Evie’s Choice. Terri Nixon

to one another. Someone, somewhere down the platform began to sing “It’s a long way to Tipperary”, and a few disjointed voices joined in.

      My heart suddenly, and finally, accepted that he was going, and it stopped beating for a breathless, terrifying moment. The thought flashed into my head: what if it doesn’t start again? But of course it did, and the racing, sickening feeling made me dizzy. I looked up into Will’s face and he seemed more dear to me then, more precious and more fragile than I had ever seen him. These people didn’t know him. How could he go off with them when they didn’t understand him? Didn’t realise that, beyond the cheerful smile and the clear, friendly blue eyes, he was a man of warmth and wit, and a quiet, fierce intelligence? Would they ever have the chance to realise how lucky they were to be with him?

      His voice, when he spoke, wasn’t raised to shout over the cries of others. Instead it was pitched low, easily cutting beneath it and straight into my aching heart.

      ‘Evie, my impossible, exasperating wife, I love you so very, very much.’ He faltered, searching for words when we both knew there were none. At last he sighed. ‘Promise me you’ll be careful.’

      ‘I will if you will.’ I was trying hard not to cry in front of him; there would be time for weeping, so much time, but this was not it. So I smiled, but the movement loosened the tears that had gathered in my eyes, and they spilled anyway.

      ‘I promise.’ He bent to kiss my forehead and the warm press of his lips almost sent me spinning into hysterical pleading…don’t go! But he drew himself upright and away from me. He stood tall and straight, somehow making that awful uniform look like a thing of honour, touched my cheek once, and then he was gone, heading for the coast, and God alone knew what awaited him there. I stood with countless others, long after the train had pulled out of sight around the bend and, as the chuffing faded and voices started to filter back in, I blinked, swallowed, and let out a shaky breath. Soon I would be leaving too, to begin my Red Cross training; each of us had answered the call to arms in our own way, and I could only pray that, when I saw him again, it was not as a shattered, broken echo of the man he was now.

      Back at Breckenhall I made my way to the fruit shop above which Will had taken his rooms. He would have to surrender them, or be faced with a dreadful debt when he returned…I emphasised the when, which kept trying to change itself to if. It would help no one to think of that. In the meantime all his things would stay at Oaklands, and I needed to know how much there was to bring across.

      I knocked on the landlady’s door and introduced myself; she knew me only as one of the Creswells from the manor, and I told her I had come on behalf of Will’s family, to pay rent in advance and remove his belongings so she could let the room out again. In all the time we had been together I had never come here, it had been too much of a risk. The stairs were narrow and dark, and I pictured him climbing them at night, exhausted from his work, looking forward to a wash and a quick meal before bed – where perhaps he might have lain and thought of me, as I did of him. Through the pain of missing him, the thought made me smile, just a little. Even the smile hurt, made me feel disloyal.

      The landlady unlocked the door and I gave her the two weeks rent money I had brought. ‘I can take just a few things now, but I’ll send for the rest tomorrow.’ She nodded, already used to her tenants’ sudden departures. I waited until she had gone back down the stairs, then turned to take my first look at where Will had lived for the past three years.

      The room was not a big one and the first thing that struck me was the clutter, although a second look revealed it to be no mess, but rather a collection of paintings, carvings and sculptures. The largest of these stood on the table, half-covered by a carelessly thrown sheet which I drew back to reveal a statuette, standing around a foot high and carved in dark wood. It was the shape of a woman, her hair escaping her hat and shaped into wild curls that blew across her face, hiding the features, but I didn’t need to see them; I raised my hand to my own face, tears thick at the back of my throat.

      The statuette wore the roughly outlined symbol of the Red Cross on her front, standing out against her uniform dress, and her legs were not yet shaped, just a solid block of wood. It felt as if my own legs were the same; just an unmoving lump, unable to take another step. The care that had gone into the carving of this piece sang from every notch and scrape, and the knife he had used to craft it lay on the table beside it, curls of wood littering the table as if he had been called away from his work suddenly. As I looked closer I saw, in the girl’s hat, a tiny rose carved out of the same block, and with a sharp pang I remembered his face when he’d seen the paper rose at my waist just yesterday. The rose itself was back in its box, and would go with me to Rugby, and from there to France, or wherever we were sent.

      This piece was the one I would take with me tonight. I glanced around: the majority of the space was taken up with paintings, most of them facing the wall, and when I turned one or two of them around I understood at once why Nathan had been so unsuccessful towards the end. It wasn’t a lack of talent, far from it, but the paintings were dark and tortured-looking, full of deep reds and blacks, and swirls of mashed colours in thick oil that seemed to leap, screaming, from the canvas. Bodiless faces; roaring rivers; tall, black buildings; a huge, Golem-like creature bearing down on a tiny, helpless man…symbols of the trapped terror the artist was feeling for his debts, no doubt.

      Disturbed, I turned these paintings back to the wall. It was little wonder Will had faced them that way, it would be impossible to sleep in this room otherwise. I looked at one or two others and they were calmer, presumably painted during earlier, easier days, but of less artistic merit that I could discern. It was ironic that Nathan’s best work had emerged as a result of the lack of success of these lesser pieces, and that gave me a pinch of sadness for Will’s unknown friend, but it was followed by frustration that he had given Will this dream, and then left him alone with the nightmare.

      I went back to the table and picked up two of Will’s small pieces: a miniature cottage no bigger than my hand, but intricately carved in soft, pale wood; and a daisy of around the same size – both unpainted – and then I wrapped the statuette in the cloth again and tucked her under my arm. I would have everything brought over to Oaklands tomorrow, but for tonight I would have these things to remind me of my husband when I lay down in my bed, alone once again.

      I slipped off my wedding band before the car arrived, and on the way home I rehearsed my cheerful lies; I’d already said I was attending a wedding, giving the impression it was a friend from London who was getting married, and fixed the description of my own gown in my head, ready to attribute it to the fictitious bride. The way the lies fell from my lips, cheerful or otherwise, disturbed me, but I wasn’t ready yet to place this burden on Mother’s shoulders; she was already distressed about my imminent departure to the Red Cross. Neither was I ready to turn this joyful news into something cold and hurtful, to be argued over rather than held tightly and treasured.

      I tried once more to tell the truth before I left, but my mother’s despair at my stubborn insistence on going overseas, instead of serving in England, stole any inclination I had to heap more woe upon her, and it simply grew more and more difficult to tell her the truth. It seemed easier, and kinder, to let her believe I had too much to think about to waste time on hopeless, and unsuitable, romantic entanglements.