Shadow Baby (10 page)

Evie, when she arrived at the Fox and Hound, had not appeared to know her surname or indeed that she was bound to have one. It was only when her name was called at registration in school that she realised her other name was Messenger and that she shared it with Ernest and Muriel. This had surprised and pleased her at the time, it had been like receiving a present and made her feel a certain kinship which had been more meaningful than hearing Ernest referred to as a second cousin. When she was older, the shared surname misled people. They assumed she was Ernest and Muriel’s daughter and she saw how this irritated Ernest but pleased Muriel. ‘She’s not ours,’ she heard Ernest say, when inquiries were made occasionally, ‘she’s my cousin’s bairn, I’ve taken her in.’ Sometimes, because Messengers had been at the Fox and Hound a long time, the inquirer would ask which cousin and then Ernest would say first of all, ‘Leah Messenger, from the Caldewgate lot, kept the Royal Oak,

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her mam died, came here when they’d had enough of her, but little pitchers have big ears and that’s as far as I’ll go.’ But if the question was asked of Muriel the reply was more detailed and nothing was said about little pitchers. ‘No, she’s not ours, and she’s not my side,’ Muriel would say, ‘she’s Ernest’s cousin’s bairn, Leah Messenger’s, from the Carlisle side. We’ve taken her in, not that we ever knew she existed till she was six and then we got a letter, they’d traced Leah back to here. She was in a Home, this one, she’d been with another Messenger, old Mary, she lived here once, before my time, and Mary died and this one was put in a Home.’

Suddenly, Evie had a history and, though it remained sparse, she clung on to it. Her grandmother might not really have been her grandmother but at least she had had the same name and there was some connection between her and Leah, the Leah who was her own mother. That thought was precious, that link between Mary, Leah and herself. Bit by bit, Muriel strengthened it. When, at fourteen, Evie finally began her monthlies Muriel told her that now she had come on she must be careful or she’d fall and if she fell she’d share her mother Leah’s fate. ‘Look what happened to her,’ Muriel said, sorting out rags to give Evie and telling her first to wash them well and keep them private. ‘Fell, at seventeen, and that was that, that was you, that was her out on her ear and nowhere to go, so you be careful, though you won’t have her problem looking as you do.’ Another time, when Evie was late back with the milk, it was, ‘Where’ve you been, not dallying with any lad, I hope?’ Evie, who knew no lads, shook her head and explained about the late arrival of the milk cart with the churns at the crossroads. ‘You be careful,’ Muriel said, ‘walking that road, that’s how your mother got caught, walking that road and him coming up on his horse day after day. Did anyone speak to you? No? Good. Keep yourself to yourself, that’s best.’

Evie did now finally help in the bar but only at quiet times when the daytime regulars were in, those with the patience not to mind her hesitations and difficulties with the pumps. Some were kind to her and tried to engage her in banter, but this flustered her - she found it hard to draw beer and take money and talk at the same time. Ernest always had her out from behind the bar long before it filled up and would order her back to the kitchen. ‘You’re flushed,’ Muriel would say, ‘your face is right red, Evie, you’re more like Leah now, she had a good colour. Of course, she stayed all night in that bar, she

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drew them like flies, she could have had anyone she wanted, her looks could have been her fortune if she’d played her cards right.’ Evie began washing the supper dishes, slipping them very, very quietly through the sinkful of water so as not to disturb Muriel’s train of thought. ‘But he came along, on his horse, and took a fancy to her and after that nobody could tell her anything, she was daft for him, daft. I told her, I said, “Leah” - I’d just married Ernest then and we were at the Crown, but I saw her often enough - I said, “Leah, lass, give over, he’ll make a fool of you, he’ll have you and leave you and won’t give a damn,” and surely she could see it, she’d heard the tales, they were well enough known, but no, she wouldn’t have it, she wouldn’t listen, not her. If she’d had a mam it might have been different, but her mam was dead and her dad too, and she was brought up in Caldewgate, then sent here. Her mam was Ernest’s dad’s sister’s child and they brought her up as their own like we’re bringing up you.’ Muriel sipped the brandy and lemon to which she was partial, and looked at Evie’s back, bent over the sink. ‘She was lovely to look at, your mam, Evie.’ And then, what Evie had waited so long for, ‘Maybe still is, for all anybody knows, she’ll only be in her thirties, wherever she is.’

So. Evie went over and over every one of Muriel’s slurred words many times. Her mother might be alive. She was certainly not known definitely to be dead. She had felt quite faint hearing what Muriel said that night, and was glad to be facing away from her or for once in spite of herself her expression might have betrayed her excitement. At first, thinking about what she now knew, it seemed wonderful news but then, after all the hours of mulling it over, it seemed dreadful also. Her mother was not dead. She had therefore given her away. She had not wanted her. She, Evie, had been the cause of betrayal, misery and ruin, if Muriel was to be believed. Her mother had banished her for ever, given her to old Mary Messenger and abandoned her. When Mary died she had not come forward to claim her. She had let her be taken into a Home. But then Evie remembered she had been baptised and had a birth certificate. Did that mean some measure of concern for her and her soul? The thought of that certificate, the piece of paper in the ribbon box which had led to Ernest and Muriel taking her, worried her. She didn’t have it any more. She still had the tin box and the ribbons, she still treasured those, but the paper had gone when it had been given back to her by Mrs Cox. Ernest must have it. She wished she

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had it, now that she understood the full significance of it. Perhaps, if she had it, she could find her mother. But another thought occurred to her: if her mother could have been found why did the people who found Ernest and Muriel not find her first? It could only be because she had disappeared. Unless - and this chilled Evie - her mother had denied Evie belonged to her.

Evie could not remember afterwards when she had decided that her sole purpose in life was to find her mother. She thought probably there was no one time when she had made the decision and doubted if the making of it had been precipitated by any particular thing. It had just grown with her, this strong sense of knowing what she must do, and it had made her curiously happy. She would not remain at the Fox and Hound for ever, working so hard for Ernest and Muriel, her days utterly monotonous and without hope of change. She nurtured her conviction that there would indeed be change and that she would bring it about herself. She would use her brain. She might not be beautiful like her mother but she knew she had a brain and that it must be capable of helping her. Answers came from this admirable secret organ in her head to the questions she put to it and she marvelled at the ease of the process once she got started.

Where and how could she start to look for her mother? Carlisle, of course, where she had lived with Mary once upon a time. And how could she get to Carlisle? By coach. Who would pay? She would have to save the money herself. Very difficult. She had no money except the rare threepence strangers in the bar gave her and the even rarer sixpence Muriel graciously bestowed upon her on market days in a fit of sublime generosity. These miserable pennies would have to be saved and, once accumulated, used for her fare. But in Carlisle where and how would she live during her search? She would have to find work the moment she arrived there, she would have to show a boldness she had never felt she possessed. And if there was no work? If her smallness and slightness and plain features put employers off? What then, brain?

That was too far to go. She stopped her questions at that point and settled for the limited plan of action she had thought up. Meanwhile, as she saved, as she put the small coins into her tin box of ribbons and sighed at how slowly they filled it, she drew from Muriel every last detail she could about Leah merely by forcing herself to say a word of encouragement here and there. ‘You’ll need

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a new dress,’ Muriel said when, at seventeen, Evie’s growth reached its modest limit, resulting in a sudden bursting of the buttons on her bodice. ‘We’ll make it a different colour, you look bad in navy, we’ll try a brown maybe, your mother looked lovely in brown with that hair of hers.’ ‘Hair?’ echoed Evie, timidly. ‘Her hair, all gold it was, and masses of it, waves and curls, the lot. You haven’t got it, you must’ve got yours from him, gold hair and hazel eyes, that was Leah, not that it did her any good, she was just the sort he fancied.’ ‘He?’ repeated Evie, only a murmur but enough. ‘Mr High-falutin’, Mr Smart-as-paint, Mr Here-today-and-gone-tomorrow. Hugo was his name, la-di-da as himself, Hugo Todhunter, but they’re ashamed of him now, his family disowned him and not before time, and off he went, to Canada, they said.’ Evie stored the name away. It was easy to remember, it thrilled her to say it to herself. But she had no desire to find him, her father, it seemed, no desire at all, he was nothing to her. All she hoped was that through knowing his name she might be aided in her search for her mother when it began.

There were Todhunters in the village but she didn’t think they were anything to do with this man on the horse whom Muriel described. There was nothing la-di-da about them, they were blacksmiths. But on the Carlisle road there was a big house, set back from it with a curving driveway, and Muriel passing it once had made some remark to Ernest about the old Todhunters letting it go to waste. ‘Look at it,’ Muriel had said, ‘needs painting, needs the roof mending,’ and Ernest had squinted at it in the midday sun as their cart rattled along and pronounced the neglect of this once fine house both a shame and a disgrace. ‘Heart went out of them after he left,’ Muriel remarked. ‘And that other son died. There was only the daughter, and she married and left, remember?’ Ernest did, but he wasn’t interested. It was Ernest, though, who provided Evie with another clue, one of more importance than much of Muriel’s chat. He heard Evie singing to herself one day as she worked in the washhouse, singing a hymn. ‘Well,’ he said, surprised, ‘you’ve got your mother’s voice if nothing else. Proper lark, she was, and she was in the church choir, loved to go to church, did Leah, never mind the rain, never mind the snow, off she’d go to St Kentigern’s, came back like a drowned rat many a time, but she didn’t care, she loved to sing in church, no stopping her.’

Evie stopped singing at once, struck dumb with the surprise and thrill of it - she had her mother’s voice, she had something of hers,

something to bring them together, then, to identify her after all as Leah Messenger’s daughter. She knew St Kentigern’s, though it wasn’t the church Muriel had taken her to. Muriel was a Methodist and the Methodist chapel lay in quite the opposite direction to St Kentigern’s, which was a dim little church with a broken spire now and cypress trees crowded so closely round it that it was almost obscured. Evie had never been inside it, she had only seen it from the road, but now she resolved to visit it and see where her mother had sung. She walked there, a distance of a mile or so, and all the time she was walking she was thinking about her mother doing the same, feeling as free perhaps as she suddenly felt herself, hurrying out of the village and striking out between the hills until the road curved downwards and a great vista of moorland opened up. It was a fine day, the sky was a watery pale blue with big puffy clouds sent chasing across it by the strong easterly wind. Evie had her head up and her hair blew out in front of her and her skirt billowed around her as the wind pushed her on. Going back would be hard, struggling against it, but for now it was helping her.

It was a Thursday, late afternoon in March, and there was no one near the now ruined St Kentigern’s. How black it looked, with its dark trees scowling in front of it and its stone walls encrusted with moss so old the green of it was forgotten. There was an old wroughtiron gate at the entrance to the path leading up to the church itself, wide open, banging in the wind. Evie closed it carefully behind her, rust coming off on to her hand. She was afraid the church door would be locked but, though the handle was stiff to turn, she opened it without much trouble. The smell inside was the smell of all neglected old stone buildings - damp, mould and a whiff of lingering smoke. It was a very small church. Evie counted the rows, only six each side of the narrowest of aisles, room for sixty devout folk at the most. And where could a choir have sung? She was puzzled. There were no choir stalls, only a row of six chairs to the left of the altar with a wooden rail in front.

Her mother would have sat on one of those chairs and stood when it was time to sing. Voices would sound loud in this small space, it would not take much vocal power to fill it with sound. Evie did not dare put it to the test. Softly, she crept down the aisle, tripping once on a piece of the matting which had frayed, and hesitated in front of the one step leading up to the altar. She badly wanted to sit, or at least stand, where her mother had stood, but she lacked the courage

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to intrude any further. This was enough. Here her mother had come, every Sunday, rain or shine, and she had sung. It occurred to the motionless Evie that she, too, had of course already been here, in her mother’s body, and this thought startled her. She was not a stranger here after all. This was where she had begun. Had her mother remembered that every time she stood in a church, after she had parted with her? Did singing hymns bring back the memory of this particular church and of her baby? Lightly, Evie ran her hand along the shelf of the front pew. It was covered in dust. She wrote ‘Evie’, then she wrote ‘Leah’, then she drew a heart round the two names, then she pulled her sleeve across and obliterated the names.