The Skeleton Tree

by Diane Janes

  ‘Who’s that man?’ Katie said. ‘The one who’s waving at us.’

  Wendy swivelled round at the same moment as Tara arrived beside her.

  ‘Oh, look, it’s John,’ Tara said. ‘Hello …’ she called down the platform to him.

  John raised his arm again in greeting, picked up an enormous black barrel bag, which he swung effortlessly over his shoulder, and strolled across to join them. Wendy spared a hasty glance at Bruce.

  ‘Tara, Mr Thornton, Mrs Thornton.’ He nodded politely at them, his blond hair flopping forward slightly as he spoke. Wendy noticed that he still had his moustache. She wondered if Tara had ever reported back Bruce’s comments about him being just a bricklayer. Tara had not mentioned him for weeks and Wendy had therefore assumed that she was no longer seeing him. Now his presence on the platform conjured up a variety of alternative possibilities.

  ‘Going on holiday?’ he asked Bruce.

  ‘We’re here to see Tara on to the train.’

  ‘I’m going to see my father in Solihull.’ Tara beamed.

  ‘No? Straight up? You’ll be going all the way to New Street then?’

  The train was approaching the platform. The lad’s surprise seemed genuine, but Wendy was not convinced. Were the bricklayer and her daughter playing out an elaborate charade?

  ‘Are you going to Birmingham too?’ Tara asked.

  ‘Yup. Going down to Brum to stay with Mum and Dad.’

  Neither of them looked displeased by the discovery that they would be travelling on the same train.

  ‘Well, this is great,’ John said. ‘Now I’ll have someone to talk to. The journey doesn’t half drag otherwise.’

  The train doors were being flung open. ‘Plenty of seats,’ he said. ‘Here, I’ll carry it.’ He picked up Tara’s case, making light work of both their bags as he waited politely while she pecked each of the family on the cheek and Jamie demanded that she bring him back a present. As John led the way on to the train, Wendy watched him warily. There was something almost threatening about his masculinity. He seemed different from the John she had seen on an almost daily basis when he was working on the house. She had not properly noticed then how dangerously attractive he was. Tara followed him on to the train and turned to slam the door closed behind them. They momentarily disappeared from view, emerging a moment later in the windows of the carriage. John was looking back at Tara as she followed him down the aisle, laughing at something she said. They got a table to themselves, Tara seating herself beside the window and waving happily as the train began to move, while John finished stowing the luggage. The coaches moved steadily along the platform until Tara was carried beyond their view, just as John took the seat opposite her.

  ‘Can we stay and see some more trains?’ Jamie was asking.

  ‘No, we can’t. Come on, don’t you want your supper? It’s Chinese takeaway, remember.’ Bruce seemed relentlessly cheerful. Wendy kept glancing sideways at him in the car, but it didn’t appear to be an act.

  They left the children sitting in the car outside when they went in to pick up the takeaway. ‘You’re very quiet,’ Bruce said, after he had placed their order and they had moved across to the waiting area, which was furnished with plastic-covered bench seats and a coffee table with an ancient Woman’s Own and a somewhat distressed copy of the Daily Mirror.

  ‘That’s because I’m worried sick.’

  ‘Why? Now what’s the matter?’

  Wendy was incredulous. ‘Well, do you really think it was an accident? Them meeting on the station platform like that?’

  ‘What, you mean Tara and that John?’

  ‘Of course. Who on earth else would I mean?’

  Bruce shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The bloke was going down to see his parents. He probably goes down every other week, gets his washing done and eats them out of house and home. You know what young lads are like.’

  ‘You know what young lads are like,’ she echoed, incredulous. ‘Well, you certainly thought you knew what they were like when you first kicked off about her seeing him. We should have stopped her going.’

  ‘Wendy, we’ve been through all this before. She’s entitled to go and meet Robert if she wants to.’

  ‘This isn’t about Robert, it’s about John.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, I can’t keep up with this. She’ll sit with him on the train for a couple of hours, then they’ll both get off at New Street and go their separate ways.’

  ‘But will they?’ She lowered her voice, conscious that a fat, middle-aged man who had placed his order just before them was becoming increasingly interested in their conversation.

  ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’ Bruce asked.

  Wendy hesitated, ever more aware of the eavesdropper. He didn’t know them, but that didn’t matter. ‘Oh Bruce, don’t be so obtuse. You know very well what I’m getting at. Suppose Tara isn’t going to stay with Robert at all?’

  ‘Well, if she isn’t, there’s damn all we can do about it. You can’t run after the train, and if you think I’m driving all the way down there, you can think again.’

  ‘So you’re taking the line that as she’s not really your daughter, it’s not your responsibility, is that it?’

  ‘Not at all. But you need to recognize that kids grow up fast these days. Tara’s seventeen. Some people would say it’s none of our business who she chooses to spend her weekends with. She’s not a child any longer and everyone kicks over the traces sooner or later.’

  ‘Bibbings.’ The woman who served behind the counter called out the name, and as the fat man stood up she began to reel off the contents of two bulging carrier bags, starting with prawn crackers and spare ribs.

  ‘You’re condoning it!’ Wendy was astounded.

  ‘I’m not condoning anything. I’m suggesting that Tara has reached a point in her life where some things are none of our business. I don’t suppose you liked your mother prying into your teenage sex life.’

  ‘I didn’t have a sex life, not until I was married.’ Thank goodness the fat man had left and the woman had disappeared into the rear of the premises again.

  ‘Well, not everyone is as … restrained as you were.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Face facts. A lot of people sleep together before they’re married. You may not have done …’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘But a lot of people did.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘You never asked me.’

  ‘I just thought … How old were you? The first time?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Thornton?’ The query was unnecessary, since they were the only customers waiting. ‘One sweet and sour chicken, one beef curry, one prawn chow mein, one chicken in oyster sauce, two egg fried rice, one boiled rice, two banana fritters.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to have some sort of mid-life crisis about my ex-girlfriends,’ Bruce said as he held the shop door open for her. ‘It was a long time ago and they were all before I met you.’

  ‘Well, of course not,’ she said, mentally noting his use of the plural. ‘It doesn’t matter a bit.’ It did matter, she thought. It mattered that she had never known. Everything she thought she knew, everything she had always taken for granted, had somehow begun to unravel.

  Tara telephoned much later that evening. Bruce happened to be passing through the hall at the time, so it was he who picked up the call. ‘Hello … Tara? … Good, fine. Did you want to speak to Mam? … No? OK … Yes, yes, have a nice time … See you on Sunday.’ He turned to Wendy, who had appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘It was Tara to say she’s arrived safely. The train was on time and Robert was there to meet her at the station.’

  ‘Did she say anything about John?’

  ‘No.’ Bruce sounded irritable. ‘What would there be to say?’

  Bruce and the children collected Tara from the station on Sunday evening whil
e Wendy stayed at home to cook, steeling herself to be politely interested in hearing about the trip.

  There was no need for her to ask any questions, because Tara scarcely drew breath over dinner, so eager was she to share the fun she had had with ‘Bob’ – as her father had suggested she call him – his wife and other offspring. The whole family had gone on a shopping expedition into the city centre, during which they had lunched in an Italian restaurant and ‘Bob’ had bought a necklace for Tara and encouraged her to pick out a dress and some perfume at his expense.

  Wendy attempted to catch Bruce’s eye over the table, as Tara detailed these blatant attempts to buy her affection, but Bruce was concentrating on his roast lamb and appeared entirely unperturbed.

  While Wendy cleared the plates in readiness to serve the apple crumble, Tara dashed off to fetch a Polaroid photograph from her bag and Wendy forced herself to appear pleased by the smiling image of her eldest daughter standing with Bob’s hand resting proprietorially on her shoulder, with his two boys, Alexander and Richard, grinning in front of them, the perfect little family group.

  ‘Bob always kept his distance because he didn’t want to complicate things for me.’ Tara smiled across the table at them, making it sound, Wendy thought, as if this was some kind of incredibly generous act of sacrifice on Robert’s part. ‘But of course things will be different, now that we’re back in touch. They want me to go and stay again soon.’

  Looking at the middle-aged man in the photograph, Wendy found it difficult to believe that she had ever been married to him. She noticed that he had put on some weight since their Coventry days and developed crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. She realized that Bruce was watching her as she studied the photograph. She quickly passed it back to Tara.

  ‘They’ve suggested I might like to go away with them on holiday,’ Tara was saying. ‘They’ve got a timeshare in Portugal. It’s no wonder they’re all so brown. Look, here’s another one with me and the boys and Mel.’

  ‘Mel?’

  ‘It’s short for Melissa.’

  Wendy regarded the slim, undeniably attractive Melissa and wondered how it was that the man she had once been married to had transformed from Robert into Bob. It made her feel foolish, the way she had always referred to him as Robert. It was as if they had never been on sufficiently intimate terms for her to know what his real name was. She handed the photograph across the table to Bruce. ‘And how was the journey down, with John?’

  ‘It was great to catch up with him. He’s been accepted at the Polytechnic, in Birmingham. He’s going to live back at his parents’ place while he does his degree.’ Though she was responding to her mother, Tara directed her words at Bruce, her tone unmistakably challenging, but if she had been hoping for any acknowledgement that he had misjudged John, she was disappointed. Bruce merely asked Katie to pass him the custard.

  Next morning, Wendy decided to give the bedrooms a thorough clean. She was still wondering whether John had featured more in Tara’s weekend than her daughter had admitted, but she found nothing left lying about in Tara’s rooms to indicate that. Wendy was not normally given to snooping on her children, and by the conclusion of her unsuccessful operation she felt rather ashamed of herself, particularly as she did not even know what she had been expecting to find. Her mood was not improved by the discovery that not only was Katie’s room as untidy as usual, but her previous efforts at tidying when last instructed to do so had consisted of pushing everything out of sight under her bed, where it now lay like the detritus left behind by the retreat of a tidal wave.

  On Katie’s return from school Wendy marched her upstairs and demanded that she lift the valance to reveal the mess.

  ‘I want all this stuff picked up and put away properly,’ Wendy said. ‘You’re to stay in here until it’s done, do you understand? And when you’ve finished, I will be coming up here to check that you’ve done it properly.’

  Katie mumbled that she did understand and Wendy departed, closing the door behind her. In truth, she was less annoyed by the mess than by the way Katie had lied to her, assuring her that everything had been tidied satisfactorily, when it so clearly had not.

  She half expected Katie to reappear after half an hour and claim the job was done, but the clock ticked towards five and there was no sign of her. At a quarter past, beginning to feel suspicious, she crept up the stairs, intending to check that tidying, as opposed to any other activity, was still in progress. When she reached Katie’s door, she heard crying within. For a moment she hesitated, hand an inch from the door handle. It was horrid to think of Katie, sitting inside, sobbing amid the mess, but then she remembered that the situation was entirely of her daughter’s own making, and that there had been lying involved too. Katie was learning a valuable lesson. She slipped quietly back down to the kitchen.

  It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later when she heard Katie start screaming and pounding on the door with her fists – or possibly kicking it. Katie never threw tantrums – or not since she was a toddler anyway. Well … let her scream and shout. The room had to be tidied and throwing a wobbler was not going to make any difference. Tara had phoned to say she was calling at a friend’s on her way back from college, and Jamie was playing outside, so there was no one around to hear her.

  Two minutes later, Bruce’s car pulled into the drive, rather earlier than his usual time.

  ‘Good grief!’ he exclaimed, as he walked in at the back door. ‘What on earth is happening up there?’ Without waiting for an answer, he raced up the hall and Wendy heard him taking the stairs two at a time.

  She thought about following him or calling after him, but on second thoughts, she would let Katie explain for herself. When Bruce discovered that she was merely playing up, he would be just as annoyed by their daughter’s behaviour as she was herself. From the kitchen, Wendy heard the screaming and pounding stop abruptly. After a few minutes she heard Bruce’s approach and turned to face him as he entered the kitchen. His expression was oddly serious.

  ‘I’ve sent Katie to wash her face before she comes down.’

  ‘And got her to stop that caterwauling too,’ Wendy said approvingly.

  ‘Caterwauling? The child was terrified. What on earth were you thinking of, letting her get herself worked up into such a state?’

  ‘She worked herself up. It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘She says you locked her in her bedroom.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bruce. I found a whole stack of stuff shoved under the bed from when she said she’d tidied up before, and I told her to stay in there until she had sorted it all out. How could I possibly have locked her in? There aren’t any keys. You can’t lock any of the bedroom doors. She was just having a tantrum, that’s all.’

  Bruce hesitated. She could see that the point about the lack of keys had hit home.

  ‘Katie doesn’t have tantrums,’ he said.

  ‘Well, she had one today.’

  ‘She was frightened. She thought she was locked in.’

  ‘Oh, really? And did you have to break the door down to release her?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  ‘The door must have jammed. She was obviously terrified. You should have gone up to her to see what was the matter.’

  ‘I know what the matter was. She had been caught out fibbing and not doing what she was told and she didn’t like having to sort it out. And what’s more, you ought to be backing me up on this, not criticizing me. Whatever happened to showing a united front and not allowing the children to divide and rule?’

  The conversation might have continued but for the arrival of Jamie, asking what was for tea, and then Katie herself appeared, red-eyed and crestfallen. In response to Wendy’s question about her bedroom, she said, without meeting her mother’s eye, that she had finished putting everything away and Wendy said briskly, ‘That’s good then.’

  The episode was not quite over, however, for not long after they
had settled into bed and Bruce had switched out the light, the quiet was disturbed by yet more screams from Katie’s room.

  ‘No, Mammy, no! Oh, don’t please, Mam, don’t!’

  Both parents raced across the landing, as they had done once before, and Bruce was again the first to arrive, hushing Katie and holding her to him as he sat beside her on the bed. Wendy hovered in the doorway, anxious lest the noise had woken Jamie, but there was no sound of him getting out of bed.

  ‘Was it a bad dream, poppet?’ Bruce was asking.

  ‘It was a horrible dream. I was up in the attic and there was a horrid old woman and she said, “What have you got there?” and I said, “Nothing.” And then I tried to run away and at first I couldn’t get out and she was going to hurt me,’ Katie’s words tumbled out. ‘Then I was running down the stairs and out into the yard and the old woman had turned into Mam, but she was frightening and she was going to hurt me too …’

  ‘Now then, now then …’ Bruce was coaxing, soothing. ‘You know that Mummy would never hurt you.’

  ‘I know that, but in my dream …’

  ‘Why not let Mummy go and get you a nice glass of water and you just calm down and stop thinking about this nasty dream? Where’s Huey? Here, look …’ Bruce reached down and located the bear in question. ‘You take Huey …’

  Wendy heard no more, having taken her cue to fetch a glass of water, but by the time she returned, Bruce was emerging from Katie’s room, waving her away as he carefully closed the door behind him.

  ‘What did you do to that child this afternoon?’ he asked when they were safely back inside their own room.

  ‘What on earth do you mean? You’re surely not blaming me for this?’

  ‘Whatever you did, she’s absolutely traumatized.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Bruce!’

  ‘You heard her … “Don’t Mammy, don’t!”’

  ‘This is ridiculous. She was dreaming. All kinds of weird things happen in dreams that bear no resemblance to real life. Katie got herself into a strop this afternoon because she’d been told off for not tidying up her bedroom. She was made to spend her afternoon doing something she’d been told to do days ago and she didn’t like it, so she lost her temper and got herself worked up and overheated and this is the result.’