Dear evelyn, p.1
Dear Evelyn, page 1
Praise For Kathy Page
“Page runs circles around authors who work twice as hard for half the reward.”
—Globe and Mail
“A moving novel about knowledge, self-awareness and the power of words, set in the purgatory of prison. This young man’s life demands our attention and refuses to let go.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Kathy Page is a massive talent.”
—Barbara Gowdy
“A complex book, and splendidly written, Alphabet is an intensely compelling reading experience that speaks to the power of words and the significance of language in all its dangerous subtleties.”
—The Edmonton Journal
“Like children at a sleepover, tucked beneath shared covers, the stories whisper to one another, providing a thematic richness to the book that far outstrips its page count.”
—The Walrus
“One of the most complex characters I’ve ever met in a novel…”
—Victoria Times Colonist
“Emotionally resonant, poignant examinations of life and love and – most piercingly – death… Page is a highly skilled miniaturist, capable of pulling off powerful effects by way of simple (though never simplistic) prose and a keen eye for human fallibility and ambiguity.”
—Quill & Quire
“Alphabet is not just highly readable, but one of the strongest, most eloquent, most tightly constructed novels of the year… It is a measure of the quiet artistry of Alphabet that, out of material that would have been at home in the blackest of black comedies, Kathy Page has celebrated, with rare deftness, the resilience of the human heart.”
—Sunday Telegraph
“… lucid, unpretentious writing…”
—New Statesman
“… a writer with a strong imagination and great literary skills…”
—Malcolm Bradbury
“Page’s prose is vivid and alive, with nary a scrap of throwaway writing to be found.”
—Publishers Weekly
“One of our most daring writers… If you don’t know Page’s work yet, she’s a find.”
—Caroline Adderson
“Kathy Page’s language has passages of striking beauty.”
—Maggie Gee
“Simply an epiphany.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
DEAR EVELYN
KATHY PAGE
A JOHN METCALF BOOK
BIBLIOASIS
WINDSOR, ONTARIO
Copyright © Kathy Page, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Excerpts from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot used with the permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpts from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot from COLLECTED POEMS 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot. Copyright © 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright © renewed 1964 by Thomas Stearns Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights Reserved.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Page, Kathy, 1958-, author
Dear Evelyn / Kathy Page.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77196-209-4 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77196-210-0 (ebook)
I. Title.
PR6066.A325D43 2018 823’.914 C2018-901725-2
C2018-901726-0
Edited by John Metcalf and Tara Tobler
Copy-edited by Emily Donaldson
Typeset by Chris Andrechek
Cover designed by Gordon Robertson
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the financial support of the Government of Canada. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
A Kind of Music
Bite on This
“Bite on this,” Mavis said, and gave Adeline a half-moon of leather on a string that tied around the wrist: her own invention, she said. Adeline knelt, legs wide, arms thrown over the edge of the double bed, the top of her belly pressing into it. Mavis had rolled back the rug and put down newspaper topped with clean sheeting. Same on the bed. Bleach in the washing water. Cleanliness. Keep visitors away. She had boiled everything sterile, scrubbed her hands three times. “Bite,” she said, “not long now.”
The second baby was supposed to come easier, but this little bugger had started off facing out. To bring it round, Mavis had made Adeline crawl up and down the tiled passageway on her hands and knees, time after time, then stand and lean on the end of the bed. Two days. Very little rest. But be grateful it isn’t a breech. And be grateful she isn’t at York Road: a filthy place, and half the mothers there come out in coffins. And no high-and-mighty doctor charging you the earth. Mavis cost fifteen shillings, however long it took.
Adeline groaned, bit down hard, and when the worst had passed, she spat the leather thing out and a bit of one of her back teeth went with it. She didn’t care.
“On your side on the bed, if you don’t want to tear,” Mavis said.
“No,” Adeline told her as the pain obliterated all remaining thought and forced a grunt out between her clenched teeth. Spit oozed out over the leather thing and ran down her chin, but Mavis got her up on the bed before the next one. A good thing. Her legs were shaking so much she might have sat on it.
“I’ll be damned!” Mavis said, minutes later. The cord wound three times round the baby’s neck—no wonder he was slow to emerge. She slipped her finger under one of the fleshy loops and tugged it free.
Male, unremarkable, Mavis wrote on the record. Father, Albert Edward Miles, lathe operator. Mother, Adeline Miles. They didn’t have a boy’s name picked, so Mavis recommended Harry: “Can be a Henry or a Harold. Works for a king, a ditch-digger, or anything in between. Everyone likes a Harry.” Albert’s grandfather had been the Henry sort so he was happy with that; Adeline was too tired to care.
Albert took a spade and buried the afterbirth in the square of yard out back, near the outhouse. Put in a tomato plant on top of that, Mavis advised him, though there was not enough light there for anything but the toughest weeds to grow. She brewed tea and waited two hours in case of bleeding and then he paid her the balance owing and a shilling tip for a good job done.
Adeline’s baby sister Josephine, seven years younger, was married, too. When Adeline turned weepy and couldn’t pull herself back together she came over, got her out of bed, and brought her downstairs to sit in the small back room, its windows fogged with the steam from soup-bones boiling.
“Come now, let’s count your blessings,” she said. And there were plenty. Adeline was alive, hardly torn, full of milk. She had a healthy baby, despite the business with the cord, so thank goodness Mavis knew her business … She had a roof over her head and a younger sister who’d taken her first, George—almost four now—off her hands, and three more sisters who might do the same. A good crop of aunts. One uncle. Still had her mother. She had all that luck, and more. Good food. A husband in skilled work, who didn’t drink to excess—a fair, decent man who never hit her and never would.
It was a blessing to have any kind of husband, Josephine pointed out; the war had swallowed so many of them up. She and Adeline the only two sisters married out of five. Adeline and Albert were both fortunate: he to have been spared the trenches, she to be the one he selected, despite that she was twenty-seven and rather quiet. She could add, multiply and divide in her head. She spelled well, and wrote neatly, worked hard, showed no signs of religion, gave herself no airs, did not crimp her hair, or spend her time romancing. Albert Edward appreciated all that, and told her so.
It was the first time anyone had ever expressed an opinion about who Adeline was, so she didn’t disagree. He talked too much for her comfort, but that was a small thing. He wanted a better kind of life and studied how to get it. He was in favour of rational choice. Far better, he said, to have one or two children with full stomachs than six wraiths in one bedroom, half fed, always sick, and most of them ending up in tiny graves. Don’t you agree, Adeline? Of course it made sense, though at the same time, wasn’t it wrong to go against nature? Wrong, certainly, to talk so much about it? We must understand each other, he said. Was that what men and women did? Josephine’s Will never asked her opinion. Hardly spoke.
And surely it was better to have your children live, and grow up to work in an office or even teach. Yes. But she wished he would spare her the details of the means they’d use to limit their family’s size. And did they have to be so strict on the number? Education was the key, and knowledge, power. Yes. Also, Albert said, there was strength in the understanding of numbers. Compound interest, esp
“I don’t understand what went wrong,” he said when they realized she was expecting. “I’ve been very careful.” He had everything written in a penny notebook: her monthlies, when he’d let himself go. “Day eight. Well before your egg would be released,” he said, bringing their doings in the darkness of the bedroom right there onto the kitchen table, where they surely did not belong; still, the egg part put her in mind of chickens, and she laughed.
“Well, I didn’t mean to be laying.” Truth was, they’d done the same as the Catholics did. Plenty of them seemed to be making mistakes too. Perhaps some things couldn’t be controlled, and maybe it was better that way, but she didn’t say any of that because she had married him, for better or for worse.
“We’ve money saved. But as for the future—”
The future was what made Adeline weep, though for the life of her she couldn’t say why.
“Cheer up now, dear,” Albert said, while she was still weepy and good for nothing. They sat in the room off the kitchen, finishing up the shepherd’s pie Josie had brought. “I promise you won’t have to go through it again.”
And hearing that, Adeline, so very lucky as she knew she was, wept even harder, right into the food she was lucky to have.
“So how’s he going to make sure of that?” Josephine asked when Albert had gone to stand on the back step for his smoke. “Is he going to wear a ‘raincoat’ in bed, now?” Josie giggled and Adeline coloured right up.
“We tried one of those,” she whispered, leaned close. “Smelled like matches. Awful.” She was too shy to mention the nasty look of the thing, The Paragon Sheath it was called, washed and powdered, in its box. Cost two and six. Surely, Albert had said, this was a thing that could be, would be, must be improved upon?
“I don’t know what he’s planning, and I don’t want to. I hope he don’t send me to that clinic that’s opened up, I’d die.”
“Will doesn’t go in for any of that. Best just use a bit of self-control and take what comes.”
Harry woke. He had a very persistent cry, would not be lulled. So she gathered him up, fed him, and wept some more.
Stop it, stop it, she told herself, rubbing her sleeve over her face. Count your darn blessings: alive, healthy baby. Good milk. Helpful sisters. Mum to mind him when I go back to work. Kitchen, sitting room, running water, convenience out back, rent paid on the dot. Food. Good husband. Better life.
“I wish you didn’t tell your sister such intimate things,” Albert told her when he came into bed. He spoke very low because Harry lay between them.
“Oh, but I’ve got to talk to someone,” she said, “or I’ll go off my rocker like cousin Nellie did.”
“Maybe it could be someone more discreet,” Albert said. And there again was luck: another man might have forbidden it outright, or struck her, or both.
But what would they do now in bed? Make sure to pull the kettle off before it boiled every single time? Stuff herself with some stinking sponge? Would he just leave her alone? No chance of a daughter, ever? Too much care and calculation surely took the pleasure out of things, the surprise out of life.
It helped to talk, to talk to someone not so rational and reasonable as Albert. And it was better to talk to Harry than to talk to empty air. To count the blessings aloud, numbering them, as she unpinned his nappy, scooped out and emptied its liner, chucked the stinking things into the enamel bucket, wiped him clean and fit him up with fresh muslin and towelling.
“So we’re both lucky buggers,” she concluded, pushing the pin through the layers. “One day, I’ll stop blubbering like this, and that’ll be better still. You’re a good listener. You’ll be good to your wife. You’ll know what she wants.” The blue-grey eyes fastened on her face. He had a thoughtful expression, she decided. Understanding. Didn’t judge. And so, while she could have left him asleep in his box when she popped out for ten minutes, she carried him with her to the shops, telling him on the way how she would cook a bit of beef, and then, when they got there, how no, it was too dear and they’d have neck of mutton instead. She set him on the table while she cooked, on the floor while she did the washing and hung it out. She told him exactly what she was doing even though he could see for himself.
At the end of the fortnight Josephine brought George back. He seemed taller and thinner. “Eating us out of house and home,” she said. “Al was too damn right about keeping a family small! Besides, I’ve been throwing up. Must be expecting again.”
“Now, if your brother doesn’t behave,” Adeline told Harry, “if he’s rough or forgets you, or does the slightest wrong thing, scream. I know you will. And George, if you watch him well, then soon you’ll get to feed him a rusk, and I’ll buy you a string of liquorice.”
Two strong boys. George, Albert’s favourite; Harry, hers. These were likely all the children she would have. Her luck.
Count your blessings, Adeline reminded herself many nights, awake, in the small bedroom with its two night tables and small closet, her body longing for something she had no words for. Two healthy boys. Rent paid. A decent man. She clenched her teeth, and a memory flooded her mouth, of leather, of how she kept the sound of the birth pains inside.
Desperate Glory
Harry had a window seat at the front of the classroom. Morning sun fell across his desk, picking out its fine coating of chalk dust, the marks of his fingers. Stray tendrils of Virginia creeper, a deep scarlet, framed the wooden sash window, the top arch of which was made from four pieces, the careful joints just visible through white paint. He could see the railway lines running to Clapham Junction, the sports fields, fence, trees and buildings beyond. To his right sat Gorsely, behind him, Fitzgerald. He had a close-up view of the new teacher, Mr Whitehorse: of the gravelly texture of his skin and the jagged white line that ran from his cheekbone to the corner of his lip.
“Miles,” Whitehorse said as he marked Harry present, “do you know what your name signifies?”
“A measure of distance, sir?”
The class tittered. They did not yet know what to expect.
“Where’s your Latin?” Whitehorse continued. “Mīles, mīlitis: a foot soldier.”
Whitehorse, tall, gaunt and stooping, asymmetrical in almost every respect, was already known as Dark. He straightened his back somewhat, and looked slowly around the class. It took them a moment to realize that only one eye, the left, moved. “Since we are talking of war,” he continued, “I’ll take the opportunity to let you all know that the rumour is correct. I wear a glass eye. I lost my real eye in what is called the Great War.” He indicated his right eye, in case they were not sure. Beneath it, the white scar. “Lost is a euphemism, from the Greek. Who knows what that is?”
No one replied. He did not explain, but continued: “Shrapnel impaled my eye, and the nerve behind. Pain seared through me. I passed out, then woke still in agony on my back in the mud … Yet I was lucky. We should remember that one hundred and seventy men from this school died during those four years, including a former headmaster and both of his sons. They were of course very brave. However, I sincerely hope you all avoid such a fate.” He inhaled sharply, looked around the room. The boys at their desks sat perfectly still.
“The guns are silent now,” Whitehorse continued, softly, “and in this class we shall study verse of various kinds. The poetry of love, the poetry of the land, and the poetry of the soul. I hope to avoid the poetry of war. We shall take verses apart and put them back together again, speak them, write them; you will learn poetry so that you have it in you forever, beating like a second heart … I wonder, what was the last poem you read and liked? Armstrong? Godwin? Bowles?”
The silence became unbearable and Harry raised his hand.
“I liked ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ sir,” he said.
Whitehorse stiffened, fixed him with his single, seeing, sky-blue eye, and then, a second later, turned his head so that the unseeing one appeared to look as well.
“Miles, I must ask, did you also enjoy ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’? One of the most dishonest poems ever to be written:
