Simon Clark - Humpty's bones

They went to the pit at the bottom of the garden. After tenderly placing his brother’s bones back into the grave, The First Man carried Eden away. She glimpsed Heather and Curtis. Their faces were strangely blanched shapes, huddled together by the road, as they watched her departure. Mr Hezzle was there. He began to raise his hand to stop the First Man taking her. Then he dropped his arm, stood aside: he understood.

Waves of sleep washed over Eden as the man ran with her in his arms. At times fully conscious before slipping away once more. Dimly, as if the real world had become an unreal phantom, she glimpsed fields, fences, trees rushing by. The dyke overflowed. Instead of presenting formal straight lines, it had flooded out over the meadows to become a formless shape with careless, rounded edges. As her mind surrendered to unconsciousness she once again visualised the First Man’s existence. The swift passage of lovers and sons and daughter from life to death. The repetition of meeting, bonding, then parting became too much for him. Grief accumulated. The weight of sadness became too much. As the centuries passed his upper-mind slipped away. The power of speech evaporated. Now he had the instincts of a fox.

When that instinct told him they were safe from the flames he set her down. They stood face to face in a far-flung heath. An empty place. No houses. Not so much as a single tree. Here, a vast blanket of grass rooted into wet dirt. Eden’s feet sank into moist turf. Rain sighed from the heavens. The First Man closely watched her face as if he saw someone he half-remembered. Perhaps her expression was familiar, rather than her features. He could read a meaning there. An intention.

The effort of trying to remember grew too intense; he shuddered. At the same time he began to turn away. Instinct told him it was time to leave.

‘No.’ She forced that cloying drowsiness out of her mind. ‘I want you to stay.’

She put her arms around him. The muscles in his back quivered at her touch.

‘You remained here for a purpose. I’m going to help you remember.’

His eyes darted as if an inner voice urged him to escape.

‘Stay,’ she murmured. ‘Stay.’

At last, he allowed his body to relax. He lay down on the ground, the spontaneous act of a creature needing to rest a while. She lay beside him. The wet grass drenched her; mud turned her fingers slippery as she moved so she could lie close to him. There, she gazed up into the dark cloud that spilled its rain onto their bodies.

When she spoke she addressed herself as much as the man: ‘I have a purpose now. We’re going to leave our mark on this world.’

It didn’t happen straight away. By degrees, by subtle signs of acceptance, he allowed her to embrace him as they lay there. When his arms encircled her in a hug of such simple, yet heart-warming fondness, she had to gasp. She’d wanted this to happen. She absolutely did. But the realisation that she’d found a way through a defensive shell into his affection caught her by surprise. The knowledge he wanted her moved Eden.

‘At last,’ she murmured.

Eden Page wrote this e-mail:

Dear Heather,

Here are some photographs. I hope you like what I’ve done with the house. You’ll see the kitchen is now in limed oak. The windows are twice the size they were; it’s made the place very bright and airy. The fire didn’t cause as much damage as first thought. I must add, Mr Hezzle and his family have been a great help. They really are wonderful neighbours. They’ve worked miracles.

It’s good to hear that Uncle Curtis is well on the road to recovery. The both of you retiring to Portugal has been very wise. I’m sure the climate suits you perfectly.

Tell me what you think of the photographs of the rooms now they’re finished. I think you’ll be amused by the one entitled ‘The Old Laboratory’. It’s now my study. Dog Star House is a home again. I’m very content here.

Lots of love, Eden.

With the e-mail sent, Eden stepped out into the pleasant sunlight of an Autumn afternoon. A few apples remained on the trees in the orchard. They glowed red with a full ripeness. Beside one tree a slight dip in the ground marked where her aunt had excavated the grave. Now grass had grown over it. From time to time, people would take the old path from the village to stand by it for a while. Each visitor would drop a coin into a narrow cleft that formed something like the opening to a rabbit’s burrow. Often they told Eden how pleased they were that she’d issued an invitation to practice their devotion whenever they wished.

Eden strolled to the back gate. The dyke, a narrow waterway as straight as a ruler, seemed to run through the fields into infinity. In the meadow Mr Hezzle drove his tractor. Cheerfully, he raised a hand in greeting. She waved back.

Content, relaxed, in love with her new life here at Dog Star House, she luxuriated in gazing out across this strangely beautiful, if forgotten realm of England. Eden’s eye focused on the distant horizon where ploughed earth became married to blue sky. Eden wished she could see a certain figure racing through the sunlight toward her. But she knew that wouldn’t happen by day.

He called on her at night. When all the shadows merged into one. When traffic absented itself from the Via Britannicus . When villagers closed the doors of their houses. Birds returned to their roosts. Cattle dozed in the pasture. That’s when Eden Page would open the back door to find him standing there, his bright eyes fixed on hers.

Then he’d softly stroke her face and whisper, ‘Eden loves’. In the past, his voice had appeared to emanate from everywhere but his lips. What’s more, it had been a disordered stream of half-memory mixed with raw emotion. However, gradually, over the last few weeks he’d begun to speak to her. Albeit haltingly. Nevertheless: speech meant mind. Mind meant intelligence.

Many a time these lines would run through her head: All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.

But she had.

A bird singing on the fence drew Eden back to the sunlit present. She smiled. The miracle had happened. For her, the changes in her body were quite plain to see. And her ancestors had provided her with the words to describe just what the result would be.

‘Our child.’

And will that birth mean the end of Mankind as we know it? she mused. Well only time, and Darwin’s ghost, could tell…

Pitt is twelve years old. Pitt is also crazy. Although it still shocked me when he told me what he planned to do.

‘You’re insane,’ I told him. ‘You don’t know what’s in there.’

‘Probably a psycho,’ said Jenny.

‘Or poisonous chemicals.’ Adam looked worried.

‘And missiles full of flesh-eating virus.’ I nodded at a sign on the fence. ‘That’s been put there for a reason.’

On the sign, this warning in big, shouting letters:

CAUTION!

RESTRICTED MILITARY ZONE

DO NOT PASS.

DANGER OF DEATH!

‘That clear enough for you, Pitt? You go in there you’re a dead man.’

He whirled round at me. ‘Hey, Naz. Are you saying I’m scared? Do you think I’m frightened of that?’ He punched the sign so hard it gave a heck of a clatter. Birds flew in panic from the trees. The notice was so old the painted side began to peel away from its wooden backing. The sign, itself, was a thin metal sheet. One still shiny enough to reflect the sunlight like hazard lights — as if to say: Warning. Peril ahead.