The Friday Tree (40 page)

Then, in the quiet, she thought she heard a sound, a rustling. There it was again. Someone was there. She spun round, but she could see no one: then, “Brigid,” said a voice at her left, low and soft. It was a man’s voice, and she knew it, but she could not think how.

“Brigid,” it said again, “get back to your house.”

She craned her neck to the left, and saw a face she knew, half-hidden by the bushes.

“George,” she said, and something like joy shot through her. She was not surprised. “I knew you’d come back. I thought I saw you today at Mass.”

He nodded, sadly. “I went for your father. He was a good man, Brigid. Will you go inside, now, please?”

Brigid felt her eyes fill, but she shook her head. “Not till you tell me where you went. You disappeared. No one believed you were there. No one at all. Unless, maybe Francis.”

She heard an impatient sigh. She had heard plenty of those: she stood her ground.

“I’d tell you, Brigid, but I haven’t time. And it’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be out here at all.”

“You’re out here,” said Brigid, reasonably. “Just tell me why. Then I’ll go in.”

Another rapid sigh.

“Quickly, then,” he said. “Listen. That day, I just wanted to see you home, but I didn’t want anyone to see me. Do you understand? Same today. But I can’t take you home, today, because I have to wait for a signal that it’s safe to go. Now, please go in. Please!”

Brigid understood signals. “A smoke signal?” she said.

“A smo– ? No. Not that sort.”

“Sometimes I saw smoke at the Friday Tree. Up there.” She pointed to it. “It’s shaped like Friday.”

“Is it?” said George. “That was probably me. I hid out under that tree last autumn, when I had to get away from some people I used to . . . work with.” He looked about him again, anxiously, as if the people were there. “I don’t any more, so they don’t like me, and they’re after me.”

“I saw smoke not long ago,” said Brigid. “Was that you?”

“No,” said George Bailey, and he looked up at the Friday Tree again. “I hid in a house once winter came. But listen, Brigid. Someone fired a shot at me just now, from up there. The Friday Tree. Did you not hear it?”

“I heard something,” said Brigid.

“Then you know why I’ve got to get away.”

“To Bedford Falls?” persisted Brigid.

“To Bedf–? Yes . . . yes, there,” said George, and he looked about him, anxiously. “They’re expecting me.”

Brigid took this in.

“Will you go now, Brigid, please?” said George. “He might shoot again.”

“Does he have a real gun, like Mr Doughty and Mr Steele?”

He nodded, showing her his hand. It was bleeding from a long graze,

“Come in,” said Brigid. “Come into the house. Mama will make that better.”

George shook his head. He smiled, though his face looked sad. “I can’t,” he said. “I . . .” Suddenly he pulled back out of sight. “Brigid!” he said. “Keep in! Hide yourself.”

Brigid flattened herself into the bushes, her blurred sight just able to make out a shaking in the undergrowth below the Friday Tree. She saw a movement, then another, and a small figure and some distance from him, a man’s. A head like a seal shot out from the undergrowth, and she heard a loud report, and then the head like a seal disappeared, and the small figure disappeared, but then it got up and ran towards her, and she saw that it was Ned Silver, bedraggled, matted, but alive and running, stumbling through the carrots and the cabbages.

“That’s Ned Silver!” whispered Brigid. “We thought he was lost, all last night and the night before!”

George Bailey caught him, shivering and small, and Ned, half-crying, began to struggle.

“Don’t, Ned,” said Brigid. “It’s George Bailey. He won’t hurt you.”

“I won’t,” said George. “I won’t hurt you. Didn’t you sometimes come up where I had my hideout?”

Ned, dirty and wide-eyed, but shivering less, nodded. He said, “Yes. Was that yours? I thought it was the other one’s . . .” and he looked over his shoulder. “He has a gun. I saw him creeping . . .”

“He’ll not creep far now,” said George. “Someone has hit him.” He put his hands under Ned’s ribs. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he said.

Ned shook his head.

George nodded, and lifted him into his own garden, the blood from his hand leaving a smear on Ned’s already dirty clothes, her grandfather’s shirt and Laetitia’s trousers. It seemed a long time since Brigid had seen him pull the belt tight, in the house in Lecale.

“Will you keep my secret?” said George. “I haven’t hurt anyone. And I’m going away now.”

“Don’t go, George!” said Brigid. “Everyone goes away.”

“I’ve told you. I have to,” he said, simply. “Look over there.”

Brigid could make out, near the Friday Tree, the greenish black of a policeman’s uniform, with a glinting, smoking darkness in his hand that must be a gun, pointing at something down in the long grass.

“I think it’s Mr Steele . . . but I don’t know . . .” said Brigid, and a terrible thought struck her. “Oh, George, did he shoot that man?”

“He did,” said George, grimly. “It’s a wonder he didn’t hit the child.”

“Oh, George, then go, go!” urged Brigid. “He might shoot you too! Go, before he gets down here!”

“He’s not coming down here,” said George. “Look. He’s gone off in the opposite direction.”

Brigid glanced across. He was right.

Still, George did not move, and stood looking at Ned.

“I won’t say,” said Ned. “I promise,” and, dirty and dishevelled, he swivelled and ran through the garden as only Ned Silver could do – until Brigid heard a scuffling and, to her horror, the voice of a man.

“Whoa, there!” it said.

On different sides of the fence, Brigid and George, flattening themselves into the bushes, looked through the leaves.

Inside the Silvers’ garden, Cornelius Todd was holding the struggling boy. “Ned,” they heard him say. “Stop kicking. Now.” Cornelius looked up to the bushes. Without raising his voice, he said, his tone almost conversational: “You’d better go now. I can’t cover for you any more. It’s as safe as it’s going to get. And, Brigid, you should be inside.”

Brigid and George locked eyes.

“He does that,” whispered Brigid. “He just appears out of nowhere.”

George did not answer.

“I am going, Conor,” she heard him say. “Thank you for coming. You’d better get out of here, too,” but when she turned to see what Uncle Conor would do, she was astonished to find he was already gone, and Ned too. Her mother had been right. Uncle Conor was just like the Cheshire Cat.

“You heard him,” said George, above her head. “That was my signal. Time I wasn’t here. But Brigid? Tell no one,” he said. “Especially not Isobel.”

“I wouldn’t tell Isobel anything,” said Brigid, adding, in spite of herself, “but why especially not her?”

He was already half-turned away. “The man with the gun is her brother,” he said, and, as Brigid stood taking this in, George suddenly stopped, turned back and, reaching into his pocket, handed her a piece of paper, worn and creased. “Take this,” he said. “It’s a prayer. Say it for me when I’m gone. Get your brother to read it if you can’t. You can tell him about me. But no one else. Promise?”

“I promise,” said Brigid. “But, where are you going?”

“I told you,” he said, and he was already moving away through the bushes, his voice growing faint. “Bedford Falls.”

Chapter 26: Brother and Sister

In the days that followed the funeral, silence settled over the house. All who had come to mourn the untimely death of Maurice Arthur resumed their own lives. The bustle and noise, confusion and discussion, ritual and solemnity, all ceased. Brigid did not hear even the sound of tears, her own or anyone else’s. The house held only emptiness. In her room, she wrapped brown paper round an empty matchbox, and placed it in the centre of the theatre. No plays were imagined or performed. Marianne, her audience and critic, sat still and expressionless on the dressing table.

Yet, outside, the summer beckoned and, despite herself, a morning came when Brigid longed to be part of it. The sun was high in the sky, but she was still in pyjamas: no one told her these days to get dressed, to have breakfast, or to occupy herself. No Daddy read from the papers. No Mama talked of the baby God might send, or had not sent. There was no more Isobel, no Rose, not even Uncle Conor or Ned Silver. There was no Granda, no Laetitia, no George Bailey. The house held three lonely people and a budgerigar, and suddenly, that sunny morning, Brigid had had enough.

“I’m going up to the garden,” she announced to Marianne, silent and unresponsive on the dressing table. “You look after things here.” She took herself downstairs, running her hand along the banister, swinging as she had been forbidden to do on the newel post at the end. Here, a long time ago, Francis had cowered in fear at her cowgirl suit and her gun. That was the day her parents had come back to them, their voices floating from the sitting room. Now that room, like the hall, though filled with morning sunshine, lay still. One window sat slightly open, the curtain moving slowly in the summer breeze. No one had thought to close it. Shafts of light caught dust-motes that nobody would brush away. In the dining room stood the table where her father had lain in his box the night before the funeral. Brigid closed her mind: she would not have that memory.

She went to see Dicky and lifted the cover from his cage. He sat with his head under his wing: one dark, wary eye looked out. With a little trepidation, Brigid opened the cage, and reached her finger to scratch his head.

“Hello, Dicky,” she said.

Dicky looked straight at her with his black, gleaming eye. “Hello, Dicky,” he said, his voice cracked and croaking.

Brigid felt her mouth drop open and, filled with amazement, she turned and ran from the room, round the banister, up the stairs, down the long corridor under Blessed Oliver, and into the new silence of Francis’ room. He was sitting on his bed and, like her, he was in pyjamas. In front of him sat an old book she had often seen on his shelves, and on the open page she saw the words: “
Brother and Sister
.” He looked up, but he did not seem surprised to see her.

“Brigid,” he said, “I was just going to get you. I want to show you someth–”

“Francis,” she cried, hardly able to take the time to tell him. “Come downstairs. Dicky’s talking!”

Francis, eyes wide as her own, swung his legs down from the bed and took off along the corridor, downstairs and into the kitchen, Brigid scrambling after him. Breathless, tumbling over each other, they arrived to an empty room: the door of the cage lay open as Brigid had left it, but there was no Dicky. They stopped, and Brigid, her heart pounding, saw what had happened.

“Oh, Francis,” she cried, “the window was open. I’ve let him get out!”

He took her arm. “It’s all right,” he said, though she could hear his heart, loud as her own. “He’s done this before. We know where he’ll be.”

“The Friday Tree?” said Brigid.

Francis nodded. He was already on his way out the door. “Are you coming?”

“Yes . . . but Francis, the Friday Tree was where that man . . .”

“Brigid, it’s still the same tree. Are you coming?”

Still in pyjamas and slippers, unwashed and dishevelled, Francis and Brigid ran out through the kitchen, the back yard, up the steps and along the path as they had done so often the previous summer. Now, Brigid could keep up more easily, and she could climb over the fence without help. She remembered to pull a docken leaf against the nettle stings, and did not say a word when the nettles inevitably brushed her.

Though the morning was bright, there was no one in the plot. Neither Mr Doughty nor Mr Steele had been there since the day of the funeral, and the young vegetables that had survived the running and the trampling, feathery tops of carrots and lush potato plants, waved about unattended, parting easily for the children. At the top of the plot, the Friday Tree stood above them, its fresh summer green an invitation to climb.

“Dicky!” called Francis, softly.

“Dicky!” cried Brigid.

“Oh, not loudly, Brigid,” said Francis, and his voice was filled with anxiety. “Don’t frighten him.”

They stopped, and listened. They heard songbirds and whirring insects, far away a dog barked in crazy joy, but they did not hear
Dicky. Brigid looked at Francis’ face, creased with anxiety.

“Francis,” she said. “I don’t think he’s here.”

Francis looked up through the leaves, and held on to a slender branch. “He’s here,” he said. “We just have to be patient.” He folded his legs under him, and sat down on the patch of pale grass where the camp had been.

“Francis,” said Brigid, “that’s where –”

“I know,” said Francis. “It doesn’t matter now. He won’t be back.”

Brigid did not know whether Francis meant the man with the gun, or Ned Silver.

“Where is he now?” she said.

“I don’t know. Prison, maybe.”

“I meant Ned,” said Brigid.

“I don’t know where he is now,” said Francis. “With his father, I suppose.”