Not yet. No. Not yet. She must make the most of this discovery. She recalls once seeing some monkeys enjoy a meal of something similar living in a tree trunk, by using a stick to draw them out. The tiny creatures on the ground will escape her too easily, she must get some sort of tool inside this thing and encourage them to attack that intruder in numbers. She can make something thin and sharp enough with her flint and a section of arrow shaft. Place some thick spittle over it, if she can raise any. It is worth a try?
She makes a hole in the mound and probes into it but catches only a mouthful or two. The taste is foul but they offer some sense of food and moisture as they burst upon her tongue, enough at least to spur her on. She pushes away once more, commanding her feet to find new paths.
There seems little distinction now between ground and air. She is no longer sure of what she is seeing, but this does not seem like the onset of a vision. She must properly drink. She must keep milk flowing for the child as it cannot have another day without it. The little one is able to sip now from a hollow reed within a pierced gourd, but that gourd too must be refilled and with any kind of suitable moisture. If only she can find the right root or tuber to squeeze to a pulp – and the energy to dig it out.
And she must gather new kindling again or there will be no fire. She looks around for anything that might work. Then she thinks she sees a figure following them, moving through the emptiness, through the shrouds of dust at the edge of her vision. Yes, it is her father. Has he been behind them all along?
No. These are only the illusions of thirst and hunger again. It is nothing, another of those living, heaving rocks. She knows now why her father had not come with her. He had understood that his weakness, his grief for all the others, his injuries from that last fight would have held her back.
So can she trust what seems to be green in the distance? No choice. Where anything is growing there surely must be some source of water. She aches for it, not only to drink, but to surround her and support her. In days that seem unreal to her now she would spend too long at the shore and was often scolded for it. Even if those salty depths could not quench a human, she knew that somehow they held the truth of life.
19
Saturday at the Natural History Museum was a pleasure marred only by the weekend crowds. (And the incessant screaming of a newborn, beyond all reasonable capacity for such juvenile lungs.) Keep all the palaces, the abbeys, the bridges and the towers, thought Eloise. Leave the Palladian splendours, the Nash terraces, Pugin’s halls of power… she would forfeit even brave St Paul’s. This monument to the genius of Waterhouse was the architectural gem that made London worth living in, and not only for what lay within.
It was something about the colours of the stone, she could not explain it. Once inside, on each visit, she would observe a tradition to run her fingers over a skilfully rendered relief in one of the pillars or covings. A shell, a bird or a flower. As a child she had begged to be allowed to stay and set up camp right there under the old blue whale. Eloise had often wondered about whales in the years since. What had made their ancestors decide they’d had enough of the land, to shed their limbs and return to the sea? Had they foreseen the mess that we would make of it?
Now she saw the museum as an elegy to knowledge, a dovetailing of the disciplines from geology to archaeology, biology to conservation (and now genetics too had joined that pantheon!). The public displays had evolved over the years, of course, but how she missed all those glass cabinets filled with jars of pickled embryos and foetal failures, a source of disgust to some, but so fascinating to the young Eloise. Later in life she had understood why. In so many species the embryo appears strikingly similar, almost inseparable, until those molecular signals fire and instruct the tiny blind seahorse to become something other, something unique. To grow fin instead of finger, beak instead of snout, claw instead of opposable thumb.
The museum jaunt was not mere nostalgia, however, not only a diversion. Eloise had arranged the briefest of meetings and a walk around the mezzanine with an old palaeontologist friend of her father’s, still curating the massed collections both seen and unseen, and here on a Saturday out of nothing more than devotion (and widowerhood?). She had an important question for him. Where, apart from the teeth or the femur, both of which had proven uncooperative in Sarah so far, might the cells they need be hiding? It was not a wasted trip.
‘Try the skull,’ said her grizzled godfather, as he nodded towards the cabinet that held the Qafzeh skull and then dusted it with a frayed and yellowed sleeve.
‘The skull?’
‘Yes. The petrous bone, that little pyramid at its base, the casing for the inner ear. I am quite sure it must be an undiscovered treasure house.’
‘Oh god, yes, I see, yes. Of course. I think there’s enough of that still intact in Sarah, though it could be tricky to get to it. But we have carte blanche now to try anywhere, so why not give it a go?’
‘Trust me, my dear. Give it the best of British. What do you have to lose?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Thanks! Time for a coffee?’
‘Oh, no. No, thank you, too much to do, and, honestly, I can’t tolerate anything but a nice warm Horlicks these days.’
He looked so old. As ancient as his cherished collections. Is that how her father would seem to her now? Eloise adored her godfather, he was something of a ‘high-functioning’ introvert, rather like her. Perhaps that was why they got along so well, why they silently understood each other. But Eloise also understood that her ten minutes with him was up and that she would continue her sojourn here alone. Perhaps she reminded him too much of those missing from both their lives, as painfully as he did her.
‘Alright then. I’ll get on and leave you to it. But not before giving you your birthday present.’
Eloise rummaged in her bag. The book-shaped parcel she handed to him would offer only the surprise of its title.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’
‘Yes, yes, I should.’
It didn’t matter that he’d forgotten that their birthdays were only a day apart. She expected nothing, but she very much needed to give.
‘It was so good to see you, Uncle Martin. Now you look after yourself, won’t you? Go steady on the Horlicks! And thank you.’
‘Lovely to see you. Thank you for the gift, Eloise, so thoughtful. So like your mother. I shall open it up on the big day. Good luck, my girl. Good luck.’
They kissed cheeks and parted with a smile of sadness.
It wasn’t long, however, before that sense of what was missing in her life was replaced with a ripple of thrill and encouragement… the skull! She must tell KC! She had abandoned all crazy misgivings once again. (Aided by the chance discovery of a friend in common, one she’d since received discreet assurances from that, yes, she was being paranoid, but that, yes, her lab partner really was a ‘good guy’.) Eloise texted KC about the skull, excited about the week to come, but not quite ready to leave the museum yet. As habit dictated, she needed to complete a circuit of the ground floor before stopping to enjoy a cup of fair trade coffee and the indulgence of a brownie.
It was far too busy for her liking in the open plan café, but she would not be deterred. The queue at the service counter soon grew uncomfortable, however, and not only from the crush of chattering and elbowing tourists with no concept of personal space. She became aware of that unnerving sense of being stared at. Glancing around a few times along the queue, Eloise eventually caught the flinty eyes of a woman in a scarlet beret an instant before she could look away in a failed attempt to deny her surveillance.
The woman was unremarkable apart from the woollen beret, which Eloise thought must be far too hot for this Indian summer weather, but perhaps her ‘watcher’ was having a bad hair day? She considered her own appearance and couldn’t imagine why it would invite such persistent interest, but then wondered if she might, in fact, know her spectator? Eloise looked back again (had she seen her somewhere before?) but the lady had too qu
ickly turned, anticipating her subject’s attempt to catch her out. Clearly, if this creature was somehow familiar with the object of her interest then she was not inclined to renew their acquaintance. Eloise felt an irritation filtering in to replace the awkwardness – and then became resentful that this unwelcome observation was disturbing her weekend peace.
After she was at last served at the counter, Eloise was able to secure a seat as the family with the wailing newborn were vacating theirs. She smiled and cooed at the child and disguised her relief at their departure, then scanned her surroundings before sitting down. Happily, she could no longer spy the red beret. She allowed herself to relax, let the caffeine and sugar rush kick in and then gazed pensively into the middle distance.
Good Lord! Mid-sip of coffee, Eloise was suddenly forced to double-take as a pair of heavy-hipped, middle-aged women waddled towards her, waving and smiling. The twins! Judy and Gina, from that fascinating study all those years ago in the States. But how bizarre to see them here!
As Eloise watched them approach and prepared to greet them in spluttering surprise, she couldn’t help wondering whether this encounter was in some way meaningful. (The notion was tempting, as she had thought about the twin study in general, and these two in particular, only the other day.) As a scientist versed in probability she knew the acceptable answer to coincidence but there had been so many chance occurrences in her life, often leading to either significant opportunities or the deepening of connections, so Eloise sometimes excused herself for imagining other possibilities.
An old school friend met on a distant city street halfway around the world – why that street, that moment, what sequence of small decisions had they each made to bring them, staggeringly, face-to-face on a crowded New York sidewalk? Or had they somehow been aware of each other, energetically bonded through a unified field and drawn along the lines of that matrix without will or awareness?
Eloise had often asked herself whether prescience was a cryptic part of the pliability of space and time, or the connective strings of which some theorised the universe was composed, and of their extra, as yet unseen dimensions. Would such mysteries be debunked and explained at the far frontiers of physics or could there really be some kind of integrated ‘energy’ behind it all? Heresy, she could hear many of her peers proclaim in chorus with her own inner voice, as it too heckled with derision.
Of course, she knew very well that an important function of the human brain had been the emergence of pattern recognition, the ability to find and remember signs and landmarks that helped us navigate and optimise our environments in advantageous ways. Eloise understood how this talent might fall prey to more fanciful interpretation, to seeing more than was there and to connecting the dots in ever more credulous ways.
Nevertheless, she was now confronted with the surprising presence of the Ragnursson twins. All the way over from Ohio. Eloise realised that she’d expected these two to come back into her life, one way or another. It felt extraordinary, even so, that it should be here, today. Then again, why would they not choose to visit London at this time of year? Wasn’t the city on many an American bucket list? And of course the museum would (should) be on any sensible soul’s itinerary for a tour of its treasures. She may even have mentioned this place to them sometime.
But then there was no more time to ponder the mysteries of synchronicity, for having waded through the café crowds, here they were right in front of her, right now.
‘Oh, wow! Dr Kluft! How wonderful to see you, how are you?’
Identical sopranos in unison, not even the distinctions found in a harmony, just straightforward stereo.
‘Oh, my goodness, how amazing. Oh, wow… how are you both?’
She submitted without flinching to an enveloping two-sided hug. The twins held on longer than would be comfortable for Eloise under normal circumstances, but the cocoon they had created around her seemed to be soothing away her earlier unrest. Judy and Gina had formed the perfect force field against any strange, staring, red-bereted stalkers.
‘Please, won’t you join me for coffee, do sit down. Oh, wait… Excuse me,’ Eloise asked of the table next to her, ‘might we steal one of those chairs, please? Thank you, thank you very much.’
Once she had settled in her unexpected guests, she went to re-join the ever growing queue at the service counter in search of three more coffees, insisting above the sisters’ protests, ‘No, no, please, let me treat you. You’re in “my manor” now, so to speak,’ (borrowing a phrase from one no longer in her life, if not without a twinge of pain). This time around, Eloise found herself smiling at the others in the queue and not minding the waste of valuable time as so often she might do when forced to wait for anything. The curse of impatience set aside, she was delighted by the sudden company and a chance to share all that she loved about this place with her unexpected guests.
The Ragnursson twins had been an integral part of a study that had proved pivotal in her career, and despite an attempt to keep a clinical distance, Eloise had warmed to the pair immediately. Or rather, she’d succumbed to the warmth that they seemed to have for her and indeed for everybody. Not all the sets of twins had been so open. Many were so tightly wrapped up in each other and in the worlds of their own private making that they were unwilling to expand the circle of their communion to easily include strangers (especially all those peering and prodding doctors).
Eloise had felt her only child status all too keenly at the time and had been envious of the effortless compatibility that twins were able to enjoy. No need for all that ‘getting to know you’ nonsense, not even much in the way of sibling rivalry, but in its place the constant trust that someone in the world knew you as well as you knew yourself – and would always have your back.
There was so much to learn from nature’s own control group of clones, this enduring riddle of a single fertilised egg that for whatever reason, decides to become two (or more). The resulting similarities were not only physical, not restricted to inherited immune responses, but also evident in tastes, inclinations and behaviour. The crucial differences, meanwhile, pointed to precisely how and where external influences played their part, and not only in those rare, poignant, yet incredibly important cases of separation at birth.
So many curious and surprising differences. Eloise had been intrigued by the revelation that political affiliation was less about class or education and more closely influenced by a reflexive response to fear or disgust: greater in conservatives, lesser in liberals. There was also an interesting disparity in sexuality and gender identification between certain pairs of twins, suggesting the effects of very early neurological chemistry rather than genetic factors.
Of course, similarity had been the dominant observation and there had been so many startling affinities. The Ragnurssons had been that bit special, however, and in more ways than academic to Eloise, who’d also discovered a likely ancestral link with the girls going back to Scandinavia. With Judy and Gina the symmetries had exceeded the obvious and the explicable, such as sharing each other’s childhood ailments, finishing each other’s sentences or meeting up as adults to find they were wearing the same new outfit. If there was such a thing as telepathy, then these two were prime candidates.
As Eloise waited to be served (returning the twins’ enthusiastic waves with a modest reply) she recalled that Judy and Gina had gone to separate universities, but on the same nights of the year had met boys and started dating. Their respective suitors were eighteen months apart in age, studying different majors, one was a jock the other a musician. One thing the boys had in common, however (as the girls would later discover) was hailing from the same hometown. But then, not just the same town… the same father.
Of course, the fact that the girls had been attracted to half-brothers could be attributed to some shared social conditioning. Maybe even pheromones with similar compositions or the subtle scent of beneficial immune adaptations? But after marrying the boys and moving to different states the girls became pre
gnant around the same time, both having sons within hours of each other. Years later, Judy felt a sudden pain in her neck while driving from the school run, and once home learned that Gina had been in a car accident, not seriously injured but suffering from whiplash.
The study had attempted to pin down such anecdotal phenomena with polygraphs and other controlled tests. The rigour of the criteria had since been questioned but seven out of ten pairs had shown evidence of a link that went below, above and seemingly well beyond the surface.
Walking back towards the table, juggling hot paper cups with ill-fitting lids, Eloise indulged a whimsy, wondering if this connection might be compared to mycelium, the white web of communicating root systems in forests that had been seen to stretch for many miles while emerging from a single fungal life form.
As she caught up with the sisters and enjoyed their infectious good humour, she imagined quantum theory written in esoteric equations like halos around their matching blonde bobs. The non-locality of particles, forever connected to and affected by each other, no matter how far apart.
*
She walks on in wonder.
Why is there no one else here, in this blessed place? This pocket of somehow flourishing life could support not only her and the child, but it could become home to an entire tribe. Did no other know of it or had they left? Why?
She unstraps the child from her back to carry her on her hip, so she may better see and experience all this. There is new growth on living palms, fruit that is sweet and small, the child’s eyes widen with the happy surprise of its unknown taste. There are thriving families of all kinds of four-legged life, not shy, not scattering, but curious and apparently unafraid. She need feel no shame for picking off the easy catch, although she will choose only the slow and old.
There are more riches. Everywhere, fallen to the ground, nuts, still in their shells, handfuls that would last long if carried away. And water. Fresh and flowing from streams that spring out of the ground. Have they somehow left the old world, left their bodies, without her even noticing? Will she find her grandmother, her family here? She takes out her flint and draws it across her arm. She bleeds, hurts and knows she is not in spirit yet.
Bone Lines Page 18