Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  When they arrive in front of Mary’s home, Ada puts her hand on Mary’s knee.

  “Do try to talk to your mother.”

  Mary says goodbye and slithers out of the car without responding. She counts fourteen steps to her front door.

  Chapter 28

  Mary

  After the cinema on Friday evening, Mary and Trish drop into the King’s Head for a drink. The pub is crowded and they weave in single file around the groups of students. Many of them nod or wave at Mary as she passes, and she exchanges a few words with several of them. She stops when she sees Jed, and introduces Trish to him.

  Jed is her closest friend at college. Their relationship is based on lighthearted banter and irony, with which they cover their secrets. Sometimes she’s tempted to talk seriously to him, but she never finds a way to start. She can taste fear too. She’s afraid he’ll become important to her and that he’ll find her empty compared to his expectations. It’s better this way.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Trish asks as they sit down.

  “No.” She scrutinises Trish over her glass. “Do you fancy him?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s you, actually.”

  Mary chokes and spits shandy over the carpet. “Me?”

  Trish laughs. “I don’t mean I fancy you!”

  “Good. What do you mean, then?”

  “I’ve never seen you so sociable. It’s weird. You’re like a bird: you hop to one friend, chirp merrily and make them laugh, and then hop to another. You’ve changed. You always used to be so angry with everything.”

  “Maybe I seem different because I know what I want now.”

  “Do you? What?”

  “I want to live in France, in Paris.”

  “Because of that holiday with whatshername?”

  “Katia. Yes. For the first time I felt I’d found my destiny.”

  In fact, it was the second time, but the first was before, so it doesn’t count. She steers her mind to the Eiffel Tower and its interminable triangles. There’s a companionable silence. They sip their drinks.

  “Do you ever feel something is missing from your life?” asks Mary.

  Trish swills her Coke around her glass.

  “Missing?”

  “Forget it. What about you? Are you happy?”

  “You’re kidding. How can I be happy when I’m stuck at school? I can’t wait to get to university and start real life. Everything is so boring here: home is mundane, Mum and Dad are stuck in their ruts, Jimmy is a pain and nothing ever happens in the village. Helen is tedious. She boasts she’s already done everything there is to do. She brags that her mum is pretty and young, though she cheated on Helen’s dad and got married to another bloke. She’s a real tart.”

  Mary twists her empty glass in her hand. “Shall we go home?”

  Trish looks surprised. Then she checks her watch and agrees.

  Christmas morning arrives and Mary does her best to ignore it. She sprawls under her quilt and thinks about Trish. She can understand her anxiety to move on: Trish always focuses on what she wants and advances in a straight line, impatient to reach her target. Mary moves transversally. She slips from one channel to another as if by accident, always moving outwards and never going back. Her thoughts about Trish spill into thinking about Ada’s words in the car.

  Mother and Graham are already up. They never lie in, even at Christmas. Before Graham moved in with them, Mother would stay in bed on weekend mornings. She’d leave notes on the breakfast table for Mary: Out with G. tonight, or Where’s dishwasher salt? The dishwasher had been Graham’s first gift to Mother, which said a lot about their relationship. Mary would throw away the notes, or find the item and bang it on top of the paper. Sometimes, if she felt particularly annoyed, she would scrawl an unhelpful answer underneath: Out too, or Salt is in cupboard.

  Graham bought the neighbour’s house within weeks of meeting Mary. In a whirl of efficiency, he employed workmen to join the two half-houses and transform them into a big new house. He and Mother live mostly in the new part of the house. They drift around their old-fashioned sitting room and kitchen–dining room. Mother stopped swiping boxes and jars across the red eye of the cash-till laser last summer, and now looks after their home. She calls herself a writer. Mary sees no evidence of any writing actually being done in Mother’s old bedroom, which they converted into an office.

  Mary likes the extra space because it’s easy to hide from Mother and Graham. She has her own little sitting room and bathroom, as well as her old bedroom. She thinks of it as her flat. There isn’t a kitchen, but she has a personal front door. Better still, Mother now fusses over Graham rather than her.

  She can hear the depressing sound of cheerful Christmas music. She turns over in bed and counts the muffled creaks of footsteps on polished floorboards, willing the numbers to lull her back into a doze. But the creaks are too slow. She keeps coming back to Ada’s hints about her father.

  Perhaps it’s time to give Mother another chance. Will she tell the truth now Mary is older, or will she stick to her old lies? Mary sighs. The pain is behind her. It no longer matters. She doesn’t want to sink back to where she was three years ago. She’s dealt with it. There are rarely any dreams nowadays. She no longer picks fights with Mother in revenge for her lies. It isn’t worth the bother. Your actions make you the person you are, not your past. Thanks Gus.

  There’s a knock at her door. Mother tells her lunch will soon be ready. Mary mumbles that she’s coming and glances at the clock. She’s managed to use up the morning. Now there’s the afternoon and evening to get through.

  “Happy Christmas, love,” says Mother, when Mary walks into their sitting room. She takes advantage of Mary’s sleepy movements to hug her.

  “Mother,” groans Mary. “Morning, Graham.”

  Graham is sitting in his armchair in front of the open fire, a glass of sherry in his hands and a book on his lap. He closes his book, puts down his glass and stands up.

  “Happy Christmas,” he says.

  Mother stands by Graham’s side. Mary stares dully at them. Late mornings always make her heavy-headed. She feels like a spectator of a play where only the actors – Mother and Graham – know what’s going to happen.

  “I’m off to the kitchen for some tea,” she says.

  “Just a minute, love. We’ve got something to tell you.”

  Mother is dolled up for the day in a sweeping black blouse over burgundy corduroy trousers. Her dark hair has been trimmed into a matronly bob and she looks respectable. Her bohemian side only seeps out through her daring lines of kohl eyeliner.

  Next to Mother, slightly smaller, stands the Reptile. He is beige and cream with a stoop that tilts him to the left. Mary has never discussed anything with him. He is proud of his patience, and she can tell he’s waiting for her to open up to him. She doesn’t want to get close because she suspects she despises him. She can’t afford to scare him away from Mother.

  “Go on then. Tell me.”

  They exchange smiles. “We’ve decided to get married.”

  Third time lucky, Mary thinks. “Congratulations,” she says. “Can I get my tea now?”

  “You could show a bit more enthusiasm. Graham’s been good to us.”

  Mary’s chin raises in defiance. She didn’t ask for his charity. “Am I supposed to sing and dance?”

  Graham clears his throat.

  “Please don’t be sarcastic,” says Mother.

  “You’re getting married. That’s cool. But it’s not as if I’m a kid. You haven’t got to pass him off as my new father.”

  Why the hell did she say that? Mother’s cheeks start to crumple at the edges. Mary is reminded of her reaction after the accident, when Mary had announced her new name. She’s unable to drag her eyes away from Mother’s face. She counts four wrinkles under the right eye, five under the left. Ada’s words are hot in her head.

  “Though I suppose that’s what he’ll be,” Mary hears herself add.

&nb
sp; Mother’s eyes plead for silence.

  “A new father,” Mary continues, “because my real father died when I was a baby, didn’t he?”

  “Do we have to bring that up again?”

  Mother’s voice is weak. Graham clears his throat again.

  “Mary, you know I’ll never try to replace your biological father. This is about your mother and me. Not about you. As you say, you’re not a kid. You’ll be heading off to university in less than two years. You’ll always be welcome here – this is your home – but I don’t expect you to treat me like a father.”

  “I see. It’s not about me. The question about what happened to my father is nothing to do with me.”

  “We’re talking about our marriage, not about your father,” says Graham. His voice is annoyingly dry and calm.

  “Well, I’m talking about my father, which is between my mother and myself. Not you.”

  Graham folds his arms. Mother leans against him.

  “We talked about this when you were little,” she says.

  “Exactly. I was little. I’m sixteen now. Maybe you’d like to add more.”

  Graham’s tortoise head swivels towards Mother. So she hasn’t told him either. Mother’s face pales.

  “What more can I add? He left us and then died.” She grasps Graham’s arm.

  Inside her head, Mary screams at her mother. Lies! Liar! She clamps her mouth shut and presses her hands to her temples. The words are trapped. They crash around and dent her brain, unable to escape into the open air. She strides out of the room and slams the door behind her.

  In her sitting room, she sweeps the books off her bookshelves. She wrenches open the window and hurls seven cushions outside. She kicks her CD tower and watches it crash to the floor. The room resonates with the rage of her crying.

  At last she collapses into her chair. She bangs her head onto her desk and counts the blurred grains of its yellow wood. At seventy-four, her mind starts to empty. The tiny kernel at the very centre of her being shivers in the cold air. She was wrong to think she was over it. It still hurts. Enormously.

  Chapter 29

  Mary

  January is bitter cold. Every day, Mary swallows mouthfuls of chilled air and lets them freeze inside. They numb her perfectly. She feels nothing but the stillness of her frozen routine: to college; back from college; out with friends; home to bed.

  Mother is wrapped up in Graham and the wedding. Mary wonders if her relief at not having to endure Mother on her own anymore has turned into loneliness. She phones Trish and they spend hours moaning about the masses of homework they’re expected to magic out of their minds. The differences between school and college now seem few. Mary invites Trish for coffee in her sitting room with her college friends without worrying that she’ll feel left out.

  Now she sees more of Trish, Mary feels awkward with Ada. The renewal of their relationship seems to have been a stepping stone to finding Trish again. She goes back to thinking of her as Mrs Bellamy.

  Mary’s tutor has arranged an appointment for her with the careers office. Mary sits on the hard chair opposite Mrs Bellamy’s desk and they talk about university choices and career possibilities with a Modern Languages degree. Mary has already confided in Mrs Bellamy and told her she’d like to work in Paris. The question is which career to aim for. Translators or teachers are all very well if she works in England. But to work in France, she must choose a career that will be suitable over there.

  “The French are very hot on qualifications,” says Mrs Bellamy. “Before you choose a course, you could take a gap year and work there. Then, if you discover you don’t like the French way of life after all, you can do a different degree course.”

  It’s an ideal opportunity to escape from the lies in the love nest at home.

  “Great. How can I find a job from here in England? Are there listings or something?”

  “Don’t you want to think about it first and discuss it with your mother?”

  “No.”

  Mrs Bellamy lifts a hand to arrange her stray hairs behind her ears, remembers her hair is short and lets it drop back into her lap. “I’ll look into it for you. I think schools take language assistants. Alternatively, you could go to a French university for a year and study French on a foreign students’ course.”

  This second idea sounds even better. She’s never worked before – she always resisted the popular trend of Saturday jobs. When Graham arrived and showered Mother with money, he opened a bank account for Mary and pays a meagre allowance into it. She spends as little as possible. She doesn’t want to be any deeper in his debt than necessary.

  “I’ll find out about both,” says Mrs Bellamy. “But you must talk to your mother about it. You’ll need her help to fund a gap year.”

  “Mother’s only interested in her wedding.”

  “Oh? She’s marrying Graham?”

  Mary nods.

  “Isn’t that good news?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Hmm. Have you had a fight with them?”

  Mary nods again.

  “Oh, Mary. Was it about the wedding?”

  Mrs Bellamy’s manner is cautious. Mary can feel her tiptoeing towards what she really wants to know.

  “No. It was about my father.”

  “Did you ask–?”

  “She says there’s nothing more to add.”

  Mrs Bellamy jumps up and bangs her hand on the table. “She promised, dammit!”

  Mary leans forward.

  “What did she promise?”

  Mrs Bellamy folds her arms and then unfolds them again. She grips the edge of the desk.

  “I’m going to tell you, since your mother hasn’t. I’ve been trying to persuade her to tell you for years, but she’s been too scared of your reaction. She knows she should. She even promised me she would.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” mutters Mary.

  Mrs Bellamy takes a deep breath. Mary’s mind detaches from her body and drifts a little above it. So the cliché is true: people really do take a deep breath before saying something difficult.

  “Your father … well, he didn’t die when you were a baby. He and your mother split up just after your birth, but he didn’t die.”

  Mary wills her on.

  “I never knew him,” Mrs Bellamy continues, “but I met your mother just after he left. She was alone with you and didn’t have a clue about how to look after a baby, so I’d go up Wymer Hill every day and help her out. She was so angry with him that she swore she’d tell you he was dead. She wouldn’t even say his name. I tried to persuade her it was important for you to know the truth, but she wouldn’t listen. I’m afraid she only ever thought about herself. She didn’t want you to find him when you were older and let him have the pleasure of enjoying a relationship with you. She resented him skipping the hard bit at the beginning. She wished he was dead, and in her mind I think she imagined him dead. She had awful post-natal depression – that wasn’t your fault, of course. Anyway, we had a row about it. She refused to speak to me until last year, when you were seeing Gus. That’s when she promised me she’d tell you the truth.”

  Thirty-six, thirty-seven. Mary notices a persistent pain in her leg and realises she’s pinching it. She forces her hands into her lap and carefully interlinks her fingers. “Did she tell you why they split up?”

  Mrs Bellamy looks puzzled. She sits back down. “No. Listen: what I’m trying to tell you is that your father is still alive. He’s out there somewhere.”

  She looks expectantly at Mary. She’s waiting for an excitement that Mary can’t summon.

  “I’m not interested.”

  Mrs Bellamy strokes Mary’s arm. “You poor thing. It must be a shock to learn you have a father after so long. You need time to digest the news.”

  There’s a knock on the door. Mrs Bellamy calls to the person to wait for a few minutes.

  “Think about what I’ve told you. If you want me to help you trace him, let me know. I’m here for you,
even if it’s just to talk.”

  “I don’t want to delve into the past.” Mary closes her notebook and slides it into her bag.

  “But–”

  “Look: thanks for telling me the truth. I appreciate it. Honestly. But I can’t look backwards. It’s not important anymore.” She stands up. “So you’ll find out about the France business for me?”

  “France?” Mrs Bellamy looks lost. “Oh, yes, of course.”

  Mary opens the door. Mrs Bellamy hurries around the desk.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She nods. She would like to be honest with Mrs Bellamy, but being honest would mean reliving the past. She can’t risk that.

  She leaves the building. As the door closes behind her, Jed calls to her to come and play pool. She ignores him and counts the seventy-six steps to the library. How many more lies are left to discover?

  Chapter 30

  Rainbow

  When Rainbow scored fifteen out of twenty in the first history test of her second year at lycée, Sylvia was amazed. They left the classroom block together and Sylvia demanded to know who in the commune specialised in miracles. Rainbow laughed.

  “Nobody yet, unfortunately. I’ve decided I need my bac.”

  “What for? Is your mum nagging?”

  “No, she couldn’t care less. And for Domi, a bac is a boat.”

  Rainbow felt great. She never imagined she’d get such a buzz from succeeding in anything so unnatural as a written test. It had been much easier than she’d thought. Schoolwork was simply a case of learning textbook words and then regurgitating them. It was nothing to do with finding answers.

  “Why, then?” asked Sylvia. “We’ve still got this year and next before the bac finals.”

  “I’ll show you in the library. Madame Cartier is helping me research careers.”

  “Careers? Libraries? What about your trees?”