“Christ on a bike.” Rog is in one of the stables, filling a wheelbarrow with stinking wet straw and horse poo. “You know what, Rory, old son. I’d rather shovel shit all day long than listen to that lot trying to make a decision.”
“I need someone to help me get back home,” Rory says.
Rog stops shoveling poo to lean on his pitchfork. “Do you, now.”
“I’ve got to go and tell them what’s happened. Kate and everyone.”
“You mean over on the Scillies.”
“The boat we came in’s probably still there. Past Penzance. If someone can sail it for me it won’t take very long. Marina said it’s safe now.”
“You’re a determined little bugger, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know who to ask. There must be someone. It’s not very far. Just a day.”
“Yeah,” Rog says slowly. “I’m pretty sure there’ll be someone.”
A little later Soph finds him kicking a football around a patch of wet grass with some of the smaller kids, who turn out to be pleasingly awestruck by his presence. He’s famous.
“Hey. Tiger.”
The two of them walk down the long avenue towards the road. She asks a lot of questions about Home, how they do things there, what kind of houses they live in, what they eat. It takes him longer than it ought to have to work out that she’s not just asking out of curiosity. When he finally understands he can’t stop the question leaping out through his mouth from his heart.
“Do you want to come with me?”
She grins at him with her terrible teeth. “Me and Ellie, we reckon we’ve had enough of the excitement here. A bit of island living sounds good.”
He’s too unexpectedly happy to speak.
“Not too many people, water all around. Sounds balmy. No adventures. You’d have to promise no adventures.”
“OK,” he says.
“Besides.” She squats down in front of him. “Ellie and I reckon we owe you a couple. You lost your mum and dad, didn’t you?”
He nods.
“I know it’s not the same, but how’d you like a foul-mouthed Kiwi auntie?”
“A lot,” he mumbles, ashamed he can’t say it better than that.
“Rog’ll go wherever Ellie goes, of course, so he’s coming too. Not that he’s complaining. Island full of women, I reckon he’s pretty excited.”
They walk down to the gate. Soph climbs up the rungs and picks her way on top of the adjacent hedge, looking up into the crowd of bedraggled objects dangling by ribbons and strings from the branches of the overhanging trees. “There.” She’s tall enough to grab a low-hanging token, a knitting needle. She uses it to pull the bough down. Among the hanging things is a small rectangle of soggy cardboard wrapped in plastic. She gets hold of it and tugs it free.
“That’s my one.” She shows it to Rory. “Fag packet. You take down whichever one’s yours when you leave.” She taps it against her fingernails and smiles at him. “Magic.”
It all happens quite quickly after that. There are good-byes to be said, but since everyone’s talking at once they’re a bit random and chaotic. No one lingers over them, or cries. They’ve all seen far too much proper loss to waste grief on a happy occasion. Sal wants to give Rory something to take with him. In the end they settle on a horseshoe. “As a reminder,” she says. “And for luck.” She shows him which way up to hang it so the good magic stays in. It’s heavier than he expects but he puts it in a pocket.
Then he’s up in the saddle with Ellie again and riding out into the autumn woods. A whole group of them go out together, the others coming so they can bring the horses back, or perhaps just for the company. Apparently the boat’s still where Lino and Per tied it up, the patrols have seen it. The Riders are cheerful and chatty at first, but by the time they’re skirting the hills above the ruin of Penzance everyone’s gone quiet. The Mount’s a blackened heap to the left as they ride west. It’s still smoking faintly. People see them coming and emerge from farmhouses and side roads to talk. Everyone wants to know about the fire, and if it’s really true that the Black Pack destroyed itself. Some of them have heard a story that one of the man-eaters came ashore and put the fire out. Ellie nudges Rory in the back and winks at him, but keeps quiet.
They’re riding slowly. There’s no hurry. Why hurry? Tomorrow’s as good as today. Winter’s on the way but for now it’s October, the free wind’s stirring the world all around them and a low sun’s turning all its base metal into gold. By the time they come to the end of the land the clouds have unwound themselves into wisps and feathers and half the ocean’s blazing under western light. They ride down into the abandoned town. The corpse has gone from the beach but the boat’s still there as promised, the boat Rory’s mother went to fetch so she could take him away from his fate. Rog and Soph are quickly aboard. They know about boats. Of course I can sail a fucking boat, I’m a Kiwi. Ellie takes longer. She’s going to miss the horse, Rory can tell.
“You don’t have to come if you really don’t want to,” Rory says. “Or you could go straight back afterwards. Some of the women are going to want to see the Mainland.”
“Oh, no,” Ellie says. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Ellie’s ready for a bit of settling down,” says one of the other Riders, an older woman with a spectacularly weathered face and an accent that’s never left Cornwall. She prods Ellie above the waist. “Be a new islander coming along before next summer, eh?”
Ellie smiles away the teasing, but when no one except Rory is in earshot she leans close to him and says, “I’m having a boy. The mermaid told me. She said she’ll come when it’s time, and bless the birth.”
It’s too late in the day to set out now. They’ll sleep aboard, the four of them, and make the passage the next day, or the day after, whenever the weather suits. There’s no hurry. As the shadows lengthen Soph takes Rory by the arm.
“C’mon, Tiger,” she says. “Let’s go for a walk. Up the cliffs and watch the sunset.”
“But—”
She nods in the direction of the forward cabin, where Ellie and Rog have disappeared. “Half an hour should do it.”
“Half an hour?” comes Rog’s shout, indignant. There’s giggling.
“Maybe we can spin it out a bit longer.” Soph nudges Rory. “Let’s go.”
“Oh.” He thinks he gets it. “OK.”
The road ascends steeply through a jungle of bramble, still thick with berries. Soph can reach the top ones; Rory digs around underneath. At the top of the cliffs the wind has scoured away everything but gorse and grass. They find one of the tracks beaten clear by the Riders and follow it out to the coast. To the south the sea’s turned a deep glassy blue. Westward it’s too radiant to look at, a glittering sheet of unbearable light. Rory shields his eyes and squints as best he can nevertheless, out past the near rocks with their expired lighthouse and impaled ships.
“Can you see the islands from here?” Soph says.
“You could see the Mainland from there,” he says. “If it was really clear. So it should work the other way round.”
“Can’t get much clearer than this,” she says. “Look at that sun. Looks like it’s right on top of us.”
Maybe there’s a few specks on the molten horizon, or maybe the light’s just making spots in his eyes. He’ll be there soon anyway. He tries to imagine them sailing into the Channel, under Briar Hill, the seagulls going mad with excitement. Everyone will see a boat coming. The first arrival since The Old Days, bringing the news that they can finally stop wishing those days would come back. They’ll all be down on the quay at the Harbor, waiting to see who it is. They’ll see it’s him, and they’ll think, Someone’s come back. At last, after all this time, someone who left has come back. It’ll be like a tide turned, sorrow to joy.
But that’s tomorrow, or another day. He sits beside Soph on warm stone and they watch in silence together while the sun descends, until there’s that moment when its rim meets the horizon and it looks as
if it’s come all the way down to touch this blissfully, bitterly enchanted earth.
© DAVID BAKER
James Treadwell was born, brought up, and educated within a mile of the Thames, and has spent much of his life further reducing the distance between himself and the river. He studied and taught for more than a decade near the crossing at Folly Bridge, Oxford, and now lives within sight of the Tideway in West London.
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Copyright © 2014 by James Treadwell
Originally published in 2014 in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Treadwell, James.
Arcadia : a novel / James Treadwell.
pages ; cm
I. Title.
PR6120.R426A88 2015
823'.92—dc23
2014017839
ISBN 978-1-4516-6170-5
ISBN 978-1-4516-6172-9 (ebook)
Arcadia Page 51