Page 40 - WTP Vol. X #7

Eggs of Ill Omen (continued from preceding page)
afternoon and brings them into the kitchen. “Go show them to your mother,” her father says. But Elinor says no, she turns around and goes back out into the garden.
It seems like time stands still on the swing bench. She hears tea cups and glasses rattle on trays carried out into Mr. and Mrs. Evans garden on the other side of the stonewall. She hears their low chattering voices, she hears the snips of the scissors when Mrs. Evans cuts roses for a bouquet and she hears Jane’s squeals when she has friends over.
One day there’s a phone call for Elinor. “Elinor,” her father calls from the open door in the other end of the garden. It’s Andrew, he wants to come see her. She gave him her number, he wanted it, “In case of an emergency,” he said. What emergency, Elinor thinks now. He wants to come see her. “No,” Elinor says.
~
One day Mrs. Evans is pruning the apple trees in the garden. She stands on a ladder, she peeks over the wall separating the gardens. “Elinor,” Mrs. Evans says. She’s wearing green, floral gardening gloves and a straw-hat with a rose-coloured ribbon. She wants Elinor to come to tea in the afternoon.
Elinor puts on a red dress, she stands in front of the mirror, she turns from side to side making the skirt swing around her in the air. She catches a glimpse of her own eyes in the mirror, she hears her mother’s long, warm whisper from the bedroom, then she turns, she runs down the stairs, out and stops at the house next door. Her heart beats in her chest, there’s a taste of iron in her mouth.
"Hi Elinor," Jane opens the door, she’s on her way out with her friends, they blow past Elinor like a whirl- wind carrying scents of flowers, foreign spices and boys. Dresses and scarves and long shiny hair all over. “Bye Elinor.” Jane turns around on the footpath and waves, her girlfriends giggle. Mr. Evans comes to the door, he waves at Jane while he shakes his head and lets Elinor in. “Mrs. Evans is in the garden.”
Mrs. Evans is in a play in the local amateur theatre club, she wants Elinor to come along. ‘Red Cross Girls’ the play is called.
Now Elinor goes to rehearsals every Tuesday and Thursday. Mrs. Evans drives them there, sometimes she’s ready, standing by the car when Elinor comes over, and sometimes Elinor waits in the hallway and
Mr. Evans calls Mrs. Evans and she appears at the top of the staircase and then she walks down the stairs, looking at Elinor and Mr. Evans, smiling.
~
In the play Elinor plays a nurse in a war, on the stage are models of damaged buildings, trees made out of cardboard and fabric. Lights make the sky change from blue to dark, woollen brown, then there’s the sound of gunshots and bombs, then the sound of music.
Elinor rehearses on the swing bench in the garden, swinging back and forth. She reads her lines from the manuscript. A few paragraphs at a time, then she closes her eyes and says them out loud in the garden.
Mrs. Evans watches her over the garden wall, standing on the ladder, but Elinor doesn’t see her. Sometimes Elinor gets up and walks around in the garden, whispering, gesturing to trees and flowering bushes and she doesn’t notice the chickens running around her feet.
Elinor has a long monologue, and backstage, before she makes her entrance, she squints her eyes tight and clenches her fists until she hears a ringing tone in her head and everything disappears around her, then she’s ready.
The other people in the play compliment Elinor, they say she stands out, that she’s got real talent. The director looks into her eyes, he grabs her shoulders and shakes her, “Don’t let it go to waste Elinor,” he says. Elinor can feel the touch of his hands on her shoulders long after he’s left the room.
Elinor’s grandmother waits up in the kitchen when Elinor comes home at night. There’s bread with mackerel pate and pickled gherkins. Elinor can’t sit still, she picks up a gherkin and takes a bite, puts it down, then picks it up again and takes another bite. She taps a rhythm with her feet on the floor, she gets up to make more tea.
When Elinor goes to bed it’s like something lifts her up the stairs, like she’s not really touching the ground, car- ried by some breeze that follows her around.
At night Elinor sometimes wakes up with a strange excitement, she can feel it in her blood, like some- thing is growing there, as if it’s alive, she can feel the blood pulsing through her body. She gets up, she walks past her mother’s bedroom door and down-
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