The Kicking Tree

by Trevor Stubbs

  “I don’t have a father, either. We’ve next to nothing in our house, my mum and I. But I don’t need friends that drink.”

  “But I bet your mum loves you. My mum turns me out so she can have her boyfriends in.”

  “Rough,” said Jack. He was learning all the time what a good woman his mother really was.

  Kakko appeared with Mr. Pero. “This is Mr. Pero, the owner,” she said to the young man.

  He immediately got to his feet, but unsteadily. “I… I want to say sorry.” The word seemed very lame when he considered what had been done in those short minutes last night. “I was here and I… I want to say that I really regret being part of it.”

  “So they let you go?” inquired Mr. Pero.

  “Not all of us. They have let some of us go. But we all have to go to court next week. To tell you the truth I was too drunk to remember much about it.” He still looked very much the worse for wear.

  “Head hurt?” asked Mr. Pero. The boy nodded once, gently. Mr. Pero indicated a bottle of water from the shelf and one of the fellowship brought to it him. They were all gathering round now. “Sit down and drink this!” ordered the restaurateur. The young man drank carefully, gratefully. “Thanks,” he muttered.

  “OK. Apology accepted,” said Mr. Pero, “So long as you promise to be in court, take your punishment and to learn from this.”

  “Thanks. I am going to plead guilty. I promise. Can I do anything to help?” He spotted the cardboard box and dropped a note in it. “All I have left,” he said.

  When he had finished drinking the water, Kakko looked into his eyes. “Stand up,” she barked. He stood. “You’ll do. Washing up!” she ordered.

  After he had staggered in the direction of the kitchen, Jack exclaimed, “Wow! He’s a bit brave isn’t he coming back here after last night.”

  “He is,” said Jalli, “but I don’t think he’s bad inside, just unloved.”

  “If you’ve got someone to love you,” declared the rosy cheeked girl, “then life is a different slice of pie!”

  “… or kettle of fish,” murmured Jack

  “What?” laughed Jalli.

  “Kettle of fish. We say ‘kettle of fish’. Life is a different kettle of fish. Things are different.”

  “And we say ‘planted in a different field’. Life that is different. If you’ve got someone to love you then it’s like planting seeds in good soil. I can’t imagine putting fish into a kettle! How does that work?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. It’s just a saying. I expect they used to have fish kettles somewhere in the past. It’s not as silly as like when we say ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’.”

  “What? I’m not coming to visit you on a rainy day! It sounds positively dangerous.”

  “So you two don’t come from the same country then?” asked the girl.

  “No, different universes,” replied Jalli, “but he’s good for me.”

  “Life with him is a good kettle of fish then?”

  “The best!” she giggled, giving Jack a kiss on the cheek.

  At nine-thirty the staff started arriving. They weren’t due till eleven but they had heard on the radio that Pero’s was opening at ten. At a quarter to ten customers began to roll in and by half past ten Mr. Pero was down at the market with some of the young people buying food. It looked as if they were going to have a good number of people all through the morning. In fact, this was the first of three visits he had to make to the market that day!

  “I don’t usually buy on a Saturday,” he explained.

  There was soon a queue of people who had come out especially to patronise Pero’s. They wanted to applaud his courage. “It’s a good job you have such a big family,” observed one customer seeing all the industrious young people. “All yours?”

  “All of them! They are my very special friends,” smiled Mr. Pero, as Tod walked in with the repaired frames and began hanging them on the wall.

  “The plate glass will be here before three,” he stated.

  That morning all the young people stayed around to help, but soon only a few of them were needed. Tod led most of them off to the beach where Jalli and Jack had an awesome time in the surf followed by some form of beach cricket. Jalli was really good at it and had to keep running. But after a long stint, Jack detected a fleeting wince of pain in Jalli’s face.

  “Time to declare,” he shouted.

  “Declare? Declare what?” asked Tod.

  “It means that you give someone else a go because no-one can beat you.”

  “Great idea,” said the rosy cheeked girl stepping forward and taking the bat from Jalli.

  “I was just getting into that,” breathed Jalli.

  “You were playing with an injury. It’s hurting you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It was in your face – just a little bit.”

  “Can’t hide anything from you!”

  “Don’t try. Got to let people love you.”

  Jack reflected. Love. It can mean so many different things in English. When he said that just then he didn’t mean it in the same way as he had said he loved her top yesterday. Or in the same way that Tod and Kakko had said they were all called to love one another. He wondered how it would be translated for Jalli. But she must have understood what was in his heart because she looked at him and smiled and squeezed his hand. He held onto it.

  “It’s arrived!” One of the fellowship was charging down the beach. “The window. It’s arrived.”

  They quickly gathered their things and went back to the restaurant. They helped to take tables and chairs across the street onto the grass under the trees where people could continue eating their food while the glass was put in. Tod counted the money out of the box to pay the men.

  “We’re doing this at cost,” they explained. “We heard what happened and we want to help.” Tod found there was just enough to cover everything. But the box remained all day and throughout the evening and at the end of the day Mr. Pero had enough to have painted on the glass “Pero’s Family Restaurant”. It used to read “The Restaurant Pero” but he said that now he had a super new family of young people, he had decided to rename it. “You are all my family,” he declared. “And whenever you come here, you eat for nothing because you are family.” After the window had been finished, and the tables and chairs returned to their rightful places, a photographer from the newspaper came to take a picture. “I want all of my family in the photo,” Mr. Pero pronounced, and so everyone was arranged around him.

  “Wait!” called the restaurateur, “where is the young man doing the washing up? He must be in the photo too. He is part of the family. He has been washing up all day.” So the young man whose life had presented him with a “different slice of pie” was pulled into the group bearing a sheepish smile that turned into a laugh when “Rosie” gently dug her fingers into his waist.

  The rest of that afternoon was just as busy. Mr. Pero had to set off for the market again and a different shift of young people took over. The repentant lad was taken from the sink to play the beach games and was accepted into the fellowship just as easily as Jack and Jalli had been. After a couple of hours as a waitress Jalli was tired. Jack came over to her and said that they really ought to be going and Jalli agreed. They sought out Kakko and thanked her for a wonderful two days. “We think there should be fellowship groups everywhere,” they affirmed.

  “Then start one up,” replied Kakko. “What you have to do from the beginning is agree that the purpose of the group is to help other people and have fun at the same time… and it helps if you can pray about it.”

  “Jalli’s good at that,” responded Jack. “Thank you!” They waved a goodbye to everyone and promised that they would definitely look everyone up if they could come that way again.

  “And don’t forget. You eat here free any time,” promised Mr. Pero.

  “Thanks. Your food is the best,” said Jack.

  “I know!” he ag
reed.

  The tired couple returned to their room and paid the bill. The money they had just covered it. “The Owner has given just enough,” remarked Jalli.

  “And that makes us rich!” rejoiced Jack.

  Jack carried both bags as Jalli was beginning to limp. They walked up to the toilet block, turned to take a last view of the beach resort, and stepped through the white gate.

  Inside the garden the air was soft and quiet. There was a gentle breeze that wafted the scent of flowers into their nostrils. Jalli put her arms around Jack’s neck and held onto him. She was really tired and in some pain. “Too much fun!” she declared. Jack lifted her off her feet and carried her to the bench.

  “You need to rest a bit,” he suggested as she snuggled up to him.

  “Look I’ve been thinking.”

  “You’ve had time to think?”

  “I’ll have to tell Grandma… everything.”

  “Yes, I suppose you must. And I’ll have to tell Mum. Not that I feel like it.”

  “Everything,” murmured Jalli. “White gates. This garden. Beach resorts. And, especially, you! My grandma will want to meet you of course.”

  “But I may not be permitted through your gate.”

  “Then that would be a disaster!” shuddered Jalli. “Grandma just wouldn’t countenance me sloping off into a different universe to meet a boy she can never meet.” Jack then became aware that Jalli was talking quietly to her God. “Please let Jack into Wanulka. Please!”

  Silently, as lovers do, they held onto to each other for a full ten minutes. Then Jack returned to the practical. “We’re both rather salty,” he observed. “It did occur to me to shower before we left. But then, I thought, I was too tired to bother.”

  When they looked back across the lawn the white gate through which they had just come had disappeared. So had the little shed, and their clothes were in the neat pile in which they had left them. “I’d better put the jeans on,” muttered Jalli. But when she stood to move, her leg had seized up again. “Ow!” she yelped. She stood but no way could she bend forward to her feet. Jack fetched her jeans and trainers while she undid the shorts and let them fall.

  “Exciting!” declared Jack.

  “And I was going to tell Grandma what a gentleman you were!”

  “So, an excited gentleman.” He knelt down and held the trousers for her to put her feet in and then tugged them up into her reach. Then she sat down as he put both her socks and shoes on.

  “Whatever would I do without you?” she smiled.

  “You won’t have to, ever, if your white gate allows me through.” He sat beside her and she put both her arms round him and kissed his face. Their lips met and it was as if the whole universe, all the universes in creation belonged to them at that moment. They enveloped one another and felt the power of the Owner of the cottage as He or She too revelled in their joy.

  “Everything,” whispered Jalli, “I have to tell her everything!”

  “OK! I do not want to be a hidden secret. But, now, however are you going to make it home?”

  “I have to catch a bus. It stops nearly outside my house.”

  “I know what we will do,” pronounced Jack, “if I can get through your gate I will come with you to your bus-stop and see you onto the bus. I can help you get there. And then we will know for sure whether or not I am allowed through your gate.”

  “That is a brilliant idea!” They hobbled to the gate. But before they opened it, Jalli lent up and kissed Jack again. After all she may not get another chance! She then opened the gate and she pushed Jack through in front of her. It worked! They stood together in Wanulka beside the Municipal Gardens.

  “Wow! This place is really different from Persham. I like it!”

  “A different kettle of fish?”

  “Well not exactly. But there is a really strange smell here.”

  “It smells like home.”

  “I suppose it does to you. It’s not a gentle smell though is it? Like in the garden.”

  “Some of it’s the soil, I suppose, and some of it’s the sea – and some of it’s the mess people don’t look after properly,” she sighed. “The bus-stop is this way.” She gave the towel with her underclothes wrapped in it to Jack as she thrust her hand into her jeans pocket and pulled out a small purse with the fair. She was still wearing the swimsuit.

  “Looks as if we’re allowed to keep these things,” said Jalli, as she took back the bright towel.

  “Souvenir of the trip!”

  Fortunately for Jalli they did not have to wait long for a bus. As it approached they remembered they had almost forgotten to make arrangements for their next meeting.

  “Tuesday,” suggested Jalli, “early – nine o’clock. I’ll meet you in the garden and I’ll take you home to meet Grandma!”

  “Fine.” He kissed her on the cheek and helped her up on to the step and into the bus. The bus pulled away and Jack stood staring after it, his arm raised, suddenly alone in a strange land. The strangeness of the land, now, had far more to do with the fact that Jalli wasn’t with him, than that he was probably standing in a different universe light years away from his own.

  As he re-entered the garden and collected his things, Jack spun around and around, and shouted, “THANK YOU” as loud as his lungs would permit!

  9

  Later that evening, Jalli limped in from the bus-stop. She was exhausted but radiant.

  “What on Planet Raika have you been up to?” Grandma stared in amazement as she beheld her granddaughter. Jalli had suddenly exploded into colour – in pain from the hip, in ecstasy with her first kiss, and filled with wonder at the whole weekend with such super people.

  “Grandma I just have so much to tell you!” she blurted out. “I’ve had an absolutely super time. I met this boy called Jack and…”

  “Doesn’t surprise me, Jalli, I’ve known for weeks that there’s been something going on. Are you going to tell me all about it now? Can Grandma be let into the secrets?”

  “OK, Grandma. I am going to tell you everything – but you won’t believe me. I’ve been to two different planets!”

  “You’ve been to the beach that’s for sure. But not round here. You’re covered in sand, but it’s not from Wanulka beach. And what’s this you are wearing underneath your top with this bow round your neck? Where did you get that? The first or second planet?”

  “The first… to wear in the second. You see…”

  “OK. I have no doubt you will tell me everything, but before you spread any more sand around why don’t you go and take off those beach things and have a bath. Then come back and have a cup of tea and tell me all about it.” Gratefully, Jalli made her way to the bathroom scattering sand and bikini as she went. “And Jalli, I am delighted to see you so happy,” called her grandmother after her.

  “Thanks, Grandma!”

  *

  A universe away, Jack emerged from his white gate into a drab and wet Persham. There was a rough wind driving the rain into his face as he made his way down the damp pavement that led to Renson Park. By the time he arrived home he was as soaked as if he had taken a shower fully dressed. The leaves on the trees in the park offered no shelter. In fact it was probably wetter under them, and the short cut across the park, he decided, was a mistake because the paths were really muddy. It must have been raining here a long time. As he turned into Renson Park Road he spied the kicking tree and he felt deeply guilty. What he had done to that tree over the years was no better than the way those drunken revellers had behaved in the beach resort. OK, he may not have done that to a person – no he was not a vandal like that, he had never been part of a gang of youths wreaking terror – but what he had done to the tree was a kind of vandalism all the same. The only thing it had done wrong was to be there – and it couldn’t run away! Jack almost apologised to it but he didn’t. He told himself that talking to a tree (or a bush as it now was) was rather silly – but he was also conscious that he was too ashamed to face it. After
all, had he not spoken to the cottage and the garden?

  He let himself in, dripping wet. Unlike Jalli scattering sand, all that Jack’s mum was aware of was Persham mud in her hallway! “Where on Planet Earth have you been?” she cried, “You’ll catch pneumonia! Why ever didn’t you take a coat?”

  “The sun was shining when I left,” explained Jack.

  “Quite! It’s been raining here for twenty-four hours. You’ve been a long time. I was getting worried.”

  “I said we might be gone overnight,” said Jack getting annoyed – and getting annoyed with himself for getting annoyed. He felt himself sinking back into the moaning Persham mood. Some of it was probably due to the weather – raining, grey, and mud-soaked for twenty-four hours without a break. He thought of his impending visit to Wanulka. There they had three suns in the sky…

  “We?” Matilda was asking. “Who have you been with?” Jack remembered Jalli saying, “Everything. We have to tell them everything.”

  “Jalli. A girl called Jalli. I’ll tell you everything, from the beginning.” Matilda was about to wade in and demand a full explanation but stopped herself just in time, as the import of Jack’s words entered her brain, “You’d b… everything? Did you say you’d tell me everything?”

  “Yes, Mum. Everything. We decided we would tell our mums everything – well, Grandma in Jalli’s case.” Jack sneezed. He was still standing inside the front door with a large puddle forming around his feet.

  “Goodness. Look, you’d better take a bath. There’ll be just enough hot water, I expect. Then come and eat something. You are hungry?”

  “Ravenous!” Jack breathed a sigh of relief and hurried upstairs to a welcome bath. That had gone better than he had anticipated, he reflected, as he lay in the warm water. Jalli was really wise. Following her advice he had used the right words, and it had stemmed the tirade that he was used to. Perhaps in the past he may have been as responsible for the way his mother talked to him as she was. Up till now he had, instinctively, blamed her for being cross with him. Jalli was teaching him how he could say things in a way that reduced, rather than inflamed anger – she was just so good! Telling his mother what he had been doing was not easy. He felt exposed. He risked being misunderstood. In fact he knew he would be, because there was no way his mum in her limited world was going to get her mind round all he had been doing. But he had to try… for Jalli. As he talked he kept thinking about Jalli telling her grandma everything. He mustn’t keep secrets about Jalli – even if his mum didn’t always understand.