The Monkey Puzzle Tree (8 page)

W

“You never told me
what went wrong with that exam.” Gillian waved away the plate of chocolate digestive biscuits Vanna was offering. “I remember I could see there was something the matter, because you hadn’t any socks on, and your arm was all bruised. I know we sort of made it up some years later, Vanna, but we never went into what happened, and there was always that tension between us. And of course, I’ve been away for most of our lives. But I wish I could finally understand what went on.”

Vanna stood up to light a cigarette, nearly dropping the heavy silver table-lighter onto the coffee table before stalking over to the window. “The night before the exam,” she said, “My da came home even drunker than usual. He’d lost his job and couldn’t face what that meant, I suppose. He saw all the things my mother’d bought for me—pencils, pen, box of nibs, ruler and so on—and my best blouse and skirt and white socks airing over the back of a chair by the fire she’d lit specially.

“And what’s all this fancy bloody gear for?” he says. “Who paid for this, then?” And when my mother, God rest her soul, tells him it’s for my big day tomorrow, and that she knows he’ll be wanting me to do well, he says, “You know bugger all!” and throws the whole lot into the fire.

“That’s how I burned my fingers, trying to get stuff out, and why I couldn’t hardly hold my pen the next day.” She took a quick drag on her cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Anyway, the little ones were all screaming, while himself was waving the poker and shouting about throwing away good money, as if he’d never in his whole bloody life done any such thing at all. Then he said I’d turn out to be a useless, head-in-the-air, bluestocking like my mother, and he wasn’t having that. And don’t ask me why I said that about the hair in the nib, and why I didn’t tell Miss Thomas all about it. I had my pride, if nothing else.” She ground out her cigarette savagely in the cut-glass ashtray.

Gillian smoothed the burled walnut surface of the coffee table with her finger. “I remember your father died not long after that, didn’t he?”

Vanna lit another cigarette. “He did so. He was coming home from the pub, legless as usual, and got run over by another drunk. And wasn’t that the best thing that ever happened to our family at all?” She squinted narrowly at Gillian through the smoke.

Gillian felt she could hardly argue with that, especially after Vanna went on to say that her mother’s father, after he heard Michael Farrell was dead, had regularly sent them enough money to live on comfortably, until he himself died, leaving her mother a fair sum. She had died happy, Vanna said, knowing that all six children were provided for.

“You never know what’s round the corner, right?” She raised a sculpted eyebrow at Gillian. “As my Da must have said when he saw Dai Jones’s van coming at him. God rest his poor soul, after all!”

After a light supper, they sat in Vanna’s soft, grey-blue velvet armchairs while the mist came up from the sea and the foghorns moaned in the bay, until it was time for Gillian to return to Langland for the night.

In the still-misty morning, Gillian walked from the bus-stop to Saint Anne’s, and smelled the salty, fishy, seaweedy tang borne on the wind from the sea.
I’m home,
she thought.
This is the smell of home.
She stopped and inhaled deeply. But what was home now, in fact? A set of lawyers’ offices? An old wall? An unfamiliar bungalow on the outskirts of town? A few people who remembered her but could live perfectly well without her? With a shake of her head she walked on.

Home was Canada now. Ottawa was where she belonged, as much as she could belong anywhere. If she came back to live here now, she would be homesick for Canada. Home was her little house near the park and the river; her son and his wife, and her granddaughter, Alice; her partner Simon, and her other friends, and her spaniel, Dora. All those, along with the snow and the wide horizons had become her home.

Passing the wall of her old house, she noticed a small stout man in cap and raincoat walking briskly up the hill. Drawing level with her, he touched his cap and smiled politely, then stopped to take a second look, smiling even more broadly.

“Excuse me, lady, but does I know you?” He chuckled. “You looks very familiar. Does you come from round here, then?”

“Well, yes, I do, actually. Very much so.” She pointed. “I used to live in this house.”

As he peered at her, she saw something familiar about his broad, red face and bright blue eyes.

“It’s never Gillian?” He burst into a high, wheezy laugh. “Well, well, well! It’s Gillian Davies! There’s a surprise, isn’t it! I’m Robbie Bevan, Gillian. Don’t you remember me? I used to bring the meat!” He seemed to find that hilarious.

She remembered him then: Robbie, the butcher’s boy, in his navy and white striped apron, turning up on his ancient bicycle with shiny brown-paper packages in the front basket. A cheery, red-cheeked boy, always whistling.

“Gladys’ll be amazed when I tells her!” He chuckled. “Who’d of thought it? Gillian Davies! Well I never!”

“Gladys?”

“Yes, Gladys Jones, as was.” He grinned and jerked his head at the house. “Her mother worked for your mother, remember? It was after you went to Canada, I think, that we got married. Didn’t you mother tell you? I always fancied Gladys, and in the end she come ’round to me, and we been very happy. Got grandchildren now, we have. Five of them!” He evidently found this side-splitting, but suddenly straightened his face. “Is you mam still alive? Last I heard she was living in Langland.”

Gillian told him where her mother was presently, and learned that he and Gladys lived just down the hill from Saint Anne’s, in Number 84. Gladys would be popping in to see Mrs. Davies, he said, now that she knew where she was. He raised his cap and twinkled off, with an invitation to come and see them any time.

Curious, although not at all sure she wanted to see Gladys, or that her mother would, after what happened with Tom, Gillian made her way to Saint Anne’s.

Sunita met her on the stairs, carrying a tray of untouched breakfast: scrambled egg, toast, marmalade and tea. “Your mother’s not eating well, Mrs. Armstrong,” she said. “She didn’t touch the beef jelly you brought her yesterday, and she had no dinner to speak of. I think she should go onto meal supplements just to keep her strength up until she feels better.”

“Certainly. Whatever you think best, Sunita.” Gillian felt a stirring of the panic she had felt on the plane. “D’you think the new antibiotic is working?

“Not yet, but it’s too early to tell. We should know by tomorrow.” Sunita smiled, perfect teeth in a dusky-rose face, and passed on softly down the carpeted stairs.

Her mother was sitting up, coughing. She waved her hand impatiently as if signaling Gillian to go away, but then beckoned her back. “This’ll pass.” She held up a finger. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.” She coughed again and spat a chunk of thick khaki-coloured phlegm into the stainless steel dish Gillian held for her. “That’s good! I’ll be all right now. I’m getting the better of this. I’ll be out of here in no time.”

Gillian studied her. She looked even thinner, but alert, bright almost, a faint mauve flush beneath the apricot rouge on her cheeks.

“How’s my Tweetie-Pie? Did you give him a good brush as I asked you to? He needs to be brushed every day. I hope you remembered that.”

Gillian forbore from showing her the scratches she had received as soon as she had laid brush on the cat. “He’s fine, Mum. I did everything you asked.” If she were to get anywhere with her, she would have to be patient and ignore her needling.

To soften her up she had brought along photographs of Bryn, the grandson her mother had never seen; his attractive blonde wife, Carol, the pharmacist; and Alice, Gillian’s darling five-year-old granddaughter, with her
joie-de-vivre
and funny, loud laugh. Her mother would be bound to exclaim over Alice’s physical resemblance to Gillian at that age: the same hair, eyes, and build, a similarity that Gillian hoped might provide a lead-in to the subject of her own evacuation at around that age and then, with luck, to the crucial disclosure.

“Oh, how unfortunate!” Her mother dropped the photograph of Alice face-down on the bedspread. She put her face in her hands for a moment and gave a little shudder, before looking up with a forced smile. “I see she has your hair.” She gave a little laugh. “Although I must say, Gillian, in your case it seems to have worn well. You can hardly tell if you’ve gone grey or not!” She snatched up another photo. “Now this must be Bryn! He’s a handsome young man, certainly. He has a look of me I think. See the eyebrows? And there’s something about the mouth, don’t you agree?”

Gillian gave up. There was no point in going on with her project now, since her mother seemed excited and perhaps feverish. She would try again when her mother was calmer. She gathered up the photographs and changed the subject. “Have you seen anything of the other women here, Mum?”

“There’s a woman in the next room.” Her mother lowered her voice. “She came in to see me last night.” She leaned forward. “I think she’s Jewish.”

“So?” Gillian turned her head sharply, chin up.

“Oh, not that I have anything against Jewish people! I had a good friend once who was Jewish. Gilda Rosenberg. She kept the dress shop down the hill from us. Lovely woman! You probably remember her.”

Gillian looked narrowly at her. “I remember Mrs. Rosenberg very well. She was indeed a lovely woman, and seemed very fond of you.” She turned away, disturbed, as always, by her mother’s hypocrisy and by her own memories of the end of the war.

W

When the victory
in Europe was announced, nothing turned out the way Gillian and Tommy had hoped. Everyone who had a say in it, which, of course, did not include them, had agreed that even though there could be no more bombings, and it was indeed safe for them to come home, they should stay where they were because of Gillian’s approaching Eleven-plus examination. The consolation offered was that they could go home for weekends.

Gillian tried to explain to a sulking Tommy that she could not help what they thought, and that she was every bit as fed up about it as he was. They would just have to put up with it, she said, pointing out that it was already Wednesday. In two days’ time they would be home. He cheered up somewhat, but she still brooded. There were schools in Swansea, weren’t there?

They adjusted, as usual, and from then on, every Friday after school, their grandfather put them on the bus for Swansea and they rode into town, jittery with excitement at the prospect of being at home. It did not matter that their parents were often busy, their father with his practice, their mother with her social life, and that they were left to their own devices. They had plenty of those, whether in the house or rambling around the neighbourhood.

One Saturday, however, Gillian was taken shopping with her mother, who had collected enough coupons to get herself a new dress. They went straight down the road to Mrs. Rosenberg’s little dress shop, which had managed to stay in business all through the bombings.

Mrs. Rosenberg’s sad dark eyes lit up as Gillian and her mother came into the shop. After the warm greetings and chit-chat were over, she sat Gillian in a spindly, satin-covered chair by the window, leaving a silver dish of barley-sugar sweets on the tiny table beside her. She had something especially nice put aside, she said, for “dear Iris” to try on, and they bustled into the changing room where Gillian could hear them cooing over the dress.

When they came out, Mrs. Rosenberg wrapped up the new dress in a shocking extravagance of tissue paper and placed the package reverently in a shiny white cardboard box, using an outrageous amount of pale-blue ribbon to secure and adorn it. She stroked Gillian’s cheek as they left, pushing the remaining sweets into her hand.

Clipping along the pavement in her patent-leather high-heeled shoes, and holding the box flat to prevent wrinkles, Gillian’s mother observed that Gilda Rosenberg had a heart of gold, and had given one hundred pounds to Swansea’s newly set-up Home for Unmarried Mothers.

Gillian gasped at the huge amount. Remembering that this was her mother’s favourite charity, and that she sat on its board, whatever that meant, she peered up into her mother’s face to ask if Mrs. Rosenberg would be coming to the Victory cocktail party, the cause of much fuss and talk, which her parents would be giving the following Friday evening.

“No, of course not.” Her mother pursed her lips.

“But why not, Mummy? I thought you were friends.”

Her mother walked on faster. “We’re just …
business
friends, Gillian. We don’t socialize. It would be …” she searched for the word, “inappropriate.”

Gillian stopped. “Why? Why would it be
inappropriate
if you asked Mrs. Rosenberg?”

Her mother was walking so fast, Gillian could hardly catch up. “Well, she really doesn’t belong around here, you know,” her mother said over her shoulder. “And, of course, there’s the matter of religion to consider.”

Trotting along breathlessly, Gillian said to her mother’s rigid back, “But you and Daddy don’t go to church, and Mrs. Rosenberg has been here much longer than Mr. and Mrs. Ashford, and I know you’re asking them.”

Her mother stopped and swung around. “That’s enough, Gillian! You’re getting above yourself! Don’t talk about things you can’t understand.” She strode on without looking back as Gillian slipped away from her and down a narrow lane between the houses.

Weekends at home were usually like that, Gillian thought, as she half-heartedly explored the lane; hardly ever as happy as she had imagined they would be. Tommy would get into trouble for being loud and thoughtless; she would be criticized for being too quiet, or reading too much, or asking too many questions; one or the other, or both of her parents might be in a bad mood, or worse still, openly quarrelling with each other, which they seemed to do more and more often lately.