Evie (13 page)

The tide was high, the surf breaking closer to the shore. She would swim. The beach was deserted. She stepped out of her clothes, dropping them onto the powdery sand above the tideline. The water was colder than she expected as she waded in and dived under an approaching wave. She was surprised by the surge and energy of the surf and then slightly alarmed to find herself out of her depth and being drawn sideways, parallel to the shore but increasingly further from it. She realised that her strong strokes were powerless against the movement of the water and a sudden fear of drowning overwhelmed her. Then she remembered the advice one of
her neighbours had given her. ‘If you’se get caught in a rip, luv, don’t try to swim against it. Swim at right angles to it and don’t panic. Take your time and you’ll be fine!’ A quarter of a mile along the beach the surge delivered Georgina into shallow water. She felt her foot touch the sand, waded ashore and walked, shivering, breathless, dripping and naked, back to the place where she had left her clothes.

In the land girls’ digs above the public saloon bar in Ledburton village, Winnie, fresh from the luxury of a hot bath and wrapped in her dressing gown, sat with one foot on her bed, applying a vivid-pink varnish to her toenails.

‘You should of seen the state of her,’ she said to Gwennan, not for the first time. The news of the safe return to the known world of Evie and Giorgio was circulating the neighbourhood, accumulating interesting and possibly fanciful details as it went. ‘Filthy, she were!’ Winnie continued, turning her attention to the touching up of the chipped polish on her fingertips ‘When they brung ’er to Mrs Crocker’s place she stuck her in the bath tub straight off and scrubbed her, top to toe. Washed her hair and all. Said she’d never seen a girl in such a state and you’d think she would of done, all those years with us lot getting back to the hostel up to our necks in mud!’

‘And worse,’ Gwennan added, briefly removing her attention from the latest copy of The Funeral Directors’ Monthly. ‘Remember the time I had to help the vet get that still-born calf out of Mr Bayliss’s favourite milkin’ cow? Blood from arsehole to breakfast time there was! Had to hose me down, they did!’

‘These days we don’t seem to get as mucky as we used,’ Winnie mused.

‘That’s ’cos, with the blokes back from the forces, we gets ’em to do the dirty work!’

‘And quite right too, I reckon!’ They giggled, congratulating themselves on their crafty manipulation of the male sex. ‘Better get movin’ if we’re going down for a drink before closing time,’ Winnie said, screwing the top onto the bottle of varnish and admiring her restored nails.

It was Constable Twentyman who came up with a scheme designed to protect Giorgio and Evie from an unexpected attack by Norman Clark. The idea, which had to be approved, not only by the station sergeant at Ledburton police station, but by his superior in Exeter, consisted of equipping both Evie and Giorgio with high-decibel police whistles. These, threaded onto leather thongs, were to be worn round the necks of the threatened couple at all times, enabling them to attract help should Norman Clark be sighted in the neighbourhood. There was a certain amount of scoffing amongst those who always knew best but, in fact, the precaution was a sound one – a blast from the whistles carried a long way across the valley in which Giorgio would be working, and up and down the village street that passed the door of Rose Crocker’s tea shop. As a result, Evie felt better about Giorgio and Giorgio felt better because she was reassured.

The couple met as frequently as their work obligations permitted. On borrowed bicycles, weather permitting, they cycled towards each other and met at several preselected
rural rendezvous. When it rained there was the tea shop, where Rose would have a left-over pasty or two for Giorgio. Sometimes they met in Giorgio’s cottage at the Lucas farm, where, provided the visit was not overlong, Clarissa and Edwin cast collectively blind eyes and ignored any suggestion of impropriety.

Meanwhile, when Alice was spending a week working in London, Roger applied himself with great effect to a long-term solution to the Evie-Giorgio problem. He too travelled to London, took Alice to lunch and afterwards spent a useful afternoon at New Zealand House discussing, with the appropriate official, the prospects of emigration to that country.

Roger discovered that if Giorgio allowed himself to be repatriated to his native Italy, he could apply there for an assisted passage to New Zealand, where qualified carpenters were in great demand. All he would require would be the equivalent of ten pounds sterling towards his fare and someone in New Zealand to act as a sponsor. The same principle applied to Evie, whose recent service in the Land Army, together with the Ministry of Agriculture exams she had passed during her time at the hostel, made her, too, a desirable immigrant, as did the fact that she was a white female of marriageable age. She would have to be interviewed, pass a medical examination, produce evidence of the registration of her birth and of a reasonable standard of general education. She too would require someone in New Zealand to vouch for her. Further enquiries confirmed the fact that Christopher, currently employed by the New
Zealand government, could provide sponsorship for Giorgio, while Evie’s record with the WLA, plus personal references from Georgina, who would undertake to establish her in work and appropriate accommodation, would ensure her acceptance as an immigrant.

All these facts and possibilities were duly conveyed to Evie and Giorgio.

With the settlement of the legalities concerning Evie’s inheritance of the house in Coventry, she would soon be free to sell it. She would also inherit the money that had been deposited in her mother’s post office savings account, and these funds, together with the money due to Giorgio in lieu of earnings during his long internment as a POW, would enable the couple to establish themselves comfortably in New Zealand.

Christopher, using his new contacts in the timber trade, approached a thriving building firm in Christchurch and discovered that Lucca Angelica, the owner of the company and himself an Italian immigrant, was keen to employ experienced carpenters. Giorgio’s origins, plus his pre-war work for the Catholic church in Naples, made his employment almost guaranteed and he was invited to contact Lucca as soon as possible after his arrival in New Zealand.

‘But are you sure it’s what you both want?’ Alice asked. The five of them, Evie, Giorgio, Alice, Roger and Edward John, were seated round the large table in the Bayliss kitchen, discussing in detail the pros and cons of the proposed emigration. ‘Immigrants taking advantage of the Assisted Passage scheme must stay in New Zealand for at least two
years or pay back their passage money. You do understand that, don’t you? It’s a serious commitment. Are you certain it’s what you want?’

‘What we most want is that we are together, Mrs Alice,’ Giorgio told her, groping his way through the English words. ‘We no care where, so long as we together. I would like, one day, to take Evie to my home. To Napoli. To live there with my family. And maybe, after the two year, that is what we do. We shall see.’

‘And you, Evie?’ Roger asked the girl, who was sitting, mute, her solemn eyes on Giorgio’s. ‘What do you think about all this? It’s a big decision. Twelve thousand miles from your homeland and your family.’ Evie shook her head.

‘I don’t have no family, Mr Bayliss. If there was cousins and uncles and aunts, I never saw ’em after me Dad died and I can’t hardly even remember him, let alone any of them. It were just Mum and me ’til Norman come. And you know the rest. Giorgio is my family now. He’s all I ever want.’ She became conscious of the fact that all of them were looking at her, their expressions ranging from sympathy and concern, to speculation and even doubt. She lowered her head as she felt her face redden.

‘There’s another thing you need to consider,’ Roger began, attempting to use the simplest terms in order to make it as easy as possible for Giorgio to understand him, ‘and that is that Evie is still married to her husband. In most cases, these days, when a marriage breaks down the couple are able to get divorced so that they can marry a new partner if they want to … But Evie is not free to do that. Do you understand me, Giorgio?’

‘Yes, he does, Mr Bayliss,’ Evie said, adding her voice to Giorgio’s emphatic nodding. ‘We have talked about it all. And how Norman wouldn’t never let me go. And then there’s me not being able to have no more babies. We’ve talked and talked about that too. All of it, truly.’

‘An’ we no care, see?’ Giorgio confirmed. ‘We will hope that one day we might marry but if we cannot … Well … No one cannot ever have everything you want for in your life! Of course I would like for Evie to have babies … but most I would like for me to have Evie … To have Evie like she is my wife! To take care of and love. My church does not allow divorce, but maybe, if one day we explain why we do what we have done and confess our sins to the priest, we will be forgiven and receive blessing, no?’ He paused briefly and nodded, as though he wished to remove from his listeners the responsibility of having to reply. Then he continued. ‘We go to New Zealand and we work hard for the two years we have promised and after that time, who know?’ He shrugged, smiling endearingly. ‘We come back to Napoli? Or we not come back. We see how things are.’ He paused again before turning to Roger. ‘And please to thank you son, Mr Bayliss, for being the sponsor for me!’ And then to Alice, ‘And you son, Mrs Alice, for how he kept his word and brought food to the byre. He most excellent boy, Mrs Alice! Most excellent boy!’ It was Edward John’s turn to blush.

One Sunday morning Zeke arrived at the Crocker cottage at Lower Post Stone Farm. He was driving a van which, though rusted and noisy, was proving better than towing, behind his
bicycle, the wicker basket in which he had previously transported produce from the Tucker smallholding to the shopkeepers of Bideford and where, after he had disposed of it, he was in the habit of meeting Polly for a cup of tea or an ice cream.

‘What I come about,’ he told his sister and brother-in-law when the van had been duly inspected and approved of, ‘is our mother. She’s behavin’ that funny, Hes. She sits with Father all day an’ all night and don’t go to bed no more! Just fetches soup and bread and milk for ’im and tries to clean ’im and that. An’ all the time she’s talking a load of stuff about God forsakin’ her and Father. Half the time she don’t seem to know me no more! Just stares at me like I’m a stranger. Proper scary it be! I reckon Father bein’ so sick all this time and gettin’ worse an’ worse each day is doin’ ’er head in! I do! I think she’m goin’ balmy! An’ I dunno what to do!’

They took him into their cottage, sat him at the kitchen table and gave him a cup of tea and a slice of lardy cake. This settled him down and brought the colour back to his weather-beaten, young cheeks. But it did not address the problem. It was decided that Hester would return with him to the smallholding, taking Thurza with her and staying for a few days to give what practical help she could to their mother. She would clean the place and do some washing and cooking for Zeke. Thurza’s high chair and cot were loaded into the back of Zeke’s van. Dave was to fend for himself and go to his mother for his dinner each evening. The afternoon was grey and a damp wind was heavy with coming rain as he watched the van lurch across the yard and vanish into the entrance to the lane.

Daylight was fading by the time the van had toiled up and over the moor. Except for the glow from the paraffin lamp in Jonas Tucker’s sickroom, the cottage on the smallholding was in darkness.

It was decided that Thurza’s cot would be assembled in the parlour where Hester would also sleep on a truckle bed, carried down from the attic.

Hester had brought food with her and made a meal for all of them, but when she went upstairs with a plate of boiled ham and mashed swede, her mother simply stared at her. Hester was shocked by how thin and exhausted she had become, even in the short time since she had last seen her. ‘Eat some supper, Mother,’ she had urged her. ‘Please eat some supper.’

The next day Hester set about cleaning the cottage. She boiled the copper and worked her way through a huge accumulation of soiled bedding and a pile of Zeke’s clothes. In a brisk wind she hung out line after line of washing, spread it to air on a rack above the kitchen range which Zeke kept well stoked with wood, so that by evening the cottage was warm, the floors clean enough for Thurza to crawl on them and the laundry dry enough to be folded and put away. Zeke killed a chicken which Hester stewed with onions, carrots and turnips.

Discovering that no one had used the various coupons and ‘points’ which had been accumulating in the Tucker family’s ration books, Hester persuaded Zeke to drive her into Bideford the next day, where she used this backlog of food entitlements to restock the pantry.

‘I got tins of corned beef and spam and fish, Zeke,’ she told her brother. ‘All you gotta do is open one up and boil some spuds and carrots to go with it. The hens are layin’ well so there’s plenty of eggs. You gotta eat proper, Zeke! Promise me?’ He promised. She left him with a mutton casserole and baked him a couple of apple pies and a batch of scones, but could do little to improve on the pitiful situation of their parents.

‘What does the doctor say?’ she had asked her brother.

‘Not much,’ Zeke told her. ‘He can’t do nothin’ for Father and he don’t seem much interested in the state our mother’s in. She ’as got worse, mind, since ’e last come. He looked at Father for a while, then he said some’at about nature takin’ its course. And then he left.’

By ten o’clock that night Zeke was in his bed in the small, back bedroom while downstairs, in the parlour, Thurza was settled, happily enough, in her cot. The truckle bed had proved uncomfortable on the previous night, so Hester sat for some time, beside the fireplace, in the threadbare armchair that her father had used until his paralysis confined him to his bed. In the grate the embers were turning to ash. She leant forward, added the last remaining pieces of firewood and sat, watching as they caught, flamed and briefly crackled. She could hear the creak of the floorboards in the room above, where her father lay, gasping and choking. He could barely swallow now and lay, dragging the air into his struggling lungs. Why, Hester wondered, wouldn’t the Good Lord, the merciful Lord, whom Jonas Tucker had worshipped all his days, let him die in peace? Why, when he had given
over his entire, miserable life to praising him, could he not be compassionate now? ‘Let thy servant depart in peace’ the Book said, didn’t it? For a while Hester dozed. When she woke, the fire was out and the room was cold. She undressed, shivering, pulled on her thick, flannelette nightdress, made herself as comfortable as she could on the unyielding truckle and tried to sleep. She heard the clock strike eleven and then twelve. Still the odd creak from overhead suggested that her mother was awake, moving about the room, ministering to the husband who, through all the years of their marriage, had made her bow to his will, listen when he preached and concur when he bullied his family. While he had given most of his meagre earnings to his church and his children went hungry, his wife had knelt and prayed when he told her to and never once questioned his right to rule her life and that of Hester and Zeke, imposing his uncompromising will, his deep-set, steely eyes always on them.