Eden (18 page)

James wakes at gone three to the sound of a desperate finger pressed against the doorbell. Wordlessly, he lets her in and then lets her curl up on his faded Superman duvet while he sits at the end of the bed and watches her sleep, his tattooed back against the wall, his soul open, waiting
.

Then, when she wakes, he listens as she tells him that Penn didn’t even bother to deny it. Just dismissed the infidelity, like he was waving away a moth. It meant nothing, he said. She was the one, she must know that
.

“Do you believe him?” he asks
.

Her head is hung low with shame and sorrow and her fingers worry at a pulled thread. She looks up at him, meets his eyes, says steadily, truthfully, “I don’t know what I believe any more.”

And he knows he’s won. She’ll never trust Penn again now, but he, James, has never lied to her, never deceived her, never cheated her. She’ll see him now for what he is: clean and pure and true. And worthy of her, even without money and a house in the country and the title to come. And their little world will be perfect, for they won’t need much, just each other
.

Just him and Bea against it all. Him and Bea against the world
.

AUGUST 1988

THE SIGNS
are there, the clues. Like a trail of breadcrumbs laid before me. In the months, years, to come, I will see them clearly; white morsels against the dark woods. But now … now all I see is him.

I have built a future with him in my head, woven a fiction of weddings and children and death do us part. I give him a silver box that had once belonged to my grandmother, worth hundreds, I know.

“I can’t,” he says.

“Please. I want you to have it.”

“But I’ve got nothing to give you. No heirlooms.”

“What did your father leave you?” I ask.

“A broken heart,” he says. “And bad memories. Whatever good things, precious things I had, he destroyed them.”

Sorrow wells in me, the swell of an orchestra in a minor key.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, cutting the chords short. “None of them matter. You’re my family now.”

Then he sees something, plucks it like a diamond from dark tarmac. “You know what we should do?”

I shake my head, eager for his latest plan, his latest trick.

“Write wills,” he says. “So we know that all of us goes to the other, when we die. That no one can take anything from us.”

“Yes,” I say, testing the idea. Then surer. “Yes, we must.”

And so we do. We find the typewriter in a tea chest, dust off its keys like black buttons, reset the ribbon, load it with thick vellum the colour and richness of clotted cream. Then together, one-fingered and laughing with each clack and each inky letter imprinting, we write a contract to our love.

To me he leaves his worldly possessions: his clothes, his books, his badges. And more precious things too: the thoughts in his head, the light of the sun, the “Song to the Siren”.

To him I bequeath a beetle, bright and shining that crawled across the sheets one morning and lives now in a shoe box in the lounge. But more: I give him my heart, my soul. And Eden. Eden is to be his.

And then we sign our names at the bottom. He goes first, trailing the fountain pen across the ridges in the snaking loop of a J. Then he stops and looks at what he has done, and I see a brief flicker of confusion. But just as quickly, it is gone, and with bold strokes he finishes with a flourish: “James Dean” it reads.

I laugh, and sign my own: Marilyn Monroe.

But as the days pass he becomes agitated. As though, while I shiver in the cold granite walls, he burns, is on fire. He’s taken to climbing on the roof and reaching over the parapet, his arms flung open as if he’s the figurehead on a ship, as if he is flying. “I’m king of the world!” he screams into the wind. “The creek, the trees, the sea. It’s all mine. This whole world is mine.”

His, not ours, I think.

And I feel a tiny crack open up in the plaster of our life. Its jagged black hairline runs through the pristine pale pink of the palace we have built.

And someone else sees it too. For Bea is back, flown through the gap in an air brick, or the roof-hatch when he has gone out to survey his lands. And now she dances, moth-like, in and out of rooms, following me, taunting me.
Be careful, Evie. Be careful who you love
.

Then, one afternoon as I wait for him to come down, I see on the window sill what I think is a dead bee, its wings a shimmering, clear lace, its furred body soft, touchable. But when I pick it up it shudders and I feel a red-hot needle stab into the pad of my forefinger. Gasping, I drop it, then pull out the sharp, black stinger. But it is too late, I am hurt, and the bee is dead.

He finds me in the bathroom, my throbbing hand under the cold tap.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I pricked it on a needle,” I lie. “Stupid really.” Because I can’t tell him the truth. That this small hurt is just a warning of bigger ones to come. That I think Bea is telling me to stop trusting him, believing in him – in us.

He takes my hand from the sink, kisses each wet, freezing finger in turn. “All better now. Nothing can hurt you now. I’ll protect you.”

But the truth pulses through me like the insect’s poison. Bea is dead and I have stolen her boyfriend for my own. It can’t last. This Eden can’t last. “What about Julia?” I want to say. “What will you say to her? What about your mother? What’s going to happen to us?”

But, “Come to bed,” he says.

And I do. I slip between sheets and close my eyes to the fractures. So the next morning our paradise is papered over again. It is fresh and new and full of the possibility of perfection.

But by that evening a criss-cross of faults has appeared: minute changes in his accent; his refusal to talk about his family when I have bared all about mine; why he hitched – why not bring his MG? – he has money for petrol after all; he’s not broke, far from it.

“What does that matter now?” he demands. “We don’t need it. We’re not leaving.”

“Well, at some point—” I begin.

But that point hasn’t occurred to him, will not be acknowledged.

“I thought you understood me, Evie. I thought you believed in me. I’m here to protect you. You don’t need anyone else. This is it now. Me and you. Just me and you.”

And he holds me by the wrists so tightly, the pain squeezing tears from my eyes, that I can do nothing but nod, agree with him, tell him of course I believe him, of course he is right. I don’t need anyone. Don’t want anyone.

Until, one day, something happens that tears a rent in the fabric so wide and severe that it cannot be sewn up.

And who wielded the knife?

Tom, of course. Who else but Tom?

JULY 1988

SHE STAYS
for three days. For three days she is his, and his alone
.

Days that pass with the blind pulled down against the light, against Penn, against the world. Of eating only what they can scavenge from the back of the cupboard and the bottom of the biscuit tin. Of talking until they can hear the soft, steady rumble of the night buses give way to vans, lorries, taxis, and the swelling, impatient flow of commuters into town. Of lying in silent, dazed wonder at what they have, what they have done
.

Then, one evening he wakes and the room is cold and dark. The covers have been pulled back and the sun has already sunk behind the gas tower so that he knows it is late, gone five. He reaches across the sheets for her, but the bed is empty. Instead she is sitting at the window. But something in the atmosphere has changed, shifted. She is dressed now, with a cardigan pulled around her like a cocoon, hair pulled back in an elastic band
.

“Hey,” he says. “Come back to bed?”

But she doesn’t answer. Instead she looks down, and in that instant he sees what has happened. Because there, in her lap, is a letter, two white sheets of looped, childish cursive, and an envelope addressed to a lost boy, a boy she doesn’t know
.

“Who’s Brigid?” she asks
.

“I—”

“Actually, no. More to the point, who’s Seamus?” Each word is heavy, bitter
.

“It’s a long story.”

“It would be. Christ, I don’t even know who you are – who I’ve been with… How could you? How could you lie to me?”

“I wasn’t lying— I’m not lying,” he pleads. “I’m James. I just changed my name. That’s all. Just my name.” But he knows this is an untruth. That Seamus is gone. That he is new. The thoughts are coming hard and fast, the panic rising, battering inside his chest. He will tell her, tell her everything, he thinks. Tell her about da, and Deirdre, about his ma who told him he would fly to the sun
.

“Don’t. Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter anyway now.”

Oh God, she’s going, he thinks. She’s leaving me. He stands then, his naked body exposed, vulnerable. “Please. Please don’t go.” He drops to the floor, scrabbles for his things, pulls on a T-shirt. “Is it clothes you need? I’ll get clothes for you. I’ll go back to the house. What else do you want? Do you want the mirror? We can put it here, on the desk.” He pushes aside books and papers, sending them scattering across the boards
.

“What are you doing?” She is looking at him oddly. She doesn’t understand
.

“Moving you in. You can live here. With me,” he adds, as if this part is unclear
.

“No.” She says it quietly. So that maybe it means a yes, he thinks
.

“It’ll be perfect. You’ll see. I can do anything,” he says. Then corrects himself; “I can do everything.”

“No.” This one is louder. Definitive
.

“But you have to. Please,” he begs, grabbing her shoulders in his hands
.

She pulls back. “Stop it. You’re scaring me.”

Then it hits him. And he wants to laugh. And cry. “You’re going back to Penn.”

“Jesus. No. He’s not there, I told you. No one is. He’s in Hampshire. And the others, I don’t know. Home, I guess.”

“But you’ll be alone. You can’t be alone.”

“Yes… No— I… I’m not staying. I’m going back. I need to go back.”

“Go back where?”

“Eden,” she says. “I’m going home.”

“But, but… ” His mind is racing with reasons, excuses. “Term’s not over,” he blurts. “And the house is being sold.”

“Still, I—”

“And Evie!” He grasps her name from the air like it is a firefly, glowing with hope, with possibility. “Evie won’t be there. She’s still at school. You said so.”

“There’s only a week left of term. I’ve no work. And I can write to the school, or call even; tell Evie I’ll be waiting, that I’ll be there when she gets back. I need to get away.” Her voice is softer now, kinder. “Not just from Penn. From all of it, all of this. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t. Not at all. Because why go to Eden when this, right here, this is paradise
.

“There’s a train from Paddington tonight; a sleeper. I checked.”

“When? When did you check?”

“You were asleep. I went to the phonebox.”

“I could’ve come with you,” he says. But it’s desperate, and even he knows it
.

“Look,” she says, touching his arm, “I’ll write. OK?”

He nods, defeated. And then quickly, efficiently, she is gone
.

AUGUST 1988

“EVIE, PLEASE
. You have to come.”

Tom’s at the window again, banging, calling my name. But something’s changed. The anger is gone from his voice, and he sounds scared.

“What is it now?” I ask quickly, anxious for this to be over, so that Penn doesn’t hear us or see us, and come down from his perch on the roof.

“Evie, Julia rang.”

I feel a roll, like the lurch of a boat in a savage sea. But I knew this would happen. That she would try to put an end to it all.

“And what?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

“She tried you but the line’s dead.”

“We unplugged it.”

“Why?”

“So no one can tell us to stop. That’s what she wants to do, isn’t it? Tell me to grow up, to open the gates, to let the decorators in.”

“Yes— no, I… Look. He’s not who you think.”

“What, you’re jealous?” I say.

“Jesus, Evie. This is serious. What’s his name?”

His name? “Penn,” I say. “Will Pennington.”

“He told you that, did he?”

“Yes. Of course. I’m—” sure he did? Am I? Or did I tell
him
? I think back, search my memory for that day, try to rerun the conversation, what I said, what he said.

“Will Pennington’s still in Hampshire. Julia got a letter yesterday, asking to meet up with her in London.”

I feel my legs begin to buckle and I grab the window sill to hold myself up.

“I don’t believe you,” I say. But maybe I do. Surely I do.

“Believe her, then. She’s coming down tonight.”

I feel my legs tremble again. Stand up! I scream at myself, be strong, be brave.

“Look, I don’t think you should stay here. I don’t know who that, that— man is, but he’s not this Penn person.”

I look up at the roof. And I see him there, leaning on the stone, watching us, listening to us.

“Go away,” I say slowly, deliberately. Then, louder, desperate, “Leave me alone. Leave
us
alone.” I slam the door, turn the lock, and lean against its solidity, wait for him to go. To call Julia. Call the police.

Leave us alone, I repeat, silently. But then another thought creeps in: Who is “us” any more? If he isn’t Penn up on the roof, then who is he?

The truth will be in his rucksack. That’s where he keeps his worldly possessions, the ones he can’t store inside himself, for he refuses to hang anything in wardrobes or fold it into drawers. As if he’s expecting a flood, or a siege, or a great, raging fire.