The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [26]
This one looked like being no exception. The poet was female, and although I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Joan Baez, I imagine it's what she'd look like. A scrubbed face and humourless brown eyes stared at me through a curtain of long dark hair as I was introduced to her. She took my hand limply, murmuring something that sounded suspiciously like Emmylou Harris.
‘Evie Milligan,’ I smiled back, determinedly upbeat, and determinedly miniskirt-clad too, with sparkly earrings and lashings of lip gloss.
My job had been to arrange a not too intimidatingly large circle of chairs around a solitary ‘throne’ where she would sit and recite, and to which I led her now.
‘Is this all right? Or you could have it a little further forward if you like?’ Some authors preferred a more intimate circle.
She frowned. ‘I think I'd like everyone sitting on the floor.’
I blinked. ‘Right…’
I wasn't sure how this would go down with any elderly matrons who occasionally popped in to relieve a lonely evening, but I supposed I could grab them a chair, and half an hour later Emmylou was sitting cross-legged on a beaded cushion – model's own – surrounded by twenty or so similarly intense-looking supporters – not a bad turnout, actually.
‘They're all girls,’ I hissed to Malcolm, one eye on the door. Doctor Hamilton had yet to appear.
‘Oh, yes, didn't you know? She's one of us. Well, one of them,’ he added sniffily. ‘I prefer my gay female friends to be of the lipstick-lesbian variety, glamorous, sharp-tongued and witty. This is the other end of the spectrum. The hairy-toed right-on brigade.’
‘Oh.’ I looked around with interest. They were all earnestly studying the text.
‘All of them?’
‘Well, I don't know empirically which church they go to, Evie. Some will be lucky to get serviced at all, by the look of them, and some might turn out to be common or garden feminists who failed to notice bra-burning and emancipation happened twenty-odd years ago with Marilyn French at the helm. Eh up, here's the Führer.’
Jean, flushed and slightly tipsy – she was always in charge of the warm white wine – was making her way centre stage, clapping her hands prettily as if the place was humming with lively chatter, instead of hushed whispers. Her pink face clashed violently with the startling purple crepe trouser suit she'd chosen to sport for the evening.
‘Ahem! Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Well… ladies. Lovely to see so many of you here, and may I say how delighted we are to have Mary-Lou with us tonight. Emmy… lou, as many of you know, is a local poet, and winner of the Banbury District Award for Young Talent.’
A ripple of applause followed and Emmylou nodded gravely around, accepting only what was her due.
‘And now I hope you'll listen quietly –’ what were we, six? – ‘as Emily reads from her latest collection entitled Women in Chains.’
‘Oh my,’ groaned Malcolm in my ear, before sliding away to hide behind Crime and Thrillers, the better to roll his eyes at me and make me laugh. I determined not to look at him, but actually, even if I did, I knew I was too disappointed to laugh. After all that, after all my devotions to hair and make-up, not to mention a new skirt and chain belt from Dorothy Perkins, he hadn't turned up. And now, now that the reading had started, twenty minutes late, as it happened, he probably wouldn't. I listened miserably as Emmylou's shrill, reedy, self-important voice rang out strident and forceful. No nerves, it seemed, which didn't endear her to me. I was naturally suspicious of anyone who wasn't permanently covered in confusion.
It began like a rallying cry to slaves in the 1800s.
Rise up!
Rise up and speak of the tyranny of machismo,
The unequal struggle,
Of weary loins and sagging dugs,
Of flesh parting company with bones—
It was intensely irritating, dated stuff, and I took