Maggie Gee - The Ice People

Why can’t they ever be Eve, in the Garden?

True, I was too old for her. And the shadow of Sarah stood between us. Looking back on it now, she was right to demur. In those early days, Luke could not have borne it, for he still missed his mother, and talked about her, and sometimes asked what I felt about her –

Then something happened to change all that.

They had given him hormones. Luke let it out.

For a while I felt nothing but hatred for Sarah.

For decades, of course, it had been considered normal for men and women to take hormones. Mostly it was women who wanted to be male (not male, exactly, but masculine — they wanted to steal our strength, our hardness). There were also the men who wanted to be female. Their numbers had grown, particularly since the women had taken the children away. Men were caught trying to infiltrate Wicca with newly swollen breasts and whispering voices. They were treated with terrifying ruthlessness, though many of them just wanted to be with children. Others, I think, were actually trying to be the women who had rejected them; to become the women they could not have. Mostly it wasn’t sinister, though godknows we men were pretty confused …

Of course we were; we were redundant. They had sperm on ice that would last for decades — defective, most of it, but it would serve — and there was nothing better between our legs, they seemed to say, when their cold eyes appraised us.

So men and women had been taking hormones or ‘taking charge of their identity’, as the first, immensely pompous book I read about the subject put it, since the beginning of our century. But the rules had always been strict; no hormones were to be sold to anyone under sixteen. They were one of the last ‘Restricted’ drugs, after the prescription system ceased to exist and all recreational drugs were made legal, in the socalled ‘Leary Year’, 2020 …

Women can be more ruthless than men. I didn’t suspect; I missed the signs.

We were camping in a beautiful farmhouse in Anjou — we called it camping, but in fact we’d broken in. The water was switched off, naturally, but when I turned the stopcock, to my joy it worked, it wasn’t frozen, it wasn’t broken, so the area still had essential services, unlike Normandie, where everything had gone. We were staying a few nights to dry some damp things and rest the drivers; we did need rest. This new kind of driving was deeply exhausting. Bliss to have water, bliss to rest. But closeness to Briony was bad for my sleep — nights of crazed hope, of hopeless lust.

It was April, and there were rustling alders, silver with new leaf, bordering the garden, and drifts of pale primroses and daffodils, and pastel forgetmenots floating like lace across the wild green depths of grass, and they were late, I registered, because it was cold, spring was replacing summer in Anjou — but never mind, it was beautiful, the light felt young and bright and strong after the terrible gloom of the year of the volcano. I had in my hand a bottle of red wine that I’m sure the Duponts never meant to leave behind, twentyfive years old, a grand vin de Bordeaux — and I thought, let’s all have a glass together, let’s raise our glasses to this great adventure. They were three lousy toothglasses, but what did it matter?

Briony was inside, looking for bedding, washing some crockery in the kitchen. ‘I’ll wash some plates, then we can eat.’ ‘Don’t bother —’ ‘You’re joking, Luke is starving.’ ‘I mean, don’t bother to wash the plates. Come and sit down.’ ‘Yes, in a moment.’

— It’s one thing I never really liked about women, that they didn’t know how to enjoy themselves in those days when there was so much to enjoy. There used to be moments that deserved a celebration, when life, in fact, demanded it, but the women would be somewhere being goodygoodies, cleaning or packing or sorting or preparing, and they’d say, in a holierthanthou sort of voice, ‘No, you enjoy yourself, I’m too busy’. (Granted, she just said, ‘In a moment’, but I understood perfectly the implication. Sarah had said ‘In a moment’ too.)

Luke, by contrast, was tearing round the garden, trying to catch a squirrel that he wanted to skin. These are the moments when it’s good to have a son.

‘Luke,’ I said, ‘have you ever drunk wine? Because if you haven’t, this is a great time to start. It’s a wonderful bottle. Come and look.’

He pulled up, panting. ‘Wine? Me? Do you mean it? Great!’ He was flushed with running, his curls flattened back and dark with sweat, and I suddenly thought, Luke’s thickening up, his neck is no longer a boy’s thin neck, and his face is changing, ever so subtly …

We spent a lot of time in the car, you see, or lurking by candlelight in houses where the electricity was cut off, so I didn’t get much chance to look at Luke properly. Now I looked. The sun shone straight across the hills into his face. His eyes were the clear strong blue of his mother’s, but what had happened to his skin? There were some pimples round his mouth, and was that peach fuzz? I was shocked but also touched to see it. A teenager at last. I said nothing. Perhaps we weren’t giving him enough fruit. Sarah had been obsessed with fruit, and left behind a worry like a little worm.

‘You could have wine mixed with water,’ I said. ‘That’s the way French — young people — drink it.’ I managed to stop myself saying ‘French children’.

A cloud of uncertainty darkened his face. ‘I’m not sure I’m allowed to have it. It’s — alcohol, isn’t it, wine?’ He said it as if alcohol were deadly poison. But then, he had been living a protected life.

‘What do you mean, not sure if you’re allowed? I’m your father, aren’t I? I am allowing you.’

‘No — I mean — I’ll have to ask Briony.’

‘What?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ His mouth turned down. There was clearly a secret he didn’t want to tell me. Something concerning his mother, then.

At that moment Briony came through on to the patio. ‘Phew. That’s done,’ she sighed, and smiled. Was she being a martyr? Never mind. ‘What shall we eat?’

‘First we have a drink … What’s this about Luke and wine?’ I said. ‘Did Wicca make all those poor infants take the pledge?’ I was joking, really, but I saw something pass between Luke and Briony, a quick, anxious glance.

‘I think it would be all right for you to have some, Luke,’ she said, slowly.

‘For godsake, woman, don’t make such a fuss. We’ve been through a lot, this is a celebration. One glass of wine never hurt a teenager.’ The look I gave her was hostile enough for Luke to come to her defence.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said, flushing up. ‘She’s not making a fuss. It was … medical.’

‘But that’s over,’ Briony rushed in quickly, her face clearly telling him to shut up.

‘What’s over?’ I asked, twisting the cork, pulling mightily, uselessly, feeling my face redden and swell with the effort. ‘Stop talking in riddles — sod it, sod it! ’ For the top of the cork had come away, leaving half of it crumbled in the neck of the bottle.

I don’t think Luke noticed I’d mashed up the cork; he thought I was swearing at Briony. He leapt in at once, talking too fast. ‘It’s not her fault. She didn’t have any say. I was having these pills. To protect my voice. You weren’t allowed to have alcohol if you took them, I mean we weren’t allowed to anyway, but the older boys were always smuggling it in. Juno explained it would be dangerous for me.’

‘To protect your voice? What is this about? Was he on medication, Briony?’

‘Nothing important,’ Briony said.