in the winter was hardly an enticing prospect. Her last trip had been five years ago during one of her mother’s visits to Royal Ascot and had proved most unenjoyable, what with the lack of male company and the incessant drizzle. Despite Joan’s generous invitation, Evangeline was doubtful if there really was anything worth going to England for.
CHAPTER FOUR
A day or two later, slipped within the final late post of the Christmas season, another letter bearing an English stamp arrived for Evangeline. Helping herself to a handful of the sugar-covered almonds from the glass bowl on the hall table, she examined the envelope carefully before inserting into one corner the silver, flower-engraved knife that she used for opening letters. The flourishing loop that finished off the first letter of each word took her back to those Baltimore boarding-school days at Oldfields where the teachers often quoted the school motto to them: “Gentleness and courtesy are expected of girls at all times.”
As ever, the circled, underlined and hyphenated code word was reliably in place in the top left-hand corner of the envelope, the word she and Wallis had used in all correspondence with each other since their teenage years. At school, the custom had been for best friends to merge part of their own first names into one, and the middle part of Evangeline and the last part of Wallis had formed Gel-Lis. The two of them had always laughed when saying the made-up word out loud because although it sounded like “jealous,” that particular emotion played no part in their friendship. The other girls thought they made an incongruous pair as the stooped, cumbersome figure of Evangeline towered over her shorter, skinnier friend. Wallis had another soulmate, the pretty Mary Kirk, with whom she was almost as close, and Evangeline, while grateful for her primary position in Wallis’s life, wondered if Wallis chose the company of herself over Mary solely for the shiny glamour bestowed on her by Evangeline’s contrasting dowdiness.
During school holidays, Wallis and Evangeline would go shopping in downtown Baltimore. The girls were just turning sixteen and the new department store, Hochschild’s, was a favourite place to meet. Evangeline would arrive early and spend stolen time in the store’s tempting hat department, swaddling her poor bald head in the latest velvet and silk models, her appearance in the mirror briefly confusable with a sophisticated young woman of fashion like Mary Kirk instead of the plain-faced egghead that usually stared back at her. It was in the coffee shop at Hochschild’s that Wallis confided to Evangeline that she had “done it.” The boy in question was the son of a friend of her parents, although much more beyond that Wallis was not prepared to divulge. It was clear from Wallis’s satisfied expression that Evangeline had reacted to her shared confidence with awe. In fact, Evangeline had found the information almost impossible to comprehend. When had it happened? How had it begun? How long did it go on for? Were they wearing clothes all the way through? Who unhooked the hooks? Was there any sound involved? Words? Shrieks? Many other mysteries demanded answers but Evangeline had not the courage to ask them. Evangeline was further perplexed when, having settled their check with the waitress and returned to the street, she noticed that Wallis had no trouble at all swinging herself onto her bicycle and pedalling off at speed. A hard bicycle seat that tapered to a point? Surely after such an “interference” it must now hurt? Nonetheless, Evangeline left the department store that day feeling as if life had lurched forward a notch or two. If Evangeline herself remained innocent of the interlocking physical jigsaw that two human bodies were evidently capable of, she could at least glow in the reflected smugness of her newly worldly friend.
Two decades ago Wallis had returned to Baltimore from China, where she had been living for two years with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer, a naval pilot known by everyone as Win. Evangeline had been looking forward to their reunion in Wallis’s old family home but had spoken little during the meeting as Wallis described the drama of the Orient and the horror of dealing with her husband’s alcoholic temper. After more than two hours of chat Wallis gave Evangeline a silver Chinese paperknife, engraved with flowers and sheathed in its own silver holder.
“I bought it in a bazaar in Peking,” Wallis told her. “I thought you might like it.”
Evangeline was moved by