The Book of Eve Read online

  Copyright © 1973 by Constance Beresford-Howe

  First published by Macmillan of Canada 1973

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Beresford-Howe, Constance, 1922-

  The book of Eve

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-704-9

  I. Title.

  PS8503.E76B6 2001 C813’.54 C2001-901146-6

  PR9199.3.B47B6 2001

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  The Canadian Publishers

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com

  v3.1

  for Christopher

  my dear Adam

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  First Page

  The real surprise — to me anyway — was not really what I did, but how I felt afterwards. Shocked, of course. But not guilty. You might say, and be right, that the very least a woman can be is shocked when she walks out on a sick and blameless husband after forty years. But to feel no guilt at all — feel nothing, in fact, but simple relief and pleasure — that did seem odd, to say the least. How annoying for God (not to mention Adam), after all, if Eve had just walked out of Eden without waiting to be evicted, and left behind her pangs of guilt, as it were, with her leaf apron?

  In any case, I just walked out. There was no quarrel with Burt. No crisis at all. The clock chimed nine-thirty. I laid down the breakfast tray carefully (an apple and a cup of cocoa) on the hall desk, and went to my room and packed. Not a word to anyone, even myself, by way of apology or excuse. Why? And why just then? Truly I’m not sure yet, although my name is Eva.

  Our house was full of clocks rustling their self-importance and coughing delicately like people in church — they had something to do with it. So did my first old-age pension cheque, which had come the day before like a hint. But what chiefly stopped me was the cold white autumn light pouring through the landing window as I climbed up with the tray. It seemed to bleach the stairway into something like a high white cell. The night before on TV I’d seen cells like that in Viet Nam or somewhere, for political prisoners. You saw them crouched at the bottom of narrow cages, looking up at the light. I’ve never had a political conviction in my life, unless you count being bored by politics. But there I was just the same. Under bars.

  Behind the bedroom door Burt gave his dry, irritable little cough. In a few minutes he would call me in a voice sharp and light with his morning pain. The cup of cocoa on the tray one minute steamed blandly and the next wobbled and slopped itself into the saucer. His mouth would press tight in disgust. “Can’t you —” he would say, exasperated, “can’t you —”

  What I packed first (the whole thing took only ten minutes) was Wuthering Heights and a poetry anthology from my bedside shelf; but I didn’t forget the grosser animal, and also took along my blood-pressure pills, glasses, hairbrush, and warm old-woman underpants. At the last minute I pulled out the plug of the little FM radio, Neil’s birthday present, and tucked it under my arm.

  And that was all. Out I went. There was a grey skin puckering on the cocoa as I passed it. On the stairs came his thin voice: “Eva!” I closed the front door on it.

  No trouble finding a taxi on Monkland Avenue. Dry, grey October day, touch of frost. Nobody I recognized about. The only hard thing about the whole escape was getting all my possessions — radio, suitcase, and ample rump — crammed into the cab with any kind of dignity. The driver considerately pretended not to notice what a struggle this was. As soon as I got settled and found some breath, I paused to count my money. The pension cheque and fourteen eighty-nine in house money. Not much to kidnap yourself on, to be sure. But enough.

  “Where to, lady?” the driver asked.

  And of course it was then my legs began to shake. The shaking moved up clear through me, belly and bones. For a minute I thought it might turn into crying or being sick; then with cold hands at my mouth I was astonished to find it was laughter in there, shaking to get out. The driver waited without interest, bored eyes on the traffic.

  “Well, you tell me,” I said, pressing a Kleenex against my sense of irony. He gave me a wary glance then, and I blew my nose to stop the laughing. Disgraceful. Shocking way to behave, all round. And where to, lady? Where, indeed? I had not given that a single thought. Certainly I couldn’t go to Neil and his bitchy elegance of a wife. Or to our few friends who weren’t dead or living in Arizona; they would be embarrassed, or scandalized, or both. No; I’d go it alone, and the farther away I could make it, the better. But of course you can’t get far on a total of ninety-two eighty-nine, and my own bank account was down to nearly zero after a new winter coat. A bus to somewhere? Or a hotel here for a day or two, until I could get myself organized?

  No, because getting organized in a place like the Laurentien Hotel, say, with its Murray’s food and rules on every door would simply mean going back.

  “No,” I said out loud and put away the Kleenex. The driver waited resignedly. “Just drive downtown, will you?” The engine gnashed its teeth and we shot forward. “Right downtown — somewhere near St. Lawrence Main.” Because now that I was collecting my wits a bit, I realized someone from Notre Dame de Grâce couldn’t find a better place to hide than the other side of Montreal. I could find a room somewhere in the crowded French east end, and it would do perfectly. As for later on, and what to do then, I hadn’t the least idea. I sat back on the cab’s torn upholstery and we skimmed away through the neat, respectable rows of prosperous flats, full of decent women at their custodial jobs — wheeling babies, raking leaves, lugging bags of food. And I waited to feel guilty, properly horrified at what I was doing. Nothing at all stirred except a quite objective interest in what would happen next. Not to have the faintest idea what I might do — or become — was a peculiarly new and interesting experience, all by itself.

  Of course it turned out that I’d forgotten all sorts of necessary things like toothpaste and extra shoes and my strong-willed girdle. Possibly I wasn’t quite so cool and objective as I’d like to think. But I couldn’t help admiring myself for doing anything so wicked. Not everyone could have done it, specially with my Anglican upbringing. How cross God must have been — if He kept track at all of such lapses as mine. And quite possibly He was the kind of person who did. Somebody like the chap that drove my taxi, with eyes like the dots on dice, disapproving of the whole cab-taking race, even though he couldn’t exist without them.

  No sleep at all last night, otherwise I’d never be speculating at this point on the nature of God. But it was far from unpleasant to lie awake thinking, even tingling with nervous fatigue, with my old friend the tension headache licking at my forehead, and counting over with real dismay how little was left of my cash. Because I felt excited as a girl, and happy enough to fly.

  What a bit of luck to find this place, for one thing. Not more than two crow-miles from N.D.G., but a different world. You could immerse in it; become invisible. Rue de la Visitation,
let me hide myself in thee.

  In this district all the streets below Sherbrooke are narrow rows of senile, eccentric houses peering out of grimy dormer windows set high under fanciful mansard roofs. Iron lace and absurd crenellated towers crown them; they haven’t been painted for at least a generation and couldn’t care less. In every downstairs window sags a yellow sign: “Appartements à louer.”

  When I rang the bell nobody came but a marmalade cat jumping to the bow windowsill to peer out through a stiff net curtain. I was just about to turn away, shifting the radio awkwardly under one arm, when at last there was a long clatter of bolts, chains, keys, from inside, and the door opened a very small crack. Nobody could be seen in there at all, and when I pushed, the door jammed on a chain.

  “What is it?” someone asked crossly in English with a pungent Scots accent.

  I looked down for the source of the voice, and some four feet from ground level saw one beady eye gleaming. A powerful smell of soap came rushing out through the crack.

  “You have a room to rent?” I asked.

  “No,” said the voice, and at once the eye disappeared.

  “Wait — your sign says —”

  “My son forgot to take it down. We’ve got no rooms.”

  But the eye had reappeared, and was taking note of my new coat — a Blin & Blin with a dark mink collar; it was clearly having second thoughts.

  “Well —” she said cautiously, “there is that basement apartment vacant now … but you wouldn’t want an apartment?”

  As soon as I heard the word I knew that was exactly what I wanted. Apartness was just what I craved. Whatever this one was like, I wanted it. “Yes, I might. Can I see it?”

  “Cost you fifty-five a month,” she said dubiously. “Gas and light extra.”

  “Well … let me see it.”

  Very slowly she let the door off its tether and the soap smell jumped out on me like a dog. When I stepped into the hall and my eyes adjusted to the weak light, it emerged that Mrs. MacNab was only a bit over four feet tall and not, as I first thought, a tall woman on her knees. She had scraped-back thin grey hair and a fierce, sallow little face under it. Her breastless body was tightly aproned like a narrow package in clean print. The old linoleum of the hall and the long staircase rising behind her were still damp with scrubbing. A thicket of mops and brooms stood against the dark, stained wallpaper, and she heaved aside a big bucket of suds to let me move past.

  “I’ll ’ave to get the key,” she said, and after a pause, as if afraid I might steal the bucket, rushed off to the back of the house. I was left for some minutes to enjoy a steel engraving called “Out of the Deep” portraying a frantically busy shipwreck. Very suitable. Only a life-hater like Mrs. M. would keep a place so clean.

  “It’s down here — there used to be a separate entrance at the back, but it’s been closed off years now, the door’s jammed, you’re better off anyhow using the front door. There’s two rooms down here and bath, you’re real private.”

  She unlocked a door behind the stairs and, turning on a light so dim it barely stirred the dark, led me down a flight of bare cellar steps to still another door opposite a large, muttering furnace. It was hard to see much, but it smelled dry and not very dirty, and felt warm.

  More unlocking revealed a big room with two high-set basement windows at one end, and a quite stately fireplace with pillared mantelpiece. Across the hall occupied by the looming furnace was a tiny kitchen housing one crooked table and a gas stove with taps and dainty bowed legs — quite probably the first model ever made. Next door was a bathroom almost (but luckily not quite) wholly filled with a huge tub on claws. I liked the place. I liked it at once and a lot. Which is something of a confession, because if I hadn’t been by that time — nearly noon — really terribly tired, I would never have considered living in such a hole. As it was, though, my back was half broken from the suitcase, and my pressure was up, everything throbbed. So I said, “I’ll give you fifty a month for it.”

  “There’s water-tax extra, a dollar fifty a month,” Mrs. M. said at once. Of course she had no blood to have pressure with. And so we agreed, and the place was mine.

  Long, suspicious negotiations then to cash my cheque and extort some change from it. Then a brief wrangle when I discovered the gas stove had only one functioning burner. But finally I was blissfully, blessedly alone. The place was my empire. The door was locked. I kicked off my shoes and lay right down in Blin & Blin on the degenerate sofa-bed and closed my eyes. Everything throbbed for a long time. And then I actually fell asleep.

  And who would believe it possible to wake up in these circumstances as happy as a birthday child? I opened my eyes into a perfect, self-centred bliss without past or future, and rejoiced in everything I saw. Inspected every inch of my new place without a twinge of dismay, and then sat down to count my money — or what was left of it. Even this didn’t depress me. Made a long shopping list and prepared to sally out to buy supplies. Shoes on again, climbed the basement stairs after a long grope for the light switch, and locked up my own door with my own key.

  A cluttered little Chinese grocery-shop down the hill, full of colour and vegetable smells. A five-and-ten on Craig Street. A couple of hours later, home again, the door locked behind me, puffing, with two huge paper bags to unpack. Happy. I had bought two strong light-bulbs, cleaning powder (the MacNab influence, no doubt), toilet paper, a saucepan, a set of Japanese cutlery, a can-opener, a plate and mug, a facecloth and towel, matches for the stove, staples like salt, sugar, tea, and tins of soup, a few fresh things like butter and eggs, milk, and bread. A postcard and stamp to inform the Prime Minister where to send my next pension cheque. It all tore an amazing hole in my money. I didn’t care. I’d even bought a bottle of cheap sherry — a piece of wicked extravagance and folly. Two ninety left. But that didn’t really worry me. Nothing did. I found a corkscrew and a bread knife in the kitchen drawer and a frypan and scrubbing-brush under the sink. Rapturous as a kid playing house. Sun grinned in at the dirty window overhead. Two blankets revealed themselves when I opened the sofa-bed; under the chair-cushion I found a quarter, a copy of Playboy, and a ballpoint pen. Across the hall the furnace grumbled peacefully like a snoring monster. Not another sound except the distant scurry of MacNab, a muttering TV, once a child’s wail, a dog’s bark, a doorbang. All remote as sounds on another planet. Deeply satisfying.

  I set up my books on an end-table, plugged in my radio, and switched it on. Mozart obliged. I found an old peanut-butter jar and drank rather a lot of sherry out of it. When dusk painted the windows an opaque blue I heated soup and ate it, then scrubbed out the bath, filled it up, and had a long, contented soak with Playboy. After that I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. Clean, happy, and innocent as a lamb. For a few hours I slept fathoms deep in the dark, without a dream.

  And then I woke up to hear my heart beating. I began then to count and think. Great mistakes, both.

  The trouble is, you never can escape a righteous upbringing. Right now I was a success — an escaped prisoner never likely to be recaptured. What’s more, I hadn’t the slightest urge to explain or apologize to Burt or Neil. And yet, I wanted to justify my ways to somebody — God, perhaps — because, come to think of it, nobody else really knew me. A bit of cheek, perhaps, to address Him person-to-person; if only I could write Him a letter.

  Reverend Sir:

  I realize I owe You some kind of explanation for yesterday, during which I broke quite a few of Your ten rules (though I’ve often wondered whether Moses didn’t forge some of them).

  You see, I’d like to make it clear that I ran away not just from the servitude of nursing Burt, running the house, shopping and cleaning up, and all that drab routine. Nor from the confinement, even, though that was bad. As You know, he was haunted by the fear of fire, and hated being left alone in the house even for short intervals while I did necessary errands in the neighbourhood. He couldn’t get out in the winter months himself at all, and of course
it was hard for him, caged up inside his pain, to keep a sense of proportion. But one of my few pleasures, especially in the years after Neil’s marriage, was browsing through antique shops, where I discovered treasures like my spinet desk, a Lismer drawing, and a Belleek tea-set — all such bargains even Burt couldn’t complain much. But in the last few years, he made such a misery every time I wanted to go out for a few hours on these hunts that finally I had to give them up altogether. And because that one little private pleasure was cut off, I festered with resentment. Inwardly only — though I don’t claim that as a virtue; I couldn’t face quarrelling.

  “Burt, someone can come in and sit with you for a few hours — Janet next door has offered to, more than once.”

  “I don’t want to be under an obligation to the neighbours.”

  “Well, then, why can’t we pay someone to —”

  “You want a stranger in here? —”

  You see. It was no use reasoning with him. No use exploding in anger, either. So I said nothing; just festered. And took to eating for consolation and pleasure. Gradually I swelled with fat, loose, heavy flesh like another prison I still lug around. The doctor warned me, and prescribed pills for hypertension; it was no use. I went on eating and eating — during the day, like an addict, I bridged meals with chocolates; I ate hot rolls with butter and jam, slices of pie with whipped cream; at night I took butter tarts or a wedge of iced cake to eat in bed with a book.

  After a while I came to feel as if all this fat were a sort of disguise. No one knew me. Burt, who saw me every day, least of all. Neil, who rarely saw me, had cares of his own, including four children, so he had to avoid recognizing what he knew of me. And there was no one else.

  Do You realize, I wonder, what submerged identities women like me can have? How repressed and suppressed we are by a life that can give us no kind of self-expression? Unless You really are female after all, as the Women’s Lib girls insist, even You can’t know what it’s like to be invisible for years on end. To live locked up. Never spontaneous. Never independent. Never free, even to use those four-letter words we all know, because the chief duty of females, we were taught, was to practise the restraints of civilization, not explore its possibilities.