WHAT THE POOR PEOPLE ARE DOING


The hatpin skimmed the surface of her scalp. Mother-of-pearl in the shape of a seashell, Evie had picked up the pin for tenpence in Save The Children. With the hat secured she shrugged on her coat, bracing her tiny wishbone body against the weight of it. The high collar nearly overwhelmed her but the coat was good and warm, nearly new, and it kept out the November wind that threatened to whisk her up like thistledown and carry her over the slate-tiled rooftops. Evie locked the door of the charity shop and with her walking stick in one hand and a crumpled carrier in the other turned towards Water Street.

A tabby with a white shirtfront crouched on the front step. He arched his back and rubbed against her as she felt for the key. Dry leaves rasped in the gutter. It was almost dark.

"It's a raw day," Evie remarked to Baby as she filled the kettle.

Baby hovered by the dinner mat. When he'd cleaned the plate he hunched slant-eyed before the heater with his paws tucked in, while Evie emptied the contents of the carrier onto the kitchen table. The dress tumbled out looking every bit as luscious under the fluorescent tube as it had in the shop. Lace, the colour of raspberries, with a silk rose at the neckline like a dainty blob of cream. Someone in Save the Children had marked it out at fifty pence, but that hadn't seemed enough for such a lavish frock so Evie had rescued it for seventy-five.


On Saturday evening Evie ate a sardine sandwich and a slice of fruit cake at the kitchen table. She was an exotic seed inside a red lace husk as she powdered her nose and worked a dab of rouge into her cheeks.

"There!" she said and picked up her handbag. She would take a taxi and do without the stick.

At The Feathers Evie leaned her weight against the brass plate. A young couple loomed on the inside and she let them pull it open for her.

"Thank you," she murmured, but they were already crossing the street.

The Feathers had brocade curtains, plush upholstery and acres of twist pile carpet: a perfect setting for the dress. Evie sighed with pleasure. The table by the fireplace was empty, as usual, because it was a squeeze for two and few people drank here alone. She made herself comfortable.

"Something to drink?"

Evie had seen the sharp-faced barmaid before, "Thank you," she smiled, "I'm expecting friends, but I'll take a sherry while I wait."

"Sweet or dry?"

Evie cocked her head as if thinking hard, "Medium, if you have some." She smoothed the red lace over her knees.

"It's my birthday," she said when the girl returned with the sherry. Her birthday was six months off, but the dress demanded an explanation.

"Many happy returns," said the barmaid.

"Not a special one, but it's a good excuse to get my glad rags on."

The girl nodded and bent to put another log on the fire.

"Nothing to the party coming up though," Evie took a sip of sherry. "My husband will be eighty next month. It's the same week as our golden wedding and the kids have saved up to send us on a trip."

"That's nice of them," the girl looked over Evie's head at the empty bar.

"Back to the hotel where we spent our honeymoon. It was expensive at the time, but we won the money in a Grand National sweepstake. Should have saved it for something sensible of course, but when you're young you don't think ahead, do you?"

"I suppose not," the barmaid wiped her hands on her apron.

" The Metropole in Jersey."

The girl nodded and looked past Evie to a group of young people on the pavement. Evie let the sherry glide down her throat, resigned to being invisible. It had started, not at forty, a couple of years after that, perhaps forty-five. She'd thought at first she was imagining it, but she wasn't. It had taken a few years to grow used to the idea.

A young crowd came in and the barmaid served them. Evie sipped sherry. It had been the wedding of her dreams, everything she'd wanted including a cake with a horseshoe and a bride and groom on top. Nobody in her family ever had such a wedding. Afterwards they spent a week in Jersey and Evie still grew dreamy with pleasure at the memory of Arthur's face the first time he saw her naked. It was their wedding night, of course. They'd never dreamt of doing anything before. She doubted whether Arthur had even seen his mother undressed. Evie was petite, a natural blonde with a silky milk-white body: Arthur hardly dared believe such beauty belonged to him.

"My treasure!" he whispered, as she slipped into bed beside him. From the look on Arthur's face he might have just come face to face with God.

They had such fun, Evie sighed. Not like their reckless daughter. Hazel had married in haste and Evie hadn't been surprised when the baby arrived seven months later. No amount of talk about her being premature could explain it and now the baby, Samantha, well, every man in town had seen her naked by the time she was sixteen.

"Another sherry?" The barmaid was collecting empty glasses.

"My friends must be running late. Perhaps I will." Evie handed her the glass.

It was after Hazel's birth that Arthur had his troubles. Evie never understood what caused them. Her husband was like a big puppy, a Newfoundland with huge paws and a placid temperament. Not the sort to have a breakdown, you'd have thought. It started with insomnia and the doctor gave him pills. Then Arthur couldn't wake up and the doctor gave pills for that. He was tired and depressed. Perhaps it was the insurance job. Evie did her best to cheer him up, but one night Arthur went walking to make himself tired and ended up at the hospital. In casualty, he begged the sister in charge to put him to sleep.

"This place is for sick people," the woman snapped. "Go home and pull yourself together!"

Arthur had felt shattered and ashamed and walked the streets until dawn. He'd got over it in time.

The bar was busy now. Customers arrived in gusts of cold air but Evie was snug.

"There," the barmaid delivered her sherry.

Evie dropped the right coins into the girl's moist palm. Her own hands looked large, stuck on the ends of the brittle sticks of her arms. She folded them in her lap and saw her reflection in a gilt mirror across the bar: the red lace made a satisfying splash of colour on the navy seat and if she squinted in the soft pub light her face had the glow of the Evie in the wedding portrait by her bed.

She and Arthur had taken their one and only foreign trip on that honeymoon, a ferryboat from Jersey to St. Malo, where they stayed two days in a light-washed room above a patisserie. Evie remembered the battlements and the cobbled streets of the town, the jugs of white lilies on the café tables, and waking at six in the morning to the waft of baking bread. The French food had a rich foreign taste. She had loved it and Arthur had done his best.

Strolling arm in arm beside the harbour on their last night in St Malo Arthur had swept Evie off her feet and twirled, laughing, until they were both dizzy. The diamond sky tilted crazily above her head and Arthur's broad shy face wore a gloating look as he bent to kiss her.

"I wonder what the poor people are doing," he said

Her second glass was empty. She couldn't manage a third.

"Would you call me a taxi?" she said, when the barmaid passed. "My friends are very late and I really must get to this party."

From the cab she gazed at rows of shops with shuttered windows. Hazel and Tom had offered the trip to Jersey as a golden wedding present, but Arthur wasn't up to going. Not that he'd miss it, but she wouldn't go without him. Evie caught the train to see him once a fortnight. She took a slab of Cherry Genoa and a bottle of Robinsons lemon barley, but Arthur had forgotten he liked them.

Evie shrugged, she had enjoyed her evening, even felt a little tiddly from the sherry. Pity about The Feathers. It was handy, but she'd had three birthdays there in the last six months and that barmaid had looked a little sceptical tonight. Evie smoothed the red lace over her knees and sighed. There was a turquoise two-piece she had her eye on for next time. It was at the back of the shop on the rack of wedding suits and occasional wear. She'd get it for the golden wedding and God would forgive her these small deceptions.

Now it was home to Baby and a hot water bottle. She would be herself in the morning.