by Julia Green
My project is about trees, and my emotional connection to them. I like the paintings Emily Carr does of trees and they have influenced my work; so have the photos by Ansel Adams and Charlie Waite. Thank you for any help you can give me.
Emily Anna Woodman
Enough clues there, surely?
I press Send.
‘Good,’ Seb says. ‘Now come for a run with me. You need to do something physical.’
If Seb were running at his usual pace there’s no way I’d keep up, but he’s not. He’s being kind to me. After a while my feet find a kind of rhythm, and my breathing steadies. We start by going up the lane, turn right for a mile or so, then across the fields to a footpath that runs along the riverbank. It’s much easier here, on the level.
‘You’re not bad,’ Seb says, ‘for a beginner.’
‘Don’t patronise me!’ I try to thump him, but he’s sprinting ahead, always just out of reach, and soon I’m out of breath.
He waits for me to catch up, but then he’s off again. ‘Come on. Push yourself! It’s all in the mind, running.’
We run past Moat House, on the other side of the river. Three vans are parked up outside on the muddy field, and the sound of drilling and hammering echoes over the water. It’s odd, seeing it all from this side of the river, more objectively: just a beautiful old house being tastefully restored.
‘I still can’t imagine living there,’ I say to Seb.
‘Why not? It’ll only be a few months now,’ he says.
‘I know, but I can’t imagine it. I can’t see myself there.’
Seb slows right down. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ I say. ‘It’s like I have to see myself somewhere, to make it happen. Visualise it. And with Moat House, I can’t. Not any more.’
Seb frowns slightly. ‘But it looks good,’ he says. ‘The stonework is all done. It’s just the superficial stuff left to do now.’
I’m panting and so hot I feel sick. ‘Can we stop for a bit?’ I ask.
We walk for a few minutes, then Seb wants me to try again. ‘One more mile, as far as the next bridge, then we’ll turn back.’
‘I’m so thirsty! And I’m getting a stitch.’
‘You look lovely,’ Seb says, ‘all sweaty and pink.’
‘Yeah, right.’ I stick out my tongue.
Seb grabs me, pulls me in close. We kiss. We’re both slippery with sweat.
‘Back to the caravan, then? Walk a bit, run a bit. It’s less than three miles.’
He doesn’t mind me being useless at running. ‘There’s no rush,’ he says, when we’re almost home. ‘It’s not about that. It’s like anything: you get better with practice.’
It does feel good, as soon as we stop. I’m glowing and full of energy, not tired out like I expected. I gulp down a glass of water.
‘I need a shower,’ I say.
‘Me too.’
‘I’ll see if I can find you a towel,’ I say. ‘We don’t have spares of things because there’s no space.’
‘I can share yours,’ he says.
I pull a face. ‘I don’t think so!’
We’ve only been out about an hour, so Cassy and Dad won’t be back for ages, which is just as well. I know Dad wouldn’t want me going to the shower with Seb. But I pick up the shampoo, anyway, and find two clean towels and some coins for the meter, and we cross the field together to the concrete shower block.
‘I can’t believe you’ve had to do this all winter,’ Seb says. ‘You must be tougher than you look.’
‘Tough as old boots,’ I say, and he laughs.
We take it in turns to shower. I go first. It’s a bit strange, stripping off in the cubicle, with him just the other side of the door. I turn the shower on full blast, so it heats up quickly before I get under. I spend ages, turning slowly round in the hot water, letting it drum on my scalp, my back, my legs. I let the water stream over my face, hot and delicious. For a second, I let myself imagine what it would be like with Seb in the shower with me. I imagine his face, close up and wet, and our mouths together.
‘Hurry up!’ Seb calls. ‘You’re taking ages!’
When I open the door, he’s there, grinning at me, already stripped to the waist. ‘Your turn!’ I say.
I think about him while I’m drying my hair under the wall heater. There’s something so . . . so intimate, about doing all this together: the run, the shower . . .
He comes out after only a few minutes, his hair dripping, feet bare, teeth chattering. ‘You took all the hot water!’
‘Seb! I’m so sorry! You should’ve said. I’d have put in more coins.’
‘It’s OK. Come here, you.’ He takes the towel and rubs my hair dry for me at the back, and then he kisses my bare neck, and along my collarbone.
‘You’re not actually tough at all, are you?’ Seb says, running his finger along the curve of my neck to the top of my spine. ‘Tender as the night.’
I laugh. ‘Is that a book or a film?’
‘Both. Except that I think it’s is rather than as the night.’ He pulls me round and holds my damp face between his hands, and kisses me on the lips.
I pull gently away. I know he wants more from me, but I’m still not ready. Not yet. ‘Come on, then,’ I say. ‘It’s too cold to stay here much longer.’
We go back to the caravan together. We don’t say much as we cross the field. Our hands hold tight.
Inside, I hang the wet towels over the rail and switch on the heater to warm the place up. ‘Can you stay for supper?’
Seb nods.
‘I’ll start cooking, ready for when Dad and Cassy get back.’
‘Will they mind me being here?’
‘No. Cassy really likes you.’
‘And your dad?’
‘Him too. He’s just a bit . . . odd about stuff. Protective, I suppose. Don’t say anything about the shower.’
Seb watches me fill the pan with water, start chopping the garlic and onion. ‘What shall I do?’
‘Grate the cheese? Clear the table? There’s not much to do.’
It’s cosy, making supper together in the caravan, just us. I could live like this, I think. In a caravan, in a field somewhere, just me and Seb. I can see that. I can imagine it really easily.
11
I have to wait two whole weeks, and then just when I’ve almost given up, Seb sends me a text.
Your parcel’s just arrived. Shall I bring it over later? xxx
Yes please! xxx I text him back.
I think about it all through English. Do I really want to open a parcel from Francesca in the caravan? With Cassy and Dad around?
I text him again at lunchtime.
Can you borrow the car? Can we go somewhere instead, after school?
Can’t get car till later tonight. Mum’s at work. 8?
Come back to my place.
The day drags.
I had this fantasy of Seb and me going to our special place in the wood, and me opening the parcel there. But it will be too dark, and it’s silly, really.
He picks me up at the top of the lane. I’m twitchy with nerves.
‘Good day at school?’ Seb asks.
‘Not really. What did you do?’
‘Not a lot. Read the stuff they sent for the Level Two course.’
It’s hard for me to focus properly on what he’s saying.
‘How big’s the parcel?’ I say.
‘Not very.’ He glances at me, then back on to the road. ‘Like, the size of a book. A thin one.’
I’m already preparing to be disappointed, shutting down something deep inside me that had just begun to open and breathe again.
He pulls up at his house.
‘Is your mum in?’ I don’t feel like seeing anyone, not yet. And Avril asks too many questions.
‘She won’t bother us if I ask her not to. She’s got a friend coming round, anyway. And Dad’s out.’
The parcel is waiting for me on his be
d. My name is written in thick blue pen on the front, with Seb’s name and address underneath. I know the writing. It’s just the same as on the albums, only bigger and fatter because of the felt-tip pen. She’s tied it round with blue string. Her address is written on the back. I stare at the words. Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
The search is over, then. I have the address right here, in front of me. And the parcel? I’m almost too scared to open it.
Seb goes downstairs. I know he’s thought about this, that he’s giving me some space.
I sit on his bed, and turn the parcel round, and over, and then I start to unpick the knot in the blue string, and unpeel the sticky tape, and rip the layers of brown paper, and finally the contents lie there in my hands.
A thin booklet, the brochure from an exhibition. An envelope with a cardboard back, with photographs inside. I shake them out on to the bed: trees, and more trees. Fir trees, and trees with moss and lichen dripping from the branches, and the bare roots of a huge tree pulled out of the earth.
I’m numb.
I turn over the pages of the booklet. The writing is in French. There are photos of three paintings by Fran Davidson. The biggest one shows a young woman at a round table with a blue bowl of red cherries in the middle; behind her, two small children are sort of floating, as if they are almost sitting at the table but not quite. An open window. A fine muslin curtain blowing out, as if in a summer breeze. Outside, through the open window, a garden with an orchard of cherry trees.
Seb comes back upstairs with two cups of tea. He sits beside me on the bed. He looks at the painting. He looks at my face. ‘Ghost children,’ he says, eventually.
‘Me and Kat.’
Seb pinches my arm. ‘Except you’re not. Not a ghost.’
‘No.’
I feel dazed, as if I’m sleepwalking, going through the motions of something, not really there.
‘Is there a letter?’ Seb asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Shall I see?’
I nod. He picks up the big brown envelope, fishes out a smaller blue envelope, hands it to me. The paper is thin, flimsy.
‘Shall I stay or go?’ Seb asks.
‘Stay. Please.’
I have to read it three times, very slowly.
Dearest Emily,
You cannot imagine how many times I have gone over this moment in my mind. Hoping it might happen, one day. When I got your email it was as if my heart stopped still. I can hardly believe it is happening, and that you have managed to find me – more importantly, that you have wanted to do so.
You must be sixteen now, old enough to know what you are doing. Old enough to understand some difficult things. But how do I begin to tell you? Little by little, perhaps.
I am so thrilled that you are studying photography. I would love to see your photos. Do send me some. Please?
Does your father know you have made contact with me? I wrote to him about three years ago but I never heard back. And Katharine? How is she?
I imagine you have many questions. Well, we have made a beginning, you and I. Write to me again, Emily. Send me something of you. Please.
With love
Fran
Seb reads it too. He holds me tight, while I cry and cry, for the mother I can’t remember.
‘It’s weird, though,’ Seb says when I finally stop. ‘Those tree photos she sent you. How similar they are to the ones you’ve done. Don’t you think?’
I can’t bear to leave all the stuff at Seb’s house, after all. I put it back in the paper packaging, the string and envelope and everything, and Seb finds me a plastic bag to keep it all safely together, and I take it back to the caravan with me.
Cassy knows I’ve been crying. She doesn’t ask why. She and Dad are already getting ready for bed.
I tuck the bag next to me, under the duvet, next to the stone mouse who nestles up against the window, at the edge of my bed. All night, I sleep with her things close to me, my hand on the thin blue paper.
I wake up early: I’m already making plans.
Notebook 3
Summer, Pyrénées-Atlantiques
1
We are almost there, after hours of travelling.
Bus, train, another train, and this last bus, now trundling off again, the engine struggling as it climbs the long slow hill towards Pau, in the French Pyrenees. Seb and I look at each other and grin. It’s been hours and hours. The sound of the bus fades into silence. It’s just us, now, in the middle of nowhere.
Except that it isn’t, of course. Even here, in the foothills of the mountains, there are farms and houses and whole villages, tucked away out of sight. It seems a miracle that we’ve found our way this far: the junction of the lane and the main road, the signpost to the church and the village. Her village. Just like the map shows.
Seb shifts his backpack on to both shoulders, I pick mine up too, all dusty from the road, and we begin the walk down the lane. It winds between small hayfields, down a long, green valley between densely wooded hills. Behind us the mountains go up into cloud, so high you can’t see the top.
We walk in silence, all talked out. The air is a relief after the long, hot bus ride: no air-conditioning, seats packed together. The small fields, the greenness, is another surprise after the long hours we spent on the train, speeding through a dry golden landscape of huge sunflower fields and maize and then miles and miles of pine forest, all baking in the sun.
Here, swallows loop low over the grass, snatching flies out of the air. It must be early evening, but I’ve lost track of time. The lane crosses a stream, but when we look down over the bridge the stream has dried to a muddy trickle. The light changes. Dappled sunlight falls through overhanging beech trees. We reach the first houses at the edge of the village: two big stone houses, and then a modern one with a gravel drive and a new car parked outside.
The lane turns a bend and we find ourselves in front of a church, in a large deserted paved square. Tubs of scarlet geraniums, a stone bench, a huge old tree throwing deep shadow. The church bell strikes six at exactly the moment we arrive, as if it’s announcing we are here. But there’s no one to see.
‘I’ll get out the map again,’ I say.
We sit on the stone bench and I smooth out the crumpled paper for the hundredth time.
‘Up past the church, and along a bit.’
The lane goes steeply uphill and then levels out. Almost immediately, I see the house. I know it from the photo: the way it stands at a right angle to the lane, the stone-tiled roof, the wood stacked up under the eaves. A wooden verandah runs along the front. Huge shuttered windows have been flung wide open to let in the evening sun. She’ll have done that . . .
It’s all so solid and real it’s a shock. I’ve stared at this house so many times, in a flimsy creased photograph. I’ve imagined arriving here.
We’ve stopped still. I glance at Seb. He’s tired, and dusty, and crumpled-looking. He’s come all this way because I asked him. It’s the longest time we’ve been completely alone together.
Voices from somewhere behind the house drift across the hedge. A woman and a man, in conversation, though we can’t hear the words.
In a minute, I’ll see her.
I make myself open the gate. The click of the latch sounds ridiculously loud. Seb’s hand is on my back, a gentle pressure.
‘You’re holding your breath!’ His mouth is warm at my ear. ‘Breathe, Em!’
Before, and after. Like a hinge. This is the me before . . .
Suddenly, before I’m properly ready, prepared, she’s standing right there in front of me. A dark-haired woman, with a smooth, tanned face, white shirt, blue trousers, flip-flops . . .
She says a word – not English, I don’t catch it – and one hand flies to her mouth, as if to stop herself crying out. An expression I can’t read – panic? fear? – floods her face. ‘Emily?’ Her voice is hesitant.
I can’t speak. I go hot. I swallow hard, so I don’t throw up.
W
hat does she see? A girl with short dark hair, slim, anxious? A complete stranger . . .
She doesn’t recognise me.
And why would she? I was a toddler the last time. Not much more than a baby, with a round face and dark hair that curled, wispy. Here, now, face to face with my mother for the first time since I was two, all I can do is stare.
She stares back. Slowly, she drops her gaze as if it’s too uncomfortable. As if she is ashamed.
And something flares up in me, a white-hot rage, as if I am still only two years old and she has only just abandoned me. It is as simple and raw and overwhelming as that.
That image has become frozen in time, itself like a photograph. My mother, framed against the green and gold of hayfields in high summer, mountains behind, an edge of stone house to one side, the half-smile fading on her face.
2
Seb reaches out for my hand. He holds it tight, and the feel of him there, steady beside me, keeps me from turning and running, while Francesca babbles a kind of welcome, in her too-bright voice.
‘Come on in! You must be exhausted! It’s been hot today – I’ll fetch us all a drink. Come on through.’
We follow her through the massive front porch into a dark, open-plan sitting room which goes up and up, two storeys high.
‘Sit down,’ she says. ‘Make yourselves at home.’ She waves towards the big sofa, as if we should sit there, while she goes deeper into the old house to get the drinks.
We stay standing. We’re both much too sweaty and dusty from the journey to plonk ourselves down on the cream sofa with its plumped-up red and gold cushions. We’re both suddenly shy.
‘It smells really old,’ Seb whispers.
I stare at the paintings in dark wooden frames hung on each wall: abstracts in the same flame colours as the cushions. Are they hers?
The air is musty with old woodsmoke and candle wax and a lemony scent that might be furniture polish or possibly real lemons, because Francesca reappears at that moment with a tray of glasses and a jug of home-made lemonade and a bottle of some orange-coloured liqueur.
She looks surprised to see us standing there, awkwardly. ‘We can go out into the garden,’ she says, ‘if you’d prefer?’
