Chapter Twenty-Four
Those times when they had the flat to themselves, Evelyn savoured every small moment.
She would stand in the galley kitchen watching people scurrying by on the street below and marvel that they were unaware how, three floors above, Evelyn Silver was falling in love.
Often, she would make a cafetière of coffee and take it back to bed, where Asa lay in the rumpled sheets.
Then, together they would set off for the short walk to the British Museum, passing under plane trees and peeking through railings at secret garden squares.
As they got closer to work, they would kiss and then Asa would drop back to ensure they didn’t arrive together, the museum being a terrible place for gossip.
In later years, she looked back on those days as the happiest she’d known.
‘I’m thinking of moving out of my flat,’ Asa said as they walked to work one morning. It was starting to rain, so they were sharing her large umbrella and every now and then her hip bumped against his.
‘Oh?’ she replied, her heart thudding harder.
‘I thought we could discuss, um, future options,’ he said. ‘Over lunch.’
She looked down at the glossy London pavement, where his suede desert boots and her red ballet pumps were both already darkening with the rain, and felt a shudder of pleasure.
‘I would love that,’ she replied. ‘It’s a date.’
He’d chosen an oddly stuffy restaurant, Rules in Covent Garden, but she took this as a sign that a proposal of sorts was on the cards.
‘I will be back at the museum by three, won’t I?
’ she asked a little anxiously. She was back in Egyptology and that day, at 3 p.m., there was a special event.
‘All the curators and a few members of the press will be there,’ she reminded Asa.
Several recently restored pieces, including a set of ceramic pots and a canopic jar with a stopper in the shape of a jackal, were ready to join the Egyptian collections.
Evelyn felt a special affection for the jackal head, as she’d been permitted to dust its fragile surface.
Her supervisor, Dr Marianne Guest, had explained the role this canopic jar played in ancient burial rites: it was to hold the person’s stomach, while other internal organs were put into separate jars.
Only the heart was left inside the mummified body, which had made perfect sense to Evelyn now in her throes of love.
‘I’m sure we’ll be done in good time,’ Asa replied. ‘The service here is excellent.’
Rules was a place of dark red velvet banquettes and gilt picture frames and it had a similarly old-fashioned clientele, which was probably why they were shown to an inconspicuous corner table, which was hidden behind a stained-glass divider.
‘Is this place OK?’ Asa then asked nervously. ‘My father always books it for special occasions.’
Evelyn reassured him it was lovely and opened her menu.
She wasn’t officially vegetarian, but was privately horrified by the array of venison, rabbit and milk-fed lamb that scampered across her menu.
Having spent much of her childhood in clifftop meadows, she’d grown familiar with these animals, learned to read the meaning of a twitching nose or the flick of a tail. They felt like old companions.
Against the waiter’s advice, Asa ordered port and Evelyn suspected he’d got confused.
‘A bottle, sir? Are we quite sure?’ A smile tugged at the waiter’s lips. ‘Very good, sir.’
They had booked an early slot to avoid the rush, but what with the port and her indecision over the menu (so many childhood friends, sliced, diced and roasted), their orders got backed up and soon Evelyn was rather the worse for wear.
‘Such silly small glasses!’ Asa laughed, topping her up again. ‘Here’s to silly old us.’
By the time they reached dessert, Evelyn felt quite queasy.
She’d ordered poussin, mistakenly thinking it was fish, and picking meat off the bones of a baby bird, on top of all the port, had been challenging.
It was unfortunate that Evelyn realised she urgently needed the toilet at precisely the moment Asa began his speech.
‘So, Evelyn, I expect you are wondering why we are here today,’ Asa began, slurring a little. ‘I want to ask you a very important question. It concerns our future.’
But it was no good, she couldn’t wait. ‘Asa, just wait a sec, I need a wee.’
As she began to make her wobbly way to the bathroom, Evelyn felt a flurry of joy, anticipating what Asa was about to say.
She would say yes, she’d love to move in together and then they could look for a little flat, a bedsit even.
She thought of suggesting Finsbury Park or Crouch End, because both areas were within reach of the Piccadilly Line for work.
She would buy bright curtain fabric in Berwick Street Market and they would ask the landlord if they could paint their walls in sunshine colours.
If they didn’t have a garden, she would buy window boxes and plant geraniums, or herbs for cooking.
Those were the thoughts running through Evelyn’s head as she walked between the tables towards the toilet. And then she came to a standstill.
Ahead, sitting in a booth, was her father.
He was clinking glasses with his companion, who was dressed in a tweed suit and brogues exactly like those worn by Evelyn’s landlady, Frances Parfait.
Evelyn was about to say hello when two things happened.
The first was that her father reached out over the table, grabbed Frances Parfait’s hand (for it was her) and pulled it to his whiskery lips where he repeatedly kissed it.
The second thing was that Evelyn’s bladder awoke from its temporary state of shock and reminded her she really did need to go, right now.
After relieving herself, Evelyn stood at the sink and tried to regain her composure.
Her reflection in the mirror showed lips stained dark and an unnervingly wild look in her eyes.
She needed to calm down. The obvious explanation was that it was a case of mistaken identity – after all, she really was very drunk.
Except she could clearly picture the way that her father’s soft, pliable lips had rubbed their way across Frances’s hand, like an overeager dog.
Pushing open the door, she half expected to see strangers sitting at the table – confirmation that her imagination had gone into overdrive – but there was no mistaking the fact that it was her father and her landlady, engaged in an illicit lunch date.
Worse still, from her new vantage point Evelyn could see that, beneath the table, Ms Parfait’s tweed skirt had been inelegantly pushed up her thigh by her father’s other hand.
She recognised the edge of the nylon slip as one that was rinsed out each Sunday night and hung over the bath to dry.
Her stomach roiled, a bitter nausea rose up and Evelyn knew she had to leave immediately.
She pushed aside a waiter and opened the door.
She felt awful for abandoning Asa, but telling him what she’d seen would have made it real and all she wanted to do was run.
Outside, the streets of Covent Garden were rammed and she had to sidestep tourists reading maps and ladies with shopping bags hanging off their arms. She hopped on and off the kerb to make her way through because it felt imperative that she get back to the safety of the museum, where the galleries would be cool and orderly and nobody would know what she’d seen.
She made it through the museum gates, scattering grey pigeons as she ran up the steps.
At last, she was inside and the soft echoey atmosphere of the entrance hall wrapped around her.
People were studying the museum’s floor plan and a guard nodded to her.
She was back in a world where calm decorum reigned.
It was almost 3 p.m. and, as if on automatic pilot, Evelyn navigated her way to the Egyptian Gallery, just in time for the ceremony to present the new exhibits to the world.
She used her hefty key to open the tall wooden door and slipped in just as her supervisor began her speech.
Evelyn sat attentively, trying to ignore the sheen of sweat that seemed to be forming on her face.
She had a raging thirst and, when she bent her head to try and discreetly wriggle out of her hot mackintosh, a wave of nausea reared up to meet her.
A few feet away, Dr Marianne Guest was explaining the significance of the pieces, which had been so carefully restored. She extended her thanks to her curator team and then Evelyn felt a jolt of horror as she heard her own name mentioned. ‘Our trainee, Evelyn Silver, has also been a great asset.’
Marianne Guest, a warm and inspiring woman, looked out at the crowd. ‘Evelyn, are you here?’
Evelyn feared that if she made any sudden movements, she might be sick, or faint, or both, but she risked raising her hand.
‘You should be up here with the rest of us, come on,’ Marianne said warmly.
Evelyn had no choice. In a daze, she rose and made her way to the front of the gallery. She told herself that if she kept breathing and didn’t move her head too fast, all would be well.
‘Yes, up you come!’ encouraged Marianne, who was standing behind a table where the newly restored pots were laid out.
‘Evelyn has a promising future here,’ she added and, wordlessly, Evelyn watched as Marianne’s hand reached for her own.
And then Marianne began to shake Evelyn’s hand up and down, like she would never let go, and the vibration seemed to pass through her, jiggling her stomach, her intestines and her throat, where a thick, hot lump was growing.