Humpty's bones

16. Friday Night: 10.30

When Eden Page moved toward the lab it seemed as if she crossed a threshold. She passed from this reality of the house, one that burned because Curtis’s mind had snapped, to enter another reality; one that seemed misty rather than smoke-filled. The house became strangely quiet. When she stepped through the doorway into the room that contained the skeleton she saw a pool of burning petrol on the floor. Its brightness equalled a noonday sun in the breathless zenith of summer. A desperate figure strode back and forth. It longed to save the skeleton on the burning table; only its animal mind couldn’t tell it how. Instead it pounded its bare chest with the flat of one hand, while running its fingers through its hair with the other. She’d expected to find a heavy ape face — a kind of muscular gorilla visage; all black fur, thick curling lips, yellowing fangs. Instead, she saw a fine-boned face of immense delicacy. No facial hair; the teeth shone white. From that face a pair of wise yet wounded eyes were held by the spectacle of bones beginning to char on the table.

‘Let me help,’ she found herself saying in a gentle voice. ‘We’ll put the bones into this bag.’ She pulled a canvas sack from a shelf. Ancient pottery fragments began to pop with the heat. Eden extended her hand to take a thigh bone.

With a cry the First Man pushed her hand away. His fingers were long, tapering, the kind of fingers she’d expect belonging to a musician. Despite the way he’d torn away the house door from its frame, he wasn’t stockily built. The name First Man had prepared her for an ancient creature but this was a man in his youth. His face had a smoothness of a sculpted Apollo. His naked skin was clean; the hair on his head shone with health. True, his nose and brow were the dominant features of his face. However, there was nothing ugly or beastlike; instead he resembled one of those graceful statues found in museums; of beautiful youths in pure white marble that are eternally waiting for the gods to breathe life into their still bodies.

The heat reached a shelf of chemicals that Heather used to preserve her finds. Blue fire belched out across the ceiling. The First Man didn’t flinch. He needed to save the bones of his brother.

That’s all that mattered.

All he cared about.

His mind had gone, true, but an old love still endured.

Eden once more reached out to the bones. ‘I won’t damage them. I’m helping,’ she said firmly yet gently. ‘I know about you. I know that you won’t hurt me. You are good and wise.’

He watched her move the bones from the table to the bag. There was anxiety in his eyes. He tensed, as if at any moment he’d snatch the bones from her. But then he understood. This female stranger wasn’t causing harm. She was rescuing sacred treasure from the flame. For the first time he raised his eyes so they locked with hers.

Eden moved automatically. Her hand glided across the table to gently transfer the bones into the bag. At that instant, it seemed as if she watched her actions from outside herself. There, in the burning room, stood a woman by the name of Eden Page. Her fingers were scorched by heat. Smoke formed a dense fog. Yet still the slight form of the woman worked to save the ancient bones. Her features were smooth, untroubled, almost relaxed. And standing at the other side of the table, a tall figure. A man who had carefully husbanded his Gift for eighteen hundred years. A remarkable man, the last of his species, and possibly the first of another.

Eden placed the remaining skull fragments in the bag. Her mind floated free of its flesh now. It seemed as if she passed into a coma as she stood there. A drowsiness seeped through her veins to feed shadows into her head. Ancient vases exploded before the intense heat. Hot air currents made her hair stream upward. Yet Eden only heard the beat of her heart; her skin felt cool. The First Man stepped through the barrier of smoke. He reached out slender fingers to touch her face. A sensation of taking a cold, refreshing drink on a hot day passed through her; a thirst quenching draught. Instead of smoke, she smelt dew on a spring lawn. Then Eden had a vision of this man — this young-old being. Perhaps what she saw had actually happened, and he poured his own memories into her brain in a way she didn’t understand. The vision revealed images of the First Man and his kind living here in houses made of turf and thatch five thousand years ago. Then refugees reached here after being driven out of their homeland by tribal wars. The First Men welcomed the exhausted people that carried their starving children. They gave the refugees food, shelter and so much more. Then she saw the winter’s day when Roman soldiers marched along the newly built Via Britannicus to their provincial garrisons. A brutally cold morning, when Hezzle’s ancestors hacked open the frozen earth to lay something withered, yet still glorious into the ground. The last of the First Men sang with his neighbours as men refilled the grave. That cleft in the soil would never be completely sealed, however. It would receive gifts of coins for the next eighteen centuries. The walls of the house began to flow. Eden realised arms supported her; the First Man carried her out of the burning house. Cool rain soothed her scorched body. The sky was a tumult of black, green, grey and blue.

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.