Forgive Me (20 page)

Eva handed Phil a cold beer from the fridge.
She hadn’t seen him since he’d brought John round to see about doing the
windows. He’d been working in Windsor, so it was very nice to have him here all
day today. While he’d been plastering, she’d been planting flowers. Then she
got fish and chips for them at lunchtime, which they’d eaten sitting at her new
little table and chairs outside.

He got hot working, and earlier he’d
stripped off his overalls – down to just a pair of khaki shorts. His whole torso, face
and hair were now speckled with plaster. Eva had furtively watched him as he was
working, turned on a little, not just by his muscles and smooth skin, but by the
graceful sweep of his arm as he smoothed the plaster, and the concentration in his
face.

‘I ought to get going soon,’ he
said. ‘I told Mum I’d pop round to see her this evening, and I’m off
early in the morning to Dorset for a job.’

‘You haven’t told me yet how
much you want for the plastering,’ she said.

‘All you need to pay for is the
plaster,’ he said with a grin. ‘And not now, when I’ve finished the
room will do. Is it
alright if I come again next Saturday? Brian
should just about be finished by then.’

‘What would I have done without
you?’ she said. ‘I’m really grateful to the handbag snatcher
now.’

He smiled, and reached out and touched her
cheek lightly. ‘You would’ve charmed some other guy,’ he said.
‘Anyway, it’s been nice today. You are so easy to be with.’

His light touch had sent a little shiver
down her spine. She wished he could stay, that they could go to the pub, or just sit out
in the garden with a few drinks.

‘Can I be really cheeky then and ask
you to do just one more thing before you go?’ she asked. ‘Just to get up in
the attic and see if there’s anything in there? I’ve tried, but I
can’t move the hatch.’

‘Hoping for some treasure?’ he
said, finishing off his beer.

‘I suppose so. People do put things in
attics and forget them, don’t they?’

‘My mum and dad certainly do.
There’re old Christmas decs, boxes of stuff they don’t even remember putting
there, and the cot my brother and I had when we were babies. So you never know what
we’ll find.’

He took the stepladder up into the back
bedroom, and had to move a pile of books to set it up.

‘Have you read all these?’ he
asked.

‘Yes, they are all old friends,’
she said. ‘I love reading and I can’t wait until I can put some shelves up
for them all. I joined the library the other day. I have to have a book on the go. Do
you read?’

‘Not much,’ he replied.
‘The books I own wouldn’t even fill one shelf. I’m more of a magazine
man, but I’d read if I was lying on a beach.’

Once the stepladder was in place he went up
it and pushed hard on the hatch till it finally opened.

‘Pass us your torch,’ he said to
Eva, who was holding the stepladder. ‘It’s pitch black in there.’

Climbing up a little higher, his top half
was then in the loft.

‘Can you see anything?’ she
called out.

‘There’re a couple of
boxes … one’s got a load of paintings in it,’ he shouted down.
‘Want me to get them out?’

‘Yes, please,’ she shouted back,
suddenly really excited.

There was a kind of shuffling noise as if he
was pulling stuff closer to the hatch, then he moved down the stepladder a couple of
rungs.

‘Paintings first,’ he said and
hauled out a couple of big canvases.

Eva took them from him eagerly. One was a
woodland scene with the ground carpeted in bluebells. The other was of an old door set
in a wall covered in creepers. It reminded her of the book
The Secret Garden
.
She let out a squeal of delight when she saw her mother’s initials F. F. in the
bottom right-hand corner.

Next he handed down a box in which there
were about a dozen more smaller canvases. She didn’t stop to look at them, as Phil
was already heaving out a much larger box which was sealed up with tape.

She had hardly put that on the floor before
a second smaller one came down.

‘That’s it now, nothing else up
there,’ he said, putting the hatch back again and climbing down. ‘But you
could do with getting some insulation up there before next winter.’

He picked up the painting of the bluebell
wood. ‘This is amazing. Not that I know anything about art.’

‘It was painted by my mum,’ Eva
said excitedly, pointing to the initials. ‘Her maiden name was Flora Foyle.
Isn’t it beautiful?’

It was in fact so beautiful that it made all
the hairs on her arms stand on end. The sunshine filtering through the trees was
remarkable, and the details – not just the bluebells, but the bark on the trees, shiny
ivy growing over an old tree stump – took her breath away.

‘I’ll have to get it framed and
hung downstairs,’ she said.

‘A housewarming present from your
mum,’ Phil said, putting one big plaster-splattered hand on her shoulder.
‘It’s a beauty. She was very talented.’

But Eva wanted to see what was in the boxes.
She tore off the tape on the first one. Whatever was in there was carefully covered in
tissue paper. She folded it back. ‘Baby things,’ she gasped on seeing a tiny
pink jacket. ‘Mine?’

‘I would think so.’ Phil smiled
at her stunned expression. ‘I bet she packed them away when they got too small for
you, and she forgot to get them when she left here. But as much as I’d like to go
through this lot with you, I’ve really got to go. I’ll see you next
Saturday.’

All that evening, Eva pored over the
contents of the boxes. The box of baby clothes appeared to be outgrown things which
Flora had packed away and then forgotten, just as Phil had suggested. All that was
really notable about them was that they looked rather old-fashioned – hand-knitted
jackets and smocked dresses. There were old sprigs of lavender packed amongst them, and
a faint hint of it still clung to the clothes.

The collection of paintings was superb, and
she was staggered by her mother’s talent. The ten smaller ones, all about twelve
by fourteen inches, were very varied in subject matter. A couple were of vases of
flowers, exquisite in their detail. Then there were three landscapes – all different –
one of a baby sleeping in a pram, which she felt certain was her, and
another of a rather run-down row of shops. The final three were of gardens: dreamy,
sun-filled pictures with statues peeping out from behind voluptuous peonies and roses.
She liked those three the best.

But the second smaller box was really
intriguing. Eva didn’t know if she was being fanciful, but it seemed to her that
it had been purposely left here for her to find. She felt there was a meaning in every
item, whether that was the old photograph album – with pictures of people who must be
her grandparents and aunts and uncles – or snaps of Flora as a young student, many in
fancy-dress costumes, press cuttings praising her art, and diaries, some dating back to
when Flora was in her early teens.

There was an envelope containing a pencil
sketch of a cottage, and with it a photograph of that same run-down row of shops as in
one of the oil paintings. They seemed to belong together. Could the owner of one of the
shops have lived in the cottage? Or were they both places where Flora had once lived,
and so were important to her? Eva wondered why she hadn’t attached an explanatory
note to them.

Also in the box was Eva’s full birth
certificate. Just as Andrew had said, there was a dash in the space for her
father’s details. Eva guessed Flora had hoped it would never come to light that
her daughter was illegitimate.

A beautiful silver necklace designed as a
series of joined small hearts was tucked into a small box with a card saying simply
‘I’ll love you for ever’ and signed ‘P’. Was that from
Patrick O’Donnell, the man who might be her father?

There were several invitation cards to
exhibitions of Flora’s work. They were from various art galleries, mostly in
London, dated from the mid to late sixties. There was also an estate agent’s
leaflet giving details of this house; the asking price was £1,500. Flora had written on
it in pencil: ‘This is the one.’

A book called
The Prophet
by Khalil
Gibran had been inscribed inside to Flora. The message was: ‘Books, art and music
belong to those who can see and hear true beauty. May your eyes and ears remain sharp
for ever.’ Sadly, whoever had given it to her hadn’t put their name, just
the date. April 1968. Eva skimmed through it and was entranced by the author’s
beautiful, lyrical prose. She intended to read it properly later.

There was also a sketchbook full of pencil
drawings of children. Eva felt Flora must once have had the idea of becoming a
children’s book illustrator, as there was the glimpse of a story in the pictures
of untidy, street children reacting to one another in comical ways.

Yet the item that affected her the most was
a notebook with a Liberty-print fabric cover in shades of pink and mauve, tied with pink
ribbon. On every page was a quick sketch of Eva’s head and upper body as a baby,
each with a caption beneath that appeared to reflect Flora’s thoughts of the
day.

It began when she was about two weeks old
and sleeping. Beneath it Flora had written: ‘So angelic now after screaming for
nearly two hours.’

A few sketches further on, she had drawn Eva
screaming and had caught perfectly the screwed-up face of an angry baby. Beneath this
one Flora had written: ‘At times like this I want to walk out of the door for
good.’

Eva could see her own progress as she turned
the pages, her features becoming more pronounced, her small hands becoming chubbier and
her hair starting to grow. She could also sense Flora’s exhaustion in her words.
‘Will the day ever come again when I’ll have the time and energy to
paint?’ was one comment.

The sketches continued until she was perhaps
six months old. In the last one she was smiling, showing two teeth clearly.
Beneath that one was simply ‘Precious One’. Eva’s
eyes filled with tears at this, and a terrible feeling of loss overwhelmed her. All at
once she understood what grief really meant, because this was more acute than the pain
she’d felt on the day Flora died.

Yet there was comfort too in being able to
touch these drawings, almost as if Flora was there in the rooms with her, whispering
that her baby had meant everything to her.

Why didn’t she give her this book on
her eighteenth birthday? It would have been such a perfect gift. But then perhaps Flora
had forgotten about it? Eva wondered too if it would have had the same impact on her if
she’d been given it when her mother was still alive.

Was it Andrew coming into Flora’s life
that had stopped the sketch diary? Eva certainly had a sense that it was just mother and
baby together at the time Flora had made the sketches. Had he even seen this box of
things? Somehow, she doubted it. She sensed Flora had put them up in the attic around
the time she met him.

Was that because once she had met Andrew she
didn’t want reminders of the time when she was alone with her baby, or reminders
of the father? But what was it about Andrew that made her turn her back on her art when
it had clearly once been so important to her?

Although Eva had been badly hurt by Andrew,
and knew him to be something of a control freak, she couldn’t believe that he
would ever have wantonly suppressed Flora’s talent. What reason would he have had
for doing so?

Reading all the diaries carefully might
throw some light on everything that she found so puzzling. She resolved to read some
each night, make notes of any names or places mentioned, and try to piece it all
together.

‘You are just in time,’ Brian
called out as she came in from work at three thirty on Thursday afternoon. ‘Can
you come and hold this for me?’

She saw he was struggling to get a wall
cupboard on to its fixings.

She grasped the bottom of it and held it up
while he clambered up on the stepladder. ‘So much easier with two pairs of
hands,’ he said. ‘Fancy becoming my apprentice?’

Eva laughed. ‘I wouldn’t mind.
Maybe then I could do some jobs myself,’ she said.

Once he had the wall cupboard fixed, he
climbed down again. ‘Right then, tomorrow, after I’ve secured the work
surfaces, I’ll show you how to use the drill and some other basic things,’
he said. ‘Now for that last cupboard before I go. I need to get to the dump with
the old cooker and sink before the place closes.’

Eva helped him out later with the cooker and
sink. As he drove off in his van, honking the horn in farewell, she smiled. He was such
a lovely man – funny and fatherly. He’d arrived yesterday to start the kitchen
just as she got in from work. He’d been almost as thrilled as she was over her new
cooker, and the French doors. He’d worked through till nearly seven, laughing and
chatting with her, yet getting an amazing amount done.

She thought his wife was one lucky lady and
hoped she appreciated him.

The following morning Eva answered the door
but instead of it being Brian as she expected, it was her next door neighbour. She
didn’t know his name, but he’d nodded at her a week earlier when they both
arrived home at the same time.

He was around forty, tall and well built
with a ruddy complexion; Eva had seen his wife sunbathing in the garden
while she’d been looking out of her bedroom window. She was a good bit younger
than her husband, slim, long-legged and looked like a fashion model.

‘Hello,’ Eva said.
‘I’m Eva Patterson. And you live next door, I believe?’

‘Yes. Francis, Simon Francis. I should
have called when you first moved in, but I thought you were just another tenant. As I
understand it, you are the new owner of the house?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she
said. She didn’t like his condescending tone one bit. ‘You don’t call
on tenants then?’ she added with faint sarcasm.