The Monkey Puzzle Tree (11 page)

After sending Fiona back to bed, Gillian stared into the darkness, thinking about what she had just said. Truly it was strange that Lowood seemed so real to her; more real than Deer Park. And how was it, she wondered, that she understood so well what people in books were feeling? She knew as if they were her own, Jane’s loneliness and anger, Pip’s shame and sense of inferiority in
Great Expectations
, the longing of the Forsaken Merman for his mortal wife in the poem they had read that day in English class, and the yearning, too, of the merman’s wife after she had returned home, for the little mermaiden she had left behind. She had never been in any of their situations, and yet she knew their inmost feelings. Why was that?

The next morning, when they were up and dressed, and the other girls had gone chattering off, Gillian saw that Fiona’s thin face, behind its curtain of stringy dark hair, was the colour of green olives, with purple shadows under her eyes. Her tie was crooked and her tunic on back-to-front. She drooped on her bed, sniffing and fiddling with her sash. To keep her out of trouble, Gillian persuaded her to come down to breakfast even though she knew she wouldn’t eat anything. She never did.

Later that morning, Miss Lamb, the English teacher, elegant in a chignon and a long black cloak, read aloud from a poem called “Pippa Passes.”

God’s in his heaven.

All’s right with the world!

she concluded with an airy wave of her hand, followed by a thud from the back of the class as Fiona fell off her chair in a dead faint.

At bedtime Gillian went to the sick bay.

“Ah, Gillian, the reading girl,” Matron looked up from her logbook. “I want to talk to you, dear. That poor little thing from your dormitory is breaking her heart. She’s not sleeping, and she won’t eat a thing. She’s just pining away for her mother.”

“Yes I know. Can I have my book back, please, Matron?”

Matron looked at her for a long moment over her glasses, sighed, and shook her head. “You may. I’m keeping the torch, though.” She handed the book to Gillian who stuffed it down the front of her box-pleated tunic, tying the sash tightly.

A few nights later, just before lights out, Gillian looked up in a daze from
Jane Eyre
, her eyes resting on Fiona’s empty bed. She wondered for a moment what was happening to her tearful little roommate, until the mystery of the demonic laugh through the keyhole of Jane’s bedroom door reclaimed her attention and she sank back into her book for the last precious minutes of reading time.

The next day she was summoned after classes to the sick bay. Matron was all starched up as usual in her white uniform, but she did not have her cheerful “How-are-we-today?” face on.

“Poor Fiona isn’t doing well at all,” she said. “She’s just breaking her heart. She still won’t eat or sleep, and I’m very worried about her.” She looked at Gillian with her head on one side, her soft dark eyes reminding Gillian of Mrs. Rosenberg. “Now then, Gillian, Fiona says the closest she has to a friend here is you, poor little thing, so I want you to go in and talk to her, and see if you can cheer her up a bit.”

Stung by that “poor little thing”, and resolving to try harder for Matron’s good opinion, Gillian nodded.

Fiona was lying back in a chintz armchair by the electric fire in Matron’s cozy sitting room, her eyes sunk in dark hollows and her cheekbones jutting out. She looked worse than ever.

“Hello, Fiona.” Gillian put on a fake, cheery smile. “When are you coming back to the dorm?” Making a big effort before Matron left the two of them together, she added, “I miss you.”

“Do you?” Fiona looked at her with lacklustre eyes that straightaway overflowed. “I don’t know why you would. Why would anyone miss
me
?”

Good question, Gillian thought, at least as far as school was concerned, but she found what seemed to be a good answer: “Well, your mother cares about you, doesn’t she?” From the way Fiona had carried on, it appeared the two of them must have been close in a way that Gillian could hardly imagine.

Tears gathered, trembled, and flowed again down the sunken, yellow cheeks. “She used to, but she doesn’t any more. She could’ve stayed with me, or she could’ve taken me back home with her, and we’d have managed somehow, but she said she’d got to go back by herself,” she began to sob loudly, “to get more money.”

“But perhaps she went to get more money for your sake?”

Fiona leaned forward urgently, pushing rat-tails of hair off her face. “How could she leave me all alone for a
year
? I think she wanted to see more of Uncle Rodney without me hanging around all the time. She doesn’t want
me
.” She put her head in her hands and began to cry. “Nobody wants me.”

“Who’s Uncle Rodney?”

Fiona took a shuddering breath. “He was a friend of Daddy’s. He lives in Delhi and he’s very rich. I hate him.” The sobs became desperate as she turned to hide her face in a blue velvet cushion.

Matron came back in, bringing Fiona’s medication. “Thank you, Gillian.” She put her arms around Fiona. “Wait for me in the sick bay.”

Gillian was beginning to feel like crying herself as she sat on the hard chair by Matron’s tidy desk. All that about Fiona’s mother not caring had been very upsetting, and her efforts to cheer her up seemed to have made things even worse. Matron would be disappointed in her.

Matron came out of her room, shutting the door behind her. “I’m sorry, Gillian dear, I know you really tried, but Fiona is quite inconsolable. I’m at my wit’s end. I can’t reach her mother of course, and there’s only a solicitor for contact.” She pursed her mouth and looked seriously at Gillian. “Can you, by any chance, think of anything, Gillian? Anything at all that might make a difference to her?”

Gillian tried hard to think of a remedy. What would she herself do in this situation? “I know, Matron! I’ve got it!” She leapt to her feet. “I could lend her
Jane Eyre
!” It would be a wrench, but to be honest, she was getting a bit bored with that St. Jean Rivers man, and she could take a break from the book. She would start on
Wuthering Heights
while she waited to get it back.

Matron smiled and actually gave her a quick hug. “That’s really very kind of you, Gillian. I know how much that book means to you, and I remember how I felt when I read it myself, at about your age. But you know, dear, I don’t think the subject matter would help Fiona. As I recall, it’s about a poor little orphan girl who has to struggle to make her own way through a hard, cruel world, and then marries that awful Mr. Rochester.”

“Oh … right. But Matron, Jane manages really well, doesn’t she? And perhaps Fiona would see that if Jane managed, she could too.”

“Well, that’s a thought. We could give it a try, I suppose. Why don’t you pop down and get it while I go and have a quick word with Miss Campbell about calling the doctor again?”

She locked the medicine cabinet and put the keys in the bottom drawer.

Camilla was patrolling the silent corridor as Gillian scurried along to the dormitory, mentally arguing with Matron about Mr. Rochester.

“You’re not allowed on this floor at this time, Gillian Davies,” she hooted down the hall, “You should be in prep.
And
you were running down the corridor. I’ll have to report you.”

Gillian kept going. “I’m on an important errand for Matron, Camilla, and if you’ll excuse me, I’m in rather a hurry. You can check with Matron if you like.”

When she got back to the sick bay, book in hand, she was surprised to find Fiona already in bed, a patch of pink on each cheek. There had been a rustle of bedclothes as she reached the door, and something pushed under the pillow before Fiona turned to face her. Fiona took the book with limp hands, and without even opening it, put it down behind the half-empty glass of water on the bedside table. She thanked Gillian but seemed even more tired and distant than usual and turned her eyes back to the rain running down the darkening window. Still, Gillian thought, once she opened the book and read about how horrible the Reed family was to Jane, she would have to read on to see what happened to her, and then, once she got to the red-room bit, she would not be able to put it down. It would change her life.

“I’ll come back this evening, if you like,” she offered nobly.

“No thanks. I’m awfully tired. I’m going to sleep.”

“Well that’s great, Fiona! You’ll feel much better tomorrow. I’ll come and see you after school.”

Fiona smiled faintly but made no reply.

The next day, however, when Gillian went up to the sick bay after netball, Fiona was not there, and neither was Matron. The bright overhead light was turned off, and Matron’s chatty radio was silent. Fiona’s bed was newly made up, and all her things were gone. On the taut white chenille bedspread Gillian saw
Jane Eyre,
together with the torch and a note saying, “For Gillian Davies,” in Matron’s handwriting. She picked them up, wondering what could have happened. Had Matron taken Fiona to the cottage hospital?

The whole school was agog. Fiona had disappeared, and Matron seemed to have gone too. Rumours were flying: Fiona was hiding somewhere in the building; she had run away; her mother had mysteriously reappeared and taken her away, threatening to have the law on the school for starving her. Gillian was in demand for once, since she had been one of the last people to have seen Fiona, but she could throw no light on her disappearance except to say that she did not think she would have had the strength or the gumption to run away, and that she had nowhere to run to anyway.

That evening Miss Campbell summoned the boarders to the main hall, where they assembled quietly to wait for her, the teachers and prefects on chairs, and the rest of the girls sitting cross-legged on the polished wood floor. Finally the headmistress appeared on the platform by herself, looking pale and shaken, the white wings of her hair drooping. She regarded the assembly for a long minute before beginning to speak.

“Girls,” her voice was deep and slow. “Something terribly sad has happened.” In the silence that followed, Gillian held her breath and stared at the floorboards, frozen with apprehension.

Miss Campbell looked around the gathering. “I’m giving you the whole story, girls, so that you’ll know the truth and won’t invent, or believe, rumours.” She took a deep breath and gripped the lectern. “Fiona was a heartbroken little girl who was very weak and tired from three weeks of not being able to eat or sleep. Matron and I decided last night, therefore, that she should be taken to the hospital for a thorough examination.” She stopped to clear her throat. “The doctor there discovered that in fact, unbeknownst to us, Fiona had a serious heart problem. Apparently the stress of separation from her mother had aggravated her condition to a point where, I’m desperately sorry to say, girls, despite all their,
and our
, efforts to save her, her heart gave out.” She paused and raised her face to the ceiling. “Fiona died early this morning in the hospital.” She held on to the lectern and then bowed her head as if praying.

There was a stir throughout the hall and gasps of horror. Some of the girls began to cry. Gillian felt sick and realized she had to breathe deeply if she were not to faint. Through a feathery white fog she heard her name, and then the head-
mistress’s voice.

“Matron, who, I’m sorry to say, has left us, told me that Gillian tried to show some friendship towards Fiona, and did her best to help her.”

Gillian was aware of the other girls looking around at her in disbelief. She knew she was not exactly famous for her friendliness and was generally held to be a nasty sarcastic thing, best left alone. She looked down into her lap, seeing the fringe of her sash in sharp detail as if for the first time. She could not swallow for the jagged pain in her throat.

In the dormitory that night
,
the four girls huddled together in their dressing gowns on Anita and Diana’s beds, trying to come to grips with what had happened.

“At least you tried to help Fiona.” Anita looked at Gillian. “The rest of us tried for a couple of days and then gave up and just ignored her until she
died of a broken heart
.” She dabbed at her red eyes. “I feel terrible.”

The others agreed tearfully. The pain was back in Gillian’s throat. “I ignored her too. I didn’t do my best to help her at all. I shut my ears to all that crying at night, and sometimes I tried to avoid sitting next to her at meals or in the common room. I wasn’t any better than anyone else. I only tried to help because Matron asked me to. The only thing I wanted to do was to read my book. I couldn’t see
…
I didn’t think
…
I didn’t know
…
And now Fiona’s dead! And Matron’s gone too!” She gave way to sobs such as she had not uttered since she had first been sent away from home at the beginning of the war. She shrugged off the arm that Anita put around her, and ignored Chris’s offer of a handkerchief.

“Would this help?” Diana fetched
Jane Eyre
from Gillian’s chest of drawers and put it into her hands. Gillian was about to push the book away, when she noticed a small white triangle poking out from behind the front cover. Turning her back, she removed the envelope before dropping the book on the bed, to be picked up and leafed through by the other girls.

“Dear Gillian,” Matron had written, “I don’t want to leave without telling you that I won’t forget you. I can see that you have had your own troubles, but always remember, dear, you have a kind heart. Goodbye and God bless, Rose Solomon.”

Gillian’s shoulders dropped down and back as she took a deep breath, the pain in her throat subsiding. Matron would not forget her. Matron had called her ‘dear’, and said she had a kind heart. She could feel that organ warming and expanding in her chest as she reread the words.

“What’s so terrific about this book, Gill?” Diana held it out towards her. “You always act like it’s the best thing in the world.”