The Evening Chorus (17 page)

Country Ways
tries to speak fully to the inhabitants of the countryside, men and women alike, although even with so many men so recently back from the war, the audience for the magazine remains largely female. The magazine ambitiously tries to address every one of Britain’s roughly twenty-five million women. It seems to be working, as the number of new readers increases with each monthly issue. Now in its eighth year of production,
Country Ways
continues to be popular. The people of Britain can’t ignore the effects of the war and the lingering rationing, but the magazine’s heady mix of recipes, knitting patterns, instruction in watercolour, pointers for gardeners, travel recommendations, and jaunts in the countryside is a welcome distraction.

Enid jams a new block of wax in her waxer to melt and goes round the corner to Editorial.

She pokes her head into Margaret’s office.

“For the new issue,” says Enid, “it’s thatched cottages, the marsh violet, plum jam, and the vole. Is that right?”

“I think the vole is in with gardening,” says Margaret. She pushes her glasses up her nose, and Enid sees a strip of Elastoplast holding the bridge together. “As in, how to get rid of the vole, not how to understand it.”

“Oh, right,” says Enid. “The vole is a villain now.” Switch categories, switch context. This was a constant practice at
Country Ways
. There would be the heartfelt story of a lamb raised by hand in one issue and a delicious recipe for lamb stew in the next. “What happened to your glasses?”

“Tripped on something. They flew off my head, and then I stepped on them. Is it very noticeable?” Margaret looks worried.

Enid wavers between lying and telling the truth, but decides to lie. “Hardly at all,” she says. “Only if you look directly at your nose.”

“Oh, dear.” Margaret still seems worried, so Enid ducks out of the younger woman’s office and goes back to her drafting table.

The waxer is hot enough now, the block of wax under the roller nicely melted. Enid rolls the back of the first galley for
Country Ways
, cuts it to fit, and sticks it down on the layout board. She skims the article on thatched cottages, finding it boring and needlessly detailed. The plum jam recipe is one she’s seen before. Enid is sometimes stirred enough by guilt over her own mother’s jam-making prowess to attempt to make preserves herself, but it always ends in disappointment. Her jam, no matter what recipe she follows, is too sticky or too thin, too thick to spread easily on toast or running off the edges onto the plate.

Recently,
Country Ways
has run a series on botanical illustration. Each month they introduce a flower and then lead the reader through a series of simple line drawings that show how to portray it. At the start of the article there is a black-and-white photograph of the flower, and at the end of the article is the fully rendered illustration, which apparently any idiot housewife can duplicate.

This month the marsh gentian is the flower of choice. Instead of the usual single photograph of the flower at the beginning of the article, there are two. One photograph shows the flower open, and one shows it closed—the two states in which the walker is likely to discover it.

Enid likes the botanical illustration series. She likes reading about the flowers, and sometimes, on a rainy evening, she tries her hand at the illustration herself. It seems a useful thing to learn. Enid has a habit of judging the content of
Country Ways
in direct reference to her own preferences, and she would much rather learn to draw a flower than knit a pair of booties or frost a cake.

She starts reading about the marsh gentian. The flower is characterized by bright blue, trumpetshaped blooms that are often striped with pale green. It has narrow leaves that grow in pairs up the stem of the plant. It blooms from July through October in acidic bogs and wet heathlands, can grow to a height of twelve inches, and is one of the few flowers that flourish in the transitional space between the mire of the bog and the firmer ground of the heath.

Enid goes back to Margaret’s office, knocks delicately on the open door.

“Sorry,” she says, “but that violet—the marsh gentian?—it’s rare. There are only three places in England where it’s ever seen. How is anyone supposed to draw it if they can’t find it?”

Margaret takes off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose, which is red from where the Elastoplast has been rubbing against it. Enid tries not to stare but can’t stop herself.

“That Saunders,” Margaret says. “I should fire him. That’s the second thing he’s got wrong in this issue.”

“He’s just a writer,” says Enid. “They make mistakes. Wasn’t it proofed?”

“Yes, of course it was proofed.”

Margaret sounds irritated, and Enid wants to point out that the fault lies not with her for bringing the error to Margaret’s attention, but rather with the error itself. But she doesn’t say this.

“Thank you, Enid,” says Margaret. “I’ll see to it.”

Enid backs out of the office, but then comes in again. “What was the first thing?” she asks.

“What first thing?”

“The first thing Saunders got wrong.”

Margaret sighs, puts her glasses back on again. “He misjudged the distance for ‘A Ramble Round the Cotswolds.’ Instead of a pleasant five-mile stroll, it’s actually fifteen miles. If someone starts out for a nice walk after lunch, they’ll be finishing it in darkness.”

“Probably not finishing at all,” suggests Enid. “More likely lost and stumbling around for ages. Perhaps never to be found again.”

“Anything else?” Margaret sounds even more irritated.

“No.” Enid leaves the office for the second time.

Back in her little corner of the art department, she looks at the two photographs of the marsh gentian. They might as well be completely different flowers. The closed flower, with its slender, tapering bloom, looks completely opposite to the open, starshaped version of the violet. Even without the fact of it being a rare flower, the marsh gentian really was a ridiculous choice for illustration, because you would find the flower in one of those two states, either open or closed, but which one was really the true example of the specimen?

One of the three places in Britain where the flower is found is in the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. Enid is reminded again of those days she spent exploring the forest almost ten years ago now. Wouldn’t it be nice to go back there again and see the heath in all its glory?

But that thought is quickly followed by one of Rose. Enid doesn’t know what has become of her. Perhaps she is still in Sycamore Cottage? Perhaps she has married and moved elsewhere? Enid has doubts about the likelihood of this second scenario. She doesn’t remember seeing Rose with Toby, but she does remember seeing Rose happy, and she knows it was because of Toby. In the dimly lit vault of memory, she contrasts this happiness with what she remembers of Rose and James’s wedding. She knows that Toby made Rose happier than James did, and that happiness would probably not be easy to set aside. So a jaunt down to see the Ashdown Forest in summer would inevitably lead Enid to Rose’s cottage, and although she has, in many ways, remembered that time with Rose fondly, Enid is also fiercely loyal to her brother and won’t do anything to upset him.

She looks again at the photographs of the marsh gentian. She will never see it in her lifetime. And just as twitchers make a list of birds they have spotted, Enid makes a list in her mind of some of the things she will never see again: a marsh gentian, the Ashdown Forest in summer, Rose.

W
HEN
E
NID
finally gets back to her flat, it’s gone nine and she’s exhausted. She kicks off her shoes and lies down fully clothed on the bed, trying to decide if she’s more hungry or tired, if she should rouse herself to get something to eat or just go straight to sleep.

She decides on sleep, but then she hears a key turning in the lock, the sound of the flat door opening and closing, the tap of shoes as someone walks down the hallway towards the bedroom.

“Enid?” A head pokes around the door frame. “Fancy going to the Crown? It’s half-price fish and chips night.”

The Crown is as crowded as ever. Enid battles her way to the bar to get the drinks and place the order, then battles her way back again. By the time she returns to the table, she feels irritated and churlish.

“Someone trod on my foot,” she says, slapping the drinks down on the wooden tabletop. “Right on the arch. Bloody painful. And he didn’t even apologize. Bloody idiot.”

“Darling.” Margaret reaches over and squeezes Enid’s hand. “Don’t be cross. I’ve looked forward to seeing you all day.”

“You have seen me all day.” Enid leans down, slips her foot out of her shoe, and rubs it where it’s been stepped on.

“Well, not how I like to see you,” says Margaret.

“Oh, I don’t know. I sometimes think you like to boss me around at the office more than you like being with me at home.”

“That’s not fair.” Margaret takes a sip of her gin and tonic. “In fact, that’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Is it?” Enid slips her shoe back on. “Yes, I suppose it is. I’m sorry. I’m tired from all the travel, and from freezing to death all weekend in James’s shepherd’s hut.”

“Well, you don’t need to take it out on me.”

“Who else am I meant to take it out on?”

Their supper arrives, and after the first few mouthfuls of fish and greasy batter, Enid feels more cheerful. “I did miss you,” she says.

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Come on, Mags. Can’t we start again? I am sorry.”

Margaret takes a healthy sip of her gin and tonic. “How was your brother?” she asks.

“Terrible. I don’t think he eats, and he drinks too much. The cottage is so primitive he might as well be living in a cave. Probably warmer in a cave, come to think of it. He’s so miserable that I don’t think he can see how miserable he is.” Enid puts down her knife and fork. “How would you feel about going down there for Christmas with me? We could give him a proper Christmas, cheer him up a bit.”

“Have you told him about us, then?”

“No, not exactly.” Enid takes a sip of her drink. “Not at all, really. But I’m going to write him and tell him this week.” She takes another swallow of gin and tonic. “Or next week.” She drains the last of her glass. “Definitely by Christmas.”

“We could just go down as friends,” says Margaret. “Workmates. Flatmates.”

“Yes, that might be better.”

“Colleagues,” says Margaret. “That’s the word for it.”

“Well, it isn’t at all the word for it,” says Enid. “But it will have to do.”

“It’s not entirely a lie.”

“No, not entirely.” Enid crams the last of her chips onto her fork. “Will you come with me to Wales, then? To see James?”

“Yes, I will. I’d be happy to, in fact. It will be a nice change from sitting in my parents’ stuffy parlour making small talk about my sister’s brats and the allotment.”

“Good.” Enid pushes her plate away, feeling satisfied with both the conversation and her supper. “Shall I fetch us another drink?”

“That would be lovely.”

But when Enid goes back to the bar, there on a stool at the end by the taps is George Fletcher from Sales.

“Where’s my drink?” asks Margaret when Enid returns to the table empty-handed.

“Fletcher from Sales is sitting up at the bar.”

“Do you think he saw you?”

“I don’t think so. I kept my head turned.”

Margaret grabs her purse from the bench beside her. “Shall I leave first, or will you?”

“I’ll go. I’m already standing. Give me fifteen minutes’ head start. I’ll meet you by the tobacconist’s near the park.”

“Just meet me at home.”

“Mags, couldn’t we walk at least partway together?”

“I just can’t risk it. You know how hard it’s been for me. This could ruin everything.”

“But we could just be having a drink together. An innocent drink.”

“It’s not innocent.”

“But how is Fletcher to know that?”

“He would know.” Margaret smooths her skirt. “He would see the way you look at me. The way I look at you.”

There is to be no argument on the matter. Enid pushes her chair into the table. “I’ll see you back at the flat, then.”

Margaret is the only female editor at
Country Ways
, a fact that always strikes Enid as ridiculous, although she knows the struggle it’s been for Margaret to achieve this level of success. Even Enid’s own presence in the art department is out of the norm, and she has also had to fight hard for her lowly position of paste-up artist. And to think of all the jobs women used to do in the war, when the men were off fighting. There was nothing a woman couldn’t do in those days, including flying commercial aircraft. Now the choice is between being a secretary or a nurse, or perhaps a teacher at a junior school. And these jobs are for the unmarried woman. The married woman’s entire purpose in life is to be a loving wife and mother, serving her husband and children all day long, sitting down with a quick cup of tea in the afternoon to leaf through her latest copy of
Country Ways
.

Country Ways
—read almost entirely by women and staffed almost entirely by men.

Enid lowers her head so she won’t be recognized by Fletcher and walks quickly to the door of the pub, pushing it open and stepping outside into the cool night air.

Sometimes life seems very unfair. But right on top of thinking that, Enid thinks of all the men who died in the war, and how it made sense that those who didn’t die—those who returned from fighting—would want their jobs back. It was their right, really, to try to pick up where they had left off, and they should be helped to do that, not blocked.

She lights a cigarette, thinks of Toby Halliday crashing his plane into the heath so close to Rose’s cottage that it was hard not to believe he was heading straight for her. Enid half wishes she’d still been there, so Rose would have had her to lean on during the horror of that time, as she had had Rose to lean on, briefly, after Oliver’s death. But that would have meant Rose’s confessing about the affair with Halliday, and Enid wouldn’t have wanted that secret, wouldn’t have wanted to know anything that James didn’t.