The Daughters of Eden Trilogy

by Michelle Paver

  The outing was a success. Max loved every minute of it. He loved it when the big steamer set off for Ireland from the New Pier; he loved it when a fishing boat came in from the foreshore with a cargo of oysters. He loved the vanilla ice which Maud bought for him at the kiosk on Harbour Street, and he insisted on reading aloud the legend stamped on the stone bottle of ginger beer which Belle bought him to wash down the ice: Drink Fedele Bonugli’s High-Class Ginger Beer, Stranraer. Belle enjoyed his enjoyment, and for a while she almost forgot about Adam. The worry returned as soon as they started for home.

  Maud got out with Max at Cairngowrie House, as they hadn’t yet paid the daily visit to Julia, and Belle drove on alone to the Hall. She arrived in time to catch Drum, who was on the point of leaving.

  ‘I came to say goodbye,’ he told her as they walked in the grounds.

  Belle threw him a surprised glance. ‘Goodbye? Where are you going?’

  He pulled down his mouth in a mock grimace. ‘Where do misfits usually end up? The colonies, dear girl.’

  ‘You’re leaving the country? But – isn’t that a little extreme?’

  He shook his head. ‘Best thing for me. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. Fresh start. New faces. It’s what I need.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Ah, now, I think you’ll approve of that. Adam’s helped me find a position on his great-aunt’s estate.’

  Belle stopped. ‘You’re going to Jamaica?’

  He grinned. ‘I shall be a sugar planter, like your papa. Do you think I’ll be any good?’

  She was too astonished to speak. Astonished, and oddly disturbed. ‘Of course you will,’ she said at last. ‘It’s just – well, to be honest, I’m jealous.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, then you shall have to come out and see me, very soon.’

  She swallowed. ‘I don’t think I shall be doing that for a while. I haven’t been back for years.’

  ‘Oh. Oh dear. Not trouble at home?’

  She hesitated. ‘Sort of.’

  He seemed to sense that there was more to it than she wanted to talk about, for he gave her shoulder an awkward little pat. ‘Bad luck, old girl. But maybe – it’s none of my business, I know, but maybe you should just think about coming out? Might do you some good. You’re looking a little . . . well, down.’

  She did not reply. She’d been thinking about going back ever since East Street. She’d had daydreams about introducing Adam to her father. She could see how it would be in every detail. They were on the verandah overlooking the cane-pieces: Papa and Mamma, and herself and Adam, standing at the balustrade among the tree-ferns and the bougainvillea, laughing at the twins playing on the lawn with the dogs.

  You’re such a fool, she told herself savagely. Why even think about it? It’s never going to happen.

  ‘I hear old Ma Palairet’s a bit of a dragon,’ said Drum, dragging her back to reality.

  ‘Old Louisa?’ she said with an effort. ‘She wants to be, but she isn’t really. Unlike my Great-Aunt May, who really is a dragon, and best avoided.’ She paused. ‘I’ll write to my people and tell them you’re coming. They’ll like you. And I think you’ll like them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I shall.’

  They walked on in silence. Then she said, ‘Have you seen much of Adam, these days?’ She’d tried to speak lightly, and was annoyed to hear the tension in her voice.

  ‘Now and then,’ he replied.

  ‘Drum, what’s the matter with him?’

  He threw her a curious look.‘I don’t know. I thought you’d know. I thought – well. I thought he was fond of you.’

  ‘So did I,’ she said.

  That evening, Belle made a special effort. She wore a gown that Adam hadn’t seen before, of deep purple satin which made her feel sophisticated and ready for anything. She knew it was a success because he didn’t look at her once when they met for drinks before dinner.

  Luckily, Maud was in a talkative mood, and didn’t seem to notice that Belle hardly said a word. ‘I’m letting Max come down and say goodnight,’ she told Adam. ‘It’s a reward for persistence. Julia let him stroke her wing this afternoon.’

  Adam handed her her sherry, then returned to the side table to top up his whisky. ‘I wouldn’t let him get too attached,’ he said quietly.

  Maud paused with her glass halfway to her lips. ‘Why not? A boy ought to get used to being with animals. It’s—’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Adam, ‘but he’ll only get upset when he leaves.’

  Belle and Maud exchanged startled glances.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Belle.

  Maud put down her glass on the side table. ‘Why should he leave?’

  ‘He can’t stay here for ever,’ said Adam. He went to the chimney-piece and stood looking down at the fire. ‘I had a letter from his father’s sister.’

  Maud put her hand to her cheek.

  ‘She used to live in Lübeck,’ Adam went on, ‘but now she’s settled in Somerset. Married to an attorney. They seem decent people, and they’ve two boys of their own. If we can sort it out with the lawyers, they’re willing to take him.’

  ‘I should imagine they are,’ Belle said drily. ‘Exactly how much is Max worth these days?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Adam over his shoulder. ‘All the assets are in trust till he’s twenty-one; no-one can get at them. Sibella saw to that.’

  ‘But . . .’ began Maud. ‘He can’t leave now.’

  ‘Sooner or later,’ said Adam, ‘he’ll have to. It’s either Somerset or boarding school.’

  ‘Boarding school?’ cried Belle and Maud together.

  ‘But – Adam,’ said Maud, her voice shaking with emotion, ‘boarding school is the very last thing that child needs.’

  ‘Maud’s right,’ said Belle. ‘He’s just finding his confidence. If he went now it’d be disastrous. The other boys would eat him alive.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Adam. He ran his hand over the chimney-piece. ‘School would toughen him up.’

  ‘You don’t seriously believe that,’ said Belle. ‘Adam, what’s this about? Why—’

  The door opened, and in came Nelly with Max. He was shiny-faced from his bath, and clutching a book to his dressing gown. Belle noticed that Deeds of Pluck and Daring had given way to Langley’s Illustrated Birds of Scotland.

  Maud saw her looking at it. ‘It was Adam’s when he was a boy,’ she explained. Then she turned to Adam and said stiffly, ‘I take it that you’ve no objection to his having it?’

  He opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of it.

  Max approached him with a shy smile. ‘Look, Captain Palairet.’ He’d been keeping his place with his finger, and now he opened the book at an engraving of a small brown bird sitting on a rock. ‘I saw one just like it this afternoon, sitting on a rock in exactly the same way.’

  Belle looked at Adam over Max’s head. ‘Adam, you can’t—’

  ‘Now is not the time,’ he cut in.

  ‘Captain Palairet,’ said Max, frowning at the engraving. ‘When you were my age, what was your favourite bird?’

  ‘It’d be the worst thing possible,’ said Belle. ‘Surely you couldn’t—’

  ‘Was it a cormorant, like Miss McAllister’s?’

  ‘I’m being realistic,’ said Adam between his teeth.

  ‘Captain Palairet—’

  ‘What?’ snapped Adam.

  There was a shocked silence.

  Very carefully, Max closed the book and hugged it to his chest. His shoulders crept up round his ears.

  ‘Don’t take on, now, Max,’ said Miss McAllister. ‘Captain Palairet’s merely tired. Come along, let’s go upstairs.’

  But Max didn’t move. He drew a deep breath which ended in a gulp. ‘Is it not all right that I have the book?’ he whispered. ‘Do you want me to give it back, sir?’

  Adam rubbed his temple. ‘Of course it’s all right,’ he
said. ‘Now take the book and just – go along to bed.’

  ‘That,’ said Belle, ‘was unforgivable.’

  Adam did not reply.

  She’d come downstairs and found him standing at the drawing-room window with his hands in his pockets and a half-full tumbler of whisky beside him on the window sill.

  ‘To snap like that without reason,’ she said. ‘You know how he worships you—’

  ‘Aren’t you making a fuss over nothing?’ he said without turning his head.

  ‘It isn’t nothing to Max. I went to say goodnight to him just now. Do you know what he said? He said he quite understands that he oughtn’t to keep the book, because you’re a soldier and brave, and he’s not . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Adam, don’t you see? You mean so much to him—’

  ‘So shoot me,’ Adam said brusquely. He turned to face her, and she felt a flicker of alarm. ‘Well, now you know,’ he said. ‘I drink too much, and I snap at children. Not quite the paragon you seemed to think I am.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were a paragon,’ she said. ‘But I did think that you—’

  ‘I cannot be a father to that boy,’ he said with such violence that she took a step back. ‘I cannot love him. I cannot – love anyone.’

  As he said it, he met her eyes. Then he turned and reached for his glass.

  In the fireplace an ember cracked.

  Adam flinched.

  Belle didn’t move.

  ‘I think . . .’ she said at last, ‘I think I understand.’

  He did not reply.

  ‘How stupid of me,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to think that you— Well. That you might be starting to— But you’ve made it very clear. You can’t love anyone. My mistake.’

  Still he said nothing. He simply stood there, staring down at his glass.

  ‘But please,’ she said. ‘Just because I’ve made a mistake, don’t take it out on Max.’

  Somehow she managed to turn and walk away, and get out into the chill gloom of the hall.

  He didn’t come after her, and he didn’t call her back.

  The next morning, Maud took a subdued and silent Max down to the House. Adam worked in his study. Belle stayed in her room, packing.

  No more prevarication. No more deluding herself. For whatever reason, Adam had reached a decision about her. He didn’t love her. So it would be best for everyone if she left.

  Maud and Max did not return for luncheon, and Belle couldn’t face going downstairs on her own. Adam didn’t send to ask if she wanted a tray, which was just as well. There was a knot in her stomach. She couldn’t have eaten a thing.

  Around four, she heard a door slam, and urgent voices in the hall. She went to the top of the stairs and leaned over the balustrade.

  Maud and Adam stood facing one another in the hall. Plainly, Adam had just come out from his study, and Maud had run in from outside. She was hatless and out of breath, her shoes and stockings spattered with mud. She looked as if she’d run all the way from the House. ‘Oh God,’ she gasped, ‘Oh God oh God—

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Adam, taking her elbow and leading her to a chair. ‘Is it—’

  ‘That stupid girl!’ Maud burst out. She slumped onto the chair and gripped the sides with both hands. ‘I told her never to leave the door open—’

  ‘What girl?’ said Adam.

  ‘Susan!’ cried Maud. ‘Stupid, wretched, stupid—’

  ‘Maud,’ said Adam, ‘what are you talking about?’

  Maud clutched his arm. ‘I couldn’t find them,’ she said. ‘I followed the tracks in the sand towards the Point and then – then I lost them. And the tide’s coming in, and – I couldn’t – I couldn’t find them!’

  ‘Find who?’ said Belle.

  Adam glanced up and met her eyes.

  ‘Julia’s gone,’ said Maud. ‘And so is Max.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Max of the Black Watch was going over the top to rescue his pal, and if he had to die heroically to save her, then so be it. He knew she was out here somewhere. He’d seen her swooping low over the sand, and he’d heard her cries as the dastardly Boche ravens launched their attack . . .

  But he couldn’t find her. The sea mist had crept up on him when he wasn’t looking, and he didn’t know where he was.

  Miss McAllister would be furious. He’d rushed out without hat or coat or mittens, and now he was so cold that his teeth were chattering. He couldn’t even feel his toes. He was going to get most awfully told off.

  ‘Never go out of sight of the House,’ she always warned. But he was so far out of sight that he couldn’t tell where the coast road had gone. He was in a deadly world of swirling mist and threatening seals; he was facing an icy, heaving sea that quite possibly contained tiger sharks.

  The fear was an iron band round his chest. He couldn’t breathe. But he couldn’t turn back. His pal needed him.

  ‘Julia!’ he cried. ‘Where are you?’ The mist muffled his voice as if he were under water.

  A distant squawk. But was it raven, seagull or macaw? And which way?

  The wet sand dragged at his feet. Water slopped into his boots. The sea was getting closer and closer in a way he’d never seen before: each wave clawing a little higher up the beach, as if it were after him.

  A gust of wind parted the mist like a curtain, and he saw a finger of rock sticking out into the sea – and on it a flash of red amid a flurry of black.

  ‘Julia!’ he shouted. ‘I’m coming!’

  Grabbing a stick of kelp to beat off the marauders, he leapt onto the rocks.

  They were slimy with seaweed. He slipped and went down, banging his knee painfully. Cold waves slapped him in the face, making him splutter. He grabbed at the rocks to push himself upright. His hands were so cold that he didn’t know he’d cut them until he looked down and saw the blood.

  A seal bobbed out of the water and stared at him with bulging black eyes. It was huge. Max gripped his kelp stick, and prayed that Miss Lawe was right about seals never attacking humans.

  ‘Go away,’ he cried, waving his stick.

  The seal disappeared beneath the waves, then bobbed up again.

  Through the mist, Max saw Julia flapping her wings and lashing out with her formidable beak; the ravens lifting in a tattered cloud.

  ‘Go away!’ Max yelled at the seal, brandishing his stick. He lost his footing and crashed into the sea.

  If anything happens to that boy, thought Adam as he pulled on the oars. If anything happens . . .

  The mist was so thick that he could hardly make out the prow. Rocks loomed with alarming suddenness. He could feel the incoming tide dragging at the boat. With each pull on the oars, the old wound in his chest ached savagely.

  ‘No more racing across No-Man’s-Land for you,’ Clive had told him, ‘but you’re fit enough for ordinary duty.’ Adam wondered if rescuing small boys and parrots qualified as ordinary duty. Judging by the pain in his chest, probably not.

  The next moment, he saw them. A small figure cowering at the tip of the promontory, clutching what looked like a baby wrapped up in cloth.

  ‘Captain Palairet!’ yelled Max, trying to stand, and nearly toppling into the sea. ‘Here I am!’

  ‘I can see you,’ called Adam. ‘Don’t move, I’ll come and get you.’

  The tide was running fast, but the sea was no more than choppy, so it wasn’t too hard to bring the boat about and get near the rocks. As Adam approached, Max tried to hold the bundle out to him, and nearly lost his balance. ‘I found Julia,’ he said unnecessarily. Now that help had arrived, he seemed more excited than scared. ‘I wrapped her up in my jacket, like in “How They Saved The Pets”.’

  ‘Max, listen to me,’ said Adam. ‘I’m going to come alongside and you’re going to pass me Julia, then climb in yourself. Got that?’

  Max nodded.

  As Adam drew closer, he saw that the boy was soaking wet, and shaking so hard that he could hardly stand.

  ‘Change of plan,
’ said Adam. ‘Just stay there and don’t move.’ With the oars out of the water, he stood up, bracing his legs against the sides, then leaned over and lifted boy and bundle bodily into the boat. Then he whipped off his own jacket and wrapped it round Max.

  ‘B-but you’ll catch cold,’ stuttered Max.

  ‘No I won’t, I’m rowing. Did you fall in?’

  Max nodded. ‘I was warding off a seal and I slipped. But I climbed out, and then I got Julia. I think she was glad to see me, but I had to wrap her up to stop her scratching.’

  ‘That was brave,’ said Adam.

  Max wiped the seawater from his face. ‘The ravens were scared of me,’ he said. ‘They flew away.’

  The boy had been given a warm mustard bath and was tucked up in bed with two hot water bottles and a mug of steaming milk before Maud allowed herself to hope that he might survive.

  ‘You look as if you could do with a drink, too,’ said Belle, who was seated at the foot of the bed. ‘Why don’t you go downstairs? I’ll stay with him till the doctor arrives.’

  Maud hesitated.

  ‘You’ll come back soon?’ said Max with an anxious frown. He looked very small in her bed, incongruously wrapped in her warmest flannelette nightdress, and with both hands bandaged. He seemed embarrassed at the fuss he’d caused, and it had taken some time to reassure him that he wasn’t going to be told off.

  ‘Of course I shall come back,’ Maud told him. ‘This is my room. Now no more talk, and drink your milk.’

  ‘Come back soon,’ he mumbled.

  Maud managed to get herself out onto the landing before her knees gave way and she sat down heavily at the top of the stairs.

  She’d never fainted in her life, but she’d come close to it when she’d seen Adam striding out of the mist with that terrible, limp bundle in his arms.

  And now here they all were, safely back at Cairngowrie House, and waiting for Dr Bailey. Julia was downstairs in her enclosure and, from the sound of it, giving Adam merry hell; and the boy was tucked up in her bed, and requesting that she come back soon.

  He was asking for her; not for Adam or Belle. He was sticking like a limpet to plain old Miss McAllister.