The Monkey Puzzle Tree (27 page)

“Angus has gone to the hospital,” Gillian said. “But I’ve come back because I need to talk to you and Janet alone.”

Rhiannon’s smile faded. She stood aside to let Gillian into the hallway as Janet, her hair trailing from its bun and dark smudges on her apron, emerged from the door to the back of the house.

“Gillian wants to talk to us,” Rhiannon said.

Janet stood still, her hand on the doorknob.

“Is there somewhere we could sit down?” Gillian looked around the austere entrance hall with its grandfather clock, narrow table, and single, upright chair.

Janet hesitated, her hand at her throat. She looked for a moment at the closed door to the reception room, furnished, as Gillian remembered, with black leather armchairs, cold and hard as boulders, but led them instead down the passage to the kitchen. They sat again at the table, Rhiannon pushing aside the heap of half-polished silverware. Sally scuttled under the table to play with her toy monkey on the small threadbare rug, while the dog took up its former place, leaning against Gillian’s leg.

Taking off her apron, and tucking her hair back from her face, Janet sat down at the head of the table. She pursed her mouth and straightened her faded, Liberty-print blouse before clasping her hands in front of her on the table. “What’s all this about, Gillian?” She put her head on one side, and raised her eyebrows as if addressing a wayward element of the local Women’s Institute.

Gillian saw fully, with dismay, what she was about to do to this nice woman, her social life and local standing obliterated with one stroke, her careful shoring-up all swept away. People would turn away from her in the street. Shopkeepers would pretend not to see her. It would be a brave friend who would stand by her now in this small, tight community. Closing her eyes for a moment, Gillian put her hand on the dog’s head, feeling, beneath the warmth and softness, the hardness of its skull.

“When I was evacuated here,” she looked from one puzzled face to the other, “I had some very … damaging experiences.”

Janet stiffened, her eyes fixed on the Aga, while Rhiannon stared at Gillian in astonishment. “What was it that happened to you here, then, Gillian?” she said. “And, if I might ask, what business is it of ours?”

Janet’s chair screeched on the slates as she stood up. “Would anyone like a cup of tea?” she asked with a nervous, social smile.

“No, thank you.” Gillian and Rhiannon spoke as one, and Janet sat down again, picking up a dessert spoon and turning it over.

There was a stir under the table. Sally was popping her monkey into the dog’s face. “Hello!” she piped, “My name’s George. D’you wanna play wi’me, Daisy?”

The dog turned its head up and away as if embarrassed.

“I’ll give you a present!”

Daisy buried her muzzle under Gillian’s elbow as the little girl returned, pouting, to sit at her mother’s feet.

“
Janet,” Gillian said, “Rhiannon. I have to tell both of you about what happened to me here all that time ago because I’m afraid it is very much your business. Because of Sally.”

Rhiannon froze, her hand on Sally’s head, then looked up sharply. Janet scrutinized the back of the spoon handle as if doubting its provenance.

“Please believe me,” Gillian went on resolutely, “I had no intention of upsetting you when I arrived this morning. I just wanted to find Angus and settle an old score. But after listening to the way he talked at the Hare and Hounds, I knew I’d
no choice but
to come here and tell you what …” she dropped her eyes to the scrubbed, battered tabletop, then looked straight at Janet, “what he did to me when I was six and seven years old.”

The spoon dropped with a clatter as Janet stared at Gillian. She had turned so white that Rhiannon ran to fetch a glass of water which Janet took with a trembling hand, spilling some on her blouse as she raised it to her lips, the glass rattling against her teeth.

“I’m so sorry, Janet,” Gillian said, “but for Sally’s sake, you must listen to me.”

“Jack and Jill went up the hill …” a little voice rose up from under the table.

The slates at Gillian’s feet shimmered in dark iridescence. She blinked, and raised her head.

“You should both know, “she said, looking from Janet to Rhiannon, “that whenever Angus was home from boarding school that year, he molested me.”

“
Jesus wept!”
Rhiannon clapped her hand over her mouth, staring at Gillian. Janet bent to pick up the spoon.

“I don’t mean just one little fumble, either,” Gillian went on doggedly, “but systematically, and repeatedly, whenever he could get me alone, which was often. And after I left,” she said, trying to control the tremor in her voice, “he did the same thing to another little evacuee in the village, except,” she kept her eyes on Janet, “that he actually
raped
her.”

A bare branch rapped on the window pane as dead leaves whirled by on the wind.

“He never!” Rhiannon stepped back, her fingers across her mouth, staring at Gillian. She sat down hard on her chair.

Janet got to her feet. Pulling open the neck of her blouse, she hurried, slipshod, to the window to stand with her back to them, hunched over, clasping her elbows, the drooping hem of her skirt visibly trembling. “That’s impossible!” She spun around. Her colour rose as she faced Gillian, head high. “Who do you think you are, you … you
mischief-maker!
Coming here out of the blue like this, and saying these terrible things about my husband without a shred
of evidence! You must be mad! Or maybe you think you can blackmail an innocent man? Yes! That’s more like it! I’m going to call the police right now!” She set off towards the passage.

“
Janet,” Gillian moved in front of her. “That woman told me herself about the rape some months ago in Swansea, and will confirm what I’ve just said. Her name then was Gladys Jones.”

A magpie landed with a flutter on the branch outside the casement, bending the twigs and seeming to peer into the room.
“One for sorrow
…”
the old rhyme came into Gillian’s head as she saw Janet turn back to grip the windowsill, her knuckles white
.

“Ah! I see it all now!” Janet said over her shoulder, “I
did
meet a very common young girl called Gladys Jones the first time I came here, before we got married. I didn’t like her one bit. I thought then that she was very shifty-looking. I’m not surprised that
she’s
involved in this.” She faced Gillian again, a tall, gaunt figure, backed up against the sill, her face whiter than ever, but her head still high. “I think that you’ve been plotting with this Gladys Jones, and that you’ve made up this whole horrible thing between you.”

Gillian shook her head. “Tell me, Janet,” she said steadily,
“
Was there never any problem at all concerning Angus’s treatment of little girls? Were there no complaints of that sort in all the years you’ve lived here? No strange, angry phone calls? No mothers coming to the door?”

Janet bridled and opened her mouth, but closed it, her eyes wide and her fingers pressing against her lips.

“What?” Rhiannon said.
“What,
Janet?”

“Nothing.” Janet turned her back on them, her shoulders hunched and her head low.

“It’s terrible, what you’re telling us, Gillian,” Rhiannon said after a pause, running the tip of a knife into the soft white wood on the tabletop. “But if it did happen, that was half a century ago, when he was still in his teens.” She looked up. “There’d be no danger now, of course, of anything like that happening again.”

A soft clunk came from the Aga as the anthracite shifted and collapsed on itself.

Janet turned, nodding vehemently. “That’s right, Rhiannon! He was just a boy! A young lad! That’s all water under the bridge now.” She arched her neck, her face red and her hair trailing loose. “Why are you trying to wreck our lives like this?” she hissed. “
Why
?”

Gillian put her finger on the maze-like marks Rhiannon had made on the tabletop. “I’m sorry, Janet, I know this is a terrible thing for you to hear, but there’s more. There’s something worse that I must tell you …”

Rhiannon fixed horrified eyes on Gillian, as Janet, her colour still high, twisted away to stare out at the garden.

“From the way Angus spoke to me at the pub,” Gillian said to Janet’s back, then to Rhiannon’s white face, “I realized that that sort of behaviour is not over. Not at all! I’m afraid it’s … well, it’s …” she squared her shoulders. “I think it is, and always has been a …” she directed her words to Janet’s rigid form, “… a way of life for him.”

“What?” Rhiannon leapt up. “Bloody hell!
A
way of life,
you say? You mean you think he’s
still
doing that
? Oh my God!” She snatched up Sally and backed away, her face flooded with colour and her eyes blazing. “That fucking bastard! Jesus! I could kill him!”

Sally began to whimper.

“Rhiannon!” Janet cried. “For shame! You don’t mean to say you believe any of this … this
preposterous
story? This is your
father-in-law
we’re talking about here, Rhiannon! Sally’s grandpa! You live in his house! How can you even
think
such things?”

Rhiannon looked away for a moment, her lips trembling, “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure, but …” With Sally’s head buried in her neck, she turned to face Janet. Shaking her head slowly, she said over the child’s sobs, “I’m sorry, Janet, but something here rings true to me. A lot of things are beginning to make sense and sort of fit together.” She sat down. “Now that I think of it, without knowing why—just a feeling I had—I never liked to leave Sally alone with Angus. To tell you the truth,” she stroked the little girl’s back to calm her. “I can’t stand seeing those big old hands on her—or the way he looks at her, now she’s stopped being a baby. And he’s always bringing her presents and treats …” She closed her eyes. “And the other day,” she looked at Gillian, “while I was soaping Sally in the bath, he came in and asked if he could help! Of course I said no.” She shuddered, putting her head against Sally’s. “Oh, dear God!”

Gillian shivered too at the image conjured up. She had come none too soon.

Janet tearfully reached out a supplicating hand. “Rhiannon! Please! Don’t do this!”

Rhiannon kissed the child’s cheek before settling her down on her lap. She turned to face her mother-in-law. “No, I’m sorry, Janet, but terrible as it is, what she’s saying, I have to believe Gillian.”

The telephone shrilled in the entrance hall. Gillian and Rhiannon exchanged a quick, almost shame-faced glance as Janet stumbled off down the passage. That would be Angus, probably, Gillian thought, sounding the waters at home.

Janet returned, her face as white as the handkerchief she was twisting in her hands. “That was some man wanting to get hold of Angus.” She collapsed onto a chair. “He sounded very angry.” She put her head in her hands. “I can’t bear this! It’s a nightmare!” She turned on Gillian. “This is all
your
doing! You’ve already spread rumours about him in the village, haven’t you? Telling these obscene lies to everyone you met down there!”

Gillian kept silent.

Janet raised desperate, reddened eyes. “It must be you. Who else would say such things?”

Quite a lot of people actually
now that the matter’s been opened up.
Gillian saw again the appalled faces in the Hare and Hounds, and the waiter, standing behind Angus, wringing his napkin like the neck of a chicken. But all that was out of her hands now. Apart from making a statement to the police, which she could do in Swansea, she had done what she had to do. Suddenly aware of the time, she looked at her watch. If she were to catch the return bus, she should leave soon.

With Sally and the dog
running about in the strong fresh wind, Gillian and Rhiannon walked in front of the house. Wiping her eyes, Rhiannon tucked away Gillian’s home address and phone number and hugged her so hard that Gillian felt a rib bend before they kissed each other goodbye.

As Gillian reached the first turn in the drive, Sally cried out that the monkey wanted to give her a goodbye kiss too and ran holding out her toy, a wide, confident smile on her face, clearly not a child to whom anything untoward had yet happened. Gillian kissed the monkey, and Sally too, who scrambled back to wave with her mother from underneath the monkey puzzle tree.

That tree was not what it had been, Gillian saw as she waved back. Lower limbs had been lopped off, the remaining branches had lost their manic thrust, and the sparse, browning needles were entirely missing from the top. This wind could blow it down.

Despite the shock and grief behind her, she looked up at the blue sky with an open face as she turned out of the driveway and onto the road. It was over. She had felled the giant. Her raincoat billowing behind her, she walked away from Maenordy and down to the crossroads to begin her journey home.

Acknowledgements

 

 

My heartfelt thanks
go to my husband, Alistair, and my sons, Edward and David, as well as to my friends for their help and support throughout this whole process. I am grateful also to Ivan E. Coyote, whose upbeat writing course got me started; to the remarkable Mary Borsky and the members of her workshop, whose generous encouragement and feedback kept me going; and above all, to John Metcalf, my editor, who pushed me further than I knew I could go. Thanks also to all at Biblioasis, especially Tara Murpy, for their work in bringing the book to fruition.