The Monkey Puzzle Tree (26 page)

“No. She does not take after me. Not in any way. She’s plump, and dark, and her name,” she looked straight at him, “is Gladys.”

“Gladys, eh?” He chuckled. “There used to be a Gladys here in the village in your time. D’you remember? Lovely little girl!” He pushed his mug over to Rhiannon for a refill.

Gillian put her hand down on the dog’s shoulder, the weight of its warm body against her leg grounding her. “I remember Gladys
,
” she said.

Flapping and cawing, a flock of rooks, caught up in some corvidian drama, descended onto a dead tree near the window. Rhiannon hurried over to shut out the din.

“So you were here for a year, Gillian?” Janet said timidly into the silence that followed. “Was it very hard for you to be away from home for so long?” Her face was kind and full of soft little wrinkles.

“Of course it wasn’t,” Angus snapped. “She had the time of her life.”

Janet subsided, biting her lip, but Rhiannon, topping up the Brown Betty teapot from the kettle on the red Aga range, asked over her shoulder
,
“And how did you find Mrs. Macpherson senior?” She raised an eyebrow. “Was she ever so strict with you?”

“Oh, Mother had her old-school ways, but she had a heart of gold,” Angus said. “She looked after them wonderfully.”

Heart of gold!
Gillian sat up straight, feeling her cheeks burn with anger. “She was more than strict,” she heard herself say. “She neglected us, and she beat us.”

Rhiannon gave a startled snort, and Janet shot a frightened glance at Angus.

Exhilarated by this access of courage, Gillian took the offensive further. “And that’s not all,” she said, staring straight at Angus, a pulse thumping in her throat.

Narrowing his eyes, he looked hard at her for a moment from under his beetling eyebrows before producing the crooked smile she remembered so well. “I tell you what.” He shot out his arm and looked at his watch. “It’s not even noon, and I’m not due at the surgery until one-thirty. Why don’t you and I pop over to the Hare and Hounds in Brecon, Gillian, and have a spot of lunch? We can have a good chat about old times, eh?” He took hold of her elbow and steered her out of the kitchen in seconds as Janet and Rhiannon sat open-mouthed over their unfinished cups of tea.

Gillian studied the cracks and stains on the wall of the house until, with a throaty purr, a forest-green vintage sports car crunched out of the darkness of the barn onto the gravel, dazzling in a sudden gleam of sunshine.

“How d’you like her?” Angus put down the hood and jauntily opened the passenger door, slinging her handbag into the minimal back seat. “It’s a Jaguar E-Type. You won’t see too many of these around I can tell you. Cost me a fortune!” As they roared off, Gillian turned in her soft leather seat to look back at the dilapidated house. The seven-mile drive to Brecon on a narrow, winding, hilly road took five terrifying minutes.

Judging by the clatter of crockery and the sound of conversation and laughter, the Hare and Hounds was already almost full. Angus must be gambling, rightly perhaps, that she was too well brought-up to make a scene in public, the presence of so many strangers sure to inhibit her from even raising the subject, let alone forcing a confrontation.

He spoke to the landlord who grinned, looked Gillian up and down, and slapped Angus on the back before leading them through a barrage of waves, greetings, and handshakes for the doctor, to a table for two in a far corner of the low-ceilinged, dark-timbered dining room.

A beaming teenaged waiter, an immaculate napkin over his arm,
appeared as soon as they sat down. Angus ordered a whisky on the rocks and a lamb curry for himself, insisting on a schooner of sherry for Gillian whose churning stomach wanted nothing to eat or drink. In the silence that followed, he smiled complacently across the table at her until, as she reached shakily for her water glass, he placed his huge hand firmly over hers, red hairs still thick across his wrist. Her mind lurched away, again attempting flight, but she held steady this time, concentrating on the weave of the linen tablecloth.

“Let me say again, Gillian, how delighted I am to see you.” He raised his glass. “I’ve often wondered how you and your brother were doing. You were such lovely children!”

A hairbrush thwacks Tommy’s bare bottom; a hand around her ankle drags her back.

She wrenched her hand free. “And I’ve often wondered, Angus, how, between you and your mother, Tommy and I survived that year.”

“You can leave my mother out of this!” He glared at her.
“
It was very good of her to take you in.” He looked away, his face softening, the boy in him suddenly visible
.
“I cared for her at home until she died, you know. Ten years ago that was. She lived to be ninety-four, Gillian; marvellous to the end. “He blew his nose. “She was a wonderful woman!”

If you say so
. Gillian rubbed her hand, momentarily disconcerted by this alternate view of Mrs. Macpherson. Could she, just a child after all, have somehow got the whole thing wrong?

“Thank you, Gareth,” Angus
gave a nod
as the waiter put down their drinks.
“How’s that young sister of yours?” He smacked his lips after taking a gulp.

The waiter’s round, spotty face lit up. “Megan’s fine, thank you, sir. She’s been a bit off form lately, but she seems okay again now. Thank you very much.”
He retreated to take a stand nearby.

“Nice boy,” Angus patted his lips with the large white napkin. “Oldest of six. Know the family.” He put his head on one side with a smile, and reality returned to Gillian in a rush.

“We had a lot of fun together, didn’t we, Gillian?” he said, “D’you remember? Exploring the woods and fields, riding the bike, and so forth.”

And so forth?

Thought he could brazen it out, did he?

Railroad her into treating this as a pleasant social occasion?

That she had learned nothing in fifty years?

Folding her arms,
she stared at him for a good five seconds while he kept up his smiling front. “Angus,” she said in a loud, clear voice, “I was six years old. How dare
you talk to me about fun! Shall I remind you what your idea of fun consisted of?”

He jerked back, frowning and shaking his head almost imperceptibly while making little shushing movements with his hands. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as his eyes darted about the room, and she realized that there and then, in that tavern, surrounded by his friends and acquaintances, she could finish him. A couple of middle-aged women immediately in her line of vision were already staring with open curiosity, while at least two more tables were easily within earshot. The waiter remained at his post behind Angus.

Angus rallied, took another swallow, and wiped his face with the napkin. “Oh, come on now, Gillian.” He bared his teeth in a conspiratorial smile, keeping his voice low. “There’s no need to carry on as if I ruined your life. Actually, you seem to have done rather well for yourself. I mean, look at you.” He held out a hand. “Elegant, healthy, obviously well off; married, I gather, and with a family and a profession to boot. What more could you ask, eh?”
He sat back, still smiling.

What more could I ask?

The back of her neck prickled and her face burned.

Is he insane?

Clutching her napkin, she leaned forward, her eyes fixed on his. “I’ll tell you what more I could ask, Angus.” Despite the nearness of the waiter, and the distinct drop in the volume of noise around them, she raised her voice. “I could ask to have been left alone to grow up unashamed and unafraid; sure of myself, and,” twisting the napkin, “…
proud
of myself.”

As Angus glanced to either side, loosening his tie, she pressed on. “I could ask to be not just someone who can get by and keep up appearances, but someone who can live her life freely, and,”
she swallowed, “and
joyfully
. And most of all, Angus,” she stared into his furious, frightened eyes, “I could ask to be someone who’d be able not just to fight, but to
win.
” She threw down the napkin, pushed her untouched sherry away, and planted her hands on the table, ready to rise.

She had never seen a man sweat like that. Large whitish drops sprang out on his forehead and ran together to slide down his face. “Gillian,” he whispered, “Don’t go! Listen to me.” He wiped his brow, managing a nod at two women at the nearest table who promptly lowered their eyes. No doubt he would tell them later that she had turned out to have been a madwoman. He turned his eyes back to her. “There’s something I must say to you.”

“What?” She sat back, seeing his age catch up with him in front of her.

Waving away the waiter’s attempt to top up Gillian’s glass, he glanced around and leaned forward.

“You have never been far from my thoughts.”

What was that?
She had never been far from his thoughts? She blinked and looked away to where, beyond the latticed window, the sun shone on trees and traffic and shop fronts, and on people going about their normal daily business. She blinked again and looked back at the lined, blotched face.

Was this some sort of acknowledgement?

An apology, even?

He shovelled in a forkful of curry, and took another gulp of whisky as she slaked her mouth with water, watching him.

“The truth is Gillian,” he swallowed the last of his mouthful and wiped his lips, “all my life you have haunted me, whether I’m awake or asleep. In a way, you know, it’s you who have ruined
my
life, and not the other way round.”

She stared at him in disbelief.

“And as for the shame,” he cocked his head, “consider this, if you will. It was not
I
, you know, who made you … uncomfortable, but society in general, and your shaming mother in particular.” He raised his eyebrows, nodding agreement with his own argument. “Anyway,” he went on, “what we did was just natural, eh? After all, I was only eighteen.” He sat back with a smirk and saluted someone across the room.

She straightened her back, narrowing her eyes. The man had no idea whatsoever of what he had done to her, or worse still to Gladys; their feelings unimaginable to him and of no interest. “I see,” she said, “So you’re not at fault, is that it? In fact you’re the victim. You were just innocently doing what was natural.” She gripped the arms of her chair and leaned forward. “Natural, Angus?
All that?
It may have been natural for you, maybe; but for a six-year-old? Forget the fucking sophistry! You knew it was wrong.”

A woman with a long pheasant feather in her mannish hat got up from across the room to sit at the table behind Angus, the other two making room for her without a word.

Angus drained his cut-glass tumbler and held it up, eyeing Gillian with a small, twisted smile as the white-faced waiter came forward and slipped away with the glass. “If you think that was so very bad,” he said quietly, “you should count yourself lucky.” He leaned closer. “Did you ever consider, Gillian, how amazingly well I controlled myself with you, so little, and fragile, and …
accessible
as you were?” He raised his eyebrows. “There certainly could’ve been
more
cause for so-called complaint in your case, couldn’t there?” He sat back.

More cause for complaint?

In your case?

Those words, and the easy way he said them, along with the smile, revealed suddenly to Gillian that what had happened to her, and to Gladys, all that time ago had not been, as she had assumed, a matter of raging adolescent hormones, but the start of something much darker. Registering what he meant by “
more
cause for complaint,” she realized that there must have been other, perhaps many other, little girls since that time, who had suffered not only her lot, but Gladys’s; and that there could be more to come. Remembering Sally, the ‘real little beauty’, she jumped up and stood over Angus, staring down at him.

The buzz of conversation died, and the clatter of knives and forks around them ceased. As faces, near and far, lifted and turned towards them,
she said loudly and distinctly, her voice shaking, but growing louder with every question
,
“With how many other little girls did you so considerately restrain yourself, Angus?”

A high laugh and the clink of glasses came from the bar at the far end of the dining room. A child wailed out in the street.

“In how many cases could it have been
much worse
?”

The pheasant feather shot up, quivering.

Seeing again the audacious little seven-year-old Gladys, she pressed on, her voice rising to a shout at the last word.

“How many little girls have you actually
raped?”

She turned and walked out through the hushed room, her cheeks flaming but her head high.

A few minutes later, watching from the hotel entrance, she saw him lean heavily on the door of his absurd car, head bowed, before stiffly lowering himself in. Her eyes followed his slow retreat down the hill to the hospital.

Re-entering the bar, she called a taxi to take her back to Maenordy.

From under the monkey puzzle tree
,
she watched the taxi rattle away. Her stomach clenching and her palms wet, she turned to face the house. She knew what she had to say to Janet and Rhiannon now that she had grasped the full truth about Angus, but could not imagine how to say it. How could she explain to Janet that her husband of forty-odd years preyed on little girls? How tell Rhiannon that she was placing her daughter in horrible danger? Would they believe her? What if they did not? Would she be coldly, or furiously, driven away? Or, if they did accept what she said, could they handle it? Rhiannon seemed resilient enough, but Janet had struck Gillian as fragile and exhausted. Whatever the case, there was no turning back now.

Tucking in her chin and drawing a deep breath, she climbed the steps to lift again the fox-head knocker. Rhiannon opened the door, a solemn, red-cheeked child astride her hip, the wriggling dog at her feet. “Back so soon?” Eyebrows raised, she smiled at Gillian and looked beyond her for Angus.