by Anna Larner
Eve remembered Roxanne joking that one person in the room made it full, two made it crowded, and three people represented a fire hazard.
Eve slurred at Roxanne, “You have a tiny room, Rox. No wonder you’re always at mine.” Eve wrestled out of her boots and collapsed onto Roxanne’s single bed, her cowboy hat squashed under her head. “Your bed’s really uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, shove over.” Roxanne gave Eve a hearty push in the direction of the cold wall.
“Is that your truncheon or are you pleased to see me?” Eve giggled and hiccuped again.
Roxanne pulled her pillow from under Eve’s head. “You are totally pissed, Eddison. If you puke on me, you’re dead.”
Eve rolled into Roxanne and wrapped her arms around her. “Uh-huh.” There was a pause followed by an almost inaudible mumble. “You’re my best friend, Rox—the very best friend in the whole world, the whole wide universe world.”
*
Eve stood in the middle of her living room, as if waiting for something or someone. It had felt wrong to leave Roxanne without saying goodbye. It had felt wrong to walk away in stocking feet, her boots in her hand. But she had woken with a start, Moira’s name at her lips. And then she couldn’t stop thinking about the parcel that waited for her. The parcel she couldn’t throw out.
Eve’s head hurt. She felt sick. Sick and confused. I need a drink. She poured herself a glass of water, drinking it down in one thirsty gulping rhythm. She numbly wiped the wet from her chin with her sleeve, her eyes staring, rather than looking, at the parcel. Moira.
Dear Eve,
Eve squinted at the sunrise tipping over her windowsill into her living space. She imagined Moira writing the letter, sitting amongst her plant cuttings, the light from her sunroom window fading on the pages as she wrote. Eve lifted the paper to her nose. It smelt strongly of the neat bouquet of ferns, heather, and gorse petals with which it had travelled.
I know I have hurt you. I am very sorry for that. I did not tell you I was married because I thought you would think differently of me. Please understand I never set out to deceive you.
Eve sat pensively on the edge of her sofa, the remnants of the torn-open parcel at her feet. But you did deceive me though. I trusted you. The two weeks that had passed since Moira’s revelation had done nothing to dull the hurt Eve felt.
A part of Eve didn’t want to read on. Reading on somehow felt like a complicit act of forgiveness. I’m not going to forgive you, Moira. You can send all the letters and flowers you want. And yet discarding the parcel unopened, the letter within unread, felt equally intolerable.
I need to explain. To explain how I came to marry. I need to explain about my life, about me.
Eve held the letter tightly with both hands, keeping it flat against her lap, almost as if she feared that Moira’s words of explanation would slip from the pages and be lost like dropped jigsaw pieces onto the floor.
As a child I played and grew up amongst crofters, my family, and friends. I learnt about life from the natural world around me. I felt safe, I felt free. As I grew older, things changed. I went away to college in Ayrshire to study, to learn about caring for my homeland. It was always my intention, when I graduated, to return to Newland, to Foxglove.
The memory of Moira’s croft, the hens in her garden, the magical glade, the image of Moira, spilled uncontrollably into Eve’s thoughts. The noise of delivery men unloading in the street outside jolted Eve back to the present, to the letter, to the promise of an explanation.
I didn’t plan to fall in love. Iris wasn’t part of my plan. It somehow never occurred to me that I would meet someone, fall for someone. I certainly didn’t plan to move in with Iris after college, it just happened. Not being with each other, it wasn’t an option for us. I couldn’t be without her.
Eve shuffled in her seat. She felt her heart quicken as she read the name Iris. Eve had thought a lot about Iris—the woman Moira had wanted to be with forever. Forever. And every time she thought of Iris it made Eve feel terribly sad, for surely there was no room for Eve, or for anyone else, in forever. Eve took a deep breath and read on.
Over time, Iris and her band, The Bells, became more and more well known, first in Inverness and then the local regions. They were developing a following and the local press were besotted with Iris. Everyone was besotted with Iris.
At first, the press speculated that Iris was dating one of her band mates. Each one was linked to her at some point. And then, out of the blue, an article appeared in the Chronicle, our local paper. They had taken a picture of Iris, half-naked with her back to the camera, looking at me. We were just talking, but the headline, it read, “Breast of Friends?” My father read the Chronicle, Angus and Elizabeth read the Chronicle, they all saw the article. It was so humiliating Eve, deeply, deeply humiliating. We denied it, of course, at least to the press and to family. The band was really good, they also denied the story. John even told them he was dating me, you know, to put them off the scent. Whenever we went anywhere, John would put his arm around me. It annoyed Iris, we rowed about it. I thought it was a good idea. John didn’t seem to mind.
Eve’s mind was working overtime, reading between the lines of everything Moira was writing, retracing what she had seen, what she had heard. I bet it annoyed Iris, for John to be all over you. It would have annoyed me.
Iris tried to tell me that it would be okay if we told people about us, that we were in the music business and that it would be okay. I wasn’t in the music business—I was teaching. I was a teacher, not a gay rights activist. I had to think about my job, about my students. I had no choice but to protect my reputation if I were to continue teaching. And there was my father, he was elderly, old fashioned, I couldn’t bring him shame. I wouldn’t bring shame on Angus and Elizabeth, on Newland. I just couldn’t Eve, you have to understand I just couldn’t.
The Bells got a manager and he set up tour dates, right across the UK. It would mean that they would be away for months at a time. Iris pleaded with me to travel with them. I felt torn. I couldn’t imagine being without her and yet I couldn’t get that picture out of my head. That awful picture.
We kept in touch. She would ring me each night before she went onstage. I was her strength, she would say. After six months they were nominated for a newcomer’s folk award. It was a really big deal. Iris asked me to come to the ceremony with her. We agreed that I would sit between her and John. They won and when they announced The Bells, Iris went to kiss me, and I panicked, I turned away, and then John was holding me, kissing me. The cameras were flashing, people were applauding—it was chaos.
We didn’t speak for days and finally when Iris rang, we rowed. She told me that I had hurt her badly. I told her I would only keep hurting her if we stayed together. She asked me did I mean that it would be better if we ended it. I heard myself say yes. She never rang me again.
Eve realized that she had been holding her breath and that her chest had become incredibly tight. She repositioned herself to lie on her back, her head against the arm of her sofa, Moira’s letter resting on her tucked-up knees.
I was in a bad place. I missed her so much, I struggled to work. I struggled to keep going. In the end I packed up, left Inverness, and came home. I came home and never left again. I buried myself in Newland. And then, eight months later, Angus handed me the Chronicle. The front page read “Ring The Bells, The Travellers Return.” I remember looking at the photo, just staring at it. Standing amongst their instruments, Iris and John looked back at me. He had his arm around her. They were both looking down at Iris’s pregnant stomach. The article explained that The Bells had returned so that Iris could give birth in her homeland.
I went to their homecoming concert. I stood at the back of the hall, out of sight. I just had to see her. She looked radiant, beautiful. I knew at that moment I had made a terrible mistake. Everything in me wanted to run to the stage, call her name, tell her I was sorry, beg her to forgive me. And then she kissed John. They looked really
happy. I knew I had lost my right to Iris, that I had lost her love. That I had lost love forever.
I left the concert and that was that. And then, thirteen years ago, thirteen years last January, out of the blue, John rang me. He told me that Iris was certain that they would find me in Newland. She’d kept my number all those years. How I had longed to hear her voice—to hear her say my name. But instead it was John speaking to me, with a strange, hollow tone. He told me Iris was very ill and that she had asked for me.
I remember the weather was really bad, I struggled my way to town. When I arrived, John greeted me. A doctor was also present. He had given Iris morphine. She looked a bit high. John left us to see to Alice. We held each other all night. She said she never stopped loving me. I just kept saying sorry.
She slipped in and out of consciousness. Just before dawn, she woke, really lucid and calm. She asked me to look after John and Alice. She made me promise. I promised her I would, I promised her, Eve. I held her hand as she left me. I found it hard to leave her. They let me sit with her for a while longer and then they took her away from me.
Eve looked over to the window, her gaze fixed beyond her living space, beyond the city, to Scotland, to Moira. I’m sorry, so sorry, Moira. With an aching heart, Eve read on.
Without Iris there was no Bells, and without The Bells John had no work. I didn’t think twice. I took them in and they came to live with me in Foxglove. There was plenty of room for us all. We devoted ourselves to Alice, to bringing her up, in the way we knew her mother would want us to. And then one night, after Alice had won some competition or other, she was so proud, we were so proud, and John kissed me.
Our bond had grown so strong. Even though they were a constant painful reminder of what I had lost, I nonetheless found solace in his company, such joy in bringing up Iris’s daughter. We were married in the following spring.
Oh my God. Eve’s head spun with everything she’d read.
It felt so good to give Alice a home, stability, but for John and me it didn’t work. I tried, for everyone’s sake, to love him fully, but I couldn’t. It became clear soon after we married that a platonic relationship was all I could give him. All I could ever give a man.
I expected John to move on, for them to leave, but they didn’t. John moved back into his own bedroom and we kept ourselves busy. He eventually got a job as a consultant in the Highland Council’s agriculture department, which meant he had to work away a lot. I devoted my time to Alice, and to developing the centre. We somehow found a way to make it work.
Eve looked up at the clock on the wall and stared at it as if the hands were marking not minutes, but years that had ticked by. But weren’t you lonely, Moira? Eve’s gaze fell back to the letter.
We reassured Alice that everything was fine and she believed us in the heartbreaking, trusting way that children do. And before we knew it she was eighteen and packing to leave for university. She insisted on choosing the college her mother—all of us—went to. It strangely felt like some sort of circle of life had been completed.
With Alice gone, and John working away so much, the main house that had suited me fine before John and Alice arrived just felt too big somehow. And when John was home, and it was just the two of us, the house felt even emptier. So I turned my attention to renovating the croft and gradually moved in. We did our best to explain to Alice that my move to the croft didn’t mean that we were no longer a family. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure who we were trying to convince. Alice was so desperate to believe us and we have been so wrong to let her.
Angus and Elizabeth took the news of my decision to live in the croft with their usual diplomacy. If other people—villagers, acquaintances—wondered at our living arrangements, they had the decency not to ask. That was two years ago. And then I met you.
Eve gripped the page tight in her hand.
I want you to know that John and I have talked, and he has left Newland. We had drifted for years without the courage or impetus to address our relationship, to talk about the future, and I would have carried on in that way, hurting myself, hurting us all, if it wasn’t for you. You’ve shown me that there could be more to me, that there should be more to my life. And for that I’ll always be grateful.
I hope that one day you will understand, Eve, and find it in your heart to forgive me.
Moira
Eve’s emotions, thrown like a ship in a storm, dipped and rose and dipped again as Eve struggled to anchor her feelings. She could feel Moira’s pain, but then there was her deception, her deliberate economy with the truth.
She struggled to digest the fact that the Campbells were Moira’s family, that they were living in her house.
And yet Moira must have known that she was risking everything to be with Eve. She must have needed her so much. Eve recalled Moira’s deep urgent kisses, the way she touched her, the way she made her feel. Eve’s thoughts turned to the night they’d made love, when she had wanted Moira as desperately as Moira had wanted her.
Moira had laid bare her soul, relived her sadness and pain, offered up her life for scrutiny. Eve knew for such a private woman this would have been unthinkably hard.
By rights she should have been appalled by Moira’s dishonesty, but she couldn’t help but wonder: If Moira had told her then what she was telling her now, would she have wanted Moira any less?
She traced her fingers over the intimate handwriting, over Moira’s heartfelt words, and with a sigh, she said, “I want to try to understand, Moira, really I do.”
Eve knew there was only one way she would fully understand and that was to see Moira again, if only just for one last time. In fact, if she left straight away she could surely catch a train, and before the sun set she would be in Newland.
Chapter Twenty
As Eve stood in the driveway of Foxglove Croft, everything about Newland looked familiar, and yet nothing felt familiar. The main road still curved its way past the village hall, past the sheep gathered at the gates and the horses nodding in the fields. The grass edging of the road still brushed against the flower-laden walls of the roadside crofts. Even the sun setting behind the mountains, bleeding blood-orange into the brooding loch, was nothing new. And here at Moira’s door were the familiar grains of wood, the worn-down stone step, the threshold to all that had gone before and all that lay ahead.
Please be in Moira, please be in. There was no reply to Eve’s knocking. Eve dared to glance into the sitting room. She could see the table full of papers, Moira’s armchair, and the whisky decanter catching the glint of the evening sun as it faded through the sunroom windows. She could just make out the hint of the garden beyond. Ah. The garden. Eve walked around the croft.
She steadied her voice. “How are your beans?”
Moira looked up and blinked several times as if trying to take in what she was seeing. She leant heavily on her spade, her throat thick with feeling. “Eve?”
“It’s okay, Moira. I mean, I’ve practised this. For us. On the train. I practised what I wanted to say to you.”
Moira set the spade firmly into the ground, moving slowly to Eve.
Eve began, “I start off by saying that I read your letter.” Eve’s chest tightened as Moira stood in front of her. “I read your letter and”—Moira eased Eve’s rucksack from her shoulder to rest on the grass—“that I want to try to understand.” There was a slight pause.
“And what did I say?” Moira asked. She looked serious.
“That you were pleased I’d come to you.” Eve swallowed down suffocating emotion.
Moira stood silently looking at Eve.
Eve couldn’t tell what Moira was feeling. “Are you pleased I’m here? I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t.” Never had the word pleased felt so inadequate.
Moira nodded.
Eve hugged Moira, holding her tight.
Moira whispered into Eve’s ear, “I wasn’t expecting you to come all this way.”
“No?” Eve asked, confused, releasing her hold to
look at Moira. “But how could I not?”
It felt to Eve that all paths seemed to converge on this moment. That if there was an alternate route, then it simply didn’t feel like it.
Stepping into the croft, Eve was transported back to that heady June night. With tired eyes, she looked at the floor in the sitting room where she had made love to Moira, where they had lain together.
“It was magical—being with you,” Eve said wistfully.
“Until I broke the spell,” Moira said flatly.
“No, it was me,” Eve said, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry that I sent you away without giving you a chance to explain.”
“No, Eve. Believe me when I tell you, you have nothing to apologize for. I should have told you I was married. I didn’t know how to…I didn’t know what we were. And then, everything was moving so quickly.” Moira paused and looked intently at Eve. “The very last thing I wanted to do was to hurt you. In fact, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t read my letter.”
Eve confessed, “I nearly didn’t.”
“No?”
Eve shook her head. “I’ve felt so deceived, and hurt. I can’t pretend I haven’t. But somehow I had to read your letter. And then reading about your life, your grief—I just wanted to see you again. I had to see you again.”
Moira moved away. She sat on the edge of the sofa, looking down, as if entranced by the patterns of the rug.
