The Trees

by Ali Shaw

  ‘Is this a friend of yours, Adrien?’ asked Roland. ‘And is she always so rude? What about these others? Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

  ‘These are my friends,’ said Adrien, and it felt good to say so. ‘This is Inoue Hiroko, and Yasuo, and Hannah and Sebastian Tate. My friends.’

  A turn of Roland’s lips showed his displeasure, even if they were quickly smiling again. ‘And have they all come to find their former wives and husbands, too?’

  ‘Stop this, Roland,’ said Seb. ‘He’s here to speak with Michelle, not you.’

  Two perfect rows of teeth lined Roland’s smile. ‘You’re a charming bunch, aren’t you?’

  ‘I . . . I mean I do, insist,’ said Adrien, even though he found it hard to breathe while being so bold. ‘I do insist that you, uhh . . . tell me where Michelle is. And if you don’t, then I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’

  ‘You’ll what?’ chuckled Leonard.

  ‘He’ll find out from someone else,’ said Hannah. ‘Simple.’

  ‘Wow.’ Roland shook his head. ‘Wow, Adrien, this is more than a little awkward, you know.’ He let the silence hang for a moment, then motioned to Leonard with his hand. ‘Go and fetch her, then. We might as well put him out of his misery.’

  Leonard nodded, but for a moment did not move. He had his eyes half-closed and was smiling, as if basking in the sun. He had known, Adrien realised. He had known all along that he was leading them to wherever this was going. Perhaps he had even relished it.

  Leonard turned and stalked out of the hall. His Alsatian took one last hungry look at Yasuo, then followed its master.

  They were all quiet for a minute, during which time the smile never entirely left Roland’s face. Then he shook his head with a show of disbelief and said to Adrien, ‘I think you’d appreciate some space for this reunion. Aren’t I right?’ He raised his voice to address everyone in the hall. ‘Excuse me, people! We need to give this poor man some breathing room. Why don’t we all wait outside?’

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said Hiroko.

  ‘I’d imagine,’ said Roland, ‘that Adrien might prefer it if you did. He won’t want to be any more embarrassed than he already is.’

  ‘He isn’t embarrassed,’ said Hiroko defiantly, and Yasuo yapped as if in agreement. Then they both looked to Adrien for confirmation.

  Adrien didn’t know if it was embarrassment, dread or failure that he felt crammed full of inside. All he knew was that at least one part of him would be grateful if the floorboards opened up and swallowed him whole. Another part wished he had stayed on the beach with his deckchair classroom, and another was the told-you-so part that had rubbished coming here from the start. But just then a wolf spider glided diagonally down from the ceiling on an invisible thread, and Adrien recalled out of the blue what it felt like to abseil so weightlessly, to shimmy with eight long legs. He gasped and clutched his stomach, remembering silk glands inside himself tight as balls of twine.

  ‘I can provide you with a bucket,’ said Roland, watching him with barely concealed amusement.

  Adrien shook his head and waited for the feeling to pass. Then he stood up straight again, trying to ignore the feeling of phantom spinnerets. ‘No thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘That wasn’t what you think it was.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Roland. ‘I know a nervous man when I see one.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know the first thing about it.’

  At that Roland looked surprised, but Adrien continued before he could say anything. ‘You know what, Roland? You’re right that I’d like my friends to wait outside. If . . . if this is going to be in any way difficult for Michelle, then I don’t want to make it any harder for her.’

  Roland snorted. ‘How incredibly noble of you. Come on then, everyone, let’s do as Adrien bids us.’

  Hiroko looked unwilling to move, but Seb pulled her away. The girl accompanied the others reluctantly, and as Roland led them outside he ushered the various strangers out of the hall with them. Adrien was left all alone, with not even a tree for company.

  He didn’t watch them go, only stood facing Roland’s table, as he had stood in the past in a church, facing an altar draped in cloth. He remembered the scent of Michelle’s hair that day, an aroma that had been cruelly stirred up for him by some note in Roland’s lingering scent. He wondered, as he heard everybody’s footsteps fade and the hall fall silent, whether he were really alone now, or whether his wife was already standing back there in the doorway, observing him. He had turned at the altar and seen her stepping dressed in white, her bouquet in her grasp, her skin radiant even in the church’s stone shadows. With every step of that walk her eyes had been fixed on him. Whatever had she seen in him? He wondered it still, and pressed his hands to his collar.

  Something moved on the table. The wolf spider again, which halted its gallop halfway across the wooden surface. Adrien thought at once of the thing from the theatre, then shuddered and folded his arms tight. The spider raced away and disappeared over the edge of the table.

  ‘Adrien.’

  All of a sudden, Michelle was right there behind him. Now, after all this time, near enough to feel her breath trace his neck.

  ‘Adrien,’ she said. ‘Oh, Adrien. I can’t believe you’ve done this.’

  He turned around.

  Michelle was beautiful. Adrien still thought that. Yet she also looked a different woman to the one he had harrumphed at when she left for the airport. It had been, what? Ten weeks? Eleven? Time passed as it pleased in the woods. He did not remember those one or two grey hairs running among the brunette ones, nor that she had quite so many freckles, nor that her irises were quite that shade of brown. Maybe it was because she was without eye shadow, or any other makeup. Maybe (he thought it the more likely) he had not paid enough attention. Not in a long time.

  ‘I never expected this, Adrien. Never in a million years. I mean, it’s . . . it’s . . .’ and Michelle laughed. The sound was hollow. At last she said, ‘It’s daring, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Not daring,’ he said, ‘Not really, Michelle. I don’t think any of the courage was mine.’

  She nodded, as if she could well believe that. ‘Those people you came with, waiting outside. Who are they? Where did they come from?’

  ‘They’re . . . my friends. I met them.’

  Michelle looked suspicious. ‘I remember, not a few months ago . . . you said you hated having friends. You said all they did was waste your free time, and cost you money at Christmas.’

  ‘That sounds just like something I would have said.’

  They stared at each other for a minute.

  ‘Oh, Adrien . . .’ she said, with a faint shake of her head.

  He didn’t know what to say in return, other than, ‘Michelle . . .’

  ‘That woman you came here with. You’re not . . .’

  ‘No.’

  Michelle puffed out her cheeks. ‘Maybe that’s a shame. Maybe that would have made this easier. So . . . why are they with you?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Everything always was, with you.’

  He grimaced. He supposed the happier days of their marriage felt as long ago to Michelle as they did to him.

  She looked away to her side, where there was nothing to see but the wall. ‘Can we be frank with each other, Adrien?’

  ‘You have every right to it. We can be however frank you need.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She puffed out her cheeks. ‘You . . . you go first.’

  ‘Go first?’

  ‘Yes. I need a moment. I mean . . . these last months I’ve thought of a million things I’d love to say to you, but this is such a surprise. I need a moment to put things into words. You go first. I’ll go second.’

  ‘Okay. Sure.’ Adrien chewed his lip, and looked inside himself for the right kinds of words. She wasn’t wrong, he’d had plenty of time to rehearse this. Yet he’d never got as far, in any of his rehearsals, as actually having to say anything to her
. In his imagined versions of this moment all of the talking had been done by her, either berating him or eulogising Roland. He had just stood there, nodding along and attacking himself in time with her.

  ‘Michelle . . .’ he began, and willed his tongue to come up with something. ‘This is . . . this is a pleasure.’

  She frowned. ‘It’s a pleasure?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Uhh . . . There’s more.’ He tapped his thumbs together. ‘Look, Michelle, I never thought we’d get to have this conversation.’

  ‘You didn’t think you’d find me here?’

  ‘I assumed that if you were here, it was because you’d decided to stay.’

  Michelle nodded.

  ‘And that . . . you wouldn’t want to hear from me . . .’

  She waited for him to continue. Just as he had remembered her with browner hair and smoother skin, he had remembered her more certain of everything than this.

  ‘But I . . . I do want to say that I’m sorry. I know it went wrong because of me. I was the one who soured everything. I can see that very clearly now.’

  She folded her arms. ‘Do you love me, Adrien? Did you come here because you love me?’

  His throat made a pitiful gurgling noise that seemed to go on for ever, despite his desire to silence it. Had that been why he had come? Did he love her? He had the awful feeling that, if either of those things had been the case, he would have answered her now without hesitation.

  ‘Because I think . . . I think, Adrien, that when we first met you were so overwhelmed that somebody had started to love you that you didn’t ever stop to check whether you felt the same thing in return. You just felt like you had to go ahead and marry me. You didn’t love me, even then, not deep down. You just never had the courage to look deep down. Maybe you still never have.’ Tears began to streak down Michelle’s cheeks. ‘I mean, have you ever, ever, stopped and searched to the heart of yourself, Adrien? Because that’s all I asked you to do. I gave you a year! All I wanted you to do was look one day, just on one single day . . . was stop for a moment and dig through all your awkwardness and self-loathing and look at what you wanted. And then, I suppose, I wanted you to tell me whether or not you really loved me.’ She swallowed a deep breath. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the things I’ve been wanting to say to you.’

  ‘Michelle . . .’ began Adrien, and even saying her name felt like scraping the bottom of his lungs. ‘It wasn’t like that. I did . . . I did love you.’

  ‘You did love me,’ she repeated flatly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did I do, then, to lose it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I must have done something.’

  He shook his head. ‘It was all me. That’s obvious now. All of our problems stemmed from me.’

  She sighed. She pulled two of the chairs away from the table, and placed them side-by-side looking down the length of the hall. ‘Sit,’ she said, taking one of them.

  He did so. He wanted to say that he had not realised that love could wither, that it was a leaf that would shrivel without water and light. No one had ever explained that.

  ‘I thought that love,’ Michelle said, with a sad shake of her head, ‘was supposed to overcome. I wanted our love to be the thing that fixed you.’

  To his shame, Adrien couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘It . . . it . . .’

  ‘You were unfixable, though, weren’t you, Adrien?

  He couldn’t reply.

  ‘It’s as simple as love and hate,’ she said, ‘and you hated yourself too much to have any room left for love. I tried to help you, but it wasn’t enough.’

  There was silence for a minute. Eventually, Adrien said, ‘It was never as easy as that. It sounds easy, looking back on it, but it was never easy at the time.’

  ‘All you had to do was stop hating yourself.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I was . . . lost to it. Maybe I still am.’

  ‘But I sometimes felt like you loved to hate yourself.’

  ‘I . . . maybe I did.’

  ‘Why, though? Why would you choose that over happiness? When Leonard said you’d showed up here, I thought . . . I thought a lot of things. I thought maybe you were going to tell me that the trees had been the catalyst, and you’d worked yourself out, and that you really did love me, and then . . . then maybe things would have to be different right now. But why have you come, Adrien, if it wasn’t for that?’

  ‘I . . . I walked . . . I came all this way . . .’ He trailed off. It would give him too much credit to say he’d always meant to get here, or that he’d have carried on without Hannah’s need to be heading towards something. The most truthful answer was that he had been afraid, and hadn’t wanted to be alone, and that a kirin had led them.

  ‘I don’t want to get back together,’ Michelle said, miserably. ‘Just in case you were going to suggest something like that. You know it’s over between us, I think, and that it was over before the trees came. People talk about love like it’s the be-all and the end-all. I don’t know about that, any more. What good is being in love with a person, if it only binds you to a thousand quiet disappointments, and new problems for every one that you fix? And now, like you say, you’ve travelled all this way to see me, and I’m waiting for you to tell me that you’ve worked out what you really want, and you haven’t actually got anything to say.’

  Adrien winced. ‘I want . . . I want . . . Look, Michelle, I suppose I just thought that, if you were still here, you and Roland would be . . .’

  Michelle looked down at her palms. ‘Yes,’ she said, wearily, ‘of course. I guess we will have to talk about Roland.’

  ‘How long have you two . . . ?’

  She cringed. ‘How long has it been since the trees came?’

  ‘What? I mean . . . you weren’t before?’

  She began, gently, to cry. ‘Jesus, Adrien. Of course not! What do you take me for? I was married, Adrien. Oh, sure, he made his moves, but I was married. I mean, I know technically I still am, but . . . but . . . what you have to understand is . . . I was so frightened. On that night, when the trees arrived. People died horribly here. When the hotel caved in, people were crushed and we couldn’t get them out. Some of them kept screaming for days. But despite everything, that wasn’t what I was frightened about. I was just so terrified that something had happened to you. That the roof had come down on you while you slept. I felt so alone, Adrien. I started looking for something, anything, to cling to of my life before. I mean . . . of before before. I wanted to believe you were alive, and I wanted to believe you’d come looking for me, and that when you found me you’d be . . . you’d be fixed. But, as it turned out, I couldn’t believe that. That was too difficult to believe in. So I looked for something else.’

  ‘And you found Roland.’

  She hung her head.

  ‘Michelle, listen . . . you don’t owe me anything.’

  ‘I do,’ she whispered. ‘I made promises to you. To love and to cherish, have and to hold. I did my best to keep them, Adrien, for as long as I could. But you made it so hard for me.’

  He conceded that with a nod. ‘Does . . . does Roland . . . does he look after you alright?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Of course.’

  ‘Good,’ muttered Adrien, ‘good.’

  Michelle dried her eyes, but he knew her make-the-best-of-it voice when he heard it. ‘He’s always looked after me. And he’s really imposed himself on this place. Some stuff here is already just like it was before the trees came. He’s, you know, preparing us for winter, and doing all the other things that are necessary. People trust him, put faith in him.’

  ‘Good. That’s . . . good.’

  ‘Stop saying that.’ She drummed her fists against her knees. ‘How can you sit there and say that it’s good?’

  ‘Because I want you to be happy.’

  ‘And are you so damned certain I could never be happy with you that you’d walk all th
e way here from England, just to tell me that it’s good that I’m with Roland? Aren’t you even going to fight for what we had?’

  ‘Are you?’ he asked meekly.

  ‘What do you think this is? What do you think I’m doing right now?’

  ‘You said it was over between us. That it had been before the trees came.’

  ‘It is! I just don’t want it to have all been worth nothing.’

  Adrien didn’t know what to say.

  ‘What was it like,’ asked Michelle, almost in a whisper, ‘when the trees hit our house?’

  This, at least, he knew how to tell her. ‘Messy. Our bedroom door got blocked entirely. I had to climb out of the window. You remember how I used to lie in bed so many nights, trying to figure out how many sheets I’d need to tie to make a rope?’

  She nodded. ‘I remember.’

  ‘I’m afraid the garden was ruined. And . . . and Mrs Howell, well, she didn’t make it. And about the only thing that survived was my dad’s old grandfather clock that you couldn’t stand.’

  She gave a short gasp of laughter. ‘I hated that thing.’

  ‘Well it’s still there. Still chiming. Unless it’s been stolen.’

  ‘By a thief with very poor taste,’ she said with half a smile.

  Adrien smiled too. ‘You couldn’t break that thing if you hit it with a sledgehammer.’

  They were both silent for a minute.

  ‘I can hardly believe that you’re sitting here next to me,’ said Michelle. ‘And all of this has happened around us. So much has happened, but I suppose you and I are in the same place we were when we left things.’

  Adrien looked down at the space between his feet. There was a knot in the timber there, a dark oval shape, and he rubbed his shoulder as he looked at it, for upon seeing it an ache had begun to pain him in the bone. He thought of dead branches dropped from the trunks that had borne them, and the year-on-year thickening of bark as it grew over the lumps they’d left behind.

  ‘Things have changed,’ he said. ‘Maybe just not in the way that either of us would have hoped.’