Louise Hare - This Lovely City

When she’d been younger, Evie had hoped he would come back to London, that one day there would be a knock on the door and he would be standing there with his suitcase and a brilliant white smile. When Ma punished her, often for something as slight as spilling a drink or grazing her knee in the school playground, banishing her to her bedroom to think on her mistakes, Evie made up stories about him. In her daydreams, her father was an African king and Ma was a wicked witch who had stolen Evie away from his kingdom. He had spent years searching for her and when he found her they would go back to his palace and she would eat all the food she wanted, wear only new dresses and all the people of the land would envy her.

These days she knew better. She would never meet him and that was for the best. Too much time had passed and she’d be embarrassed for him to see them now, her and Ma. He was clever, she knew that much. He’d been over on a mathematics scholarship from Sierra Leone according to Aunt Gertie who sometimes let go of tiny fragments of information after a third gin. No doubt he had made his fortune by now. An impressive man who would be disappointed to find his daughter with aspirations no higher than to become a qualified secretary; her mother a charlady who took in piecework to pay the bills.

A couple of large army tents had been set up on the grass close to the shelter entrance and a Union Jack had been raised to make it clear that this was an official operation. Government sanctioned. They weren’t expecting trouble but Ma had told her to stay away just in case. She thought that Evie had gone to the pictures with Delia, a thrilling lie that had been stammered out over breakfast. Delia had been kept home from college for the last two days with a stomach virus so there was no risk of her running into Ma by accident. Anyway, how could she stay away? She didn’t know anybody who looked like her and now here were a whole group of people whose skin was even darker than hers. An entire ship full of them!

She watched on but still she could see only men. Evie bit her lip, not sure what to do. Men have needs, Ma said. Evie had to be wary of being left alone with a man, even though she wasn’t quite certain what would happen if she was. What would she say to a strange man from another country anyway? She had no idea, but she didn’t want to walk away. Instead, she made a bet with herself. She’d walk up to the next female volunteer who came out. She could pretend that she had some questions about the WVS. She was sixteen now, old enough to join if she wanted.

She crossed her fingers and almost immediately a woman did appear. She wore the usual WVS uniform but this woman made it look glamorous, the lines fitting her body as if it had been tailored. Her hair was immaculately coiffed in neat red waves that sat below her standard issue hat. She led out her charges confidently, six men whose laughter floated out to Evie on the breeze. They all wore jackets despite the fine June day, the temperature having risen to well over seventy. One of them threw a ball into the air, casually, spinning it higher each time it left his hands. The jackets came off and were set down as markers to form a playing area. Evie found herself walking across the road before she knew she’d taken a step, like Karen in The Red Shoes, though her plain brown lace-ups were anything but fit for a princess.

The woman had set herself up with a fold-up chair, carried out from the nearest tent by one of the men. She sat and fanned herself with a slim pamphlet or magazine, her legs crossed. Her shoes were standard brogues but with a small heel and polished to a shine. She flicked her hair back as she watched the men remove their shoes and socks, piling them to one side. She was knowingly beautiful and Evie noticed more than one of the men throwing a glance or a comment her way, trying to attract her attention.

The game got underway and, with the men distracted, Evie moved closer. ‘Excuse me?’ The woman didn’t hear her so she took another tentative pace forward as though playing Grandmother’s Footsteps, wanting the woman to turn but uncertain what to say when she did.

‘Rose?’ A male voice called out from behind her, both Evie and the woman turning. ‘Have you seen my notebook?’

‘You left it lying about. Marge almost threw it away.’ The woman, Rose, reached under her chair and retrieved a battered blue book, a pencil trapped within its pages.

The man looked at Evie and she felt her cheeks redden beneath his stare. He looked only a little older than her but he was different to the boys she’d gone to school with. Years of rationing and light deprivation had left them scrawny and pasty. This man was well-fed, tall, and the sun hit the angles of his cheekbones so that it seemed to her, in that moment, that he was the source of the light.

‘Can we help you?’ Rose walked over.

‘Oh. I just…’ What was wrong with her? She’d been standing across the street for half an hour, thinking of nothing but clever introductions, and now she couldn’t formulate a simple sentence? ‘Sorry, I…’

‘You’re from round here?’ the man interrupted.

‘Yes. I live over in Brixton.’ She pointed in the general direction.

Rose handed him the notebook. ‘Lawrie, stop pestering the poor girl. She only came to see what was going on, didn’t you?’

Evie nodded, feeling foolish. The man called Lawrie smiled at her and for almost six seconds she forgot to breathe. She felt sweat gather in shallow pools under her arms, trapped by the restrictive white blouse that was prescribed as uniform for her secretarial college. She should have made more effort with her hair, not just scraped it back and forced it into a bun. Compared to Rose, she felt like a little girl.

‘Why don’t you come and watch?’ Rose invited. ‘This lot are mad about cricket and it’ll be nice to have a girl to chat to.’

Lawrie fetched another chair for her, setting it beside Rose’s before running off to join his friends. As Evie sat she caught the glint of Rose’s gold wedding band and felt inexplicably relieved. Evie shielded her eyes from the sun with her left hand and watched the cricketers. Lawrie was fielding, the closest man to her, his notebook tucked into his back pocket. She noticed that the smile never left his face. She would know. She couldn’t wrench her eyes from him.

Ten minutes into the match, the batsman hit the ball flying high into the air, Lawrie running backwards, his eyes tracking the arc of the spinning orb, raising his hands as it aimed towards him, answering his call. Cheers and groans erupted and Rose clapped, Evie following her lead. Lawrie looked over with a proud grin, winking at Evie as she smiled back and doubled her applause.

‘Someone’s got an admirer,’ Rose commented. ‘He’s a handsome chap all right, our Lawrie.’

Evie blushed again but she was so captivated by Lawrie that she didn’t think to read anything more into those words. She couldn’t imagine that behind Rose’s polite smile might lie a thin coil of jealousy.

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