Silver Birches

by Adrian Plass

  Springing to my feet I rounded the bushes and took the bridge in two strides, then stood irresolute, my whole body shaking. Would the clockwise or the counterclockwise route be faster? It didn’t matter. It really didn’t matter. Either way would do.

  Turning left I flung myself along that narrow, slippery path with no regard at all for tree roots, overhanging branches, or any other kind of natural ambush. I was mad with desire to prove to the part of my brain that remained stubbornly calm and skeptical that something extraordinary had happened — was going to happen. Jessica was there, waiting for me to join her on the other side of the water. Oh, Jessica! As I rounded the bottom end of the lake the rain began to fall quite heavily. I didn’t care. Why should I care? I hardly noticed. On and on round the edge of the lake I flew, elbowing bushes and tall grasses aside, my galloping, frantic speed sustained by the knowledge that very soon that dear, familiar face and figure would come into view and we would talk and hold each other and be together just as we had been for so many years. At last, no more than ten yards in front of me, I saw that flash of crimson clothing once more through gaps in a canopy formed by the branches of an aged weeping willow. The person wearing the garment — Jessica — must be standing inside there sheltering from the rain. She was just there. So close! I covered the remaining distance in no more than a second. Gasping with exertion and sheer excitement, I pushed the heavy, dripping fronds aside with one hand, wiped sweat and rain from my eyes with the other, and stepped into the canopy.

  It was not Jessica.

  Naturally, it was not Jessica.

  It was a small, elfin-faced woman with frightened, bird-like eyes and thinning curls of gray hair. She was about sixty-five years old, dressed in a crimson jumper with two tiny white sheep embossed on the front, an anonymous tweed skirt and sensible brown shoes. There was a sickly pallor to her skin and a dark hollowness about her eyes that, even at a glance, suggested some kind of serious illness. My dramatic entrance into the arboreal refuge she had chosen in order to avoid the worst of the rain hardly seemed to bother her at all. I understood why as we chatted. Some people are so consistently cast in the role of victim that they develop a habit of limp acceptance, a weary resignation to the notion that things will always happen to them or be done to them. Other people will never be significantly affected by anything that they might try to do. Poor little Nora was one of these people.

  Her life was like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. Nora had worked as live-in companion to a rich, fierce old woman for the last thirty years of her life. Since her employer’s death she had suffered from severe panic attacks, profound loneliness, and a feeling that God was always cross with her. Her doctor, a Christian, had sent her to a married couple he knew who were “experts” in this area. After two or three visits Nora had been told that she was subject to demons of fear, insecurity, and faithlessness. A week of the kind of ministry offered by Grafton House would be just what the doctor ordered. She hadn’t wanted to go, but she went.

  “It didn’t seem very polite to refuse,” said Nora, “everyone was being so kind. You don’t like to — you know.”

  I knew what to say to her.

  I asked her to tell me about her father and watched the driving rain create a thousand ripples on the surface of the lake as she spoke. She told me how much she had loved and respected him, how gentle and kind he had always been, how very sad he would be if he could see the problems that his little Norrie was going through now. She cried a little. I put my arm round her shoulders. She took an embroidered handkerchief from the sleeve of her red jumper and dried her eyes with it.

  “Nora,” I said, “I don’t know a great deal, but I do know that God is just like your father was, only nicer, if that’s possible. When you think about God, give him your father’s face. God won’t mind. If you ask me, I think you felt all those horrible negative things because your life changed so much and so very quickly. I don’t believe there’s a single demon in you, and I reckon you ought to think seriously about changing your doctor. Shall I say a prayer for you?”

  I said a prayer for Nora. She had another little cry, then she smiled at me, and then she looked at the tiny gold watch on her left wrist.

  “Ooh!”

  It was time for morning coffee up in the hall of the big house. Mustn’t be late for coffee when the people in the kitchen have been kind enough to prepare it for everybody. Just as she was about to duck out into the rain she turned.

  “And— and I never asked — so rude of me — why were you here at the lake?”

  I stared at her for a moment. Why was I here?

  “Oh, er, I came to meet my wife.”

  “Well, I do hope she turns up.”

  “Yes.”

  As I watched Nora scurry away along the path, one hand held over her head in a vain attempt to keep the rain from her hair, I felt as if a part of her pain had been added to mine.

  “God,” I said quietly, “what’s the matter with you? I ask you to give me something and what do you do? You give me a job instead. There are no holidays with you, are there? No compassionate leave. You knew I’d do it, just like you knew poor old Jonah would swing into action once he got to Nineveh. But, oh, God!” I sighed from the very bottom of my boots. “Why did her jumper have to be that color?”

  I stayed there for another few minutes, weeping with the rain, puzzled by existence, furious with Jessica and with God for not giving me what I wanted.

  I spent some part of every day that week up at the lake. Sometimes I sat and sometimes I walked, sometimes I just leaned miserably against a tree, but always I was aching with the wretched hope that, if I could just persevere with my entreaties for long enough, Jessica might come to me and let me hold her in my arms and kiss her one more time. By the end of the week the madness, if that was what it was, had passed. I no longer went to the lake. I knew — of course, I had always known — that I would not be meeting Jessica there. But as I departed for the last time I felt as if I had left her behind in that melancholy place. For a week or more there was a part of me that missed the madness. It had been layered with hope, however foolish and irrational. Now, even that foolish hope had gone, leaving only the yearning and the anger burning intensely in my heart.

  Returning to the grounds of Grafton House six months later with Angela’s letter in my hand was a different experience. Weather, for instance. The weather for the whole of that week after Jessica’s death had been dull. Morning sunshine is so kind to everything it touches, and, of course, water finds light irresistible. The place was no less neglected, but the lake was putting its very best face forward, beaming happily back at its benefactor. Color was everywhere.

  Despite this I found that I didn’t like being there. I wished I hadn’t come. I had enjoyed being on my bike again. That was bad enough. Then, crossing the rickety bridge to the island, warm and buzzing from my cycle ride, I found myself struggling to identify a familiar little package of nerviness and excitement that was making me feel faintly nauseous. As I sat myself down on the rusty old seat in front of the rhododendrons I suddenly recognized this sensation. Of course, it was how I had felt years ago before going on a date with a girl. One or two before Jessica, and then lots of times with her. Clearly, a part of my brain was recalling the week of hopeless entreaty I had spent here at the lake as a real encounter with my dead wife, and was expecting to meet her now. But it was just a trick of the mind. I wasn’t going to meet Jessica. She wasn’t here now, any more than she had been then. I gazed sadly across the lake at Nora’s weeping willow. It would take a darn sight more than a flicker of crimson to send me racing off round this lake today. I found myself wondering what had happened to that frightened little woman. Had she found a God who smiled at her? I hoped so.

  Angela’s letter.

  I took the newly contoured sheets of paper from my back pocket, smoothed them out, and read the whole thing through yet again. What should I do? What did I want? Did I really want to go to some strange old
barn of a place to meet people I probably wouldn’t remember anyway, and have to put up with them asking questions and telling me how sorry they were to hear what had happened? No, I didn’t. Did I want to risk any kind of close contact at all with the lives of other human beings, the kind of granular contact that might force me to open up again and emerge into the land of the living? No, I didn’t. And was that likely to happen?

  Glancing up at that moment into the blue and white of the heavens I saw the innocent eyes of God, apparently looking in a different direction. I groaned.

  Well, I wouldn’t go. I simply wouldn’t go. I flicked the envelope angrily against my knee. All right, I would at least look at the idea of going.

  Did I want to see Angela again? Well, yes, probably. My memories of her, the tone of this letter, her friendship with Jessica — yes, I thought I would like to see Angela again, preferably not with a posse of other people hanging around. Did I want to find out what Jessica had been up to in those hours before her death? No.

  Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes, I wanted to know! Yes! I wanted the thing that Jessica had given to Angela to give to me. It was mine. I wanted it! It was my right! I would ring Angela up and be strong. Simply demand that she hand over whatever it was without any of this silly fuss about a reunion.

  I sorted through the sheets of paper and read that final section again. I reflected on my limited knowledge of Angela. I reflected on my very extensive knowledge of Jessica. I shook my head. No, not against the two of them. That wasn’t going to work.

  Was I practically able to go? Yes, I was. What Angela obviously didn’t know was that I had canceled all my speaking engagements for the rest of the year as soon as Jessica died. Invitations for next year were piling up on the desk in my rarely entered study at home. They could pile up all they liked. That life was behind me now. I knew I would have to find some kind of job eventually, but there were no money problems at the moment. Ironically, losing Jessica had seen to that. No, the fact was, I was probably more available than anyone else who was likely to come on a weekend like this. No dependents. Never would have any dependents. No wife. Not ever. Free.

  A spasm of raw grief and anger hollowed my stomach and rocked my body. Sod them all! I wasn’t going anywhere. Angela could keep whatever the sodding thing was. And they could have their reunion and get drunk and vomit all over each other. Good luck to ’em. I stared across the lake. I had been wrong. One little flash of red would have been enough to send me running again. Oh, Jessica!

  Standing and shoving the letter into my pocket, I turned my back on the lake, crossed the bridge, and made my way up the hill to the house. I had left my bike leaning against the wire perimeter fence of a weed-strewn, lumpy old tennis court, another potentially excellent facility that had been sadly neglected.

  “I’m beginning to really hate this place,” I muttered to myself.

  I swung a leg over the crossbar and pushed off with my foot across the car-park. Reaching the drive that connected house and grounds with the main road, I deliberately set off in top gear. Standing on my pedals, I gritted my teeth and pushed with all my strength. Exerting the muscular effort required to gain speed and momentum was an exquisite, unavoidable pleasure. A slight gradient in my favor let me accelerate to something near top speed in less than half a minute. I raced, head down, along the frequently curving drive, oblivious to all but the air rushing past my head and shoulders, and the whizzing hiss of the thin racing tires as they went spinning over the black asphalt.

  At the speed I was doing I could easily have hit something on one of those narrow bends. A person walking. A car. Another cyclist. Perhaps, I thought light-headedly, I’ll just keep going when I reach the main road. If I were to close my eyes and carry on into the traffic, that would probably be that. Problem solved. Why not? As I approached the entrance gates I was still traveling at maximum speed. Directly in front of me vehicles moved at high speed in both directions. They always did on this section of the road. All I had to do was close my eyes and keep pedaling...

  I came to a skidding, dusty, tire-scraping halt, inches from the edge of the road, and had to wait to get my breath and my courage back before setting off for home at a more sedate speed and in a saner frame of mind.

  Oh, well, I told myself as I reached the little roundabout at the end of my road, at least I’d made a firm decision this morning. Angela could keep whatever it was she’d got. No reunion for me.

  Back home I made a cup of tea, carried it through to the desk in my neglected study, and turned on the adjustable lamp. Taking a pen from the pot on one side of me, and a sheet of paper from the pad on the other, I settled down to write to Angela, thanking her for her letter, and accepting her invitation to attend a reunion of the St. Mark’s youth group at Headly Manor on any weekend that suited her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday

  She named a weekend in late autumn, and I went.

  Motoring down to the West Country on that particular Friday in November would have been no fun even in happier times. High winds and heavy, blustering rain made driving on the motorways unpleasant and perilous. Opaque clouds of spray thrown up by vehicles traveling in front of my car constantly reduced visibility to a frighteningly low level. Presumably, I was doing the same to the traffic behind me, but I was in no mood for such pointless exercises as balancing out responsibility and blame. Good Lord, it wasn’t as if I had any great desire to get to my destination. In my present state I had nothing that would be of benefit to the sort of gathering that Angela seemed to be planning, and scant optimism that the weekend would have anything of value to offer me, except... what?

  As I drove, I glanced quickly down once more at a sheet of paper on the passenger seat beside me. This list of names had arrived in the post a few weeks ago. These were the five people, in addition to myself, that Angela had persuaded to attend her reunion, and I had been prodding my memory about them ever since.

  Angela I remembered, of course, and Mike Ford was another name on the list that triggered instant recall. He had been at the same school as me, but in the year above. Mike had been loud and argumentative and quite funny sometimes. A bit of a troublemaker. In my mind’s eye I saw a square, large-featured face, with a lot of thick black hair worn very long.

  Andrew Glazier. Thin face, serious, sort of tense? Yes, vaguely.

  These were ghosts of memories.

  Peter Grange. I did remember him. He was one of those the leaders got into huddles with. He always seemed very clear about what he believed. Always had an answer to problems. Tall and thin with hollow eyes and a large nose. Yes, I remembered him quite well.

  Jenny Thomas. Nothing but the faintest memory of this one. Always doing stuff, helping round the place, but that could have been someone else.

  Graham Wilson. Absurdly, the only pictures that went with this name were images of a small, earnest, gerbil-like character leaping up and down at the back of the group in order to see what was happening in the middle. I laughed at myself. It couldn’t have been like that, of course, but that was what came back to me across the years.

  In her circular letter to all those attending, Angela had put forward some ideas about how the weekend might be organized. As we would be together for less than forty-eight hours, she pointed out, there wouldn’t be time for lengthy getting-to-know-you sessions. What was needed was a commitment on the part of all those who were coming to be as open and as vulnerable as it was possible to be, given the unusual circumstances. Various things might help. We would begin, for instance, by briefly filling the others in on what we were doing at the moment. Another idea was that at some point in the course of the weekend we would take turns to describe our greatest present-day fear to the rest of the group. That, suggested Angela, could open up all sorts of areas. Well, yes. On Sunday morning we would hold a brief service of communion, say prayers for each other, and listen to a talk — from me! The most important thing was that we should relax and enjoy ourselves.

  Vulnerable? Op
en? Greatest fear? A talk by me? I sighed. What was I letting myself in for? If only I knew what Jessica had sent Angela to give to me. I had run out of guesses.

  I twisted and turned in my seat, trying to get some of the kinks out of my back, and settled down to concentrate on the road ahead.

  It was dark by the time I arrived in the middle of the village of Headly. The rain was just beginning to ease. I stopped outside the Lucky Star Chinese takeout in the High Street to read Angela’s directions. I had to admit that, so far, they had been excellent. Last lap.

  “At Headly, follow the High Street until it swings left. The Red Lion will be on your right. Take the lane that forks to the right past the pub and climb the hill until you see a sign for Headly Manor at the end of a drive on your left. Follow the drive and park in the yard or under the big trees if no space. Push the back door.”

  I found the lane and the pub and the sign and the trees. Those trees certainly were big. They included a couple of massive oaks on a slope rising up from the dark mass of the house. They must have been hundreds of years old. As I turned off the drive into the yard at the back of the building I realized that I hadn’t even begun to understand how big this house of Angela’s was, nor how ancient. Even in the beam from my headlights and the weak illumination offered by two carriage lamps fixed to the wall by the back door, I got a vague impression of one of those houses that grows with the centuries, bulging and widening and shooting out extra wings according to the whims and finances of successive owners. A real pile. Leaving my car next to a broken-up old Peugeot parked at the bottom of the yard, I crossed the cobbles, paused for a second or two to pluck my heart out of my boots, and pushed open the door.