Bone Lines

by Stephanie Bretherton

  She had needed somewhere to go and to ‘be’ – and she’d always loved graveyards. Not in any morbid, romantic or gothic way but more for the simple fact of so much prime and carefully tended real estate that was dedicated purely to the memory of love. Eloise found such places moving, but also strangely life-affirming, despite the mournful stone angels and the inevitable sense of loss. So she had endured a formal service, a eulogy from Darius and the agony of a long, slow interment process, if only to have a standing stone somewhere. Her father had deserved a memorial, something that would last. He deserved an epitaph.

  Professor Emeritus. Benevolent genius. Quiet protector. Inspiration. Family man. Haemophiliac.

  The stalking flaw. She had denied him any other kind of weakness for so long, refusing to see even a toe-print of clay. Any Freudian amateur would recognise why no other man had come close, it was so dishearteningly obvious (even if too late to change?). She had felt stung to fury when Darius had suggested that he’d known her father better than her. The professor’s star pupil, the dashing rake of the Archaeology department, the one who would take up the torch, rude and robust enough to risk any site (no need for coagulant or a chiller packed ready for an emergency transfusion). But they could not have been more different men and Eloise had never resented Darius more than in that moment. Although now, she realised with relief, she felt only the vestiges of that rage.

  F8. The guilty gene. Such a small name for such a despised culprit. How long had she stared down at it? Knowing what they had known, her parents probably should not have risked having her, but they could not bring themselves to abort. In spite of all their rational convictions, Nils and Frances Kluft had thanked a fortuitous roll of nature’s dice when they were delivered of a healthily clotting girl. Even if they were acutely aware of the legacy she might leave if she ever had sons.

  Eloise placed some fresh flowers at her father’s headstone. It seemed he had been unable to live without her mother. After a bad fall alone at his last dig he had chosen not to call for help on the fully charged phone that remained in his pocket, not to struggle for the emergency kit that was only metres away, but had allowed himself to bleed out slowly and fade away.

  I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

  *

  No moon, a chance. In the last long shadows of dusk she eases her way down the hillside but is betrayed by an unsteady rock that sends a pebble shower scattering. Keep moving.

  She makes the shore line, its handful of spiky shrubs. The bear claws are bound between the knuckles of her right hand with finely twisted gut, the thigh bone is loose in her left. Her skin is blackened with burnt wood. She realises it will take more strides than she had hoped to make the point of the shortest crossing. Tar pit dark now, but her night vision has always been acute.

  No, no please, hush, hush. What has wakened her? Usually the little one sleeps so soundly when bound to her back and with a steady motion. The cry cannot be from hunger, she had fed her well enough. A dream? A nightmare, all too real perhaps, all too soon. Understanding, it seems, the child is silent again.

  She presses on through the dark on legs as light as she can make them. But then she knows. There is no sight of them yet but she knows the sounds. They are moving behind her. Still some distance away… but closing in on her trail. Can she silence the drumming of her heart? She must. She must be still and quiet, she must listen.

  Yes. They are running now. Now they have split to fork. One has found her tracks.

  With what courage she can muster she melts into the scrub and squats, controlling her breath like the lynx.

  Now she sees the swing and sway of his flaming torch. As he runs it illuminates a face so carved by rage and hunger that there can be no doubt of his intention. She has seen the death-lust in such vacant eyes before.

  Now she hears his heaving exhalations. He moves closer, moves past her, then comes to a sharp and turning stop when he smells her and she readies herself, but he loses his grip of the torch and it rolls towards the shore. He turns back to chase it before the ripples can reach it. He scrambles for the light but the fall has extinguished it. And now her eyes are better in the blackness than his. He must be aware that she cannot be far but he has no idea how close, and where.

  Behind him.

  One move, one leap, the bear claws rip in and out of his throat and the warm wetness flows. Another move and he is eviscerated. He splutters but can sound no alarm. There is no need for the club. (Later she regrets this lack of mercy, even if these two would have shown them none, shown them only horror.) No need to wait for the other one, who has circled too wide into the scrub. When he finds this one he will not follow.

  She runs again, splashing out into the cold water of the mud flats, faster than she will ever know. Into the night, sure of her direction.

  21

  Driving through a deluge, running late, Eloise had been on the reserve list for the Bach recital for weeks, but the call about a pair of returned tickets had come only late that afternoon. After checking that Anna could get a last-minute babysitter, she had dashed home from the cemetery in a taxi without returning to the lab. (She excused herself for the unusual truancy, but there was no pressing need for her to be there, not until the very special delivery that was due the next day.)

  She’d already lost a few moments trying to remember where she’d parked when she was stopped by Mrs Templeton returning fully laden from a shopping trip.

  Oh dear, not now? There really wasn’t the time. But she couldn’t have ignored her.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mrs T. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, dear. Thank you. And you?’

  ‘Yes, fine, thanks. In a bit of a dash really…’

  Eloise hated being impolite. A moment or two wouldn’t matter? Then while juggling umbrella and bag, she’d dropped her keys into an oily puddle and had to bend awkwardly to retrieve them.

  ‘Oh no… excuse me. But I’m so glad to see you, Mrs T. I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s George?’

  ‘George? Oh yes, he’s been shot!’

  Eloise wondered if she had somehow misheard. Surely Mrs T had said that with far too much glee?

  ‘Oh no! Oh dear. I’m so sorry!’

  ‘No, no, dear, don’t worry. It’s marvellous news, really!’

  Eloise was dumbfounded.

  ‘Only a flesh wound you see, in and out! In all likelihood he’ll make a complete recovery. But not quite yet thank you very much! We’re all rather hoping this will keep him out of the thick of it for the duration. Don’t you see? It looks as though the old curse has finally been beaten into submission. I mean, he’s done his bit now, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, I see, yes. Well, absolutely, I suppose that is good news. Do give him my best, won’t you. I mean, I don’t know him, of course, but whatever we may think of the politics we’re all behind our boys…’

  Oh god, Eloise cringed (as Mrs T nodded and smiled and thanked her) did she really just say ‘our boys’?

  Now finally on the road and due to scoop up Anna on the way, she was trying not to speed, trying not to swear at the other drivers. (One of her new resolutions among many, her reflexes of profanity were getting out of hand.) But the day’s earlier drizzle was taking torrential revenge for her dismissal of its potency and the traffic was setting stickily. No great fan of popular radio and its trite invasion of her thought processes, Eloise needed to track the travel updates, nevertheless, so she turned up the dial. As her wipers whimpered under the strain the FM scanner came across Candi Staton singing ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ and complaining about her man. Unable to help herself, Eloise stayed with the song as the lyrics questioned the wisdom of wasting this one and only life on love.

  That soulful old melody again. It seemed to punctuate her existence. Eloise recalled dancing to it as a teenager, the sweaty all-nighters, the abandonment of A-level anxiety and crushing self-consciousness into a swirling mass of revellers.

  Then another image insisted on replaying itself, anot
her interlude of that same old song – in spite of a recent commitment not to fixate on what was lost. The memory surged through nonetheless, as Candi counted up all those years filled with all those tears.

  Tom.

  At home with her. Investigating all the cherished curiosities from her family’s explorations, the fertility icons causing particular amusement. So many digs, so many expeditions. Such a restless, wonderful childhood.

  Such inevitable disappointment in the harsh realities of adulthood? Ha! So much for youthful hearts, running free.

  Neither she nor Tom (for different reasons) had been quite so blessed. Eloise had tried to hold back from asking him at the time, but she could not.

  ‘Are you sure the baby is yours?’

  Pride pinched, but Tom had thought about it.

  ‘Probably, yeah.’

  ‘Do you want to be sure?’

  His eyes had narrowed, the arch of one brow pulled up quizzically.

  ‘I can help you find out, if you want.’

  Eloise had shocked herself at the thought of making real for this girl the song’s warning about getting the babies but not getting the man.

  And in that moment she had almost envied her – Tom’s ‘mistake’ – wondering if she shouldn’t have listened so well to Candi’s advice all those years ago (or to Germaine). Perhaps she should have bred, unthinking, like Tom’s silly girl. And then she regretted taking this sidetrack into her past because thoughts of childlessness usually led to thoughts of Darius, and with them a whirlpool of resentment.

  Why was it that whenever he came to mind she immediately smelled his pungent, overpriced aftershave? For a few years after the split if she’d ever caught a whiff of it on anyone else the wrath had risen involuntarily. Fortunately such occasions were now rare (rather like Darius’s expensive tastes) and Eloise was not often in that kind of ‘elevated’ company these days.

  Darius, and all the unspoken power of his family money, accrued in ways he’d never liked to talk about. No doubt squirrelled out of investments in some corrupt foreign regime before the fall of a dictatorship? Alright, so her ex did have a sense of subtlety about displaying his good fortune (and often used the safety net of his mother’s maiden name when travelling to North Africa or the Middle East) but he knew how to wield his privilege whenever it served him. Eloise had never liked the taste of all that entitlement, suspecting that much of this leverage had been gained at the expense of those left behind whenever such regimes or schemes had failed.

  She remembered an evening with him in one of those awful Mayfair nightclubs, where the sheaths of respectability were handed in at the cloakroom and the reptiles came out to play. To be fair, Darius was no great fan of such places either but a cousin of his was visiting from the States for an air show and the right kind of entertaining had to be done. Eloise had gone along willingly (and with some hypocrisy, she conceded) knowing that the same cousin kept a yacht in Fort Lauderdale. Eloise loved little more than to sail but rarely had the chance in her land-locked adult life. She knew of few sensations to match the moment when the engine cut and the canvas unfurled and all one could hear were wind and water, all one could feel was life pushing forward through the waves.

  Now she recalled the conversation in that dark private booth at a table strewn with champagne flutes, little effort made by their guest to hide the wrap or the silver straw to snort it with. Darius did not partake (he was surprisingly conservative when it came to narcotics – and brutally dismissive of those who lived or died by them) but he was prepared to overlook their recreational abuse when it suited him. He must have forgotten that Eloise was with him for a moment (it would not have been the first time) as he teased his guest about his penchant for poor investments in expensive playthings. Darius thought it madness that his cousin was now in the market to buy a jet to complement ‘that hole in the water you pour money into,’ and he had gone on to joke, ‘Well, you know what they say, don’t you, Cyrus? If it flies, floats or fucks, rent it!’

  This was not the only indignity of the night levelled at the woman he professed to love and yet always wriggled out of marrying. At one point both men had stared openly at a passing redhead and Darius had tried to persuade Eloise that she would suit her hair that way, asking of her, ‘Why don’t we think about cutting it and going strawberry blonde?’

  It was in that moment that she’d seen the writing on the wall. Excusing herself to go to the ladies, she’d texted Anna and asked her to call the club and have ‘Dr Eloise Kluft’ paged urgently over the PA. If only to remind Darius who it was that he had come here with. Who it was that he was sacrificing. When the DJ called out her name, she took out a pen and scribbled ‘For Rent’ on a napkin, then put a cross through it and handed it to Darius as she left.

  Not long after that he had left her for a woman from these elite, loftier worlds where the air was too thin for Eloise. Worlds in which people were consumed in the same way as luxury goods. In which souls were commodities. He’d said he was leaving because he wanted to have children but that was only half the truth. Clearly his new bride was not a letting option. Darius straddled the twin spheres of academia and affluence and could happily break bread with anyone that interested him, but he was always going to seek his true pleasures at the trough of the latter.

  Now Eloise felt the tears seeping up behind the anger. It was a familiar response but she quickly stifled any self-pity. It was not that she’d never wanted to be a mother (but so what if she hadn’t? It was a perfectly reasonable choice for so many who declined the role). It was not that she’d been some ‘selfish’ career woman, or that she was ‘having too much fun’. Ha! As if! If anything she erred towards the philosophy that sentient existence was far too weighted to suffering to justify imposing it on another.

  Oh, but the silly, smug things that people say to the childless, the thoughtless questions they ask.

  Eloise often backed out of events that were centred around families, not merely to evade such interrogation, not only out of a growing introversion, but in case she found herself enjoying the company of children a little too much.

  It wasn’t that the urge for children had been absent, nor that she hadn’t wanted any with Darius. She would have considered trying again after their little ‘accident’ – and its accidental loss – if he had stayed. No. It was the pain, or rather the fear of the pain. Of coming too close again – or not close enough. And what if they had been successful before she or any other had found the cure, what if a beloved little boy had borne the burden of a life-threatening condition or if a cherished little girl had been another carrier, how would she have lived with the guilt? Even so, Eloise was forced to concede, that may have been preferable to all this creeping and unforeseen regret, no matter how much it had been resisted or rationalised.

  She turned up the radio. Swayed along with the next soul tune. That was quite enough self-punishment for now. And enough of hating Darius. (Enough for several lifetimes.) Eloise was relieved that the age-old rancour was beginning to recede, whatever the outcome of any rapprochement. She realised that if Darius hadn’t left her when he did, sooner or later she would have asked him to go. So perhaps he’d done the courageous thing after all? Perhaps it was time to recognise all that they had been to each other, for better or worse, and to reconcile with all of that.

  In the rain and in her reverie, Eloise almost missed the turning into her best friend’s street but thoughts of Darius germinated still, pushing up into their conversation once they were underway again.

  ‘So… you know I’ve had a lot more to do with Darius since Sarah came into my life?’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell, we’re not going to talk about bloody men are we?’ asked Anna, finger-combing through the long, damp, wavy hair that she had allowed to go grey, and which looked so striking against the canary yellow of her trench coat. Was this refusal to dye a form of rebellion, wondered Eloise, or more a lack of time and concern for expensive grooming now that she was single mother to a youn
g child?

  ‘What about our pact,’ Anna complained in her Edinburgh burr, ‘What about failing that bloody Bechdel test?’

  Eloise was embarrassed. Since discovering the criteria for judging a movie by whether or not two women engage in at least one conversation that is not about men, the two had re-affirmed a commitment to more fulfilling discourse rather than any moaning about relationships (or the lack of them). Indeed, there were many more important things to discuss, but Eloise needed to talk about all the ancient history that was suddenly adding new wrinkles to her romantic life, such as it was. She knew better than to bring up KC, however. Anna had been married, been cheated on, been left. Eloise could predict her friend’s opinion on that near-miss.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know. But we’ve done the weather and even a bit of politics with the underfunding of nursery facilities and all, and I do want to hear more about May-Lyn and tell you more about Sarah – but the trouble is, Anna, she and Darius are now so impossibly linked!’

  ‘Of course, darling, I know. Don’t worry, I’m only teasing! But please tell me you’re not having any silly thoughts about that old bastard, are you?’

  ‘No. God no, of course not. Oh, but I don’t know… Maybe at last here’s a chance for what our Americans friends would call “closure”?’

  Anna shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, I suppose that would be no bad thing. As long as you don’t indulge in any of that “conscious uncoupling” business! Darius deserves every bloody poison dart you’ve ever thrown at him, my love. Never doubt that. Mind you, maybe a bit of unconscious coupling might not go amiss for you? I mean, when was the last time you got laid?’

  Eloise was affronted, but with affection.

  ‘Ha! You can bloody talk!’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a bloody excuse. Morality has nothing on a toddler when it comes to abstinence, let me tell you.’

  ‘Maybe we should stop saying bloody now, Dr McAdams?’

  ‘Oh, alright then. Yes, we ought to do better really, ought we not, Dr Kluft? But anyway, speaking of Darius, you do know that I never understood what you saw in him? I mean, yes OK, he has a certain… magnetism, I suppose. And then there’s all your family stuff, I get that. But he was sooo wrong for you. And as much as your father loved the both of you, even he knew that.’