You’d better get home before the tide strands you here,’ she said to Eddy, as his van turned down her street. It was a little like déjà vu. It had almost happened this way before.

  He parked at her front door, and there was a moment when they both just sat there.

  Conflicting thoughts sailed through her head. You only get one life. Do unto others as you’d be done by. No regrets. She placed her hand on the door handle, but couldn’t move it. She knew he was experiencing a similar dilemma. A strange and unsettling traction existed between them; she needed to break it, but was powerless.

  ‘Evelyn,’ he said, very quietly.

  At what point had she already crossed a line? When she had held his eyes in the Mayfair Ballroom, in the presence of her unsuspecting husband? When she’d allowed him to help paint the house?

  Don’t do it, she thought. Don’t make a good life complicated. Be honourable to Mark because that’s who you are. A decent person.

  She was palpably aware of her heartbeat, of his leg just inches away from hers, his left hand on the wheel, the way he kept clenching and unclenching his fingers.

  ‘Evelyn,’ he said again, this time more assertively. ‘I need to hold you again. I can’t know you went back to London and I didn’t get to do that.’

  She could hear her pulse: a loud whishing in her ears, so distracting that she wasn’t sure if he had said it or if she had imagined it. She opened her mouth to reply.

  Yes was poised to come out.

  But then she saw Mark’s kind face, and her life, and their home, and his trust.

  ‘No,’ she said, and then, ‘I’m sorry! I can’t do this!’

  She dove out. As her foot met the pavement, she stumbled and twisted her ankle slightly. She hobbled quickly for the refuge of her house, registering the tingling pain and the embarrassing melodrama. Her rejection of him weighed on her like an albatross around her neck. She could feel his gaze attaching itself to her, could feel the enormity of his regret. When she quickly glanced back, he was still sitting there. His hands were clutching his head as though he was having some sort of brain burst.

  I mustn’t look, she thought. I can’t bear it.

  THIRTEEN

  He didn’t come the next day, or the next. She made trips over to the mainland to buy groceries and cat food, pay bills, to peruse the windows of the estate agencies – anything to keep busy. One afternoon, she went back to Bamburgh and sat in the exact same spot where she had sat with him, wondering why she lived her life always trying to recreate things.

  There was a man on the beach with his son. She watched the little boy run full throttle to the water and then stop short before it touched him. Sometimes, she missed being a mother so deeply that she had to just fold in on herself and let the anguish of the lost opportunity roll over her. Maybe a baby would have made her more settled, more content, given her less time on her hands to think ab
out herself. I want that man to be Eddy, and that little boy to be our child, she thought, in rampant desperation, recognising the drama of it – how it had all suddenly stepped up. Her common sense was telling her to get a grip; she had a different life to this alternate one she suddenly thought she wanted, and it would be best that she went back to London and got on with living it.

  By day four she was going insane. She rang Mark and listened to his voice. There had been a family gathering with all his nephews. The youngsters were tiresome in their mischief. Their friends, the Bradbury-Coombs, had done the dastardly thing of popping in unexpectedly when Mark was in the middle of his dinner. His meal was entirely ruined. He thought they’d never leave. Timothy Bradbury-Coombs drank nearly all his Scotch. Mark told her how dire the weather was, and how the Tube workers might be going on strike again.

  She could have been talking to an occasional friend or a second cousin. If anything, it left her feeling guilty that she failed to miss him or to hugely long to see him. ‘Do you think you would mind if I stayed on here a bit? There’s still so much to do . . .’

  There was a pause. Then, ‘Do? What, for instance?’

  ‘Well, painting. And I was thinking about the floors—’

  ‘Floors?’

  The lie lay in her conscience like a tumour. She had never deceived Mark, other than to tell him the shop had lost his dry-cleaning, to avoid confessing she’d forgotten to have Tessie send it in.

  ‘I thought you were just freshening the place up, Ev. Not rebuilding it from the ground up.’ There was a petulant note in his voice.

  ‘I thought we said I’d stay here for as long as needed.’ She was feeding him a lie that he would recognise as a manipulation.

  ‘You said you would extend your ticket if you had to – yes. But I honestly didn’t think you’d have to.’ Mark had a way of appealing to her higher conscience for the right thing to prevail. When she didn’t answer, he asked, ‘Well, how much longer do you think you need?’

  She heard the emptiness. The abandoned puppy. Despite his age and his accomplishments, there was a part of Mark that had stayed a little boy. He missed her like a child would miss his mother.

  ‘Perhaps another week.’

  ‘A week?’ His disappointment was palpable. It should have mattered, yet all she could think about was the need to buy herself more time. Her heart pounded as she waited for his answer.

  ‘Well, do as you will,’ he said.

  She tried not to let out her relief until she had hung up. For a brief second, she felt she’d signed a lease on freedom.

  Then she did something that she knew crossed a line.

  His street was a long row of pre-war terraces. She peered at numbers until she found his. It had fresh paintwork and a mint-green door. Out front by the gate were a child’s pink bike and a pair of tiny pink plimsolls. Evelyn was driving her mother’s old car. She parked it two houses away on the opposite side. After sitting there for about ten minutes, she got out and crossed the street, focussing on the clip of her heels to try to ignore the wild pounding of her heart.

  She gave three tentative raps. She hadn’t fully decided what she’d say if his wife came to the door. She tried to remember that, as far as Laura knew, she was just Mrs Coates’ daughter. No one was going to read her face and know any different.

  She could hear music from a radio indoors. Suddenly, she got cold feet. She was just on the point of turning around and sneaking away when the door opened and Eddy appeared.

  ‘Evelyn?’ Shock and mild annoyance registered all over his face. She heard a voice say, ‘Who is it, Edward?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he shot back, stepping outside and letting the door close part way. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, in a rushed whisper.

  She flooded with shame. ‘I came to see when you are coming back to finish painting. We still have a job to do.’ She didn’t really know what she was saying. It mortified her to act like she had a right to him. ‘You didn’t finish,’ she said, almost curtly.

  She could see the alarm in his eyes. ‘I can’t. I can’t be there. Can’t see you, be so close to you, and not be able to, to . . .’

  The woman in the house said, ‘Edward?’

  ‘I can’t handle this, Evelyn. I might look like I can, but it’s too much for me.’

  She nodded, and backed away while his eyes held on to hers. Then she turned around and almost broke into a run.

  The last thing she remembered was hearing the door close a little too firmly. Like someone shutting out a potential intruder and trying not to give the impression they had felt threatened.

  The following day, she went back to the paint shop. The woman behind the counter observed her with too much interest. Evelyn bought some supplies and hurried out.

  Back at the car, she was trying to balance her purchases on one arm and open the boot with her free hand when she heard him say, ‘Hello Evelyn.’ It was as though her ribs collapsed with the weight of her relief.

  ‘Can I help with those?’ He was behind her. His manner was perfunctory. He didn’t meet her eyes. Without waiting for her reply, he took the cans of paint from her, and her keys. ‘Here.’ He opened the boot and put the cans in. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’ She thought he sounded mildly impatient.

  She didn’t know why he would have stopped to speak to her if he was going to be like this. ‘I really don’t need your help.’ She tried to wrestle the third can off him, which was mildly absurd. He finally stopped struggling and let her take it, then held up both of his hands in surrender. ‘You need some more white for the ceiling. We had run out.’ Before she could speak, he had walked off, and she thought he was leaving, but he went into the shop. When he came out, carrying another can, he seemed more relaxed; it was as though she might have imagined his earlier hostility. It fanned her flame for him in a way she hadn’t been prepared for. It no longer mattered that he hadn’t come earlier. It mattered that he was here now.

  ‘You were just passing?’

  ‘I followed you.’

  ‘Followed me? I thought you’d never want to see me again!’

  ‘Well, maybe not on my doorstep. But I did want to see you again. Desperately. You’re all I can think about. I was telling my friend Stanley I have this so bad it’s ruling me like I never thought I could be ruled.’ He moved in to perhaps kiss her neck and stopped himself. ‘I tell myself I can’t see you, I mustn’t see you, but I can’t stay away from you.’

  ‘I thought you hated me now.’

  He searched her face, like a man torn between loathing and enjoying this trial-and-error, hit-and-miss process of getting to know a woman. ‘Hated? If anything, I thought you would hate me after how I behaved . . . Evelyn, maybe if I hadn’t been married all these years I’d have had a bit more practice – a better grasp of boundaries and when to cross them. But then you showed up at my door. That was the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve had in this lifetime.’

  She loved his confession.

  ‘I need to kiss you, to have you in my arms. You can’t run away from me again. We only have one life. We can’t mess this up again.’

  ‘But it’s wrong.’ She jumped into the car without really thinking, and slammed the door. What was she doing? Her hands clutched the wheel. She was light-headed. She put the car into reverse while he just stood there, clearly confused. She pulled out of the parking spot a little too abruptly. The car bucked. She stalled the engine, started it and tried to do it all over again, this time without the ‘getaway driver’ sound effects.

  Then, through the rear-view mirror she saw him walk toward his van. She could feel the throbbing bass line of her heartbeat. He climbed into his vehicle. A moment or two later, he was following her.

  Her hands sweated so much that she couldn’t grip the steering wheel properly. She drove across the causeway to the island with a daredevil quality loose in her. He followed close behind. She wound down her window and let the salt breeze dry the perspiration on the back of her n
eck. When she arrived on the island, she drove the short distance to her street, the car bump-bumping over the uneven road. His was the only vehicle behind hers now. Her stomach flipped like a dolphin.

  As she walked up her path, her legs were like puppy legs, not quite going the way she wanted them to.

  She successfully unlocked the door on her first attempt. He was so close behind her that she could feel his body heat. Then they were inside her kitchen. She stood in the middle of the floor, and felt his hands on her hips, his breath a warm draught on her neck. ‘Is it anything other than inevitable, Evelyn?’ he asked. ‘Because if it is, then tell me now and we won’t do this.’

  But before she could answer, he spun her around and kissed her. It wasn’t very smooth. He dove in so quickly that he misaimed and got her nose. They both moved, and there was another collision of faces. But then . . . ‘Third time lucky,’ he whispered. Then he was kissing her smile.

  It went from tender to hot in 1.67 seconds. Instantaneous acceleration. Exactly as she remembered. His hand at the back of her skull supported her head. The feel of his mouth – another man’s kiss – was stunning, intoxicating.

  Eddy’s kiss.

  His weight rocked her slightly off her feet. She reached up on her tiptoes to slide her arms around his neck, losing herself in the momentum of their passion, in the taste of him, in the feel of a different man’s body. Someone taller, broader, harder, more into her and in touch with her than Mark, on what felt like every possible level.

  Eddy’s body.

  She said his name. He said hers. They laughed. They had surprised themselves and each other. His gaze burrowed into her, touching chords of longing. She held on to him, clutching whatever part of him she could clutch, lost in the smell of his skin, his clothes, his body heat, the strength of him, his keen desire for her.

  ‘Evelyn,’ he said, after he’d carried her into her old bedroom. He picked open the fiddly buttons of her blouse and laid his hand on her rapidly beating heart. He looked moved, almost sad.