Humpty's bones

Six Months Later

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…