Evie’s Choice

I smiled. ‘Does it matter?’

‘No,’ he admitted, and took my hand. ‘It’s still early, Mrs Davies. Shall we walk up the lane before supper?’

The sun was just beginning its slow descent on this, the happiest day I had ever known, and as we reached the top of the hill, Will pulled me to a halt. I turned to see the orange-gold light setting his eyes on fire and burnishing his skin, and an intensity in his expression that I knew would be mirrored in my own. Without a word passing between us, we turned to go back to the hotel, a new urgency in our steps and all thoughts of the earliness of the hour banished.

In our room he took me by the shoulders and brushed his lips against my forehead with the most gentle of touches that, nevertheless, shot straight through me, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. He stepped back and removed his jacket and shirt, and, unable suddenly to look at his face, and instead keeping my eyes on his surprisingly compact, muscular body, I eased my gown over my shoulders. When we moved close together again I had only my petticoats on, and the friction of the fine silk sliding between us ignited that heat and made us both gasp.

But we were not yet close enough, and when he raised my arms and slipped the last remaining barrier away my hands went to his chest, as if by the touch of my fingers on his skin I would finally realise he was mine. He pulled me closer, and I let my hands drift down his sides, over the strong swell of his ribcage, feeling him tremble with the lightness of my touch. I wondered if he was as drawn to my body as I was to his or whether, now he saw me without the mystery and flattery of my clothing, he might be disappointed.

The question must have shown in my face because his hand came up to touch my jaw. ‘Evie Davies, you are, without doubt, the most beautiful creature on this good earth,’ he breathed, and then his mouth came down on mine.

Eventually he broke the kiss and led me to the bed. I lay down and he looked at me for a long, delicious moment before stretching out beside me and, easing one hand beneath me, he lifted me closer. He raised his free hand to my breast and I arched towards him, longing for the complete possession that seemed to hover so close, yet still danced out of reach. All the while he was kissing wherever he could reach, along my cheekbones and down to my jaw, his lips blazing across my face to my eyes as if he couldn’t taste enough of me all at once. Thrilled at the thought that I excited him so much, I let my hands choose their path across his broad back and down to his hips, and my teeth nipped gently at his shoulder, my lips moving hungrily over the smooth skin.

Nervousness almost stole my pleasure as he moved across me, and I tensed as he positioned himself so that his entry was as smooth and painless as it could be, his eyes on mine in silent apology. But after a brief flash of pain my hips rose of their own volition to meet him and I didn’t even have to think about matching his rhythm; all thought seemed to be happening on another level of my consciousness and there was only sensation now. Our movements grew more urgent and I tried to pull him deeper inside me, knowing that, as wonderful as it was, there was something more and I had to either have it or die.

All at once the warmth I had always felt in his presence – in my heart, on my skin, in my stomach – was now concentrated in one place and growing. Just as I thought I could bear it no longer, that elusive feeling I had sensed before rushed through me to meet that warmth, and the collision was everything. It was glorious. With every beat of my heart the sensation pulsed more heavily in every part of me, only fading away as Will, spent and exhausted, sank down to lie beside me.

After a moment he rolled towards me again, supporting himself on one elbow. I opened my eyes and smiled, and he looked relieved and brushed away a curl that had stuck to my cheek. His fingers were trembling. ‘It didn’t hurt too much?’

I could feel his thundering heart as his chest pressed against my arm. ‘It was awful,’ I said, ‘I never want to go through anything like that ever again.’

Will laughed, a shaky, breathless sound, and dropped his hand to my hip. ‘Never?’ he asked in a low voice.

I scratched my short nails lightly across his stomach. ‘Never,’ I breathed, and kissed his shoulder, moving down across his chest, tasting the light, salt sweat of him and loving it. ‘Not for at least ten minutes.’

It turned out ten minutes was a lot shorter than I’d thought.

In the morning we left that magical place behind forever, and to my embarrassment Will showed me he had taken some of the paper from the little supply in our room. ‘I’ll write to you on this, so we can remember,’ he said. ‘Whenever you see this hotel crest,’ he traced it with one finger, ‘you will know it’s you I’m thinking of. I’m going to kiss every single page,’ he grinned, warming to his promise as I rolled my eyes in disbelief, ‘and whenever you get a letter from me on this paper, you will think of our wedding night.’

Despite my teasing look, I was unbelievably touched; Will was not what I would have thought of as a particularly romantic young man, but I had no doubt that he would do exactly as he’d said. And when he left later that same day to join his unit, I thought of the ridiculous little stack of paper tucked into his shirt, and wished I could have taken its place.

Waiting with him at the station was a strange, hollow affair. He wore his uniform now – an oddly plain, muddy-green, ill-fitting affair of rough wool – and carried a hessian kit-bag; it was as if he were going to stay with a friend for a week, nothing more. That we were surrounded by people in the same clothes, and that some of them openly wept, only served to heighten the sense of unreality.

As the train pulled into the platform, the mood changed. It became charged with a brittle air of patriotic fervour, men straightening their backs and declaring it time to “get over there and sort the Bosche out”. Someone slapped Will’s shoulder, and he gave them a mechanical grin and slapped back. They had never met before, yet now they were quite likely to be living side by side and entrusting their lives 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.