Will Adams - The Eden Legacy

Yvette’s health had improved after that. She’d become comfortable. Rebecca had even allowed herself hope. But it had been a mirage. In Kenya, recently, she’d watched an elderly antelope brought down by lions. Once its fight was lost, it had lifted its head and watched its own evisceration with the same acceptant, haunting silence as Yvette had displayed in those final weeks. Death shouldn’t be like this, Rebecca had thought. Death was the worst thing in the world and needed to be fought, even when hope was gone. But Yvette had already passed beyond reclaim. She’d become indifferent to the world. Too late, Rebecca realised that Adam had tricked her into their reconciliation so that Yvette could achieve peace with herself, and so die.

Flower-beds dug around the tomb had been planted with orchids. Yvette’s favourites, from her highland home. They needed copious and regular water to survive in this arid climate. Rebecca remembered ruefully her ostentatious grief during Yvette’s funeral, her tears and wailing, her rejection of comfort, company, food and drink. People will see my grief and know how deeply I’ve been hurt, she’d thought. They’ll compare me with my father and find him wanting. But here, in this lovingly tended tomb, was irrefutable proof that Adam had felt true, deep and lasting love; a memorial to her mother, a place she hadn’t visited in a decade.

Only one person had been found wanting, and it was her.

Knox woke with a start to discover that the sun was up and the day was growing warm. As he rose to wash and dress, he realised he still had his medical pendant on. Miles insisted on the damned thing whenever he was on an overseas job, but it was inscribed with the MGS logo and would blow his story about being a freelance journalist, so he took it off and packed it away, then brewed coffee on the gas cooker and wondered what to do.

A small stack of promotional leaflets for the nearby guest cabins lay on the reception counter. He took one outside to read while he drank his coffee: French and English text wrapped around touristic photographs: sunbathers glistening with oil on the white sand; angel fish in crystal-clear water; a bearded man Knox took to be the proprietor bouncing across the waves in an inflatable Zodiac; a sailboat silhouetted against a nectarine sunset. He looked up at the sound of footsteps, saw Rebecca arriving from the spiny forest, raised his cup in greeting. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘Love some,’ she nodded.

He refilled his own mug while he was at it, took them both back out, sat down beside her on the veranda bench. She held her cup beneath her nose, breathed in deep, then looked sideways at him. ‘Doesn’t count as a proper holiday if you have to shave, huh?’

‘Something like that,’ he smiled. The sky was bright, mist rising from residual puddles. Grey-headed lovebirds frolicked and chased in the surrounding trees. A radiated tortoise crept slowly along the line of shade, making the most of the morning cool to feed. ‘Tame buggers, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘This is their sanctuary. No one hunts them here.’

‘People hunt them?’

‘Sure. For food. And for the pet trade.’

‘So what’ll happen to them now?’ he asked. Only once the question was out did he realise its unfortunate implication. He winced and held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘It’s okay,’ she assured him. ‘I need to think about it.’ She looked around, as though seeing it through different eyes. ‘I’ll certainly keep it going,’ she told him. ‘My father and Emilia would want that. But I’m not coming back. My life’s in England now.’

Knox nodded. ‘It should be easy enough to find someone to run a place like this.’

‘Harder than you might think. Managing a nature reserve is bloody hard work. People dream about places like this, but it’s not all sunshine and reefs.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Her words reminded him of the promotional leaflet, however. He passed it to her.

‘Oh.’ Her face fell. ‘So you’re moving on, then?’

‘Not unless you still want me to.’ He pointed to the picture of the sailboat. ‘I was just wondering, is this the boat you were telling me about last night? Your father’s, I mean. The one you want to collect from Tulear.’

She glanced down at it. ‘Yes. Yes it is.’

‘A flat-bottomed sloop,’ he told her. ‘Not quick, but a piece of piss to handle. And I’d need someone who knows the reefs, of course. Or the passes between them, at least.’

She looked up at him in surprise. ‘You can sail?’

‘Sure,’ he told her. ‘I’d imagined it was bigger. But something like that, no problem.’

Rebecca nodded slowly. ‘I know the reefs,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while, but I don’t suppose they’ve moved.’

Davit was sitting on his porch watching half-heartedly for a pirogue with a Western Union logo on its sail when Claudia came around the corner of his cabin. ‘Hey!’ he grinned. ‘There you are.’

‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘Here I am.’

‘Any luck?’

‘Sure.’ She climbed up on to his porch, sat upon the balustrade and swung her legs. ‘I ask my friends. They say this pirogue belongs to Thierry and Alphonse. They say they take two foreigners with them, a man to Eden, a woman on to Tulear.’

‘Eden?’ asked Davit.

‘You have a map?’

Boris had hired himself a motorbike after breakfast, had headed off on some mysterious errand; but he’d left his guidebook on his porch. Davit fetched it now, opened it up to a regional map as he returned. Claudia came to stand beside him when he sat back down, leaning against his thigh. Braids spilled like a bead curtain over her face as she looked down. She pointed away to their south. ‘This is my orphanage I was telling you about,’ she said.

‘And Eden?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Her finger moved with deliberate slowness, stretching out the moment. ‘This is Eden here.’ Her leg felt gloriously warm against his own. He glanced up at her. She scooped her braids back behind her head with her left hand. ‘You like a massage, maybe?’ she said.

‘You give massages?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘Yes. I give massages.’

He glanced around. There was still no sign of Boris, and with Knox in this Eden place, there seemed little point watching out for him. Besides, what harm could a massage do? ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘That would be great.’

‘I get my oil.’

He went inside, stripped down to his shorts, lay facedown upon the bed. Claudia came back in, took hold of the door. ‘Open or closed?’ she asked.

‘Open,’ he said.

She knelt beside him and set to work on his neck and shoulders. Her fingers were weak compared to the sports massages of his rugby-playing days, but it was pleasant all the same. She tapped his shoulder; he turned on to his back. The mosquito net glowed around them in the halflight, lending a certain medieval grandeur to the moment. She massaged his chest and arms and thighs, then sat herself at the far end of the bed, took his foot and set it against her chest, the better to work his ankle. He could feel the warmth and softness of her breast against his sole. His foot tugged down her top a little way, revealing a glimpse of nipple. She gave him a look of mock reproach and adjusted herself, then ran her thumbs hard down his metatarsals, as though trying to empty a tube of its toothpaste. ‘Is nice, yes?’ she murmured.

‘Very nice,’ he agreed.

She slid her hands up past his knee to his thigh. She did it again, and then a third time, going a little further on each occasion. He felt that strange numbness of mind setting in, the kind that made men forget about things like shame and consequences until it was too late. ‘How old are you?’ he asked; and his voice sounded like it was coming from far away.