The Fruit of the Tree

by Jacquelynn Luben

  However, I soon found that, during the week, it was a busy little place, where the many local car owners often chose to make their purchases, in preference to the bigger towns and shopping centres within a two to four mile radius. For the time being, I was without that choice, but I soon found the friendly shopkeepers preferable to the detached supermarket staff.

  The village shopkeeper is ‘owned’ by the village; they know his business and he knows theirs. For me, suddenly and for the first time, totally in isolation, the friendly chat at the end of my half hour walk was a lifeline—my only link with humanity. The hubbub of our old office/home contrasted dramatically with our quiet bungalow, for as well as the other essentials that we lacked, we were also without car and telephone. Consequently, lines of communication with the outside world were cut off, and although there were six other houses in the vicinity of our land, I rarely saw any signs of life emanating from them. Our nearest neighbour had in fact been widowed during the period of our building, for we had met her and her husband once in the early days. Although I often saw her television flashing through the windows and heard her dogs yapping, as I passed by, I did not feel able to inflict myself upon her.

  Our other near neighbours, Doug and Beryl, in the foot of whose garden we resided, were almost invisible from autumn onwards. If only we had had a telephone, we, or they might have picked it up to say, ‘Why don’t you come over? Have a coffee—have a sherry,’ but to walk to someone’s front door to say the same is a much more difficult task. So we saw each other by chance, and infrequently.

  Robert and I were now each other’s main companions for the major part of the day. But in some ways, I felt like one of two incompatible prisoners, sharing the same cell. There was no contemporary or friend like Joan with whom he could stay for an hour or two, not even the facility of leaving him in the office with Michael, as I had done in the past. Robert was a sociable child, and, possibly missing the activity of the office himself, constantly sought my presence. I, on the other hand, yearned for a period of complete solitude. Including him in the daily chores doubled or trebled the length of time they took, and I never found time to play with him. Sometimes I grumbled and told him to go away and play with his toys, but he still seemed to have no interest in doing so. Often in desperation, I would place him in his cot for an afternoon nap and sit reading, unkindly ignoring rising murmurs of complaint from an unsleepy child.

  Another wedge between us was his masculinity. There had been a period, when as a small baby, he had felt so much a part of me that I felt uneasy when I was away from him. Now he was no longer my baby, but a small boy who was inclined to be naughty or daring at times, and who had no wish to be frustrated in his desires by a mother saying, ‘No.’ As an only child myself, I was inexperienced at dealing with children, and having had mainly female cousins, I regarded small boys as an alien breed, and was often surprised, irritated or aggrieved by the very normal disobedience of a toddler. Without a companion of my own age, I was unable to share my child-rearing problems with anyone else. At the same time, I was aware that Robert’s life, too, must have become more empty. Guiltily compensating for the unchanging and uneventful passage of each day, I would draw his attention to the arrival of a friendly robin, Max, the visiting dog who came to turn our dustbin over and collected a biscuit from Robert’s tiny hand for his pains, or the magpies that swept dramatically across the garden.

  I got quite fond of Max, the wandering Labrador, like many lonely people who become attached to animals. I pictured him saving me in some dramatic situation and even considered writing this in the form of a short story. However, I was not sufficiently fired with enthusiasm to put pen to paper and, in any case, there never seemed to be quite time in the day for such pursuits.

  By the end of the first six weeks of our ‘no-mod-cons.’ existence, Michael had taken our old electric fridge (a silly piece of bachelor-size equipment), and by dint of some brilliant engineering, had converted it into a machine operated by bottled gas. Admittedly, it was highly inefficient, but it served our purpose, and enabled me to cut down a little on my journeys to and from the village.

  Our first visitors, Ruth and Roger, had arrived within a month of our moving in. The bungalow was a great improvement on our first home, and despite its unfinished nature, I could show it with some pride to my friends.

  Nevertheless, in the early weeks, we were not in the state of readiness I had hoped for. Very few of the furnishings were ready and, worst of all and despite my protestations, there was simply no floor covering in the major part of the house, and we clattered around raising dust on the concrete floors.

  But slowly things took shape; with the arrival of the furnishings, the lounge took on the elegant appearance I had pictured in my mind. The restful shades I had chosen became an extension of the colours of the countryside, and the curtains acted as a frame for the view outside, the five stately trees that were the focal point of our drive, backed by fields and with very little intrusion of houses into the landscape.

  The arrival of the carpet also enabled me to demote our old living room carpet to our bedroom. Although it didn’t fit awfully well, I managed to get the worst bits under the bed, so that at least our feet came into contact with a warm surface instead of the cold concrete. It stayed there until the early seventies, but by that time I had become accustomed and unsurprised at our slow progress, and even rather appreciated it, for each innovation could be enjoyed on its own account.

  At the present time, however, we did not even run a car and Michael frequently travelled the four miles to the office by bus. We had owned a rather smart second-hand Wolseley, which we had abandoned at the ‘site’ when it developed a major fault. To our shame, it had remained there, gradually decaying for the next few years. Therefore, the event which ought to have made a lot of difference to me, the passing of my driving test in August, made no difference at all. Since I was quite petrified at the idea of driving on my own, I was really quite relieved that no car, other than the untaxed, uninsured Wolseley, sat outside the door waiting for me to jump into it.

  It was still good walking weather, and the summer sunshine stretched on into the autumn.

  I, who had never appreciated the delights of the countryside before, now gazed out of my windows at unbearably beautiful scenes. The majestic oaks, acacias and chestnuts at the front of the house retained their stately dignity at each change of season, and even though the view from my kitchen window was marred by the weed-ridden wilderness that was our own garden, the boundary was marked by two copper beeches and an enormous conifer, perhaps sixty feet high, as well as the more commonplace deciduous trees. The giant conifer would remain—a symbol of life in the depths of winter—but the copper beeches would first turn scarlet at their climax, before the brilliant foliage finally withered and died.

  Now the mornings were sometimes cool before the sun emerged; then Robert and I would wander outdoors, crunching leaves and twigs beneath our feet as we collected dead sticks to make up a fire. The hedgerows were full of blackberries and we picked out the biggest and best on our walks to and from the village.

  But we still felt strangers in this countrified world, Robert and I. He would not set foot outside the door without me; and I, for my part, felt unnatural carrying out these rural tasks. I was at loss in this unpeopled world. The beauty of the surroundings did not make up for the lack of humankind. Sometimes, as I gazed at the view, I longed for a car to appear, spilling out friends to share it with me.

  My old friend Susan, who would now have lived so close to me, had moved to her native Ireland with her husband, Bruce and her two children. However, her English parents-in-law lived a mere mile from my home, and one day a car did indeed draw up unexpectedly and Susan and her family emerged.

  It was a wonderful surprise, although the house was not in a state of tidiness I would have liked; the hearth was not swept, and Robert had been sitting in his high-chair aiming bread fingers at the still un-linoed kitchen floor. But no o
ne had ever arrived on days when I had been efficient—and actually, they still never do.

  Susan’s visit gave me the opportunity to invite her for dinner—and it was one of the few occasions of its kind that autumn, for only special friends were invited to share our hardships. Candle-lighting time had gradually been brought forward to the early evening, and the room looked at its best, decked with candles and illuminated too by the blazing log fire.

  We had ordered a lorry load of logs from a local man, and each day, I would clean out the grate and relay the fire; first the paper, then the kindling wood, finally one or two of the logs. I became quite an expert; for although the days were delightful, as darkness fell, the house became chilly and the roaring fire became a necessity, not just an attractive feature of our lounge.

  Bruce warned me: ‘Collect plenty of timber now, while it’s dry.’

  He was right, of course; the fire was one of the mainstays of our existence. I didn’t like to think too far ahead of the approaching winter, but we couldn’t expect this golden Indian summer to last much longer.

  It was Robert’s birthday in October, his second birthday, on which another child should have been born; but I had no feelings of regret about that now. How could we have introduced another baby into this situation without proper heating or washing facilities? As it was, we had to make a regular weekend trip to the launderette in one of the firm’s vans, packed out with washing. However, we were thinking again about another pregnancy; I wanted Robert to have a companion, while he was young enough to enjoy a brother or sister. Perhaps a two-year age difference was a little narrow, bearing in mind the apparent contrariness of two-year-olds, but a gap of another six months—that surely must be ideal. I did not imagine that Fate would play any more unkind tricks on me.

  I had, for some time, been summoning up my courage to invite Michael’s family over; we had always invited them in appropriate sections before. But now the bungalow was big enough to house all of them on one occasion, and a birthday seemed an auspicious enough occasion to entertain Robert’s aunts, uncles and grandma. Including us, the family amounted to nine adults and four ‘halves’. The question was, could I cope with the sheer numerical impact of Michael’s exuberant (and efficient) family?

  It was the chip on my shoulder about being less efficient than my sisters-in-law that made me accept the challenge. There was always the chance that, with our present difficulties, I might show up to better advantage.

  So I roasted and baked and fried; and dusted and ‘carpet-swept’. (I couldn’t use my vacuum cleaner, of course.) Robert’s birthday—and the family—arrived on a perfect autumn day. We had homemade cakes for tea; then, in a Luben-like frenzy, they rushed outside to find conkers and they played enthusiastically with one-ers and two-ers, dropping chestnut shells on the carpet; but never mind, it had looked fine when they arrived, and that was the important thing. As dusk fell, we lit the candles and unveiled the buffet supper on a long trestle table in the wide hall. Cold chicken and roast beef, cold fried fish, cooked in the Jewish style; carefully prepared vegetable salad, potato salad, tomato salad; and fresh fruit with cream (for those errant members of the family who would flout the Jewish tradition not to combine milk with meat). I had made a success of it and I knew it; and it was difficult not to glow with pride in the warmth of the fire and the appreciation.

  As always, I felt how good it was to be part of a family, and how lucky I was to have acquired this good-humoured bunch of brothers and sisters.

  Another member of the family, Michael’s first cousin Colin, a wizard with motors, was an occasional visitor. At that time, although not living in the vicinity, he worked for the local A.A. and made a point of dropping in spontaneously.

  Once he called in when I had run out of gas and drove me to the local suppliers to buy a gas bottle, and connected it himself.

  On another occasion, he actually let me drive his own car into the village to get some shopping.

  Apart from purely sociable reasons for calling, he was interested in our old Wolseley and spent a lot of time renovating the engine. He was a meticulous worker and Michael also asked him to look at the generator, which we had been given by a scrap dealer.

  He was quite content to spend hours working outside and whenever I asked what he was doing he always seemed to be ‘cleaning the carbon brushes.’

  Sometimes he shared with us a candle-lit dinner, and it was always a pleasure to have a guest at our table. But these few social occasions were merely oases in a desert of unrelieved difficulties, and as we moved towards winter, it was difficult to quell my increasing frustration and loneliness.

  7. No Electricity, No Heating, No Car, No Telephone,

  November…With Apologies to Thomas Hood

  The days grew shorter and colder and the tensions increased. We awoke in darkness and breakfasted by candlelight. Last night’s dinner plates and greasy pots and pans awaited my attention in daylight.

  Now, though I lit the fire early each chill morning, the house temperature would not reach 60 degrees F until around midday. At the first glimmer of autumn sunshine, I would open the windows to induce some warmth into the house. But it was a vain effort.

  Water streamed down the windows daily and each morning the bedspread was wet with condensation like a dew-soaked lawn.

  Many times, the heavy use of gas in the morning caused the bottle to run out after Michael had left the house. Then Robert and I would walk the mile to the telephone to contact him, only to be confronted on many occasions by the answering machine. On those days, I could only boil a kettle on the fire for tea, or cook a tin of soup. Spiders’ webs bejewelled with misty drops were draped across each holly bush, as we set out on our expeditions. I observed them, but was too irritated by the chilly and too often abortive treks to appreciate Nature’s artistry.

  We were no longer playing an amusing game. I had always disliked darkness; now I often returned from our shopping expeditions in dusk, gazing with envy at the brightly lit homes I passed. Filled with despondency, I would fumble around for matches. The daylight hours were not long enough for everything I had to do. Often I was forced to go out into the thick blackness of the night to get in more logs to keep the fire going, accompanied only by the small circle of light from the torch. Michael often brought in a basketful of logs, but he worked long and late hours, and the possibility of the fire going out merely because of his absence was unthinkable.

  To a certain extent, Michael was insulated from the problem. When he came home in the evening, he would sit in the lounge-cum-dining room where the fire was burning brightly and the drawn curtains kept the room at a comfortable and pleasant temperature. Weekends were often spent escaping to other members of the family. In any case, Michael was a warm person, often not noticing the cold at all, whilst I was acutely aware of it. I felt, therefore, that this was my personal martyrdom, and when I described it to my friends, made sure they realised how long-suffering I was.

  Why didn’t we give in? We had always doubted that the Electricity Board would accept money from us, but we could have contacted the Colonel privately; and in our reluctance to do this there was an element of pride and an unwillingness to be manipulated, feelings shared by both of us. In any case, initially we were under the impression that the Electricity Board’s compulsory powers would be implemented much more quickly, and had not really imagined that we would still be without electricity in the winter. Even now, it was difficult to believe that the Electricity Board would allow this situation to continue for much longer. There was the financial aspect too; we were always short of money, but in my heart, I do not think this was the main reason for digging our heels in.

  However, Michael was not insensitive to the increasing difficulties, and when he came home one evening to find me warming frozen fingers in front of the fire before returning to the kitchen to peel potatoes, he said, ‘We can’t go on like this.’

  Within a day or so, he made two purchases—an oil heater and a gas light�
��and of the two, it was the latter which was the most spirit lifting.

  With a young child in the house, we had not previously given much thought to an oil heater. Now we lifted the carpet, and, for safety’s sake, screwed the heater down to the concrete. Thereafter, we had a delivery of paraffin each week, and ran the heater night and day, but to be honest, the difference in temperature was not great.

  The light had much more impact! We attached it by a long flex to a smallish gas bottle, which was not too heavy, and transported it between the kitchen and lounge. It was almost as good as a light bulb; miracle of miracles, almost possible to read by it. How wonderful it was to come in from the dark outside and not be faced with the prospect of lighting seven or eight candles and balancing them on saucers. How satisfying to light the delicate gas mantle and see the little flame turn into a bright glow. And how heartbreaking when, in our eagerness to light it or replace the mantle, we accidentally destroyed it with clumsy fingers, when we had no replacement. But we soon learned to avoid such disasters.

  ‘One day,’ Michael promised extravagantly, ‘I’ll turn this place into a palace of lights.’

  Buoyed up by the morale-boosting effect of the latest purchases, I asked my two aunts from Hove to stay for a weekend. It was a fairly foolish thing to do, but on the one hand, I wanted to invite people to share our lonely adventure, and at the same time I wanted to behave as normally as possible. Social occasions were small goals to aim for. The days seemed less monotonous with the prospect of visitors ahead and there seemed to be a purpose in boring domestic chores.

  The Aunties were my closest relations with the exception of my parents, and I wanted the chance to show off to them my improving skills in cooking and running our attractive new home. My father was a sick man, and it was quite impossible to subject him to our problems. The Aunties, however, were a pair of sports and, despite the fact that Auntie Betty was over 60 and Auntie Ethel was approaching it, I felt that they would put up with our difficulties without complaint.