‘Father!’ I giggled. ‘I’m sure you don’t know yourself!’
‘I’ll read to you instead, if you like.’ He ran a skinny finger along my bookshelf. ‘Some Shakespeare. “The Taming of the Shrew”?’ He shot me a merry glance. ‘Just the ticket. And if you don’t fall out of any trees in the next fortnight, I’ll take you to Southampton to see the mail ship.’
‘Does it hurt?’ Susan inspected my head as we sat in the playground of St David’s School a week later. I’d been allowed to attend without my hat in case it restricted circulation to my brain. So there was no hiding the purple bruise which had spread across my forehead and around my eyes like a pagan adornment or the result, Father winked at me, of a barroom brawl. Phyllis Carter said I looked like a clown. Felicity Chalmers said Phyllis was a disgrace to make fun of me and Julie Eastman said her brother had once fallen out of a tree and was never the same again. Several boys laughed at me and shouted: did I think I was a monkey to be climbing like one?
‘At least the doctor didn’t cut off your hair to see the wounds.’ Susan opened her lunchbox and poked through her sandwiches. ‘That would have been much worse.’
‘Sue! I could have died!’
Susan snorted. Her own hair was thin whereas I had enough – and of a distinctive colour – for both of us. And there it was, flowing freely while everyone else had to keep theirs unflatteringly bundled beneath school panamas. ‘Did you see stars? When you fell? Fran?’
‘I didn’t see stars but I felt strange afterwards.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Everything was clearer.’ I hesitated. ‘I could understand things I hadn’t been able to before.’
Susan halted with her jam sandwich halfway to her mouth. ‘What things?’
But there was no time to explain because the bell rang.
‘Good morning young ladies,’ shouted Mr Cadwaller from the front of the art studio. ‘Today we’re going to study perspective. Does anyone know what it means?’
‘It’s when a road far away looks narrower,’ Phyllis Carter said smugly. ‘Or trees look smaller.’
Or, I caught my breath, when your view of the world is transformed by a blow to the head.
‘So, if we want to entice our viewer into believing the distance we’re creating,’ Cadwaller’s moustache twitched, ‘we draw objects smaller. One sheet each!’ He brandished a pile of paper.
I sharpened my pencil and held it above the paper.
The woodpecker in the oak, just before the fall.
My hand began to fly across the page. A slender head with a dominant beak emerged atop a striped breast, feathers ruffling slightly in the breeze, the afternoon sun falling sideways.
‘Frances,’ Mr Cadwaller murmured at my shoulder, ‘that is charming but where is the perspective?’
‘Coming, sir.’
I sketched the looming houses in the background, then roughed out a second, smaller tree with another bird poised on its trunk. The first bird seemed to be looking at the second and would not normally tolerate a rival close by, but if I made it seem too far away to be competition and yet just close enough to be clearly male …
‘My,’ Cadwaller raised his bushy eyebrows, ‘have you been practising while you’ve been at home?’
‘No, sir. I wasn’t allowed to draw. And I smashed my binoculars so now I have to look for myself.’
‘Yet perhaps that is not such a tragedy?’
Does he know?
Can he tell I’m seeing the world more clearly without magnification?
‘Binoculars are valuable, Frances, but they’re only tools. They can be replaced. A critical first glance at your subject cannot. It will never reappear.’
‘But—’ I’d always believed first impressions were flawed, lacking essential detail: the layered hues of a bird’s wing, the intricate tracery of chestnut blooms.
‘Draw what’s in front of you, as you’ve done here.’ He tapped the sketch. ‘Reflect what the eye sees.’
By the end, most girls had created roads disappearing into the distance, lined by ever-diminishing trees.
‘Quick!’ muttered Susan. ‘While Cadwaller’s not looking, draw something for me, Fran!’
When the sketches were collected, my pair of birds was the clear winner, followed by Susan’s surprisingly good triangular kites flown by distant figures on an otherwise deserted pebble beach.
‘Are they us?’ she whispered. ‘Last summer? Before you swam out beyond the breakers?’
Father had shouted for me to come back, but the sea was flat and I could have floated all the way to the Isle of Wight, where there are gardens with plants from Africa that must be familiar to Aunt Mary.
‘Excellent work, class!’ Cadwaller shouted. ‘Look for perspective every day, young ladies!’
When I was allowed back into the garden, the sky hid beneath lowering clouds. No flowers opened their faces, no drumming woodpeckers tempted me from the oak. The only presence was a strange absence, as if the world were waiting for something to happen.
A storm? Another fall?
‘Miss is better?’ Lionel Jacobs croaked, looking up from weeding around the roses. Father said we had a duty. Mr Jacobs had lost a limb in the war. He often touched a hand against his pinned-up trouser where the leg once was. They say soldiers who lose limbs can still feel them, still sense their flesh.
‘I’m fine, sir, thank you.’ I knelt down and began to search for stray bits of Father’s binoculars in case they might stab my bare feet in the summer.
Mr Jacobs sat back on his one good heel and squinted up into the oak.
‘The tree sees everything, miss.’
‘What do you mean?’
Jacobs talked about birds and plants as if they were his friends.
‘The tree sees the grown-ups’ sadness. Miss must be careful.’
I felt a tremor, like when I came back from the hospital and the roofs leant over me. I remember a nightingale singing as I fell asleep. And then later – the same night, the next night? – a dream woke me, gasping, in the darkness.
Mr Jacobs wasn’t talking about my fall.
Perhaps the detachment that comes over Mother’s face has nothing to do with me at all.
Chapter Three
‘One day we’ll take a trip!’ Father waved to no one in particular on the Union-Castle liner tied up to the quay in Southampton harbour. Father loved boats, even stationary ones without passengers. He loved the bustle of the docks, the aproned men swarming up gangplanks bearing boxes of unknown contents, a lighter curving through the water from an anchored barge. ‘It’s good to see such purpose, Fran. Such intent! Remember that, my dear.’
He raised his hat to a group of sailors marching by, their bell-bottom trousers flapping.
In honour of the visit, I was wearing a blue linen dress, white gloves and black patent shoes that pinched. ‘One can’t be too careful, Frances,’ Mother had warned when I asked for easier footwear. ‘The wrong accessories can betray the best of backgrounds.’
Father’s necktie broke free of his waistcoat and flapped up into his face.
‘Hold my hand,’ he said, stuffing it back. ‘We can’t have any more accidents.’
‘Mr Whittington?’
I gazed upwards as a motor car, carefully suspended from the hook of a crane, swung slowly over the deck of the liner. ‘We’ll watch a bit longer,’ Father leant down to me, ‘then we’ll go for tea.’
‘When does she sail for the Cape, Father?’
‘Today and every Thursday. 4 p.m. on the dot.’
‘Mr Whittington?’
We turned. A young man stood before us, smiling nervously, and carrying a battered suitcase.
‘I’m Julian McDonald, sir. You knew my parents.’
Father gasped and took off his hat. ‘Would you believe it?’ He reached out to grasp the young man’s hand. ‘Julian McDonald! The last time I saw you, you were Frances’s age!’
The man offered his hand to me a
s well. He had fair hair and pale eyes and a strange habit of clasping and reclasping the case as if he were worried it would be snatched from him. I turned back to the ship, noting the sweep of her lavender hull, the raked angle of her red-and-black funnels, a row of dots for portholes. Mr Cadwaller was right. If I found a quiet spot and set up a folding chair and put a piece of paper on a clipboard, I could quickly sketch—
‘What brings you to Southampton, Julian? Your parents …’ Father rested a hand on his shoulder, ‘I’m so sorry. Emily and I were shocked.’
‘I’ve become a teacher,’ he said hastily. ‘I was supposed to leave today, but there’s been a delay.’
‘Come.’ Father began to head down the quay. ‘Walk with us. Where are you staying?’
‘Well, the delay was unexpected. I should find a small hotel.’ He looked about uncertainly. I wondered if he was short of money.
‘Nonsense!’ Father clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘You shall stay with us. I won’t hear another word. Do you have any more luggage?’ He glanced down at Julian’s meagre case.
‘That’s awfully kind. I wouldn’t want to be any trouble. I could—’
‘We have a spare room, Mr McDonald,’ I put in, feeling sorry for him. ‘It’ll be no trouble.’
And a visitor would successfully divert Mother, who was still monitoring my every move.
‘Indeed,’ Father beamed. ‘Ah, there’s a Lyon’s tea room. Let’s have a cup before we motor back.’
‘Thank you, sir. That’s very kind.’
‘Frances,’ said Father in due course, over a fat slice of Bakewell tart, ‘I have a gift for you. I want to encourage a hobby that will keep you on terra firma. As does your mother.’ He delved into his coat pocket and produced a package.
I tore open the wrapping to reveal a set of coloured drawing pencils in a decorated tin.
‘Oh, Father! Thank you!’
He winked in Mr McDonald’s direction. ‘Frances fell out of a tree recently, Julian.’
I fingered the tin and glanced out of the window, back at the ship.
‘Have you seen the other item, my dear?’
It was a book bound in leather, but not one that would teach me lessons in life like the Shakespeare Father teasingly employed. The pages were blank, lined in pale blue and edged with delicate gold. This was a book for me to fill with my own words.
‘Why, Father?’
But he didn’t need to answer. Father knew something inside me had changed since the fall. He was giving me a place to record whatever sprang, unbidden, into my head; thoughts that couldn’t be drawn or spoken out loud.
I reached over and kissed him.
‘A diary is a friend, Frances. You can tell it anything you like.’
It turned out that Julian McDonald’s nervousness was because of the Great War.
War and loss, in my youth, was a topic that lurked beneath every grown-up’s conversation.
‘Where is your school, Julian?’ asked Mother over dinner. She was used to Father making acquaintances on docksides or at the railway station. They could become clients, Father would say. Accountants needed a ready supply because old ones died or lost their fortunes and that was of no help. But I doubted Mr McDonald had enough money to make him a worthwhile customer.
‘In Africa, Mrs Whittington. The Hex River valley.’
‘Ah,’ said Mother, whose geography south of the equator was hazy.
‘Near the Cape, Mother. Where Aunt Mary lives. What happened to your parents, Mr McDonald?’
‘Frances!’ Mother paled and put out a hand to stop me.
‘It’s all right.’ Julian McDonald gave a faint smile. ‘My parents died of Spanish Flu at the end of the war.’
‘I’m so sorry. You didn’t catch the Flu, Mr McDonald?’
‘That’s quite enough, Frances!’ Mother shot a despairing glance at Father. ‘Julian, please forgive Frances. She’s had a bang on the head and it’s made her a little … insensitive.’
‘I was recovering from a wound,’ Julian McDonald turned and faced me, ‘when my parents became ill. They passed away before I returned home.’
‘Well,’ said Father sombrely, leaning back in his chair, ‘your parents were fine people. Now,’ he crumpled his napkin, ‘if you will excuse us, ladies, Julian and I will take a brandy and talk about Africa.’
I glanced outside. Tomorrow, provided it was dry, I’d get up early and take my new pencils and draw the rose that was in bloom at the bottom of the garden. Maybe I’d see Mr Jacobs and ask him again why Mother and Father were sad underneath. I sensed his answer might somehow involve me but not in a way I could understand. I wasn’t at the centre of whatever it turned out to be, but rather looking on from the side. Like the dream that kept returning only to disappear before I could catch it; like smoke from a ship’s funnel slipping past my fingers.
‘I don’t know what’s come over you,’ Mother murmured as we cleared the table. ‘Ever since you fell out of that tree you’ve been in a strange mood. Perhaps,’ she looked at me more carefully, ‘perhaps we should get a second opinion. You’re not yourself.’
But I am, Mother, I’m more myself than I ever was before.
I understand more.
And I see more, I see something that I can’t quite make out—
Chapter Four
It’s taken me a while to write my first diary entry.
That’s because I was worried someone would find it and read what I’ve written and be upset.
You can never tell what will upset parents.
So I waited until my twelfth birthday, which is today, and until I found a safe hiding place.
It’s two years since I fell out of the oak and I still see life sharply. Nothing has faded.
Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe I was ready to understand more of the world anyway, and the bang on my head made it happen sooner?
Could be.
I like this new version of me.
Susan says we’re growing up and so everything in our lives will change, from our bodies – Sue is already endowed – to our minds, and that I shouldn’t fuss. And I know I’m loved even if Mother sometimes doesn’t see me at all.
I climb the oak when she’s out, and I go just as high as before.
I want to see as far as Africa.
Father taught me to swim in the sea – he used to be a champion – and he says I’m reckless to go beyond the breakers but he understands why. I like the edge it brings.
I still don’t know what Mr Jacobs meant when he said the tree saw everything and that the grown-ups were sad. I asked him again last week but he shook his head and picked his teeth and repeated that only the Good Lord knew and I should pray. But I only pray when we’re in church and I can’t avoid it. Any spare time I have, I’m busy drawing. It takes away the tremor I sometimes still feel and lets me see what God has made, if it was Him who did so. Although, that’s not what Mr Charles Darwin says.
Father said my diary would be my friend, and that I could tell it anything.
The dream has come back to me regularly and each time I see a little more, although it’s still elusive.
There is a child in the garden. But it’s not me.
I haven’t said anything to Mother or Father yet.
The hiding place is my secret.
If I should fall out of another tree, these pages will never be found.
Chapter Five
Last night I dreamt again. Not of the unknown child in the garden but of young men going to war and never returning.
‘What were they fighting over, in the Boer War?’ I’d once asked Father when we were up the oak.
‘Gold and diamonds, of course! No one cared about the Boer republics with their backcountry Dutch until riches were found beneath their feet! Remember, Frances, money greases the wheels of power.’
‘But wasn’t that unfair, Father?’ I nudged him, but not too hard that he might fall. ‘To fight a war only because you wanted to take so
meone else’s riches? Isn’t that a sort of burglary?’
‘Indeed, but the world is ruled by the Great Powers, child. That’s what mostly keeps the peace. Young upstart nations can’t be allowed to get above themselves – especially as a result of lucky geology.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said to our history teacher a year after Julian McDonald’s visit, ‘why all those boys needed to die in the trenches? What did the Allies win?’
The Great War wasn’t about gold or diamonds or upstart nations.
My classmates exchanged glances. Perhaps, I could hear them thinking, Frances did indeed lose her mind in that fall. But she’d always asked odd questions, even before she fell out of the tree.
‘The corridors of power, Frances Whittington, are not open for judgement by ourselves!’ Mrs Beatrice Andrews retorted. We called her ‘Beagle’ on account of her oversized ears and ability to discern covert snacking beneath a raised desktop. ‘Our leaders explore every avenue to avoid war until such a path becomes unavoidable. Now,’ she gave me a quelling look, ‘the Great War is not our focus until next year; let us turn our attention back to the voyages of discovery. Columbus and the New World. The sea route around Africa.’
I stared out of the window and pictured the Dutch in their wooden sailing ships, anchoring beneath the gaze of a flat-topped mountain and wondering what lay on the alien shore, just as Columbus and his men must have thought on arriving in the Americas. Might they be hit by poisonous arrows from local tribes? Would they die from eating strange fruits?
There were consequences of my question to the Beagle.
‘Your teachers say you’re very outspoken, Frances,’ Mother observed, coming into the dining room after a parent–teacher meeting and unpinning her hat.
‘Quite right, too,’ put in Father, following her to the table where I was doing my homework. ‘We’ve taught Fran to engage. Not to be afraid to ask questions. It’s part of her education.’
The Fire Portrait Page 2
