Evelyn (Cate Blancett x OC Story)

Chapter One

                    Chapter One

                     AT TWELVE PAST SIX, the great block-square toy department at Harrods on Knightsbridge was coming to life. 

    There was no room left at any of the long glass-top counters, and more and more people were arriving to wait back of the metal barricades by the cash register. People who had already made their purchases wandered about between the counters in search of a spot they could squeeze into, or a place that somebody was about to leave, but there was no place. The roar of children's laughter, voices, shuffling boxes, and a weary rat-tat-tat of toy tracks was like a swarm of hornets in a beehive. The automated toys began to toss balls into the air and catch them. A table of brightly coloured farmyard animals chirped, cackled and brayed. Behind Evelyn, the drumbeats of the giant wooden nutcracker who defiantly faced the patrons and drummed all day had started up, and a toy train hurled itself blindly into the papier-mâché tunnel. It wasn't as big as the one that ran the ground floor at the front of the toy department, but there was a tenor in its tiny pistons that the larger trains did not possess.

    Evelyn saw in big gold scripts across the banner: 'The Orient Express 'H' Railway Locomotives.'  

    She removed her gloves and reached for a cigarette, remembered for the umpteenth time that she could not smoke on the sales floor, then thrust the cigarette case back into her purse.

    'I wish you'd stop, Evelyn,' her mother had often told her. And often, Evelyn tried to comply.

    'Mother,' Evelyn whispered carefully, the sibilant syllables comforting her.

    Again and again, her eyes dropped to the stubborn, fascinating crowd while she waited for an opening at the long counters in the back and tried to think of something else. Of the beautiful brown leather suitcase she had seen at Burberry and might buy for William for Christmas if she couldn't find more appealing shoes than the ones she had seen downtown last week. Of the possibility of driving with Annas next Saturday up to Windsor to see a polo game. One of the sales girls was pulling dolls from the shelves and placing them, legs spread, on the class counters. The little square section of the window in the upper corner opened to a white sky. And a bird flew in and high up, disappeared behind the sturdy iron rods that hung from the ceiling. What sort of a creature would lay its nest in a department store? And she was back again.

    She could see her mother's face, bony and yellowish like orange stone when the sunlight was on it, and the green eyes set deeply in their wide sockets. Her mother's long figure coming around a corner in their home, behind the weathered mahogany piano. She could see her mother's hands, bind with arthritis, veins pulsing in blue rivers under her skin, her mother in various places, her mother in a hundred-thousand places. She could see her mother handing her the garnet-green dress she had sewn wrapped in a thin cloth, not smiling, only presenting it to her directly, with hardly a word, on Evelyn's sixteenth birthday.

    Evelyn had kept the dress in a wooden drawer, for years after her mother had passed away. The cloth had become yellow and stiff like parchment paper, and still, she had not worn the dress. Finally, it was too little to wear.

    'Vroom b'rrrom rromm! Move out of the way, Lady!'

    A trolley hurtled toward her with a young boy aboard, and Evelyn almost struck her knee against its metal corner.

    'I said no runnin' in here!' shouted a man's loud voice, the intimidating sound of the security officer, and the two boys ahead of Evelyn who had been racing the department floor laughed just before disappearing into the crowd, 'Sorry, Mister!'