The Friday Tree (17 page)

“I’m not telling you anything, either, then,” Brigid replied. “And I could, too. If I wanted, which I don’t.”

The car slid away from the dark house, and the October sun dappled over the faces of the silent children.

Chapter 11: The Point

They drove out of Port St Anne, away from the narrow dark house, down towards the sea. Still, the children did not speak. Brigid’s father opened the window: the salty air, the sharp bite of the wind and the sound of one lone seagull hit Brigid like a slap.

In the mirror, she met her father’s eyes.

“Brigid, try to be less sullen,” he said. “This is for your benefit.”

Brigid opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wanted to blame Ned, but could not think how. And there was no fight in him now. She felt a little sorry for him, small and curled into the corner of the car. There was nothing to fight with.

She said: “Sorry, Daddy.”

He was no longer listening. He had turned off the road into a narrow lane, and driven in a circle so that they pointed again towards the little town of Port St Anne. The car stopped, he opened the window, and the cold salt of the sea floated in.

“Look outside to your right,” he said, “and you will see the house.”

The children looked. Far away, across a headland of grass and sheep, they saw a small chimney with no smoke, a sad and lonely little house right at the side of a cliff. Seabirds hovered about it and, in a cove below, water boiled and bubbled in frothy foam.

Brigid drew a sharp breath. “Granda!” she said. “It
is
the edge of the world!”

Ned, white-faced, pressed his forehead to the window, and said nothing.

“Right,” said Brigid’s father. “Home, I think.”

“But . . . Daddy? Aren’t we going to get out?”

“Brigid, for the love of . . .”

“Too cold today,” said her grandfather, “and too near the edge of dark. The next day you come, maybe we’ll go out to the farm on the Point. But you can see the lighthouse. Look now, it’s over there. You can just make it out!”

Brigid, disappointed, looked across the grey sea and saw a tall shape like the pillar of a gate, standing lonely on a rock. She shivered. She did not want to go there, now. She wanted to go home. In the silence, she heard her father turn the key. The engine rattled and started, throbbing as though impatient for them to be gone.

“Maurice,” said her grandfather, “is something the matter? You’re out of sorts.”

Her father, already easing the car across the gravel, gave his head a slight shake. “I have a slight headache, Pop. That’s all.”

There was a silence.

“Still?” said his father. “Still, that headache? Shouldn’t you see about it?”

There was no reply. In a stiff silence, they drove back to the house. All the while, Brigid’s grandfather told the children the story of the house at the edge of the world.

The farm, he said, where he had come to court Brigid’s grandmother was tucked away at the end of a narrow lane, a loanen. In summer, it was thick with brambles and red flowers of fuchsia, and if they came at the right time they might eat the sweet blackberries. For a second, Brigid tasted the blackcurrants from the summer garden at home. Ned did not appear to be listening, but Brigid did not care. It was her family, her story. When you walked down the loanen, said her grandfather, fields fell away on either side, silent, golden. Far away would be the sound of men working, distant shouts, no word distinct. Nearby, the quiet would be complete, not silence, but stillness, one bird singing, the sea breathing itself in and out, and they would taste salt in their nostrils as they walked through the cart-ruts, dried on the ground between the high hedges. Then they would see it, tucked away in a hollow.

It would come and go, he said, through the brambles, till they would round a small bend, and they would look across the gate and the pillar into the field, and then they would walk down to the edge of the world, to the Churn Rock they had just seen, boiling and bubbling, and they would hear the sound of the great sea crashing against the rocks below the lighthouse, winking far away. They would make their way over the field, between the grooves where the tractor had made its cuts, and then they would see the water swirling and splashing below, a high crescent of salt spray dashing the inside of the little inlet below the house. He said smugglers came past in the old days. Ned turned towards him for a moment, but only a moment, and the grandfather said he knew a sheltered place for a picnic, big rocks behind them, the calm sea away from the Churn Rock, smooth but white-capped, and they would look out as far as the Isle of Man.

Brigid settled into the back of the car, and she felt she had been, after all, to the house on the Point. Ned, silent again, seemed to be watching the sky go by through the hedge, over the horizon. Brigid turned her head. Behind them, the lighthouse had begun to blink in the gathering gloom and she could no longer see the little house.

“Granda,” she said, “why is no one there now?”

“Oh, families die out, Brigid,” he said, and then there was no sound but the engine of the car.

In the cooling evening, lonely seabirds calling, the car drew up once again outside the stone house. Brigid’s father turned off the engine, pulled on the brake, and then the silence was, for a moment, complete.

Her grandfather reached for the door handle, and opened it to the air. “Frost,” he said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“I can feel it in mine,” said his son.

Brigid, who could not feel it in her bones, had a more pressing
concern. “Granda,” she said, “will you come and see us? See Francis?”

“I will,” he said. “Very soon.” He looked across at his son, sitting silent at the wheel. “I have business anyway to see to in the city, and one of these mornings I’ll be on your doorstep.” He paused again, still looking at his son. “I’ll tell you what: I’ll come next week at Samhain. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” said Brigid, “but what is sow-an?”

It was too late. A light came on in the hall, and her grandfather, unfolding stiffly from the car, stood up straight.

“I’m done,” he said. “I’m an old done man.”

Ned, pulling at the door handle, made to get out of the car.

“You children don’t need to come in,” said Brigid’s father, with some irritation. “We should get on the road.”

His father looked at him in mild surprise. “They might need to pay a visit before the journey.”

Ned spoke up. “May I visit the bathroom, sir?”

“Oh,” said Brigid’s father. “Yes. I didn’t think. Of course, I suppose so.”

“And Brigid had probably better, too, hadn’t she?” said Ned.

“I think so,” said the grandfather, eyeing Brigid as he reached in a deep pocket for his latchkey.

“But I don’t want . . .” Brigid began.

“You do,” said Ned and, most unexpectedly, took her hand and squeezed it hard. He whispered in her ear, so close that his lips tickled her: “I’m going to show you something.”

He held on to her, not comfortably, but tightly, as they climbed out of the car and followed her grandfather’s slow step. Once through the door, Ned steered her straight upstairs, and along a dim corridor.

“Ned,” said Brigid, pulling back on his arm, “that was the bathroom there. You’ve passed it!”

“Oh, bugger the bathroom,” said Ned.

“Ned!” said Brigid, shocked, though secretly she was impressed, and stored it up.

“In here,” said Ned, and he pushed her into one of the rooms.

“Ned, this is one of the bedrooms. We’re not meant to . . .”

“Oh, shut up, Brigid.”

Another forbidden phrase was squirrelled away. “Do you want to see something or not?”

Brigid was torn. She knew they should not be here. She wished she were out in the car with her father. She did not know whose room this was, and looked nervously behind her. It had a silver-backed hairbrush on the dressing table, and hanging on the wardrobe was a coat of fine wool. Over its shoulder hung a silver fox, its eyes glittering at her. Her mother had one of those in her wardrobe, but it was dark brown, soft and sad, and its eyes did not glitter. Only one person she knew had a silver, glittering fox: Laetitia. They were in Laetitia’s room.

She could hear her grandfather’s voice downstairs, coming through the hall: “Are you children nearly ready? Maurice wants to get on the road.”

“Ned,” she began again. “How did you . . . ? Why did you . . . ?”

“For God’s sake, Brigid, don’t you want to know things? This place is full of . . . Here. Pull open that cupboard.”

It was a narrow cupboard, part of the dressing table.

“Go on,” said Ned. “She keeps secret things in there.”

Still, Brigid did not move.

“Maybe things for Christmas,” he said. “Presents, maybe?”

That was too much. She pulled open the door: it gave with a soft pop, like a sigh. Then, suddenly, horribly, something sprang at her, dark and formless, and she inhaled a musty staleness so pungent that she put out her hands to push it back in again, yet she could not and, as she pushed, another thing, white, snapped viciously in her face. She tumbled backwards, one hand to her face, the other pushing away the enveloping cloud of dusty cloth.

On the ground, sitting, she tried to fight her way free, and found that the thing had collapsed on her. It was cloth, lots of cloth, and the white was a shirt collar, stiff and yellowing, and there was a dark square of something. These empty objects lay harmless, dead, in her lap. Now, she saw the dark cloth was almost green, the white tinged with yellow, and the things were just a man’s jacket, a black shirt front, and a round collar. Brigid, her breathing coming more slowly, realised they were only old clothes.

She turned to Ned. He was watching her, smiling, and Brigid, in an instant, knew what he had done.

“You came in here that other time, when you went up to the bathroom. You knew what was in here. You did this on purpose.”

“Go to the top of the class,” he said. “Nice surprise?”

“But . . . why? Why did you do this to me, Ned?”

He did not move, and his smile stayed in place. “You’re such good value, Brigid. You fall for anything.”

“You’re a horrible boy, Ned Silver,” said Brigid, and she started to roll up the clothes, trying to push them back into the narrow space. It was not easy, and Ned did not help. He moved in an easy, leisurely way, like a young cat, prowling round the room, feeling the material of the curtains, picking up books, turning over the mirror, drawing out a hair from a hairbrush. Brigid grew hot, ashamed to be there, to be there with Ned.

“Brigid!” she heard. “Ned! Come on!” It was her grandfather’s voice again.

Outside, the engine was revving. Her father must be growing impatient. She badly wanted to leave, but she could not, how could she, until the clothes were put away – and something was blocking them. Frustrated, and anxious now in case someone came to find them, she rolled and pushed, yet still something blocked her. She reached round the bundle, skinning her fingers as she pushed against the side of the cupboard. There was something in the jacket pocket.

Skinning her knuckles further, she reached in: her fingers closed round a shiny pouch, slippery as a raincoat, and pulling it out, she felt it open. It held a packet of brown tobacco, musty, like damp leaves: tucked into the back of the pouch was a small piece of paper, with writing on it. The writing was very small, and blurred in places, but the signature was large, and Brigid read:
My-ra.

“Myra,” she said, aloud, but it made no sense, as a word or a name.

As she worked with one hand to squash the bundle of cloth into the cupboard, the box was suddenly snatched from the other and, angered and surprised, she saw Ned pull the paper from the box and stand, white-faced, staring at it.

“God,” he said. “God.”

“Ned,” she said, “that has to go back. It has all to go back.”

Ned said nothing, and at that moment Laetitia entered, a pale furious storm.

“You sneak, Brigid Arthur,” she said, and her voice was a hiss. “You sly little . . .” She raised her hand to strike her, and Brigid, lifting her arm to protect herself, remembered Isobel, furious in the garden. She looked in despair for Ned, catching sight of him just behind the door. Then she saw him slide round it, and ease out into the corridor.

As Laetitia’s hand fell on her upraised arm, she heard the lavatory flush, and Ned’s voice saying: “I don’t know, Mr Arthur. She was waiting out here while I went to the lavatory. I don’t know where she is now.”

So then there was her grandfather, standing at the doorway. He did not come in.

“Laetitia,” he said. “Leave that child, now.”

Laetitia, suddenly limp, took her hand away, and left the room. Brigid could hear her crying as she rattled down the stairs.

“I’m sorry, Granda,” said Brigid, and she could not hold up her head. “I am really sorry.”

Her grandfather lifted up her chin. “There’s no harm done,” he said. “It’s time we cleared out some of those things anyway. What good are they, now?” He took Brigid’s hand, and led her gently down the stairs and out the door, past the silent woman standing in silence beside the car.