Morag Joss: The Night Following

Not until the end of her shift would Evelyn look up from her work and notice the shimmering, glassy air of the Testing shed and the strange, hard, salty smell of electricity. The space above her head seemed laden with tiny shocks that sparked against the white glazed bricks lining the walls and glanced back like arrows. Like a headache waiting to happen, Evelyn thought. Then she would rub her eyes and long for the fresh air. Every one of the hundreds of bulb flashes would smoulder on in her vision for hours afterward, erasing detail as if they had made ragged red and grey holes like cigarette burns across the surface of her eyes.

Today, out in the freezing rain, she marched on briskly. She had more important things to think about than sore eyes. She would not let even the most dismal January she could remember interfere with her good spirits. After all, it would soon be spring, and she would be getting married. Then there would be the baby and so what if a few people talked? It wasn’t unheard of, a honeymoon baby coming early, most folk wouldn’t probe. The fuss wouldn’t last. It would be a shock for Mam, and Evelyn hated the thought of upsetting her, but she would make her understand and she’d come round in time. Stan would settle down fine and there would be nothing more to worry about.

As she walked, a voice from behind interrupted her thoughts. “Oy, Evelyn Leigh, hang on, can’t yer!” She turned and waited for her friend, Daphne Baker, to catch up. “Heck, you’re in a hurry!” she puffed. “Where’s the fire?”

A grinning Daphne came lumbering towards her in her shapeless coat and tight stockings, careless as always of her lack of elegance. She had inherited, as she said herself, “me Dad’s build and me Mam’s legs, worse luck.” It was true that she had his strong, square shoulders and short arms, and her legs were, like her mother’s, almost elephantine below the knee. There was a medical name for it that Daphne had told Evelyn once and she’d forgotten, but a medical name didn’t mean there was a remedy. Daphne laughed it off, as the only girl in a family with three teasing brothers, Paul, Colin, and Jem, had learned to do. “I’m as strong as an ox,” she said. “And who looks at your legs if you’ve got a nice friendly face?”

The two friends linked arms and made their way to the tram queue where they stood patiently. There was no letup in the weather. The tram came, a dark shape appearing out of greyness, and it struck Evelyn that it too had lost its colour, as if the rain had washed off its dark green paint and it had soaked away down the street drains. On board they had to stand as usual for the first few stops, but once past Coronation Mills they found spaces to sit. The motion and noise of the tram made talking difficult. Daphne brought out her cigarettes.

“Fancy one of mine?” she said, offering the pack to Evelyn.

“Oh, no, not for me, ta all the same,” she said.

“Please yourself. Still off the cigs, are you?” Daphne lit one for herself and blew out the match with her first exhalation of smoke.

Evelyn turned away, trying to take her mind off feeling sick. She knew every bend and halt of the tram route by now and she didn’t need to see through the grimy windows to know where they were. Soon they would be at Canal Street, the stop where occasionally the odd woman got on. Not that she was all that odd, not at first glance, she was just what Evelyn thought of as “different” and what Daphne called “not all there.” She blended in all right as far as clothes and general appearance went but you could tell she wasn’t from Unsworth’s, where the other people getting on at Canal Street worked. For one thing, she wasn’t regular enough, only boarding the tram on maybe two days in every six. Evelyn supposed the woman worked casual hours, maybe as a char. Daphne said she’d heard from somebody that she’d lost a son and had funny turns. She was generally considered to be harmless but definitely not all there. Nobody seemed to know her name.

Not that she drew attention to herself, rather the opposite. On the tram, whether she was standing or sitting, she would close her eyes and a smile would settle on her lips. She’d stay like that for the entire journey. The tram would creak along, jolting at every stop and juddering on again.

Now and then somebody might address a remark to her. “Mind if I get past you?” or “ ‘Scuse me, is anybody sitting there?” and the woman would usually reply quite sensibly. But not once would her eyes open or her smile falter.

Today she got on and took the seat opposite Evelyn. Her eyes weren’t closed in sleep or obvious tiredness, or squeezed tight against something unpleasant. As usual they were just shut and smooth, though her face was blotchy with cold. Her smile, even on her wintry, pinched face, made Evelyn think not for the first time that she knew well enough where she was, in a smoky tram surrounded by drab, glum passengers, and had just decided to spare herself the sight of it.

But today as Evelyn watched, all at once the smile vanished and the woman’s eyes flew open in agitation. She blinked round the tram for a moment, her mouth working furiously. Evelyn was ashamed in case the woman had seen her staring. She tried to look away, but it was too late.

“Bloody look at it! I tell yer! Bloody look at me!” the woman suddenly shouted. She waved a greyish frozen hand towards the rain-streaked window. “Look! It’s enough to make you, make you… it’s enough to make you…”Her voice tailed off and the hand dropped in her lap. Her lips were trembling. People exchanged glances. Composing herself, she sighed and spoke again, quite calmly this time, and to nobody in particular.

“I’ll tell you. Look at it. It’s enough to make you go to bed New Year’s Eve and not get up afore Easter.” Apparently satisfied, she surveyed the carriage, smiled, folded her hands together, and closed her eyes.

A few people looked around nervously and one or two, including Evelyn, nodded. A gruff voice further down the tram muttered,“Aye, don’t blame you, missus.”

Daphne nudged Evelyn. “Only sensible thing she’s ever said. She most definitely is not all there,” she whispered. “Look. Get her now. Butter wouldn’t melt!”

“Maybe she feels better for getting it off her chest.”

“Maybe. Wouldn’t mind it myself, sleeping New Year till Easter. Wouldn’t be missing anything, would I?”

Evelyn smiled. “Rum kind of Sleeping Beauty you’d make, Daphne Baker.”

Daphne laughed wryly. “Aye, but I’d catch up on my sleep, wouldn’t I? You’d die of old age waiting for Prince Charming round here. I’m past all that, anyway. Getting too old, me.”

“Do you mind? I’ll thank you to remember I’m two years older than you, young lady.”

“Aye, but you don’t look it. And you’ve got your Stan. You’re not stuck on’t ruddy shelf like me, not that I’m bothered. They’re all the same, men.”

“Oh, Daphne Baker, you are not over the hill. You’ll see. Somebody’ll be along and sweep you off your feet. Mr. Right.”

Daphne grunted. “I’m not worried. I’m better off. At least you won’t catch me at a man’s beck and call. I’m nobody’s unpaid skivvy. You’re a fool, Evelyn Leigh, getting married. Come on, this is us.”

After they’d clambered off the tram at Station Road, Daphne had said “Ta-ta” and set off on the short walk to her home in Chadderton Street. Evelyn let out a deep sigh. Daphne could be so tactless. And she only pretended not to care. To hear her talk you’d think she’d seen a hundred Januarys, not twenty-seven. She was too young to come out with half the things she said, but that was what Daphne was like nowadays, bitter. She was becoming a bitter old spinster, a type all too recognizable since the terrible Great War, which had taken so many of the young men of their generation. Now there were simply too few to be the sweethearts and husbands of all the women who remained, many of whom were now resigned to spinsterhood, all their hopes of youthful romance and wife and motherhood dashed. Evelyn knew she was one of the lucky ones.