The Mulberry Tree

by Allison Rushby

  “So I’m going to this thing at four o’clock,” Immy told her dad as they walked home from school that afternoon.

  “Cocktail party?”

  “Very funny. The school’s allotment club. It’s like a community garden.”

  “Oh! You mean the allotments next to the village green?”

  “I guess so.” That’s where Mrs. Garland had told her they were.

  “Well, that’s a good idea.” He looked up at the sky, which was blue and streaked with feathery white clouds. “Nice afternoon for it. You know what? I might even do a bit of gardening myself. Finally get out that hedge trimmer.”

  “Sure,” Immy said, doubting that would actually happen.

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Okay.”

  Immy dumped her schoolbag at home and grabbed a snack. Amazingly, her dad went out to the shed and fished out the hedge trimmer and some other gardening tools.

  He popped his head inside the French doors. “I’ll walk you down to the allotment, and then I’ll get started.”

  “Mmm,” Immy said, her mouth full of apple. The tools might have left the shed, but she still didn’t believe the gardening thing would actually happen.

  The pair set out for the allotment with time to spare.

  “Let’s go the long way,” Immy’s dad suggested as they started along the footpath. “There’s a side gate that leads onto the village green.”

  “Okay.” Immy shrugged, following her dad.

  It was only a short distance inside the gate that they stumbled across the tree.

  “Whoa.” Immy’s dad stopped to stare up at it. “It might be smaller than ours, but that’s the kind of mulberry tree you want in your garden.”

  Immy gulped as she stared up at the tree. Not out of fear this time, like the tree made her do in her own back garden, but because the mulberry tree’s clusters of blue-red berries looked so plump and delicious that she could already taste them. Her dad was right. This was a completely different sort of mulberry. Instead of being ancient and wizened and cranky, it stood peacefully in its place, leaves fluttering gently in the breeze — tall and green and serene. As she inspected it, she remembered something — the very first time she’d been on the village green, Riley and his friends had been eating berries out of an upturned cap. It must have been mulberries they’d been eating. These mulberries.

  Her eyes still glued to the tree’s fruit-laden branches, Immy took her hat off and handed it to her father. “Let’s load up and we’ll eat them as we go.”

  They were still munching berries when they got to the allotment.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” her dad said as they let themselves inside the little blue wooden gate that fitted snugly into the wire fence.

  It was pretty. There were several raised rectangular garden beds with rows of herbs and lettuces, and the borders consisted of all sorts of blooming flowers — reds and purples and pinks and yellows. At the end was a blue wooden shed, painted the same color as the gate.

  Mrs. Garland waved and started over to greet them.

  “Quick; have I got mulberries all over my face?” Immy asked her dad.

  “Looking good.” He brushed out her hat and popped it back on her head.

  While Immy’s dad and Mrs. Garland were chatting, some of the other kids from school came inside the gate.

  Immy knew only two of them — Riley and, she was surprised to see, Erin.

  Amazingly, without Zara or Caitlyn by her side.

  The moment she saw Immy, Erin looked nervous. It didn’t take long before she sidled up to Immy.

  “Don’t tell Caitlyn I’m here,” she said.

  “What?” Immy said. “Why not?”

  But Riley had overheard their conversation. “They’re not allowed to do anything without Caitlyn. Not even breathe.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Erin told him and stomped off.

  Immy remembered what had happened at swimming earlier in the day — how Erin had actually looked worried that Caitlyn might have heard her saying something nice to Immy. Her brow furrowed as she looked at Riley. “Ugh. What is it with them?”

  “It’s not just about the tree and the cottage, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Riley told her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The thing is, there was this other girl here last year. Her dad was working at the hospital as well, but they stayed just six months before they went back to New Zealand. As soon as this girl arrived, she and Erin became friends. And then Zara, too. Caitlyn was kind of left out. There are quite a few parents who don’t like their kids hanging around Caitlyn. You know, because of the tree.”

  “Oh,” Immy said. Things were starting to make sense as to why Caitlyn behaved the way she did. She was scared — scared not just of the tree but of losing her friends again. For some reason, Immy thought back to what Mrs. Garland had told her on her first visit to the library. Nothing is ever all good or all bad. Nothing is ever all black or all white. Suddenly she felt a bit sorry for Caitlyn. And for Erin, too. They were all stuck living in the shadow of the tree. The whole village was. Its blackened branches had crept into their lives in all sorts of ways.

  “Hey, I forgot to give you this before.” Riley pulled a torn-off piece of paper out of his pocket and pushed it at her. “It’s my phone number. Call me if you want to go to the library Saturday afternoon.”

  Immy took the scrap of paper. “I don’t know. . . . I’ve never done anything like that. Gone somewhere without telling my parents, I mean.”

  Riley just shrugged that shrug of his again, as if he didn’t mind either way, and went back over to join the other boys.

  After an embarrassing argument about whether she could walk herself home or not (Immy insisted that she could), Immy’s dad left, and Mrs. Garland told them what they’d be doing that afternoon. They spent half an hour weeding and then set about picking glossy crimson-colored red currants, which Mrs. Garland said she’d make into red-currant jelly, promising them each a small jar.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Garland was busy, and Immy didn’t get a chance to ask her any more about the tree. She told herself to be patient. She’d get a chance. She just had to give it time. Which wasn’t exactly something she had a lot of, but still . . . She let it go for today. She’d seen how uncomfortable Mrs. Garland was when it came to talking about the tree. And Immy knew from experience that the more she asked, the less she’d probably find out. It was like when she bugged her mum and dad for something. The more she bugged, the less likely she was to get it. She just had to keep going to the library and come to the allotment club each week and hope Mrs. Garland might tell her more in time.

  At just after five, Immy walked herself home. The wind was picking up and the sky darkening, and she wondered if it would rain this evening. As she let herself through the front gate, she heard something, and her eyebrows raised in surprise. Was that . . .?

  It was.

  Immy rounded the corner of the house and stopped to watch her dad, busy with the whirring hedge trimmer. He was actually trimming the hedges.

  And it looked like he’d gotten quite some way around the garden, too.

  Immy waved, catching his attention, and he turned the hedge trimmer off.

  “You needn’t look so surprised.” He lifted up his protective glasses, resting them on his head.

  Immy was suddenly silent.

  “Well, okay. I know it must be a shock to the system, but — Oh, come on,” he said, taking in the growing horror on her face.

  But it wasn’t her dad’s gardening efforts that Immy was reacting to. It was something else entirely.

  Immy pushed her windblown hair out of her eyes, which were fixed on something by her dad’s feet. Something small and brown that was shuffling across the grass.

  Something small and brown and . . . bleeding.

  Immy ran over and knelt down by the creature. It was about the size of her hand and had a small, brown, furry face and salt-and-pepper spines on its back
.

  “A hedgehog.” Her father came down beside her.

  “Dad, its head!”

  The blood was coming from a deep cut in the hedgehog’s head, above its eyes and just before its spines started.

  “What are we going to do?” Immy’s voice was panicked.

  Beside her, there was a distinct lack of movement from her father.

  But there was movement from above. The shadows surrounding Immy darkened. Lengthened. She felt like the tree was looking on, wanting to know what was happening.

  And then it found out.

  Immy could have sworn the tree screamed a high-pitched scream in the wind as an unwieldy branch swooped down toward her.

  Immy reached up and covered her head protectively. There was no time to be scared of the tree right now.

  “DAD!” Immy yelled.

  He didn’t move.

  Immy bent down closer to the hedgehog. It looked up at her with its tiny black eyes and quivering nose, which stretched out toward her.

  The poor thing had to be in terrible pain.

  She had to do something.

  Her mum was at work and probably would be for hours yet. The hedgehog couldn’t wait that long.

  Looking around for help, Immy caught sight of the wooden gate that led to Jean’s house.

  Jean.

  Jean’s husband had been a vet. She said she’d assisted him. Surely she’d know what to do.

  Immy got up and ran over to the spot where her father had left all the gardening tools and plucked out a pair of gardening gloves. She pulled them on, then raced back over and carefully, gently, scooped up the hedgehog and cradled it to her as she made her way across the garden.

  “Oh, dear,” Jean said, ushering Immy inside the glass conservatory attached to her pink thatched cottage. She peered down into Immy’s hands. “The poor little thing.”

  “Dad was trimming the hedges and . . .” Immy gulped. She could feel the tears coming.

  Jean sighed. “Silly me. I should have warned you. Those hedge trimmers . . . they’re a terrible nuisance. Almost as bad as the bonfires. The hedgehogs hide during the day, you see. They’re nocturnal, so people simply don’t know they’re there when they go to trim their hedges or light a bonfire. Hmmm . . . that’s going to need stitches.”

  Jean moved over and dumped a basket of laundry onto an armchair covered in a print of huge, full-blown roses. Then she came back and took the hedgehog carefully from Immy.

  “Now, I know it’s upsetting, but I’m going to need you to keep your head, Immy, if we’re to help this poor creature. I tell you what we’ll do. I’ll go and get a hot-water bottle and put the hedgehog in the basket with it to keep warm. Then I’ll call the nice young man who bought my husband’s practice from him and see if he can pop by on his way home this evening. Jonathan his name is. Meanwhile, you have a very special task. You need to go back to where you first saw the hedgehog and start searching in the bottom of the hedge for a nest. I suspect there might be some babies there. Hoglets we call them.”

  “Really? Babies?” Immy’s mouth fell open.

  “There are usually four or five of them. If you find some, they’ll need to be brought back here so we can care for them, too. Now, off you run, and see what you can find.”

  Immy did just that, bolting out the door and almost taking the little wooden gate off its hinges as she opened and shut it with a bang.

  Her dad was hovering around the spot where she’d left him, looking like he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  Above, the tree bristled in the breeze, its armlike branches scraping and groaning.

  Immy ignored both of them and ran over to where her dad had left the hedge trimmer. She got down on her stomach, close to the hedge. Almost immediately she saw an area that had a small clearing with a lot of leaves and twigs behind it. She crawled over closer to it and opened the space up with her hands. Maneuvering herself closer still, she removed some leaves.

  And then she saw them.

  “Ohhh . . .” Immy breathed. “Hello.”

  There were three of them curled up together, each one about the size of a miniature cupcake. Carefully, she reached into the nest and picked them up, one at a time. They felt warm and prickly in her hand. She placed each one on the grass until she’d collected them all. Then she gently picked them up again and made her way to Jean’s without giving her father, or the tree, a backward glance.

  Back in Jean’s conservatory, Jean was tucking the mother hedgehog into the laundry basket with the hot-water bottle.

  “Ah, there you are!” she said. “Find anything?”

  “Three babies . . . I mean hoglets.” Immy came over to peer into the laundry basket. “Is the mum okay?”

  “It’s hard to say — shock can be a funny thing — but I think she’ll be all right. We just need to keep her warm. The babies, too. Now, let me have a look at these little chaps.” Jean peered into Immy’s hands. “Adorable. About three weeks old, I’d say.” She picked each one up in turn and inspected it. “A girl, a girl, and a boy. Let’s pop them in here.” She reached down and picked up what looked like an oven mitt.

  Immy must have looked taken aback when Jean started to put them inside the mitt, because Jean laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to put them in the oven! I know it seems strange, but the mitt really does keep them warm.”

  A knock on the conservatory door made Jean and Immy turn around.

  It was her dad. He looked quite green.

  He cleared his throat. “Ah, hello, I’ve just come to . . .” He trailed off.

  Jean looked from one of them to the other in the quiet that followed. “Why don’t we all go into the kitchen and we’ll put the kettle on while we wait for Jonathan, the vet, to turn up?”

  Jean made two cups of tea and a hot chocolate for Immy while Immy’s dad hovered around the table. The laundry basket with all the hedgehogs in it sat on top, and his eyes kept flicking toward it nervously.

  Jean ferried the three mugs over to the table and then placed a hand on Immy’s dad’s shoulder. “Now, Andrew, be a dear and fetch a packet of cookies from the pantry. There should be a few varieties to choose from.”

  Immy’s dad startled, as if he’d been awakened from a dream, but he headed off in the direction of the kitchen. Immy watched him go, barely believing her eyes. Over the years, she’d seen him help out in all kinds of situations. Once, they’d been at the shops, and a little boy had fallen over on an escalator in front of them and cut his leg quite badly. And another time, there had been a car accident down the road from their house. He’d helped with that, too.

  And now he couldn’t deal with a hedgehog with a cut on its head?

  Jean pulled out a chair at the round, polished wooden table and sat down next to Immy. “I thought your father was a GP?” she said, her voice uncertain. “Or did I get that wrong and it’s only your mother who’s a doctor?”

  Immy’s eyes remained glued to the table. “He used to be a GP.”

  Jean didn’t ask any more questions.

  Jonathan arrived soon after and set about giving the mother hedgehog some local anesthetic and stitching up her wound. “I think she’ll be all right. And, thankfully, the babies aren’t too small. I’ve brought a couple of heating pads you can use and some food and syringes and so on. As you know, Jean, they’ll need three- to four-hourly feeds for the next week or so.”

  “Oh!” Immy stood. “We’ll do it, won’t we, Dad? We can look after them.”

  Her dad looked at her blankly, as if he hadn’t been listening to Jonathan at all. “Hmmm? What was that?”

  There was a long pause, and then Jean reached over and patted Immy’s hand. “Best I take them, Immy. I don’t sleep much anymore, and you need your rest for school. You can come and see them every day. You can do the afternoon feed, if you like!”

  Staring at her father, her jaw clenched, Immy slowly sat down again. Before she could say anything, however, Jonathan’s phone rang and he answered t
he call. After a few seconds, he held the phone to his chest.

  “Sorry, I’m going to have to run. A Siamese having problems delivering her last kitten. You know how it is.” He smiled at Jean.

  “Oh, I do, I do. Thank you so much for dropping by, Jonathan. Very kind of you.”

  “Anytime. Er, not that I’m hoping you’ll be injuring hedgehogs left, right, and center, of course! I’ll show myself out!” Jonathan waved as he made his way to the front door. “Lovely to meet you, Andrew and Immy,” he called out.

  “Yes, you, too,” her father managed to say, just a bit too late.

  But Immy couldn’t squeeze even a word out.

  Her body was too busy dealing with the rage that was whirling around inside it.

  Jean waited until she heard the front door open and shut before she checked her watch.

  “Goodness me, look at the time. Your dad’s probably got to get dinner on, Immy!”

  Immy’s dad checked the time as well. “Oh, yes. I should. Katie will be home soon.”

  “You head off. I’ll just get Immy to help me set the hedgehogs up and then I’ll send her on home.”

  “Of course . . .” Immy’s dad was already backing out of the room toward the conservatory. “And I am sorry . . . about all the bother.”

  “It’s no bother at all,” Jean said. “Injured animals day and night. That was my life for decades!”

  Immy’s dad disappeared without another word.

  As for Immy, she fixed her eyes upon the table and tried to remember to breathe. In and out. In and out.

  “Oh, dear.” Jean sat down beside her. “I can see you’re angry, Immy, but some people simply aren’t animal people, dear. It’s just the way it is.”

  Immy’s expression remained set. “It’s not that.”

  “No?”

  Immy’s eyes met Jean’s, and she realized she could tell her. She took a deep breath. “Something happened. In Australia. To one of his patients. It wasn’t his fault, but it’s why . . . why he isn’t working anymore. Why he can’t do anything anymore. Or doesn’t want to, I mean.”