On that same morning, at about the same time as Charlie Partridge was finishing off his, round, Eve Hardy went down the drive so as to waylay Markham’s longest serving postman, Mont Iremonger, before he rounded the bend in the drive where there was a view from the house. Eve Hardy was the same age as Georgia Kennedy but, unlike Georgia, who was a born and bred country girl, Eve was born in Markham and bred in the finest educational establishments that money could buy. Eve Hardy was the daughter of‘Hardy’s Cakes Like Mother Bakes’.
‘Morning, Miss Eve.’
‘Hello, Mr Iremonger. Shall I take the post?’ She put out her hand for the large bundle, but the postman held it back playfully but respectful.
‘Shouldn’t rightly do that, Miss. I’m supposed to deliver to the premises. But…’ waggling the letters as though she was still seven… ‘seeing there’s so many ha’penny ones I reckon it’s somebody’s birthday…’ Two-handed he presented them to her as he had done for nineteen years.
‘Must be twenty, is it twenty-one?’ He knew very well what it was, for as well as the unsealed ha’penny envelopes, there was a coloured postcard without an envelope from the Hardys’ daily woman and another from their washer-woman. Both cards the same, a photo of a silver key and a girl with primroses and Happy Twenty-First. But Royal Mail employee Mont Iremonger had officially blind eyes to everything except names and addresses, particularly Longmile. This being a group of houses so grand as to suggest that they could scarcely be thought to be part of a market town at all. Even so, the Longmile address was Markham.
Eve took the cards and tried to be casual about riffling through them. ‘Twenty-one today.’
‘Congratulations, Miss.’ Mont Iremonger knew what she was looking for, the letter with a Portsmouth postmark which he had placed at the bottom of the pile. A flush crept over her cheeks as she discovered it and slipped it into a side-pocket of her summer skirt. Charlie Partridge would have given her the letter and said, ‘Well, here’s your love-letter. You’re still sweet on Dave Greenaway then? I’ll bet your Dad would have something to say if he found out.’ But then Charlie Partridge delivered mail to a very different part of Markham.
‘Be back with another lot at midday, I dare say.’
‘Pa’s giving me a party, I’ll save you a piece of cake for tomorrow.’
The Hardys’ house being the last delivery, Mont Iremonger mounted his bike and headed back towards town. What would Young Eve’s father say if he knew she was getting letters from the Greenaway boy? There wasn’t much in Markham didn’t eventually reach the eyes and ears of Councillor Hardy. He’d soon put a stop to it if he got to find out his precious daughter was writing to a sailor brought up in a Markham newsagents and tobacconists – and a Greenaway at that.
He’ll never get to hear of it from me. Young Eve’s been running to get the letters since she could walk, a proper little joy, like a godchild or a granddaughter. I wouldn’t give her away to him in a hundred years. In any case I don’t actually know that they’re letters from the Greenaway boy… can’t tell much from a cancellation stamp, can you? Only thing I know is that young Greenaway is in the Navy and he’s in Portsmouth. No business of mine who’s writing letters to who.
Twenty-one! He had reached the bottom of Longmile Hill before he was smitten with the realization that young Eve had stopped being a girl. Middle-age creeping up on you, Mont. Really though, in her pinky skirt and sandals, she didn’t look that much different this morning than when she was about twelve. Young minx, though, going behind her father’s back like that. But there, if you was a man like Councillor Hardy, you shouldn’t be surprised if people went behind your back.
It was evening before other scales dropped from his eyes and revealed to him the truth about his own ageing. The thought of the lonely road that stretched to the cemetery clutched at his stomach and dried his throat. Next year this time, I shall be retired. He thought the sunset looked ominous and took himself off to The Orb and Sceptre for a pint of bitter.