Eva laughed. ‘I wouldn’t mind. Maybe then I could do some jobs myself,’ she said.
Once he had the wall cupboard fixed, he climbed down again. ‘Right then, tomorrow, after I’ve secured the work surfaces, I’ll show you how to use the drill and some other basic things,’ he said. ‘Now for that last cupboard before I go. I need to get to the dump with the old cooker and sink before the place closes.’
Eva helped him out later with the cooker and sink. As he drove off in his van, honking the horn in farewell, she smiled. He was such a lovely man – funny and fatherly. He’d arrived yesterday to start the kitchen just as she got in from work. He’d been almost as thrilled as she was over her new cooker, and the French doors. He’d worked through till nearly seven, laughing and chatting with her, yet getting an amazing amount done.
She thought his wife was one lucky lady and hoped she appreciated him.
The following morning Eva answered the door but instead of it being Brian as she expected, it was her next door neighbour. She didn’t know his name, but he’d nodded at her a week earlier when they both arrived home at the same time.
He was around forty, tall and well built with a ruddy complexion; Eva had seen his wife sunbathing in the garden while she’d been looking out of her bedroom window. She was a good bit younger than her husband, slim, long-legged and looked like a fashion model.
‘Hello,’ Eva said. ‘I’m Eva Patterson. And you live next door, I believe?’
‘Yes. Francis, Simon Francis. I should have called when you first moved in, but I thought you were just another tenant. As I understand it, you are the new owner of the house?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. She didn’t like his condescending tone one bit. ‘You don’t call on tenants then?’ she added with faint sarcasm.
‘Not if they are like the last ones here,’ he said. ‘They lived like pigs, rooting around in their own filth. Music blaring out all night, fights and rows all the time. We were delighted when they left.’
‘It certainly looked like a pigsty when I arrived,’ she said. ‘But I’m getting it into shape now.’
‘That’s what I called about,’ he said, running a finger around the collar of his shirt as if he was a little nervous. ‘We saw you’d put on new doors at the back.’
‘Yes, they are a great improvement on a boarded-up window.’
‘Are you planning to replace the front windows and door too?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said, a little baffled that he thought this was an appropriate way of welcoming a new neighbour. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I am concerned that you might be intending to put in plastic window frames there too,’ he said.
Eva could only stare at him in astonishment for a moment. ‘And my window frames are your business, because …?’
‘Well, plastic does rather lower the tone,’ he said in a pompous manner.
She was flabbergasted. ‘Well, Mr Francis,’ she said in her most icy tone, ‘I own this house, and if I want to have window frames made of play dough, plastic or solid gold, it will be my choice and mine alone.’
‘I’m only speaking out because you are young and probably don’t appreciate the history of these houses,’ he retorted.
‘Oh, I do,’ she smirked. ‘They were thrown up for the workers at the pottery, probably funded by the pottery owner who lived in one of the more salubrious Georgian houses nearby and paid them a pittance.’
‘There’s no need to take that attitude with me,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been so rude and un-neighbourly,’ she said. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.’
She shut the door in his face, smarting with anger.
A few minutes later there was another knock on the door. Thinking it was her neighbour back again, she wrenched the door open ready to lay into him.
But it was Brian.
‘Oh, thank goodness!’ she said. ‘Am I glad to see you!’ She blurted out what had just happened.
‘Bloody snob.’ Brian sniffed contemptuously. ‘These flaming yuppies around here get right up my nose. I agree that a Georgian house should have traditional sash windows with wood frames, but this is just a little Victorian working man’s house. And it don’t make no sense to stick in windows that need painting every year.’
‘I can’t believe anyone could be so snotty,’ she said, her face flushed red with anger. ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’
‘You’ll have to get used to that sort of crap if you live around here,’ Brian said. ‘Gentrified areas always attract snobby arseholes. If they had their way, they’d tear down the council houses and the people who live in them would be dumped somewhere else, then they’d build a wall around the whole area to make sure no common folk got in again.’
‘What makes some people so mean?’ she said, her anger fading and now replaced by hurt. ‘Why couldn’t he just have welcomed me, asked how I was getting on and if I’d like to come in for a cup of tea?’
Brian patted her shoulder in sympathy. ‘Because he’s one of those “I am it” prats. He probably made his pile selling insurance and pensions, and he’s terrified that his house – which he considers “an investment” rather than a home – might come down in value. My gran was born around here. She’s told me how it was in the 1950s. It were a slum area then, all the way from here down to Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Grove. She talked about the race riots in Notting Hill, and how that bastard slum landlord Peter Rachman stuck half a dozen West Indian families in just one room. It weren’t such a desirable place to live in then. Your poncey neighbour is just afraid it might go that way again.’
‘Was it still slummy in 1968?’ Eva asked. ‘I think that’s about when my mother bought this house.’
‘Yes, it would’ve been – not as bad as Westbourne Grove and Ladbroke Grove, but still pretty grim. They made that film Blow-Up, with David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, here in Pottery Lane in 1966. I think that was the start of “arty” people moving here, because it was much cheaper than Chelsea or Hampstead.’
Brian asked her to hold the end of his measure against the sheet of Formica, while he marked off where he needed to cut it, and as she helped him she told him about the stuff of her mother’s that Phil had found in the attic.
‘It was so exciting to find her paintings,’ she said. ‘But the other box of stuff feels like she left it there on purpose for me to find. Everything in it seems to be a clue, like in a treasure hunt, and I’ve got to work out what it means.’
‘What did she die of, Eva?’ he asked
‘She killed herself,’ she said bluntly.
She expected him to be shocked, but he looked as if he already knew what she was going to say.
‘Phil told you?’ she asked.
Brian shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t, he wouldn’t break a confidence. I just suspected it was something like that, because people who have recently lost someone close do tend to tell you what they died of. Besides, there was something about you that first time I came here with Phil, you looked like a lost and frightened puppy.’
Eva told him the whole story then: about Andrew, and then what happened with Tod. ‘So I packed my bags and came here,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It seemed the only thing to do, even if this place was a tip.’
‘If you was my girl, I’d have wrung that lad’s neck,’ he said stoutly. ‘But then if you was mine, you wouldn’t have moved away with your mother hardly cold – whether you was my blood or not. You’ve been through it, no doubt about that. But you’re a brave little thing, a real sweetheart, and I think you’ll do well for yourself here in London.’
Once Brian had fixed the worktops Eva whooped with delight at the finished result. It was all very simple, just grey and white, but though it was a small kitchen it would be very practical. ‘It looks marvellous,’ she said. ‘Like something out of House & Garden.’
Brian laughed. ‘Well, I don’t look in them hoity-toity magazine
s,’ he said. ‘But I like it when the ladies I do kitchens for act like a kid in a Wendy house.’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’ she asked as she ran her hands over the worktops and opened cupboards and drawers.
‘Yes, you are. I bet you’ll be down here half the night tonight, arranging knives and forks in the drawers, stacking up your saucepans and stuff.’
‘I haven’t got much to put in here yet,’ she giggled. ‘But it is my first home. And I bet your wife was the same with hers?’
He was adjusting the doors so they hung correctly, and he looked up and grinned. ‘We had two grotty rooms by Shepherd’s Bush market back then. We had mice, just two gas rings, and we had to share the bathroom with four other couples. But we thought it was wonderful, because we’d been living with her mum up till then, and she gave me earache the whole time.’
‘Did you do it all up?’
‘Not really, we didn’t stay in that place long enough. I worked all hours to get a deposit to buy a house. We moved in there two days before the first baby came. The big thrill then was having our own bathroom.’
‘I keep wondering how my mum felt about this place when she first bought it,’ Eva said. ‘It has got a nice vibe about it. I must have been born in a hospital near here, my pram must’ve stood here somewhere. It’s strange thinking about that.’
‘Pity she never told you anything,’ he said. ‘But I guess she must’ve felt a bit ashamed that she was a single mum. My sister got up the duff in 1968, she was only seventeen, and even if it was all Flower Power and rock concerts then, my dad went ape shit, there was the shotgun wedding an’ all.’
‘So your niece – or is it a nephew? – is only two years older than me.’
‘Niece. Yes, and a right little cracker she is. And her dad and mum are still together. We all wonder what all the fuss was about now. But that’s just the way it was back then. Things didn’t really change till the mid-seventies.’
‘Yes, I can see that’s how it was for most people. But Mum was supposed to be a free spirit, a bit wild and stuff, so I don’t see why she would be ashamed of me being illegitimate.’
‘Then maybe it was your stepdad who had the hang-up about it?’
‘You mean it was his idea to pretend I was his baby?’
Brian shrugged. ‘Maybe. His parents might have been old-fashioned and wouldn’t approve of him marrying a single mother. Have you ever seen pictures of their wedding?’
Eva shook her head. ‘I don’t think there are any. Mum said it was a very small, quiet one. She never even said where it took place.’
‘You might find that out in the diaries. My guess is they got married in secret and then told the family they’d done it a lot earlier than they really did. I expect Andrew wanted to protect her from gossip!’
‘So if he loved her enough to do that, and to bring me up as his own, why did he turn nasty later?’
Brian scratched his head. ‘Who can say? People change. Sometimes one of the partners loves more than the other one. I know people who are bitter because they didn’t get what they expected out of it. There are dozens of reasons for a change of heart. I’d guess that you were just the easiest one to have a pop at. But I promised you some lessons on using an electric drill – and that’s going to be a lot more useful to you than finding out what happened between your mum and stepdad.’
That evening Eva went through the box of baby clothes; she thought she might take the best ones to a charity shop. But when she got to the bottom of the box, she found another small box. It was a pretty pink one – the kind a present for a baby might have been put in. Opening it, she found a very tiny pink matinee jacket, matching bonnet and bootees, and a little dress, only big enough for a newborn baby. The dress was nylon, overly frilly, and the hand-knitted jacket, bonnet and bootees were very lacy with satin ribbons. She couldn’t imagine that her mother had picked them out – she had always said she loathed fussy baby clothes. But maybe someone dear to her had made them for her and that was why she’d kept them and packed them away so carefully. Maybe Eva’s grandmother?
Eva lifted out the tissue paper from the box to repack the clothes, and to her surprise there was a black and white photograph beneath it. It was of a tiny baby, lying in a pram, and Eva was certain it was her. But if it was, why had Flora always claimed there were no pictures of her as a newborn baby, because she didn’t have a camera then?
The diaries were proving hard to read. For one thing, the entries were rarely dated, and Flora had an irritating way of using people’s initials rather than their names. And in the first diary she hadn’t once said where she was. If she hadn’t numbered them, Eva wouldn’t have even known in which order to read the diaries.
She also wrote in what seemed like riddles. ‘Wishing M would stop behaving like I was still six.’ Obviously the ‘M’ was for mother and she was still in Cornwall, as there were many other references to nagging and wanting to go to ‘L’, which must mean London. Although she wrote ‘arrived in L, and it’s so huge it’s scary’, she didn’t say what part of London, or whether she was with anyone else. Later on she mentioned The Bistingo, and this appeared to be a restaurant she worked at, as there were many entries referring to possible friends, again only using the initial when describing someone who had come into The Bistingo on different occasions. ‘J’ was mentioned most, as owing her money, getting on her nerves, or having no talent. So was ‘J’ male or female? A lover, or just a friend?
She thought that the only way she was going to make any headway was to note down anything she thought might be relevant, even if she didn’t understand it, and then try to contact Patrick O’Donnell to see if he could throw any light on it.
But for now she had too much else to do. She needed to buy cooking equipment and crockery. One saucepan, two plates and enough cutlery for one didn’t justify even having a kitchen. She needed to get a telephone line installed, arrange for John to come back and do the other windows, get quotes for central heating and a new bathroom suite, and decorate the house. Brian had told her today that she would need to give all the woodwork, doors, skirting boards and the banister a really good rub down before applying undercoat, then at least two coats of gloss paint. Likewise any holes in the walls upstairs would need to be filled and rubbed down before painting. That all sounded very boring and a lot of hard work, but she supposed she would have to do it properly. Until it was done, she couldn’t buy furniture or put carpets down.
‘You’ll have to wait, Mum,’ she said, putting the lid back on the pink box. ‘I suppose as you kept your secrets for twenty-one years, a bit longer won’t make any difference.’
Saturday turned out to be a really good day, still warm and sunny, and fun too because Phil arrived at ten ready to finish skimming the living-room walls.
Eva didn’t admit to him that she’d been up at six that morning; she’d made herself scrambled eggs on toast, delighting in the new cooker, the shiny sink and the taps that were easy to turn on. She’d eaten it in the garden looking back through the French doors so she could gloat over the new kitchen. Then she’d put a load in her new washing machine and hung it outside on an airer. She just wished Tod and Andrew could see her now; she felt as if she was putting two fingers up to them.
Almost the first thing Phil said when he arrived was that he’d like to take her out for a meal that night.
‘That would be lovely,’ she replied.
‘Glad you think so,’ he said. ‘But don’t get alarmed that I’ve brought a bag with me – that’s just some smarter clothes to change into later. I thought we could walk through Holland Park, there’s a great Chinese up on Kensington High Street.’
Eva liked the fact that he didn’t want her to think he expected to stay the night. She really liked him, she kept thinking about him when he wasn’t here, and it was nice that he was so gentlemanly with her. She certainly didn’t want to be pushed into anything until she was really sure.
Shortly afterwards, Brian turned up
with a couple of boxes of tiles and some sheets of hardboard.
‘I found all these tiles in the shed last night, and I thought you might like them for a splashback,’ he said, opening a box to show her some white tiles with a pale grey motif on them. ‘They were left over from a job, and I reckon there’re more than enough to do the wall behind the sink.’
Eva was thrilled. They were just what she would have picked herself. ‘Gorgeous! Thank you so much, Brian. But you shouldn’t be wasting your Saturday doing stuff for me, you should be taking Julie out.’
‘She was going shopping with her sister, anyway.’ He grinned. ‘She don’t want me trailing along behind her. And the hardboard is to lay on the floor ready for lino tiles – you can’t put them down on floorboards. I brought a bit extra too for the back of the units under the breakfast bar. That’ll look OK when it’s painted white.’
Eva left the men to get on while she drove up to Notting Hill to buy some kitchen equipment, plates, bowls, and cutlery too. While she was up there she looked in an interior design shop to get ideas for fabric to make some curtains. Everything was terribly expensive, but then she’d already planned to get her fabric from a cheap shop she’d seen in Shepherd’s Bush.
Brian had done most of the tiling by the time she got back, and Phil had nearly finished his skimming.
‘Goodbye graffiti,’ she said as he began to cover the last bit. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to miss you one bit.’
Phil laughed. ‘What kind of arsehole does it to a place he lives in?’ he said. ‘I can understand it on empty buildings, or even the thrill of doing it on a bridge over a railway line, but not in your house.’
‘I expect there was nothing on the telly,’ Brian said. ‘I’ll have to try it one night and see what Julie thinks of it.’
‘I think she might dismember you,’ Eva said. ‘Did you tell Phil about what that creep next door said about plastic window frames?’
‘He did,’ Phil said. ‘I felt like knocking on his door and marking his card, bloody cheek! But I reckon the reason he stuck his oar in was because he’d hoped to get his hands on this place.’