The Juniper Tree (22 page)

Mrs Hicks was in the dining-room laying the table for the expected family lunch and I thought if only it were true and Johnny would come running into the room followed by Charlotte and the husband we’d never seen. I asked Mrs Hicks to keep an eye on the oven for me and she said she would, but added, ‘I only hope Mr Forbes won’t be disappointed. Strange them not sending a card or telephoning. Perhaps Miss Charlotte has forgotten the date of the poor child’s birthday.’

I said, ‘Perhaps,’ and opened the drinks cupboard and selected a bottle of brandy and went upstairs with it.

I settled down to write my letter in Marline’s room; it was more private than my bedroom. I fetched a tooth mug and the little bottle of Valium from the bathroom and counted the tablets. There were only ten left, but there was plenty of alcohol to help them down; a tumbler of brandy would be almost lethal on its own – I wondered if I was allowed to mix water with it. I took a sip of the neat brandy, then wrote my letter on a large sheet of Marline’s drawing paper I found pinned to a board. There was the beginning of a drawing in the top left-hand corner, a happy drawing of flowers and leaves and not very suitable for the letter I was about to write. I addressed it to Bernard and anyone else who should read it, a coroner perhaps. I didn’t want the letter to be too personal, just very truthful.

I gave a detailed account of exactly what happened from the time I opened the chest to air it and Johnny said goodbye to Peter: the careful journey down the steps, Johnny wildly throwing the apples into the open chest, me telling him to stop it, and how in defiance he climbed into it although I shouted ‘No’ (actually, I couldn’t quite remember if he was standing upright or rather bent forward, I thought it was bent forward) and so on. I wrote very quickly because it was agony to recall what happened. It was difficult to explain why I was so afraid of Bernard that I had to bury the poor little body under the juniper tree. I appealed to Bernard to forgive me for acting in such a strange manner and asked if he had noticed my depression and mental deterioration during the last few months. I felt I was losing my sanity and, now I was the indirect cause of his son’s death, I couldn’t go on any longer. I did point out that if Johnny had not been encouraged to be disobedient, his death might not have occurred. I said little about love or the pain of parting because it would be read by strangers. I felt calmer after I’d written the letter and I put it on my bedside table with the brandy and Valium. I planned to lie down after lunch and tell Bernard to call me when Charlotte came, which would be a long, long time.

I closed my bedroom door and ran downstairs to help Mrs Hicks with the meal for people who would never arrive and put candles on a birthday cake for a boy who was already dead. At one o’clock Marline came home from school because she had remembered it was Johnny’s birthday. She had bought him red slippers decorated with fluffy rabbits’ heads with flopping ears. She was rather tearful when we eventually sat down to eat our lunch at the half-empty table; but Bernard tried to appear more cheerful than he was, complimenting me on the cooking and suggesting how easy it would be to heat up when the rest of the family arrived. He said that it was such a perfect autumn day and that he was feeling quite lighthearted. ‘Cheer up, little Marlinchen,’ he said, giving her hair a playful tweak, ‘Johnny will be home this evening.’ Then turning to me, he said, ‘And why aren’t you eating, Bella, dear?’

I told him I felt uneasy, as if a heavy storm were coming: ‘It must be the flu. I’ll lie down this afternoon and have a really long rest, so don’t disturb me until Charlotte comes.’

Before we had finished our late meal, there was a ring at the front door bell and we could hear Mrs Hicks talking to some men in the hall. Bernard left the table and I could hear his authoritative voice. ‘Yes, it could well be true. We have a nest down in the thicket. Been there for some years . . . cuff-links . . . no objection at all . . .’

Marline, alert as always, bounded from the room crying, ‘My birds! You mustn’t frighten them or they’ll go away.’

Then Bernard, reprovingly: ‘Be quiet, Marline, go back to the dining-room and finish your meal.’

Marline did not return, but at least she was quiet, and when they walked through the drawing-room into the garden she was trotting behind. I stood there holding on to the door, watching them. I was weighed down by fear and felt so ill and anxious my teeth chattered – yet it was as if I had fire in my veins – but I had to follow the little troop of three men and a child. One man looked very like a policeman to me. Perhaps he had already heard about the little grave and had come to inspect it. They had nearly reached the juniper tree and I stumbled on behind but no one noticed me except the startled birds. They appeared to fly straight up from the ground, crying, ‘Chak-Chak-Chak,’ and there were three of them instead of two, and a great roaring came in my ears like a violent storm and the birds seemed to swoop towards me, and one had a great round stone in its fearful beak which it let fall and I knew I was to be entirely crushed by it as I saw it spinning down towards me.

Chapter Thirty

A
ctually the policeman had not come about the little grave, but something quite different. There was a well-known goldsmith in Hill Rise who made beautiful and expensive jewellery from precious metals and valuable stones. That morning when he was sitting in his workshop making a heavy golden chain he saw through the skylight a large bird sitting on his roof singing what seemed to him a very beautiful song. He stood up and went towards the street; but as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. But he went right into the middle of the street with one shoe on and one off, and in his left hand he held the golden chain and in his right the pincers he had been working with, and the sun was shining brightly on the street. The bird had come to the edge of the roof and he called to it: ‘Bird, how beautifully you sing,’ and the bird sang something like, ‘Kywill, Kywitt, chak-chak-chak.’ This pleased the goldsmith so much that he hardly noticed when the bird swooped down, snatched the glittering chain from his hand, carried it to the roof, pecked at it for a few moments, and then flew away towards some gardens at the back.

Several people, some of them in cars, saw this happen, and they were astonished. Some said one thing and some another: ‘It’s a thieving jackdaw’; ‘No, it’s too large, a magpie most likely’; ‘Of course it’s a magpie, all black and white with a long tail.’ Someone else said it was definitely a parrot and a crowd started to collect, and the jeweller, who was a shy man, scuttled into his shop and shut the door. It was only then that he noticed he’d lost a slipper. When he’d retrieved his slipper, he went into the small yard at the back; but no golden chain glittered there or in his neighbour’s yard. He telephoned the police and they sent round a most helpful young constable who knew quite a lot about birds and their habits. After he had written a description of the missing gold chain, the young policeman suggested that they call on some of the nearby houses that had large gardens, The owners of the first two houses they visited said that, although magpies sometimes settled on the trees in their gardens, they hadn’t seen any recently; but the next house holder they asked was an elderly woman who knew of the Forbeses magpies and directed them there. ‘There is a little girl, a very dark little girl, who feeds them with her own lips, and they have built the strangest nest. The lady who died was very fond of them too and called them her
elsters.
I watch them from my bathroom window and there seem to be three birds now, but I haven’t seen any gold chains. It’s the large house with a carved bear outside. You can’t miss it.’

So they came to our house, the policeman and the jeweller, and Bernard took them to the thicket, followed by the indignant Marline. They found the birds pecking at the gold chain just under the juniper tree and the disturbed birds flew into the sky, then swooped down towards me – and that was when I fell to the ground, twitching and moaning, not crushed by a stone, but by my poor disordered mind.

Chapter Thirty-One

F
or a time I was in a coma – for several days, they told me. Then came a terrifying time when I was crying out but couldn’t speak proper words and didn’t know where I was or who I was for that matter. Sometimes, when the drugs wore off, I thought I might be in purgatory. Quite often there were looming forms bending over me and at first their voices hurt my ears; it was as if they were shouting through a megaphone. Occasionally there were people I’d once known, but I couldn’t remember who they were. Later, a nurse told me that the first time I spoke clearly was when Bernard stood by my bed and, although I didn’t know him, something twisted in my heart and I said: ‘I’d rather be married to a fox than you.’ Nonsense, but it was a step forward.

The worst step forward was when my memory returned, all misty at first, then horribly clear. I called out and said I must talk to someone about Johnny; I was very worried about him. Then such a sympathetic woman came and sat beside me and let me talk as much as I wanted, making notes as she listened. It was some time before I realized she was a policewoman. She had a copy of the letter I’d written to Bernard and asked if it were true. She wanted to know why I was so afraid of him. I told her the letter was true, although my mind was very disturbed when I wrote it, and I’d buried poor little Johnny to hide his body from Bernard until I’d destroyed myself. I tried to explain how he was about the child, so obsessed with him as if he were his dead wife. In the state I was in I couldn’t tell him his son was dead and he’d died because I left the lid of the chest open. But even if he had died in any other way, I still couldn’t have told Bernard; I’d far rather be dead myself.

Later, a policeman came to see me too and asked the same questions over and over again, but they were kind, these police people. At least they didn’t seem to think I’d murdered Johnny. It was unlawful burying they were going on about. I didn’t have to appear at the inquest or in a police court because they said I was unfit to plead, but it was decided that I was to have treatment in a mental hospital. That was better than going to prison, and I really needed treatment. It wasn’t only the depression and despair that came from time to time, but my mind felt so muddled and bruised that I couldn’t concentrate. Someone had arranged for me to have
The Times
delivered every day; it was nice to see it, but I couldn’t read it. There was talk about ECT, but my mother and Bernard were against it and when I found out what it was I was glad I’d escaped such an unpleasant experience.

Sometimes I had hallucinations, perhaps due to the drugs I was taking. I’d see Johnny swinging on his swing right into my room, backward and forward, and I’d call to him but he wouldn’t stop and I could still see him if I shut my eyes. Then there was the mackintosh woman, who only appeared in the evenings. She was about three-and-a-half feet high and made of rolled up rubbery mackintoshes, and although she had no eyes, skilfully arranged buttons gave her a kind of face. She crawled from under my bed and scuttled about the room, appearing to be very busy sweeping in the corners of the room although she had no visible brush – or hands, for that matter. The slightest sound sent her scuttling under my bed again and I’d imagine I could smell a rubbery smell. For a time she appeared almost every night and I could see her even in the dark.

My mother was a frequent visitor. I didn’t recognize her at first, but when I did we talked quite a lot although I didn’t take in everything and sometimes dozed off while she was talking. Marline was staying with her and they were getting on ‘like a house on fire’, she said. She was planning to sell her house and everything in it and live in something very different. ‘I don’t know what, but it must be different. When you have recovered, perhaps you will help me. No antiques, though. I want everything modern and very simple – no clutter, if you know what I mean.’

Mary came, bringing a suitcase filled with clothes suitable for being mad in. She had been to the house and collected them. She said she had had quite a long talk with Mrs Hicks, who was rather miserable and shocked but managing to ‘look after the master’ on her own. She had also had a talk with Peter, who had given evidence at the inquest: ‘Very nice evidence. We all said what a caring mother you were, even Bernard, and he admitted neglecting you. Oh dear, I shouldn’t run on like this. They warned me not to.’

Mopping my eyes, I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s Bernard I’m sorry for. Having to go through an inquest on top of everything else. And the publicity too. He’s such a proud man.’

Mary shrugged. ‘He’ll survive,’ she said rather unfeelingly, then asked if he visited me.

‘Not since I’ve been more normal. I don’t think he could bear it. But he has long talks with the psychiatrist, and mother has seen him once or twice. They discuss me, I believe. Mary, do you think I’ll ever be a normal woman and be independent and able to take decisions again? My mother wants me to help her find another house. I’d like that.’

When Mary had gone, I lay on my bed and pulled my dressing-gown round me and looked up at the high window. There was only the changing sky and a torn and faded flag fluttering from a pole, so worn and bleached it looked like elderly knickers. I think the window was barred.

The following day I was taken with my two suitcases of clothes to a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of London. Only some of the wards had bars at the windows and most of the patients were free, at least the ones I met. I had a bit of a relapse soon after I arrived and had to be drugged again, but after a week or two I felt more normal and gradually left my private room, at first with a nurse in attendance, then whenever I felt like it. There were televisions in the large wards but I found them confusing after the first few minutes, partly because some of the patients made strange noises as they watched. I preferred the transistor my mother bought me and listened to it a lot, particularly to concerts and plays.

Mother was becoming the kindest of women and seemed to like me much more now I was rather insane; perhaps I had been too independent before. We got on so well we even made jokes. Living with Marline seemed to have melted her heart. She said she loved having her, it had given her a new interest in life. I missed the child so much it was quite painful, we’d always been so close. Mother did bring her occasionally for short visits, just for tea in my room; but I didn’t really like her seeing me in such a place and mother said the patients were so starved for family life, they almost mobbed her.