Eden (15 page)

But Bea was too wise for that. And she didn’t need rescuing, she said. She could rescue herself. Though she still let them try, let them shower her with gifts and plaudits and pleas, gave them just enough to think they had won her hand and heart, then slammed the door and ran back to the attic, laughing all the way.

“Where are the keys?” he asks, his voice edged with excitement, with purpose now.

“What?”

“The keys for the cars?”

“In the cabinet. But it’s locked,” I say. Of course it’s locked, with a combination set by Uncle John.

And solved by me and Bea one long Sunday when we were playing at codebreakers; she the wartime heroine, me an orphan child she had found and adopted. Not that we ever used it. It was the knowing that mattered, the beating the grown-ups at their own game.

“You know the number don’t you,” he says.

“I—”

“Come on. It will be fun.”

“But I can’t drive.”

“I can.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t,” he echoes.

“I shouldn’t,” I repeat.

But I will.

And there they are: four numbers – the date of Bea’s birthday – revealing four single keys to match four singular cars.

“Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo…” He runs his fingers along the hooks. “Catch a tiger by the toe.”

“If he hollers let him go.”

He smiles. “Eeeny, meeny, miney. Mo!”

He plucks the key from the wall, dangles it around his little finger. “So which one is it?” he asks, his accent changed. He is dapper now, Waughesque.

“That one,” I say in perfectly clipped notes, a flapper to his Bright Young Thing. “The Alfa, darling.”

We roll slowly down the long drive. “Don’t race,” I warn, echoing Uncle John to Julia. “The gravel will fly up and scratch the paint.”

He laughs. “Scaredy cat.”

I am scared. And excited. And horrified. And happy. Because I’m sat next to him in a 1969 cherry red Alfa Giulia, top down, radio on, heading through the iron gates of Eden towards the world, towards no-man’s-land.

We come to a halt at the road.

“Which way?” he asks.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Where is there to go?”

“Right is England.”

“What about left?”

I start, remembering the last time I came this way. “It’s— town. Well, village really. Calenick.”

I never liked it that much. Bea would beg me to go with her, to take our games of Cinderella or Macbeth to a bigger stage, where we could pass as kitchen girls or princesses or blood-handed queens amongst a wider audience.

“There’s a whole world out there,” she would say, her eyes lit with a strange kind of hunger. “All those people.”

“In Calenick?” I would reply.

“It’s a start,” she would snap. And then sulk until she got her way. For she always got her way. And so she would make Calenick our Emerald City, or our Tara, and she wouldn’t miss a beat: not a stumbled line or a skipped gesture as she walked up Fore Street, Elizabeth Taylor in a pair of saddle shoes. While I would freeze, my mouth gaping like a lunatic, like a slow-witted sidekick. Until in the end that is all I became: her silent accomplice, her cover as she sought out new thrills, new worlds, and no longer needed ours.

But with Penn, it could be different. It
will
be different.

“To town, Mrs Pennington?” he says.

It’s a joke, I know. But with those words, I feel surety fill me with treacle warmth. “To town,” I say, smiling. Then I laugh, my head thrown back with the thrill of it. “To town!”

Like the creek, Calenick changes with the seasons. Steep streets of tightly packed houses, clinging to each other and to the rock like limpets or stubborn barnacles. In the winter they glower, staring grimly out at a sea that is as grey as their own granite walls. But in the summer they dress up, wink brazenly, their faces decked with bunting as crowds of tourists throng the pavements, queue for ice cream or a cone of hot, salty chips or the mackerel boats that they can write home about, boasting about their catch, claiming they are a natural.

The older I got the less I liked summer in Calenick. As my taste for ice lollies or polystyrene pots of prawns waned, so did my tolerance of crowds; of braying boys and horse-faced girls. I felt out of place, out of time – the boat girl in her outdated dress and school plimsolls.

But today is different. Today I’m full of pride, of power. His arm through mine is a shield, a shining cloak that reflects back the confidence of these strangers as swiftly as it sweeps away the pity of those I know: the silver-haired, bent-backed Mrs Cardew; John Penrice in his Land Rover; the vicar, hot under his dog collar.

We walk into the Lugger. Into the orange-soaked dimness and stale taint of beer.

“But I’m not eighteen,” I say. “Not for weeks yet.”

“He doesn’t know that,” Penn replies, nodding towards the bar.

I look at the bartender, his hair sun-bleached and long, his accent from far away – Australia or New Zealand. He doesn’t know me. Penn is right. He doesn’t know me at all. None of them do, not really, not today. Today I’m different: bright, brilliant. I’m the kind of girl to whom people pay attention; the kind who lets herself be bought lobster knowing he can pay for it; the kind who washes it down with vodka and tonic, then another, and another. So that by the time we walk back down the steps to the street I’m giddy; with alcohol, with freedom, with Penn.

So giddy my shoulder crashes into an oncomer from the throng, making me stumble, lose my grip on Penn. I have to reach to the wall to steady myself, laughing.

I look up, and my eyes meet my assailant’s.

It’s Tom.

I wait for it, for the accusations, the reprimands, the pleas. But he says nothing. Just looks at me. His eyes move up and down, taking me in. The newness of me, the difference. He looks at me the way I wanted him to look last summer; like I’m worth having, like I am the prize, as he was mine. “Well it’s too late,” I tell him silently as I loop my arm back through Penn’s. “I don’t want you any more. I don’t need you any more.”

And I don’t. Whatever I felt for Tom pales when I see him next to Penn. Tom and I are done, we are over. If we ever really began.

“Who was that?” Penn asks, turning.

I watch Tom’s back as he weaves his way up Ship Street. “Nobody,” I say.

I tug at his arm. “Come on.”

“Where to now, my lady?”

The grey, gated church is to our right. I had planned on showing him her grave. So he could say what he would have said at the funeral. So he could say goodbye. But…

“She’s not there, is she? Not really.”

I shake my head.

“She’s at Eden,” he says, saying the words for me. “The real Bea. She’s at home.”

“Yes, home,” I say. “Take me home.”

And so he does. He drives slower this time, more sedately. For we are grown-ups, not children playing any more.

Back up the hill to the edge of the village.

Back down the narrow road that winds through the woods.

Back to Eden.

Back to Bea.

JUNE 1988

SHE FINDS
him last. The sound of the door being flung open startles him. It’s been half an hour, maybe more since he crept in, and sleep crept up, as he waited, waited
.

But she’s not alone. And she isn’t staying
.

“You’re ‘it’,” she says triumphantly. Just two words, then dances off, a Greek chorus of punch-drunk Pans in her wake, but no Penn, for Penn has refused to play, says he’s not in the mood for games today
.

James doesn’t want to play any more either. Instead he will play a trick, he thinks. He will let them hide away, bury themselves in corners and cupboards, then he, the Great James, Master of Mysteries, will disappear. And after, when she has sat alone in the dark, counting down the minutes and hours, she’ll know what it is to wait for someone
.

And so he creeps carefully, quickly down the stairs, his feet noiseless on the carpet. He’s good at this, has had years of practice at home – walking on eggshells around Theresa and Brigid once a month, tiptoeing past his da and Deirdre every Saturday night to wash off the smell of sweat and smoke and sin
.

He’s at the bottom of the stairs now. The front door is just ahead. He’ll slip outside and then his vanishing trick will be complete. But then he hears a sound from Penn’s room: a suppressed giggle, then another voice – a man’s – speaks low, then groans. They’re in there together – him and Bea. They’re not playing by the rules. He hesitates. The door is ajar, a sliver of light from a lava lamp playing on the tiles. He knows he shouldn’t, that this isn’t some Berwick Street peepshow. But the need to know what is happening is overwhelming, and so he presses his face against the jamb, and peers in
.

It takes him a few seconds for his eyes to focus in the half-light, and two or three more for them to register what he’s seeing. Then he has to suppress a sharp intake of breath, a gasp out. For it’s worse than he imagined. And better too, so much better
.

Because there is Penn; his wet, desperate lips on her face, his hand inside the cream chiffon of her top. And there is the girl, her fingers on the swell of his crotch
.

And James smiles, because he’s found it, he’s found the weakness. And this time it isn’t just a chink, but a huge gaping hole
.

Because the girl Penn is kissing isn’t Bea
.

It’s Stella
.

AUGUST 1988

THE HOUSE
is empty when we return. The decorators have gone for the day, their paint brushes leaving milky trails on the kitchen drainer. On the table is a note from Tom’s mum Hannah: “Come to dinner, we miss you.”

“Do you want to?” Penn asks me.

I shake my head. “Too full still.” But it’s not that. I don’t want to go, alone or with him. Don’t want anyone to prick this bubble of perfection.

And nor does he, I’m sure of it.

“We’ll have a party of our own,” he says abruptly. “A cocktail party. We’ll have crisps, and peanuts in glass bowls. And we can dress up.”

“In what?” I ask.

“You have dresses, don’t you?”

I shrug awkwardly. I don’t any more.

I did once: Bea’s hand-me-downs, velvet things with lace collars, then later, drop-waisted, or with net skirts swishing round my thighs. They were always a year or two out of date, but I didn’t mind, for in them I was her. Or almost. But then she grew taller, grew breasts, and I couldn’t catch up, so she either kept her clothes for herself or they were sent to charity. And now I live in T-shirts, leggings; a black uniform of “don’t-look-at-me”.

But Penn has other ideas. “Come with me,” he says. And this time, it is he who leads me up the stairs.

I wonder what he’s brought with him. If he has a coat of many colours or a Cinderella outfit hidden away in his bag upstairs.

But it’s not his treasure he is plundering, it’s mine. Ours.

We’re standing in front of the door to Narnia: my grandparents’ wardrobe, leading not to snow-capped mountains or forests thick with fir, but to furs. And to black-beaded dresses that tickle my toes with their jet bugles; to pink silk slips that drape across the flesh like liquid skin; to gold brocade gowns whose opulence begs to be chosen, jostling, “pick me, pick me!”

I’ve stood in front of that wardrobe before, with Bea; our eyes wide, as if we were looking on sweet jars full of gobstoppers and candy canes. She would take armfuls of dresses down, parade in them in turn, catwalking across the carpet in too-big heels while I, on the bed, clapped and whistled, a child still in my Ladybird sundress and flip-flops. It wasn’t that I didn’t dare try on the clothes. Rather, why would I bother? When I could watch her, when she was the one they were made for, really.

But not tonight. Tonight is different.

“Which one?” I ask.

“That’s up to you,” he says. “Who do you want to be?”

“Who do you want me to be?” I ask quickly. Because I’ll be anyone, will play any part, for him.

But he shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you? You,” he says. “I want you to be you.”

The invitation is for seven-thirty. I’m to meet him in the drawing room, where he’ll be waiting to escort me, in a grey suit belonging to my grandfather.

Until then I stand in front of my mirror, take in the girl I have become: the lips painted a heavy, sticky red; the eyes ringed with black kohl; the hair pinned up on my head in a dishevelled bun. And the dress: a 1950s emerald shot taffeta, like the hard shiny shell of a beetle, glimmering with blues and yellows as I move, its skirt rustling in anticipation.

“I want you to be you,” he said.

But I don’t want to play me. Me is shy. Me is awkward; all bones and too-skinny legs. Me doesn’t wear stockings, or gold rings, or pearls around her throat.

But look: this me does.

This me wears heels.

This me walks, bold as Bea, brave as Bea, down the staircase, one gloved hand on the banister, the diamonds in my cuff catching in the light of the glass chandelier.

This me takes his arm, and doesn’t blush or giggle when he says, “Why, Mrs Pennington, you look beautiful tonight.”