Chapter Eleven
Evelyn
As soon as Evelyn wakes up on Tuesday, she knows it’s going to be a difficult day. There’s a queasiness in her belly and a tight pinching band round her forehead that her cocktail of medications and painkillers isn’t likely to change. Today would have been Rose’s birthday had she still been alive, a day when the enormity of her loss seems to swell within Evelyn’s body, so that it’s harder to breathe than usual.
‘Happy birthday, my darling,’ she says aloud into the quietness of her hotel bedroom, her voice cracking on the last word. Rose always celebrated a birthday so splendidly. She was typically generous with the occasion too– it was never a day about herself, more an excuse to gather loved ones closer around, in a candle-lit restaurant, an elegant wine bar, the gastro-pub round the corner from their flat. They’d fill a long table, with Rose at the centre wearing something sparkly, laughing with her head thrown back, her hair escaping whatever up-do she’d wrestled it into, her eyes so bright and welcoming, so interested in what everyone else had to say. God, she was a peach of a woman. A gorgeous, juicy peach.
Her phone buzzes with a message from Charles. Dear E, thinking about you today. Hope you are well x
It’s sweet of him to remember– even though in truth it is probably down to Hazel, his second wife, reminding him. Good old Hazel, who swept in to take Evelyn’s place following her flit to Rose, thus blotting up some of the guilt she’d felt about leaving. It’s thanks also to Hazel that Charles became a father to two boys, and eventually a grandfather to six youngsters, with the first great-grandchild now on the way. Evelyn is glad for them both and grateful for the open hearts they have always shown her when she knows that, back in those more inhibited, unimaginative times, many an ex-husband would have washed his hands of her.
There had certainly been plenty of head-shaking and lip-pursing about the affair from other quarters; plenty of ‘Well, it’s not natural, is it? It’s disgusting!’ comments. Former neighbours blanked Evelyn and Rose if their paths crossed in the supermarket or post office. Even some so-called friends were icily disapproving, rallying around Charles and Jonathan, saying how lucky it was that there were no children involved at least, then angrily demanding of Evelyn and Rose, ‘What on earth are you playing at?’
‘We’re not playing at anything!’ Evelyn had retaliated, stung. ‘This is not a game. We love each other!’ And they had done, blissfully, passionately, devotedly, for years and years and years, through the best of times and the worst. The world has changed since then, at least– in fact, one of Charles and Hazel’s grandsons is gay, another grandchild non-binary, and it has barely been an issue for anyone. Quite right too.
Other messages are appearing from friends who also loved Rose, who know how hard this day always is for her. Thinking of you, they say. We still miss her too. We’ll raise a glass to her tonight.
So will Evelyn, she decides, putting her phone down with a small sigh. But before then she must start thinking about how she can fulfil the last remaining part of her final promise to Rose. This is why she’s here in the first place, however much she’s dressed the trip up as a holiday. She has a task to complete.
‘We need to have a horrible but important conversation, I’m afraid,’ Evelyn had announced to her, heart in mouth, once it became obvious that Rose’s time was running out. She was in the hospice by then, her cheerful little room belying the dreadful sadness of the situation. ‘And not about which restaurant menu I’m going to look up for you next,’ she added, trying to soften her words. Rose was having trouble keeping anything down by this point and, having loved food all her life, she missed tasting it so desperately that she’d been getting Evelyn to read her Greek and Lebanese restaurant menus aloud, item by item, so that she could longingly imagine their flavours.
‘Turkish,’ Rose said immediately, and Evelyn laughed, a sound close to a sob, as she squeezed Rose’s hand, so thin by then that it felt like a bundle of sticks.
‘We can get to that later,’ she’d replied, ‘but first, Ireally need to ask you about– well, what you want to happen at the end. Or rather, after the end.’ She’d gulped in a breath, hating her own words but aware that she had put them off long enough. Two days ago, Rose had seemed so confused and befogged by her new painkillers that Evelyn had been jolted into vowing that she had to tackle the subject the next chance she got. This was her moment. ‘Iknow you want to be cremated, but is there anything else you’d like to add to that? Is there somewhere special you want me to scatter your ashes? Any particular requests for the funeral?’
‘Well,’ said Rose in the faint scratchy voice that had replaced her formerly lovely rich tones, ‘Ihope you will play something beautiful that has everyone bawling their eyes out.’
Evelyn made another of her laugh/sob noises, a lump in her throat. ‘Of course Iwill,’ she replied. ‘I’ll rustle up an entire orchestra for you, my love.’
‘Excellent,’ Rose said, smiling up at her. ‘And about my ashes. . . Ican’t decide, Evie. There are so many special places. Would you take me to the Acropolis again, do you think? Ilove the thought of being there, maybe at the Temple of Athena.’
‘Of course,’ Evelyn assured her. ‘In a heartbeat. Even if Ihave to queue all the way up there.’
‘Or Pompeii. . . do you remember that trip we took there together? Wasn’t it the best?’
‘I’ll never forget it,’ Evelyn said, and in the next instant the overheated hospice room seemed to vanish, replaced by dusty Pompeiian back streets. The sound of cicadas, Vesuvius looming ahead of them, and Rose clutching her hand, thrilled to be showing Evelyn around the place.
‘Rome, of course,’ Rose went on, her eyes half-closing with the exertion of remembering. ‘Istanbul. Trier– Iwas so happy when we went there, Evie. That perfect day!’
‘Iwas too. Icouldn’t have been happier, my darling.’
‘And oh– Kefalonia. Definitely Kefalonia.’
Evelyn had nodded, even though Rose’s eyes were shut and there was nobody else present to see her. The lump in her throat swelled to such a size that she didn’t trust herself to speak immediately. They had honeymooned in Kefalonia after their civil partnership ceremony, when both of them were in their sixties, and it had been one of the most romantic, blissful weeks of Evelyn’s entire life.
But this wasn’t getting them anywhere in terms of decision making. ‘So– what are you saying, you want me to go on some kind of extended pilgrimage across Europe?’ she joked, trying to lighten the mood, for herself as much as for Rose. ‘Scattering your ashes here, there and everywhere, like the Rose Farleigh Greatest Hits tour?’
She had been rewarded by a weak chuckle, a sound as precious as gold. ‘Would you do that for me, Evie? Because. . . well, you’ll need something to keep you busy, won’t you, when I’m not around? Can’t have you getting bored without me there chivvying you about.’
It was no good, Evelyn was simply not brave enough to maintain her poker face, because they both knew she was going to miss Rose unbearably, and that she’d have given anything for the so-called chivvying to continue for years longer yet. A sob had burst out of her despite her best efforts to hold it back. ‘Sorry,’ she gulped miserably. The last thing she wanted was for Rose to feel bad for her.
Rose, who had seemed close to sleep moments earlier, tightened her grip on Evelyn’s hand, her eyes fluttering open again. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m being silly. You don’t have to go anywhere to scatter my ashes. Just dump me in the nearest park, that’ll do me. It doesn’t mean anything anyway.’
‘No,’ Evelyn told her stubbornly. ‘Iwant to take you to those places. Iwould love to do that for you.’ She imagined being in Pompeii and Athens and Istanbul without Rose’s animated eager face, without her usual running commentary every time they wandered round a ruin, and felt something tear inside her at the prospect. Could she really do that? Even though she had basically just promised as much? ‘I’ll do it,’ she vowed. ‘Whatever you ask of me.’
When Rose died, less than a month later, a terrible moroseness had weighed Evelyn down; a sadness so crushing and dreadful that it had been hard to see the point in going on at all, without her. But then she’d finally got round to sorting through the belongings the hospice had bagged up, and she found a note in unfamiliar handwriting, which presumably had been dictated to one of the nurses in Evelyn’s absence.
Where to take my ashes (please) (only if you can face it) (absolutely fine to go with the park option), she read, and smiled, imagining Rose’s precise instructions around the bracketing of all these phrases. Then she studied the list below:
The Acropolis
Knossos
Pompeii
Rome
Trier
Istanbul
Sicily
Kefalonia
And a tiny pinch in Russell Square so that you can still go there and be with me.
Or– of course– none of the above!
It was exactly what Evelyn needed: a plan, a project, a roadmap to help her through the grief. And so she’d set about booking flights and hotels, organising the trips that Rose’s final request would require. The easiest one first: she’d put a teaspoon of Rose’s ashes into a sandwich bag and taken her down the road to Russell Square, the site of many of their clandestine early meetings when Rose was lecturing at UCL. She found the bench where, once upon a time, they would meet for lunch and kiss one another, then discreetly tipped the ashes behind it. ‘There you are,’ she said under her breath. ‘Rest easy. I’ll visit you all the time here.’
After that, there was no stopping her. She’d sprinkled Rose at the foot of the olive tree in the Temple of Athena at the Acropolis before taking another flight on to Crete, where she’d bid farewell to her at the Palace of Knossos. The following year, she took her to Istanbul, booking herself onto the same Byzantine Empire walking tour she and Rose had undertaken together five years earlier, and surreptitiously shaking out another scoop of ashes as the group ambled along the Constantinople Walls. Then came her most ambitious solo trip, to Pompeii and Rome and Sicily in one particularly tiring fortnight, after which Evelyn had been so wiped out she seemed to pick up every virus London could offer her. And then, just as she was nearing the end of the list, the pandemic had hit, scuppering everything, including Evelyn’s own health.
That had been a lonely, trying few years all right, but last autumn she’d taken the Eurostar to Brussels, then caught another train to Luxembourg and on to Trier, the beautiful medieval city in Germany. The first summer after leaving their husbands, she and Rose had travelled all over Germany together, partly because Evelyn had always wanted to go to the annual Bach festival in Leipzig, and also because it was a country neither of them had spent much time in. They fell in love with Trier, for its Roman ruins (Rose), the Karl Marx house and museum (Evelyn) and the Moselle wine (both of them). On returning this time, Evelyn had discovered the Queergarten, apparently the first queer beer garden in Germany, and decided Rose would be tickled to have some of her ashes left there.
Kefalonia is the last place on the list and she is finally here, with the remainder of Rose’s ashes to scatter somewhere on the island. It has been an epic slog, a true pilgrimage, to obey Rose’s dying wishes, and, now that Evelyn is dying herself, the impetus to complete her task has at times felt like the only thing keeping her alive. And yet, coming to the end will mean the very last goodbye, the shift into a new era, when she no longer has Rose with her at all. She’s still not sure she’s ready.
That said, in other ways she is ready, she concedes: ready to let go herself, mission accomplished. She’s so tired now. Her body aches all the time. She dreams of Rose every night, as if the boundaries between them are melting, falling away; as if their reunion is at last approaching. Back at their Bloomsbury home, the townhouse that has always felt too empty with only one person living there, she has left her will on her desk, along with a neatly typed list of passwords for various accounts, all the practical tasks that will need to be ticked off by her nephews when the day comes. She suspects it won’t be too long. Her neighbour has her front door key. Everything is clean and tidy, bills paid. Before leaving for the airport, she wiped the dust from her cello and tuned it for the first time in years, before taking up her bow. Then, with trembling fingers, she had done her best to play the refrain from Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 Prelude one last time. It was always Rose’s favourite piece in her repertoire, and Evelyn has found the music a solace in her darkest times. Her technique is poor these days, her hands too stiff to do the passages justice, but all the same, hearing the notes swell and soar through the apartment once more felt like a fitting goodbye. The closing of a door.
She can feel the disease eating away at her from the inside; she pictures it as a spreading blackness moving stealthily through her cells with deadly intent, silently increasing its hold. Who knew dying was so bloody gruelling? Maybe she will rest another day, she decides, catching sight of herself in the mirror– still in her nightdress, hair unkempt, her face crumpled from the pillow. She will take herself down to the pool again, lie in the shade with a book, snoozing occasionally, swimming now and then, perhaps even ordering herself a cocktail, just for the hell of it. What harm could it do now?
‘Tomorrow, Iwill take you somewhere wonderful,’ she says aloud, certain that Rose is with her here. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to keep my promise. Even if it’s the last thing Ido.’