Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  Of the tasks he has allocated her, gardening is the one she dislikes the most. She’s responsible for mowing the lawn and weed-killing. Both are destructive, which pleases her, although she’d rather not go into the garden at all. The rest of the gardening is left to Mother, who spends hours on one tiny job and then does nothing for weeks. Graham regularly inspects the level of perfection of the flower beds but doesn’t appear to take any pleasure from them. Mary has never seen him smile spontaneously. He probably only does that at his golf club.

  She unlocks the shed and wheels out the electric lawn-mower. The lawn is on the original house’s side. It’s a long, thin strip, divided into two by a wobbly stone path that grates on the lawnmower blade as she pushes it along. At the far end of the lawn are some withered pear trees. Their roots make knobbles in the lawn, exposing themselves to the sharp lawnmower blade.

  She navigates the first length of the lawn. It’s hot under the late April sun and she stops to take off her jumper. There’s movement next door. The Flints must be out in their garden. She peers over the fence to see if Mark the phobia weirdo is there. Only his parents are in sight. Mark must still be at boarding school. She imagines him sitting indoors, wearing a tin World War II helmet and preparing for his A levels.

  She nods at Mrs Flint and continues mowing. It’s a shame Mark isn’t there because she’s sure Trish would like him. Trish could do with a boyfriend to take her mind off her relationship with her mum. He’s supposedly intelligent, which is one of Trish’s boyfriend criteria. She’ll introduce them when Mark comes home for the holidays.

  Trish confronted her mum last Wednesday and was told the truth. Mrs Bellamy had been right: Trish refused to accept that her mum had a long-term lover. She’s staying with Mary while she digests the lie she feels her whole life has been. Mary empathises. She tried to share the truth of before with her, but it proved impossible to distil her emotions into words.

  Graham appears on the patio, on cue, the moment she turns to cut the last strip – the difficult one next to the flower bed, where she has to be careful not to let the mower slide off the lawn and cut up the plants. His presence unnerves her. She has to yank the mower back into line several times before she finishes. The damage isn’t too bad: only a few leaves hashed and a couple of flower heads flattened.

  Putting off the moment she’ll have to walk past him and hear his complaint, she bends down and examines a mangled French marigold leaf. Why is it French? In a translation she did a few weeks ago she learnt that the French call it ‘Indian’: l’oeillet d’Inde. She takes a dark green leaf and rubs it between her thumb and forefinger.

  The contact with the bleeding leaf is repulsive. She drops it, wipes her fingers on her jeans and shivers. It reminds her of the accident and the shock of waking up afterwards. Until last week, she had always been overcome by hate for her mother when her memory arrived there, and she would flounder in its force. But now the hate has receded. In its place, she sees an image of Michael. Please, not Michael. She counts thirteen marigold flowers before the image fades.

  “You could have cut the grass shorter,” says Graham. He kicks lumps of damp cuttings to spread them out. “And used the bag attachment to pick up the bits.”

  “If I’d cut it shorter, I’d have damaged the pear-tree roots,” she retorts.

  Graham takes the mower from her. He wheels it backwards and then passes three times over a corner Mary hadn’t bothered with. She turns to walk towards the back door.

  “Wait a minute, young lady. I’ve got words to have with you.”

  Why can’t he speak normally? Mary stops and pulls a neutral expression over her sullenness. Graham will enjoy his power more if she lets her resentment show.

  “Where’s your friend?” he asks.

  “Out.”

  “I don’t understand why she’s still living with us. Didn’t I make myself clear last Tuesday?”

  “She’s going through a difficult patch with her parents. They know she’s here.”

  “I think I’ll ring them and check.”

  The strain from cheering up Trish and resisting the memories of before overcomes her.

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  She can no longer keep everything inside. It all needs to come out, even though she knows he won’t cower before her and that her provocation will only result in her losing. She wills him to retaliate. He almost smiles as he takes up her challenge.

  “Are you lying?”

  “Ring the Bellamys and you’ll find out.”

  “I’ll do that. Meanwhile, you can tell her to pack her bags. The best thing for a teenager going through a difficult patch is to be grounded.”

  “She needs some space at the moment. In fact,” Mary takes a step closer, “her mum asked me to look after her. She understands, unlike you.”

  “In that case, Mrs Bellamy should have come to me. Not to you.”

  “What for? To hear you lecture her on how to deal with Trish?”

  “I only lecture disobedient children.”

  “Well, lecture away. I’m not listening.”

  She puts her hands over her ears and hums loudly and tunelessly. Graham shakes his head and turns to push the mower back to the shed. She can’t believe he has given up already. What sort of fighter is he? She takes her hands away from her ears. Some reptilian instinct makes him glance back right at that moment.

  “It’s a shame you insist on being disobedient, Mary.”

  “It’s a shame you’re such a control freak.”

  His back stiffens. He swivels slowly around to face her. “If that girl is still here tonight, you can forget your trip to France.”

  Mary doesn’t reply. She strides into the house and kicks off her trainers. His smug smile burns into her back. In her sitting room, she marches to her bookshelf, picks up a book and throws it across the room. Damn him! Another book. Damn his money! A third. Damn his power over her! Damn the day her mother met him! Damn them both! Within seconds, the shelf is empty.

  Trish refuses to go out that evening. She mopes in front of the television while Mary fingers through the promises of the local Gazette’s jobs pages. She can’t let Trish down now by sending her home, even if it means Graham won’t pay for university. And she’d promised Mrs Bellamy she’d look after her.

  Trish has stopped looking after herself. She no longer uses make-up and has been wearing the same clothes for days. And in the middle of some absorbing activity, like a comedy show on television, she’ll spurt out an unrelated question: “What’ll Jimmy do if he finds out?” or “Poor Pop. How can he look at her?”

  Every morning, she drives to school and is back at the flat by the time Mary arrives home. She told Mary that Helen has betrayed her. They no longer speak to each other and she has no other friends at school. She seems to have stopped working for her A levels too.

  Mary has no choice. She’s the only person Trish believes in at the moment. Trish must stay, which means she has to find a summer job in order to get to France. She needs to earn enough to buy a ticket to Paris, pay the university fees and finance a couple of months’ rent. Once she’s there, she’ll find work so she can support herself for the rest of the year. She continues to flick through the Gazette pages. Perhaps talking about the future will jog Trish out of her stupor.

  “Any ideas for summer jobs, Trish?”

  Trish stares at the television and doesn’t reply. She could have been immersed in a programme, except that it’s just a boring car advert.

  “Trish!”

  “Uh, what?”

  Trish turns around, her eyes dull, and Mary repeats her question. Trish shakes her head and picks up an old Cosmopolitan she brought from home. After a few minutes, Mary suggests a trip to the cinema.

  “What’s the point?”

  Trish needs time to assimilate the truth, but she also needs to understand that it’s her mum’s problem, not hers. At least Trish’s mum has acknowledged the truth, unlike her own.

  “
It’ll do you good to think about something else.”

  “I can’t believe Pop says nothing. How can he carry on like that, knowing she’s screwing that other bloke?”

  “It’s their decision, Trish. Your mum loves you all, but she loves Philip too.”

  Trish lowers the magazine and stares at Mary.

  “What did you say? Who?”

  “Your mum said his name the other day.”

  This sounds even worse, as if she and Trish’s mum have been chatting casually about her adultery. She rushes on to explain.

  “It was at college, when she was asking if I knew where you were.”

  Her cheeks redden under Trish’s scrutiny. Trish’s eyes narrow.

  “So you’ve been talking to her behind my back?”

  “No!”

  “Yes, you have. And she’s even told you his name. I don’t believe it!”

  “We just–”

  “You’re on her side, aren’t you? I thought you were looking out for me, but all the time you’ve been her little spy. When did she tell you his name? While you were having a cosy drink with them both at the pub?”

  “Trish! It’s not like that at all.”

  “Then what is it like? And don’t you dare lie.”

  Mary hesitates. “All right. If you really want to know the truth, I saw her with him a couple of years ago, when I was with Gus.”

  “What?” Trish lurches to her feet and draws herself to her full height. “You’ve known about it for two years?”

  Mary jumps up and tries to lay a hand on her arm.

  “Look–”

  Trish shrugs it off.

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “What could I have said?”

  “If you’d been any kind of friend, you’d have told me.”

  Trish turns her back on Mary and snatches up her coat. Mary grabs the sleeve.

  “Trish, please–”

  “I can’t believe you’ve known her secret all this time. You’ve been plotting together. Now I understand all those private whisperings between you two when you were with Gus.”

  She yanks her coat away and strides to the front door.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? Mum was worried you’d tell. That’s why she was always sucking up to you. And why you’re always defending her. You don’t give a toss about me.”

  “No–” Mary tries to prevent her opening the door. “Let me explain.”

  “Let go! You’re no friend of mine.”

  “Trish–”

  Trish seizes her handbag and wrenches open the door. She slams it behind her, in Mary’s face.

  Mary opens it and rushes after her.

  Trish throws herself into her Fiesta and starts up the engine. Mary tugs the car door handle, but Trish has locked it. The engine revs. Mary’s nails drag down the wing of the car as Trish screeches out into the road without looking behind her.

  Mary screams out her name. But there’s no reply. Trish has gone.

  Part VI

  Blooms

  Rainbow and Mary, Summer 1995

  Chapter 34

  Mary

  Mary studies herself in her bathroom mirror, looking for signs of her entry into adulthood. It’s the eighth of June, her eighteenth birthday, and her A-level exams are over.

  There’s nothing new. Her short black hair glosses around the same pixie-thin face. She has no wrinkles, no baggy skin and no wisdom in her eyes. There isn’t even an interesting scar to show for her childhood. She looks completely ordinary: a skinny, flat-chested adult-girl. The temporary piercings and the half-shaved head from her rebellious period have left no history on her features.

  Her college friends say she’s ‘pretty’, whatever that may mean and hide. She looks it up in the dictionary and reads, ‘having superficial attractiveness but not striking beauty’. Superficial and not striking – that figures. Gus would probably have described her like this. She looks up ‘superficial’. ‘No deeper than the surface,’ says her dictionary. She snaps it shut. She can’t allow herself to be anything but superficial. Going any deeper under her surface would mean unearthing what she was before. Despite the soul-searching and discoveries of the last two years, she still doesn’t really know who she is. If she continues to feel blocked like this, she may have to come to terms with what she was before. But not yet. Not until she’s forced to.

  It’s been six weeks since Trish disappeared. Mary thinks constantly about her. Mrs Bellamy called in the police that awful night. They found her car by the train station, but there were no more traces. Mrs Bellamy says they haven’t been particularly helpful in their investigations because she’s eighteen. The hospitals haven’t seen her and she’s sent no word to anyone to say where she is.

  The Bellamys have hired a private detective, a bland man who isn’t the slightest bit like Hercule Poirot. Mary has stopped dropping in to see Mrs Bellamy and relies on the telephone to ask for news. She can’t bear to see her. After blossoming for two years, Mrs Bellamy has now faded into an old lady. Her sole aim is to find Trish. Her relationship with Philip is over because, as she told Mary, she felt paralysing guilt each time she saw him.

  Once Mother and Graham have left the house, Mary comes downstairs and eats her breakfast in the kitchen. She picks up the Gazette and turns to the jobs page. Graham has said she must get a summer job now the exams are over, as it’s good for young people to work. Her place at university in Paris has been confirmed and he has agreed to fund her year there, perhaps because he feels guilty about Trish. But he insists she contribute to her living costs.

  What she’d really like to do is to spend the summer in France. But Graham will never let her have a three-month holiday until term starts. Too much free time is bad for young people and encourages them to be lazy and live off society. She closes the paper and wonders if she has enough money in her bank account to buy a ticket to Paris and find a summer job there. The prospect of arriving in Paris with no plan is daunting. Perhaps Katia Murville could put her up until she finds work.

  She telephones the familiar Parisian number. Katia answers and wishes her a joyeux anniversaire.

  “I was going to call you today, Marie.”

  Mary smiles at the pronunciation of her name. She kicks her French into gear and catches up with Katia’s news, and then tells her about her place at university. Katia is delighted. She invites Mary to spend the summer with her in France, saying her mum can get Mary a job in her tourist office doing guided tours in English. There’s no reason for Graham to refuse her this opportunity. They work out the details of times and flights for the following week. Mary is happier than she’s ever felt on any birthday.

  A week later, she arrives home from her shopping trip to find a slip of paper on her front door mat. She bends down, picks it up and reads it. Her hand shakes. She forgets all about her new possessions for Paris. She drops her bags and dashes into the other half of the house.

  “Mother!”

  “Your mother’s out,” says Graham. “Do you have to shout like that?”

  He doesn’t even look up from the encyclopaedia balanced on his crossed legs. She waves the note under his nose.

  “It’s Trish! She’s back. I must go and see her at once.”

  He slowly closes the book, adjusts his glasses and frowns at the scruffy writing.

  “I see she’s come to her senses at last,” he says. “I hope her parents punish her properly for everything she’s put them through.”

  Mary snatches back the note. “I have to see her before I go.”

  “Make sure you’re back early, then. You must get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s trip.”

  She hates the way he forces her to ask for a favour. He knows her bike is broken. If there were any other solution, she’d take it. But it would take ages to walk to Trish’s house.

  “Could you drop me off, please?”

  He glances at his watch. She bites her lip.

  “Please! I’m sure Mrs Bellamy will br
ing me back.”

  “I must get dinner ready first. She’s been away for nearly two months. I’m sure she can wait another two hours.”

  The girl who opens the front door of the Bellamys’ house doesn’t look like Trish until she smiles. She’s wearing glasses again and, instead of the stylish blouse and skirt sets, she’s dressed in a long, draping wrap-over skirt of muddy brown and a pastel-green cheesecloth top with winged sleeves. Her ginger hair is loose around her shoulders. She looks serene.

  “Trish?”

  Trish whoops and pulls Mary into a hug, swinging her around and off her feet. Mrs Bellamy appears in the doorway.

  “Hello, Mary. Isn’t this great?” She winds an arm – now much bonier than it used to be – around Trish’s waist and hugs her to herself. “Doesn’t she look wonderful?”

  Trish squeezes her in return. There’s a silence as mother and daughter look at each other. Mary feels tears in her eyes. Mrs Bellamy releases Trish reluctantly.

  “I expect you two would like to talk.”

  Mary links her arm through Trish’s.

  “You bet.”

  In an unspoken consensus they head off to the circuit they used to walk around when they were kids. Mary can’t stop looking at her friend.

  “You look so zen. What have you been doing all this time?”

  Trish smiles. “I guess I’ve come to terms with life’s ups and downs. Now I’m back with a vengeance.”

  She tells Mary about being homeless in London and how meeting up with some people from an ecology group saved her life.

  “They’re wonderful guys. Really sorted.”

  “It’s rubbed off on you. What did you do with the greenies, then?”

  “We lived in trees. The council wanted to uproot a forest and we managed to prevent them by refusing to come down. Can you imagine me living in a tree? I’ve got to introduce you to them. Mary? Are you all right?”

  A hot flush creeps up Mary’s back and steals her senses away. The thought of being in such close contact with a tree makes her feel sick. She sees a vision of Amrita trying to save a tree, sitting on a branch, her arms wound around its trunk. She pictures the Maharajah’s men, axes brandished, threatening her, attacking. She imagines the slicing of sharpened blades, a rush of sap and spurting blood, Amrita collapsing into a sticky, sappy, bloody pool, the tree folding on top of her. She remembers the beech tree. The accident. Before.