Eden (4 page)

“You should get that checked out,” Penn says, as his father retrieves his ironed handkerchief from his inside pocket and wipes his brow, his mouth
.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” the man retorts, his florid face deepening to a still darker red
.

“Then don’t tell me,” Penn replies
.

Penn is still gazing at the fringing on the lampshade an hour later. He doesn’t know why he is still here, or why he came back here from college in the first place. Duty, maybe? Or habit. Or the lure of a summer in the country with a swimming pool and local girls drawn to its blue like butterflies. Like flies
.

Not that he’s been near the thing. Doesn’t even like to swim. Instead he’s been stuck indoors, stifling in the heat and under the weight of expectation as his father tries to construct an alternative future for him within his own strict parameters: doctor, lawyer, MP. And Penn, in defiance, has stepped backwards, retreated into women, into wine, into whatever will take him out of this straitjacketed world
.

He will change though. Because he’s not what his father says. He’s not a wastrel. He has talent; has been told this time and time again. People want to be him – have told him so in vodka-soaked plaudits at parties. He would roll his eyes, take an overblown bow, and ride on this brief burst of public glory. But then later, alone in his room, on his bed, the drink worn off and the applause long faded, he would wish he were anyone but himself. Wish he’d been born a different boy, to a different father, and a different world. No one understands that. Not the others on his course, nor any of the women he has whispered his hopes to
.

But someone will. And when he finds her, he will keep her
.

JULY 1988

I AWAKE
to disappointment. To the reality, the starkness that daylight reveals in its unrelenting rise and fall. To the realization that my crying wasn’t cathartic, that giving into grief – one self-indulgent session of pity and pathos – didn’t exorcize the ghost. As I sit up in her bed, in her room, in her world, I’m still shocked and confused, and I feel her more than ever.

I read the letter again – Penn’s letter. A night hasn’t diminished its content, lessened its meaning. She was coming home. She was coming home – even though she swore she’d never bother again, said her life was in London now and would always be.

So why didn’t she come?

I want a cigarette.

We’ve smoked since she was fourteen and I twelve, learning from the village boys on the harbour walls and behind the pub, practising in the boathouse with Silk Cut borrowed from Aunt Julia. “She’ll think she smoked them herself,” said Bea confidently. “You have to smoke to be an actress anyway. It’s a career advancement.” And then she would blow smoke rings, looking for all the world like a schoolgirl Dietrich.

The first time I tried it, it tasted of stale biscuits and left me coughing and green-faced. It wasn’t until we were back at school that I realized the importance of cigarettes and saw the meetings on the back field to which entry was gained only by ownership of a lighter or the ability to French inhale. And so I learnt, forcing myself to manage half a Marlboro Light at a time without throwing up. Not to fit in, but so as not to lose out, to lose Bea. That way I could at least skirt at the edges of her circle. I never smoked any on my own.

And now, this morning, I crave it; the rush of nicotine, the defiance of knowing self-destruction. But I have none, and Julia, of course, has given up.

But Bea always had cigarettes – in her bag, in her pockets, in various drawers and boxes, stashed amongst the lipsticks, letters and condoms; the detritus of a life lived loved. I push my hand to the back of the drawer and strike gold – a packet of Player’s, quarter-full, and a Bic lighter, a millilitre of fluid still visible in its pale blue transparency. Bea was last here at Christmas. She managed three days from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day before begging Uncle John for a lift to the station, vowing never to come back. Seven months ago since she opened these.

Seven months since she spoke to me. Barely spoke. Or rather that was me. “How’s Tom?” she asked. I paused, snorted incredulously, then spat out a calculated, spiteful “Like you care.” I regretted the words even as their shape was still on my lips. I regret them infinitely, incalculably, now. Such a pointless row, a waste of words, of time we could have been together, truly together. And over what? A boy she’d never loved, and who had never loved me?

I tap a cigarette out of the packet, then climb up onto the window seat beneath the dormer, open the casement wide and light it up. The harsh smoke catches my throat but I stifle the urge to cough for fear of waking Julia, then, as it eases, I breathe out slowly, and look out over Eden.

This has been my kingdom for as long as I can remember. The lawns, studded by dark, gleaming rhododendrons and edged by the darker-still woods, the corrugated iron of the boathouse roof and the glimpse of water beyond, tantalizing in its sun-silvered brightness. Yet she didn’t notice this. When she looked down from this vaunted perch, I believe she saw only the sea beyond, a world so vast and infinite that she couldn’t wait to be out in it, to find every corner, taste every new sensation, wring every last drop of life from it. While me – all I wanted was here.

They begged her not to leave, or not go to London anyway, fought her decision to do drama, said she should pick something sensible – law or medicine or maths – and at Oxford, surely, or Durham at least. Said it would be for her own good. But it wouldn’t have been. She’d have withered, died in those stuffy, dust-filled places, studying numbers or anatomy or anything that demanded such precision, such measured silence.

Yet, even knowing this, I fought too. And my reasons were just as selfish. I knew it was the end of it all, of the parting that had begun at school and quickened the summer of the lovebite. She knew it too.

“But it will be an awfully big adventure, Evie,” she had said, quoting Pan triumphantly and smiling with the promise of it all. “Remember?”

I shook my head. “No,” I replied, grimly. “You’ve got it wrong. The awfully big adventure? That’s ‘death’.”

She shrugged. “Well, either way, it’s better than here.”

I start at the sudden quick turn of the door handle. I’m not practised like Bea was – adept at disguising the smell and hiding the fag ends in a matter of well-timed seconds – so that when Aunt Julia enters it is into the unmistakeable fug of smoke and the sight of me hurling a hastily stubbed-out cigarette butt onto the gravel below. Her face is drawn, grey; valium and Clarins failing to cover her age and grief and this new disappointment.

“For God’s sake.” She stalks over and opens a second window, throwing it wide so that it clanks dangerously against the granite, threatening to shatter. “It’ll kill you.”

“I wish it would,” I retort. And then we both realize what I’ve said. The fire that killed Bea could have been started by a cigarette – Bea’s cigarette. The words sour on my tongue.

“I don’t want the house smelling of smoke,” Aunt Julia says stiffly.

“You’re still selling?” I demand. “After this? After everything?”

Aunt Julia looks down, at some scuff on the skirting board, real or imagined, then busies herself picking up a sock, a pair of tights. “Of course,” she continues. “We can’t stay. You know that. We can’t afford it.”

I know that, but I don’t like it.

“But you can’t,” I plead. “It’s ours – mine, I mean.” Which it is; left to Bea and me by our grandfather who knew his own son and daughter-in-law never loved it like he did, like I did.

“You’ll get your share,” she says. Her voice is tight now, nearly snapping, her knuckles white as she grips the sock. “Bea’s reverts to John and me.”

I pause, then load a final rounded stone into my slingshot, take aim and fire: “She wouldn’t have wanted this.”

But though it ruffles the air as it flies, the shot falls short and rolls slowly, harmlessly under a cupboard. Because we both know that’s not true. She had outgrown Eden years ago. It was only me who clung on.

SEPTEMBER 1987

THE GIRL
is standing with her back to Penn, arms wide, facing the west of the city, letting the late afternoon light fall on her face. A halo of gold flickers around her hair and fingertips, and in her pale, net-skirted dress she could be an earthly angel
.

She turns her head swiftly, suddenly, as if she can feel his gaze hot on her like the sun. And he can see her face now; her wide, dark eyes; her pale skin; her cheeks and lips stained pink with the flush of knowing she is watched
.

This isn’t the first time Penn has seen her. He’s counted up the moments like a small child with birthday coins. Once in the foyer of the theatre on her audition day five months ago, when she wore Doc Martens and a band in her hair, like a strange, overgrown Alice in Wonderland. Once outside the accommodation office last week, a suitcase in one hand and her new key in the other, smiling like she was about to enter a rococo palace, not a concrete new-build off Lewisham Way. Once in the bar, barefoot, a country girl airdropped in the big city; yet not lost, she never looks lost. And now here, today
.

The East London line train pulls in and the girl climbs aboard, and even though Penn is waiting for another train, to take him to Charing Cross and his father, even though this will take him miles and minutes, maybe hours out of his way, he follows her
.

“You’re Bea,” he says, flopping down in the seat next to her, his face spreading into a wide Cheshire-cat smile
.

She looks up from her book lazily. “And how would you know that?”

“I asked around.”

“Following me, were you?”

She pretends to read, but he can see that her eyes don’t move over the lines and her cheeks are creased with a smile, and he knows she is rapt by him, not Gatsby
.

“What if I were?” he tests
.

She drops the book, puts one hand on her chest in mock fear. “Then I’d scream rape and my bodyguards would appear as if by magic. And then, well, I can’t go into details but you wouldn’t like it.”

“Have a drink with me,” he says
.

“Now?”

“Why not.”

“I’m meeting someone. A girl,” she adds. “We’re going to a play, at the Half Moon. A Dario Fo thing, it’s called—”

“Elizabeth,” he finishes for her
.

“You’ve seen it?”

“Last week. Compulsory thing. I’m doing political comedy for my final year.”

“You’re a drama student?”

“Goldsmiths,” he says. “But then you knew that.”

She laughs, caught out. “I did,” she nods. “But don’t read too much into it. Everyone knows you.”

“So you know I’m not dangerous. Ditch the play; come with me.”

The train slows, pulls to a stop. “Maybe another time,” she smiles
.

And with that promise on her lips and a book in her hand, she flits, bird-like, before he can think of anything else to say
.

JULY 1988

AND SO
they come to Eden. Men in dirt- and time-stained overalls pack up half our world in cardboard boxes so that the decorators can come and paint away the last traces of our lives. The portraits on the stairs of long-dead relatives bearing pieces of me and Bea – our lips, our eyes, our noses – are the first to go. Oil likenesses of long-dead men and women in awkward clothes and forced poses are bubble-wrapped ready for auction, their stories reduced to a few lines in a catalogue. Then curtains are taken down, dust sheets draped over chaise longues and wing-backed chairs and the drop-leaf table in the drawing room that served as our fortress.

But I can’t be packed in a box to be sold off or squirrelled into storage. Instead I shut myself in my room, hoping that if I’m quiet enough they will leave me behind. I’m fooling myself, I know. But I’m determined, will hold out until the bitter, inevitable end. I eat toast, cereal, soup left at the door by Aunt Julia; pee in the sink, using the bathroom only late at night when I can steal unnoticed the few steps along the corridor.

Call-Me-Cassie leaves but I mumble a goodbye from behind the bolted door.

Hannah – Tom’s mum – calls, bringing cookies and concern, but I send her away, throw the biscuits in the bin. I’d choke on love if I tried to eat one.

But a day later Tom comes, and Julia knocks on my door.

“I don’t want to see him,” I protest. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

“He’s not anyone,” retorts Aunt Julia. “He’s your friend.”

He is. Was. He was the one who taught me to fish, to dive, to row. He was my without-Bea-time friend. Until one day I fell swiftly, hopelessly in love, and he became so much more. And then, just as quickly, so much less.

I don’t know how it changed, or why, only that it did. That somehow, as we lay on the deck of the pontoon, side by side, our noses peeling, our voices cracking with laughter as we sang “Hey Frankie” to the butcher’s boy Frank Delaney fishing in the shallows, he became my world. So that every stretch of bare arm and leg became something forbidden, every smile left me breathless with want. Until I no longer felt safe, solid, grounded, in his presence but instead sensed a strange, teetering vertigo, as if I might fall at any minute from a great height. If only he would catch me.