The Juniper Tree (21 page)

Seeing her pleasure in her grand-children, I asked her why she had so disliked me as a child. She said quite truthfully that it was because I reminded her of my father and that I’d brought her shame. ‘You see,’ she said sadly, ‘it was what they call a shotgun wedding. The whole thing was so humiliating. Producing a baby six months after marriage was a terrible thing in those days, so of course I resented you and I resented your father also because he didn’t love me, but was fond of you. I knew he’d go off with someone in the end and that’s what he did. I felt so bitter towards you both. I suppose in my way I loved the wretched man and that made it worse. You are very lucky, Bella, to have such a devoted husband, very lucky indeed.’ Mother was someone else I had to wear a happy face for.

I was fairly busy at this time. Now Miss May had gone away I did all the cooking and some of the housework. Mrs Hicks did all the heavy work – and there was a lot in that large house – and she also insisted on preparing the vegetables because she had always done so when Gertrude was alive. Jenny fitted in extremely well, arriving soon after eight in the morning to help the children dress and to supervise their breakfast which they ate in the kitchen. Bernard and I ate a stately breakfast in the dining-room, discussing our correspondence of which I had very little, and the gallery which he liked to talk about with me. Then he made a few suggestions on how I was to spend the day, gave me a peck on the cheek and would go off in search of Peter to discuss his work. Peter always worked in the house, never in the gallery.

On weekdays there wasn’t much cooking until the evening so I often had a morning more or less free to visit art exhibitions suggested by Bernard and then go off to the sale rooms. I became quite bold at the sales and sometimes bid for things that ran into hundreds of pounds, at least a few hundred pounds. I bought a French escritoire made of beautifully inlaid woods for £230 and sold my early Victorian one for £65 in the following week’s sale to pay for some of it. A pair of elegant Queen Anne pier glasses took the place of the Trafalgar mirror, one on either side of the console table; then the console table was changed for an earlier, more elaborately carved one, and so it went on and the contents of my secret room became more and more valuable. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Peter’s help and the use of his van, and it was he who found some of my best bargains. We’d sit down there drinking coffee and planning what to do next and sometimes Mary joined us. She called the room ‘Paradise Lost’, but I thought it was more ‘Paradise Found’.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

J
ohnny started having nightmares, so Bernard had his small bed moved to the dressing-room and he slept beside his father and the nightmares ceased. I was glad for the child’s sake, and yet I could not help feeling a certain resentment. Now, when the children played together and Johnny cried because he couldn’t have his own way, Bernard would appear from nowhere and accuse Marline of being rough with him. If they were telling him something both at once, as they so often did, he’d say, ‘Marline, be quiet for a moment and let Johnny speak.’ Sometimes she seemed a little hurt, but on the whole she took it very well. When I looked at my daughter I loved her so much, and when I looked at my stepson, with his fairy-story red and white cheeks, it cut me to the heart and I’d think: ‘He’ll always come first with his father. Marline and I are nothing.’ I became almost jealous of the child, and I’m sorry to say I sometimes gave him a slap when he was particularly difficult. He wasn’t naturally a difficult child; Bernard had made him so.

We picked the apples again a few days before Johnny’s fourth birthday. It wasn’t the happy day it had been the previous year, perhaps because I tried too hard. We had our picnic under the tree and Mary was there as well as Peter, so it should have been a jolly occasion, and it was for the children. Johnny was far more nimble this year and climbed about the lower branches of the tree although we were terrified he’d fall. Bernard would never forgive us if a big black bruise appeared on his snow-white skin. He didn’t fall, but anything made me nervous that afternoon. One minute I’d be laughing, then I’d find I was crying instead and Peter and Mary would exchange glances. I knew they were worried about me and indeed I was worried about myself. As my desolate marriage deteriorated, so did my health. I had headaches and found it difficult to eat, the food seemed to stick in my throat; but the worst thing was the depression, sometimes really black and terrible, and at other times just under the surface waiting to pounce. I’d sit in my secret room and tears would run down my cheeks; then, when I touched the beautiful things – the carving on the console table, the smooth inlaid woods of the escritoire and the Spanish virgin with her delicately carved hands and gold-embroidered robes – I’d feel comforted and I’d return to the household upstairs. There was only Mrs Hicks working for us now both children went to school, Johnny just in the morning. The policeman’s wife still came to babysit, but it wouldn’t be for long because she was expecting a baby of her own. We went out so seldom now, Bernard and I, that that wouldn’t cause much inconvenience.

Meanwhile a girl called Alison had come into our lives, a wistful girl with small breasts and large eyes that appeared to be appealing for help. She worked in Bernard’s bank and had cashed cheques for him for over a year without him noticing her. Then she turned up at the gallery one lunchtime and he recognized her immediately, quite startled to see her against a different background. He told me about her when we were having dinner one evening. ‘There was this timid girl gazing at the paintings with her big eyes and trying to understand them. She said she often spent her lunch hour in the National Gallery but now she was becoming interested in modern paintings after a visit to the Tate. The poor girl – she’s called Alison, by the way – admitted she knew nothing about art, but she so wanted to learn. Anyway, I promised to lend her some books and she’ll be calling for them on Saturday afternoon. You won’t mind giving her tea, will you?’

No, I wouldn’t mind giving her tea. And that’s how Alison crept into our lives. I do so hope poor Gertrude didn’t look on me as a kind of Alison. I think, I’m almost sure, she accompanied Bernard on some of his trips to Brussels and she didn’t have to study French first.

And now comes a terrible time, a time when I behaved quite out of character. It was as if my brain had turned into broken elastic. It had been so stretched and strained in one way or another and it was as if I had lost the control of it. The disaster occurred the day after the apple picking. It had been quite a pleasant day, really, and with Johnny’s help I was storing the apples in the basement hall. There was a long shelf near the gas meters that took about thirty pounds of apples and I decided to put the rest in my big chest, which had been banished from my room because of its clumsy farmhouse appearance. It had a great heavy lid and a great heavy iron lock and it now stood in a dark corner of the hall. It was difficult to open at first and I pulled it a little way from the wall to make it easier. It was empty except for a slight smell of camphor, so I left it open to air for a little.

While the chest was airing Peter came down the stairs carrying a suitcase. He said he was going to stay in Cornwall with his family for a few days and had come to say goodbye. Johnny wanted to see him drive off in his little red mail van, so we trooped up the basement steps into the sunny courtyard and Johnny climbed on to the bear’s back as most young children always did. People passing the gate must have thought what a happy-looking family we were with our beautiful, laughing child and stately house, though they might have wondered at Peter’s funny little van.

When he had driven away we went down the steps with great care because Bernard said they were dangerous, but when we reached the bottom step Johnny pulled away and started picking up the brilliant apples and roughly flinging them into the chest, laughing defiantly when I told him to stop. Then he started to climb into the chest.

I shouted, ‘No!’ and ran across the room and made to grab him, but before I reached him the lid came down, the lid came down, THE LID CAME DOWN. There was nobody to be seen, just the heavy closed lid. For the rest of my life I’d have to live with that great black lid coming crashing down.

Could I have been quicker, calmer? Could I have saved the child? Was I to blame for leaving the chest open? Before I opened it I thought I knew what I’d find – a little dead boy with a defiant laugh on his face. But when I saw him, his mouth was pulled down as if in horror and his eyes had gone all startled in a dreadful way. As I held my poor stepboy in my arms I lost my reason and it was as if I had become someone else, someone stupid and crafty at the same time. At all costs Bernard must never know what had happened to his son. I must find somewhere to hide him. It never occurred to my poor twisted mind to telephone for help; an ambulance could have been there in a matter of minutes. I laid him down on the dirty floor and ran upstairs to fetch one of Bernard’s fine handkerchiefs to wind round his neck to support his head. This seemed very important to me, rather like sticking a doll’s broken head together. But it didn’t work. His head still lolled. Then I remembered the kiss of life and kissed and kissed him; but it made no difference because he was certainly quite dead. All the same, I wrapped my cardigan round him because he appeared to be already growing cool.

My main idea was to hide him from Bernard. I would bury him in the garden. So I put him back in the chest while I went out to dig. The obvious place was under the juniper tree where his mother used to sit and dream before he was born. The earth was very soft and leafy there and it was easy to dig a shallow grave. I collected some strawberry plants which grew wild in that part of the garden and put them beside the grave to plant over it later on. Then I heard the church clock strike the half hour and realized it was almost time Marline returned from school, so I ran back to the house to close the lid of the chest, which I’d left open in the wild hope that he might come alive again, that a miracle might have occurred and he’d just be sleeping. I felt his forehead, but it was definitely growing colder and his little hands didn’t feel like Johnny’s. His arms had gone strangely heavy and fell back when I lifted them. All the same, there would still have been time to call for help but I couldn’t face Bernard and reveal what had happened and my poor twisted mind could only think of that. I remembered with relief that he would be late home that evening. He was taking Alison to a concert; she had now become interested in music as well as art.

I didn’t go near the basement again until Marline was safely in bed. I usually read the children a story at bedtime. They took turns in choosing it and this evening it was Johnny’s turn and Marline kept asking where he was. I told her Charlotte and her husband had taken Johnny away for a few days motoring holiday. Later on I told Bernard the same lie, polished up a little, and he believed me because he didn’t see my eyes flicker as they do when I tell lies. But he was very annoyed with Charlotte for taking his son away without his permission. He grumbled, ‘I don’t like it at all. He didn’t even say goodbye to me.’

And I turned my face away and said, ‘He wanted to go, you know how he is,’ and we parted for the night, Bernard to his room with the little boy’s empty bed beside his.

When I saw that Marline was asleep, I went downstairs and took Johnny out of the chest and wrapped him in my best silk dress, the colour of maize. I felt nothing was good enough for him. He was cold now and his face looked beautiful, even more beautiful than in life; but he was unexpectedly heavy to carry through the garden and into the spinney.

I found I was talking to him as if he were alive: ‘What a heavy boy you are, Johnny! We’ll soon be there now,’ and as I put him in the little grave, ‘Oh, my darling little boy! I don’t know what’s going to happen now.’ As I covered him with the leafy earth there was a faint rustle and I felt I was being observed; but it was only the magpies, their white feathers showing in the bright moonlight. There appeared to be more than usual, but they were quite quiet, only watching.

I planted the strawberry plants as well as I could, but didn’t like to water them because of Johnny getting wet. Then I sat on Gertrude’s bench and remembered how she had asked me to look after her child if anything happened to her. Well, I had looked after him to the best of my ability except for an occasional slap. It was Bernard who had spoilt him. I stayed on the bench for a long time thinking, and I kept shivering although it was a warm night.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I
don’t know how I would have got through the next two days if I hadn’t found a discarded bottle of Valium in Miss May’s room, the extra strong blue ones. They must have been there for years but they were still potent. There were sleeping pills too. They numbed my poor brain in a marvellous way, and although I was more or less in a dream, I managed to do the cooking without any disasters. Bernard said, ‘You are not yourself, Bella. Are you ill?’ I told him another lie. I said I had a touch of flu.

He stayed at home on Johnny’s birthday, his fourth it would have been. He was convinced that Charlotte would bring him home on such an important day and insisted that I prepared a large family lunch and all the things that Johnny liked, stuffed chicken and roast potatoes and a chocolate pudding with whipped cream. I said there wasn’t time for a birthday cake so he went out and bought one. As I worked in the kitchen tears ran down my cheeks; but I had had these crying fits for some time so Mrs Hicks wasn’t surprised. Bernard returned with the cake and said it was a beautiful day outside and wouldn’t I leave the kitchen for a little walk round the garden with him, it would do my cold good. So we walked among the last of the autumn flowers still brilliant and untouched by frost. Bernard was holding my arm, and we were closer together than we had been for months. I thought, ‘This is the last time we shall walk together in a loving way. When Johnny’s grave is discovered, it will be the end of everything between us. Perhaps Bernard will think of me with horror.’ I had a sudden idea and told Bernard I must leave him, there was an important letter I must write immediately. And I took his hand away from my arm and held it against my face for a moment, then ran into the house.