A Place Near Eden by Nell Pierce

Author:Nell Pierce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Next morning, I woke to the sound of tyres on the gravel outside. It was early, pale light leaching in between the heavy curtains. My head was aching and my body was heavy, from too many beers. I was feeling so unwell that I forgot about the situation with the tank. I got up and went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. I bent my head and put my hands into the flow and started scooping water into my mouth, only to remember the brown muck, and start spitting it back out. And I hardly had time to register the error because already Sem’s boots were coming down the corridor, Celeste’s bedroom door creaking open on its hinges, and I heard him say, ‘Happy Birthday, C.’

I came out into the hallway to see Celeste pulling away from Sem almost angrily.

‘I didn’t think you’d remember,’ she said, walking down the corridor, not looking back at him. ‘It’s been long enough.’

It was her birthday. He’d remembered—and I had somehow managed to forget.

Things were off-kilter all that day. We spent the morning separately, each doing our own thing. Celeste painted on the balcony. Around lunchtime she drove into town and came back with a slab of water.

‘Take it slow,’ she said, as I eagerly twisted off a cap. ‘We want these to last a while.’

Sem slept in Celeste’s room until late afternoon, when we started drinking—at least, Sem and I did. I felt myself getting woozy with alcohol and let the hours slip away until night started to fall, and that was when Sem gave Celeste her gift.

Sem had had the gift made specially for Celeste, by an artist who lived a bit further along the coast. A ceramics artist, Sem explained, who had moved down from the city and built two huge kilns, for firing pottery. Sem had asked the artist to make a bowl, with a mottled green and blue glaze. It really was very beautiful, and I could tell that Celeste was thrilled. She held it in her hands and carefully turned it, admiring it from different angles, and then she went and put it in her bedroom, her face lit up by a huge smile.

It was the present that set the evening back on a good track. Celeste decided that she wanted to go to the pub. She wasn’t drinking, but she wanted to go anyway. Sem drove us in the red car, already drunk, soaring through the trees. He and Celeste seemed so fearless, laughing and chatting, while I sat quietly in the back, still not quite over my embarrassment at having forgotten Celeste’s birthday. She was turning twenty-one.

At the pub, Celeste drank lemonade while Sem and I had beers, and we played pool. I was terrible, my balls rolling sadly across the felt, no satisfying clacks. I drank a lot. I think Sem did too. The pub was a blur of faces, Sem and Celeste coming and going, another beer pressed into my eager hand. Celeste took off her shoes at one point, and danced in bare feet, but Sem wasn’t around.

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