Little Eve by Catriona Ward

Author:Catriona Ward [Ward, Catriona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780297609698
Publisher: Orion
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dinah

1931

Mary is ten. We go to the forest, as is our tradition.

Rose lines a basket with clean gingham. In it she places boiled eggs, a pinch of salt in a twist of newspaper, bloater paste sandwiches, ginger ale, three apples, half a plum cake.

The path is scooped out between high banks. Overhead bare branches interlock against the blue. The trees bear only sparse pennants of auburn. The leaves fell early this year.

Mary swings between our hands, solemn. ‘I am going to look after animals when I grow up,’ she says. ‘Like Rose.’ Rose helps on a farm. Calving and medicine. ‘It is called a veterinarian,’ Mary says. ‘Sister Margaret says that there is a college. I will go there.’

I see my fear mirrored in Rose’s face. There are too many ways for the world to blunt Mary, to show her what her place is. I did not even want her to go to the little school where the black and white nuns welcome her at the gate each morning. I was afraid she would not thrive. But she does; she comes home shining.

‘Let us find all the animals we can, today,’ I say to Mary. ‘That will be good practice for you.’

The forest is alive. We see dung beetles shining like jewels. A furious robin keeps pace for a hundred yards, chasing us off. Crows sit in judgement on a leafless oak. Starlings move overhead in mesmerising clouds. A young roe deer on skittish legs. No people.

‘A Cervidae,’ Mary says. ‘That means deer. It would be better if I could see them from the inside.’ It is something any child might say, isn’t it? But to me Mary’s face looks dark and small, as if the person in there had slipped away for a moment. Those fears are always stirring just beneath the surface, too. How much of me is in her, how much of the other one? Sometimes blood tells.

We spread the blanket in a small clearing, open to the sky. Mary eats the plum cake first. It is allowed, because it is her birthday. ‘How did my father die?’ she asks me.

It is not the first time, but the question has power today. She understands that, even at ten. On this day each year the past grows vivid, obscuring the present like woodsmoke. It is harder for me to lie today.

‘He was killed in the War,’ I say. ‘Lots of girls and boys are missing their papas, you know.’

‘I know,’ she says, worried.

‘But you have me.’

‘Look,’ Rose says. Something pours through the grass. Round orange eyes, scales marked like sunlight on bare earth. She moves slowly, great with eggs, looking for somewhere beneath the leaf mould.

I take her up in my hands. I support her swollen length.

‘Come,’ I say. ‘You can hold her, if you like.’

I place Mary’s hands on the grass snake, gently, so as not to bruise the cargo she carries within.

‘She is beautiful. Does she have little snakes inside her?’

‘Dozens of little snakes inside dozens of little eggs.

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