‘And I think you should be “Eve”.’ There was not a hint of hesitation here either. ‘Evie just doesn’t work, does it? Eve. Pablo and Eve.’
And he was right. Evie was the same as Ronnie. And Pablo and Eve, yes, it had a certain ring.
• • •
It can’t have been on that first Tuesday or even the second one, it must have been some other time, but it was in that rehearsal room anyway that she found herself saying, ‘Ronnie, has anyone ever told you that you have smashing eyes?’ It was bold and forward of her even then. But she was Evie White, who’d never been slow in coming forward and would give anything a go at least once.
It was in one of their tea breaks. It was all rather odd. One moment they were doing magic—they really were—next, they were stopping for tea. She sometimes made it herself now, they took it in turns. And it must have looked very odd too, a woman sometimes in little more than sequins and plumes in that cubbyhole, with its stained and smelly sink, filling the kettle, warming the pot. Her plumes could get in the way and upset things if she wasn’t careful, but she’d learnt long ago to be aware of her attachments as an animal must be aware of its tail. Every chorus girl had this sixth sense.
Working with Ronnie was fun. She’d never thought magic might involve laughter, and perhaps Ronnie had never really thought it either. When performing, he could adopt the most serious, even scary expressions, she’d discovered, he could really change, but they would laugh a lot in their breaks. He was a magician and yet he could find all sorts of ordinary things strange or funny.
He began to say, now and then, about this or that, ‘Fucking ’ell, Evie, fucking ’ell.’ She didn’t mind. If you don’t like language then don’t work in the theatre. She even felt slightly privileged. She felt he might have wanted to say it when he first saw her in her costume. ‘Fucking ’ell, Evie.’ And there was something oddly innocent about it. It was not so different from her mother saying, as she did about all kinds of things, ‘Ooo-er!’
Was it when they were both blowing the steam off their mugs? No doubt she would have been using her own eyes too. He had got quite used to her now being around him in her costume. To having to allow for the feathers himself. There was a blanket she draped round herself, more practical than a dressing gown. It was like being a horse.
‘Has anyone ever told you, Ronnie, that you have smashing eyes?’
Well, she had now. And anyway he gave his answer. Had she been asking for it—or for some answer with similar effect? And was she complaining?
‘It’s not the eyes, Evie, it’s what they’re looking at.’
And they didn’t blink at all. Hers might have fluttered a bit.
His friend, his ‘someone’ who might give them work, was Jack Robbins, stage name Jack Robinson. He’d been slow in getting round to saying that.
But he wasn’t slow in getting round to other things. When he first took her to meet Jack (who’d been away on tour up north) she wasn’t of course wearing her costume, but she was wearing something else that was special. And perhaps both these precautions were just as well. If she were a man with a friend like Jack Robbins she too might have been slow in making the introductions, or at least wanted to take out some insurance first.
‘Pablo and Eve’. Yes, it had a ring to it. And now she was wearing a ring. Ronnie had only just presented it to her, and it cemented the notion that though they were Pablo and Eve they were also Ronnie and Evie. She supposed he must have bought the ring with that windfall money as well, but that was not the right way to think about it.
An engagement ring with a little diamond bright as a star.
• • •
Now Evie White is seventy-five. It’s 2009, not 1959 when she first wore that engagement ring. Fifty years! She looks at her face in a mirror.
The idea was that if they got the Brighton season—and they did—then they’d get married that September, when the show closed and they had the breathing space. They’d take a honeymoon and generally take stock—of Pablo and Eve, that is, not of Ronnie and Evie, though weren’t they the same?
It’s September now, 8th September. Almost exactly fifty years. And it’s exactly a year since something else happened, in this very bedroom. Evie is sitting in it now. And suppose Ronnie could see her. Perhaps he can. Through the window the late afternoon light, deep gold, is starting to fade. She can see the yellowing leaves of the crab-apple tree in the garden.
She has taken off her pearls. It has been a taxing day. She might take off her face. She thinks she might just take off everything, though it’s not so long since she put it all on, and lie down for a nap in the bed behind her.
Already a whole year, but it seems, today, like only yesterday. For a whole year now it has been the only constant fact, and not all the unchanged familiarity of this house and all its stubborn denials—framed photos of Jack everywhere, his jackets, his coats still hanging where he last put them—can make the fact any less of a fact or make it any more bearable.
And has she kissed the photos? And has she thrust her face into the jackets and coats, and even—? Of course she has.
Exactly one year ago, and the house is no less full of goneness. That’s the word she still likes to use in her head: gone. Not dead. Not death. She had never liked to use those
