Migration

Eve

In the hot August morning, the air inside the tiny shepherd's hut was already thick and sluggish with the rising heat. Utterly still, the intense silence was only broken by the occasional hum of a passing insect, or the chirrup or coo of a bird outside.

In the timbers of the hut, insects scuttled and skated in the dark passageways that narrowed and gaped between every panel, occasionally venturing out to search the undulating surfaces for food or snare a smaller beast that fate had marked. As the temperature rose, the hut began to creak and groan as it swelled and twisted under the sun.

A rambling and haphazard gallery of photographs, newspaper cuttings, notes and maps covered every inch of the walls. Some were held up with pins, some pierced by nails or splinters, whilst others were jammed into creases or balanced precariously on ledges and lips. The scratched and dog-eared pictures showed small groups of people; smiling at dinner tables or waving at the viewer with their arms around each other, walking away through a forest, sitting by an ornate fountain, and in one jumping en mass into a swimming pool. As their feet forced up the first waves and spray from the water, their mouths gaped wide open in shrieks and shouts and their faces shone into the photograph with happiness and carefree joy.

By the door, a faded ordinance map hung from the timber, traced with elegant pale pink lines that curled and swooped to plot out the rise and fall of hills and valleys. Little teardrops of blue picked out the lakes and ponds that nestled amongst the contours of the land, and a solitary black line inched over the top right corner where a thin railway track wound awkwardly over the terrain. A red pencil line, faded and smudged a little, drew a delicate link from the north-west side of a patch of dark green, around the gentle terraces of pink before stopping and pricking into a large bubble of blue.

Pinned firmly to the corner of the map, a middle-aged couple stood in front of a large house with red shutters and a winding gravel drive. He was standing behind her with his arms reaching under hers and wrapping tightly around her waist. Her floral summer dress was scrunched around the waist and raised up a little by his embrace, revealing slender legs in white pumps that bent slightly under his weight. His cheek was resting on her hair, which caught a little in his stubble and forced her head to tilt slightly towards her shoulder. He was squeezing her with all his love and her face radiated a sense of belonging and completeness.

On the table tops, shelves and windowsills an array of things break up every surface, a scattering of keepsakes and memories. Two smooth beach pebbles, one black, one white. A wine cork with a faded date scratched in pen. A blackened silver watch with a broken strap. An old jam jar filled with multi-coloured buttons. A tiny porcelain child pushing an old style bicycle, his nose and fingers chipped away. A dented and rusted tobacco tin, scratched and polished from years of sharing pockets with keys and coins.

Almost disappeared in this tapestry of things, almost invisible by her stillness, Eve sat motionless in a faded armchair. She was remembering and, once in a while, her eyes drifted from item to item as she bathed in their evocations. The flowers that grew rich and strong at the bottom of her chair were faded and threadbare by the time they curled over the arms, and here and there small holes opened up in the fabric, offering glimpses of the dark knots of horse hair and old cloth that lay underneath.

Eve's chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm, the oven hot air drawn in firmly through her nostrils and then gently released with a slow, collapsing sigh.

As her eyes meandered from memory to memory she stopped on a small copper coloured coin on the shelf above the fireplace. It had a split cut into it that ran from the reeded edge right through the wreath of flowers and stopped exactly in the middle. It was his. He'd found it by a quiet country roadside when they were holidaying decades before, and had kept it in his pocket ever since. He used it to open bottles of beer when they were on picnics, or in friends' gardens for barbecues and parties. It was always a talking point, generating hours of speculation and theories as to who might have cut the slit in it and for what purpose.