Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

John had done it again ! He’d behaved again like he was the only one in the world that needed to know or decide anything! He’d destroyed Circle without asking anyone, and kept the ring for himself without telling anyone. He’d expected us to follow him and trust him, but he hadn’t trusted any of us at all.

I was so angry I didn’t even care about the ring any more. All I wanted to do was scream and yell at John. But I couldn’t do that then, could I? Angry as I was, I knew that we were all in danger. And I knew that everyone here needed to be able to believe in John and trust him, because what he said was right. We did have to go. We did have to take the risk of going over Snowy Dark.

But then an idea came to me. I realized there was something I could do to stop John having it all his own way, without messing up the things we needed to do.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘let’s do the story now. Let’s do the story of Gela’s Lost Ring . You can be the teller, Dix. I’ll be Angela. Harry, you can be the first Harry. Suzie Fishcreek and Lucy Batwing, you can be the first Suzie and Lucy. Clare, you can be the first Clare, Candy can be Candice. John can be Tommy.’

Everyone was puzzled by this at first. It was too sudden, I suppose, and they couldn’t see the point of it, and it sort of interrupted them in middle of looking at the wonderful perfect ring. But at the same time everyone could see it was, in a way, a suitable thing to do, to remember the story of this famous thing that had just been put in front of them. That was how we’d been brought up. Every Any Virsry we’d been told to remember things, to join the present up with the past.

As for John, when I peeked at him sideways, I could see that he was feeling just like I’d been feeling a few moments before. He was angry angry, he felt set up, he really didn’t want this at all, but at the same time he knew he had to go along with it. I hadn’t given him a choice, just like he hadn’t given me one.

Good! Serve him right. Let him see what it felt like.

‘So this is the story of Angela’s ring and how she lost it,’ began Dix, that kind pretty boy who had stopped to care for me and Jeff while John and the others went belting off to kill.

‘Gela never wanted to come to Eden. She and Michael were made to come here against their will by Tommy and Dixon and Mehmet. She decided to stay and start Family here with Tommy, because she thought it was better to live and see what the future would bring until Earth came back than to go into sky where it was pretty certain that she’d drown. But she was sad. She missed her mum. She missed her father. She missed her group, which was called London, like our first group here in Eden. She missed the great star — Sun — that filled up Earth with light. She missed being with people that she loved and knew. She was sad sad inside. But she didn’t show that to people. She made the best of things. She cared for her kids and did all she could to make their life happy. She even thought about us in the future and . . . and . . .’

He hesitated here, because he was about to say that Gela made Circle of Stones, which is what the story normally said, but he could see that it wouldn’t be right to say that any more (even though everyone knew quite well what it was that he was missing out), and that it was a part of the story that was now going to have to change.

‘ . . . and she made traditions and laws,’ he said, ‘that we still keep. She even made herself love Tommy, though he wasn’t the kind of man she normally liked, and even though he often got angry and sulky, and once twice he even hit her.’

He looked round at John and held out his hand for the ring. I could see John didn’t want to hand it over one bit, but once again he had no choice, not without spoiling the story. Clever Dix. Kind, pretty and clever.

‘Angela had a ring . . .’ Dix stumbled a bit in his words there, because of all the weird feelings that came with telling a story about the ring while the ring itself was right there in his hand, and his voice came out all thick and wobbly, like he was about to cry. ‘Gela had a ring, which was given to her as a present by her mum and her father. (They knew who their fathers were on Earth: they weren’t like we are here.) And the ring . . . the ring had writing inside it, tiny writing that said “ To Angela with love from Mum and Dad ”.’

He passed the ring to me and I could see that, although he was doing it for the story, he was doing it for my sake too, because he’d seen how I felt about John springing this on us like this, and he wanted to help me feel better. After all, we didn’t need an actual ring to tell the story. Normally when people do the story of Angela’s Ring , they don’t have a ring at all.

‘Then one waking, when she was out in forest scavenging, Gela lost her ring. It slipped off her finger somehow and she couldn’t find it. And then . . .’

And now it was my turn. I was Angela. I dropped the ring on the ground (out of the corner of my eye I could see John wince) and began running back and forth, back and forth, kneeling down, standing up again, moaning, muttering, beginning to cry.

‘Tommy! Tommy!’ I shouted into John’s face. ‘I’ve lost it! I’ve lost my ring!’

John screwed up his face. He really didn’t want to play. This was just timewasting to him, timewasting and unnecessary complication, and anyway he didn’t like the ring to be out of his hands.

‘I’m sure it’ll turn up,’ he said, without even trying to pretend to be Tommy.

‘What do you mean, you bloody idiot? What do you mean it’ll turn up , you useless lump? Help me look for it! Get it back for me. I’m not going to go on without it.’

I glared round at Harry and Suzie and Lucy and Clare and Candy.

‘What are you idiots staring at? Michael’s names! Find the bloody ring for me, can’t you? Do something useful for once in your whole life!’

So they began to look, some getting on their knees, some walking about. Clare and Candy began to cry. Harry was shaking all over and running about like he really did think it was lost.

‘I’ll find it for you, Gela, I’ll find it,’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll find it!’

‘Stop that racket, you snivelling kids,’ I yelled at them, ‘shut it now. I never wanted you, you know. I never wanted to be with him. I never wanted to touch him, never mind slip with him and have his kids . . . It’s my mum and dad and my friends on Earth I love, not any of you, not you stupid lot in this stupid dark dark Eden. And that ring, that ring was the only . . .’

‘Mum, please,’ went Clare, and she was really crying now.

‘Piss off, Clare. I can’t stand the sight of you. Do you know that? I can’t stand the sight of any of you . . .’

Whew! I really let rip, I can tell you. I screamed and yelled till my face was red and the tears were pouring down, and I was sweating and shaking all over. All five of my so-called kids were crying — even though one of them was actually my big brother — and a lot of the people watching were crying too. And the babies were yelling, and the bucks were going eeeek! eeeek! eeeek! in their cave. Even John looked scared.

It must have been scary scary that first time for those five kids, all those wombs and wombs ago, watching their mum fall apart like that and turn on them, when she and Tommy were all they had in the world. It must have been scary scary. Otherwise that story would never have kept going for so long, would it? Not when so many other things have been forgotten and lost, spreading out and out over the generations like the ripples from a stone chucked into a pool, getting smaller and fading away. And the weird weird thing about this story of Angela’s Ring was that it didn’t even have a point to it, no happy ending, no lesson to be learnt. It was like one person’s cry of pain, echoing out on and on and on through the generations, even after that person was long long dead.