Eden (6 page)

I’ve worked it all out: when she goes back to the flat in London, returns to her coffee mornings and tea parties and cocktails at seven, I will stay here and supervise the decoration.

“I won’t be a hindrance,” I tell her. “I won’t get in the builders’ way. In fact, if you think about it, they can’t really do without me, because who else knows things about the house?” Like how to operate the stubborn stopcock on the water system, where the fusebox is, or what to do when the geese from the Millhouse come into the kitchen.

“But where will you sleep?” she says. And despite the fear that edges her voice, I feel the first flutter of hope, because she hasn’t said “no”.

“In my room,” I reply. “They can do it last. It will take two weeks, three, even, for them to finish downstairs, then there are nine other bedrooms, the bathrooms – the landing alone will take days.” I reel off the rooms. Twenty-three in all; twenty-five if you count the boathouse and the attic. But I don’t, because the boathouse, though it will be sold as a chattel, is not part of Eden proper – not to her. It is its own land, and she wouldn’t dare, has never dared, to enter.

There’s the attic, too, but we don’t mention that either.

“And the kitchen’s done,” I add, before I linger on it, before she can think of it. “Which means you don’t need to worry about me starving.”

Aunt Julia folds her arms as if she is cold, her polished nails pale shells against the dark of her goosepimpled cruise tan. “But there’s no one to cook,” she tries instead.

“I can cook. We learned at school. Beef pie and eggs en cocotte.” And six other dishes that Mrs Beadle demonstrated and I obediently replicated, then immediately forgot, having no intention of cooking in the future she imagined for us as wives and mothers. But then I have no intention of cooking now; can barely eat as it is. There’s cereal in the larder, bread in the freezer for toast, and an account at Cardew’s in the village if I’m desperate.

“What if there’s an accident?” she tries, her forehead puckering into a frown, one hand worrying the locket at her throat.

“I’ll phone 999. Or Mr Garrett.” The ex-Chief Constable who is everyone’s Sheriff and Batman and everyday Jesus rolled into one.

“What if the electricity goes? It always goes.”

“I’ll row to the village.”

“At night?”

“Tom’s then,” I lie.

She pauses and I can tell she’s weakening, is already weak from the divorce, from death, from too many Tramadol. But she tries one last shot, a backhand.

“But think of what you could do in London. The galleries, the theatres… And there’s that girl, from school— What’s her name? Etchingham?”

“Thea Etchingham?”

“Yes. Dorothea. That’s it. What about her?”

I think of Thea, with her perfect fringe and her perfect grade score; a girl who offered her friendship to me at the same glib speed with which she took it away once the Grosvenor twins saved her a place at refectory. “She’s in Cannes,” I say. “All summer.” And the ball is returned neatly over the net.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I don’t understand what’s to be gained. It seems as if you’re just putting off the inevitable. You’ll have to come for Christmas, of course.”

“Christmas is months away,” I say. “And a lot of maybes.” Maybe the house won’t sell. Maybe I’ll dig up my fortune in the damp earth and buy Eden myself. Maybe the world will end.

“You can’t live on maybes,” she sighs.

Bea did, I think. She lived for the maybes, the slim possibilities, the one-in-a-million chances.

I have back-ups. Plans B and C. I will chain myself to the iron gates, a suffragette for my cause, refusing food and shelter until my demand – for the cessation of time – is met. Or take our boat and row out to sea, to a far-flung isle where the sun never sets and the larder is always full.

But I don’t need them. I can see by the sag of her shoulders and the set of her jaw that she is defeated. And, eventually, after a long and tedious phonecall to Uncle John, after an extracted promise that I will not get in the way of the decorators, or unpack boxes, or go unaccompanied to the pub, after a last “look-at-what-you-could-have-won” listing of the alleged pleasures of London, she gives in, and gives me my prize: a set of keys, and a last summer at Eden. With Bea.

NOVEMBER 1987

BEA SITS
at her dressing table and pushes perfume bottles, odd earrings, a half-full mug of tea aside to make room for her pad of thick cream writing paper – a present from her mother. Though it isn’t Julia she’s writing to, has no need to, for she saw her at the Connaught last week and their conversation barely stretched through tea and scones
.

“I thought you’d be brimming with news,” said her mother, placing the paper-thin porcelain cup carefully back on its saucer
.

And Bea is, but she can’t tell her mother about him. She has sketched a vague outline for her, but the colour, the fine detail; that is reserved for Evie. It doesn’t matter that nothing has happened – yet. It doesn’t matter that Evie still hasn’t written back to her last letter. That was never the point. She just wants to imagine her sat wide-eyed at the thrill of it all. The point is in the telling
.

Evie, you would love him,
she begins
.

Everyone does. Bea thinks of him now, sat on the steps of the union, holding court like a robber king in his faded T-shirt and torn jeans. Money means nothing to him. It is art that matters, art and love and life itself
.

James cares about art too, he knows Brecht and Büchner, has wept over Coleridge and declared he would die for love. But with him there is an edge of desperation. He is Buttons to Penn’s Prince Charming with his endless clowning in class, pretending to be other players: now James Dean, now Jimmy Stewart or Laurence Olivier
.

But Penn doesn’t need to pretend to be anyone. He is someone. Not like James, not like the village boys, not like Tom
.

She bristles at the memory. She had gone too far that time, she knew it even then as she pushed her lips against his, her bikini-clad breasts against his bare chest. It wasn’t meant to hurt. It was just boredom, and cheap, tepid wine she’d hocked from the post office when Mrs Polmear was weighing out humbugs
.

Or was it? For she’d known what she was doing, had needed it, her dependency as strong as an addict’s for alcohol or amphetamines. She wanted to be adored. Wanted him to look at her like she knew he looked at Evie
.

She feels the sharp prick of guilt, a needling in her side, but shakes it off. She’s said sorry, and it’s not as if Tom and Evie would ever have come to anything. She’s away at school most of the time and he must be leaving for college next year, and that would be that. Besides, falling for the boy next door is so pathetically provincial, the stuff of
Jackie
magazine and bad TV drama. The best ones – the Holden Caulfields and Hamlets – have lived bigger lives, better lives; have stories to tell. Stories like Penn’s
.

You should see him,
she writes
. He walks through the world like it’s butter and he’s a hot, sharp knife. Oh! That sounds good, doesn’t it! I may take up poetry after all. Become Sylvia Plath, only without the oven and dreary clothes. Penn shall be my Ted though, I’m sure of it. We haven’t kissed, not yet. But we will, I’m sure of it. Besides, this is the best part, isn’t it? The longing, the anticipation of it. Like a birthday party. All those balloons and games and cake, and then you unwrap the present at the end of it all and it turns out to be something you already have, or it breaks after five minutes, or you get bored. Why did I never realize that before? Remember Billy Barton? Ugh, what was I thinking? That under the fat, hairy exterior of farmer’s boy he’d turn out to be some kind of soulful Byron or Shelley?

Penn’s not like that. He’s not like anyone I’ve met, and he’s too full of secrets to tire of. Everyone thinks they know him but they don’t, not really. They don’t know he once had a pet beetle called Humbug, or that he broke his arm when he was three falling from the laundry-room window pretending to be Icarus. They think he has this perfect, gilded life with a rich, famous daddy and a place at the RSC already in the bag. They don’t see that he’s suffered to be here, made sacrifices, upset his family. They don’t know the half of it, Evie.

She writes more. About college itself; about her halls, about the late night parties, the early rehearsal calls, the endless, wondrous drama of it all. She mentions James, too, of course
.

But it is Penn who takes up the best words. And all her thoughts
.

JULY 1988

TWO DAYS
later, Aunt Julia is gone. Back to the bright lights, big city in her Golf convertible, leaving behind the boxes, the house, and me.

In her place is a freezer full of ready meals and a list of instructions: who to call if the decorators don’t come, or if the water pipes burst, or the coal man turns up despite being told not to bother any more. Or if wolves come from France through a secret tunnel, I think, like we feared they would, wished they would, tapping nervously, excitedly, on wooden panels along the hallway to check for hidden passages, willing it to be so. Who will protect me then? I wonder. Who will protect me, now that she cannot?

I stand idly in the kitchen, sipping water from a plastic beaker – a pink scratched thing that reminds me of packed lunches and picnics – and picking at a box of crackers. I am still not hungry.

“Hey.”

I start. The beaker of water slips out of my hand and clatters across the floor, a pool of oil-black wetness spreading across the slate.

And then I laugh, unbidden; with a relief that I have to hide as quickly as it emerged. Because it’s him. Of course it’s him. Who would protect me if the wolves came? Tom. Always Tom.

“As if by magic,” I say.

“Ha ha.” He stoops to pick up the pink plastic cup, and hands it back to me.

“It wasn’t supposed to be funny,” I say, taking it back delicately and dropping it on the counter.

“Then congratulations,” he smiles.

But the smile fades, for the joke, the ease, feels false. Because this is not who we are any more.

I look down. The water is inching slowly, deliciously, towards my bare toes.

“You going to clear that up?” he asks.

I shrug. “It’s only water.”

“Jesus, Evie. You’re supposed to be looking after the house.”

I watch as he takes a tea towel from a plastic hook, drops it on the puddle as he drops to his knees. He is always doing the right thing, I think. Always sweeping up after people. Or trying to; their mess, their problems. Good, I would say to myself as I watched him trying in vain to coax a gull from washed-up netting. He is a good person. “A do-gooder,” Bea would snort. Just not good enough for her, it turned out.

“I thought you were doing that,” I say. “Keeping tabs. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

He looks up at me, his eyes unreadable under that lock of hair. He pushes it behind his ear once, twice. “No. I came to see if you’d changed your mind. If you wanted to stay with us after all. You know, with all the disruption.”

“Is this your mum’s idea?”

He pauses. “No. Mine.” And I don’t know if it’s true. Or if I want it to be. If I want him to care, still. To be that Tom who carried me home from the pub that time, who put me to bed, who left a glass of water on the bedside table and a bucket on the floor, just in case.

But it makes no difference. It would still be the same answer.

“I can’t,” I say. “I just—” my voice cracks.

“Hey, it’s OK.” He touches my arm briefly, and I feel a shiver through me, a confusion of want and anger.

“Is it … is it because of last summer? Because we’ll be fine. Me and you, I mean. We’ll work it out. Work something out.”

But I don’t want to work anything out with Tom. Not now, maybe never. It’s not about us any more; about what might have been or never could. We were nothing and we are nothing. It’s about me and Bea. That’s all that matters now.

I want to be here with her.

Now that Aunt Julia’s gone I feel it more than ever. She’s in every crack in the floorboards, every keyhole. She’s in the scraps of sunlight that fracture through leaded windows, in the cool wind that whistles down the chimney at night bringing ash and bird droppings in its wake. Her hopscotch steps ring out on the flags in the scullery; her laugh is caught in the heavy drape of the drawing-room curtains. When she runs, she sends motes of dust swirling into the light, catching on my clothes, and in my hair.

She came back after all. And so I have to stay. Even in the clatter and clutter that is to come. Even with the army of strangers who will march through the halls, whistling tunelessly to tinny radio as they steam and scrape the heavy flock from the walls.

I want strangers. I want to be unknown. I want to be alone. Alone with her.

“I can’t,” I say. “I just … can’t.” And it is the truth. And he knows it.

“Well you know where I am.”

“Always,” I say. “As if by magic.”

“Ha bloody ha.” And this smile is not forced or fake. It is guileless, honest. And for a fleeting second it is how it always was. We are how we always were.

But then the smile fades, the feeling evaporates, and he is gone. And it is just me again. Me alone in Eden.

NOVEMBER 1987

BEA CONSCIOUSLY
tilts her head, twirls a lock of her hair, touching herself so that he’ll think about doing the same. “Will you do me a favour?” she asks
.

Penn grins, “For you? Anything. D’you want me to fight a duel with Freddie Hatcher for your honour?”

Bea laughs, leans forward, “No. Too messy. Besides, I don’t like Freddie. He’s got a wart on his right hand and he reads sci-fi!”

“You’re right. He stands no chance. What then? Slay a dragon? Write your Gothic paper? Or is it money?”

“No!” She’s indignant now. That’s not why she wants him, not like the others who borrow a tenner here, a twenty there. “It’s for a friend.”