The Faerie Tree

by Jane Cable

  He’s never been a husband but he should have been. I nod my thanks and wander into the living room. A picture of Connor on the mantelpiece follows me to the armchair at the far end. I close my eyes against the day.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Robin brings my tea and tablets and I go upstairs to have a soak. I hear him and Claire beneath me in the garage; they must be checking out Connor’s car. I turn on the taps to drown them out.

  I undress in the bedroom while I run my bath. The full length mirror mocks my middle-aged body. I am tired beyond belief. I slip under the sickly scented foam and grasp my tea, wet hands sticking to the hot mug.

  Claire. Almost seventeen. Next year she’ll be gone; flying the nest to some far flung university. I remember the moment myself, sitting on the bottom stair and opening the envelope. My whoop of joy echoing through an empty house. Bristol had accepted me; get the grades and freedom was possible. For the first time, my future was in my own hands. I was desperate to escape.

  I don’t want it to be like that for Claire. I don’t want her to be running away. I don’t want to be the mother-bitch-from-hell. I want her to miss me; text me; phone me. I want to be her friend.

  The codeine works its magic on the pain behind my eye and the water soothes the aches in my back. I balance my mug of tea on the corner of the bath. The door clicks open.

  “Izzie? Can I come in?”

  I twist around and smile. “Of course you can. I heard you in the garage – were you looking at the car?”

  “Yes. I showed Claire how to check the oil and the water in the washer bottles.”

  “Her father would never have thought of that.”

  Robin sinks to his haunches next to the bath. “I’m not trying to replace Connor.”

  “You’re finding your own way.”

  “I’m trying. How are you feeling now?”

  “Better. You?”

  “Too tired to think about it. The car was a good distraction.”

  I reach out and stroke his hair, leaving a soapy trail. He hangs his head.

  “Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll just have a chat with Claire then slip in later.” I pull the plug out of the bath and stand up. The air feels cool and I shiver, so Robin fetches my towel and wraps it around me. “You’re the kindest, most wonderful man I’ve ever met and I love you very much.”

  He shakes his head but all the same he smiles. “I love you too, Izzie. You’re the centre of my world.”

  I am still glowing when I cross the hall to Claire’s room. As I push the door she closes down a window on her computer screen.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No, Mum – not at all.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles at me.

  “It’s just – I had an idea. How about you have a little party here for your birthday, and invite the people you’re going to Newquay with?”

  “Mmm… maybe.” She picks at the skin alongside her thumbnail. “Mum – there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  “How long has that been going on behind my back?” The words are out before I can stop them.

  “Not… not that long. There’s just never been the right moment to say. I didn’t want it to be something we had half a conversation about on our way to the school bus.”

  “There’ve been plenty of other times.”

  “No, Mum – there haven’t. Not when it’s just been you and me.”

  “Don’t start blaming Robin for this. He’s very good to you, he’s…”

  “I’m not blaming Robin!” she yells. “I’m blaming you. You’re the one who’s never got time for me. No wonder I need a boyfriend of my own.”

  The truth of what she says hits home and I am able to check myself. “I’m sorry, Claire. We’ve got time now. Tell me all about him. Is he at sixth form with you?”

  “Yes. He’s nice, Mum – you’ll really, really like him. He’s quite tall with green eyes and he makes everyone laugh all the time. He lives in Chandlers Ford and his dad’s a dentist. He wants to be a marine geologist – that’s how I met him – he’s in Sasha’s geography group.”

  “You haven’t told me his name.”

  “It’s Jack – Jack Granger.”

  The name rings a bell so loud it even strikes the right spot in my befuddled brain. “The boy who’s organising the trip to Newquay?”

  Claire shifts her weight on her chair. “Yes.”

  “That explains a lot. So really, Claire – how long has this been going on?”

  “Only a few weeks.” But her eyes can’t meet mine.

  “So he wasn’t the reason you were so desperate to go to Newquay? Come on, Claire – I work with kids your age and I’m not stupid.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Mum, honestly…”

  “Don’t use that word with me, Claire – not unless you mean it,” I snap. “You’re almost seventeen – have a boyfriend – why not? But don’t start lying to me and hiding things from me or…”

  “I’m not. You just won’t listen,” she screams.

  I watch my hands as they stretch to shake her by the shoulders.

  “Don’t you dare – don’t you dare touch me – I’m not a child!” She shrinks against the wall and I back away.

  I am trapped in the funnel of the landing and I grip the radiator for support. It burns my hand but I can’t let go. I cannot move; not back into Claire’s room, nor cross the invisible storm to my own. I close my eyes and fight to control my breath; it is all I can hear; a panting dog chasing me.

  The feeling I am about to die recedes. I raise my hand and flex my throbbing fingers. Claire’s muffled sobs squeeze under her bedroom door and I escape to my study.

  I have visited this internet page so often the address springs into my browser when I type just the first few letters. Symptoms of stress: feeling overwhelmed, moodiness, constant worrying, panic attacks, headaches… these are all familiar. But memory loss – on a huge scale? I search the list again and again but it isn’t there.

  Robin

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  I didn’t even unlock Jennifer’s house but went straight to the garage. There, piled on the workbench, were airtight boxes containing half empty packets of seeds. I checked the dates; some would do. Carrots, beetroot, a handful of broad beans. It was enough – for this year anyway.

  It was how Jennifer and I had always done things at the spring equinox. ‘More than a nod to heathenry’ she’d laughed, but it fitted in with the view of the world we’d come to share. In the drawer of the dresser were some candles and I planted one in each corner of the vegetable bed and lit them. There was hardly a breeze and the flames burnt low and true as my spade cut into the earth, chopping and turning to release its goodness.

  I marked drills for the carrots and beetroot and scattered the seeds before raking the soil over. The beans I planted in pairs. It would be a scant crop compared to previous years and if Stephen was to sell up I wondered who would be here to harvest it. It didn’t matter; it would be a gift to the house’s future from its past. A past that was not as solid as it seemed.

  I’d worn myself into a state of exhaustion gnawing at how Izzie’s recollection of events could be so different to mine – and yet I had no answers. I’d watched Jennifer’s brain fragment as the Alzheimer’s took hold – was the same happening to me?

  The damp from the earth seeped through the knees of my trousers. I had been here, in the garden, when Jennifer had told me of her fears – before that we’d just laughed when she’d forgotten someone’s name or couldn’t remember where the milk pan was.

  It had been spring, too, but later, probably April. I was doing the proper planting; burying runner bean seeds in the trench we’d kept open all winter. I didn’t hear her approach.

  “Robin?” I looked up. “Robin, I’m scared.” Her best grey cardigan was wrapped tightly around her, but she was shivering.

  “What
is it?”

  “The doctor’s referred me to a consultant. These memory lapses… he thinks… they might be… significant.”

  “Surely he’s just being cautious?”

  She shook her head. “Who knows?” There was a chatter of magpies in the distance. “Actually, I think I’d rather not.”

  “That’s silly, Jennifer. It might be something perfectly treatable.” I stood up, wiping the earth off my hands on my trousers.

  “And if it isn’t?” She wasn’t a woman who cried, but her voice was shaking now.

  “Then I’ll look after you.”

  “Robin – no. You don’t know what you’re offering…”

  I wrapped my arms around her and she felt frozen to my touch. “No. But we’ll find out together.”

  Now, I took a handful of earth and crumbled it through my fingers. One of the flames guttered. The rite was not complete.

  I hauled myself up on my spade and extinguished three of the candles. The other I picked up and, shielding its flame, carried through the gap in the hedge and along the bottom of the field. The air was filled with birdsong and the trees fuzzy green with new life.

  I paused at the top of the bank. Below me a dog was nosing around the Faerie Tree so I knew people would not be far away. Before long two women came into view, deep in conversation. They didn’t even glance at the tree and soon they were out of sight again. I slid down the slope and placed the candle between the oak’s roots.

  Jennifer had always said the candle was a gift for the hidden folk who guarded the tree. I never thought she meant the words literally until I read that even today a majority of people in her native Iceland don’t discount the existence of elves and fairies. But by then it was too late to ask her; she may have understood the question, but I could not have trusted her response. Could I trust my own?

  I had no-one to turn to; no-one who would understand how the yawning gap in my mind was threatening to swallow me. No-one. Not any more. Unless… of course, I couldn’t talk to Jennifer about this, but I could be near her – in a way. I almost sprinted up the slope, gathered the remaining candles from the earth and jumped into my van.

  I parked at the top of the woodland burial site and made my way through the trees. I had done this only once before, with Jennifer, when she was well enough to want to come here and choose her final resting place. As we’d emerged into the clearing she had gasped at the Solent set out before us, the Isle of Wight rising from the hazy sparkle of the sea. She’d turned to me and nodded.

  “I’ll rest well here, Robin,” was what she said.

  Her grave was to the far left of the clearing. The earth had yet to settle and a flinty mound marked the place, a terracotta pot of tete-a-tete at its centre. Stephen. I should have guessed he’d been coming here. My own visit was long overdue.

  I took the candles out of my anorak pocket and set two at her head and one at her feet. The clearing was sheltered so they lit easily and I sat back against a nearby tree to watch them burn.

  On the other side of the burial ground was a coppice of firs. I had watched Jennifer’s funeral from amongst their shadows. I had come there to wait; days of agony when nothing happened and I wondered if Stephen had forgotten her wishes. Or if there were more sinister reasons for the delay. I haunted the little wood, by day and by night, and at last the grave diggers came.

  Across the field was a manor house, its garden neglected as builders worked to convert it into flats. Roses climbed the walls; a few miraculous blooms had evaded the frost. At dusk I went to pick them, but they crumbled to petals in my hands. For a moment I was dismayed, but then I gathered them up and spread them at the bottom of Jennifer’s grave, a scented mattress to help her rest.

  I watched the funeral from the coppice. Neighbours, clients, people I knew from the village. Farmer Westland helping the Major and Maria down the slope. Undertakers carrying a simple wicker coffin and behind them, Stephen and Gareth, a woman in a black coat and another man.

  As the service began I studied the strangers. Too far away to see their faces I could only assume that the woman was Susan. The man was younger, fair and solid-looking and I guessed it was Toby. They stood apart from Stephen, who was held upright by nothing more than Gareth’s arm. I should have been there, on the other side of him. Thirty paces and I would have been. But my courage failed me and I’d slunk away. “Forgive me, Jennifer,” I whispered.

  The sun crept along the edge of the wood, warming my legs as I stretched them across the earth. My fingers dug into the chalk around the tree roots, meeting an acorn, rolling smooth around my hand. And in my mind I travelled with Jennifer, her memory fragmenting, flitting from present to past, from anguish to peace and back again. And then, as I closed my eyes, she came to a place of light and she turned and seemed to say ‘Your journey is different’.

  I shared her tranquillity until the candles burnt themselves out.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Claire’s schoolbag corkscrewed across the hall and thudded into the bottom of the stairs.

  “Come on,” I joked. “It’s Friday – you ought to be happy – no more college for a couple of days.”

  “I’d rather be there than here,” she stormed.

  “Hey – what’s up?” I leant against the doorjamb.

  “Don’t pretend she hasn’t told you.”

  “I’m assuming ‘she’ is Izzie?”

  “Well who else would it be?” She planted her hands on her hips.

  “Could have been the cat’s mother, the way you said it…”

  “Oh don’t start being the disapproving parent – it doesn’t suit you.”

  “And being a stroppy teenager doesn’t suit you. So why don’t we just cut to the chase and you tell me what’s wrong?”

  Claire sank onto the bottom stair. “I can’t make her listen – she doesn’t believe me – and I haven’t lied to her, well, not really.”

  “I’m afraid none of that makes any sense to me at all.”

  “You mean she really hasn’t told you?”

  I shook my head.

  “We had the worst row we’ve ever had last night and she didn’t tell you? She probably isn’t even upset about it. I think that’s worse, I think… all day…” Her head fell towards her knees and she started to sob.

  I crouched down beside her. “Sshh – I’m sure your mum is upset if you’ve had a fall out but perhaps she wanted to keep it private between the two of you. And anyway, I was fast asleep when she came to bed and there’s never any time in the mornings.”

  “That was my whole point – there isn’t time to talk in the mornings so that’s why I didn’t tell her, but she thought I was hiding it deliberately, but if that was the case then I wouldn’t have told her at all, would I?”

  “Told her what?”

  Claire’s chin jutted out. “That I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  I considered the news. “And Izzie isn’t happy about it?”

  “She… she didn’t seem to care one way or the other. She just went off on one because she thought I’d hidden it from her.”

  “What made her think that?”

  “Because it was Jack who organised the trip to Newquay, so she thought I was so keen on it because I was going out with him then.”

  “But you weren’t?”

  “No.” She twisted the ends of her scarf. “I did fancy him, though. I did, you know, want to impress him. And… and… when we went to Newquay at half term and you, like, knew everyone and we went in the sea, he thought it was well cool and I think it was then he started to notice me.”

  “And your mum didn’t believe that?”

  “I never got the chance to tell her the full story – she wouldn’t listen.”

  I hauled myself up on the newel post. “Well she is a bit stressed at the moment.”

  “She’s always stressed.”

  “Claire, she does her best. She’s had a bloody awful seven months.”

  “But she’s got you now.”
r />   A car slowed outside then turned into the drive. Claire leapt to her feet.

  “Go and wash your face,” I told her. “I’ll try and square it with your mum but I can’t promise it’ll be straight away – I’ll need to find the right moment.”

  I was still standing in the hall when the front door opened and Izzie appeared.

  “Hello, Robin – what have you been up to today?” she asked as she put her briefcase on the bottom step.

  “I went to Jennifer’s,” I told her, “to plant a few vegetables. I hope they grow before Stephen decides to sell.”

  “You could plant some here, you know.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…”

  “Rather plant them at your real home, would you?”

  An argument was the last thing any of us needed so I took Izzie in my arms and held her until I felt her shoulders relax. “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “It’s OK. Claire told me you’d had a row so I rather expected you to feel shitty.”

  Izzie looked up at me. “She’s home then?”

  I nodded.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That you wouldn’t listen to the full story. She was crying, Izzie – she’s really upset. Just like you,” I added as an afterthought.

  “I wasn’t very fair on her, really.”

  “Then go and tell her so.”

  She disentangled herself from my arms. “I can’t do that. Honestly, Robin – you know nothing about parenting.”

  “I know that two people I care about are hurting.”

  Her eyes dropped away from mine and after a few moments she said, “You are so wise sometimes.”

  “And so stupid at others.” I gave her a little shove. “Up you go and sort it out. I’ll walk into town for a swift half and bring us back some fish and chips.”

  She turned to me from three steps up and smiled. “And a bottle of white to go with them.”

  It was Friday, after all.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  I was glad to be left to myself in the garden. Izzie and Claire were friends again and had headed off to Chandlers Ford for Izzie to meet Jack. I’d been invited but I’d declined; I wanted to start on our new vegetable patch.