Evelyn sat at the café window. She stared out along the street, towards the railway station. She could see a good distance down the road in that direction, when the passers-by were not in the way. She was concentrating very hard on the furthest point she could see, before the bend took the road out of sight. At the same time she was trying to contain the excitement building inside her. She knew it would not be for a while. She knew she must be patient, control any visible manifestations of the exhilaration she was feeling.
The sun was low in the sky and had moved into a gap between two high buildings across the street. The mellow, slanting rays shone through the crowd and the intermittent light flashed its reflections on the formica top of the café table, like a heliograph; a signal from someone in distress; but he was not in sight yet.
She looked again along the path he would take. She tried to imagine where he was. Had he left the house? Was he on his way? Was he thinking of her and looking forward to the assignation they would have had on this Saturday night, but which would not now take place? Was he thinking of another or had she already been supplanted? She didn't care. She was simply curious.....
It seemed to Evelyn suddenly that she heard her name called from far off, as if the deep red setting sun were calling her from between the two tall, black, silhouetted buildings. She stared into the sun and the calling continued. Evelyn returned to reality with a start as she realised that it was the woman sitting opposite her in the café who was calling her name.
"Evelyn, darling, I do believe you haven't been listening to a word I've been saying, you were miles away. I was asking your advice on the supper tonight. You are still coming?"
Evelyn's mind snapped back to concentrate on Nicola, the woman sharing her table. "Yes, of course; and I was listening. I think the finger buffet is so much easier, people can help themselves."
It was a trick she had developed; only in the last year; only since she had embarked on her new exploit, her crusade; or perhaps vocation was a better word. She had developed the ability to partition her mind into two quite separate compartments; to follow up a complex line of thought in one whilst retaining information received in the other. Nicola, or Nikki as she preferred to be called, continued with her plans for that evening. Evelyn glanced casually out of the window again, suppressing with great difficulty the surging anticipation within her. This was, after all, her first time, her first real time. It was understandable. She was experiencing an internal conflict between ecstasy and fear.
Now, suddenly, she could see him! He carried a rolled umbrella. She was affected by the thought that he looked ridiculous carrying this black, rolled, formal object on a day when the sun had shone relentlessly from early morning.
She thought of the first time they had gone to bed together. It was the first time she had ever been made love to by someone for whom she felt nothing; but that was her fault. She had led the way. She felt like an expensive whore. In a way that's all she was. She lay there beneath him, moving and sighing in the way that one does, able to keep her conscious mind totally apart, unaffected by the sensations.
She remembered thinking what an undignified business it all was, sweating and heaving up and down, revealing your naked imperfections to someone else, almost a total stranger. She thought of the climax she experienced. Its intensity thrilled and frightened her. Was it because she was detached? Was it because she cared so little for this man that she had experienced such a fine orgasm? Or that she had tried too hard on other occasions?
She forced herself to look away from the man and the window, returning to Nikki and the supper. She wondered whether she would actually attend it or make some late excuse, since she would probably never see Nikki again after this weekend. Evelyn studied Nikki's face. How much trouble she had gone to in order to bring about a meeting with this woman. Now they were close friends, or at least Nikki thought so. They had met several times for lunch; shopped together. Evelyn had even visited Nikki's house for morning coffee; and it was all deceit. Evelyn switched off the twinge of conscience and decided it was time again for a glance out of the window.
The man was much nearer now. She could see the lines on his face. He looked tired, she thought. Not surprising; he was fifty two. For a moment a swift pincer of pity slipped through her guard. She swatted it like a fly as it circled her mind; no pity! She thought of Charles; the start of it all. The pity dissolved immediately as the pictures of Charles flooded her mind. The man outside was so different from Charles.
Why, she pondered, when a relationship falls apart, do you look with cleansed and critical eyes at the person you thought you felt so much for. Charles excited her when she looked at him. He was witty, effervescent, maturely handsome; before. After, he was loud, crass, obvious and old.
Evelyn shuddered at the memories; embarrassing herself that she could have been like that over Charles; been like that again after the other times. She had told herself that this time would be different. Charles would not be like the other men; but he was; worse.
At University she had found herself attracted to older men. That is what she believed. She put it down to her increased maturity. She found her peers gauche and simplistic, with their drinking bouts and their rugby songs and their gutter stories of what they would do to the women of their dreams if only they could work out how to undo the zips on their trousers. During her three years there she had rarely had a relationship with anyone below the age of thirty. One or two had been well over forty. These older men were always so solicitous and caring. They were easy company and seemed to make that extra effort. Of course, she knew most of them were married. She felt pleased that her conversation and ideas interested them so.
It was in her last year that she began to despair over one failed relationship after another. Starting one up never seemed to be a problem. No sooner had one departed than another prospective lover hove into view. It was much harder to work out why they never lasted. Men seemed to find it easy to pick up a relationship with her and just as easy to put it down again. There were several to whom she was deeply attached and the resultant casting off had had a profound and lasting effect on her. She wondered whether it was her name; Evelyn. It sounded somehow outdated, Victorian. She was the only offspring of old parents, her mother being forty two when she'd had her and her father four years older than that. As she recalled these thoughts, she realised that she had never asked them why they had taken so long to have a child. Now it was too late. Her father had died three years before retiring at the age of sixty two. Her mother had not been well and had taken the shock so badly that she had not lasted that year out and she too had died.
Her name had been a source of ridicule at school. All the other girls were called Hayley or Marianne, Julie and Claire. Later, in the fifth form, when some girls discovered that there was a male author called Evelyn Waugh, the situation worsened. She never had boyfriends in school because she wasn't winsome and pretty. Her parents kept her hair cut short and dressed her plainly. Other girls said she was a man really. They tried to watch her undressing in the changing room and asked what she did with it when she went into the showers. Others said she was a lesbian. They called her Les and tried to pair her off with other girls they hated in the school.
It was with surprise, then, that she discovered herself at University. The bad times, it seemed, were behind her. She had several experiences. Discovered the delights of bed and company; only to discover heartache of a different kind. She sought refuge in the past and blamed her parents; the schoolchildren; her name.
She refocused on Nikki's face. Always a talker rather than a listener, Nikki had not been aware of Evelyn's departure nor her return. The talk had progressed from the food for the supper tonight to what should be worn. Nikki did not want it to be highly formal but it was not to be a party either. Nikki had decided that she would wear the outfit Steve had bought her in Paris in the summer; a shimmering silver blouse and long black skirt with lacy edges.
Outside the sun had disappeared behind one of the buildings. The man was almost at the café door; ten yards, twenty at the most. He had stopped to give directions to someone. He was waving the umbrella back in the direction from which he had just come. Evelyn thought again how different this man was from Charles, although in her mind she had always identified the two of them together.
The first time she'd seen Charles, he was in the bar of the local playhouse. She had moved into the town after University, when she had been appointed as assistant arts officer in the local Arts Association. During her first week she had found the records of the Playfarers and had decided to join, more as a means of making friends than of any strong ambition to act. She had been in several plays at University, including one or two leading roles, but the idea of making friends through the arts and also of building contacts up for her job, appealed to her. That evening she had gone down to the theatre, with every intention of simply joining and finding out when it was convenient to start, when she found it was the second night of "Confusions" by Alan Ayckbourne. On an impulse she had bought a ticket and gone into the bar for a drink before the show.
Charles was leaning on the bar entertaining some friends. He was the centre of attraction and enjoying it. As Evelyn bought her drink, the man who had taken her details for membership came in the bar. He walked up to Charles and had a word, looking over at Evelyn. Charles delivered one last quip, detached himself from the group and approached her. He explained that this was an ideal time to join as they would be reading through their next play the following week and so she would be in on a new production straightaway. He asked if she was stopping for the performance and she said she was. He told her that he wasn't on until the second half when he played Gosforth in "Gosforth's Fete"; of course he directed it as well. He bought her a drink and said he would probably see her after the show in the bar. She agreed and went into the play.
After the performance he was charming and attentive. He looked too young to have silver hair, but it made him look most attractive. He invited her back to a party afterwards but she felt tired and declined.
The next time she saw Charles was in the rehearsal room. They were to attempt the little-performed Elizabethan classic "The Maid's Tragedy", by Beaumont and Fletcher. Afterwards she realised just how ironic life can be in its choice of banana skins it leaves lying around. Her heart dipped with embarrassment as she ran the memory. It had been like some bad Australian TV movie that was cheap but only suitable for Saturday afternoon as a counter to sport; only she hadn't noticed on the night. All the novels she had read for her English degree, all the poetry, the relationships in the dramas had taught her nothing about real relationships. When the question was asked, she was gullible and starry eyed like a young schoolgirl. Charles was charming; his wit sparkled all evening. They read the play. He was to play the king. Other parts were cast. When he gave the part of Evadne to Evelyn, she did not see; not even when Charles made a joke about the similarity of the two names.
In a mixture of chagrin and anger at the memory, Evelyn returned once more to the café. It was warm and welcoming to customers who came in from the sharp cold outside. She watched the man's hand stretch out and grasp the handle. Saw his cheeks rouged from the biting wind. Saw the pale golden hairs on his top lip, hairs she had watched dispassionately from beneath him one week ago. She went back to her memories of Charles.
Two months before the first night, Charles had gained permission to rehearse regularly in the large parish church where the production would be staged. Until then they had used the rehearsal room at the theatre. They had read through the piece several times after casting. Evelyn was thrilled at the prospect. She began to learn her lines avidly. The excitement had not abated when Charles announced that the next rehearsal would take place in the church. At first it was cold, blocking the moves and becoming accustomed to the new acoustics. After a while, Evelyn didn't notice it. All she saw was Charles. She followed every word of direction acutely. After three rehearsals in the church, when the play had been blocked completely, Charles asked Evelyn if she could stay behind and just run through their most difficult scene. It was the opening of act five, when Evadne, used and abused by the king, dismissed his serving man, who thought she entered the king's bedchamber for a further night of pleasure. The king slept. She tied his hands and feet to the four corners of the bed. As the king awoke, he saw Evadne and what she had done and assumed that this was a new device for his sexual gratification. In an outburst of anger, Evadne told the king how he had wronged her. She stabbed him many times in the chest until finally, he died.
Charles had left this section unblocked, saying he had not decided how to play it. Now, alone in the church, he shivered, saying how cold he was. Evelyn did not feel it still. Charles suggested that the room where the bellringers toll the bells might be warmer. And so they climbed the stairs to the wooden- floored room with its long ropes slung through holes in another wooden floor above.
They read through the scene once and Charles, as if the thought had just struck him, suggested that, as the king wakes up, Evadne, having tied him to the bed, could exercise total power over him by sitting astride him. The words poured out of Evadne, "thou kepst me brave at court, and whored me king, then married me to a young noble gentleman, and whored me still."
She could not remember, staring sightlessly through the café window, at which point they had been acting and at which point the script had vanished and improvisation had taken over. Perhaps it was when, in a trance, she had looked up and seen, beyond Charles's heaving shoulders, the long bellpulls disappearing through the holes in the roof, the stark walls, and the man around whom she was desperately clasped.
Once again she stopped at the memory, but it forced itself back like an exorcism, as if this was the moment when she would finally expunge it from her mind.
They had made love several times. He was expert, so caring, eager to please, to have her recognise the great pains he was taking to pleasure her. She felt she would explode.
Later, when they had returned to an earthly plane, they had gone for a drink in a small, local pub. It was Charles who brought up the subject of his wife. Hated the theatre, could not mix or converse with members of the group. It had led to a passionless relationship, which he had fostered for the sake of the children and which had become something of a habit. Evelyn could not remember if he had asked her directly not to say anything to anyone, particularly his wife, or whether she had offered to remain silent. Or maybe it had all been done by inference and implication. Now it seemed absurd.
Evelyn, for the next few months, was blinkered and bound. Her head filled with thoughts of him when alone, eyes filled with the sight of him when rehearsing. And of course, there were many extra rehearsals in the small room that Evelyn could have described in minute detail. She dreamt once that she lived there and was visited by Charles. It was all-consuming. It was over-rich. It had to burst somehow. That it did, was, in the end, a complete accident. With a week to go to the first night, Evelyn, wrapped totally in her tiny world of Charles, had sat at home waiting for the night to come and the technical rehearsal they were to sort out. Impatient and restless, she made her way to the church and walked around the inside. She stood in the doorway of her room, the bells above silent and menacing, the bells in her head ringing wildly. The church was completely empty. She went behind the screen that separates the organist from the congregation and sat on his organ stool, with her back to the stops and pipes and keys. She leaned back and looked into the vaults, at the twisting and decorated masonry. Her thoughts were interrupted by two voices, that of Charles and one she didn't recognise. She was about to stand up when she heard her name mentioned. It was the other voice that spoke it. He repeated it, "Evelyn? Not your usual sort of name, Charles. Good is she?" She wanted to make some disturbance and stop it there but she knew she couldn't. She knew she would have to hear what Charles said. "Very. She's a bit plain to look at, but eager, Rory, eager as hell. We have it in the room where they ring the bells."
"What, in church, in here?"
"Oh yes! I ring her bell where the campanologists stand. My little Esmeralda, swings on her Quasimodo's bell pull with a vigour that is tiring me out." Charles' voice was gloating and unfeeling. She remembered the young men at University and their infantile sexual humour. She froze to the spot, convinced that her breathing was a roaring in the church vaults. Her chance to escape came when she heard Rory say,
"But in a church, Charles. That's a bit gross, even for you. Where is this love niche?"
Charles moved away from the pulpit.
"Come along, I'll show you."
"You know, Charles, she'll hate you when she knows you better, when she realises that she is merely the producer's popsy for this show."
"Director, Rory. How many times must I tell you, I'm a director." His laugh diminished as they headed for the tower.
"Anyway, I'm beginning to tire of her already; and Anna has been asking questions about the final act. Someone has been talking. I think I may even give her the heave-ho before... ..........
Evelyn was paralysed, frozen. She forced herself to step out from behind the screen and she ran.
When she stopped, she was at the far end of the churchyard. "Such a tyrant
That for his lust would sell away his subjects,
Ay, all his heaven hereafter."
She clawed for breath. She was sobbing and angry and breathless from running.
"I was once fair,
Once I was lovely, not a blowing rose
More chastely sweet, till thou, thou, thou foul canker,
(Stir not!) didst poison me."
Now, months after, she could not remember how she forced herself to return to the church, or to carry on with the play. Charles helped by not asking her into their room again. The rest of the week was still a blank to her. She wasn't heart-broken in the conventional sense of the word. She was numb. Her mind was raking over the past continually, looking for reason, explanation, logic. She wanted something with which to hurt Charles. She wanted some kind of revenge. Part of it came on the first night; in front of a packed church. At the beginning of Act Five, Evelyn tied Charles to the bed. She woke him and sat astride him. She had done so several times since that night, but the memory had vanished. Now she held court over him. In charge and brandishing a large knife, she spat her words into his face and thrust the knife under his chin. She could see a different look in his eyes. There was puzzlement there; not the usual confident Charles. She began to enjoy it all. Afterwards, members of the audience clapped her loudly when she took her curtain call. She received more attention than Charles. Her performance had been the highlight of a brilliant success. Had she been acting, she might have taken greater pleasure in these compliments.
And each night was the same. On the last night, Charles had a word with her before the production party. Perhaps it would be better if they didn't see each other again, wife is getting suspicious, loved every moment of it of course, but......
Evelyn said nothing. She just looked into his eyes with as much contempt and loathing as she could summon.
Back in reality, Evelyn heard the café door trip the hanging bell as the man entered. He looked around the room. It was full. Evelyn raised a menu in front of her face to hide it from his view. She sensed his gaze in her direction. Felt him take those first steps towards her.
The Charles episode would have ended there, if it hadn't been for his wife. She didn't come to the party, though she had watched two performances, which someone had commented was two more than usual for her. It was three days later when the invitation to a small supper at her house arrived at Evelyn's place of work.
Was it curiosity, bravado or just a chance to show Charles that she really didn't care that caused her to accept the invitation? She took a taxi to the house and walked up the drive. Anna opened the door herself. She held her hand out to Evelyn. "We haven't actually met, I'm Anna, the great director's wife."
There were six or eight other people in the main room, but no sign of Charles. Evelyn was given a drink and a plate. There was a table of buffet food and she helped herself. She circulated amongst the other guests and was introduced to each one. A little later, Anna came to talk to Evelyn.
Curiosity became too much and Evelyn confronted Anna and said,
"Can I ask you what made you invite me to this supper?"
Anna paused before answering, taken aback a little by her directness. "I thought I'd like to teach Charles a lesson. When he returns in a while, he won't expect to find you here. He won't like it. I want to watch him. I think you want to teach him a lesson too, don't you?"
Evelyn saw, suddenly, that all she had gone through in the past few weeks had been one of a succession of exploits for dear old Charles. Anna was sharp and perceptive and there was little point in trying to bluff or contradict her. She took a deep breath and began at the beginning.
When Charles eventually arrived, his face was confirmation of all that Evelyn had suspected. His wife was none of the things he had claimed. He had always excluded her from the theatre because it would interfere with his assignations. He was actually afraid of his wife, but managed to elicit sympathy over her.
He stared at Evelyn as if she had grown an additional head. He muttered a greeting and looked puzzled and embarrassed. The bravado, the elan had vanished.
"Hello, darling. I think you know Evelyn. She's just been telling me all about your rehearsals. I didn't realise you were so interested in bellringing!"
In the cafe, from behind her menu, Evelyn heard Nikki say, "Oh darling, this is my friend Evelyn, Evelyn, my husband Steve."
Evelyn lowered the menu and looked straight into his face. She recorded every momentary twitch, the look of fear and incomprehension in his eyes. The pores opened and the sweat seeped out, glistening on those golden hairs on his top lip again. Now there was a similarity between Charles and Steve. That same look of wounded pride, of puzzlement at the betrayal. It was only two days before that Steve had suggested that their affair had run its course. Why was she here? Evelyn smiled and said "Hello Steve, nice to meet you."
Nikki bridged the gap.
"I've invited Evelyn over for supper tonight darling. This will be the first Saturday night you've spent in for some time, won't it?"
She watched Steve's mouth open and close, fishlike and soundless. Like the moment in the room when Charles had returned and all the guests waited for his reply.
So that was how Evelyn came to be in the café that winter's day. She had been shown a new way to repay old debts. Unfairly it might be said, since she wasn't repaying the ones who had hurt her in the past; but the satisfaction she had experienced at the conclusion of her first assignment outweighed any sense of injustice.
She still wasn't sure whether she'd go to Nikki's soiree tonight. There were other considerations; other options. It might be more painful to leave Steve guessing for a while longer. A phone call to him would prolong the worry; and there was that pleasant man in the library. The one whose wife didn't like poetry and who had invited her to a reading of one of his favourite modern poets. Was that tonight? She couldn't remember. Still, if she excused herself now, she could just make the library before it closed.......

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