The Juniper Tree

by Barbara Comyns

  No, I wouldn’t mind giving her tea. And that’s how Alison crept into our lives. I do so hope poor Gertrude didn’t look on me as a kind of Alison. I think, I’m almost sure, she accompanied Bernard on some of his trips to Brussels and she didn’t have to study French first.

  And now comes a terrible time, a time when I behaved quite out of character. It was as if my brain had turned into broken elastic. It had been so stretched and strained in one way or another and it was as if I had lost the control of it. The disaster occurred the day after the apple picking. It had been quite a pleasant day, really, and with Johnny’s help I was storing the apples in the basement hall. There was a long shelf near the gas meters that took about thirty pounds of apples and I decided to put the rest in my big chest, which had been banished from my room because of its clumsy farmhouse appearance. It had a great heavy lid and a great heavy iron lock and it now stood in a dark corner of the hall. It was difficult to open at first and I pulled it a little way from the wall to make it easier. It was empty except for a slight smell of camphor, so I left it open to air for a little.

  While the chest was airing Peter came down the stairs carrying a suitcase. He said he was going to stay in Cornwall with his family for a few days and had come to say goodbye. Johnny wanted to see him drive off in his little red mail van, so we trooped up the basement steps into the sunny courtyard and Johnny climbed on to the bear’s back as most young children always did. People passing the gate must have thought what a happy-looking family we were with our beautiful, laughing child and stately house, though they might have wondered at Peter’s funny little van.

  When he had driven away we went down the steps with great care because Bernard said they were dangerous, but when we reached the bottom step Johnny pulled away and started picking up the brilliant apples and roughly flinging them into the chest, laughing defiantly when I told him to stop. Then he started to climb into the chest.

  I shouted, ‘No!’ and ran across the room and made to grab him, but before I reached him the lid came down, the lid came down, THE LID CAME DOWN. There was nobody to be seen, just the heavy closed lid. For the rest of my life I’d have to live with that great black lid coming crashing down.

  Could I have been quicker, calmer? Could I have saved the child? Was I to blame for leaving the chest open? Before I opened it I thought I knew what I’d find – a little dead boy with a defiant laugh on his face. But when I saw him, his mouth was pulled down as if in horror and his eyes had gone all startled in a dreadful way. As I held my poor stepboy in my arms I lost my reason and it was as if I had become someone else, someone stupid and crafty at the same time. At all costs Bernard must never know what had happened to his son. I must find somewhere to hide him. It never occurred to my poor twisted mind to telephone for help; an ambulance could have been there in a matter of minutes. I laid him down on the dirty floor and ran upstairs to fetch one of Bernard’s fine handkerchiefs to wind round his neck to support his head. This seemed very important to me, rather like sticking a doll’s broken head together. But it didn’t work. His head still lolled. Then I remembered the kiss of life and kissed and kissed him; but it made no difference because he was certainly quite dead. All the same, I wrapped my cardigan round him because he appeared to be already growing cool.

  My main idea was to hide him from Bernard. I would bury him in the garden. So I put him back in the chest while I went out to dig. The obvious place was under the juniper tree where his mother used to sit and dream before he was born. The earth was very soft and leafy there and it was easy to dig a shallow grave. I collected some strawberry plants which grew wild in that part of the garden and put them beside the grave to plant over it later on. Then I heard the church clock strike the half hour and realized it was almost time Marline returned from school, so I ran back to the house to close the lid of the chest, which I’d left open in the wild hope that he might come alive again, that a miracle might have occurred and he’d just be sleeping. I felt his forehead, but it was definitely growing colder and his little hands didn’t feel like Johnny’s. His arms had gone strangely heavy and fell back when I lifted them. All the same, there would still have been time to call for help but I couldn’t face Bernard and reveal what had happened and my poor twisted mind could only think of that. I remembered with relief that he would be late home that evening. He was taking Alison to a concert; she had now become interested in music as well as art.

  I didn’t go near the basement again until Marline was safely in bed. I usually read the children a story at bedtime. They took turns in choosing it and this evening it was Johnny’s turn and Marline kept asking where he was. I told her Charlotte and her husband had taken Johnny away for a few days motoring holiday. Later on I told Bernard the same lie, polished up a little, and he believed me because he didn’t see my eyes flicker as they do when I tell lies. But he was very annoyed with Charlotte for taking his son away without his permission. He grumbled, ‘I don’t like it at all. He didn’t even say goodbye to me.’

  And I turned my face away and said, ‘He wanted to go, you know how he is,’ and we parted for the night, Bernard to his room with the little boy’s empty bed beside his.

  When I saw that Marline was asleep, I went downstairs and took Johnny out of the chest and wrapped him in my best silk dress, the colour of maize. I felt nothing was good enough for him. He was cold now and his face looked beautiful, even more beautiful than in life; but he was unexpectedly heavy to carry through the garden and into the spinney.

  I found I was talking to him as if he were alive: ‘What a heavy boy you are, Johnny! We’ll soon be there now,’ and as I put him in the little grave, ‘Oh, my darling little boy! I don’t know what’s going to happen now.’ As I covered him with the leafy earth there was a faint rustle and I felt I was being observed; but it was only the magpies, their white feathers showing in the bright moonlight. There appeared to be more than usual, but they were quite quiet, only watching.

  I planted the strawberry plants as well as I could, but didn’t like to water them because of Johnny getting wet. Then I sat on Gertrude’s bench and remembered how she had asked me to look after her child if anything happened to her. Well, I had looked after him to the best of my ability except for an occasional slap. It was Bernard who had spoilt him. I stayed on the bench for a long time thinking, and I kept shivering although it was a warm night.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I don’t know how I would have got through the next two days if I hadn’t found a discarded bottle of Valium in Miss May’s room, the extra strong blue ones. They must have been there for years but they were still potent. There were sleeping pills too. They numbed my poor brain in a marvellous way, and although I was more or less in a dream, I managed to do the cooking without any disasters. Bernard said, ‘You are not yourself, Bella. Are you ill?’ I told him another lie. I said I had a touch of flu.

  He stayed at home on Johnny’s birthday, his fourth it would have been. He was convinced that Charlotte would bring him home on such an important day and insisted that I prepared a large family lunch and all the things that Johnny liked, stuffed chicken and roast potatoes and a chocolate pudding with whipped cream. I said there wasn’t time for a birthday cake so he went out and bought one. As I worked in the kitchen tears ran down my cheeks; but I had had these crying fits for some time so Mrs Hicks wasn’t surprised. Bernard returned with the cake and said it was a beautiful day outside and wouldn’t I leave the kitchen for a little walk round the garden with him, it would do my cold good. So we walked among the last of the autumn flowers still brilliant and untouched by frost. Bernard was holding my arm, and we were closer together than we had been for months. I thought, ‘This is the last time we shall walk together in a loving way. When Johnny’s grave is discovered, it will be the end of everything between us. Perhaps Bernard will think of me with horror.’ I had a sudden idea and told Bernard I must leave him, there was an important letter I must write immediately. And I took his hand away from m
y arm and held it against my face for a moment, then ran into the house.

  Mrs Hicks was in the dining-room laying the table for the expected family lunch and I thought if only it were true and Johnny would come running into the room followed by Charlotte and the husband we’d never seen. I asked Mrs Hicks to keep an eye on the oven for me and she said she would, but added, ‘I only hope Mr Forbes won’t be disappointed. Strange them not sending a card or telephoning. Perhaps Miss Charlotte has forgotten the date of the poor child’s birthday.’

  I said, ‘Perhaps,’ and opened the drinks cupboard and selected a bottle of brandy and went upstairs with it.

  I settled down to write my letter in Marline’s room; it was more private than my bedroom. I fetched a tooth mug and the little bottle of Valium from the bathroom and counted the tablets. There were only ten left, but there was plenty of alcohol to help them down; a tumbler of brandy would be almost lethal on its own – I wondered if I was allowed to mix water with it. I took a sip of the neat brandy, then wrote my letter on a large sheet of Marline’s drawing paper I found pinned to a board. There was the beginning of a drawing in the top left-hand corner, a happy drawing of flowers and leaves and not very suitable for the letter I was about to write. I addressed it to Bernard and anyone else who should read it, a coroner perhaps. I didn’t want the letter to be too personal, just very truthful.

  I gave a detailed account of exactly what happened from the time I opened the chest to air it and Johnny said goodbye to Peter: the careful journey down the steps, Johnny wildly throwing the apples into the open chest, me telling him to stop it, and how in defiance he climbed into it although I shouted ‘No’ (actually, I couldn’t quite remember if he was standing upright or rather bent forward, I thought it was bent forward) and so on. I wrote very quickly because it was agony to recall what happened. It was difficult to explain why I was so afraid of Bernard that I had to bury the poor little body under the juniper tree. I appealed to Bernard to forgive me for acting in such a strange manner and asked if he had noticed my depression and mental deterioration during the last few months. I felt I was losing my sanity and, now I was the indirect cause of his son’s death, I couldn’t go on any longer. I did point out that if Johnny had not been encouraged to be disobedient, his death might not have occurred. I said little about love or the pain of parting because it would be read by strangers. I felt calmer after I’d written the letter and I put it on my bedside table with the brandy and Valium. I planned to lie down after lunch and tell Bernard to call me when Charlotte came, which would be a long, long time.

  I closed my bedroom door and ran downstairs to help Mrs Hicks with the meal for people who would never arrive and put candles on a birthday cake for a boy who was already dead. At one o’clock Marline came home from school because she had remembered it was Johnny’s birthday. She had bought him red slippers decorated with fluffy rabbits’ heads with flopping ears. She was rather tearful when we eventually sat down to eat our lunch at the half-empty table; but Bernard tried to appear more cheerful than he was, complimenting me on the cooking and suggesting how easy it would be to heat up when the rest of the family arrived. He said that it was such a perfect autumn day and that he was feeling quite lighthearted. ‘Cheer up, little Marlinchen,’ he said, giving her hair a playful tweak, ‘Johnny will be home this evening.’ Then turning to me, he said, ‘And why aren’t you eating, Bella, dear?’

  I told him I felt uneasy, as if a heavy storm were coming: ‘It must be the flu. I’ll lie down this afternoon and have a really long rest, so don’t disturb me until Charlotte comes.’

  Before we had finished our late meal, there was a ring at the front door bell and we could hear Mrs Hicks talking to some men in the hall. Bernard left the table and I could hear his authoritative voice. ‘Yes, it could well be true. We have a nest down in the thicket. Been there for some years . . . cuff-links . . . no objection at all . . .’

  Marline, alert as always, bounded from the room crying, ‘My birds! You mustn’t frighten them or they’ll go away.’

  Then Bernard, reprovingly: ‘Be quiet, Marline, go back to the dining-room and finish your meal.’

  Marline did not return, but at least she was quiet, and when they walked through the drawing-room into the garden she was trotting behind. I stood there holding on to the door, watching them. I was weighed down by fear and felt so ill and anxious my teeth chattered – yet it was as if I had fire in my veins – but I had to follow the little troop of three men and a child. One man looked very like a policeman to me. Perhaps he had already heard about the little grave and had come to inspect it. They had nearly reached the juniper tree and I stumbled on behind but no one noticed me except the startled birds. They appeared to fly straight up from the ground, crying, ‘Chak-Chak-Chak,’ and there were three of them instead of two, and a great roaring came in my ears like a violent storm and the birds seemed to swoop towards me, and one had a great round stone in its fearful beak which it let fall and I knew I was to be entirely crushed by it as I saw it spinning down towards me.

  Chapter Thirty

  Actually the policeman had not come about the little grave, but something quite different. There was a well-known goldsmith in Hill Rise who made beautiful and expensive jewellery from precious metals and valuable stones. That morning when he was sitting in his workshop making a heavy golden chain he saw through the skylight a large bird sitting on his roof singing what seemed to him a very beautiful song. He stood up and went towards the street; but as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. But he went right into the middle of the street with one shoe on and one off, and in his left hand he held the golden chain and in his right the pincers he had been working with, and the sun was shining brightly on the street. The bird had come to the edge of the roof and he called to it: ‘Bird, how beautifully you sing,’ and the bird sang something like, ‘Kywill, Kywitt, chak-chak-chak.’ This pleased the goldsmith so much that he hardly noticed when the bird swooped down, snatched the glittering chain from his hand, carried it to the roof, pecked at it for a few moments, and then flew away towards some gardens at the back.

  Several people, some of them in cars, saw this happen, and they were astonished. Some said one thing and some another: ‘It’s a thieving jackdaw’; ‘No, it’s too large, a magpie most likely’; ‘Of course it’s a magpie, all black and white with a long tail.’ Someone else said it was definitely a parrot and a crowd started to collect, and the jeweller, who was a shy man, scuttled into his shop and shut the door. It was only then that he noticed he’d lost a slipper. When he’d retrieved his slipper, he went into the small yard at the back; but no golden chain glittered there or in his neighbour’s yard. He telephoned the police and they sent round a most helpful young constable who knew quite a lot about birds and their habits. After he had written a description of the missing gold chain, the young policeman suggested that they call on some of the nearby houses that had large gardens, The owners of the first two houses they visited said that, although magpies sometimes settled on the trees in their gardens, they hadn’t seen any recently; but the next house holder they asked was an elderly woman who knew of the Forbeses magpies and directed them there. ‘There is a little girl, a very dark little girl, who feeds them with her own lips, and they have built the strangest nest. The lady who died was very fond of them too and called them her elsters. I watch them from my bathroom window and there seem to be three birds now, but I haven’t seen any gold chains. It’s the large house with a carved bear outside. You can’t miss it.’

  So they came to our house, the policeman and the jeweller, and Bernard took them to the thicket, followed by the indignant Marline. They found the birds pecking at the gold chain just under the juniper tree and the disturbed birds flew into the sky, then swooped down towards me – and that was when I fell to the ground, twitching and moaning, not crushed by a stone, but by my poor disordered mind.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  For a time I was in a coma – for severa
l days, they told me. Then came a terrifying time when I was crying out but couldn’t speak proper words and didn’t know where I was or who I was for that matter. Sometimes, when the drugs wore off, I thought I might be in purgatory. Quite often there were looming forms bending over me and at first their voices hurt my ears; it was as if they were shouting through a megaphone. Occasionally there were people I’d once known, but I couldn’t remember who they were. Later, a nurse told me that the first time I spoke clearly was when Bernard stood by my bed and, although I didn’t know him, something twisted in my heart and I said: ‘I’d rather be married to a fox than you.’ Nonsense, but it was a step forward.

  The worst step forward was when my memory returned, all misty at first, then horribly clear. I called out and said I must talk to someone about Johnny; I was very worried about him. Then such a sympathetic woman came and sat beside me and let me talk as much as I wanted, making notes as she listened. It was some time before I realized she was a policewoman. She had a copy of the letter I’d written to Bernard and asked if it were true. She wanted to know why I was so afraid of him. I told her the letter was true, although my mind was very disturbed when I wrote it, and I’d buried poor little Johnny to hide his body from Bernard until I’d destroyed myself. I tried to explain how he was about the child, so obsessed with him as if he were his dead wife. In the state I was in I couldn’t tell him his son was dead and he’d died because I left the lid of the chest open. But even if he had died in any other way, I still couldn’t have told Bernard; I’d far rather be dead myself.