The Singing Tree

by Anne Weale

  ‘It’s beautiful, but I found I couldn’t bear to wear it when what it symbolised seemed forever out of reach.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten what you said the tree was called... and you never did tell me the story behind it.’

  ‘It’s called the singing tree, and the legend is that it grows on a mysterious island which everyone would like to find because anyone who does also finds all their heart’s desires. Obviously the story is an allegory; the singing tree is love.’

  A year later Kim came to spend a few days with them en route to a medical conference in Paris. This time Flower was able to welcome her without constraint, secure in the confidence that she was deeply, passionately loved.

  As she showed off her baby daughter, who had inherited her blonde hair and Roderick’s blue eyes, she wondered if it caused Kim pain to see her so happy when she was still on her own. But at least her job brought her into contact with lots of men and perhaps she would meet someone at the conference.

  ‘I thought Roderick might be disappointed at not having a son and heir, but he adores Lily,’ she told Kim. ‘And we hope to have another next year.’

  Later, when Roderick returned from attending a meeting in London sponsored by the World Health Organisation, she was glad when he greeted Kim warmly. It seemed very strange that she could ever have been jealous of the American.

  All the confusions and doubts of the early days of her marriage seemed a long time ago.

  ‘And how are you, dearest girl?’ he asked, as he did every evening when his day’s work was over and they were both at leisure to enjoy each other’s company.

  He had been away overnight and she knew by the glint in his eyes that, in spite of the presence of a guest, he wouldn’t be sitting up late, discussing the progress of the clinic or the latest attempts by the spokesmen for the sugar industry to dismiss the results of research by the anti-sugar lobbies.

  Once dinner was over, and the main news telecast, he would smother a yawn, claim tiredness and sweep her upstairs, there to demonstrate that in fact his reserves of energy were far from exhausted.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, smiling up at him, silently answering the signal he was sending. ‘Dodo is fine. Lily’s fine. But we’ve missed you.’

  ‘I missed you too.’

  She knew he meant it.

  As he turned away to concentrate on Kim, Flower lifted her hand to touch the piece of gold-ornamented malachite which now she wore nearly all the time, tucked inside cotton shirts by day, showing outside sweaters or silk tops by night. It had become her talisman, even more treasured than the Anstruther emerald which, one day, she hoped to pass on to the girl chosen by her son.

  Many years ahead, the singing tree would go to Lily or perhaps to Lily’s daughter. But that was far in the future, and meanwhile she hoped to have decades and decades of this marvellous, undeserved happiness with Lily’s gorgeous father.