Did The Earth Move? (12 page)

In the days before the moving-out date, Evelyn had spent most of her time on the phone making unpleasant calls: telling the bursar the boys would not be coming back to school, cancelling lists and lists of monthly direct debits, gym membership, tennis club fees, music lessons, insurances – even their life insurance.

The boys had played football in the garden almost all day long, running the ball from one end of the lawn to the other, making up little rules and games as they watched removals men arrive, fill up a lorry full and drive it away.

'Are they taking everything to our new house?' Denny had asked and it had broken her heart.

'Well... I don't know if we're going to need all that old stuff. I mean, we'll definitely have all your toys . . . but. . . you know . . . time for a change,' was the stumbling reply she'd given him.

'So where are we going?' he'd asked and now Tom came to stand beside him so that the two rosy, rapt faces were looking up at her and she had no idea what to tell them, hadn't even broken the news that school would not be starting next week as they expected. She didn't want them to feel as lost as she did.

'Do you think we could move to your father's for a bit?' Dennis had asked over yet another meal of baked beans on toast and too many glasses of wine from a box, taken with the radio on to drown out the anxious, horrible silence between them.

'My father's!' She'd expected Dennis to have a solution for them by now. A new job, a new home, even if it was only rented, some money coming in. She felt she could only begin to start coping if these things were in place. But moving to her father's? All four of them? Was there no other possible solution? It was a fresh reminder of how grim things were.

Her father lived in Gloucestershire, miles away from Surrey.

'For how long?' she'd asked.

'I don't bloody know,' he'd answered.

'I can't ask him if he'll have us and not tell him how long for. And what about the boys? They'll have to go to school.' She resisted the urge to throw down her fork and storm out. It was becoming impossible for the two of them to have conversations of longer than four sentences before one of them became too angry to stay.

They were going to have to try. They were out of this house in three days' time with no money and nowhere else to go. Something had to be arranged.

So it was decided, and in a van filled with the things the bailiffs hadn't wanted – clothes, toys, kitchen stuff, unexceptional furniture from the spare rooms – they had all moved to her father's house.

Evelyn had never had a close relationship with her father. It was generally quite a civilized friendship, although she felt the weight of his disapproval. He disapproved and she 'disappointed' him. That was how it had been since she was small. And boy, had she given him reason to disapprove and be disappointed now.

He sighed and tutted round the house at them, but managed to hold in the lecture he was obviously bursting to give. Her dad. The formal, English solicitor, who still lived in the big family home he'd moved into on his wedding day. Her mother Elsie, only occasionally spoken about now, had died suddenly when Evelyn and her sister, Janie, were children. Over the years, her mother's presence in the house had shrunk down to a few framed and strangely oranged photos out on display and a chest of drawers full of belongings no-one had had the heart to sort through or part with.

After the move, Evelyn was surprised at how quickly they'd adjusted to this odd new temporary life.

Her father had grumpily assured them that they could stay for as long as they needed, so their cases were unpacked, the garage was piled up with their belongings, she and Dennis moved into her childhood bedroom while her sons were installed in her sister's. When the Easter holidays ended, the boys began to go to the primary school she'd gone to as a girl.

'It's just for a little while,' she'd told them soothingly as she walked them all nervous and twitchy down the street for their first day. 'But I bet there are some really nice boys and girls at this school too.'

Dennis, smartly dressed in a suit and ironed shirt every day, either stayed in the dining room, which served as his makeshift office, or took day trips to London to try and find a new job, and occasionally to appear in court.

He'd waved away her offers to accompany him: 'Just means two train fares, doesn't it?'

Her father was away at work all day too. He never gave them money, thought that would be intruding on the situation, but she noticed that he would keep the fridge topped full, would return from work with 'These fish for us all' or 'Lovely lamb chops in the butcher's window today, couldn't resist.'

She spent the hours between dropping the children off at nine and picking them up again at three in a determined housekeeper role, washing, ironing, cleaning obsessively, baking cakes for tea, making supper and trying not to give too much thought to how everything had changed.

At night, she and Dennis would lie side by side in bed, under the ceiling and the walls she'd known so intimately as a child, and say hardly anything to each other. Until one night, after they had been there for five weeks or so, he told her he was going to have to go abroad to work.

'I can't get anything here,' he explained. "There's been far too much fuss. No-one wants to get involved.'

He'd outlined his plan to take up an offer of work from a former colleague who was now out in Singapore. She didn't remember feeling any particular emotion in response to this news. It was delivered so unenthusiastically. Dennis wasn't presenting it like some fantastic new challenge or fresh start for them all. He simply explained that this is what had to be done.

'I'm not going to be able to have my own company in Britain for years,' he told her with a face crumpled with regret and disappointment. He'd grown so puffy and red-faced in the crisis, she knew he must be drinking far more than he was admitting to. His blond hair was also thinning out rapidly.

When she looked at him she could see no trace of the charming, persuasive, dashing man with a touch of the bounder she'd once found so overwhelming. She saw only a paunchy, stressed-out, City financier. And although she didn't ask exactly what he had done to be in this amount of crap, she suspected he'd not played by the rules and had been severely burned.

So, a fortnight later, he had gone to Singapore. Yes,
he
had gone. There wasn't enough money for them all to go, the job he was taking came with no perks, he'd explained, he could only afford one flight and to rent a small studio apartment. But he'd assured her the situation would change within months; weeks even, once they realized what a good operator he was.

He'd been strangely secretive about it all, left her with only the vaguest contact details, promising that he would phone with all the information once he'd found a hotel, then a flat.

She remembered him packing three enormous suitcases with most of his remaining belongings – even his heavy winter overcoats, she'd noticed – his favourite books, CDs and all his shoes, along with some silver trinkets which had belonged to his own father – a clock, an ornate hairbrush, and a photo frame with a picture of Denny and Tom when they were tiny.

'I don't want to clutter up your dad's place,' he said by way of explanation for the big, heavy bags.

Then he'd left, and she'd not had the slightest idea, as she'd tearfully waved him off in his taxi – he'd refused to let her come to the airport – that he was leaving them for good and she and their two sons would not see him again for years.

Evelyn had pursued him with a flurry of anxious telephone calls: to the airline, to the parent company of the one he'd mentioned, eventually to the police. All she had been able to establish in those frantic days was that yes, Dennis was alive and well and living over there, but he made absolutely no attempt to contact them.

She had floundered in the knowledge of this. All day trying to carry on a normal existence for the sake of Denny and Tom, in the evening trying to explain what had happened to her incredulous father and at night tossing and turning, restlessly trying to make sense of it.

The novelty of living at Grandpa's house was wearing off for the boys. They were irritable, whingey and naughty. There wasn't anywhere to set up their train track, they weren't allowed to play football in the garden and the more Grandpa disapproved of their behaviour, the more they played up.

Evelyn tried so hard to channel their energy into afternoon swims, trips to the park, even mowing and raking the lawn every second day. But she was exhausted and filled with a barely suppressible rage at what had happened to her. Weeks passed without a word from Dennis. She wrote to him care of the company to ask for some clarification at least, but the letter was returned unopened, marked 'address not known'. She didn't know if this referred to her husband or to the company. She hadn't the heart to find out.

He didn't want to know them. He had abandoned them to their fate. Without the slightest fucking explanation.

One morning Tom had been prancing about the bedroom making an irritatingly slow game of getting dressed as usual and finally Evelyn had been unable to handle it. She'd reached out and slapped him on the face so hard that four accusingly red finger-marks were left glowing on his cheek.

Her son had burst into shocked tears and as she'd hugged him up in her arms, she'd cried too.

I'm so sorry, Tom. I'm so sorry,' she'd repeated over and over. He was four, none of this was his fault. She couldn't take it out on him.

'I'll be very good. I don't want you to go away like Daddy,' he'd sobbed into her chest.

'I'm never going away. I promise, promise. I'm never going to leave you.' She told both of the boys this every time they even hinted at the fear. But there was a clinginess to them, a shadow over their lives which had not been there before.

And here she was, back in the town she had grown up in. Back in her family home. Fuck. She was getting a phobia about trips to the baker's shop, the fishmonger and the chemist and hearing the same questions: 'Hello Evelyn, how is your husband doing? When are you and the boys going over to join him then?'

Her father had looked into the legal possibilities of suing Dennis for maintenance and even divorce, but he was in international waters now and out of jurisdiction.

In the long nights she spent alone, awake in her childhood bedroom, Evelyn had time to reflect at length on her marriage. Had she been a bad wife? She had no idea. She had nothing to compare herself with, Dennis had been her one and only serious relationship and now he wasn't even going to give her any explanation as to what had gone wrong.

At first, she just waited, sure that something would happen, some word would come from him, some solution... resolution. But weeks and then months and finally the whole summer had slid by until she'd finally realized that she would have to do something. Take charge somehow, not just of herself, but of her two hurt and very needy boys.

Picking up the pieces had felt absolutely impossible. The problems overwhelmed her, seemed to grow bigger and bigger until she couldn't see past them. How would she get a job? How would she pay for childcare and a home? How would she ever get herself and her children out of her father's house?
Why
had Dennis done this to them?

Despairing, Evelyn had spent the hours her sons were at school in her father's sitting room alone at the window: watching the occasional car go past, a mother and buggy, delivery man, whatever. For hours on end, she sat in the room not moving, not crying, not thinking, just stuck.

Dennis had left her here, stuck with the boys, stuck with their care, stuck with no money, stuck in this house which she thought she had escaped for ever when she married him.

It became harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning. And finally, when she had prised herself from the covers, she had gone into auto-mum. Making the children's breakfast, dressing them in their uniforms, walking them to school. The small reasons to be cheerful had eluded her. The boys gave her reason to live, but this was not really living, this was just existing.

One morning, as Evelyn sat on the sofa staring out of the window as usual, she saw a sleek red car pull up. The door opened and out stepped the tall, elegantly dressed figure it took her a few moments to register was her younger sister, Janie.

Strange: Janie arriving unannounced. This was so unlike her. She'd been down to see them for the odd weekend since they'd arrived at her father's house – but unannounced? On a weekday morning?

'Hello big sis!' In she breezed, kissing Evelyn on the cheek. 'Dad says you're a mess, he has no idea what to do with you and I'm to sort you out. So here I am.'

Evelyn didn't know what to say to this. 'D'you want some tea?' came out instead.

'No, no, bugger tea and sympathy and all that, get your stuff, we're going out.'

'Where? I have to be back for the boys ...'

'No you don't, Dad's going to pick them up, it's all arranged. And they know, so don't worry about them, OK?'

'OK.'

'I'm not here to tell you what to do,' Janie insisted as they zipped along in the car, 'but you'll have to do something, because you can't go on like this, can you?'

'I suppose not.'

'Have you got any ideas?'

She felt so awkward trying to tell her sussed and sorted younger sister, already a lawyer training for the bar, that she wanted to do something proper and important and a bit worthy... oh, and she wanted it to be kind of court-based as well.

But Janie listened, never once snorted or laughed and after several long moments of thought said: 'The probation service, Lynnie. What about the probation service? You won't make much money, of course, but it's everything else you want. And you're great with kids, so why not get into the young offenders side of it?'

It was an unarguably good idea. And like all good ideas, it took on a life of its own. Before Evelyn could raise any objections, Janie had taken her to the social security office to sort out child benefit, study funding, grants. Then she whizzed Evelyn to the library to look up courses, bought her a sharp little suit in the town's one decent dress shop, then took her out for dinner with lashings of red wine.

'How long have you and Dad known I've been married to a shit?' Evelyn wanted to know, once the first course was over.

'Oh God.' Janie looked down at her plate, shamefacedly. 'Don't ask me that.'

'Why not?'

'Because I never wanted you to marry him, but I didn't want to say anything either. You were up the duff, you were so mad about him and would you honestly have listened if I'd said a word? I was 17 at the time, Lynnie.'

'No, I suppose not.' Evelyn wound a corner of napkin round her fingers. 'But is this what you thought would happen?'

'No, of course not!' Janie told her. 'I just thought you were going to be a Surrey housewife for the rest of your life, bored to tears . .. never having found what you wanted out of life for yourself.'

Evelyn let this sink in.

'I'm a single mother,' she told her sister, saying the words out loud for the very first time. 'A single mother who has never had a job and I'm not qualified to do one either. It's very scary, Janie and, as usual, I wish I'd done what you have. I should have re-sat my exams and gone to law school. If I was a lawyer, I'd have enough money and I could buy a house for me and my children and it would all be OK.'

'If you'd re-sat your exams and gone to law school, you wouldn't have had the boys,' Janie reminded her.

'Well, there's one thing at least that I'll never regret.' Evelyn swirled her glass around and drained it.

'You're going to be fine,' her younger sister assured her. 'You've got me and Dad to help you. I promise it's all going to be OK.' Janie so hoped that this was true.

'You're feeling better now, aren't you?' Janie asked her as they finally pulled up outside their father's home.

'I'm feeling a lot better . . . There is hope! Thank you,' Evelyn told her and took a long look at the young woman sitting in the driver's seat beside her. She'd seen Janie as her infuriatingly perfect younger sister for so long now, it was quite hard to take a real look at the woman she'd grown into: smart, driven, really clever.

'I'm proud of you,' Evelyn said.

'I'm proud of you too,' Janie answered. 'You've been through hell. But now it's time to come out the other side ... with a little help.'

'I think I'm going to move back to London,' Evelyn said, the idea just forming in her mind.

'What! With the boys? What about schools? And extortionate rents?'

'I know, I know... but I liked it there. When I first went – before I met Dennis and all that.' It was hard to explain. She wanted out of her home town, that was for sure, out of the claustrophobia of being recognized at every turn and into the anonymity of the city.

The other thing nagging at her to go back was the belief that in London, before Dennis, she had felt just briefly a very little bit like herself, her real, adult self. She was convinced that she could only find this person again, this who-she-really-was, if she went back to London and started looking.

'There must be plenty of work in London for a newly qualified probation officer,' she told Janie.

'Well, that's true. Come on, hop out. Dad's waiting for us. Let's see what he has to say about all this.'

'Yeah, and then ignore it!'

They both laughed.

The next day, an omen of good arrived for Mrs Evelyn Leigh in the shape of a letter from the secondhand dress shop. Most of Mrs Leigh's wonderful wardrobe had sold and Carole wanted to know if she should forward the £1,570 balance to the same address.

One and a half thousand pounds!
The sort of sum Evelyn might once have spent casually on a dress, a chair ... a new set of curtains, now seemed like the miraculous gift which would allow her to put her newly formed plans into action. Within weeks, she was registered for a probation course in London and she and her sons were moving into a rented one-bedroom flat in a terraced house in Hackney. It was a shabby little upstairs flat in a shabby little street, facing onto a low-rise council estate, but there was a bus stop right outside the door and a church school two streets down which was OK, the letting agent had promised.

The first night there was difficult. Surrounded by boxes, cases and a sprawl of furniture, she had tried to keep her boys cheerful as they all wondered what on earth she had done.

Now that they were in, she saw how tiny the bare white-painted rooms were and felt the damp and dankness of the kitchen and the bathroom. Both had grey spirals of mould on the walls and ceiling.

But she heard herself telling her sons as they ate a fish supper on the sitting room floor, 'I know it looks a bit ropy now, but we're going to decorate it really nicely. You can help me choose the colours of all the rooms, we'll get posters and once we've unpacked our things, you'll see how different it looks.'

And she meant it. This was her life now, she was in charge and it was damn well going to work. She would not let herself be ground down by Dennis, who had chosen to walk out on them and disappear right off the face of the planet.

The three of them slept together that night, crammed onto the fold-down futon, listening to the strange new noises of the neighbourhood. Cars revving up, the noisy chat as drinkers walked home after closing time, the scuffle of cats, she hoped, in the downstairs garden bins. She had a son on each side and she cuddled their sleeping bodies against her long into the night until she finally fell asleep just before dawn.

Over the next few weeks the flat took shape around them – a crazy and unexpected shape. Maybe it was the bottle of Baileys she was taking some comfort in at night, or maybe it was the need to stick two fingers up to the precious Surrey lifestyle she'd spent six years adhering to, but Eve's decorating went wild. With the boys' full approval, the sitting room was painted a rich, claret red with turquoise paintwork to match the lurid turquoise carpet already in place. The boys' bedroom was transformed into a red fire engine, the kitchen had a crude sunset with black palm trees painted onto one wall and the bathroom was, what else – sky blue with white clouds.

It was perfect, like living in a Wendy house, and she was in charge. She didn't have to care for one moment what Dennis, their friends, her dad, or anyone else would think. She no longer had to housekeep to impossibly immaculate standards and neither did she have to fiddle about in the kitchen at the weekends making fussy soups, toasting pine nuts, dissecting star and kiwi fruits, fraying her nerves with
boeufen croûte
and truffle layers.

Evelyn Leigh was trying to let go, become the kind of person who left things undone, who washed whites and coloureds together until everything was bluish, who watched TV at breakfast (sometimes), who made vegetable stew and lentil casseroles, who had time to spend the whole day in the park with the children. And she was determined to make some new friends and maybe even
have a laugh.

After only a fortnight in the flat, she felt she was at home. Her shoulders moved away from the position they had taken up right next to her ears and she started to relax. She was finally in control of her own little domain. It felt liberating. She was going to bring the boys up exactly the way she wanted to, let herself become the mum she'd always wanted to be.

One afternoon when they were picnicking in Hyde Park in the drizzly rain under an enormous umbrella, the two boys were laughing hard over a silly school joke and she felt a lightness which at first she couldn't define. Then it occurred to her that maybe it was happiness. It was so long since she had felt anything like it, she hadn't recognized it.