The Memory Tree

by Linda Gillard

  ALSO BY LINDA GILLARD

  Emotional Geology

  A Lifetime Burning

  Star Gazing

  House of Silence

  Untying the Knot

  The Glass Guardian

  Cauldstane

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016, 2019 by Linda Gillard

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously self-published as The Trysting Tree in Great Britain in 2016.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542009539

  ISBN-10: 1542009537

  Cover design by Debbie Clement

  For my friend, Erica Munro

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART ONE

  THE BEECH WOOD

  ANN

  PHOEBE

  ANN

  IVY

  ANN

  THE BEECH WOOD

  ANN

  PHOEBE

  ANN

  PART TWO

  HESTER

  ANN

  HESTER

  THE BEECH WOOD

  WILLIAM

  HESTER

  ANN

  HESTER

  ANN

  HESTER

  WILLIAM

  HESTER

  ANN

  THE BEECH WOOD

  PART THREE

  VIOLET

  HESTER

  PHOEBE

  ANN

  HESTER

  THE BEECH WOOD

  WILLIAM

  HESTER

  WILLIAM

  HESTER

  THE BEECH WOOD

  PART FOUR

  ANN

  HESTER

  CONNOR

  ANN

  WILLIAM

  THE BEECH WOOD

  WILLIAM

  THE BEECH WOOD

  PART FIVE

  WILLIAM

  HESTER

  ANN

  IVY

  ANN

  THE BEECH WOOD

  PHOEBE

  ANN

  THE BEECH WOOD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  War is the normal occupation of man. War – and gardening.

  Winston Churchill, 1918

  PART ONE

  THE BEECH WOOD

  She has forgotten what she saw long ago, what she found. Daily she walks in the wood, a woman now, who walked beneath our boughs as a child. Alone then; alone now.

  The tree still stands, one of our number, where the child swung back and forth, laughing, clutching the thick ropes the man had slung over one of its branches. Now the woman gazes up at the leafy canopy and shivers.

  The swing is gone, taken down long ago, but the rope left scars. She doesn’t see them, doesn’t remember. But she’s beginning to wonder if she has forgotten. And what she has forgotten.

  There is a hole at the heart of the tree, a dark place that holds secrets. The woman looks up at the hiding place the child could never reach and she wonders.

  She is scarred like the tree, with a secret hidden in her heart. Something dark. Forgotten. Unreachable.

  ANN

  When the old beech tree came down in the storm it was as if someone had died. Someone who’d been around forever, who’d seemed immortal, like an elder statesman or the Queen.

  I actually cried. I pretended it was fear. The tree had missed the studio by inches and we could have been crushed, pinned to the ground like dead butterflies, transfixed by its branches. I allowed my mother to believe it was shock that made me weep, but it was grief. I’d lost a childhood friend. A link with my father.

  When I’d calmed down, I photographed the tree, carefully recording the two centuries of graffiti incised on its smooth grey bark. Don’t ask me why. It seemed important at the time. When the tree surgeons came, I couldn’t bear to watch, so I hid indoors, but I still had to listen to the cruel whine of the chainsaws.

  It was distressing because I knew the tree wasn’t actually dead. It was weak and very old, but not dead. Even though it had succumbed to the storm, it might have continued to live, horizontally, maintaining a tenuous hold on life through its massive root system, part of which still clung to the damp earth. They were killing a living thing with many other living things growing in it and on it. It was a massacre.

  The beech had flattened the shed and an outhouse. Even if we’d removed all its branches, the trunk, five metres in circumference, would have filled the garden, like a bus. It had to go, so I let them carve it up and cart it away. It took days.

  On the second day, one of the men knocked on the back door and handed me what looked like a rusty biscuit tin. ‘We found this in a hole in the tree. Thought you might like to see if there’s anything valuable inside. Maybe the lost family jewels, eh?’ he said with a smile before going back to his noisy work.

  I had to take a chisel to the lid. Inside I found something wrapped in oilcloth. I hesitated before touching it, wondering what on earth the cloth might contain. There was no unpleasant smell, so I concluded the contents were inorganic or totally decayed. Cautious still, I donned rubber gloves and picked up the bundle. Despite its size, it weighed very little. I unwrapped the cloth to find it was protecting seed packets, beautiful antique seed packets, maybe a hundred years old. The delicate flower paintings were the sort of thing you’d frame nowadays and hang on a wall. But these were originals, glued by hand.

  I wondered why anyone would go to so much trouble to preserve seeds. They weren’t rare varieties, just humble cottage garden flowers: hollyhocks, lupins, nasturtiums, nothing special. I picked up a packet of nasturtium seeds, turned it over and read the back, wondering if the seeds would still be viable. As I held the packet between my gloved fingers, I realised it was empty. Nasturtium seeds are the size of petit pois. So are lupin seeds. I took off my gloves and felt the packets, then shook them vigorously, close to my ear. Every single packet – and there must have been twenty – appeared to be empty. Sealed, but empty.

  I put the packets back in the tin and filled the kettle, averting my eyes from the dismemberment outside. As the water came to the boil, I was already preoccupied with the question that would come to haunt me in the coming weeks. Why would anyone hide empty seed packets in a hollow tree?

  But the story doesn’t start there. I need to go back. Back to a time when the beech tree still stood, when I didn’t know the truth about my family and Connor didn’t know the truth about his. Right back to a time when the twentieth century was young and the beech still kept its secrets.

  When I was at art school we studied the work of a contemporary artist, Phoebe Flint, celebrated for her portraits. Her career fell into two distinct periods. During the first, which ended in the 1970s, her work was considered interesting, if derivative, and occasionally outstanding. Then, during the second period, she came into her own. Her mature work was consistently original and brilliant. Looking at a Flint portrait, you were never in any doubt as to the identity of the artist. Her work was as distinctive as Lucian Freud’s and often as unsettling.

  There was a third stage in Phoebe Flint’s life: the period after she stopped painting. She pr
oduced her last portrait in 2009 and the art world assumed she’d died. Some critics even wrote about her in the past tense. But Phoebe Flint didn’t die. It’s true she nearly died, but she’s still very much alive.

  I know because she’s my mother.

  Phoebe got cancer. She fought it for some years, but in the end it wasn’t cancer that stopped her painting, it was the chemotherapy – and not even the chemo itself, but its side effects. The vicious drugs that poisoned her body and saved her life also trashed her nervous system. She was left disabled by something called peripheral neuropathy.

  Phoebe suffered constant pain in her feet and fingers. More importantly, she lost her fine motor control. She continued to paint – or tried to – but she couldn’t stand for long. She found brushes hard to control and frequently dropped them, along with her palette. She dropped other things too: teapots, kettles, bottles of wine – a lot of bottles of wine – and sometimes she ended up in A&E, scalded or bleeding, fulminating against the ravaged body that had let her down.

  Her agent persuaded her to hire an assistant, so Phoebe appointed a charming young man to mix her paints, prepare her canvases and meals and occasionally warm her bed. My mother and I were barely in touch and I didn’t know the details of the arrangement. We’d never been close and treatment for cancer did little to mellow her irascible temperament. I visited as often as she permitted, but Phoebe made it plain I was neither wanted nor needed. Since she had a posse of friends and ex-lovers dancing attendance, I had few concerns about her welfare, other than the fear that chemo might actually kill her. (We got on so badly, there were days when I feared if the chemo didn’t, I would.) I tried to keep in touch via phone calls, which she sometimes declined to take, and emails, which she never answered, claiming it hurt her fingers to type.

  Phoebe continued to hold court at Garden Lodge, improbably red-haired, balding, pale and imperious, like a latter-day Elizabeth I, but despite the encouragement of her acolytes and her agent’s nagging, she produced no more portraits.

  Cancer wore Phoebe out and almost broke her spirit, but convalescence gave her an opportunity to reassess. I suspect she held a private retrospective and saw what hitherto no one else had seen, except, perhaps, me. Her prodigious output of portraits had something else in common, apart from a capacity to leap out of their frames and buttonhole the viewer. Post cancer, Phoebe might have stepped back from her easel long enough to see that every single portrait she’d painted since 1976, young or old, male or female, resembled Sylvester. Perhaps my mother finally realised that however many times she painted him and in whatever form, my father wasn’t ever coming back.

  Silvestre Esmeraldo Luis de Freitas. Or Sylvester, as he was commonly known.

  Even after Jack and I married, I kept my own name. Nothing would persuade me to relinquish my Madeiran surname, not when it was coupled with a name like Ann. Could Phoebe have expressed her disdain for her firstborn more clearly? My parents were called Sylvester and Phoebe and I was called Ann. Just Ann, not even a middle name. I felt like somebody else’s child and sometimes wondered if I was.

  Sylvester called me Anna, softening my plain name. I don’t remember much about him. In my memory he’s tall, but I know he wasn’t. Like many Madeiran men, he was short, dark and very handsome, with refined features and pale-blue eyes that looked startling even in photographs.

  Sylvester was a gardener and an importer of Madeiran wines. He spent a lot of time abroad, at least before I was born. He set up a wine import business in Bristol and made a lot of money. An impulsive and cultivated man, he bought one of Phoebe’s paintings, then contacted her to commission another. She declined the commission but asked if she could paint his portrait.

  They fell in love and married. Sylvester bought Garden Lodge, originally the Head Gardener’s cottage on a Victorian estate called Beechgrave. He turned what had been the walled kitchen garden serving a large country house into something like the kind of sub-tropical paradise he’d left behind in Madeira. Somerset’s mild, wet weather combined with the heat-retaining brick walls meant the garden flourished until Sylvester left for good when I was five.

  I barely remember the garden in its heyday, but I do remember running along narrow gravel paths, chasing butterflies and stalking frogs. I have one particularly vivid memory of sitting on my father’s lap, on a bench in the sunshine, eating a warm peach he’d plucked from the wall. No fruit has ever tasted as good since.

  But Phoebe wasn’t interested in gardening. After Sylvester left, she neglected the garden and it soon became overgrown. Perhaps this was a form of revenge. Perhaps she was just preoccupied with her work. My memories of the time are hazy, but when I think back, I have a strong sense of a geographical divide. Phoebe was always indoors, shut away in her studio, painting furiously. I was usually outside, playing on my own in an abandoned garden, which quickly became a wilderness.

  I have no memory of asking Phoebe where Sylvester had gone or why, and she made no attempt to explain. How do you explain marital breakdown to a five-year-old? She dealt with my father as she dealt with everyone who offended or betrayed her. She cast them off into outer darkness and pretended they were dead.

  But I do remember asking repeatedly if he would be coming back. Her answer was always the same. Just the one word.

  ‘No.’

  It was Phoebe’s agent, Dagmar, who summoned the cavalry. I’ve known Dagmar for over forty years. I grew up with few relations and she was like an aunt to me. Dagmar took an interest – as my mother did not – in my artistic aspirations. She encouraged me to pursue a career in textile design and when I became a student in London she served as a sort of mentor.

  If I was in trouble, I’d ring Dagmar. Phoebe had no phone in her studio and I had no reason to believe she read my letters as I never got a reply. So when, at nineteen, I thought I was pregnant it was Dagmar I rang, Dagmar who marched me off to a chemist and bought me a pregnancy test kit. It was Dagmar I rang to say, thank God, I wasn’t pregnant, the test was negative.

  As was every test for the next twenty years.

  ‘Ann? It’s Dagmar. Sorry to bother you, darling, but I need to talk to you about Phoebe.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, not wrong exactly, but I just wanted you to know . . . I really don’t think she’s coping. Not any more.’

  ‘Did she ask you to contact me?’

  ‘No, of course not! And while we’re on the subject, this call didn’t take place. I’ll deny all knowledge if she asks me.’

  ‘Dagmar, I know you’re the soul of tact, but I’m sure you’re aware I haven’t seen Phoebe in months. We’re barely in touch – and that’s her choice, not mine.’

  ‘Yes, I know things are a bit strained, but I really thought you ought to know and I wasn’t sure who else to ring. I mean, I’ve done my best to stand by her, but I’m not family, I’m just her agent.’

  ‘And it’s a long time since she earned you any money. You’d better tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Well, I visited her the other day and, frankly, I was appalled to see what she’s been reduced to. She’s living alone now and she’s decamped to the studio. The house is like the Marie Celeste. Abandoned. She’s made up a bed and she’s cooking stuff in a microwave – that is, when she bothers to cook. When I was there she offered me cold pizza. She said she gets them delivered and I think she must be living on them. There was a stack of boxes piled up in a corner.’

  ‘But don’t her friends visit any more? There used to be so many. I’ve often worried about Phoebe, but I’ve never worried about her being alone.’

  ‘Well, let’s face it, darling, she’s upset a lot of people over the years, not just you. And she’s no longer the glamour puss she was in her youth. Though she did mention she’d invited one of the pizza delivery boys to stay and share her quattro stagioni.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I gather he declined. But she’s become a sad old lady and, though she’ll nev
er admit it, I think she needs someone to look after her. Or at least organise her. She gave me a hug when I left and I could tell she hadn’t washed in a while.’

  ‘Oh, Dagmar, I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with all this.’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. Phoebe wasn’t picking up the phone and she’s stopped replying to email, so I thought I’d better check up on her. And I’d heard rumours she was painting again.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘No. Her hands are just the same. She’s still in pain, but I think she hides it better now. Or maybe she’s just drinking more.’

  ‘Was she drunk when you saw her?’

  ‘No, not drunk, but she definitely needs someone to take away all the empties.’

  ‘Oh, if only the wretched woman would keep in touch! Believe me, I have tried, Dagmar.’

  ‘I know you have. Phoebe just won’t admit she needs help.’

  ‘She can’t bear the thought of being dependent. On anyone. Not for money, not for love, not for anything.’

  ‘Well, she either needs some sort of companion or she needs to sell up. I saw some nasty bruises and she wouldn’t tell me how she came by them. I suspect she’s had a few falls.’

  ‘Oh, no, really?’

  ‘And she really struggled to make us instant coffee. My heart was in my mouth watching her with the kettle, but she wouldn’t let me help. Well, you know what she’s like. She won’t ever admit there’s a problem. But I suspect that’s what the pizza is all about. She’s given up cooking. Given up on everything. So I think you’d better pay her a visit, Ann. But don’t say I sent you.’

  ‘Of course not. I’ll go and see her. I have some news I’ve been meaning to tell her anyway.’

  ‘Good news?’

  ‘No. Well, not unless you like nice tidy endings. Jack and I are finally getting divorced. We said we wouldn’t bother, but he’s met someone he wants to marry. And she’s pregnant.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘So it’s time to draw a line. And I thought I should let Phoebe know. Not that she’ll care, but I like to go through the motions of filial duty. I’d hate her to hear about Jack’s marriage through a third party.’