The Mulberry Tree

by Allison Rushby

  “Seriously?” Riley said.

  Immy nodded. “They’re really cute. There are three hoglets — those are the babies — and their mother. She was the one that was hurt. She’s getting better, though.”

  “I’ve never seen a hedgehog.”

  “You can come and see them if you like,” Immy offered. She looked around at the rest of the group. “You all can. It’s good timing. My dad’s picking up the hedgehog and her hoglets this afternoon. We’re keeping them at our place because Jean — Mrs. Garland’s mother — has to go to London to see a friend.” When Jean had asked Immy’s dad to look after the animals for the night, she could tell he was worried about doing so. That he still felt guilty about hurting the hedgehog and wasn’t sure about caring for it.

  A couple of the kids looked like they wanted to see the hedgehogs, but they knew that Immy’s house was off-limits within the village.

  “You’ve really got hoglets?” Erin asked.

  “Yep. They’re four weeks old,” Immy said.

  Mrs. Garland smiled. “They must be so sweet.”

  “I’ll come.” Riley grinned, giving the rest of the group a look that said he knew exactly why everyone else wouldn’t. “I can stop by on the way home, if that’s okay.”

  Mrs. Garland spoke up. “Actually, I have to fill my mother’s bird feeder, so I might come, too, Immy, I’d love to have a peek. I haven’t seen them yet.”

  “Sure,” Immy said. “What about you, Erin?” It really seemed like she wanted to come.

  Erin hesitated. “Um . . . I don’t think so.”

  Immy shrugged.

  “Well, then, let’s pack up, and we can be on our way,” Mrs. Garland told everyone. “I, for one, am desperate to hold a hoglet.”

  Mrs. Garland, Riley, and Immy walked the short distance to Immy’s house together. Immy let them in via the front gate and walked them directly around the side of the house and into the back garden.

  Immy glared up at the tree, trying to scare it into its best behavior.

  “Wow, so this is the famous tree, huh?” Riley halted beside her.

  “No, it’s the one over there.” Immy pointed to the very back of the garden, right near the little wooden gate, where the sickly-looking apple tree was still trying to make its escape.

  “Hilarious,” Riley said.

  Mrs. Garland had crossed the garden and was standing closer to the mulberry tree. “Mum’s still at it, I see.” She gestured toward the white rose the tree had spat out of its bottom knot.

  “Well, hello there.” Immy’s dad appeared from the French doors.

  “Oh, hello, Andrew,” Mrs. Garland said.

  “Lovely to see you again, Claire. And Riley.” He nodded at Riley.

  “I know I told you I’m the librarian at Immy’s school, but I’m also Jean’s daughter. I hope you don’t mind us barging in like this.”

  “Riley hasn’t seen a hedgehog before,” Immy explained. “So I said he should come and see them.”

  “And I have seen a hedgehog before, but I can’t resist hoglets,” Mrs. Garland added.

  “Well, they’re hard to resist,” Immy’s dad said. “Come and have a look. I’ve just finished feeding them, and they’re having a bit of a race around.”

  “That’s it,” Riley said, getting up from the dining room table, which was covered in newspaper. He passed one of the hoglets back to Immy’s dad. “I want a hedgehog. I want a whole room full of hedgehogs.”

  “Like a ball pit?” Immy laughed.

  “Exactly! Even if it would be a bit prickly,” Riley replied. “Hey, you know what? You should bring them to school.”

  “Oh, please, Dad?” Immy whirled around to look at her father, forgetting for a moment that this was the type of thing he didn’t do anymore. Old Dad would have offered to bring the hedgehog and hoglets. Old Dad would have been pleased to do it. He would have told the kids all about what sort of care they needed, how to look out for them in their gardens, how to make their gardens hedgehog-friendly.

  She wanted Old Dad back.

  Immy turned back to the table. She wouldn’t ask again.

  And maybe her dad knew what she was thinking, because he spoke up quickly. “All right. I think I could do that. I don’t have anything much on tomorrow.”

  Immy could barely believe it. “Really?” She looked up at him. “If you did, you could tell the kids all about what Jean’s taught us. Taught me.”

  “It would be wonderful if you were able to,” Mrs. Garland said. “Several of the other children wanted to come this afternoon . . .”

  “But they were too scared.” Immy’s dad sighed, seeing where she was going.

  Mrs. Garland nodded.

  “Well, the hoglets are pretty active after eating. I could bring them in tomorrow after their mid-morning feed?”

  “Immy’s class has a library lesson just after first break, at a quarter to eleven. If you could make it in then, that would be perfect. I’ll pull out a number of wildlife books and turn it into a little lesson.”

  At first break the following day, Immy gobbled her snack down and then headed straight for the library to help Mrs. Garland set up for her dad’s visit.

  “Is my dad here yet?” Immy said as she spotted Mrs. Garland in the corner of the library, shelving some books.

  “Not yet.” Mrs. Garland checked the clock on the wall. “Hmmm. . . . Do you think he’ll be here soon? I put out some books and a few information sheets.”

  Immy’s stomach sank. He should have been here by now.

  Silently she walked over to the large glass window and stared outside toward the school gates.

  “Immy?”

  “He’s not coming,” Immy said. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t shocked. She wasn’t surprised. She was just . . . used to this now.

  Mrs. Garland came over. “Do you think he’s forgotten?” she asked.

  “No.” She didn’t want to say any more, but she found that Mrs. Garland was like Jean. She had the same kind of face — she was the sort of person you could tell things to. “He’s not . . . okay.” She couldn’t find the right words.

  Mrs. Garland didn’t say anything. Instead, she simply put a hand on Immy’s shoulder. “I see. Well, maybe some other time. It’s not a problem if he can’t make it today. I haven’t told anyone about the lesson.”

  Immy turned her attention back to the window.

  And that was when she saw something.

  “I’ll be back in a minute!” Immy told Mrs. Garland as she raced from the library. She sprinted down the corridor and outside into the playground. She rounded the corner of the building, heading for the school gates . . .

  And stopped dead.

  Caitlyn stood near the gates, looking out beyond them, at Immy’s dad. Zara and Erin hovered behind, closer to the playground. Immy couldn’t believe it. How had Caitlyn even spotted him? She was like the tree — she just seemed to know things. When Caitlyn heard Immy’s footsteps, she turned. Immy was sure Caitlyn would say something nasty.

  And she did.

  “Your dad’s out there,” she said. “Being weird.”

  Immy’s heart began to bang against her chest.

  “Why is he even out there in the middle of the day?” Caitlyn’s gaze moved to the other two girls. “Our real estate agent said he doesn’t have a job.”

  Anger flared up inside Immy. She ran forward toward the gate. Caitlyn stepped sideways to block her way.

  “What would you know?” Immy gave Caitlyn a shove with her elbow, pushing her aside. She opened the gate. “You don’t know anything about my dad. He’s a nicer person than you’ll ever be. He . . . cares about things.”

  She didn’t wait to hear Caitlyn’s response.

  She was too busy running toward the hedge that ran along the footpath and what she could see of her father’s legs.

  When she reached the hedge, Immy halted and crept up to peek around the corner. And there was her dad. Along with a cage with the hedgehog and hogle
ts in it that was sitting on the ground. It looked like he’d been pacing back and forth, because he was walking away from her.

  Immy stepped out from behind the bushes.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said.

  Her dad started and turned. “Me, too,” he replied. “But I wanted to come. I wanted to come very much.”

  They stared at each other for a moment or two in silence, and then Immy broke into a run. She scooted around the cage and without slowing down, not even when she reached her father, hurtled herself into him with full force.

  “I know,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt, which she began to wet with her tears. “I know you want to do all the things you can’t do.”

  Immy’s father kissed her on the top of her head and then sniffed, teary as well.

  Some squeaking noises from down below made them both pull back. “I think they feel left out,” Immy’s dad said, staring down at the hedgehogs’ cage.

  Another squeak and then some snuffling.

  “And that means they want to go inside,” Immy said. “Come on, then.” She took her father’s hand. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Oh, how lovely to see you, Andrew,” Mrs. Garland said as Immy and her dad entered the library. “Thanks so much for coming in. I’ll just finish grabbing a few more books and things. We’ve got about five more minutes before the bell rings.”

  “Over there.” Immy directed her father to a table Mrs. Garland had set up, and they went over to place the cage on top of it.

  Immy opened the cage and said hello to the hedgehog and her hoglets, who all continued to toddle around the cage, snuffling as they went. “I’m sorry,” she said, glancing up at her dad. “For . . . everything. I know it’s been hard.”

  Her dad reached out and smoothed her hair back. “It’s been hard on all of us. But it won’t be hard forever. I promise. I just need to find my feet. I am trying.”

  Immy nodded. “I know. I’ll try harder, too.”

  “Thank you,” he said, giving her a kiss on her forehead. “Now, listen. I think we should take the hedgehogs full-time. You were right about that. They should be my responsibility.”

  “Really?”

  An excited, high-pitched squeak came from the cage. “Do you think that means someone agrees?” he laughed.

  A tiny nose exited the bars on the side of the cage.

  “That girl,” Immy said. “She’s always hungry.”

  “She really is. You should have seen the way she scrambled when she saw the food coming this morning. I thought she might eat my fingers if I didn’t hurry up! Can you tell them all apart?”

  Immy nodded. “Of course! It’s easy.”

  “I guess we won’t be needing this, then.” Immy’s dad pulled three small bottles of nail polish out of his pocket.

  “You’re going to do their nails?”

  Her dad grinned. “I thought they could use some pampering. No, Jean gave it to me. It’s to put a little dot on their spines. If you use a different color on each one, you can tell who is who and then you can name them. You know, I think she might have been hoping we’d take them after this.” He gave Immy a shrewd look. “She’s smart, Jean.”

  “She is,” Immy agreed.

  “Why don’t you name them now? Before everyone gets here?”

  Immy bent down to peer inside the cage so she could see all four hedgehogs at once. “Hmmm. Okay. Well, the other girl — the not-so-greedy one — she’s the softest. And the sweetest.” She paused to think for a moment. “Marshmallow?”

  Her dad chuckled. “Sounds good. What about the greedy one?”

  “Well, she really does always scramble for her food. Scramble?”

  “Makes sense. And the boy?”

  “He’s dreamy. He needs a good poke to do anything. He always has his head in the clouds. So how about Cloud?”

  “Marshmallow, Scramble, and Cloud. I like it.” Her dad nodded decisively. “We’ve forgotten the mother.”

  Immy grinned. “How about Lucky?”

  “Lucky it wasn’t worse, you mean.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Lucky it is, then. Jean said they should be able to eat by themselves in just a few more days. Depending on how the mother heals, they might need to be kept over the winter, though. The vet is going to bring around a special, larger cage tomorrow.”

  Immy put a finger through the bars and tickled Scramble on her tummy. “Can we keep them? Really? Until they’re ready to be released?”

  Her dad nodded.

  And Immy stood up and hugged him right up until the library door opened and the students started to pour in.

  Immy’s class separated into small groups, and each group took its turn gathering around the cage.

  “Now, we’re not all going to hold the hoglets, because that wouldn’t be good for them,” Mrs. Garland told each group. “But you can have a close look, and we’ll all be learning lots about them and how we can care for them in our own gardens. I have a number of books that you might like to borrow and information sheets as well.”

  Immy’s dad told the class all about how the hedgehog had been injured, how Jean had taken it and the hoglets in, what the hedgehogs needed on a daily basis, and how they’d be set free once they weighed enough and the season was right. He also told everyone how they could make their gardens hedgehog-friendly and said that they should watch out for hedgehogs in their sheds and hedges and check in bonfires before they were lit.

  Immy couldn’t have been prouder of him. It really was like having Old Dad back again, though she knew she shouldn’t let herself get too excited. Coming to the school today had been hard for her dad. So hard, he’d almost not been able to do it. He’d been able to come inside only because she’d gone out and met him halfway. Immy remembered how Jean had told her she needed to hold her father’s heart carefully, but Immy thought it was a bit different from that. It was more like her dad was balancing — balancing on top of a log, with his arms out, trying to keep steady. She had to hold his hand and help him get to the other side. She knew from experience that the funny thing about balancing on logs was that most of the time you didn’t even need that hand. It was enough to know it was there. Just in case.

  When the lesson was almost over and all the kids had wandered off to check out their books, Erin remained, hovering by the cage.

  “Did the mother hedgehog’s injury need to be stitched up?” she asked Immy’s dad.

  He nodded. “It did.”

  Erin bent down to take another look at the hoglets. “It’s what I want to do when I’m finished with school,” she said. “I want to be a small-animals vet.”

  Caitlyn was sitting at a table nearby, an information sheet in her hand that she obviously wasn’t reading. “Well, you’d have to be good at biology,” she said. “You know, growing things and everything. Maybe you should join the allotment club?”

  Looks flew between the three girls. It was obvious that Caitlyn knew Erin had been going to the allotment club. Immy shrugged, letting Erin know she hadn’t told on her. She was going to let it slide but then realized she was sick of Caitlyn. She was tired of being pushed around. Over her moods.

  Immy spoke up. “You should join, Erin. It’s great. Everyone there is really nice. Really friendly. It’s nice to hang out in the sun with really nice, really friendly people.”

  Immy’s dad watched the girls carefully, sensing that something was going on. “Well, um, that’s good,” he said. “And, yes, you do need to be good at biology to be a vet. But the thing is, it’s easier to be good at something when you have an interest in it. Now, Erin, isn’t it?”

  Erin nodded.

  “I think if we’re very quiet about it, it might be fine for you to hold a hoglet or two.”

  After lunch, Immy took herself off to the library and settled down in one of the large beanbags with the book she’d almost finished reading. She was up to an exciting part, so when the library door opened and close
d, she didn’t look up.

  Sometime later, there was a whump as someone sat down in one of the other beanbags. Again, Immy’s eyes didn’t leave her book — she had only a couple of pages to go now and wanted to finish the story before the bell went.

  When she was finally done, she glanced to her left.

  She could barely believe her eyes.

  Because there, on the other beanbag, was Erin, reading.

  Immy had been about to get up to find a new book, but now she decided against this. Instead, she sat very, very still, thinking that any sudden movement might scare Erin away.

  After some time, Erin turned to her. “Your dad’s really nice, isn’t he?” she said.

  Immy wasn’t sure how to reply. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, he is.”

  Erin went back to her book then, so Immy brought her own book back up to her face and pretended to keep reading.

  “And that, my girl, is the last feed of the night done.” Immy’s dad steered her out of the living room, his hands on her shoulders.

  “Good night, Marshmallow, Scramble, Cloud, Lucky,” she called out as she went.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, her dad waved her off into her room. “Let’s all try to get a few hours’ sleep before the next feed.”

  Immy yawned and padded her way into her room.

  Today had been . . . interesting. Her dad turning up at school just when she thought there was no hope of him showing at all. Her finally standing up to Caitlyn. And Erin joining her in the library at lunchtime.

  Sometimes change could be good.

  Pondering this, Immy walked over to the bedroom window. Nervously, she opened the lock and pushed the window open.

  There was the tree, as cheerless, surly, and bleak-looking as ever.

  Immy considered it for a moment.

  She’d changed her approach today and won.

  Maybe she needed a different approach with the tree, too?

  Immy went over and took the chair from her desk. She brought it to the open window and then sat there for some time, hugging her knees up to her chest in the cool of the evening. As she sat, she studied the tree carefully, its inky branches shadowy and somber against the sky.