Eden (10 page)

But it’s me who’s gone too far. I don’t want him worrying about me, following me.

“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just…”

“It’s OK,” he says. “I understand. More than you think.”

He’s going to say he feels the way I feel. He’s going to say he loved her too. But I don’t want to hear it. Not now. I don’t have time to listen, or think about what that word does or doesn’t mean. I need to get back to Penn, before he changes his mind. Before I lose him too.

“I have to go. Before the tide goes out,” I add. “I want to swim.”

“Sure,” he shrugs. “But … if you need me … I mean, if you need something, anything. You know where I am.”

I nod. “Thanks,” I murmur. “I’ll see you soon,” I promise.

“Sure,” he mumbles.

And I am gone. Stumbling, running, as fast as I can. As fast as I dare with my precious cargo strapped to my back. “Please be there, please be there,” I repeat to myself as each footstep hits the earth. “Please be there.” Until at last I burst out of the enchanted forest, a desperate, drunken Tinkerbell staggering into the bright lotus-land of the creek.

The deck is deserted, the boathouse silent now, empty. I swing round, desperately scanning the horizon. For what? For a boat sailing into the sunset? But the sun is high in the sky, and I don’t even know if he can row. I feel dizzy again, my legs trembling from the run, from the weight, from the disappointment. And then I hear it.

“Evie,” a voice says. “Evie. I’m here.”

And I look, not out to the sea, but back into the inky green stillness of the creek. And I see him. Waist-deep in the water and half naked. Not the strong, oat-fed boy I imagined, but fragile, his skin paler. As if he is half ghost, half boy. But he is beautiful.

And he is Bea’s.

I feel heat flush my cheeks with embarrassment. And I look away as he wades out of the water and takes the towel I have brought.

“Thanks.” As he wraps it round his waist, I catch a glimpse of his shorts. Faded blue, like school swimming trunks. And I hate myself for liking him even more, for feeling what Bea must have felt; that he doesn’t swagger or show off, that he wouldn’t wear Ralph Lauren board shorts to prove he is someone.

“I brought you stuff,” I say quickly.

“So I see,” he smiles. Then adds, “Thanks.” As if he might have seemed ungrateful. As if he, too, is trying to please.

I’m awkward in his presence; a schoolgirl again, for that is what I am, I remember. I’m not the dazzling bright drama student that Bea is – was. I’m chalk dust and knee-length socks and a box-pleat pinafore.

“Here,” I say, and I rummage again in my bag then hand him my treasure. He nods and hands me a gift in return. It’s a cassette, not a shop-bought one, but home-made, a mixtape.

The radio-cassette is old, its plastic back warped, the casing rusted. And so I say a silent prayer as I push the new batteries in and press play.

At first there’s just the buzz of static: white noise crackling off the walls and fizzling into the ceiling. But then I hear the sudden striking of piano keys, the murmur and swell of a jeering, cheering crowd that pushes the air from me as a memory is dragged to the surface. I know this. Bea used to play it – a song that drifted down the stairs, or filled the kitchen with its defiant noise until Aunt Julia could no longer stand its minor chords and morose lyrics and would switch the player back to Radio 4 and
The Archers
.

“Last Night I Dreamt…” I say.

He smiles, finishes the title for me. “…That Somebody Loved Me.”

I nod. The Smiths. God, Bea and I loved the Smiths.

“I saw them,” he says. “You know, live.”

“Really?” I am childishly excited. I have never been to a gig, to a disco even.

“Twice, actually,” he says. “April the fourth at the Palace. Then the Free Trade Hall, October the thirtieth. Two different years though,” he adds, as if he must lessen this display of devotion.

“You went all the way to Manchester? Twice?”

He is silent for a second, stares at me as if I am the strange one for not going.

“It’s not that far,” he says finally. “Not really.”

“No,” I say, anxious not to be the odd one out, to be back in the triangle that is Penn, Bea and me.

The song changes then, to the slow, mournful sound of a woman’s voice. It is a lament in song and I recognize it from another tape that Bea made; one that I played again and again until it stretched and snapped and no amount of Sellotape could fix it.

It’s “Song To the Siren” and I listen – we listen – as Elizabeth Fraser’s voice soars and sinks as she sits on the rocks in our imagination, mermaid-like in our heads, and mourns a love lost.

“I— we used to…” But I trail off.

He takes my hand and I start at his touch; at the intimacy and yet the normalcy of it. And I feel a sudden jolt of fear at my want for this boy. My need for him.

Though maybe it’s not him I want. Maybe it’s what we share.

For we do share something. We share Bea. She has tied us together, and I don’t want to loosen those ties, not yet. I want them tighter. I want to be bound to him so that I can feel her again. And so I let him hold me, I don’t let go. I won’t let go.

MAY 1988

BEA STANDS
on the lowest of the three high boards; her feet over the tip, her arms wide in worship, the people below her – her congregation – as small as ants. She has done this before, here at the lido this summer, and before at the point at Eden. She’s not scared, she’s invincible, beautiful Bea, and for just a few seconds of serendipitous perfection, she can fly
.

She slinks, slick with water and shining with satisfaction, back to her towel and to Penn
.

“Your go,” she smiles
.

“Maybe later,” he says
.

But he won’t. Not later, not today, not ever
.

Bea rolls her eyes. “You’re like Evie,” she says
.

“Evie?”

“You know, my cousin. I told you about her?”

He nods, remembering
.

“She swears she wants do it, climbs to the top of the point, and then has to climb all the way down again.”

“I’m not scared,” he says
.

But he is
.

He can swim. His father made sure of that; ignored his pleas and protestations and made him jump from the side of a yacht at La Napoule. “In at the deep end,” he said. “Best way to learn.” And learn Penn did. But he’s never managed to conquer his fear of heights, despite numerous trips up lighthouses and church towers and being forced to climb ladders. However many times he tried, he’d end up stuck, with his father raging at him from below as Penn, bilious and weak, clung to walls or rungs as if they were life itself
.

“How awful,” she had said to him
.

“I’ll get over it,” he had shrugged
.

But he hadn’t. Not yet
.

“I’m sorry,” Bea says. “We shouldn’t have come.” For his father is struggling now, his determined clutch at life weakening, despite the chemotherapy and special diets and private room
.

“No, it’s good,” Penn assures her. “Good to be out.” And he pulls her to him to kiss her
.

“I’ll do it,” says James, jumping to his feet
.

He can’t believe he’s been handed this chance, this golden opportunity. He hadn’t even been going to join them
.

“We’re going to the lido,” she’d said
.
“Come with us.”

“I should work,” he’d lied. Because he knew it was an afterthought, an invitation extended through guilt not desire
.

But she’d pouted and pleaded. “You don’t even have to get in. You can read a book and lounge like a lizard. Like the lizard king!”

He’d shrugged
.

“Pretty please? With whipped cream, and hundreds and thousands, and a cherry on the top?”

And it worked, just like they both knew it would
.

“OK, OK. Fine,” he’d conceded
.

She’d laughed and linked her arm through his. “You’ll love it, you’ll see. It’s perfect.”

And it almost is. There are wooden cubicles in fifties ice-cream colours, and jewel-bright bikinis on bodies that are browned, lithe. A world away from the municipal baths on Park Road, with the yellow verruca bath, the clogs of hair that tangle around your fingers and toes, the pasty-faced Donnas and Debbies, their black regulation suits straining to contain their pale, potato-fed bodies
.

But every time he looks at her and sees her hands slick with Hawaiian Tropic as they glide over Penn’s already tan skin, a tight, hard ball of envy establishes itself in his gut again. What is it she sees in him? In this idle rich boy, this fool who won’t even dive from a board? He’s not brave, he’s not magnificent, he’s just hair and teeth and a lazy laugh
.

James has to show her what she’s overlooked, what she’s missing. And so, when Penn refuses to jump, he seizes his moment and pulls himself up, no longer caring that his trunks are a size too large and a decade too old; that his skin still carries the blueish tinge of too many Lancashire winters; that his swimming is amateurish
.

He walks past the springboard – that is for pratfalls and prats like Penn. Not even Penn. Instead he heads to the high boards, climbs to the tallest of the three. And then he stands on the edge of the still-dry concrete, his arms wide like wings, like Bea’s, his toes already in nothingness
.

He hears their voices, faint below him
.

“Jesus, what’s he doing?” says someone
.

“Jump!” yells a girl
.

“What?” Bea turns to her, anger in her sharp movement
.

“It’s safe,” the girl protests
.
“Or they wouldn’t have it. No one would use it.”

“No one does use it.”

But he does. He will. Because he’s not afraid. He’s on fire, he’s Icarus reaching for the sun. And so he steps off the platform and into the crackling air
.

And then he’s flying, swiftly, swiftly, and it’s a feeling of such purity and exhilaration that there’s no fear when he plunges into the water, just the knowing that he is alive
.

He surfaces and then half swims, half scrabbles for the side. She’s crouching there, her face etched with the surprise. It is the shock he had hoped for
.

“Are you OK?”

“Course.”

She laughs: a sound of undisguised relief. “You scared me.”

And it’s his turn to laugh
.
“Good,” he says, and pulls himself up onto the paving slabs
.

“Where are you going?”

“Again.” he says. “I’m going again.”

And he does. He jumps again, and again, and the others clap and cheer every leap and plunge
.

All except for Penn
.

Penn is riven with envy. He is losing her, he thinks. He is losing his touch. This thing with his dad is distracting him. He needs to get back in the game, though. No, not a game. This time it’s real. She loves him. She tells him so again and again. And he loves her, he does. He could have had countless others: Anna, Jules, Stella. He could have Stella whenever he wanted. But he doesn’t want them. He wants her. It’s always been her
.

But as he turns onto his stomach so he doesn’t have to witness this circus, this charade, he realizes there’s a scene he’s never played before, has never even considered: What if she doesn’t want him? What if it’s James she wants after all?

AUGUST 1988

EACH MORNING
I do the same: I pack hunks of bread, cheese, bottles of lemonade kept in the freezer to fend off the increasing heat, then run through the still-waking woods down to the creek to find him.

Each morning I feel the same: the blankness when I open my eyes, then the strange nausea in my stomach when I remember – the loss of her, the gain of him; the panic when I see the corrugated roof of the boathouse – that it will be empty again, he will be gone; the same relief, elation even when I see him – the tangle of his hair, his sleep-heavy eyes, the slightness of his smile.

Then one morning I’m bold enough, desperate enough to ask the question. I hug my knees, look at him sideways, affecting a kind of nonchalance that I am not feeling, that I never feel with him. “How much longer are you staying?” I say.

“You want me to go?” he asks, his eyes clouded by hurt.

“No, no,” I say quickly. “I want you to stay— I mean, you can stay. If you want,” I add.

“Then I’ll stay,” he says, finally. “For a bit.”

And I will take that “a bit”. For a bit is longer than a day. Maybe even a summer.

“You could come to the house,” I say. “I could call Aunt Julia. She wouldn’t mind, I’m sure. I—”

“No,” he snaps. Then softer, “No. I just—” He looks at me, his sudden anger slipping into urgency. “She’d want to talk to me. Ask me stuff. Want to talk about—”

“Your dad,” I finish.

He nods. “And— I didn’t tell you but I’m supposed to be in Venice. My mum paid for the ticket. But I didn’t want to go. Not after … everything. And so I lied. I told her I was getting the train, so it would take longer, give me some time, you know? But instead I came here. I wanted to come here. I wanted to— I don’t know… See Bea? And see you. Do you understand?”

My heart surges, a soaring thing, with wings of gold. For I do understand. I do.

I don’t court it, this feeling. I don’t even know if he shares it, or begins to. But I’m sure of one thing, one thing that brought us here, and now ties us, and that is Bea.

We sit on the deck – our hands splayed on the wood, close but not touching; our feet pale, ghost-like as they dangle in the water – and we talk about her. The easy stuff at first: her insistence that
Casablanca
was her favourite film, yet it was
Pretty in Pink
that she watched over and over again, until the video got stuck in the player; the time she added a bottle of blue-black ink to the bath to turn us into mermaids, and we wandered about like cyanotic waifs for a week until it finally washed off; the time she painted his face with her lipstick and rouge, crowned him with her Cleopatra wig, and they went down to a club in Deptford, teetering on costume department heels, giggling into vodka-tonics as, in the dingy lights and drunkenness, they almost, almost got away with the disguise.