This Is All (79 page)

I arrive at the tree. O, my lordy! It seems much much higher than last time. And now it’s without leaves, it seems gaunt, unwelcoming, menacing. My nerve almost fails me. But I steel myself. Push thoughts of giving up from my mind. Lecture myself on how disgusted with myself I’ll be if I don’t do it.

Like tea and coffee, fear is a diuretic. I had tea for breakfast, coffee on the way, and now fear floods the reservoir. There can be no escalation before micturation. I push my way into a nearby clump of undergrowth and relieve myself. Coming back out I see a problem I haven’t anticipated. How to reach the first branch? It’s too high, even if I make a good jump. I’ve not brought any rope. I scavenge for something I can use and find nothing. Maybe I could plait long grass into a rope? But it would take all day to make it long enough. And would it hold me anyway?

Then a solution occurs to me, probably because I’ve just taken them down and pulled them up. If I take my jeans off, and throw one leg over the lowest branch while holding onto the bottom of the other leg, so that my jeans straddle the branch, and then grab the other leg, that might do.

I have to take off my trainers because my jeans are too narrow to pull over them. Having got my jeans off I have to put my trainers back on. And now I’m standing with bare legs and, though the sun has come out as promised by the ballet-handed forecaster, the air is still frosty, which combined with fear produces goose pimples and shivers. I place myself under the branch, take a firm grip of the bottom of one leg of my jeans, hold them out as if they are a whip, give them a twirl and flip them towards the branch.

The loose leg rises up, touches the branch, and comes flopping down onto my head.

I try again. Flip flop again.

I remember the rope Cal used. It had a little bag of weights on the end. So: a stone or something small but heavy enough to attach (somehow) to the bottom of the loose leg. Plenty of pebbles and bits of stone lying around, but how to attach them? While selecting a few that will do I ponder the problem. I need a bag … My sandwiches are in a plastic food bag. That’ll do.

I take off my pack, take out my sandwiches, remove the sandwiches from the bag, return the sandwiches to the pack, put the pack on again. The bag is big enough for the stones but not big enough to tie it to the leg of my jeans. I look around again. Nearby, there’s a patch of brown stalks of dead nettles. They’re string-like. I pluck three or four of a good length and knot them together end to end. They’ll do. I tie the neck of the bag to the bottom of a leg of my jeans.

By now I’m shivering and my legs have turned from chicken-white to blush-red. Adrenalin is beginning to pump. Hormones are on the go.

This time I twirl my jeans two or three times before flipping them up to the branch. The weighted leg sails up and over with a satisfying neatness. I have to let go at the last second because the branch is too high for me to hang on to my end without pulling the other end back again. But they’re there, straddling the branch like the legs of an invisible man.

I must jump to reach them. But if I catch only one leg, I’ll pull them off and will have to start again. Essential to catch both legs at the same time and to hang on while I walk my way up the tree trunk till I can swing a leg over the branch and heave myself onto it. The sort of thing they make us do in the gym using climbing ropes and wall bars. But I’m the type who swings for the wall bars and goes legs over head instead of feet onto bars.

One, two three, hoopla, and I do it! A hand on the bottom of each leg. And swing myself while I’ve still got the momentum, get my feet on the tree, hang onto my jeans to support
me, walk up the trunk, reach the branch, pull and turn and fling my right leg over the branch up to the knee, and pull pull pull and twist and push, and I’m straddling the branch, lying front down and arms round it. (Bravo, Cordelia! Why can’t I do it like that when being observed in the gym by the rest of the class and Mr Muscles? For the same reason I can’t play the piano in public anywhere near as well as I play it when alone: because I’m not a performer.)

Pause, while I catch my breath.

It’s now that I feel a pain on the inside of my right thigh. I push myself up so that I’m astride the branch and hitch back to the trunk so that I can lean against it and raise my right leg to inspect the damage. As I move back I see patches of blood on the branch. I must have scraped my thigh. The tender skin just below my crotch is cut as if a fork has been dragged across it, and is bleeding, not badly but fluently. I’ll have to do something about it or it’ll mess up my jeans when I put them on.

The only thing I can think of to make a bandage is to tear strips off the T-shirt I’m wearing under a sweater, which is under my hoodie. I try getting at my T-shirt without taking everything off but can’t do it. So have to remove my pack and hang it over my left leg (nowhere else to put it), pull off my hoodie and hang it over the branch, then my sweater on top of my hoodie, and then my T-shirt. I’m now down to bra and briefs. O lordy! Ten minutes like this and I’ll die of hypothermia. (That’s nonsense. I’m just being a drama queen. The sun is shining through the leafless branches of the tree and warming me nicely. So stop whingeing, Cordelia.)

Naturally – what else would you expect in the circs? – the T-shirt is so well made I can’t start off a tear. I pull and tug and try biting it. No go. All this time blood is trickling from the cuts and it’s hard to hold my leg so that the blood doesn’t flow either into my crotch or down towards my feet. I think of giving up. But recall lines from a certain play,
memorised for quoting in up-coming exams. ‘I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ (
Macbeth
, III iv, 135–7.) And then: ‘On, on, you noblest English, / Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!’ (
Henry V
, III i, 17–18.)

At last it occurs to me – how slow-witted I am! – that as the bark of the branch cut me, it would also cut my T-shirt. And with only a couple of rubs of the cloth over the branch between my legs, the cotton does tear, and then no problem ripping off a strip to fold into a wad to place over the wound to soak up the blood, and another to bandage the wad to my thigh. I use what remains of the T-shirt to mop up the blood from the rest of my leg.

Job done.

Now to dress again. (This jaunt is turning me into a stripper. But no ogling punters, thank the lord, except for a few uninterested birds and a squirrel that flashes past on its way up, as surprised by finding me as I am by it.) On go sweater, hoodie and backpack. But before I can put my jeans on, I have to take my trainers off, tie them together with the laces so that I can hang them round my neck in order to leave my hands free to pull on my jeans, which are already so grubby they look like they’ve been marinated in a rubbish tip, after which I have to untie my trainers and put them on again. Getting my jeans on is the trickiest part, as it’s hard to keep my balance while wiggling them onto my legs and over my bum.

If the rest of the climb goes as it has so far I’ll be here till Christmas.

But it doesn’t. Instead, it’s hardly more difficult than climbing the stairs at home, so well arranged and close together are the branches for an easy spiral ascent.

Do not look down, I instruct myself as I go from branch to branch. Don’t even look to the sides or up. Keep your eyes on the next branch, and make sure you’ve a good hand-hold
before taking each step. Remember, Will went up like this, probably by the same route, stepping exactly on each branch where I’m stepping on it. He’s with you, you’re with him. O lovely, gorgeous Will, how I miss you!

And I’m there, I’m here, where I sat the first time, and just above my head are our miniature memorial plaques.

I take stock. I’m covered in green slime (crushed moss) and gluey dust and shards of bark. My hands are filthy – I forgot to put the climbing gloves on. The cuts on my thigh are stinging, but at least there’s no sign of blood seeping through my jeans. But none of this matters. I’ve done it, and can nail the second plaque below the first.

This requires another awkward manoeuvre, taking off my pack, opening it, getting out my plaque and the hammer, holding the plaque between my teeth and tucking the hammer under my leg while I close the pack and put it on again so that my hands are free, then reaching up, holding the plaque with its already inserted nail in place, hammering the nail into the tree, tucking the hammer under my leg again, taking my pack off again, opening it again, returning the hammer to it and—

I hear my name shouted from below.

For the first time I look down. And see Cal looking up.

I’m so startled by the sight of him and so shocked by the dizzying sight of the ground far below that vertigo freezes my body. My backpack slips from my hands, tumbles down, banging against branches and bouncing off them till it reaches Cal, who steps back to avoid being hit. It lands on the ground with a slack thump, like the corpse of a bird shot out of the sky.

‘Trying to do away with me?’ Cal shouts, laughing.

I can’t reply. Voice frozen like the rest of me. Don’t want to reply. Don’t want him here.

My arms have clasped the tree in a clinging embrace, my cheek crushed against the trunk.

‘You okay?’ Cal shouts, his words like bullets in the crisp air.

And when I don’t answer, ‘You stuck?’

And when I don’t answer, ‘Hang on. I’m coming.’

Hang on!
I would that I couldn’t.

I want to shout, No don’t, but can’t open my mouth, never mind speak. Nor can I look down any more. And the odd thing is, though I’m paralysed, unable to move even a finger, I’m trembling. Frozen stiff yet at the same time shaking all over. Unable to see Cal climbing up to me but able to feel through the tree his tread on the branches and the tree wobbling more and more as he approaches nearer and nearer and hear him breathing louder and louder the closer he comes.
Fee fi fo fum
.

Do I merely dislike him for being here or do I fear him?

He arrives, his head level with my knees, grinning, his eyes eager, like he’s been given a present. I’m shaking so much I don’t know why I’m not breaking into pieces.

‘You’re okay,’ he says. ‘Safe with me.’ He puts his hands, big strong warm hands, on my thighs. ‘Breathe. Slow. Deep. Three deep breaths … Okay? … Go. One … two … three.’

Why do I obey?

He waits a moment, grinning the smile of a jailer.

‘Good. Again. Ready? Okay. One … two … three.’

And again I obey. And yes, I’m calming down. The shakes fade away.

‘Easy, see! Another. Okay. One … two … three.’

My clinging embrace of the tree loosens. I can move my head away. I face him.

‘Better?’

I manage to say, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Bird watching. I’ll help you get down.’ He squeezes my thighs.

‘No!’ I say, alarmed, the panic returning. But not from vertigo.

‘It’s okay.’

‘Stop saying okay.’

‘I’ll go down with you.’

‘No!’

‘I’ll look after you.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean I want to do it on my own.’

‘You will.’

‘You don’t understand. I
have
to do it
alone
.’

‘What if you slip?’

‘I got up, so I can get down.’

‘What if you get stuck again?’

‘I
won’t
. You startled me. I’m all right now. Look, Cal, if you really want to help me, you’ll go away and leave me alone.’

His smile fades. He glowers. A small boy moping.

I put my hands over his and wheedle. ‘That’s what I want. That’s what I’m asking you to do. For me. Please, Cal.’

He snuffles like a prodded horse. ‘Okay. But I’ll wait in the van. It’s in the lane.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I’ll wait.’

And he climbs down.

I watch him all the way, till he’s out of sight.

But why was he here? Why has he unnerved me? I’m unsettled. It’s instinctive. A sense of danger. But why?

And I resent him for intruding.

I think: Well, I’m not going to let him spoil my day. He’s been, he’s gone. I climbed up on my own and I’ll climb down on my own. That’s what I came to do and I will. He’s just another obstacle to be got over. Like reaching the first branch.

To restore myself, I sit quietly, deliberately listening to the sounds around me, smelling, fingering the bark, taking in the view and thinking again about Will and me. If I were to write to him, and explain, and ask his forgiveness, would he accept
me? Did I hurt him too much for reconciliation? If he truly loves me, won’t he take me back? Is it stupid pride that has stopped me from writing to him already? No. It’s disgust with myself for behaving the way I did. Do your mistakes condemn you for the rest of your life? Is there no way of deleting them? Can’t love cancel them? Surely it can. Isn’t that the only hope we humans have of saving each other?

The sky is darkening. Not because it’s dusk but because a heavy cloud is drawing like a curtain. I can see rain falling from it and it’s heading this way. Ms Ballethands has proved an incompetent prophet. I’d better climb down before the rain makes the tree slippy.

The descent is easier than the ascent. I’m making love to the tree as I do it. Thanking it. Remembering it.

On the ground, I retrieve my pack. I’m hungry. I can tell from shaking it that the flask is broken. And my sandwiches are squashed. But the plastic bottle of water has survived. I sit under the tree, prop my back against the trunk, take a long drink and eat a squishy sandwich. It’s one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I shall always remember this moment and relish it.

I’m packing up when the rain arrives. The whole sky is covered now with the looming cloud. Won’t be just a shower. Might as well get going. I set off, pushing my bike back to the lane, where I can mount and ride.

Cal’s in his van parked under a tree. No wonder I couldn’t see him from the top of my tree. He gets out when he sees me coming and as I reach him stops me and says, ‘Give you a lift.’