This Lovely City

The woman had set herself up with a fold-up chair, carried out from the nearest tent by one of the men. She sat and fanned herself with a slim pamphlet or magazine, her legs crossed. Her shoes were standard brogues but with a small heel and polished to a shine. She flicked her hair back as she watched the men remove their shoes and socks, piling them to one side. She was knowingly beautiful and Evie noticed more than one of the men throwing a glance or a comment her way, trying to attract her attention.

The game got underway and, with the men distracted, Evie moved closer. ‘Excuse me?’ The woman didn’t hear her so she took another tentative pace forward as though playing Grandmother’s Footsteps, wanting the woman to turn but uncertain what to say when she did.

‘Rose?’ A male voice called out from behind her, both Evie and the woman turning. ‘Have you seen my notebook?’

‘You left it lying about. Marge almost threw it away.’ The woman, Rose, reached under her chair and retrieved a battered blue book, a pencil trapped within its pages.

The man looked at Evie and she felt her cheeks redden beneath his stare. He looked only a little older than her but he was different to the boys she’d gone to school with. Years of rationing and light deprivation had left them scrawny and pasty. This man was well-fed, tall, and the sun hit the angles of his cheekbones so that it seemed to her, in that moment, that he was the source of the light.

‘Can we help you?’ Rose walked over.

‘Oh. I just…’ What was wrong with her? She’d been standing across the street for half an hour, thinking of nothing but clever introductions, and now she couldn’t formulate a simple sentence? ‘Sorry, I…’

‘You’re from round here?’ the man interrupted.

‘Yes. I live over in Brixton.’ She pointed in the general direction.

Rose handed him the notebook. ‘Lawrie, stop pestering the poor girl. She only came to see what was going on, didn’t you?’

Evie nodded, feeling foolish. The man called Lawrie smiled at her and for almost six seconds she forgot to breathe. She felt sweat gather in shallow pools under her arms, trapped by the restrictive white blouse that was prescribed as uniform for her secretarial college. She should have made more effort with her hair, not just scraped it back and forced it into a bun. Compared to Rose, she felt like a little girl.

‘Why don’t you come and watch?’ Rose invited. ‘This lot are mad about cricket and it’ll be nice to have a girl to chat to.’

Lawrie fetched another chair for her, setting it beside Rose’s before running off to join his friends. As Evie sat she caught the glint of Rose’s gold wedding band and felt inexplicably relieved. Evie shielded her eyes from the sun with her left hand and watched the cricketers. Lawrie was fielding, the closest man to her, his notebook tucked into his back pocket. She noticed that the smile never left his face. She would know. She couldn’t wrench her eyes from him.

Ten minutes into the match, the batsman hit the ball flying high into the air, Lawrie running backwards, his eyes tracking the arc of the spinning orb, raising his hands as it aimed towards him, answering his call. Cheers and groans erupted and Rose clapped, Evie following her lead. Lawrie looked over with a proud grin, winking at Evie as she smiled back and doubled her applause.

‘Someone’s got an admirer,’ Rose commented. ‘He’s a handsome chap all right, our Lawrie.’

Evie blushed again but she was so captivated by Lawrie that she didn’t think to read anything more into those words. She couldn’t imagine that behind Rose’s polite smile might lie a thin coil of jealousy.

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