by Eva Glyn
I paid a heavy price for those few hours of oblivion, waking at four in the morning with a raging hangover. My head thumped, my stomach churned, and Izzie filled my head. I failed to stagger to the bathroom and was sick in my wastepaper bin. I lay on the floor and clung to it as dawn crept into the sky.
The last thing I wanted was for Stephen to see me like this. I pulled on an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt before padding downstairs and dowsing my face in cold water at the kitchen sink. The dew from the grass soaked into my trousers as I crossed the lawn. I averted my eyes from the untouched bonfire. Beltane had passed – there was little point in lighting it now. I had failed Jennifer’s memory and the year would be a poor one for me and for the garden.
The woods were full of bluebells and their soft shimmer glowed between the trunks as the rising birdsong surrounded me. I slid to the floor under the fairy tree and its roots embraced me, the knots of its bark burrowing into my back. I closed my eyes, desperate to lose myself in its magic.
The air became warm and heavy with thunder. The chattering of the birds ceased. And there, in the perfect stillness, I heard myself begging, “Please, please let it come right for Izzie and me in the end.” The softness of her hands in mine… A flash of lightning… I opened my eyes to catch glimpses of her yellow dress running away from me between the trees. I leapt to my feet, heart pounding, but when I looked again there was no one there.
Stephen all but ran across the lawn to meet me.
“Rob, what’s wrong?”
“Just hungover. I went for a walk—”
“But you’re crying.”
“No I’m not.”
He reached up and touched my cheek and I realised it was wet and I could taste salt in my beard. My head felt as though it was made of cotton wool.
“How odd,” I marvelled. “I didn’t even know.”
He took me by the hand and led me into the kitchen where Gareth was making a pot of tea.
“Hey, Mr Psychobabble,” I told him, “looks like I need your help. I’ve been crying and I didn’t even know it.”
“Denial, Rob. You’re a master of it.”
“It’s nice to be good at something.”
He shook his head as he sat down next to me. “Self-esteem issues, too. You’ll have to watch yourself.”
“I bet I tick all of your boxes. I’m a freak. Izzie thinks I’m a freak so I must be.”
“Bullshit.”
“What did you say?” I moved my head from side to side to try to clear the fuzz.
“Bullshit. You’re not a freak. You’re just an ordinary bloke struggling to deal with a relationship breakdown and a massive hangover.”
“Of course I’m a freak. I’m a gardener with a degree in botany, for God’s sake. If I have any belief at all it’s heathen and I’m piss poor at that. And you don’t want to know what’s wrong with my memory… except… except…” I felt the tears start again.
“Except what?”
“Except it’s not my memory. It’s Izzie’s. I have proof. My Post Office book – I found it in the attic. Like a passport, it’s stamped with the places I went.” The torrent of emotion sweeping over me was unbearable but somehow I caught a foothold in it. “Look,” I told them, “I’m babbling like a madman. I’m probably still drunk. I’d best go and sleep it off, OK?”
Stephen forced a mug of tea into my shaking hands. “Take this up with you and drink it first.”
His kindness almost killed me.
The sound of Stephen’s car starting outside woke me and I listened as the engine receded up the drive, surprised at how alone I felt. I groped for my watch, finding someone had put a glass of water beside my bed, and I sipped it gratefully. As I came to, I realised I didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as I should have done, which gave me a choice: I could lie here and wallow in my misery or get up and do something useful.
I swung my legs out of bed and pulled on a pair of old work trousers. There was a light drizzle misting the roses but that didn’t matter. I’d dismantle my Beltane bonfire then put the whole sorry weekend behind me.
As I stepped onto the landing I almost jumped out of my skin when Stephen called, “You awake then, Rob?”
I followed the sound of his voice to Jennifer’s bedroom where he was sitting on the floor going through the boxes I’d left for him. I leant against the door jamb. “Why are you still here? I heard the car…”
“That was Gareth. He needs to get back to work tomorrow.”
“And what about you?”
“I decided to take an extra couple of days.”
“What, to sort out your gran’s things?”
He slotted a stack of Reader’s Digests back into their box. “No. To make sure you’re OK.”
“That’s very kind of you, Stephen, but I’m only hungover.”
He was still fiddling with the magazines. “I’m worried it’s more than that. This morning, when we couldn’t find you, I was so scared you’d gone off again.”
I walked into the room and sank down onto the bed. Jennifer’s bed. I’d sat here so many times when it was two in the morning and she wanted her lunch, or to get up and walk in the woods. My hand ran over the counterpane, my palm following the contours of the sculpted silk flowers.
“I won’t do that to you again, Stephen, I promise.” But could I? At the time I had hardly known what I was doing myself, but somehow now, deep inside – and even without Izzie – I knew I’d moved on.
I heard Stephen’s footsteps cross the carpet and I looked up at him. There was the small, frightened boy I’d fished out of the Hamble all those years ago, still trying to put a brave face on things.
“I owe you an explanation,” I told him. “But not here, not where I found her. Sometimes I can almost see her lying on the floor and that’s when I did something… something maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“What?”
I stood up. “Let’s go downstairs.”
In the kitchen Stephen made tea while I nibbled on a cracker. My stomach was still churning but I was so lightheaded I knew I needed something. I didn’t want to have this conversation but it was long overdue. I couldn’t have Stephen living his life wondering if I’d do another runner and nor could I push him away so he didn’t have to worry.
He sat down opposite me, acres distant across the square table. “OK, so what did you do?”
“I picked her up and put her on the bed.”
“And then?”
“Then I phoned you, then the doctor. Then there’s a blank until you all actually arrived.”
“But you said you’d done something wrong?”
I sat back, cradling my mug in my hands. “It seems a small, insignificant thing now but back then it took on huge proportions. It was the act of putting her back to bed. I couldn’t leave her on the floor, Stephen, I just couldn’t. But I told the doctor that the bed was where I found her and when Gareth said there’d be a post-mortem I knew they’d discover that I’d lied.”
“But it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“I know that now but I wasn’t thinking. I probably wasn’t capable of rational thought. I just remembered what happened after my mother died. She was chronically disabled following an accident and she took too many painkillers. The police came and asked all sorts of questions. It was unbearable and I knew I couldn’t go through that again.”
“But Robin, that wouldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen…”
“I didn’t leave the house with the intention of leaving for good. I just kept walking and then I found I couldn’t come back.”
The Aga hissed as the drizzle formed patterns on the window behind his head. In the fading light it was hard to read his expression. “I don’t understand,” he said. “This was your home. Even without Gran you had your home and you had me.”
“I didn’t see it like that. I didn’t see… anything… at the time. I wasn’t even seeing in colour – quite literally. I suppose it was the shock, but also the deep-down exh
austion of caring for someone twenty-four hours a day. She didn’t even know who I was half the time. Sometimes she thought I was you but towards the end, more and more, she called me faoir. It took me ages to work out it was Icelandic for father.”
“Gareth and I… we should have helped you more.”
“You offered no end of times, Stephen, you know you did, but I wouldn’t let you. You had jobs to hold down and, I suppose, I didn’t want your memories of your grandmother to be clouded by what she was like in the end. You did your bit, sorting out the shares and things so we had enough money. I’m only telling you about this now so you know it was everything coming together that tipped me over the edge. It won’t happen again.”
He nodded, and whispered “Thank you.”
The emotion of the moment was almost too much so I stood up. “There are a few jobs I should be doing in the garden and, to be honest, I need the fresh air.”
I gazed at the dampened bonfire for a long time but somehow couldn’t begin to dismantle it. My failure to mark Beltane made me feel rootless and I walked from one corner of the garden to the other as Jennifer and I had done so many times over the years. Nearest the wood, the shimmer of bluebells seemed to glow in the pale light, but while I let their beauty flood through me my mind was well and truly elsewhere – back in another wood, watching Jennifer’s funeral, my self-loathing increasing with every minute I stood there, unable to take the few short steps to support Stephen. I watched the mourning party trudge from the graveside and then the diggers returned to shovel over the earth. And I turned and walked in the opposite direction.
That night I had slept in a copse just off the South Downs Way, curled into the damp loaminess beneath a naked ash tree, the hood of my coat my only pillow. I was just too tired to go on, but I had woken before dawn and by early morning I was in Winchester, cold and thirsty. I don’t remember feeling hungry at all. Behind the cathedral were the wooden huts of the Christmas market and I hunkered down under the broad eaves of one of them, out of the wind.
When the stallholders arrived I moved on. I suppose I drifted around the market – I don’t really know – until the Christmas songs and carols drove me away. Somehow I ended up in a cheap café with a mug of coffee in front of me, but there was hardly any money in my pocket so I couldn’t buy another and eventually I was told I’d outstayed my welcome.
It was a member of the Salvation Army band who rescued me. Maybe that day, maybe the next. All I knew was the constant merging of grey and cold. I didn’t feel anything. I don’t remember thinking anything. Then this kind gentleman in his peaked cap, carrying a trumpet case under his arm, led me to a hostel where at least I had a meal and a bed.
I recognised the grey as depression but I wouldn’t be helped. Only Jennifer could help me and now she had gone. I had no thought at all of returning to her empty house, but now, standing in the garden in the soft dampness of an early May afternoon, I wondered at it. The place was my sanctuary, my home.
The light came on in the kitchen and Stephen waved through the window. I pointed to the path to the woods and signalled I’d be ten minutes. Over the stile, and slipping down the slope, I slid to a halt in front of the fairy tree and put my hand on its trunk. Tall, strong – a survivor. Up, up into its canopy I gazed, with the rough bark imprinting itself into my outstretched palm, and I knew I was a survivor too.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Despite my piss-poor performance at Beltane, my vegetable patch was growing nicely. I crouched over a row of beetroot, teasing out the smallest plants to give the others a better chance. A cabbage butterfly fluttered onto the purple sprouting. I watched it a little guiltily; if I wanted a decent crop I’d have to spray them but I hated to harm even the most destructive of my winged visitors.
“You didn’t reply to my letter.”
I leapt up and spun around, almost losing my balance in the process. “Claire!”
“The one I wrote to the fairies. You answered the others but you never replied to me…” Her voice was breaking, taking my heart crashing down with it.
I held out my arms. “Because you’d have known my writing.”
For one dreadful moment I thought she was going to ignore my invitation, but then she barrelled into me, burrowing her face in my fleece as I held her as tightly as I possibly could. Over the top of her head I noticed Jack.
“Hello, Mr Vail.”
“Thanks for coming. It means a lot to me.”
“It does to Claire too.”
It took Claire and me a few moments to compose ourselves then I led them into the kitchen. There were two questions at the top of my mind but I was only brave enough to ask one of them.
“So how did you know it was me who writes the fairies’ letters?”
“Like you said, I recognised your writing. I was looking in the folder for one addressed to me and I knew straight away it must be you. Then… then I read some of the others and I realised, you know, well, I remembered more than realised. You’re kind of special, Robin, and I wanted to see you again.”
“I’m glad you did. I was watching a learner driver the other day and wondered how you were getting on.”
“I… I haven’t started yet.” We both looked at the table.
It was Jack who spoke. “If you don’t mind me asking, Mr Vail, how did you end up writing those letters?”
“It was Jennifer, the lady who owned this house. I don’t think she began the whole fairy tree thing. She told me it just happened over time – a ribbon here, a necklace there – human nature, she said it was. Then the wishes started to arrive. At first they were just tiny pieces of paper pinned to the tree and Jennifer liked to read them. Then one day a child had written quite a long letter to the fairies so she decided to reply.
“It was a long time after I came to live here that she told me what she was doing, although I had already guessed. I saw her going to the wood one night and I followed her. As I watched her kneel by the tree I thought it was some sort of ritual, but even if it was she was collecting the letters as well.”
Claire was hesitant. “You said… at Easter… Jennifer was pagan too.”
“Pagan.” Jack sounded thoughtful. “Does that mean she believed the fairies existed and she was doing their work?”
I shook my head. “Not in the sense of little people with wings living in holes in trees, no. But in the sense that nature is full of spirits, something ephemeral we can never quite touch but need to respect, then yes, I think she did.”
“And do you?”
I chose my words carefully. “When I take something from the trees, like my Yule log for example, I stop to ask first, but I couldn’t tell you who or what I think I’m asking. It’s about respect, really. The natural world is so incredible, there has to be some greater force behind it. I mean, when you think that a tiny seed can turn into a tree which gives you fruit for generations, it’s pretty awe inspiring. I guess for me it’s finding a way to make a connection with something bigger and better.”
“That is just so cool,” enthused Jack. “I’m going to look it up on the internet when I get home.”
“Well I wouldn’t tell your parents. They’ll think I’m a weirdo as well as a lowlife gardener. Not that it matters now, I guess.”
Claire’s eyes met mine. “Robin, do you miss Mum?”
“Of course I do. I’ve tried to text her loads of times…”
“She never said.”
“That’s because I never press send. I can’t get the words right. Then one of my clients told me I should send her a card instead but I can’t seem to find the right one.”
“Robin, that’s really lame. There are hundreds of cards out there.”
“There’s about a dozen in here too.” I pulled a bundle from the drawer under the worktop. “I keep buying them but none of them seems right.”
“You are useless,” Claire told me as Jack started to laugh. She turned on him. “This might be funny to you but you know how down Mum is and all the ti
me she’s suffering because Robin can’t decide which card to send. It’s pathetic.”
I pushed them across the table. “Well, you choose then.”
She spread them out in front of her. One was a line drawing of a heron, another had the words I’m sorry embossed on it in foil letters, but most of them were glossy landscape photographs – Old Harry rocks, the beach huts at Hengistbury Head, Golden Cap. For one reason or another I had discounted them all.
Claire held them as though they were playing cards, the pictures facing away from me. She discarded four of them immediately and was left with seven fanned out in her hands.
“Close your eyes and pick.”
“That’s a cop-out, Claire. You said you’d choose one,” Jack interrupted.
“No I didn’t. Robin just asked me to, and how could I tell Mum if I had? No, any of these will do and this is the quickest way.”
“OK.” My hand shot out and picked the one furthest to the left – a gnarled oak tree in the New Forest, its autumnal colours set dramatically against the blue of the sky.
“No, Claire, not that one. Let me pick another.”
She shook her head. “No , and what’s more, you’re going to write it now.”
“Oh come on, give the guy a break…” Jack interceded on my behalf.
But Claire was adamant. “We’ll go and finish our walk and when we come back I expect it to be done.”
Their chatter receded across the garden and I shifted in my chair. Not only had Claire forced my hand but the clues she’d given to Izzie’s state of mind spurred me on. I opened the card flat on the table and picked up a pen.
Dear Izzie,
That was the easy bit.
Maria had asked me what I wanted to say but there were a million things running around my head and I couldn’t possibly fit them all onto one little card. Most of them I’d never write down anyway. Finding the words was impossible. I spun the pen slowly around on the table with my index finger.
