Dusk

Eveline stared at the clock on the mantelpiece, and swore. Her eyes were gone to hell – she knew that – but that damned thing, like most of the inhabitants of the Nazareth Home, wasn’t ticking.

She’d planned this whole operation to perfection, right down to the moment when Rose, her partner in the lounge, would give in to the effects of her tablets, and collapse into a head-nodding, snoring, dribbling coma. Once this was done, she had a certain amount of time before half past five, which was dinner, when they’d all be shunted into the dining room to feast on some atrocity the latest cook had dreamt up.

Ah well, she thought, rising slowly, and listening to the creaking and cracking of her bones, she’d better make the most of it. Mr Hen – so-called because his parents had kept a small coop, and no-one forgot anything in a small town – was mumbling to himself in the corner. She had no fear of him – his mind was completely gone, unlike, unfortunately, Rose. She was compos mentis and loved intrigue, but was sadly stone-deaf and extremely loud as a result. Eveline’s hearing was still reasonably good, so Rose’s booming tones were somewhat painful.

She picked up her walking stick and slowly made her way out of the room. With a furtive glance into the hall, she made her way quietly along, towards the glass door. She pushed her way out, and suddenly her senses were bombarded with the visions of a late afternoon seascape. She blinked, inhaling the fresh, cool sea air; a pleasant contrast to disinfectant and stale potpourri, mothballs and old, ill flesh. It was beautiful.

The cool, salty air brought tears to her faded, milky eyes as she stared on the scene in front of her. She listened to gulls cawing dreamily above her, and then shook herself out of the enchantment, and moved gingerly down the steps of the Nazareth Home towards the promenade.

Every summer there was a cabaret singer out there on the front, primarily to entertain the families who couldn’t afford holidays in France and so came to the local seaside for a week. The old folk were all brought out to sit and listen to the noise, although anyone who could leave generally did, and quickly. She always felt sorry for those in wheelchairs, deposited there with no means of escape. It was sadly comic to see them stuck there for long hours, after everyone else had left, nodding to the strained tones of the singer. What a way to end. People forgot. They forgot that you were them, forty years down the track; that you knew what disappointment, fury, ecstasy and pain were all about.

They couldn’t see that you had once been a giggling, fearful child, with rosy cheeks, ribbons and curls; that you had been a sullen, embarrassed, awkward youth; a demure, blushing, beautiful adolescent; a confident, comfortable, capable woman. They couldn’t see it in your withered, leathery flesh; in your chilblains, varicose veins, knobbly elbows and knees; in your wispy, thinning, white hair and slowly dimming eyes. And who could blame them?

She moved her neck slowly, painfully back to look at the sky, sensing rain, and then hesitantly, gaining momentum, confidence and pace, she began to hobble, somewhat stooped, along the promenade. Up until now, she had been a little overwhelmed by the details of the escapade. For countless long nights, she had lain awake, planning her venture, going over the minutiae, wondering if she would live to see the day on which she dared to assert such independence.

Her memory was now a faded pastiche of the past, and indeed the present sat uneasily in the middle of the dreams that governed her mind; so it was that often she would forget the day, the time, the year. She had no notion of the length of time it had taken her to open the door, to close it behind her, and step into the daylight. Nor, as she walked deliberately along, could she recall the reason for this departure.

She tried to stem a rising sense of panic as it dawned on her that she could not remember what her mission – her grail – entailed. Here she was, casually bent on adventure, and with no concept of its potential end, or indeed where to proceed from the point where she now found herself. She swore softly to herself, hoping the words would slow her speeding heart, which, what with the sudden exertion of the walk, was making her rather breathless.

A small child, with big blue eyes and cherry lips, who had been circling the promenade, glanced up at her as it heard the words from her lips, and began to cry. She watched it, genderless in its woollen hat, scarf and red Wellington boots, running towards the safety and sanctity of its parents, presumably – two figures, shady on the periphery of her sight.

She clucked sadly to herself, mustered her resolve, and marched slowly onwards. Better to start, she decided, with what she did know. Her name. Eveline. She mumbled it to herself, feasting on the syllables, the sound, the connotations. Eveline. Eveline. Musical, soft notes, spun from the sinews of time. Eveline. Such a pretty name. She didn’t feel like she owned it any more.

Eveline was a pretty little girl with dimples, who laughed and sang, could play the piano and recite nursery rhymes by heart. She was good tempered and the apple of her mother’s eye; she was going to be a nurse, a teacher, a writer, an actress, a singer. She wore her hair in two thick braids with red ribbons, which she liked to flick disdainfully at the boys who wanted to hold her hand.

Back on the promenade, her knees were beginning to feel the effect of her walk. They were trembling beneath her, and she felt with a sudden fright that they might turn to dust beneath her; that she would crash down onto the promenade in a cloud of bone. Her head began to spin, and she was wheezing in terror, when she spotted a lovely bench, just a few yards in front of her at the end of the pier.

It had a calming effect upon her; it took her just a few moments of exertion to reach it and sit slowly down. She could not guess at the time, but she imagined it would not be long before she was missed at the Nazareth Home. Already, somehow, the home seemed like a closed chapter in her life; an ethereal dream, from which she had long since awoken.

The dusk, the cry of a lone bird, the breeze from the sea, the sound of the waves, the silt, the sand, the taste of salt upon her lips: this was reality. She could not imagine, sitting here, no distance from the home at all, that she could ever return there; that the scene before her – so complete in its separation from the warmth, the bright and harsh colours, the regular meals, the kindly, bored staff, the old people who smelt of cabbage and talcum powder – could be reconciled with the Nazareth.

She had left; she had stepped out of the door, she had closed it behind her and now she could never return. Her name was Eveline. She was never called that now. What did they call her at the home? Dear… sweetheart… something non-committal; something that didn’t distinguish her from the rest of the phlegmatic, cobwebby, creeping crowd. Her name was Eveline, wasn’t it? Eveline, she mumbled to herself, listening to the cracked voice she knew to be her own make a daring, reckless reclamation.

Not the voice that sang sweetly in St Michael’s choir – no. It was like a door hinge in desperate need of oiling; a ghastly, ghostly sound that frightened her a little. She shuddered and sighed, and waited as the sun blazed a bright orange, a dying ember, directly above the midnight blue of the sea.

The wind began to pick up and, as the light continued steadily to dim, she felt a rising sense of urgency. She had to get on. She pushed herself up with effort from her lonely bench and carefully manoeuvred herself and her stick back onto the main promenade.

The night air was drifting in and it had a chill to it, which made her glad to discover she was wearing a coat. It was a heavy coat – another clue to her errand, perhaps. She delved her hand into a pocket and slowly drew out a purse. She looked down at the coat. It seemed shabby – a little worn at the edges, in keeping with her own weary figure. But the purse was new. She racked her mind for a clue to it, silently cursing the addled mess of her memories.

She continued to walk, grasping the purse in one arthritic hand and the stick in her other. She squinted, trying to focus, trying to picture herself, but could see only a demure, blushing chit of a girl with long, brown hair that she brushed till it shone, waiting for life to sweep her away. What was her name? Eveline, of course.

Her father was dead by then. She heard in later years that he drank himself into an early grave, along with the other men of the town, but she wasn’t aware of any memory to corroborate that. She couldn’t picture his face any more, which was a regret. Her mother, too, was disappearing in fractured fragments. She remembered her deep blue eyes, her soft smile, and the sound of her own name spoken in her mother’s voice.

She knew of other children – siblings, perhaps – who had filled her days with riotous games and raucous arguments. Some of them darted into her mind, racing around in red Wellingtons, fighting, playing, running in circles and crying for mother because of an old lady with evil on her tongue.

She shook the purse and it jangled. The jangle – the scrape of coin against coin – the noise of collection on a Sunday mass in St Michael’s Church, where giggling, silly girls flicked scornful pigtails at altar boys and sang like angels with softly beating wings. Money. She slipped the purse back into her pocket and continued her thoughtful jaunt.

She remembered a small school where she had sat attentively for many years, waiting for a turn to take the chalk and write on the blackboard – instruct a band of obedient ignorants, educate the masses, display her talents on a blackboard with a white stick. Chalk dust on her hands, on the books, in her hair, everywhere. The sound of generations dutifully reciting fragments of the canon with her, as she grew older and the chalk dust settled on the gleaming pigtails.

Austere, benevolent, tyrannical, malevolent; admonishing, rewarding, congratulating, punishing – she watched generations filtering through, grinning, cheerful, sobbing, skipping; big blue sexless eyes and red Wellingtons running circles round a blackboard and white stick, with a purse, a sunset and the smell of morning mist on frosty days.

The black board and white stick paid for her mother’s care and now it paid for hers – a sound investment. She hadn’t paid anything for her father, which seemed wrong. She should do something about that while she still had the chance. But she didn’t teach any more. She had abandoned her personal projects that she so carefully filled with poetry pieces, sweets, punishments and kisses. Demure, spring dewed, glossy pigtailed, laughing, red-Wellington-booted, disdainful, beribboned babies, circling the promenade and running to her protection, as she stood on the peripheries, watching them grow and wondering at it.

Someone else, another character, in smart trousers; an embarrassed smile on a pink face – her father? A pink face that clashed with red ribbons and white dresses and red bouquets and white sheets and – that silly bugger she married. The disdainful flick of a pigtail in the choir and the rosy-cheeked altar boy. I do and I do and they did. What happened next and where he had gone were mysteries to her now, she thought sadly to herself.

She had walked on much farther than she imagined herself capable and now stood beneath the war monument, the vision of Victory – an angel with softly beating wings; a choral vision with spring dew on her glowing cheeks. She gazed up at Victory, waiting for an illumination; for inspiration, but the crick in her neck easily overcame will and she lowered her eyes to the ground, suddenly perturbed by the darkness and aware of a ferocity in the wind and a savagery in the sea that reminded her of their tempestuous natures.

Despite the heavy coat she seemed to have purloined, with its jingly, jangly money purse, she was beginning to feel cold. The Nazareth House, a picture of another universe, flickered in her memory like a dying ember; the walk from the cosy, floral front room, where little old women with candy floss hair and names like Violet and Rose, Poppy and Chrysanthemum – no, that was her favourite for the spelling bee; a whole bouquet of dried and talcum-scented flowers, talked about a pleasant place they called the past. They all corroborated each other’s remembrances – partners in crime, so to speak, asserting their supreme knowledge of the region they called yesterday.

She felt a certain longing for it now, afraid of her mission and the task that lay before her and perturbed by the jingly purse, the sound investment and peripheral parents whose faces were forgotten fragments in rusty recesses of her consciousness. But she pressed on into the cold, remembering her lengthy and stealthy preparations, her plans and timings, her tremblings and shakings; the breathless beating of her heart as she slipped out of the door and into this place, away from her sound investment and into a tempestuous land where gulls cawed and the sea swept along the shoreline; where the sun glowed above the water like a lost thought – a dying ember – and where blue-eyed babies with disdainful pigtails ran in circles to peripheral parents. She couldn’t return now.

There was a mysterious new purse that jingled like the collection box in the arms of a blushing altar boy, into whose arms she fell. She fingered the purse as she tapped along, excited by its possibilities, its sound investment potentials, and singing to herself as she sang in the choir at St Michael’s, the summer child and the apple of her mother’s eye; her fractured mother and faceless father, who doted upon their chalky daughter. Her cracked tones danced in the night in circles on the promenade as she made her way along.

She was tired. Her legs shook. Her bones creaked and cracked. She forced her way forward, determined and desperate to fulfil her aim. Ahead of her, a light shone, and she could hear music floating on the air. Trembling with fatigue and excitement, with a certainty in her actions now, she made her way towards the brightness. She pushed open a door, and sat down, energy spent, at a small table with a plastic floral tablecloth. There was a scent of talcum powder in the air and she spotted several shades of wispy candyfloss around her.

A disdainful girl with a glossy ponytail smiled at her and asked her what she’d like. Stealthily Eveline withdrew her jingling purse. She wanted a cup of tea, and a cream bun, she added daringly. She heard a gull cry out in the night and she felt glad for the scent in the air; the candyfloss and the familiarity of a place called the past drifting in conversation past her table.

The bun and tea soon appeared, and Eveline munched thoughtfully, listening to wisps of memories as she circled the promenade in red Wellingtons, searching for her peripheral parents; her beautiful mother and her neglected father without a face. She was jolted from her reveries when a man with blushing cheeks came to her table. Her father? That silly bugger? He picked up her jingling purse with a hand that jingled with keys, and she started in confusion. Then he picked up her stick and helped her gently to her feet.

Had she enjoyed her constitutional? She had, rather. Good, good. Doctor’s orders, of course, to take a daily stroll, and she enjoyed a cream bun at the end of it, didn’t she? She did, with a nice cup of tea. Quite right, he laughed. Got to enjoy herself – had she enough money to pay? She looked confused. The scornful girl flicked her ponytail, bringing her change, and the blushing boy blushed anew.

But best not to overdo it, of course. He called to Violet, Lily and Laurel, who made their way over, smiling. They hadn’t spotted Eveline. She’d been there all the time? Anyway, time to return to good old Nazareth for some Cocoa, a natter and a warm bed. He’d brought the car, and they could all squeeze in, back to Nazareth in time for supper. It was good for them to retain a bit of independence, get out from the home; have a stroll. They actively encouraged it at the Nazareth.

Eveline was tired. She looked forward to the lounge; to the floral paper, the comfy chairs, the sound investment, the “my dears”, the Cocoa, and the familiar discussions of a place called the past. She wanted to be back there, warm, comfortable, and excitedly planning a secret excursion all of her own once again, amongst the flickering embers of a dying sunset and a lonely gull circling the promenade.