THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK
Chapter 3: Only a Week to Go
Evelyn saw Stan and his mother off from the door herself. It was a dry evening, but foggy. Mrs. Ashworth sniffed and turned up the fur collar on her good coat.
“Nice spread, Evelyn,” she said, nodding.“Much obliged to your Mam. Come on, Stan, that train’ll be along.”
Stan, winding his red scarf around his neck, glanced down at his mother and then at his fiancee.
“Aye, right nice it was, say ta again for us, will you?” he muttered, shuffling towards Evelyn for a kiss. Mrs. Ashworth cleared her throat and stared hard at her son.
She does it on purpose, the old curmudgeon, Evelyn thought. She wasn’t letting the two of them have even a minute alone to say good night. She could at least pretend to be busy putting on her gloves or looking up the street. But Evelyn didn’t care. They’d got through the ordeal of Stan with his mother in tow meeting all the assembled Leigh family for a special Sunday tea, a week before the wedding. Mrs. Leigh had soaked and braised a whole ham, and she and Evelyn and Auntie Peg had all been baking for days, to say nothing of the sweeping and polishing of the house, which was always spotless, anyway.
But it had all gone off all right, and on top of that there was her lovely new locket. While Stan dithered about kissing her good night in front of his mother, Evelyn fingered it gently at her throat and smiled shyly at him. In less than a week they would be a married couple, and with her help he would start standing up to his mother at last. Mrs. Ashworth had had her own way with him too long, ever since his father cleared off. Everybody said so. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right for Stan. In the meantime, Evelyn wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
“You’re very welcome I’m sure, Mrs. Ashworth. ’Night, then, Stan,” she said brightly. “See you tomorrow, six o’clock sharp. You haven’t forgotten you’re taking me to the pictures, have you?” She darted forward and pressed her lips to his cheek, kissing him with a loud smacking sound.
And thank you again for the beautiful locket, Stan,” she said, loud enough for his Mam to hear. “Ta-ta, then, Mrs. Ashworth! Mind how you go in the fog.”
Mrs. Ashworth’s only reply was a pursing of the lips. Evelyn didn’t care. Make all the nasty faces you like, she thought. By this time next week I’ll be kissing your precious Stan all I please, only right smack on his lips, and right in front of you in your own house. And you won’t be able to do a thing about it.
Mrs. Ashworth took Stan’s arm decisively, turned him up Roper Street, and marched him away. They made a funny pair of shapes, her as wide as she was high, Stan so tall and rangy. He didn’t look back once, but Evelyn hadn’t expected him to. In the fog she could only make out the bright red scarf, anyway.
Mam and her aunties Peg and Violet were seeing to the dishes and no doubt gossiping about their visitors, going over the details of Mrs. Ashworth’s frock no doubt, and the habit she had of sniffing ever so daintily at her teacup before she sipped from it. How even she hadn’t been able to resist Mam’s Eccles cakes and how Peg had tried not to stare when she had reached for her third one! How she tried to look down her nose, as if she were doing them a favour letting her Stan marry into the Leighs! And then when Evelyn had shown them all the pretty locket Stan had just given her, how the woman hadn’t known whether to bask in the Ashworths’ largesse, or tut over her son’s extravagance.
The menfolk, Violet’s husband, Bill, and Peg’s sons, Bradley and Will, were in the front room, also ruminating over the meeting of their future relations by marriage. But they did so more contemplatively, puffing on cigarettes and pipes, their talk interspersed with many a grunt and long stare into the fire. Stanley Ashworth seemed a sound enough lad. On the quiet side, but this was no criticism; the Leigh menfolk weren’t big talkers themselves. Anyway, they never got too worked up about such matters. They didn’t speculate deeply about a man’s character, they waited to see what he was made of. It was better to stay slightly puzzled by it all, and let the lasses get on with unravelling all the ins and outs of courtship and marriage and the uneasy unions of families. It wasn’t that the men liked being puzzled by it all, it was just that they liked a quiet life and the best chance of that was not to interfere with woman talk that they could never hope to understand.
That night in her bedroom Evelyn took off her locket and studied it carefully. Stan had given it to her sheepishly, hanging back in the hall as he’d arrived, while Mrs. Leigh had taken charge of his mother and led her away into the front room. He had pressed the box into Evelyn’s hand and said, “Hope it’s to your liking. Not had much call to go buying jewellery, it’s nothing to write home about. Hope it suits.”
“Why, Stan!” she had cried, opening the little velvet box. “It’s lovely!”
Now she held it up and gazed at the locket in her palm. Really, a locket was more useful than a ring, she told herself. A ring could get in the way if you were doing a dirty job like raking out the fire or scouring the front step. You’d either have to take it off and worry about losing it or you’d worry about scratching it. A locket you could just put on and forget about. There would be a little wedding band for her finger soon, for decency’s sake, and that was all anyone needed.
“Oh, and it’s got ever such a strong clasp, Stan. No fear I’ll be losing it!” she had said to him, watching it spin from its chain. In the dark hall it hadn’t caught the eye half as much as it would in a brighter room. In proper sunshine, come the summer, the etched pattern of leaves on the silver surface would surely throw back the light quite beautifully.
“It’s only silver,” grunted Stan.
“But silver’s lovely!” Evelyn had reassured him. “Silver’s better on me, with my colouring. Silver’s much more flattering than gold, in my opinion. It’s much more wearable. In fact I believe I prefer it to gold. Honest, I do.”
She had placed the locket against her throat while Stan watched her in silence. Eventually she had turned her back to him and dipped her head.
“Do it up for me, Stan?” she’d said, lifting her hair from the back of her neck.
“I can’t be doing with them fiddly things. My hands is too big.”
“Oh, go on, do! At least try, Stanley Ashworth!”
Stan, fumbling awkwardly, had managed to secure the clasp. Evelyn twirled around to face him again, smiling radiantly.
“I shall have to get a nice photo of you now,” she had said. “To keep in it. A nice one of you, on our wedding day.”
“Who’d want my ugly mug in a locket?” Stan had replied. “Wait and get one of this precious baby o’ yours, when it turns up. That’d be more like it.”
That had caused Evelyn to gasp with excitement. “Oh, Stan!” she had said, her eyes filling with tears. He was as good as saying he wanted her to get a proper baby portrait taken, when the time came. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about the baby!”
But Stan hadn’t heard. He had already turned and was on his way into the front room where Mrs. Leigh’s special tea was waiting.
In the dark of her bedroom Evelyn smiled to herself as she got into bed. Stan was so straightforward, really. A man’s hungry so he goes off to get his tea, what could be simpler than that? She was grateful for his good appetite, remembering the sight of him a little later, folding slices of ham and beetroot from his knife into his mouth, face bent low over his plate. That Mrs. Ashworth obviously didn’t overfeed him. But she, Evelyn, would try to learn to be as good a cook as her Mam, and everybody knew what satisfying a man’s stomach led to, if you were patient.
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