The Faerie Tree (8 page)

When I got home she was still asleep, even though it was close to eleven o'clock. I crept into the kitchen and started frying sausages and mushrooms, and very soon she appeared behind me. She looked annoyed but I wrapped my arms around her and told her to go back to bed, which thankfully defused the moment and after that the day was a really happy one. I'd begged Ed to do the afternoon run so Megan and I lazed in the garden drinking wine and reading the Sunday papers, and she said she wished every day could be like this. And I felt better, because I'd made her happy.

But many times I didn't. Like when I talked for too long to a pretty girl in the shop. Like when I was late back from an evening trailer run and she thought she could smell beer on my breath. The rollercoaster wasn't only inside my head and I had absolutely no way of controlling it. On top of that the anniversary of Mum's death was looming and I was beginning to live in terror of it.

It was only a matter of time before things really kicked off between Megan and me. It was after supper and I was meant to be washing up while she changed the sheets on our bed, but instead I stayed at the table, lost in my own thoughts, and when she came back she was furious.

“You lazy little shit! The flat's a pigsty – I just tripped over your fucking trainers in the hall.”

I started to apologise but she wasn't having any of it.

“I bet you were spoiled rotten by your mum – bet she never let her precious boy do anything. Do you know what an iron is
Robin, a hoover? Do you know toilets don't clean themselves?”

Of course I knew all those things. But I wasn't prepared to tell Megan that or the reason for it. I stood up and towered over her.

“Don't you dare talk about my mother – you're not fit to – about the only thing you've got in common with her is your age.”

I didn't stay to listen to the abuse she was hurling after me. I grabbed the offending trainers and my jacket and stormed out of the flat.

It was dusk and I stomped along the streets towards Fistral Beach. A solitary surfer was still in the water but most were in groups on the beach, with courting couples dotting the sand between them. I wanted no company so I walked the track along the golf course until I found an isolated bench tucked into the folds of the dunes, but still their bursts of laughter drifted towards me.

I'd burned my boats with Megan and I had nowhere else to go. But maybe it was time I stopped using her anyway. I still loved Izzie and I spent the night convincing myself that I should find a shred of courage from somewhere and do something about it. Again and again I pictured the look on her face as we held hands around the Faerie Tree and it planted a tiny seed of hope to cling on to.

I must have slept a little because I remember waking to a pale grey light in the sky. And it was cold – my fingers were completely numb. As I flexed them I looked at my watch – coming up to five o'clock. I got up, stretched my aching limbs and headed off in the direction of Ed's surf shack where at least I could make myself a hot drink and have some sort of wash.

When Ed arrived he had only to glance at my face. “What gives, young Rob?”

“I was a shit to Megan last night,” I told him. “I can't go on using her like this, it's not right.”

He sat down on the wall next to me. “Has it occurred to you that she's using you as well?”

“In what way? She's given me a home, a job…”

“And you've given her a source of cheap labour and a massive one in the eye for that bastard ex-boyfriend of hers up at the hotel every time he sees her with a guy twenty years younger than him.”

“I didn't know anything about that,” I murmured, spinning my empty mug around on the wall by its handle.

“Well maybe you don't need to, but all I'm saying is that if there's using going on then it's cutting both ways.”

“But it's still not right…” The mug started to topple but I managed to catch it.

“Like I've always said, Rob, you've got a lot to learn about women. What else is a relationship, anyway? It's just a transaction where you've got something she wants and she's got something you want – everything from a twenty-five year marriage to a one night stand is based on that so you'd better get used to it.”

As I drove to Watergate I thought about what he'd said – was it true? Looking back at my mother's various partners I could see he had a point, but I couldn't imagine life being like that with Izzie. Ed made it sound as though love didn't exist. Perhaps it was rare and in which case it shouldn't be wasted. By the time I was driving back to Newquay I'd made up my mind – even then I knew Izzie's work phone number by heart and I was going to call it. If she'd married Paul then I'd forget all about her; but if not…

Except that when I got back to the surf shack, Megan was waiting for me and she looked as though she hadn't slept either.

She didn't beat around the bush. “Robin – we've got to talk. Ed's minding the shop for an hour or so – shall we get some breakfast?”

We made our way to a table in the back corner of the beach café. As soon as we sat down I started to apologise but she held up her hand to stop me.

“OK, you said some horrid things – well, one in particular stung – but it was the truth. I thought about it all night, while I was worrying where you were. I touched a really raw nerve, didn't I?”

The lump rising in my throat made it hard to tell her what she wanted to know. “My mum's dead. Coming up for a year ago.”

“Oh, Robin – I'm so sorry. I've lost both my parents and the first anniversary's the worst. It hits you for six but it does get better, I promise. Tell me when it is, so I can look out for you.”

“Seventh September.” I just managed to say it before I broke down and buried my head on my arms on the plastic tablecloth. I heard the scrape of Megan's chair as she moved next to me to put her arm around my shoulder.

Chapter Seventeen

It was the sixth of September when I finally plucked up the courage to call Izzie. I knew that if I let it drift more than a year then I would be the other side of a significant watershed and it would never happen.

There was a telephone box in Porth, on my way back from Watergate, and I had been eyeing it up for a while. I generally came back that way about quarter to ten in the morning and I knew it was a time Izzie would be in the office, taking telephone orders and preparing for her day.

I pulled the van off the road into the lay-by next to the beach. I listened to the waves crash on the rocks for a long time before I locked the van door and crossed the road. The phone box was occupied by an elderly lady with a small poodle and I almost turned away, but she finished her call and my last excuse had gone.

The receiver slipped in my hands and I dropped my ten pence piece. As I scrabbled to pick it up I noticed there was a child's bracelet on the floor and it made me remember the Faerie Tree. It was the kick I needed and I pressed the buttons quickly before I could change my mind again. The phone rang three times and then I heard the familiar voice of the receptionist. There was no chance she would remember me.

“Can I speak to Izzie, please?” I asked, my heart thudding so loud it threatened to drown out her answer. I wish it had.

“I'm sorry, she doesn't work here anymore. Can anyone else help you?”

I placed the phone back on its cradle. I stood for a few moments, my forehead on the glass, inhaling the pissy metallic smell. That, more than anything, drove me to open the door, stumble across the road to the van, drive to Newquay and get on with my day.

Chapter Eighteen

The holiday season was effectively over by the middle of September. The shop became quieter and Ed only needed my services over long weekends. It would stay that way for another month and then my sole source of independent income would dry up. Megan wouldn't really need me in the shop either and when I spoke to her about it she had a go at me for not trying to find non-seasonal work sooner. Given I'd been working more than full time over the summer I thought that was a bit much and I told her so.

By now our arguments ran a familiar course; I would do something wrong, she would tell me how useless I was, I would bite back then sulk for a while and then we would make it up, normally in bed or over a bottle of wine. But each time it happened I sank lower into an endless mist of grey, made more mistakes, became less willing to open my mouth, and so things went from bad to worse.

It was Ed who eventually spoke to me about it, poor bugger; Megan probably put him up to it. He had become a bit of a father figure to me – probably the only one I've ever had – but it wasn't his way to talk about emotional stuff and as I didn't want to either it was a bit of an awkward conversation.

We were putting the trailer away on a Sunday night in early October when Ed suggested we crack open a few beers. I was
hesitant, fearing getting back to Megan late with alcohol on my breath, but Ed wasn't put off by the feeble excuse I gave him and had already opened the cans.

“D'you want to tell me what's up, young Rob?” he asked as he handed mine over.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Nothing, really.”

“Oh come on – you've been miserable as sin for weeks now – everyone's noticed and we're worried about you.”

It was nice of them, but I really had brought this on myself. But how to explain it all to Ed? Did I even want to? He'd probably tell Megan and then… but then, what? And did I care, anyway? It seemed too much trouble to care about anything. But Ed was looking at me, waiting for an answer.

“It's nothing really; it's just, you know, the future looks so uncertain.” The metallic taste of the beer can reminded me of the phone box at Porth.

“The future is uncertain – not just for you, now, but for all of us, all the time. We're still caught up in this bloody recession for a start. It's not great for old hands like me, but it's bloody unfair on bright kids like you, scraping by doing dead end jobs.”

“I'm not that bright. Lots of people have degrees nowadays and I've never even used mine.”

“Because you can't or because you won't?”

It was a good question. When I'd first graduated my choice had been limited because of Mum. I'd wanted to travel, work overseas even, but that avenue had been closed to me. Now I was a free agent and Ed was right, instead of doing something about it I was bumming around. Only I didn't feel free; I felt more as though I was serving a life sentence.

I shook my head. “I don't know.” I stood up and gazed out of the window onto the beach, waiting for my vision to clear and to be able to speak again.

But Ed spoke first. “Megan's especially worried.”

“She hasn't said anything.”

“She says she can't reach you, it's like you've shut yourself off from her.”

“Can't do a thing right, that's all,” I muttered.

I heard the smile in Ed's voice. “That's Meg for you.”

“I can't handle it.” I was close to tears again.

“You won't change her.”

“I don't want to, I… I want to stop using her,” I burst out. “It's not doing either of us any good and I'm too much of a wimp to walk away. And anyway, I've got nowhere to walk to,” I added.

“You can have my sofa for a few weeks if that'd help?”

“No, Ed. It's time I was a man about this.” Which was a really immature thing to say, although I meant it at the time.

It quite literally took a hurricane to make me act. To be honest, the infamous hurricane of 1987 didn't hit our part of Cornwall that hard, but waking up to the radio news about what had happened in the south of England turned my thoughts firmly to home.

The last group of surfers of Ed's season were a stag party from London and their tale of travelling through increasingly windy conditions the night before was regaled long and loud while they put their wetsuits on. One had called his girlfriend in Putney and was amazed to find she had no power, not a tube running, nor indeed much in the way of buses so many trees were blocking the roads.

Driving the van back on my own I was trying to picture tree after tree, crashing down in the wind, like so many dominoes. The devastating impact of nature on nature made me feel strangely agitated: for the first time, something was hauling my mind kicking and screaming out of the grey. It was awful, exciting and stimulating all at the same time. Back in the shop I talked to Megan about it like a man possessed. I remember her smiling and nodding – she was probably just pleased I was communicating again.

But then it started to get personal. That evening, on the TV, there were pictures from all over the south of England. Mainly London, but also some of Southampton and a vague unease crept into the edges of my mind. I watched the Nine O'Clock News
then turned over for News at Ten. Megan said I was becoming obsessive and rather than argue with her I switched off the television and we went to bed.

I woke in the deepest blackness of the night with an image of the Faerie Tree implanted into my brain. Not the Faerie Tree as I had last seen it, but lying skewed and broken in the middle of a tangled heap of twisted vegetation, the offerings pinned to its bark shredded and smashed under the fallen branches.

I tried to focus on Megan's easy breathing beside me but the image was so strong I knew it was real. With such devastation, how could the tree have survived, so close to the top of the steep bank up from the Hamble? It had never felt exposed with the woods all around it, but with a great wind ripping and roaring up the river, it would surely have had no chance. But I had to find out for sure.

I said nothing to Megan as I worked my last weekend taking the trailer back and forth to Watergate and my last Saturday in the shop. It was very quiet – I guess a lot of weekenders' plans had been spoilt by the weather. On Monday I helped Megan sort out and mark up stock for the end of season sale in virtual silence.