The Friday Tree (37 page)

Just as Rose was about to turn the key in the ignition, Francis turned to her. “Rose,” he said, “I’m sorry. I can’t go with you. I’ve got to stay with Mama. I can’t leave her by herself all day.”

Brigid could have cried. It had been months since there had been an outing, and she so wanted Francis to be with her now. She said nothing. It would do no good.

“Yes,” said Rose, and she nodded her head with a sigh. “You may have a point. Brigid and I will be fine, won’t we, Brigid?” and she turned her thinness round to look at Brigid, silent in the back of the car. “Have you a nice game you could play while we go?”

“Yes, Rose,” said Brigid, but she did not look at Francis. “I have my Travel Ludo, from Christmas.”

“Good. You’ll be occupied then. On you go, Francis.”

“Thank, you, Rose,” said Francis, and then he stopped, and his face looked brighter. “I know,” he said. “Take Ned.”

“Ned?” said Rose. “Nobody said Ned was here.”

No one could have said, except Brigid, and she had no intention of telling that to anyone.

“No, he’s here,” said Francis, scanning the road for traffic. “Look,” he said, opening the door. “There he is behind the hedge. Ned!”

And there he was, as always, Ned Silver, silently watching.

“Well,” said Rose, “I thought he was still away at school. I don’t think I’ll ask him why he’s not. I may not want to know.”

Francis got out and spoke quietly to Ned.

Rose, through the window, called: “Ned? Will you check inside? And if it is all right, you can come.”

There was no need to check. Mrs Mulvey, polishing the brasses at the front door, waved down, “Please take him, Miss Durrant,” she called. “You’d be doing me a favour,” and before Brigid knew what was happening, Ned Silver was in the back of the car with her, yet again, and all she could see of Francis was a pair of long legs sprinting up the passage.

It was a silent journey. Ned was no substitute for Francis. Unlike Brigid, he did try at first to make conversation with Rose, asking her if Uncle Conor would be meeting them. Rose said he would not, and something that was like a steel barrier entered the car between the children and Rose, so that after that everyone stayed quiet, even through the drumlins and the green summer lanes. Halfway, Brigid did try to get Ned to play Travel Ludo with her, but he looked at it and at her with such disdain that she lost heart and put it away.

Only when they saw the sea did Brigid, almost in spite of herself, utter a sound of satisfaction. She asked if she could roll down the window, and she inhaled the salt air and took in the soft grey of the horizon, and the lonely call of the circling birds. She did not notice until they were past it that the car had not gone to her grandfather’s house.

“Aren’t we . . . ?” she began.

Rose drove on, steadily. “Your grandfather is walking out to meet us where the road ends,” she said. “He says he is going to take us to the house at the edge of the world.”

“But how . . . ?”

Ned dug his finger, sharply, in Brigid’s arm. “That, perhaps?” and he pointed to a telephone box, near her grandfather’s distant house. “Unless it was carrier pigeon. Or, I know, Pony Express. ‘
Davy
. . .’” he began to sing, and Brigid, raising her hand to give him one good whack, met Rose’s warning eyes in the mirror. She dropped her hand, and looked stonily out of the window.

“It wasn’t carrier pigeon, Ned,” she heard Rose say. “And it wasn’t Pony Express, and that will be enough from you. Anyway, don’t you think it will be pleasant to be by the sea on this nice day?”

“But, won’t Granda be worrying about Daddy?” Brigid asked, turning back from the window.

She looked again at Rose’s mirror eyes, and the hint of warning was still there.

“Not if we take his mind off it,” she said. “Your Aunt Laetitia doesn’t finish up at her school until tomorrow, and we can have a good day out with your granda, can’t we?”

No Laetitia? Brigid, her spirits lifting, nodded her head.

Where the road ended, they did indeed see the tall figure, in his black hat. Brigid thought, with a stab, of the day her father drove them to the hospital, and his hat and Granda’s hat had nodded and bobbed at each other all the way over and all the way home. Now, her father was in the hospital himself, and Granda was here, standing like a traffic policeman – like Mr Doughty and Mr Steele. Brigid shut out those names: she was going to the sea, and she would think of nothing else.

The car stopped, releasing a silence where the sky became a wider blue, the crying of the birds more intense, and the smell of seaweed and salt still stronger and more enticing. The children tumbled out of the car, and were greeted with handshakes from Brigid’s grandfather.

“Well,” he said, “this is an expected pleasure! I’m sorry that I have no picnic, but I am afraid I didn’t tell Laetitia where I was going. Enough on her mind. She’ll think I am out for a walk when she gets in.”

“We didn’t expect a picnic, Mr Arthur,” said Rose. “Did we, children?”

Ned and Brigid exchanged eyes, and it was clear to Brigid that he, like her, had rather expected a picnic: but they shook their heads, for once united.

In a straggling line, at varying speeds, they began to make their way across the grassy bank above the sea. In the distance they could see the little house.

“What news?” said Brigid’s grandfather to Rose.

“None yet,” she said, and Brigid could feel the careful reticence of her voice. “A little later, I’ll phone from the telephone box near your house, if I may.”

“The one you telephoned from, Granda,” said Brigid.

“Good girl,” said her grandfather, “to work that out.”

“I worked it out, really,” said Ned.

“Good boy, then, too,” said the grandfather, “though it might have been more gallant to leave a lady’s word unchallenged.”

Ned bit his lip, and Brigid felt a small rush of triumph. She thought, that’s for Davy Crockett, and missed the beginning of something Rose was asking.

“I didn’t want to involve my daughter in any anxiety,” she heard her grandfather say. “She knows that there is . . . concern, and I am leaving it there for the moment.”

Brigid did not understand what he was leaving where, but she said nothing. Ned had been put in his place, and it was enough now to concentrate on the rocks and tufts of the bank, clambering over a place where there once had been a path and now was none.

As they climbed, however, it seemed to get harder, and Brigid saw her grandfather reach his hand more than once to Rose. “I am sorry, Miss Durrant,” he said. “I’m so used to clambering about here myself, I forget what it must be like for a lady.”

Brigid thought, indignantly: two ladies.

“Oh, Mr Arthur,” said Rose, “I’m almost ashamed to say how much I am enjoying myself, just being away from, well, everything.”

“We could have gone by the lane,” said Mr Arthur, “but it is very muddy . . . and your shoes . . .”

“Are wrong, I know,” Rose said, with a slight laugh. “I should have worn walking shoes. I don’t know what I was thinking . . . Oh!” and she stopped, as the gable of the little house came suddenly into view, above a cove that seemed to be simmering green-blue, throwing up arcs of white spray.

Brigid and Ned, almost colliding, stopped where they stood.

“The Churn Rock,” said Brigid’s grandfather, proudly. “I promised this to you, children. Do you remember?” They did. “My wife used to say she used to lie awake as a girl, listening to the sound of the sea at night, and the lost sound of sirens, and the beam of the lighthouse . . . See over there?” and they did, indeed, see the lonely tower on a distant rock. “It made her afraid, she said, till morning came.”

Brigid took her grandfather’s hand: she understood that fear. She felt him turn to Ned, “Smugglers came here too, you know. That little cove over there,” and he pointed to a shallow inlet to the left, “that’s called Jack’s Point.”

“Jack’s Point,” repeated Ned, and Brigid saw his eyes look far away.

Then her grandfather put up his hand: Brigid thought again of Mr Steele and Mr Doughty. “Now, children, make a chain,” he said, “because I don’t want anybody falling in. It may not look it, but it’s treacherous. The last submarine to be sunk in the First War went down there. There are ships and fishing boats and God knows what else beneath that water, and I don’t want any of us to join them. Hold on tight.”

In her mind Brigid saw pictures: a child in the night, the sea’s high waves, far out at sea a creaking rigger tossed in a storm. She held tightly with one hand to her grandfather. The other she raised to be taken by Rose. The noise of the water and the crying of the seabirds filled her ears: it was impossible to speak as they passed above the inlet. Damp spray settled on their hair and faces, and the taste of it sat in their mouths. Brigid was terrified and exhilarated all at once, and Ned seemed lost in his own secret world.

Then they turned a corner and, quite suddenly, there was quiet. A small stone wall led to a sheltered place, mossy and grassy, and there was a little mound of stone, like a beehive.

“What’s that, Granda?” asked Brigid.

“Ned, don’t climb in there,” said her grandfather, his hand suddenly firm on Ned’s arm. “That’s a corbelled pigsty and, believe it or not, is a listed building. It’s a very ancient structure. No, there are no pigs now,” he said, as Ned’s face looked the question, “though I shouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t the odd ghost.”

Ned, peering, said scornfully: “I see no ghosts.”

Then Rose’s quiet voice spoke: “I’m not so sure,” she said.

They all turned to look at her and, receiving no response, followed her eyes. Above them, at the gable of the house, dark against the light, stood a figure, quite still. Brigid’s heart pulled tight: perhaps it was a ghost, angered at their having come back to the deserted house. How lonely and grey the poor house looked – no smoke from the chimney, the front door locked for years, the garden forlorn and abandoned, and a tall sentinel standing by the blank gable. In spite of herself, Brigid took hold of Ned Silver’s arm, and he did not pull away. Together, they moved a little backward.

Then the figure stepped forward, and she saw that it was Cornelius Todd. Confusion swept over her. Why was he here? He had not been seen since Easter. No one but Ned had even mentioned him, and only Ned seemed happy to see him now. “Uncle Conor!” he cried, pulling forward, but Brigid held on to his arm, restraining him, for no reason that she could articulate.

“Ssh,” she said. “Rose.”

Rose, white and a little unsteady, her hand on the arm Brigid’s grandfather offered, moved carefully across the stony grass, towards her former fiancé. Brigid, standing by the wall with Ned, saw her grandfather lift his hat in greeting, yet she saw, too, an unusual stiffness in his bearing. She noted that he did not release his hold on Rose’s arm. Brigid heard only “called to see” and “telephone” and “no response” and “came myself”, but she could not hear more without going forward, and some dim fear, something she could not explain, held her back.

Ned, by her side, pulled on her arm. “Come over here,” he said, and his voice was urgent. Brigid, still watching the adults, allowed herself to be led backward. “Look,” he said, and now he sounded really excited. “There’s this ledge, and we can look right into the water. It’s like a cave.” His hand was on her arm, and he felt strong as Francis. She glanced again over her shoulder. The adults were engrossed: no one would miss them for a moment. She took Ned’s hand, and they stepped out onto the edge of the rock. He was right. It was wonderful, the prow of a pirate ship, water around them and beneath them, spray salting their faces and, yet, they were sheltered from the noise, the hissing boom at once far away and close, hypnotically close beneath them.

Throughout her life, Brigid could never explain, even to herself, what happened next. One moment she and Ned were safely placed in a crevice of the rocks, close together and yet separate. The next, his arm was clasped around her, his face beside hers, his eyes deep as the sea and bright with sudden terror; a wall of white water was wrapping them in cold salt spray, and they were slipping, and falling, and gasping all at once. The next thing she knew was a pumping silence that was heavy and green, echoed by a pounding that was inside her head. Above her was black darkness like rocks and a wet, wavering blue sky. She opened her mouth, calling “
Mama!
” but water rushed in, salty and choking, and no sound came out. She tried again: “
Francis!
” No sound, more salt, more water, more rushing and pounding inside her ears, her whole head bursting, unable to breathe. She flailed and kicked, the weight of her clothes and her shoes pulling her down, but she kicked, and kicked again, until she broke the surface of the water, and the sky was blue and still, and there were dark figures above her, and she heard a voice cry “
Brigid!
” out into the wind. It was Rose, spinning above Brigid’s reach, her arms out.

Another cry sounded, without words. That was her granda. In the same instant, beneath and around the other cries, she heard: “
Myra! Oh God!
” Then, she slid beneath to the green gasping and the salt and the pounding, and the blue above wavered again, and darkness like an octopus enfolded her, and arms and legs that must be hers were flailing, not able any more to rise above the green waving ceiling, slowing down, giving way. And then, through the opaque swirling rush, her heaviness was lifted, a great sodden weight, straight out of the water, and a sharp slippery warmth came up beneath her.