The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  That set the tone for his visits from then on. He was by her side as always, loving and patient, but he absolutely refused to discuss anything to do with Mary or the umbra. It was as if he’d simply decided that it hadn’t happened, and his brain had reconfigured itself so that whenever she did try to raise the subject, she became inaudible. He would change the conversation, and if she persisted he simply left the ward on some absurdly trivial errand. It was like a curtain coming down between the acts of a play; he brought down a barrier in his mind as strong as anything between the lands of the living and the dead.

  And it was maddening.

  He was literally the only living human being she could talk to about any of it, and he was pretending like it had never happened. Of two things only was she certain: that Oak Mary was no more a prostitute than a witch or a spy, and that she was determined to get to the truth no matter how much Tom buried his head in the sand. Unable to get answers to her questions, they chased around in her head like cats during the long periods of time when she had no visitors to distract her.

  That was why, when she started to see dead people on the ward, she dismissed it at first as the product of her frustrated imagination and the painkillers.

  No amount of renovation or twenty-first-century medical equipment could disguise the fact that Birmingham’s Royal Orthopaedic Hospital had old bones. In the bed opposite her was a young man who had the look of a surfer or skateboarder – shaggy ginger hair, improbably good-looking – with both legs in plaster to the hip and sprouting pins and braces from them at all angles. For a moment it seemed that his high-tech bed with its servo-controls and monitoring equipment had been replaced by something like a single narrow cot with tubular metal rails and a woollen blanket. Rachel blinked, and the modern bed was back, but she could see the echo of the older model hovering behind. She shook her head harder, closed her eyes and counted to ten, and when she opened them again even the echo had gone. But the ghost bed came back several times over the rest of that day, flickering in and out of her vision.

  The phantom sensations had moved – now they were in her head. Maybe the accident had knocked them loose somehow. Maybe part of her was still in the umbra. The buzzing, flickering, twitching, tickling pins and needles that she’d been able to translate into physical sensations had taken root behind her eyes and between her ears, causing shadows to dance at the edges of her vision and echoes to whisper behind the sounds of the world.

  Not that this made any difference to the young man; he lay in his bed just as easily either way. Nor did he seem to notice the ragged old woman who appeared once, sitting on the edge and staring vacantly into space, even though her appearance made Rachel recoil so sharply that she smacked the back of her head.

  Once spotted, the dead were impossible to ignore. Mostly they were patients in tattered hospital gowns, wandering past with empty expressions as if looking for something they’d lost or couldn’t remember. Some were so emaciated that when Rachel first saw one her heart seized in terror at the thought that the inmates of Scoles Farm had found her, and that she’d be besieged in her bed by clinging, desperate shades, unable even to run. They weren’t, of course – just souls looking for doctors who couldn’t help them or relatives who were themselves long dead. All the same, Rachel sank a little lower in her bed whenever she saw any of them, just to be on the safe side.

  She smiled at the nurses who looked after her, responded to their cheerful small talk, and cooperated with the doctors when they did their tests. Sometimes she could tell that they were dead from their old-fashioned uniforms or the fact that they spoke with nobody except her. Other times it was more difficult to tell.

  The dark-haired nurse in the starched cap stopped by her bed once in a while to ask how she was doing but never checked her drips, tubes, or dressings, seemingly happy just to hear that her patient was feeling much better. She wore an old-fashioned tunic with a prominent red cross, which might have been from the early twentieth century. She clearly didn’t know she was dead, and Rachel didn’t have the heart to tell her. It would have seemed rude, if nothing else.

  More than anything she wished she could tell Annabel that she now had the Sight too.

  * * *

  Rachel’s mother Olivia delivered the news that the Council wasn’t going to press trespass and criminal damage charges with regard to Scoles Farm, but she didn’t look happy about it. Quite the reverse: she had the pursed, long-suffering look that Rachel had seen many times as a teenager – usually when she’d been determined to do something of which her mother disapproved but couldn’t prevent. The look that said All right then, if you think it’s a good idea. I can’t stop you of course but I will be right here to pick up the pieces as usual.

  It was possible that Rachel was feeling sorry for herself just the tiniest bit.

  ‘If you ask me,’ continued her mother, ‘I think they were afraid of the bad publicity they’d get for prosecuting a “disabled person”.’ She put little air quotes around the words as if they couldn’t possibly apply to someone like her daughter. ‘You’re lucky.’

  That word again.

  Rachel snorted. A severed hand: the gift that keeps on giving.

  ‘Yes! Lucky! Not to have been killed, for one thing!’

  ‘If I didn’t know better,’ said Rachel, ‘I’d think that you actually wanted us to get arrested.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t want you to get arrested,’ she replied, and began polishing her glasses. ‘What were you doing there?’ she asked eventually. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. If you could just give me a reason.’

  ‘I told you why. I was doing a favour for a friend.’

  ‘Yes, so you say. But what friend? The same friend who was with you in the prefab at the Coopers’ yard? Oh yes,’ she added, seeing Rachel’s mouth drop open in surprise. ‘I know all about that. Tom and I had a long chat about a lot of things while we were waiting for you to wake up.’

  Rachel uttered a hollow laugh. ‘That’s rich. He’ll talk to you but I can barely get the time of day out of him.’

  Her mother sniffed. ‘We’re not ganging up on you – I don’t have an awful lot of time for Tom at the moment. I’m still not convinced that it wasn’t all his idea to rope you into going scavenging who knows what from that horrible old building.’ She ploughed on as Rachel opened her mouth to protest. ‘Oh, I know exactly what these builders get up to. Stealing the lead from church roofs and old copper cables and things like that.’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous. You know Tom! He’d never do anything like that!’

  ‘Do I? Wouldn’t he? He was the one who was driving the boat that crushed your poor hand, and I refuse to believe that he couldn’t have stopped you going into that place if he’d really tried; he must have known how dangerous it was.’

  ‘Right, let’s clear one thing up at least.’ Rachel pulled herself higher in the bed, ignoring the pain in her ribs. ‘Tom didn’t cause the boat accident. I was the one who put myself in harm’s way; I was wearing stupid shoes and was too lazy to use the boat pole instead of my hands. If the accident was anybody’s fault, it was mine. Still, at least this all explains why you never come to visit me at the same time.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe the pair of you.’

  ‘Can you believe that I am this close to telling the police about this “friend” of yours who you allegedly “found in the woods” and who escaped from the psychiatric institution?’

  ‘Mum, look, it’s not that simple—’

  ‘Yes! Yes it is that simple! It’s exactly that simple! You didn’t seriously think you could keep me from finding out that you’d almost been shot, did you? Good lord, Rachel, what’s been going on with you?’

  Rachel could see the wet mirror shine of tears in her mother’s eyes, and felt her skin crawl with guilt. Her mother didn’t deserve this. None of them did.

  ‘You were making such progress,’ Olivia sniffed. ‘I don’t understand. Your rehab was going well, you were close
to going back to work. And now I find out from Tom about the nightmares and the hallucinations, that you’re getting mixed up with strange people and, and violence? If you could just explain it to me, if I could make some kind of sense of it all…’

  But all Rachel could think, as this spilled out of her mother, was what the creature in the boat had said – They decided to let you have what little happiness there was left – and she felt the cramping guilt harden into something cruel.

  ‘Were you going to divorce Dad?’ she interrupted. ‘Before the cancer, I mean?’

  Her mother blinked as if she’d been physically slapped, and her face went pale. ‘What? Who told you that?’

  ‘Never mind who told me. Is it true?’

  ‘I really don’t see what it’s got to do with—’

  ‘Because you seem to think I owe you an explanation for everything that’s going on in my head and outside of it, and I just think, if it’s true, it’s a shame you couldn’t have extended the same courtesy to me. You must have thought you were doing me a favour – and you probably were, when I was twelve – but that was a long time ago.’

  Her mother began fussing with her handbag, unable to meet Rachel’s eye. ‘I don’t know where this has come from. It doesn’t have anything to do with your situation.’

  ‘It has everything to do with it!’ Because if it was true then what the psychopomp had said about their family being hollow might also be true, and Rachel was starting to have some very uncomfortable ideas as to where Oak Mary fit into it all. Why had her last words been the name of Rachel’s grandfather? Why had she fixated on Rachel at all? ‘Just tell me. Were you going to divorce him?’

  Her mother sighed and took a Kleenex from the box beside the bed and dabbed her eyes. When she spoke, it was to the tissue in her hands, not Rachel. ‘Your father was a charming man. He could talk the birds out of the trees and then the feathers off the birds, my mum said. Except what she really meant was that he could talk the knickers off the birds, which is what he did. Frequently. Charming men need to be seen to be charming – they need to be appreciated – but it stops being fun when the little birdies stop being dazzled by the shiny surface and start to notice what’s underneath, because they’re afraid that what’s underneath isn’t very nice. The tragic thing about your father was that he was nice underneath – his penchant for young office assistants aside, of course – but he just couldn’t see it. And eventually I stopped trying to help him see it because it became just too bloody humiliating.’

  Rachel reached for her mother’s hand, and felt her fingers stiffen for a moment as if about to flinch away, but then relax and allow themselves to be held.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother continued. ‘I should have told you a long time ago. But ask yourself, when do you think is a good time to tell your daughter that the dead father she adored was a philanderer?’

  Rachel couldn’t answer that.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Olivia said. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed you just now. I can’t imagine the kind of stress you must be under.’ She gathered her things together and got to her feet. ‘I’m going to leave now. But you need to know what else Tom told me.’ She fidgeted, plainly uncomfortable with what she had to say next. ‘He said that you think you’ve been talking to dead people.’

  The extent of Tom’s betrayal stunned Rachel into a silence that her mother obviously mistook for guilt. ‘I don’t think you’re… well, darling,’ Olivia went on. ‘I’ve called in a personal favour and asked someone from the hospital’s psychiatric liaison service to stop by, unofficially. I can’t force you to talk to her, but I hope you’re going to cooperate because, frankly, I’m at my wits’ end.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’ll just be as prickly with her as you are with me.’ She turned to go, and then half-turned back. ‘There’s nothing…’ she started, then seemed to choke on something and tried again. ‘It isn’t… you mustn’t feel… afraid. Of asking for help.’

  She placed a dry kiss on Rachel’s forehead and left.

  Ashamed, Rachel thought. You were going to say I shouldn’t feel ashamed.

  33

  LIAISON

  THE NEXT TIME OLIVIA VISITED, SHE BROUGHT WITH her a serious young woman who spoke with the soft, rounded tones of an East European accent as she introduced herself as Ms Dasha Korovina, a member of the hospital’s liaison psychiatry team. She was eating a sandwich.

  ‘I’m not a doctor,’ she said. ‘This isn’t even an appointment. I’m on my lunch break, actually. Do you feel up to having a chat?’

  Rachel darted a swift look at her mother and smiled. ‘Of course.’

  Korovina sat on the chair beside the bed. ‘It’s important that you understand I’m not trying to trap you into saying something that you don’t want to say; I’d just like to find out how you feel about some things.’

  For some reason Rachel found the way Korovina sat so casually, eating her lunch and flicking stray crumbs from her blouse, a bit disconcerting. ‘Aren’t you going to take notes or something?’

  ‘Would you like me to?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I trust you.’

  ‘You know, I don’t often hear that phrase.’

  ‘That’s because you spend all your time talking to crazy people.’

  Korovina smiled politely while her mother winced. She started by asking about how Rachel had lost her hand, how she was coping physically, did she find it frustrating, did she blame anybody for the accident? Then, how was she eating? Sleeping? Did she have any pets? (Yes, Smoky, though Rachel didn’t think it wise to explain where she’d found him.) Did she take any exercise? How did she feel about the prospect of being in a cast for the next couple of months? Did she enjoy her job? Did she have friends there? Old school friends? Had she made any new friends either through rehab or since losing her hand? How had she felt when her father had died? Had there been arguments at home? Had she self-harmed, either then or ever?

  Rachel carefully avoided mentioning Oak Mary or any of her incarnations, and for her part Korovina asked nothing specific about the events either at the prefab or the asylum. The whole process lasted for the better part of an hour.

  ‘I’m afraid this last one is going to sound a little extreme,’ Korovina admitted. ‘And again you don’t have to answer, but I have to ask: have you ever had suicidal thoughts?’

  ‘No,’ replied Rachel instantly. ‘Never. The absolute last thing I want is to die.’

  Korovina gave Rachel her card and said that she was free to call if she ever changed her mind about seeing a doctor, or just wanted to talk, and recommended the names of some mild anti-anxiety medications if she thought they would help in the meantime. She thanked Rachel for her time, and her mother saw her out of the ward. Rachel watched them go, talking quietly between themselves.

  When Olivia returned, Rachel gave her a thin, cold smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re having conversations about drugs, then. Good job. I should be much easier to control now, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Darling—’

  ‘Drugs won’t make any difference.’ She didn’t bother trying to explain why. There was no way to tell her that throughout the duration of her conversation with Korovina an old dead man had been sitting on the end of the bed, dressed only in grubby striped pyjama trousers, the skin of his rake-thin chest blooming with tumours as he wept silently and inconsolably.

  * * *

  The dark-haired nurse in the starched apron and cap was back, and Rachel discovered with surprise that she’d been missing her and looking forward to her next visit.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, as the dead woman fussed around her. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘My name?’ asked the nurse. ‘Why, it’s Patsy. Patsy Humphries. And may I say, thank you for taking the trouble to thank me.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘Most of my patients aren’t what you’d call the talkative type.’

  Probably because they’re not even aware that you’re there, Rachel thought. She was g
oing to have to phrase her questions carefully. She wondered how she appeared, and what the hospital looked like from Nurse Humphries’ point of view. ‘I imagine they’re probably not feeling very well. How long have you been working here?’

  Nurse Humphries laughed. ‘How long is a piece of string?’

  ‘I mean you must see an awful lot of sick people through here.’

  ‘Some times more than others, but don’t you worry yourself with what you read in the papers. This little Spanish flu thing will burn itself out before you can say olé!’ She laughed again and snapped her fingers in the air like a flamenco dancer. Turning serious again, she regarded Rachel sadly. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but I couldn’t help overhearing you and your mother arguing.’

  ‘Oh that,’ Rachel snorted. ‘Don’t pay any attention to us. She means well but there’s nothing she can do to help and I can’t tell her without having her think I’m a mental case. I’m afraid it’s making me a bit of a pain. At the end of the day she and I are all we’ve got. You should have been a fly on the wall when I was fourteen.’

  ‘Well, if you say so. Now you get some rest and I’ll be back soon.’ And with that, Nurse Humphries strode off smartly to visit another patient. Whether they were living or dead, Rachel didn’t think it mattered all that much.

  * * *

  ‘Mum,’ Rachel said, on Olivia’s next visit, ‘what did Gigi do during the war?’

  Her mother looked up from the bedside flowers she’d been arranging. ‘What an odd question. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I don’t know, I sort of got the impression she was a nurse or something like that. Humour me. It helps to take my mind off my leg.’

  Put like that, her mother could hardly refuse. ‘She was in the Women’s Volunteer Service. I believe she was a driver for a while, delivering all sorts of things all over the country. At least until she and your great-grandfather got married, then she stayed home to look after her family.’