The Girl Next Door (26 page)

Days could go by when Eve spoke to no one. She thought, sometimes, that she was forgetting how to make small talk. The other day, she’d been up on the roof, and Charlotte had been there. The two of them had sat, awkwardly together for a short while.

Charlotte was listening to headphones, reading a book. It looked like a language tape. She’d stopped, embarrassed, when Eve had arrived, although Eve had protested that she shouldn’t.

‘Learning Spanish?’ Eve had glanced at the book Charlotte was reading.

‘Yes.’ Charlotte said it as though she’d been caught doing something wrong.

‘Good for you. I was rubbish at languages at school. Never tried Spanish. We did French, German, and Latin for extra torture. I was crap at all three of them, I’m afraid. How’s it going?’

So she’d tried, but the conversation had been stilted. Eve blamed herself.

As she was leaving, her tapes and books stuffed into her New York Public Library tote, Charlotte smiled at the rise of Eve’s stomach behind the cotton blouse.

‘You’re having a baby, aren’t you? Violet said. I hope you don’t mind my asking…’

‘Not at all,’ Eve replied, grateful for a subject area.

‘How is it?’

‘Tiring, nauseating, a bit scary, wonderful. All of those.’

‘It sounds… wonderful.’

For a second, Eve wondered whether Charlotte was being sarcastic, but decided that she didn’t think so.

‘I think it’s the most fantastic thing.’

‘You’d like children yourself, some day?’

‘Oh, yes. Two or three. I’ve always wanted them, you know?’

Eve nodded. Shrugged her shoulders. ‘Me, too.’ She hoped she didn’t sound smug.

If she’d offended Charlotte, she couldn’t tell. She looked like she was daydreaming. And then she’d hurried off.

Violet had no truck with Eve’s self‐imposed hibernation. She showed up, invited or not, two or three times a week, and dragged her off the sofa. She always came armed with a plan. They would have lunch at the Met, and wander around the Baroque Tapestry exhibit, or tea in the Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle. Dim sum in Chinatown, or a cupcake at the Magnolia Bakery in the West Village. Eve came to expect her, and to look forward to Violet coming.

Violet never seemed like a much older woman. Eve’s early pregnancy slowed her down to the extent that Violet often seemed younger and fitter. They took cabs to and from wherever they were, Violet declaring that subway use was a pursuit of limited appeal, best enjoyed out of summer. And they spent many hours sitting in sidewalk cafés, drinking lemonade and talking.

Today they’d been to the River Club with an old friend of Violet’s who lived in the vast, grand building all the way over on the East River. It was a club, but it was an apartment building, too – she could only imagine how grand those homes must be. But there was something gently dated about the whole place. It had been like going back in time, to the 1930s. They’d swum in the tiny art deco tiled pool, the older ladies wearing Esther Williams floral swim caps, changed in the small cubicles with chintz curtains, attendants fluttering around them, and had club sandwiches and iced tea, served by a waiter in a spotless white uniform, under umbrellas in the beautiful private garden. Violet’s friend Cynthia had clearly been, in her heyday, a New York society scion, and Eve had listened, entranced, to her stream of gossip and scandal. She didn’t know any of the characters involved, but Cynthia’s telling was fascinating nonetheless. Eventually, though, she had dozed off as Violet and Cynthia talked, waking only when Cynthia gently touched her shoulder with one immaculately manicured hand. She’d been embarrassed, and had begun apologizing, but Cynthia had raised a hand in imperious protest.

‘Darling girl! I slept through all six of my pregnancies. And at least one of the conceptions, so far as I recall.’ She winked. ‘Nothing to apologize for.’

They were home now. Eve shucked off her sandals, and wiggled her hot toes against the decking. ‘I’m so glad we did this! It’s like a little oasis in the urban jungle.’

‘Me, too. Feels like it was just for us, though, doesn’t it?’

‘I think we’re the late afternoon crew. I know Todd and Gregory come out here late at night – they were talking about it in the elevator the other day. And I think Millie brings Rachael’s kids out here in the mornings sometimes. I’ve heard them up here, playing.’

‘It’s much lovelier than I ever thought it would be.’

‘We should have a party – a terrace christening.’

‘Great idea.’

‘Can we do it before this nice weather disappears?’

‘Can’t see why not. I think only the usual suspects will show up anyhow. Can’t imagine the Stewarts gracing us with their presence. Or Arthur, unless he bursts in with a pair of secateurs and deblooms all the flowers…’

‘Is he really all that bad?’

‘Worse. I’ve no time for him at all.’

‘Has he ever been married?’

Violet laughed. ‘Good Lord, no. Pity the woman who fell for him. You’d have to be a masochist. No – Arthur Alexander is simply one of life’s deeply unpleasant people.’

Eve wondered if anyone was that black and white. It seemed to her that life was much greyer than it used to be – she was emphatic about much less these days. For some reason, she didn’t believe Arthur Alexander was all bad.

Violet had moved on, ‘Better plan it for after Labor Day. Maybe the weekend after next…?’

‘It was fun today. Thanks for taking me. Cynthia’s a hoot.’

‘She certainly is.’

‘Does she really have six children?’

‘Five now. Lost a boy in Vietnam. And, at the last count, twelve grandchildren and a few greats, I think. A veritable tribe. Doubt she could name half of them – the greats, that is. I daresay she knows her own children.’

Eve giggled. ‘That’s terrible…’

‘There are compensations. She’s not the “sit on my lap and I’ll read you a story” sort of granny. But she is the trust fund, college tuition paid, mansion on Nantucket kind of granny. I expect that’s been enough for the six of them.’

‘Wow. Six children! I can’t even imagine having that many.’

‘And always a brace of nannies. Cynthia wasn’t nearly so hands on as I expect you’ll be. Too busy, and altogether too grand, bless her.’

‘How do you two come to be friends?’

‘She was a client, of my husband’s. In the Fifties and Sixties. We used to go to “dos”. Dinner dances, that sort of thing. We liked each other a lot. I think I was a novelty for her – she was born and bred in Manhattan society. I still remember the first time I met her – we were in line at the same do. Waldorf Astoria. In its heyday – when it was one of the very best hotels. I had the only cloth coat in the ladies’ cloakroom, and a drugstore lipstick to reapply in the bathroom. Not because my husband wouldn’t have bought me nice things. I think he would have got me anything I wanted, bless him. I just wasn’t that way inclined. I carried on the way I always had before I married him. No furs, no Elizabeth Arden. That tickled her.’

‘We’re talking second husband, I presume?’

Violet winked. ‘Have you been taking notes?’

‘Well, it doesn’t sound like she could have been a “client” of Gus’s… Gus had customers, right?’

She smiled. ‘She wasn’t.’

‘But before you get to the second one, you’ve got to tell me about the first one. I haven’t forgotten. We left you on the prow of the bride ship, listening to Céline Dion singing “My Heart Will Go On”.’

Violet laughed. ‘Don’t you have to take a nap, or make dinner for your poor neglected husband?’

‘Neglected husband? That’s rich! Nope. Ed’s got a late meeting, with drinks. Won’t be back for ages.’ Don’t care if he is, she added, only to herself. I’d rather be with you right now. ‘And I feel strangely awake today… you’ve got time for a couple of decades, I’m thinking… I might just get you to the present day by the time this baby comes!’

‘You remind me of me and my sisters, sitting around the radio listening to
Dick Barton
.’

‘I love listening to your stories.’

‘Bless you.’

‘Really. I do. I want to know about Gus. Please…’ Eve stuck out her bottom lip and looked at Violet sideways, from under her eyelashes. Violet smiled, and slapped her knee gently.

‘All right, all right… Do you know, it sometimes seems to me that that time, the years of my first marriage, didn’t even happen. It is so long ago, and I carry with me almost nothing of it. I wasn’t even the same person. It’s like it happened to someone else, you know?’

‘He was waiting for you, though? When the ship docked?’

‘He was waiting for me. So were his mother, his grandmother, and his three sisters.’

‘Blimey. That must have been pretty intimidating.’

‘Terrifying. They all spoke at once. More like screeched, actually. They had his New Jersey accent, only more so, and at a higher‐pitched decibel level. It was pretty overwhelming.’

‘And Gus?’

Violet smiled. ‘Gus was different. Out of uniform, back on his home turf. A familiar refrain, I daresay.’

‘They’re all a bit different, aren’t they, once you take off your rose‐coloured spectacles…’

Violet looked at her sharply, but, when Eve didn’t add anything, she carried on. ‘You’ve got to remember, we hardly knew each other. Not really. I’m sure you don’t want details, but suffice to say we’d had a wedding night, in Norwich, but that was it. And that had been pretty disastrous. Maybe disastrous is a bit harsh. But it hadn’t given me a lot to live on, during the time apart and the voyage over. And I don’t think I’d realized quite how it was going to be. I mean, I’d known we’d be living with his family, to begin with, at least, but I imagined it would be short term – that he’d be as keen as I was to get our own place. I wanted to have my own home – make my own rules. Do my own thing.’

Eve nodded. She was remembering her beloved cottage, and the incredibly intoxicating feeling of owning it, back at the beginning.

‘That first night, we went back to Gus’s parents’ house. The rest of the family was all there – not just immediate – Gus seemed to have 300 aunts and uncles and cousins, and they were all there – anxious to clap eyes on the English girl Gus had married. They meant well, I know, but it was far too much, too soon. My family had been so small and so different – we never, ever talked about personal things. Gus’s lot were all “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” about us.’

Eve squirmed with sympathy.

‘Do you know, more than sixty years later, all I can remember about that first night – our first night in America and only our second as man and wife – is that the bed creaked and squeaked. All I could think as I lay under Gus was that everyone must be able to hear us. It was awful. I couldn’t wait for it, for him, to be finished. I was totally mortified. I could barely face them the next morning.’

‘Not much of a honeymoon.’

‘Not much of a first year at all. It quickly became apparent that Gus was quite happy where he was, and he couldn’t see why we’d want the expense and inconvenience of moving out into our own place when we were, so far as he was concerned, perfectly well set up where we were.’

‘Didn’t you tell him?’

‘Oh, I tried. But Gus had a way of talking you round. He said we’d move when we had a child, and since that didn’t seem to be happening, he saw no reason to rush.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Jockeyed for position with his mother. Played house in the one room, and played second fiddle to her in every other part of the home. She was a nice enough woman, I suppose. But it was pretty clear I wasn’t expected to work, except and unless I wanted to make myself useful in the family business – the lumber yard, the hardware store. They all lived together, and then worked together all day, and it didn’t seem to bother any of them, being on top of each other all the time. And there wasn’t a lot else to do. I had imagined, I guess, that I’d make friends easily enough, but that didn’t happen either. They were a big family, who had little need for outsiders, it seemed.’

‘What about his sisters?’

‘They couldn’t ever seem to stop treating me like an outsider. Not with hostility. Just with this sort of curiosity and carefulness that was very wearing. The town wasn’t big. And although New York was pretty close, it wasn’t somewhere they went often. I went myself, a few times, in the first months. I loved the city – it was so exotic to me then – unfamiliar in almost every way I could think of. Busy and exciting and a big adventure, you know. Gus hated New York – I could never persuade him to go in, on a Sunday or anything. They disapproved of me going in alone. If I suggested we try and see a show, or go and look at a museum, or something, he looked at me like I was advocating dancing naked around Central Park. He was a small town boy, my Gus. You couldn’t tell, when he was back in Norwich. We thought all Americans were the same – you couldn’t see. Mind you, I think I must have been one of the lucky ones. When I think about the girls on the ship – some of them off to Louisiana, and Kentucky, and Tennessee. I think I probably had it easy in comparison with them.’

‘It doesn’t sound easy.’

Violet shrugged, nodding. ‘I was pretty low. I was closer to the new life I’d dreamed of, but still far away. I’d escaped a home I wasn’t happy in, for one I didn’t feel I belonged in. I loved Gus, so far as I knew about love, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in love with him, as they say. We hadn’t a lot in common. And I came to be regarded as a bit of a failure, because I didn’t get pregnant. All of Gus’s sisters had their first babies in the first year of marriage, and that’s what they expected of me. It got to be quite an elephant in the room, the fact that I wasn’t.’

‘Poor you. That sounds really tough.’

‘I was cared for and comfortable. People had it much worse. But, my goodness, I was lonely.’

She was me, Eve thought suddenly. She was me. This life is my life. She put one hand across her tummy, above where the baby was. This is different. This makes it different. This will make it okay.

‘Did you ever think about leaving him?’

‘Honestly? No. Never.’

‘I think I might have done.’

‘So might I, now. We were different then. You didn’t do that. Divorce – that wasn’t an option for so many of us. You stuck it out. You’d made your bed.’