The Monkey Puzzle Tree (25 page)

Christmas was the worst time. She managed to bah-humbug her way through the season until the unavoidable mid-day Christmas dinner at Bryn and Carol’s home when the foolish hilarity, the grossly extravagant feast, and the threat of Christmas crackers and games drove her to leave early.

She walked Dora by the river in Windsor Park. Under a darkening sky, the ice-bound willows creaking in the north wind, and the hard snow groaning under her boots, she strode on until the dog stopped, holding up an ice-packed paw, mutely imploring that they return home.

Her work was in trouble too: her colleagues boring and her students insufferable. That last semester, arguing with a student about the meaning of a word, she had come close to a serious misdemeanour. The girl had objected loudly in class to Gillian’s correction of the word
emphasize
in the sentence, “
I can emphasize with my friends’ problems
.”
Gillian had explained her reason, writing all the forms of the words
empathy
and
emphasis,
in columns on the board, and doing a sort of riff to demonstrate their distinct uses, only to hear the girl say, “Whatever. That’s still what it means to me.” Others in the class declared that that was what it meant to them too, so what was the big deal? When Gillian suggested, tight-lipped, that they look it up in the dictionary, the girl said, against a background of nodding heads, that she didn’t care what it said in the dictionary, that it was what
emphasize
meant to her, so that was what it meant. Period.

That was when Gillian said, “Do you want a smack?”

There was a communal intake of breath, all eyes fixed on her. Switching quickly into damage-control mode, she added “…
is what I’d have been able to get away with saying at one time, but now I think I have to say, ‘You have a right to your opinion’.”

“You still saying I’m wrong, or what?” The girl was a scrapper.

“What I’m saying,” Gillian stated, “is that I’m emphasizing with your point of view.”

She got away with it, but only just, and the incident showed her she was in danger of losing her balance, at the very least. For the rest of the winter she would focus on her work and on avoiding aggravation.

April arrived with its threats and promises, bringing with it Alice’s sixth birthday. Gillian tried to take an interest in the party preparations, but as at Christmas, the whole thing seemed absurdly overblown. Once more, the expenditure of time and effort offended her: the extravagant gifts, so carefully chosen, wrapped in irrationally expensive paper, the loot bags, the junk food, the balloons and paper-chains, and the inane tape of Alice’s favourite songs playing non-stop.

Seeing her irritation at the music, Bryn changed the tape to one of a Mozart symphony that sounded to her like a bluebottle trapped on a windowpane.

“It’s only once a year,” Carol said, seeing Gillian’s expression as she surveyed the fairy cakes, the Rice Krispie squares, and the bowls of varicoloured Jell-O and of Smarties spread on the table. “Do you want to come and see the cake I made for her?”

“No,” Gillian said. “I’ll wait for the grand entrance.”

Carol pressed her lips tight together and tucked a stray wisp of ultra-blonde hair into her chignon. She kept her eyes down and went back into the kitchen. Gillian knew her daughter-in-law felt rebuffed, but it was not right, all this fuss and celebration over a six-year-old. Where was the child anyway? Instead of running to greet her as she used to, she had disappeared upstairs when Gillian arrived. Getting all primped up, Gillian supposed. Twenty little guests would be arriving in half an hour or so, all of them no doubt similarly over-privileged.

Incomprehensibly close to tears, Gillian watched from the shadows, as her granddaughter came down the stairs to greet the first arrivals. A little slip of a thing in an opalescent dress and silver ballet shoes, her exuberant ash-blonde hair held back by a glittering tiara, Alice received her guests like the princess she no doubt felt herself to be. The hallway was quickly filling up with other princesses, all set to party.

Later, unavoidably in the thick of it, Gillian endured the non-stop screaming and kaleidoscopic activity as best she could until, after the games, the absurd meal, the blowing out of candles on the Disneyland cake and the screeching of “Happy Birthday to you!”, the time came for the opening of the gifts.

Against a background of comments from visiting mothers on how much the child took after her, Gillian watched her granddaughter opening presents. Alice seemed delighted with them all, and thanked each giver graciously, as she had been taught, until she opened the last of her gifts, a handsome, lavishly-illustrated storybook from her best friend, Tiffany; the same book, Gillian saw with concern, as the one Alice had already received that morning from her Aunt Kelly, Carol’s sister. Gillian saw her granddaughter look up from the opened package, her eyes clouding over with uncertainty and her smile of anticipatory delight wavering into a grimace of distress at not knowing what to say.

The awkward moment was soon over, and Alice was her laughing, chattering self again, but Gillian had left the party. She stood rigid, staring blankly at the dark panelling in the hallway of Bryn’s house. Through the window of those distressed green eyes she had seen another six-year-old. In a stained, draggle-hemmed kilt and grubby yellow jersey, her hair cropped short for fear of nits from school, that child was crouched behind bales of straw in the dirt of an old barn, praying in vain to be made invisible.

Standing in the hallway, Gillian began to tremble, her heart pounding. She had never seen her childhood self that way before, always having unconsciously judged herself as an unwilling, but nonetheless responsible and guilty partner in the shameful goings-on. But she had been Alice’s age, for Christ’s sake! Just a little child! The long-simmering anger, now directed exclusively at Angus and on her own behalf, rather than on Gladys’s, boiled up and overflowed. Leaning her head against the banisters, she hung onto them until the shaking stopped.

Pleading a headache, she left the festivities. Bryn followed her to the door, offering to take her home.

“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “You just enjoy the party.” She heard, appalled, her mother’s voice.

She went straight home to phone the travel agent, talk to Simon, and prepare for a second return journey to Wales.

Bryn drove her to the airport, leaning forward from time to time to peer sideways into her face, unable to understand why she was going back so soon. “What happened at Alice’s party, Mom?” he said as they drew up, as she had requested, at Departures. “You haven’t been the same since you came back from Wales last summer, but I’m sure something at the party upset you even more. Was it something we did?”

“Of course not, darling. You never upset me. It was all about me and my unresolved problems.” She turned to face him. “I’m truly sorry about the way I’ve been acting this winter, Bryn. Tell Alice I love her to bits, would you? And please explain to Carol that I was very upset at the party by a memory of something that happened to me at Alice’s age. We’ll talk more about it when I come back. Now, just let me off here would you, love? I’ll be back soon.”

He handed over her carry-on bag, a frown of concern still on his handsome face. “What about Dora? Shall we take her? And shall we meet you off the plane?”

“Simon’s going to move back in. He’ll meet me when I get back.” She saw his face light up at that news, and kissing him goodbye, thought how like Tom he was becoming. “Don’t worry, Bryn,” she said, “It’s just that there’s something I have to do in Wales. There’s a place I need to see.”

W

“’Ere we are then.”
The bus driver turned around in his seat with a grin as Gillian made her way up the empty bus to the exit. “Croesffordd! The great metrolops! Knows somebody ’ere, does you, luv?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not now.” Gillian looked back from the pavement at his round, smiling face, fighting an urge to get back on the bus.

Don’t go! Don’t leave me!

“Oh. Well that explains it then, dunnit?” He waved a freckled hand. “I’ll be back at four o’clock sharp. Orrite? Cheers!” The bus rumbled away from the crossroads, past the row of stone cottages, on the final leg of its journey from Swansea to Brecon.

Shivering in the sharp breeze, she buttoned up her Aquascutum raincoat against the threat of an April shower and clutched her handbag. Standing on the corner where the bus had left her, she looked around at the tiny village she had first seen fifty years before. Down the road facing her was the little stone school where everything had been taught in Welsh. On the opposite corner, the chapel, Ebenezer, looked just as grey and grim as the first time she saw it. She turned to check if, by any chance, the square jars of sweets with their amber barley-sugar twists, brown and white striped humbugs and multicoloured ‘boilings’ still stood in the shop window behind her, but saw only a pale ghostly shape glooming back at her from the papered glass.

Thumbs tightly clenched, chin tucked in, she set off up the steep, narrow road between high, rough hedges, until she came to the turnoff for Maenordy. A cuckoo started up in the distance as she set foot after foot on the winding drive. She pressed on over stunted dandelions pushing through the gravel and past straggling rhododendrons until she rounded a bend and the house appeared.

She stood still, unsure. That was not how she remembered it. This was a dingy, off-white building, the slates on its roof uneven and broken, an attic window cracked. Brambles arched among the roses, the lawn around the bed high with the skeletons of last summer’s weeds. On the other side of the house, however, the barn was strangely untouched by time, the
monkey puzzle tree still standing beside it. Hand over mouth, she backed away, but stopped
.
She had not come this far, just to slink back home. Angus would surely not be here now, and this was where her search must begin.

She forced her heavy feet to approach and climb the stone steps up to the oak door, and her cold, stiff fingers to lift the brass fox-head knocker which fell with a heavy clunk, triggering loud barks. When the door opened, it seemed for a moment that Dinah, the beloved Springer spaniel of her memory, rushed out, waggling her whole body in ecstasy at her return.

“Daisy, behave!” A fresh-faced, dark-haired young woman in jeans and red sweatshirt smiled at Gillian. “Can I help you?”

Gillian cleared her dry throat. Her voice came out high and tight. “If it’s not inconvenient, I wondered if it would be possible for me to look around the house and grounds, and maybe ask a few questions.” She tried to smile. “I was, um, evacuated here with my brother when I was six years old, during the war, when Dr. and Mrs. Macpherson lived here.”

“Oh they still do,” the young woman said
breezily. “Come in, and I’ll tell them you’re here. What name will I give?”

“Tell them I’m Gillian Davies.” Twiddling and tugging the hair behind her ear, she watched the young woman cross the gloomy hall to the inner rooms.
They still do?
Even allowing for a child’s perspective, they had been middle-aged fifty years ago. They must be around a hundred years old by now. She had not reckoned on meeting them again. She had not reckoned on meeting anyone from that time right away; just on seeing the place, being there again, and beginning her hunt for Angus. Trembling, she bent to stroke the silky brown and white head, so familiar and comforting
,
of Dinah’s descendent.

The young woman was back. “Dr. Macpherson says please to come in.” She led Gillian through the mouldy-smelling stone passage, to the back of the house, and into the kitchen.

Smiling at her, seated at the same scrubbed, battered white-pine table, set on the same slate flagstones she remembered, were two people: a faded, elderly woman, draped in a beige, hand-knitted cardigan, her wispy, grey-blonde hair piled on top of her head; and a tall, rusty-haired man who could indeed have been the Dr. Macpherson she remembered, except that he looked to be in his late sixties, if that. He stood up to greet her, reaching out large, long-fingered hands.

“Gillian!” He clasped her cold hand in both of his. “What an incredible surprise! How lovely to see you again! Come and sit down. Have a cup of tea.” He pulled out a chair and patted a quilted cushion of blue and yellow squares onto which she sank.

“I’d know you anywhere,” she heard Angus say, as if from far away. “Same hair. Same eyes. Still the same old Gillian, eh? Let me introduce my wife, Janet, and,” he indicated the young woman, “my daughter-in-law, Rhiannon.”

They were all still smiling away as Gillian felt herself fading. Part of her seemed to have floated up to the far corner of the ceiling, watching and listening, while the rest of her sat at the table with those people. Angus was asking where she lived now, if she were married and had any children, and if she worked. The part of her on the ceiling observed that she seemed to be answering sensibly enough, saying that she lived in Ottawa, had one son, taught high school English, and so on. She heard Angus explain that that he had succeeded his father as the only doctor in the district, and that his son, Ian, a solicitor, was living with them at Maenordy with Rhiannon and their little daughter.

With their little daughter? Here, in this house?
Gillian pulled herself together “Did you say your granddaughter lives here with you?”

“Yes, Sally. She’s asleep just now. She’s almost three years old. A real little beauty, just like her mother,” he said, with a twinkle at Rhiannon, who rolled her eyes. “How about you? Any grandchildren?”

Gillian looked away, her stomach contracting. “Just the one. A girl. Six years old.” She was damned if she’d tell him any more about Alice.

“Six years old, eh?” Angus’s small brown eyes brightened. “I hope she takes after you. What’s her name?”