The Monkey Puzzle Tree (17 page)

She lowered her ice cream. “I’ve always felt bad about not writing, Tom, especially when you told me about Gladys and the baby. But Mum had already told me it was all over. No baby, and no more Gladys, and then I just shelved the whole thing, probably because I was so caught up with Doug.”

“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?” He smiled at her over his cone. “But I never heard much about Doug; you sort of clammed up on that subject. Was it a rebound thing after Llewellyn? I’ve always felt you were more hurt by that jerk than you let on.”

“I suppose I was on the rebound, really. But it seemed so wonderful at the start. I really thought I’d found true love at last, Tom. I forgot everybody and everything while I was living in that farmhouse with Doug. I’ll tell you all about it later when we have more time. And about how Diana rescued me.”

“Diana from school? I remember her. She came to see you at home one holiday. I thought she was smashing. What happened to her, do you know? Did you keep in touch?”

“Oh yes, we see each other from time to time, even though we live so far apart. She became an executive for a big travel agency and made enough money to retire early. Now she breeds Staffordshire bull terriers with her partner, Penny, on Vancouver Island.”

“Oh I see.” He smiled
.
“I can imagine.” He crunched up the mini-cone at the bottom of his ice-cream and brushed his hands together. “I’ve got to go now. But when we’ve got time, I’d like to hear the story. I’ve often wondered.”

As he gathered up the napkins and took them to the bin, Gillian looked across the grey pond to the bushes where the fox’s cage had been, mentally reliving her disastrous attempt at giving her all.

W

She was frying bacon
for Doug’s breakfast when the phone rang, unusual at any time, let alone at eight in the morning. She picked up the phone, jerking the receiver away from her ear as a clear voice rang out, echoing around the bare kitchen the way it had years ago on the school hockey field. “That you, Gill?”

Afraid that The Voice of Authority, as Diana had been called at Deer Park, could be heard upstairs in the bedroom, Gillian almost whispered her reply, but her friend was too excited to take the hint. She was actually in Ottawa, she declared, and had managed to track Gillian down! She’d have to return to Vancouver in a few days, but she could come to see her that afternoon. Would that be possible? It’d be such fun to meet! They hadn’t seen each other in such ages!

Gillian lowered the receiver, holding it in both hands, and looked out over the snow-covered fields. Doug was not keen on visitors, she knew, but surely he wouldn’t want her to miss this chance of seeing her old friend again. Raising the phone, she gave Diana directions to the farmhouse and invited her to lunch. She squared her shoulders and went upstairs to the bedroom.

Doug was awake and awaiting her explanation for the call. “I’m not sure about that, honey.” He sat up and settled himself against the pillows. “You’d better call her back and tell her not to come.” He glanced out of the window. “The weather looks really bad. These early March storms can be the worst.” He reached over and switched on the bedside radio.

“But, Doug, I don’t know where she’s staying.” Gillian raised her voice over those of The Platters. “And anyway, she’s probably left already.”

With a sigh, he turned down the volume. “How come you didn’t talk to me before inviting her here, Gill? You know I like it best when it’s just the two of us.” He held out his hand. “I thought you did too, my darling.” His eyes were watchful. Choirboy eyes, Gillian called them, dark blue, heavily fringed with black lashes.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said. “Besides, we’re not really doing anything today.” She sat down on the bed, still holding his hand. “Diana was my best friend at boarding school, Doug, and I haven’t seen her since we left school six years ago. I really want her to come.”

Turning his head, he raised the volume on the radio and closed his eyes.

The melancholy harmonizations accompanied her downstairs, followed by a severe-weather advisory.

“With any luck,” Doug came into the kitchen five minutes later in his ratty dressing gown and broken-down carpet slippers, “she’ll hear that storm warning on the car radio and turn back. I mean we wouldn’t want her going into the ditch, would we?”

Gillian put his breakfast down smartly in front of him as the ancient percolator finished gargling. “Diana’s very competent. She’s been living out west for years. She’ll cope with the snow.”

He stabbed the two egg yolks so that they bled all over the plate and ate in silence, the ticking of the wooden wall clock the only other sound.

An hour and a half later, a car turned in through the gate Gillian had managed to pull open after clearing the driveway. “She’s here!” she called out to Doug in the back room, and flung on her sheepskin coat and boots to skitter down the front steps.

Diana, in a bright red duffle coat, jumped out of the car, hugged her and held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “Skinny as ever! Still that crazy hair! You haven’t changed a bit, Gill.”

“Neither have you.” And indeed it was true in Diana’s case. She had the same round face and rosy cheeks, her straight black hair still as short as at school, if rather more stylish. As they turned laughing towards the house, arms linked, Gillian saw Doug pull back from the window.

“What the hell’s that?” Diana stopped to look at a metal structure beside the steps, consisting of four sleigh runners curving vertically away from an upright steel drum of the type used for storing toxic materials. Great lengths of rusty chains, their links at least three inches long, were welded to the tips of the runners, piling up on top of the drum before dropping down its sides into the snow.

“That’s one of Doug’s creations. He makes them out of metal things he finds around the property. Metal things sprout out of the ground here like the soldiers in that Greek myth.”

“He’s an
artist
?”

“Yes, he had an exhibition last year. Had a good review and sold three pieces. People in downtown Toronto put them in their gardens.”

Gillian saw Diana look back askance as they went up the steps into the house.

Unshaven, his dark hair straggling over his collar, Doug was standing in the middle of the floor in corduroy pants, bald at the knees, and a grubby red and black plaid lumber jacket. He held a cigarette in one hand and a stubby bottle of Molson Export in the other. Gillian could not help wishing he had made more of an effort to brush up for her friend, as he had for his exhibition when, in black pants and turtleneck, he had attracted at least as much appreciative scrutiny as his creations.

“Doug, this is, Diana.” She stood back for them to shake hands.

“Charmed I’m sure!” Ignoring Diana’s outstretched hand he raised his beer bottle in salute and took a drag on his cigarette before ostentatiously blowing the smoke away from her. After a long swallow, he banged the bottle down on the counter and smiled his sudden dazzling smile. “Whatcha want to drink, Diane? How ’bout you, Gill? We must celebrate this great occasion!”

Maybe it was going to be all right after all. Gillian smiled back at him. “Let me get Diana comfortable first.” She took her friend into the warmth of the back room to settle her in the capacious if threadbare armchair by the wood stove. “How was the drive?”

“It wasn’t too bad, actually,” Diana held out her hands to the warmth. “The car I rented is new and it’s got good tires and a heater, but I borrowed chains and a snow shovel just in case. There is an awful lot of snow, though. Perhaps I should try to get back before it gets too late.”

“I think you should.” Doug came forward to chuck a massive log into the already pulsating stove. “There’s a severe storm warning for later this afternoon, and the temperature’s going down to minus thirty, not counting the wind factor. I don’t want to sound inhospitable,” he stood up, poker in hand, smiling at both of them, “but if I were you, I’d set off right away.”

Diana laughed. “Well, maybe not right away, but well before dark.”

Does she think he’s joking?
Gillian put her hand on the front of his jacket and lifted her face to look into his eyes. “Doug, please! Diana can’t just turn around and go back. We want to talk and catch up.”

He turned away without replying and stalked into the kitchen where she found him a few minutes later, standing at the front window, cigarette in hand, staring out at the snow through a cleared space in the frost feathers. Joining him, she could see the snow throwing its weight around. The driveway and road were already obliterated, and she could hear the wind keening through the gap over the front door. She jumped as he whizzed
his bottle cap across the room into the open garbage bin.

At the same moment, Diana came in, holding out a bottle of wine. “I brought this for you and Gillian, Doug. I hope you like it.”

He took the bottle of
Liebfraumilch
. “Oh, super.” He put it on the counter behind the beer cartons. “Thanks a lot, Diane.”

“It’s Diana actually, Doug. I’m glad you like it. I know I do.”

“I’m sure you do.” Doug pointed to the road. “You know,
Diana,
I really think you should take my advice and go back right now.”

She glanced at the window and did a double-take.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He opened the wine. “But it’ll get worse. If you go right now, though, you should get back okay. Here, have one for the road.” He filled a juice glass.

“Thank you. I’ll save it to have with my lunch. Can I help you, Gill?”

He returned to the window with a fresh bottle of beer in his hand and lit another Marlborough. After a few puffs, he ground it out in the massive brown glass ashtray, already overflowing, which he had lifted the day before from the Wakefield Inn.

The women laid the battered pine table in front of the side window in the kitchen, exchanging news of old school friends: Anita had had another baby girl; Chris was performing in a jazz concert in Cardiff next month; the headmistress was retiring. As they seated themselves at the table, Gillian tried without success to catch Doug’s eye. Attempting to draw him into conversation, she mentioned the family history surrounding the Clegg farmhouse, but he munched his way through the homemade tourti
è
re, baked beans, and apple crumble without saying a word, sticking to his beer and refusing the wine.

After lunch they went into the back room to warm up, Diana again sitting, at Gillian’s insistence, in the armchair, while Gillian and Doug took each end of the sagging, sawdust-leaking vinyl couch. Gillian slid sideways looks at the aquiline profile, willing Doug to say something.

“Darling,” she turned to him eventually, touching his arm, “Don’t you think Diana’d better stay? It’s getting really dangerous out there.”

“It’s not that risky.” He addressed an
objets trouvés
moose-head on the barnboard wall behind the woodstove. “She’s got a good car, and the snow plow’ll be along. There’s still time to get back before the light fails.”

Twisting her hair, she went to the back window. Snow tumbled over billowy fields, whitening the forest beyond. “But Doug, look at it out there! She has to stay. I’d never forgive myself if she came to any harm!”

“Excuse me.” Diana pointed to the woodstove. “I think the stove-pipe’s turning red. Is that all right?

Seeing the familiar dull flush halfway up the black pipe, and hearing an ominous roaring, Gillian ran to close the damper. As the danger signs subsided, Doug closed his eyes. Shaking his head as if at the stupidity of others, he turned again to his beer.

“Do you not you have a dog?” Diana looked brightly from one to the other after a short silence. “I should have thought this was the perfect place for one.”

Doug took another swig and studied the ceiling.

“We did have one, actually.” Gillian cleared her throat and swallowed. “Nigel, a stray; a sort of black lab, with a sticking-up ear, but he disappeared. He went out one terribly cold night last winter, after a snow storm like this, and he never came back. I was working then, and had to stay in town because of the storm, but Doug stayed up all night, waiting and calling for him, didn’t you, Doug? But he never came home.” She took a deep breath and straightened her spine. She had looked for Nigel for months. Still did.

“That seems strange,” Diana put her head on one side, her eyes on Doug, “to get lost so close to home. You’d think a dog would know his way.”

“Who knows what happened.” Doug looked away. “It was an idiot dog anyway. Tried to bite me once.”

“He was only defending me.” Gillian blinked hard and looked up at the ceiling. “He was still a puppy. He didn’t know you were only joking.”

“That’s enough about the bloody dog!” He slammed down his bottle like a gavel on the wood floor. “If I could just have a bit of peace, I’d like to take a nap.” He put his head back and closed his eyes. Diana made a moue at Gillian, and
they removed themselves to the kitchen.

With their coats on, hands clasped around warming mugs of tea, they sat at the table as Diana caught up with Gillian’s news. She had been very sorry to hear from Anita of Dr. Davies’s sudden death from a heart attack. How was her mother managing on her own? Gillian explained that her mother had sold the house and gone to live with her own mother, since Gillian’s grandfather had also died.

“I’m so sad about Daddy,’ she said. “I loved him, but I didn’t really know him, you know? We were evacuated and then away at school, and the times when we were at home he was always so busy, either working or playing tennis or badminton. Before I left, he and I were becoming closer, and I was glad of that, but I thought there was plenty of time, of course. And then he goes and drops dead on the tennis court.” She blew her nose. “You know, I never thought they were very happy together, but Mummy was quite distraught when he died. At the funeral she kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, Roy, I’m so sorry.’ I’ve often wondered what she meant exactly.” She topped up the teapot from the whistling kettle. “I found it easier to grieve for Grandpa actually. I was upset that Mummy didn’t let me know in time to get home for that funeral. I’d have liked to have been there for Grandma's sake, and I know Tom would’ve been beside himself. He and Grandpa were very close.”