The Monkey Puzzle Tree (3 page)

“What?”

“Why did you come?” He stared hard into her eyes. “It was because you wanted to, wasn’t it?” He shook her again. “Wasn’t it?” The fierce expression and the upside-down lighting made him look like the Demon King in the pantomime she saw last Christmas.

Gillian nodded dumbly.

“That’s right. You came because you wanted to.”

Dinah whined and struggled out of her
cwch.

Angus pulled Gillian hard against him. This felt all wrong, and she was frightened. She struggled to escape, trying to think what to do. If she screamed loud enough, Mrs. Macpherson might hear her and come, but she would be furious with her for being in the barn at that time, and would probably tell her mother, who would also be very angry. She knew, too, that Mrs. Macpherson would never take her side against Angus. Grown-ups always stuck together.

“Stop it Angus, please! You’re scaring me!”

Kicking Dinah out of the way, Angus pushed Gillian down on the blanket and undid the snake clasp on his belt.

Was he going to beat her?

As she tried to scramble out of Cartref, he reached after her, grabbed her ankle and pulled her back in. “You can fight if you like,” he said, holding her down with his knee and grabbing both her flailing fists with one hand. “But you can’t win.”

“That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?
”
he said later, doing up his belt. “You see, I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He brushed the straw and dust off her and dabbed with his handkerchief at the sticky mess, like squashed mistletoe berries, on her thighs and stomach.

“Don’t look at me like that, Gilly. It’s your fault really, you know, the way you look, so little and skinny, with that soft, frizzy hair and those big green eyes, making me feel this way. Anyway, we’re special friends now, right?” He fixed his hot, red-brown gaze on her. “But this is to be our secret. D’you understand? You breathe a word of this, and I’ll tell them it was all
your
idea; that you suggested it. What would your mother think of that, eh?” He grabbed her wrist. “Now come here, I want to play some more.”

A high scream came from the house, and another, and another. Angus dropped her wrist and ran to the back door of the barn. Looking back, he bared his teeth at her. “Remember what I said!”

Trembling, Gillian crept with Dinah to the other door. Lights came on in the house. The side door opened, and she saw the Macphersons come out with torches, calling her name. The screaming kept on: “Gilly! Gilly! Gilly! Where are you?”

She ran towards the screams. When a beam from a torch picked her out, Tommy shot past the Macphersons into her arms.

“It was the fox!” he shouted between hiccupping sobs, as she grabbed him under the monkey puzzle tree. “The fox was alive, and he was blowing the house down. And then he ran away with you on his back! And then I woke up, and you were gone, and I thought the fox had really got you!”

She held him tight and looked around at the grown-ups, Angus somehow included, who were staring at them indignantly.

Mrs. Macpherson was coldly angry. “What’s the meaning of this shameful behaviour, you sly, disobedient girl? Would you mind informing us where you were, and what, exactly, you were doing?”

Gillian looked helplessly at Angus who seemed lost in staring up at the twists and turns of the tree. There was a frozen silence while her brain raced from one barrier to another. Then she heard herself say, bold as brass, “I just wanted to see if Dinah’d had her puppies.”

Back in bed, still shivering and stinging from the slaps, she slowly calmed down. With Tommy finally asleep again beside her, she began to think about herself. Mrs. Macpherson had said she was sly and disobedient, and she’d obviously become an awful liar. And what about what Angus had done? Was she
common
now? It must have something to do with that secret, too shameful to be talked about, that only grown-ups knew. What was more, her mother, besides asking her to be brave and not whine, had most particularly asked her never to do anything to make her ashamed of her. Gillian knew, as well as she had ever known anything, that if her mother ever heard what had happened that evening, she would be horribly ashamed. “I can’t love you if you are not good,” she had said more than once. So Gillian would not tell her, ever.

Before she finally warmed up and calmed down enough to go to sleep, she remembered that she had left Glory Anna in the barn, but decided she did not care.

The day arrived for their
mother’s Christmas Eve visit, her first since she had left them at Maenordy. She had telephoned once, causing Tommy to be so upset that Mrs. Macpherson had asked her not to do it again. Their father had written a letter, almost indecipherable despite being printed, which Gillian would take out and work on from time to time, planning to write a reply. He had been supposed to come for the Christmas visit too, but had phoned that morning to say he had an emergency at the hospital.

Tommy had pestered Gillian for weeks about how many days were left until they came, and she had been as excited as he was, but now that the time was nearly here, the tight feeling
that took hold in
her chest at the thought of seeing her mother again closed in until she could hardly breathe.

First they heard, and then
saw the car crunch up the drive to park under the monkey puzzle tree. Then there was their mother, beaming with love and joy, holding out her arms. Tommy hurtled into them to be hugged, kissed, and exclaimed over. But when her mother opened her arms to her, Gillian could not move. When she took Gillian’s chin in her hand, Gillian had to force herself to look into her puzzled eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Her mother smoothed Gillian’s hair. “Are you forgetting all about your poor mummy?”

“No, Mummy. I’d never do that.”

Her mother hugged her. “That’s my good girl. I’m so proud of you. Daddy says he’s sorry he couldn’t come—you know he had to go to the hospital—but he sends his love to you both. He said to say he’s proud of you, too.”

As the day went on, with Angus nowhere to be seen, and Mrs. Macpherson being weirdly nice and kind, not saying a word about shameful behaviour, and even telling their mother how good the children always were, Gillian began to be able to breathe more
easily, to talk to her mother again, and even to smile once or twice.

Before she left, her mother brought in from the car the gaily-wrapped Christmas presents, not to be opened until Christmas Day. The huge one for Gillian would turn out to be a life-sized Shirley Temple doll, all dimply smile and curls, doomed to be stuck at the back of the wardrobe to simper alone.

As she was getting ready to leave, and they were all, Angus now included, standing by the car, Gillian’s mother put her arm around her. “Gill, you’re very quiet. Is everything all right? You
are
happy here, aren’t you?”

This was it. She had to be strong and brave. She stood up straight.

“Yes, I’m very happy here, thank you, Mummy.”

But she had bargained without Tommy.

“Mummy!” He stood in front of their mother, hands on hips. “Angus makes Gilly go to the barn with him in the night!”

The two mothers drew in their breath sharply. Gillian hung her head and closed her eyes. She wanted to disappear forever.

“Gilly is this true?” Her mother opened her eyes wide at her. Gillian stood there, frozen, unable to move.

“Is this true, Angus?” said Mrs. Macpherson.

“No! No! I never!” Angus’s face was white.

“Yes he did!” Tommy shouted. “She had to go last night, an’ the night before!”

“Angus?” Mrs. Macpherson’s voice had a dangerous lift to it.

“It’s her fault.” Angus looked as if he was going to cry. “She suggested it, not me. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“Get in the house!”

Gillian knew she must stop the truth coming out! “We didn’t do anything, Mummy,” she said. “We just talked.”

Mrs. Macpherson and Angus stopped on the steps and looked at her.

“Angus.” Her mother’s voice was sharp. “Tell me the truth now. Why did you take Gillian into the barn with you at night?”

Angus clasped his hands together in front of his chest and smiled his twisted smile.

“Well as a matter of actual fact, Mrs. Davies, to tell you the honest truth, we did go there a couple of times just to have a look at Dinah, who’s going to have puppies any day now, you know. Gillian wanted to see if the puppies were here yet.” He blinked at her. “And it wasn’t, really speaking, all that late. Not even seven o’clock.”

Gillian saw her mother draw herself up to her full height, an expression on her face that meant trouble. “And you think that’s a suitable subject for a child her age?”

Angus did a sort of squirm. “No, of course I don’t. I see that now. It was a mistake on my part. I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Davies. Honestly, I’ll never do anything like that again. I promise you. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Gillian felt herself being led around to the far side of the car. “Is that really what happened, Gillian? Was it just to go and see Dinah? Tell me the truth now. It’s very important.” Her mother knelt down to hold her chin so that she could not look away.

“Yes.” Gillian was sure of only one thing in all this confusion. “That’s why we were there.”

Somehow she managed to look straight at her mother, her back stiff.

“Mrs. Davies, I’m going to send the dog over to the farm,” Mrs. Macpherson said, adding to Gillian’s misery, “That way there’ll be no more temptation.”

Her mother looked up at the sky, biting her lip and thinking. After a pause she stood up. “Well, I suppose that’s all right then.” She stared, frowning, at Angus who gazed back, his eyes wide open.

Turning again to Gillian she said, “But there must be absolutely no more going out at night. All right, Gilly? None whatsoever! Do I have your promise?”

Gillian nodded, numb with misery.

“Goodbye, my darlings.” Their mother gathered them both to her. “Oh, I do so wish I could take you home with me, but it’s much too dangerous.”

Tommy began to cry. “Take us home, Mummy! Please! Don’t leave us! We don’t want to be evaporated!”

She covered a smile, exchanging a glance with Mrs. Macpherson. “Now, don’t be a tiny-whiny, Tommy. You know there’s a war on, and you have to be safe, the two of you. I’ll come back as soon as I can.” She kissed them both, thanked Mrs. Macpherson again, and in a swirl of silk and
Je Reviens,
got into the car.

“Goodbye, sweethearts. Merry Christmas! Be good children now.”

Still keeping her chin up as Tommy sobbed beside her, Gillian watched, dry-eyed, as the little grey car disappeared down the drive.

W

“You must be Mrs. Davies’s
daughter from Canada.” The doctor walked briskly down the hallway towards Gillian, smiling, pristine in his white coat, a stethoscope around his neck. “I’m Dr. Gabriel.”

Getting up to greet him, Gillian saw glossy hair greying at the temples and deep lines in his cheeks, becoming parentheses when he smiled. He must have been a lovely little boy, she thought: black curly hair, dimples, quick to laughter; like Tommy in that photo of him at four years old just before their evacuation, with his dark curls, big ears, and wide grin.

“Let’s take a look at the patient.” Dr. Gabriel stepped back for her to enter the room. He raised his voice as he followed her in. “You must be so pleased that your daughter’s come all this way to see you, Mrs. Davies.”

Her mother snapped to attention at the sound of the doctor’s voice, her hollow eyes suddenly bright, and her smile at full wattage.

“Doctor! You’ve come to see me at last!” Ignoring Gillian, she held out a still elegant hand. “I’ve been waiting for you all morning.”

“Well, you see, Mrs. Davies,” he winked a dark eye at Gillian, who had slipped around to the other side of the bed, “I keep the best for last.” He put the stethoscope to the old woman’s chest and listened, his eyes on the ceiling, his smile slowly fading. He moved the instrument around, repeating the procedure several times.

“How do you feel, Mrs. Davies?” He trained a pencil flashlight into her eyes.

“All the better for seeing you, Doctor!”

Oh for Heaven’s sake! Does it never end?
Gillian turned away to busy herself with the flowers, a type of small lily, she had brought. A refrain from her childhood, “Your mother could charm the birds from the trees,” entered her head as she pulled the red, trumpet-shaped blooms to the front and pushed the paler ones to the back.

“Can you turn on your side, Mrs. Davies?”

She seemed to lack the strength to move her own weight, little as it was. The doctor pushed her half over and asked Gillian to hold her there, a bundle of bones, while he listened to her back. He straightened up and helped Gillian ease her on to the pillows before turning to leave.

“You’re going, Doctor? So soon?” The old woman held out her hand again.

“I’ll be back to see you again before long, Mrs. Davies.” He smiled at her, then looked at Gillian and glanced at the door.

“I’m worried about your mother.” He had pulled the door shut after them as they left the room. “Her lungs are still very congested, her heart is weak, and her temperature is up. It’s not a good combination, but we’re going to try a different antibiotic to see if that might do the trick.” He walked off down the hallway, coat flapping, through the smells of eau de cologne, Johnson’s baby powder, and Depends, to descend the wide, curving stairway.

Her audience gone, her mother dropped the façade. “I don’t feel well at all,” she said breathlessly. She lifted her sunken eyes to Gillian’s, their faded pupils rimmed with a raised whitish circle. “I’ll be better soon, though, won’t I?”

You have an infection, your lungs are shot, and your heart is giving out. What do you think?

“You’ll be all right, Mum,” Gillian said. “The antibiotics will fix you up. They always have, haven’t they?”