The Memory Tree

by Linda Gillard

  ‘I think you’re kindness itself, Connor. And your kindness makes me feel very guilty. And rather foolish.’

  ‘Oh. That wasn’t the idea. I was hoping you’d feel reassured. Protected.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good! So it’s settled then?’

  ‘Yes. It’s settled.’ As he applied a final plaster, she said, ‘There’s just one thing, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m not letting you sleep on the floor.’

  ‘It’s not a problem. I really don’t mind.’

  ‘But I do. I want you in the bed. Please.’

  ‘Oh. I see . . .’ Connor blinked several times, then a slow smile spread across his face. ‘Right, that’s absolutely fine, because I also want you in the bed. No – don’t get up. You’re not walking on those feet, not after all the trouble I’ve taken with those plasters. I’m carrying you upstairs, no arguments.’ He bent down and slipped one arm round her waist and the other under her knees. ‘Put your arms round my neck and hold tight.’

  He swung her up into the air and as he did so, she giggled. Exhausted now, Ann rested her head on his chest. By the time they reached the top of the stairs, she was almost asleep. Connor laid her down gently on the bed and, as she stirred, he whispered, ‘You’re sure now?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m sure.’ She propped herself up on one elbow and watched him undress. ‘My goodness, that didn’t take long. Only two garments?’

  ‘I got dressed in a hurry when I saw you heading for the wood.’

  She got off the bed and turned her back to him so he could unzip her dress. As she wriggled out of it, he said, ‘I forgot – I need to lock us in.’ He strode over to the door, turned the key and removed it from the lock.

  Slipping under the duvet, Ann laughed as she regarded him. ‘Well, there’s nowhere you can hide it on your person.’

  ‘Close your eyes. I’m going to hide it somewhere secret so you won’t be able to get out.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be going anywhere. My feet hurt too much to walk. In any case, here is where I want to be. And here,’ she said, throwing back the duvet and patting the mattress, ‘is where I want you to be. Hurry up, Connor, before I fall asleep.’

  Tossing the key into a corner of the room, he covered the floor in two strides. ‘There’ll be no sleeping on my watch. Not for a while anyway.’

  She giggled again and took him in her open arms.

  It was not the last of the laughter.

  ANN

  When I woke Connor was gone. It was very light and I knew I must have slept late into the morning. As the events of the previous night came back to me, I felt disappointed that I’d woken alone, until common sense reasserted itself and I realised Connor had wanted to spare me embarrassment. He might have withstood a ribbing from Phoebe, but he knew I wouldn’t have taken it so well. He’d no doubt risen early and returned discreetly to the studio.

  As I sat up in bed, I registered aches and tenderness in various parts of my body. Accounting for them wasn’t difficult, apart from the soreness of my feet. Swinging my legs out of bed, I examined them and remembered Connor administering first aid, then I remembered why he’d had to do it. I lay down again and hauled the duvet back over me, wishing Connor hadn’t left me to start the day alone.

  The sound of lively voices drifted up the stairs, along with the aroma of frying bacon. Suddenly hungry, for bacon and the sight of Connor, I got up, showered and dressed quickly, then went downstairs to the kitchen.

  ‘Ah, you’ve decided to join us at last! Connor, slice some more bread and I’ll shove a few more rashers in the pan. Did you sleep well, Ann? I assume you must have done, lying in till this hour.’

  Phoebe’s cheerful prattle eased my embarrassment at seeing Connor again. He gave me no special look, nor did he avoid my eye. It was clearly business as usual, but I still felt at a loss, not knowing what he might have told Phoebe about my sleepwalking.

  As I limped over to the table, Connor quickly pulled out a chair for me and I was able to sit before Phoebe noticed I was having trouble walking. He poured me coffee, set the mug in front of me and said, ‘You slept, then.’

  It wasn’t a question because he knew I had. Eventually.

  ‘Yes, I did, thank you.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘I had a wonderful night. The best in a very long time.’

  His expression remained serene. ‘Must have been all that champagne.’

  ‘I always say champagne cures whatever ails you,’ Phoebe said, chipping in. ‘And if it doesn’t, well, you’re probably past saving.’ She dished up the bacon on to a plate, then handed it to Connor, who deposited it in the middle of the table. ‘Tuck in! This is brain fodder, Ann. Connor and I were in the middle of an investigation,’ Phoebe said, pouring coffee and splashing some on to the table in her clumsy excitement, ‘and frankly, we need your help. You’re the one with the brains.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Connor mumbled, his mouth full of bacon sandwich.

  ‘We need to put all our heads together because we’re actually no nearer to solving the Mordaunt mystery, despite the shocking events of last night.’

  I looked up at Connor, alarmed, wondering what my mother knew. He held my eyes, shook his head almost imperceptibly, then said, ‘I take it, Phoebe, you’re referring to the identity of my great-grandfather.’

  ‘Yes, of course! There’s so much more to think about now we know about William. The plot thickens!’ Phoebe said with relish.

  ‘Okay, fill me in then,’ I said, relieved to be able to focus on the details of a hundred-year-old love affair. It meant I could postpone thinking about Connor and the incident that had finally brought us together. ‘What do we know about Hester and William in later life?’

  ‘The information’s patchy,’ Connor said. ‘Mostly hearsay. If Hester kept any diaries, they’re missing.’

  ‘Missing, presumed burned?’

  ‘Yes. There was just one fire-damaged journal covering a period in the 1920s. It was half-burned and not a single complete page was legible, so I got rid of it. It stank the place out.’

  ‘Do we know how William died?’

  ‘TB. Ivy said he died in a sanatorium, but he’d been ill for many years. It wasn’t just his mind that was affected by his experiences in the trenches. His lungs and hearing were damaged too. Hester’s health also declined after William’s death, but if he was the love of her life, that adds up.’

  ‘Poor old Hester,’ Phoebe said, shaking her head. ‘She saw an awful lot of death, didn’t she? Far too much.’

  ‘It must have taken its toll,’ Connor admitted. ‘She lost most of her family during the war, then her mother and Violet died in the Spanish flu epidemic.’

  ‘No!’ Phoebe was aghast. ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Afraid so. After the war Spanish flu killed more people than the Black Death. So by 1919 Hester’s only connections with her past were William and little Ivy. She sold the Beechgrave estate in various parcels during the 1920s, but retained some of the houses on the estate. She and Ivy lived in one and William stayed on as a tenant at Garden Lodge with a housekeeper to care for him after Violet died. Eventually, Hester paid for his care in a sanatorium.’

  ‘Maybe she sold Beechgrave to pay for his care,’ Phoebe suggested.

  ‘That’s possible. Ivy assumed Hester’s generosity stemmed from her affection for the Hatherwick family. She had no idea her adoptive mother – as she thought – was caring for a dying lover.’

  ‘So we’re pretty much dependent on what Ivy told you about her family,’ I said, clarifying. ‘There’s little documentary evidence left.’

  ‘That’s right, apart from the odd letter or photo that survived the fire.’

  ‘Did William ever get his memory back?’

  ‘Yes, a few days before he died. Well, that’s when he told Hester he finally remembered everything. I think memories might have been coming back to him for some time,’ Connor said, with a glance at me. ‘But Ivy alwa
ys said he got his memory back after she sent him a letter.’

  ‘After Ivy sent a letter?’

  ‘Yes. Hester apparently gave her all the credit for restoring William’s memory.’

  ‘What was the letter about?’

  ‘Gardening.’

  ‘Gardening?’ Phoebe exclaimed.

  Connor shrugged. ‘That’s what she said. She was away at college, just a kid, only seventeen or so. She wouldn’t have been discussing his war experiences, not in 1934.’

  I shook my head, puzzled. ‘I find it hard to believe Ivy would have destroyed the letter – her letter – that brought William’s memory back.’

  ‘At the time of her death, Ivy was apparently trying to destroy everything,’ Connor said grimly.

  We all fell silent. The bacon sandwiches were finished and the coffee pot was empty. Connor and Phoebe looked at me expectantly and I suddenly felt overwhelmed with tiredness. Then my mother did an odd thing. She reached across the table and took my hand. Squeezing it, she smiled and said, ‘Come on, Ann! We’re counting on you. Aren’t we, Connor?’ she added, nudging him with her elbow.

  He looked at me then, the veil of circumspection cast aside. ‘I really appreciate what you’ve done for me, Ann, but you can quit any time.’

  ‘No, she can’t! What are you saying? I want this mystery solved before I pop my clogs,’ Phoebe said, rapping the table.

  ‘Shhh, Mum! Let me think. God, the pressure,’ I said with a smile at Connor. ‘So, to summarise . . . We’re certain it was a letter from Ivy that restored William’s memory? All of it?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘Then he must have remembered what Hester meant to him before the war . . . He must have realised they’d lost years.’

  ‘Seventeen,’ Connor said. ‘And all because Hester never spoke of their love.’

  ‘Yet somehow a letter from Ivy brought everything back . . .’

  We sat in silence again, contemplating the wasted, loveless years William and Hester had endured, then another thought struck me.

  ‘Connor, do you remember that jolly letter with the inkblots? Ivy’s first letter home from college, wasn’t it? We wondered why she’d sent a tear-stained letter home, especially as she didn’t seem particularly homesick. I wonder . . . Perhaps those weren’t her tears.’

  Connor frowned. ‘Whose could they be?’

  ‘I’m wondering if they were William’s.’

  WILLIAM

  October 2nd, 1934

  When the latest fit of coughing had subsided, William sat up in his hospital bed, his head thrown back, gasping for breath. His heart pounded as if it would burst out of the frail vessel that contained it and he laid a hand on his bony chest to calm it, as he might have quietened a fretful child. Never one to dwell on regrets or opportunities missed, William pushed away the fleeting but familiar thought that, if he’d had his own child, he might have loved it even more than he loved his niece – though he could scarce imagine how, since he was sure he loved Ivy as if she were indeed his own child.

  He rallied at the thought of Ivy and reached for her recent letter which he kept to hand on the bedside table with the books and newspapers brought by Hester, with which he whiled away the tedious hours of an invalid’s day.

  Fumbling with the envelope, William extracted the two sheets covered in Ivy’s untidy handwriting and began to smile, anticipating the pleasure of rereading her cheerful words. He sat back and perused the letter again.

  Waterbury Horticultural School

  Wheatley

  Oxon.

  September 30th, 1934

  Dear Uncle Will,

  Hurrah! I have now completed my first two weeks’ training and thought you might like to hear what I’ve been up to.

  If you saw me in my uniform, you’d hoot with laughter. It’s certainly going to take some getting used to. Students and teachers, all female, work side by side wearing identical uniform: green breeches with green knee stockings (very itchy), shirts buttoned right up to the neck, with a tie and a green smock over the top. We look a sight, but the clothes are very practical.

  This week we picked bushels of apples and pears and stored them. We learned about the care and use of tools and collected leaf mould from the woods. (Oh, how I miss our beech wood!) We also potted early strawberries, mostly King George and The Duke.

  One of the jolliest jobs was bunching asters for the Saturday market in Swindon. We took sandwiches and tea in a Thermos and set out our stall selling cut flowers, fruit, rooted cuttings and flower seedlings in boxes – forget-me-nots, pansies and primulas. We sold all our stock and could have sold the fruit twice over!

  I struggle to rise early, but you’ll be pleased to hear I haven’t yet been late for breakfast, which is delicious. Porridge with cream, followed by fish or sausages, eggs and all the bread and marmalade you can eat. I also drink a gallon of tea. I find I’m always hungry and thirsty here. It must be all the fresh air and hard work.

  Now I must ask your advice, Uncle Will, because I have an essay to write. It concerns the construction of a rockery for a town garden. I must choose twelve suitable plants. I’ve already made my selection but I wondered which you would have chosen? I want well-behaved plants that will not overrun a modest plot within a few years. Do let me know your thoughts so I can compare your no doubt superior selection with mine.

  It’s been a tiring day, so I will close now, sending love to you and Hester. I miss you both dreadfully and must confess I’ve shed a few tears late at night when all the others are fast asleep. But don’t worry about me, I shall soon get used to my new life. I’m too busy to be miserable for long. Thinking about how many sausages I shall consume at breakfast cheers me up no end!

  I do hope your health is no worse. I look forward to a little letter from you soon, if you can manage it. In the meantime, I shall continue to work hard. I’m determined to make you and Hester very proud of me.

  All love,

  Ivy

  When he’d finished reading, William glanced at the date of the letter and decided he should reply. Ivy was waiting for a response to her query and in any case, it would be a pleasure – albeit a tiring one – to write. When a nurse brought him some tea, he asked her to set notepaper and an envelope on the table by the window, left wide open to admit the copious fresh air deemed beneficial in the treatment of tuberculosis. She helped him into his dressing gown, then supported him as he made his way to the table. Remembering what he wanted to write, William sent the nurse back to his bedside cupboard to fetch one of his old gardening books, a volume on the cultivation of alpine plants.

  He sat and turned the pages until he found the list he was looking for, then laid the book open on the table. He unscrewed the top of his fountain pen and began his reply to Ivy. A breeze lifted the pages of the book and began to turn them. William turned them back, found his place again and resumed his letter, but another gust of wind, stronger this time, lifted the pages again. As he looked up, irritated, William saw a brightly coloured piece of paper fly up in the air, twist, then drift down to the floor where it lay at his feet. He put down his pen and, as he bent to retrieve the paper, saw it was a seed packet. As his fingers grasped the paper, he cried out, then let it go, as if the packet had burned his hand.

  William got to his feet, his chest heaving and stared at the packet on the floor. He staggered as memory engulfed him like a tidal wave, obliterating the merciful amnesia that had protected his shattered mind for seventeen years. Remembering, he lifted his hands to his head and clutched at it, as if he feared the sudden flood of knowledge might cause his skull to explode. He let out an agonised cry and sank back on to his chair, turning his head from side to side, incredulous.

  Sobbing, William leaned forward and pillowed his head on his arms, resting his wracked body on the table. Ivy’s letter and his reply lay unregarded beneath him, absorbing his tears, until the nurse looked in on him again. Seeing her patient’s pitiful condition, she summoned a d
octor immediately.

  THE BEECH WOOD

  They sought consolation among us, separately, not expecting they should meet. Grief drove them towards us and towards each other. Both had lost so much, yet there was still something that could not be taken; something both still had to give.

  Afterwards, they regretted what had happened, but in the midst of decay and death, life goes on. The cycle is eternal, inexorable, like the rising of the sun, the phases of the moon.

  They were young. Alive. They did not understand, but obeyed the imperative. Death had no dominion over them and so they found the consolation they sought – not with us, but with each other.

  WILLIAM

  May 27th, 1916

  Even before she came into sight, his sharp ears detected sounds: the sweep of her skirt over the mossy floor of the wood, the cracking of fallen twigs beneath her feet. He turned, quickly concealing the packet behind his back, though as it was wrapped in oilcloth, no one could have discerned the contents. When he saw it was Hester Mordaunt, he removed his cap and dropped the packet into it, then greeted his employer.

  She was walking with her head bowed and at the sound of her name, she looked up, startled. Her serious expression vanished and was replaced briefly by a joyous smile. She then composed herself and said, ‘Mr Hatherwick. William . . . Please accept my condolences. I was so very sorry to hear of your father’s death. I have not liked to call. I thought you and Violet were best left alone to grieve. She has seemed quite distraught.’

  He nodded. ‘She has indeed taken it badly, but she says you were a great comfort in his final days, Miss Mordaunt.’

  ‘Oh, Hester, please! Have you forgotten?’ she asked with a smile. ‘We might not have seen each other for a while, but you have often been in my thoughts. Family and friends still living are even more precious now so many have departed and I count you and Violet among my friends.’