Last Days in Eden Read online

  Last Days in Eden

  By the same author:

  ANN KELLEY is a photographer and prize-winning poet who once nearly played cricket for Cornwall. She has previously published collections of photographs and poems, an audio book of cat stories, and some children’s fiction, including the award-winning Gussie series. Her novel Runners is in the 2014 Book Trust School Library Pack, as a future classic. She lives with her second husband and several cats on the edge of a cliff in Cornwall where they have survived a flood, a landslip, a lightning strike and the roof blowing off. She runs writing courses for medics and medical students, and speaks about her poetry therapy work with patients at medical conferences.

  Born and Bred, Cornwall Books, 1988 (photographs)

  Nine Lives, Halsgrove, 1998 (audio book, stories)

  The Poetry Remedy, Patten Press, 1999 (poetry workshops handbook for patients)

  Paper Whites, London Magazine Editions, 200I (poems and photographs)

  The Burying Beetle, Luath Press, 2005 (a novel)

  Sea Front, Truran, 2005 (photographs)

  Because We Have Reached That Place, Oversteps Books, 2006 (poems)

  The Bower Bird, Luath Press, 2007 (a novel)

  Inchworm, Luath Press, 2008 (a novel)

  A Snail’s Broken Shell, Luath Press, 2010 (a novel)

  The Light at St Ives, Luath Press, 2010 (photographs)

  Koh Tabu, Oxford University Press, 2010 ( a novel)

  Lost Girls, Little, Brown US, 2012 (a novel)

  Telling the Bees, Oversteps, 2012 (poems)

  Runners, Luath Press, 2013 (a novel)

  On a Night of Snow, Ebook, 2013 (a novella)

  Last Days in Eden

  ANN KELLEY

  Luath Press Limited

  EDINBURGH

  www.luath.co.uk

  First published 2014

  ISBN (HBK): 978-1-910021-27-9

  ISBN (EBK): 978-1-910324-25-7

  The publisher acknowledges the support of Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book.

  The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

  © Ann Kelley 2014

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  For Jennie Renton.

  What would I have done without you?

  CHAPTER ONE

  ON THE DAY the girl first came to Shell Shack, fog lay unshifting on the meadow, smothering the garden and the broad estuary. The constant screech of invisible parakeets split the heavy sky.

  Nano would have been up at daybreak, letting me stay in bed until she had roused the fire, fed the chickens and pigeons, seen to the bees and made the bread. But that day the bees kept to their straw skep and the chickens were silent, as if they too were still mourning her. It was mid-morning when I clambered out of bed, my limbs heavy and unwilling, and tried to catch up with the day.

  No travs had come to Eden Spit for weeks, if not months. Certainly not since Nano died. I hadn’t sold a thing – not one measly apple. I was getting desperate. That morning, as every morning since I’d been alone, I chopped some firewood and added it to the small pile outside the door of Shell Shack. I would have to find more fuel soon. The kitchen range had a never-ending hunger, like a cuckoo, and I was its mother now.

  I raked out the soiled straw and earth from the chicken house, replenished it, and gave the birds their feed of cooked potato skins and left-over rice and rye. The iodine smell of bladderwrack hung in the air, reminding me that it was time to gather seaweed to manure the vegetable garden.

  Indoors, eating the end of a stale rice-cake for lunch, I watched a pretty harvest mouse scamper out from under the kitchen dresser, sit up and wash its face delicately. Cat was nowhere to be seen. The minute I moved, the mouse raced back to the safety of darkness. Nano wouldn’t have rested until the mouse was gone. Preferably dead and gone. But why shouldn’t it live there, part of the old place? It had every right to take advantage of the crumbs that dropped. Not that many crumbs dropped nowadays. I surveyed my fast diminishing stores. They wouldn’t last much longer. How on earth had Nano managed to provide for us, to always put something on the table that was filling and satisfying? My mouth watered as I remembered her vegetable stews and soups, the cakes she conjured from rye flour, oranges, honey and eggs. She had tried to teach me how to cook, but I hadn’t taken much notice. I was always more interested in making clothes for myself out of the beautiful garments I had inherited from my mother. And Nano had been happy to indulge me. Only six months ago there had been three of us – Nano, Grandpa Noah and me. Now there was only me.

  It was early afternoon when the gate bell sounded. Manga yelped and pressed his nose against the door, desperate to get out. I pushed my unruly hair behind my ears, smoothed the red net petticoat I wore over my denims and shrugged an apron over the lot. Could it be a trav at last, wanting to buy eggs and apples, or perhaps they’d take a digigraph of Shell Shack with me in front of it?

  I peered out of the salt-smeared window, trying not be seen. A child-like figure was checking through the meagre collection of jars on the produce table. A trav, definitely, but not dressed in the usual drab, shapeless overalls. She was smartly turned out in yellow jodhpurs and a black velvet jacket, with a scarlet scarf knotted around her neck. They were the kind of colours I loved. Looped over the gatepost were the reins of a small black mare, which snickered and nodded her head in a pretty manner.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, as I emerged, Manga tucked under my arm. She was not a child; I could see that now. She looked scrubbed clean, cleaner than I’d ever been in my life. Her fingernails were perfect – I instinctively hid mine. Her black hair was smooth and neat, tied back under a riding hat. Her lips were stained bright red. She looked at me with eyes wide as a kitten’s, barely hiding her amusement at my appearance, so different from her own.

  She picked a bruised apple from the box and fed it to her pony.

  ‘No pickled shallots? It’s the season, surely?’

  ‘None today.’

  I felt awkward in the presence of this diminutive beauty. I towered over her, a clodhopper in ugly, mud-splattered boots.

  ‘What a shame!’ she wailed as if it was a major disaster. ‘My father loves pickles. Will you have some soon?’

  ‘Er, perhaps. Come next week.’

  Why did I say that? I would have to bottle them especially for her!

  The pony lifted its forefeet impatiently. She gave it a smart sting with her crop.

  ‘What an unusual home you have.’

  ‘My grandfather built it,’ I said, holding tight to Manga, who whined, excited by the horse.

  ‘He did?’ S
he raised her eyebrows disdainfully.

  How dare she! Grandpa Noah had built Shell Shack with his own hands from driftwood, the remains of old vehicles, mud and straw. When I was little I had helped him gather pretty pebbles, coloured glass and shells from the beach to decorate the outside walls. That was before he lost his wits and started shaking his fist at pelicans and shouting, ‘We shall overcome!’ I suddenly remembered the day I had seen him sitting on the beach, sobbing over a dolphin skull, and my eyes prickled treacherously. He had died after years of ill health and Nano had followed him seven long weeks ago, from a broken heart I think. She had died on my sixteenth birthday.

  ‘So…’ the girl said, returning me to the present. She took the reins, mounted elegantly, sat back, pulled the reins tight and struck the pony’s withers again with the crop. ‘And the funny animals?’ She pointed across the garden to the sculptures.

  ‘He made those too.’

  ‘Hmm, fascinating. I suppose he built the dovecot as well? I would like to have that.’

  Have the dovecot? How could she have the dovecot? It belonged to Shell Shack.

  Before I could even respond, the girl kicked the pony with her shiny black boots and rode off a few paces. Then she stopped and looked back at me. ‘I do like your petticoat,’ she said. And I think she laughed as she cantered away, sending up a spray of sand behind her.

  I watched the mist swallow her, almost sad that she had gone despite her high-handed manner, because I was alone again. I let Manga loose and the little terrier staggered off out of the gate on his three short legs to sniff at the steaming dung the pony had deposited. I followed him and started shovelling it up for the compost heap. Nano had instilled in me the importance of wasting nothing, and horse manure was a great source of vital minerals for the veggie garden and the orchard. Whenever the Uzi soldiers rode by on their huge horses I would wait until they had passed and then go out onto the path with the shovel to do the same thing.

  I called Manga back inside, trying to work out what the trav girl had really been after. Pickles? Sculptures? Grandpa Noah’s pigeon palace? Certainly not my red petticoat! I washed my hands, despairing of my ragged nails. What was the point? There was nothing pretty or delicate about me. There was just work to be done. There always was, and there always would be. And on top of everything, I’d have to make pickles now, thanks to my foolish offer. I’d have to peel shallots, look out the spices, find the right containers. Why hadn’t she just taken the apples like any normal trav?

  I took out my anger on the chimney, knocking down the soot and removing the ash from the grate of the iron range, as I’d seen Nano do day after day after day. I carried the ash-pan outside to the compost heap. On my way back, I picked up a bundle of kindling and firewood, heaped a few small pieces of sea-coal and dried furze on top, and relit it. There was hardly any sea-coal left, I noticed. I hadn’t made time to gather any. Oh, how my back ached!

  Nano had made rye bread twice a week, but she did everything from memory. There were so many things she’d not got round to teaching me. And I had never imagined a world without her.

  My supplies of basics, like salt and rice, were running very low, but so were the dees in the earthenware pot on the mantelshelf. Nano had saved them carefully, spending them only when bartering was impossible. I hadn’t earned a single dee.

  The pullets had laid three small eggs the day before. But it hadn’t even occurred to me to sell them. I had cooked them for my supper, mixing in parsley and wild garlic with the omelette.

  That evening, on my way towards the tool shed, I noticed that the strong wind the previous night had torn a huge rent in the nets that protected the soft fruit plants. Where on earth would I find the time to mend them? And how? My spirits plummeted. Nano’s voice was loud in my head – Don’t leave a hole to get any bigger… plan ahead to let things grow… prepare the ground properly. I took a hoe to the weeds in the vegetable patch and started to dig a second trench for new planting, my hands already sore with blisters from an earlier attempt. Nano had made it look easy, but I sweated with the effort. The ground was so hard! I stabbed at it furiously. How could she have left me so suddenly, so unprepared for all this?

  By the time I’d created what passed for a new trench, the fog was lifting, so I went to sit on the gate to watch the sunset. On clear nights I had often perched there between my grandparents, all three of us gazing over the water meadows as the last rays bloodied Eden Bay.

  This evening there was a green haze to the sky and a wind sprang up which riffled the water into waves. I ambled down to the strand, Manga grumbling along beside me. Usually the sunset and a walk calmed me, but my thoughts remained troubled. The surrounding landscape seemed melancholy, suffused with sadness. This was where I belonged, surrounded by the singing of tall grass, part of the world of shingle and sand, the smell of black mud and cockle-shells in my nostrils, the big sky racing from horizon to horizon. But I felt dislocated, like a spider plucked from a warm corner and put out into the night. I hugged myself and turned slowly in a full circle. It was all so familiar, so loved, but…

  In the past there had been days when I’d complained – about the monotony of our diet, the draughts and dust, my chores – but no more than any other child on Eden Spit. Now, for the first time as I looked out across the darkening water that evening, I wanted something different, a life in which I could have pretty clothes and clean, smooth hands. Like the trav girl. She had made me envious. Strange as it might seem, I had not known envy before. Surely there must be other ways of living, I thought, not hand-to-mouth, alone, in a draughty old shack looking out at the same scene, day after day. Was this to be my future?

  That night the wind howled down the chimney, moaned in the timbers and rippled the metal roof, slamming it down again and again, even though it was weighed down with large stones. I could hear the Shell sign creaking ominously. Grandpa Noah had been so proud of it that he’d bolted it to the chimney stack. It was from the olden days before the Oil Wars, when people used petrol for fuel. ‘Relic of a bygone age,’ he’d say. ‘Your mother thought it was ugly, but it’s part of history. And we all need history.’ He could never get enough of stories from the past. ‘Remember when…’ he was always saying, and Nano would shush him. Until he began to forget everything. But he never forgot to wear his war medals, even when he was confined to bed in his final illness he had them pinned onto his dressing gown.

  Peering out into the darkness, I could see what looked like Portuguese Men o’ War floating wraith-like across the marshes: white polythene bags blown all the way from somewhere. I hoped some would catch on brambles so that I could gather them in the morning. I wasn’t going to risk going out in a wind like this, anything could be flying about and the sand would stop me from seeing properly. Those bags were useful for all sorts of things – as containers for food in the kitchen, to plug holes in the walls and to waterproof the leaking roof.

  I shuddered at the thought of the never-ending list of repairs and turned back to the range. Smoke puffed into the small room. The image of the trav kept coming into my mind: the lovely clothes, the shiny boots, the manicured hands. I stoked the fire, more in temper than in hope. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair!

  I lit the candle and turned to the consolation of Pride and Prejudice, which had belonged to my mother, who had worked for the Great Flood Library. It had been her treasure. Thumbed and torn, it had lost some pages, but as usual the magic of the words began to relax me as soon as I opened it, Within minutes I was immersed in the warmth of the Bennett family, no longer cold and lonely and anxious, free from the bitterness and anger that had been with me all day.

  This had been our only book. Grandpa Noah had kept it hidden against the occasions when the shack was spot-searched by Uzi soldiers. I was never allowed to read it outside in case I was seen.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Forbidden, books are. Dangerous things, books,’ Nano tutted.

  ‘Let the girl be,’ said
Grandpa.

  He had read and reread the story to me. When I was small, I had begged him, ‘Talk to the book, talk to it, Grandpa.’ That was how I’d learned to read. I knew half of it by heart. Although there were things I didn’t understand, things that made no sense to me, I could escape into that world, take part in that family’s strange existence. But following the visit from the beautiful girl that morning, the book’s power to distract had weakened. Now I imagined her mixing easily with the Bennett sisters in the story, making mischief with the younger ones. Her life was stylish and privileged like theirs – and it was real, not made up by someone called Jane Austen hundreds of years ago.

  One day I wanted to write a story made up out of my own head. I had started so many times, but never got beyond the beginning. What could I expect? I asked myself, surging with resentment. What story had I to tell, a sixteen-year-old orphan who had travelled nowhere, and who had hardly any schooling, and only homemade ink and rough paper to write on? Nano had not approved, shaking her head at the sight of me writing, but Grandpa would encourage me.

  How I wished Nano was here now, shaking her head.

  The fire finally gave up the struggle. I had not brought in enough wood or coal to keep the range alight. I wrapped my book carefully and hid it away beside my tattered notebook, then went to bed to keep warm. With no one there to hear me apart from Manga, I cried myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALL THAT NIGHT I tossed and turned and the next day I rose late, after only a few hours’ sleep. I was peeling an orange for breakfast when I heard the screech of parakeets. They sounded unusually close. And it hit me – I hadn’t mended the soft-fruit nets yesterday. I rushed out, still in my nightdress, waving my hands at the flock of red and green birds, Manga yapping helpfully. However vigorously I shooed them away, they ignored me, too hungry to be frightened off. In the end, all I could do was watch as they shredded the ripe currants and gooseberries, squabbling for the best perches.