by Joanna Nadin
You’d have to. The point is forty feet up and a slow, tripping, slipping scramble over rocks and sea thrift. Then at the top there’s nothing but a wide plateau, weather-beaten into smoothness by Atlantic wind and rain. But it’s not the point we’re here for, it’s what you can see from it.
Everything. I can see everything.
I can see the arc of Pont Cove, its pale, gritty sand studded with the reds and greens of children’s swimsuits, hunched determinedly over castles and ignoring the gathering clouds.
I can see our creek, a little finger extended from the hand of the river estuary, the middle finger pointing inland, past the docks to the big towns, and then London beyond.
And I can see the house, held like a jewel in the gloved palm of the trees; the slant of its roof, the breadth of its walls, the whole breathtaking beauty of its existence.
“Is that…?” he trails off.
“Eden,” I say. “That’s Eden.”
“It’s something.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s everything. It’s perfect. Why would she want to leave? Look around you. Look!” I demand. “Why would she need to run away from this?”
“I don’t know,” he says finally.
But I do. Because even in its vastness and perfection, it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.
I hear a rumble in the distance, a clatter of clouds against each other and I feel the crackle of electricity in the air.
“Rain’s coming,” I say. “We should go.”
I stand, turn towards the stepped rocks that stand for a path.
“Isn’t there another way down?”
I shake my head. “Other side’s too steep,” I say.
“I didn’t mean that. It’s safe, isn’t it? I mean the water’s deep here?”
“Yes, but—”
“Have you done it before?”
“No.” But others have. Coffin jumping they call it. The boys from the village come on Saturdays, pumped full of a heady mix of bravado and cheap cider. They are loud and lairy and look-at-me as they leap into the unknown. And Bea has done it too, once, her hand tight in the grip of a boy called Gregor – that year’s love.
“So come on then. First time for everything.”
I look down. Maybe it’s not so far, I tell myself. Maybe it’s deep enough – the tide is high, isn’t it? And he’s here. He’s with me.
“Aren’t you scared?” I ask.
“I used to be,” he admits. “When I was a kid.” He pauses. “Actually, even this year. We went to this lido, me and Bea and— and some others. She jumped from the high board. God, you should have seen her, Evie. She looked incredible. But me, I— I let her down, I guess. But not today. We’re going to fly,” he adds. “Like Icarus.”
I look at him. “But there’s no sun,” I say.
And then he takes my hand. “You’re my sun,” he says.
Juliet, I think. I am the East and Juliet is my sun.
And I trust him.
I believe him.
I believe in him.
And I jump.
The fall takes no time and for ever. It’s a rush that turns my insides and sends my blood retreating into my farthest flesh and then back to flood my heart again. I’m in a vortex in which the world has stopped turning then spins in fast-forward. I hit water. The impact is swift and loud. It wrenches our hands apart and sends a geyser of water skywards, through which we plummet into a sudden, tumbling descent. I throw my arms out, try to right myself, but I can’t see which way is up and which is down. I can’t hear anything but the muffled roar of my own blood in my ears and I can’t breathe, as the water has pushed every ounce of air out of my lungs.
I’m going to die, I think. I’m going to die and I don’t care, because I’ve flown. For just a few seconds, I’ve felt what it is to be weightless, without burden.
I see a light in front of me. This is it, I think. This is the end. And I swim towards it.
But God has other plans.
Because when I reach out to the light I don’t feel the heat of a heaven but coldness. Air.
I burst through the surface of the water, gasping for breath with which to scream. Because I need to scream. Not with terror, but something else. I need to tell the world I’m here, I exist, I’m alive.
“See me, world? See me now?” I yell. “Do you?”
“Evie!”
I turn and he’s there. Alive too.
“See,” he says, his eyes wide with delight, with relief, maybe. “We did it. You did it. You can do anything you want. Be anyone you want.”
I smile. Because I did do it. We did it. Together. I showed him. I helped him. And he helped me.
And I smile because that’s what Bea said. That I could do anything, be anyone. And I never believed her until now. Now I know Penn is right. And I know exactly who I want to be.
We’re still only halfway across the creek when the rain starts to fall: fat heavy drops at first, slow and unsure; then harder, definite. By the time we reach the boathouse the base of Jorion is inches-deep in sea and stormwater. We reach the bank as the first peal of thunder echoes up the river, urging us to move faster as we haul Jorion to the bank then slip over wet decking in our haste to take shelter.
We burst through the door of the boathouse, stumbling, breathless, and slam the door behind us in relief. Then there is a pause, comic timing, and we look at each other and laugh. Because it’s still raining.
I look up and realize why: the plastic bags we stuffed into the holes in the rusted roof have blown away and great spouts of rain are pouring down onto the camp bed. The sleeping bag has been stained a deep wine colour and Penn’s clothes are a sodden mass.
“Shit,” he exclaims, as his eyes follow mine. He pulls the bed to one side and then begins wringing out a pair of jeans.
“No,” I say. “Don’t.”
“What?”
“There’s no point.”
“But I’ve got nothing to wear,” he protests. “Nowhere to sleep.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
I take a breath. “Eden.”
“But—”
But I don’t let him finish. Not this time. For suddenly I’m someone else. I am Bea. I can feel her inside me, feel a gloss, a glimmer to the dullness, hear her voice now, clear and commanding.
“We’re going to Eden.”
And he must see her in me. For he is meek now, allows me to lead. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure,” I reply.
I have never been surer.
JUNE 1988
IT’S LATE when they get back to Telegraph Hill – gone ten. Their throats are sore from talking and from acting scenes in the park for an audience of pigeons, and their fingers sting with salt and vinegar from the bag of chips they have shared.
“Come in,” she says. “He’s away until tomorrow. Not that that makes a difference,” she adds quickly.
James feels that same sharp needling in his side at her mention of Penn. But he doesn’t want the day to end, so he swallows his irritation and lets her lead him inside.
But someone else has got there first again.
As they tumble, stumble through the door, a voice halts their footsteps, cuts their laughter short.
“Where’ve you been?”
Penn is on her bed, his hands so tight around the neck of a half-gone bottle of vodka that his knuckles are white, while his eyes are wide, the pupils black in the failing light.
“You’re back?” she says, putting her arms around him.
“Clearly.” Penn shrugs her off but James can see it is bravado and is meant to pull her in further, away from him.
“But I thought—”
“Yeah. Well you thought wrong.”
“I was just out with James. Just James,” she repeats.
Just James. He wishes they were outside again, where the streets are golden and he isn’t “just” anybody. He wants to be her knight in shin
ing armour; for her to ask him to take her away from all this. But she’s not Rapunzel in her locked tower waiting for a prince to rescue her. She can leave if she pleases.
But she doesn’t please.
“Oh, baby,” she laments, stroking Penn’s hair. “How’s your dad?”
“Bad.” Penn drops the bottle, touches his hand to her face.
James hears the scrape and sputter of a match strike inside his head. The hard ball of pain inside him catches on the flame.
“Will you be OK?” he asks. “Should I stay?” He looks at Bea then at the vodka bottle. It is a “leave now, come with me” look.
But she won’t.
“Go on,” she says softly. “Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you in the morning.”
As he treads back down the darkened hall, he feels the flames take hold, burning through him. Penn is the cat that got the cream. While he, James, the faithful dog, gets nothing. Just the sour, thin whey that is left behind. He won’t sleep tonight. He’ll walk the night-abandoned streets of the city, until he’s cold and tired and spent.
But even as he takes his first step he knows that, in the cold light of the morning, she’ll still be there, a bright-glowing ember, refusing to turn to ash. And he knows that he’ll never give up. Never walk away.
Never let her go.
AUGUST 1988
WE’RE AT the kitchen table, me in a black dress and him in a borrowed T-shirt. Towels are draped over the chairs and our wet clothes are slung over radiators, sending up faint clouds of steam and the smell of washing powder and river water.
“Have you always lived here?”
I nod.
“But it was your grandparents’ house, not your mum’s?”
Normally I’d squirm at this, feel the question dig in like a poking finger, like a scalpel trying to cut a reluctant truth out of me. But in his hands, his voice, it’s transformed into a key, and I let it unlock me. “Both,” I say. “My mum never left home. Well, for college – art college – but then she came back. She died when I was three. Cancer. And I never knew my dad. I’m not even sure that she did. My grandparents raised me. And Bea, kind of. I went to school in the village and she came here in the holidays. But then they died, and I got sent to school too.”
“Boarding school?”
“Yeah. But not like Malory Towers at all.” I smile, thinking of the scorn and the whispers and the impossible hierarchy that I couldn’t fathom, much less climb. “Enid Blyton lied,” I add.
“But Bea was there. Didn’t she look after you?”
“Some,” I say. Because she tried. But we were in different dorms and different years. And while age differences disappear like smoke on summer beaches, in school corridors they are a uniform, are everything, as important and defining as your shoes, the contents of your pencil case, and whether your daddy wears a navy pinstripe suit or white overalls. So I watched as she negotiated sports days and secret clubs and school shows with the ease of a chameleon, while I, ungainly, awkward, stood at the edges. “She just kind of fitted in. Or stood out, maybe.”
“And you?”
I laugh. “I just disappeared.” Made myself disappear. A shadow of Bea.
“But you must have gone to boarding school,” I say. “You must know what it’s like?”
I wait for him to talk then. Because he’s been taken away from his family, and had his family taken from him. And not in this distant, daydream manner that my own early losses have become. But he doesn’t take the bait. Not yet. He’s still watching the lure dance in front of him.
“They were rich, then?”
“My grandparents? I guess. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at them.” Dressed in dog-dirty corduroy for most of the time. But there were parties. I remember walking through a sea of stocking-clad legs, over patent-leather heels and dark polished brogues, navigating my way to a table with its cut-glass bowls of peanuts and Twiglets. Though those stopped long ago. After my grandmother died. Julia tried to throw her own; invited crowds of Henrys and Ginnys over from Rock or down from London. But she put out bitter tasting olives instead of crisps, wine instead of sweet sherry. And, banished upstairs, Bea and I would watch from the landing, our legs hanging through the banisters, imagining affairs for the women, dastardly deeds for the men.
“They weren’t, you know, Lord and Lady or anything though,” I continue. “The house was built for an earl, I think, but he gambled, and my great, great grandfather, he won the house in a game of Black Jack.” Or so the story went. But like so many stories my grandfather told, the lines between fact and fiction blurred, and truth got tangled in something more interesting.
He laughs. “That’s incredible.”
I nod.
“And now it’s your aunt’s?”
I shake my head quickly. “Mine actually. Well, mine and Bea’s. He left it to us. That’s why we still came back in the holidays, all holiday. It was in the will – that it had to be our home and we had to spend the holidays here.”
“Clever.”
“Not really. Aunt Julia hated coming here and Uncle John never had the time. And Grandpa didn’t leave any money to look after it, and so now, well, it has to be sold. They win.”
“That’s not fair.”
I shrug. “Life’s not fair,” I say, echoing Aunt Julia’s excuse, her get-out clause, trying to appear devil-may-care.
But I do care, and he knows it.
“We were going to live here, me and Bea,” I tell him. “When we grew up, I mean. We were going to have a wing each. She was going to put on plays, turn it into a theatre or a film set.”
“What were you going to do?”
“Take the tickets.” It sounds like nothing. Like the job you give to the smallest child, or the fool, to keep them out of the way. But it wasn’t like that; Bea wasn’t like that. I chose it. I was happy to stay in the wings as long as I could watch her. And then, when the audiences were gone, it would be ours again, our own stage. It never occurred to me that by then we’d have grown out of those games, out of make-believe.
He folds then unfolds his arms, then leans forward. “What about … men – boyfriends?” His face reddens as he says it. It’s the first time I’ve seen him falter or show a flicker of embarrassment. I wonder why now. Is it because of Bea? Or me?
“They’d have been brothers,” I say. “And best friends. They’d have gone along with it. Living here, the four of us.” Bea said this once, had this idea we would meet and marry twins, that we would all live together, our children interchangeable, sleeping in one giant nursery.
But the truth was that, until she met Penn, the men in Bea’s life played only bit parts: trees or soldiers. Like swifts or swallows, they came and went with the seasons. She was the star of this imagined life, and I her faithful sidekick. I’d thought, once, in my own idle daydreaming, that we wouldn’t need to marry brothers. I could marry Tom. He would inherit the Millhouse and work for us. Then one day I’d kiss him – this frog prince – and then we two would tend to Bea, together, for ever.
I feel my own face redden at my childish conceit, my foolishness, and change the subject. “I’ll show you where you’re sleeping,” I say. “You can have the blue room.”
“The blue room.” He repeats. “It’s like a film, or a novel. ‘She slept in the yellow room, he in the blue.’”
There’s an edge in his voice. Sarcasm. Jealousy almost.
“Sorry,” I mumble, as I lead the way to the staircase. “I know it sounds – I don’t know… lame.”
“No, no.” He turns to me. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just so different. That’s all. Different.”
“Not like this at yours then?”
He laughs. “No.”
“I thought you had a big house – Hampshire isn’t it?”
“I— yes, yes we do. In the constituency. But I was thinking of London.”
“Of course,” I say. Then mumble a “sorry”. Because I shouldn’t have taken him back to his house �
� it’s a place I don’t want to go either.
“You don’t have to be sorry.” He looks down. “I’m the sorry one.”
I want to tell him then – that it wasn’t his fault, it couldn’t have been; he wasn’t even there. It was an accident. No one could have known what was going to happen. I want to squeeze his hand so he knows it’s all right. Or is going to be. That one day it will be no more than a memory, as distant and air-light as the others. It has to be.
But maybe it’s me who needs convincing.
We’ve climbed the staircase now, risen from the paint pots and wallpaper tables of the ground floor to the wide, galleried landing of the first, where the walls remain untouched, keeping their faces for just a few more days. For that’s all we have: a few more days until he, and then I, will have to move on.
I push the thought down and grasp the brass handle in front of me. “This is it,” I say, and I turn the handle slowly, then push the door and let it swing open. I let him step into the room first and see it in its strange, sad glory.
“It was my grandparents’ room,” I say, explaining the double bed, the brush set on the dressing table, the photographs on the window sill.
“It’s great,” he says. “Thanks.”
But I know he’s disappointed. Despite its splendour, its views across the lawns, its carpet so wide you can waltz across it, this isn’t the room he wanted to see.
“I can take you up there.” I say. “If you want?”
He nods, not even answering. He doesn’t need to: I understand. Just as he understands me, knows me; like I know him.
And so, leaving his books and bag on the floor, we close the door and climb the narrow, twisting staircase to the attic.
For a while he says nothing, just silently touches these pretty, precious things with childlike wonder. Then it begins. Her baubles and bric-a-brac pull the sorrow from him on long ribbons of memory.
“I loved her,” he says. “So much, but—” He pauses, to find the right words, to find the strength. He grasps a bottle of nail varnish. The rose red is set in stark contrast to the white of his knuckles. “We had a fight. A petty, pointless fight. I made a mistake, told a lie, and she … she couldn’t forgive me.”