The Memory Tree

by Linda Gillard

  ‘She might have died with her love for Hester intact.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well, she still thought of her as a protective adoptive mother.’

  ‘Who’d colluded with covering up incest.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t think that. But even if she did, knowing why she destroyed the archive allows you to move on, Connor. It’s an ending to the story. We don’t know if it’s the real ending, but it is an ending. Without it you’d spend the rest of your life wondering, trying to make sense of what happened. And I really can’t recommend spending another forty years trying to come up with motives for apparently inexplicable actions.’

  ‘You mean Sylvester?’

  I nodded. ‘I wish I could have got inside his head somehow, even if it turned out he was a lying, cheating scumbag with a second family in Madeira. Maybe if we’d ever known the truth, Phoebe and I would have been closer. Fonder. We could have shared the hurt.’

  ‘You really think she doesn’t know?’

  I looked up, astonished.

  ‘Forgive me for pointing this out, Ann, but you only know what your mother’s told you.’

  ‘Just like Ivy . . .’ I murmured.

  ‘Just like Ivy.’

  An uncomfortable silence was broken by Phoebe calling out from upstairs.

  ‘I’d better go and see what she wants. Come back at the weekend, Connor. We’ve got lots to celebrate.’

  ‘I’d like that. I don’t have to wear the tux again, do I?’

  ‘Not unless you want me to struggle to keep my hands off you.’ Phoebe called out again, more impatiently. I took a step towards him, stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth, then turned and ran upstairs.

  Long before he turned up for the champagne celebration, I knew Connor was up to something. I was searching for a book in the studio, a compendium of William Morris designs, and it wasn’t on the bookcase where I kept all the volumes currently in use for work. There was no gap where the book should have been – would have been if I’d just taken it off the shelf – which struck me as odd. It looked as if someone had closed up the books to disguise the fact that one was missing.

  I went back into the house and found Phoebe extracting pages from her most recent sketchbook.

  ‘Ah, there you are! Come and tell me which of these poses you think would be best for Connor’s portrait. I’ve made up my mind, but I want to see if you agree.’

  She showed me three sketches, allowing me time to consider each one.

  ‘Is it going to be a portrait in oils?’

  ‘Oil pastel. Quicker and easier for me.’

  I nodded and studied the sketches again. ‘Well, they’re all good.’

  Phoebe allowed herself a satisfied smile.

  ‘I’d reject the full-length pose though. His height distracts from his face.’ After more consideration I said, ‘The profile, I think. That’s all you really want. Head and shoulders. You need the set of his shoulders – it’s so Connor. But profile is good because you see all the determination in the nose and jaw. You can see he’s a fighter. The full-face sketch just looks . . .’

  ‘Handsome.’

  ‘Yes. And Connor’s so much more, isn’t he?’

  Phoebe beamed.

  ‘I take it I picked the right one?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ann, but you picked the same one as me. You have a good eye, I’ll say that for you. Years spent drawing all those finicky plants, I suppose.’

  Ignoring the slur, I said, ‘Actually, that was why I came in. Have you borrowed one of my Morris books?’

  ‘No. That would be Connor.’

  ‘Connor?’

  ‘He asked me if he could borrow a book, just for this week.’

  ‘Why did he ask you and not me?’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Whatever he’s making.’

  ‘Mum, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, you aren’t supposed to know, but he’s working on a present for you. He wanted to borrow a particular book on Morris, so I said he could. You’ve got so many, I didn’t think you’d miss one.’

  ‘What’s he making?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. Said I’d blab,’ she added indignantly. ‘But the Green Woman will be a hard act to follow. I suppose we’ll find out on Friday night.’ She turned her attention back to the sketches. ‘The profile is definitely the one. Heroic, but still vulnerable . . . Can’t wait to see what he comes up with for you. Bound to be something interesting.’

  Even before I learned Connor was making me a present, I knew what I wanted to give him: a photo album filled with pictures of Garden Lodge and the restoration of the walled garden. In addition to the usual before and after shots, I included a photo of Phoebe on a garden bench, sketching, wrapped in a blanket and sporting her tweed cap. There was one of Connor with a muddy face, grinning at the camera, brandishing his spade. Others showed the Green Woman, the beech wood and distant Beechgrave up on the hill, taken from my bedroom window. I’d recorded winter turning into spring, from bare branches against a pale sky, to trees smothered in snowy blossom. In the final photo, taken by Phoebe, I stood beside the massive stump of the fallen Trysting Tree, holding the rusty tin that contained William’s love letters.

  I printed out the photos, arranged them in the album, then inscribed it. I could have just given him a USB stick, but I thought Connor of all people would appreciate an album recording the last few months. I hoped it would compensate a little for the sad conclusion to Ivy’s story.

  When he arrived on a fine April evening, we were ready with champagne, a special gift and – for what we trusted would not be a last supper – his favourite fish pie. Connor turned up with two large holdalls and a carrier bag full of narcissi.

  ‘I couldn’t resist. The supermarket was practically giving them away, so I bought the lot. Hope you’ve got enough jugs and vases,’ he said, handing over the flowers. ‘Now, ladies, you must excuse me for a while. I have some business to attend to.’

  ‘Business?’ Phoebe asked.

  ‘Secret business. I’ll be back shortly to collect you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked with a laugh.

  ‘It’s a surprise. This time it’s for you, Ann.’

  ‘For me?’ I said, feigning surprise. ‘Well, as it happens, we have something for you too. Shall we save it for later?’

  ‘Yes, I need to get to work before the light goes.’

  ‘We’ll see you later then. For bubbly and surprises.’

  He set off up the garden path, carrying his bulging holdalls. I was just about to shut the front door when he wheeled round suddenly. ‘Can I borrow a ladder?’

  ‘It’s in the garage. I’ll come and unlock it.’

  Connor wouldn’t allow me to accompany him to his mystery destination, so I left the ladder propped up against the garage door and returned to the house, where I found Phoebe arranging her flowers.

  ‘Aren’t they gorgeous? Wonderful to have them in such profusion. The house will be full of their scent soon.’ She buried her face in some blooms and inhaled. When she emerged, she said, ‘Shall we take a picture?’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’ I looked round for my camera, but it wasn’t on the shelf where I normally left it, so I went to look in the kitchen. It wasn’t there either. I ran upstairs to see if I’d put it in my room. Drawing a blank, I came down again, calling out. ‘You haven’t seen my camera, have you?’

  Phoebe appeared in the doorway. ‘Did you leave it on the hall table?’

  ‘No. I can’t find it anywhere.’

  ‘You took it out yesterday, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have forgotten it.’

  I spent the next few minutes checking every room again while Phoebe searched the sitting room thoroughly, but to no avail.

  Putting my head round the sitting room door, I said, ‘I’m going out to look for it before it gets dark.’

  ‘Perhaps
Connor will have spotted it.’

  ‘Hope so,’ I said, pulling on my coat. ‘Could you put the oven on for the pie? I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  I closed the back door and headed over to the walled garden where I’d taken some shots the day before. One circuit of the path established that my camera wasn’t there, so I went over to the studio and had a scout round, even though I was beginning to suspect I’d left the camera in the wood. I remembered putting it down to take a phone call, then, when it had started to rain, I’d headed back to the house, still on the phone. I reassured myself the camera was safe inside its waterproof case and should have come to no harm.

  The light was fading fast and when I got there the wood seemed gloomy, almost forbidding. As I retraced my steps to the spot where I thought I’d taken the call, I heard a sound that stopped me in my tracks, a sound that was familiar, yet I knew I hadn’t heard it in a very long time. Decades, possibly. It was the slow, rhythmic creaking of a branch of a tree. When the sound stopped suddenly, I set off in that direction, intrigued. I spotted the silver glint of the ladder, propped up against one of the beeches and hurried over to the clearing to ask Connor if he’d seen my camera. As I skirted round the Green Woman, something else caught my eye.

  A swing was hanging from a horizontal branch of a tree and a man was standing on it, his back towards me, his head bowed.

  I began to shake uncontrollably, then my knees gave way beneath me. As I sank to the ground, a sob rising in my throat, I saw what I had seen. I knew – finally – what I had always known.

  I saw my father and I knew that he was dead.

  THE BEECH WOOD

  It was early when the child wandered into the wood. Dew still lay on the ground, but by then it was all over.

  She had come to retrieve the doll she’d left by the swing, propped up among our tangled roots, so it could observe her as she swung back and forth, serenading us with nursery rhymes.

  When she arrived in the clearing, the child’s eyes were cast down, but watchful. She wished to avoid the gleaming, black slugs, as big as her father’s thumb. But she wasn’t afraid. This was her wood. The only other person who came here was her father. He’d hung a new swing for her when the ropes of the old one finally frayed.

  The doll was where the child had left it, but it had fallen over, dislodged by some nocturnal creature. She didn’t see the doll. Long before she reached the foot of the tree, she sensed she was not alone and looked up to see her father standing on the swing. She ran towards him, delighted to have company.

  She stopped when she realised something was wrong. He was wearing his dressing gown and he was floating, like an angel. His slippered feet didn’t touch the seat of the swing and his arms weren’t holding the ropes, they hung loose at his sides. She couldn’t see his face because his back was towards her, but his head hung forward, as if he were very sad.

  The child stood still and waited for her father to move. When he didn’t, she called his name in a small, high voice, then again, louder. The silence was broken only by startled crows, flapping their wings in protest.

  She began to back away from the swing. Stumbling over a tree root, she regained her balance, then turned and started to run, with no thought for her abandoned doll, nor care for the slugs she crushed underfoot.

  Not until she was out of sight did we hear the first of many screams.

  PHOEBE

  Someone was banging at the back door. Phoebe had just closed her eyes for a few moments while she waited for Ann to return and the loud noise had startled her. Annoyed her too. Why was Ann knocking on the door when it wasn’t even locked?

  Groaning, she hauled herself out of her armchair and reached for her stick. ‘All, right, all right! I’m coming,’ she grumbled as she shuffled into the kitchen. Yanking the door open, she protested, ‘Why on earth didn’t you—’ but the question died on her lips as Connor almost fell into the kitchen carrying Ann, who was whimpering, her eyes wild. ‘For God’s sake, Connor, what happened? Is she all right?’

  His face almost as pale as Ann’s, Connor gasped, ‘She knows! Her memory’s come back. She knows, Phoebe! And you know too, don’t you?’

  She blinked at him, unsure whether he was angry or just afraid. ‘Yes. I know,’ she admitted. ‘I hoped Ann never would.’

  Connor staggered into the kitchen and shut the door behind him with a vicious kick. ‘She’s in shock. I’m putting her to bed and I’m going to sit with her. Make a hot water bottle. And some tea. But ring a doctor first.’ He didn’t wait for a reply, but pushed past Phoebe and mounted the stairs, carrying Ann.

  Phoebe fetched the phone from the hall and sat at the kitchen table to make the call. Someone took her details and said a doctor would ring back shortly. She laid the phone down, went over to the sink and filled the kettle. As she leaned against the worktop, waiting for the water to boil, her eyes fell on the fish pie Ann had made.

  Phoebe turned the oven off and buried her face in her hands.

  By the time the doctor rang back, Ann was calmer, but still unable to speak, so Phoebe explained that she thought her daughter had probably experienced a flashback to the time she found her father’s body hanging in the wood.

  The doctor said Ann would need rest and, when she was ready, she might benefit from counselling. He assured them that she had suffered no physical harm, but her mind would need time to recover. Registering Phoebe’s age, he asked if she would be able to cope on her own. She scoffed at his concern and hung up.

  Phoebe looked up at Connor, sitting on the other side of the bed. ‘Did you hear all that?’ He nodded. ‘Poor thing,’ Phoebe whispered. She lifted a hand towards Ann’s head, but appeared to change her mind. ‘Better not disturb her. The doc said she needs to rest.’

  ‘I’m going to sit up with her all night, so if you want to get some sleep, that’s fine by me. I can call you if she wakes.’

  ‘I’m not tired. I want to be here if she wakes up. That’s the least I can do,’ Phoebe added ruefully. ‘There’s a fish pie downstairs. Are you hungry?’

  ‘No. Are you?’

  ‘No. I feel like I’ll never be hungry again.’ She shook her head. ‘But Ann went to such a lot of trouble to make it. All for you. She’s very fond of you, you know.’

  ‘Yes. And I’m very fond of her.’

  Phoebe studied the sleeping face. ‘She was a beautiful little girl. Exquisite. And so intense. That’s the Madeiran blood. She was her father’s daughter.’

  ‘Why did he do it, Phoebe? I’d like to understand. I think I might be more use to Ann if I knew what actually happened.’

  She sat in silence for some moments, staring into space, her face blank. Eventually she said, ‘I suppose I might as well tell you. I haven’t spoken of it in . . . almost forty years.’ She sat back and folded her arms. Fixing her eyes on a point in the middle of the floor, Phoebe said, ‘The marriage was already over by then. There had been a stupid row . . . I might have been a bit drunk. I went to bed and took a sleeping pill, so I knew nothing till Ann woke me up the following morning, pulling at the bedclothes, hysterical.’

  ‘Did she see him die?’

  ‘No, thank God. The post-mortem established the time of death. He’d been dead for hours when she found him.’

  ‘Did Sylvester suffer from depression?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’d always had a tendency to mood swings. He was mercurial. Unbearable in the winter. You’d think we were living in Siberia, the fuss he used to make about the weather! So I encouraged him to spend time abroad, for the good of his health and the business. He imported wine and he was away a lot. Well, I’m not faithful by nature and I’m easily bored. Opportunities presented themselves . . . I’m not proud of what I did, but they were just flings, not relationships. They meant very little to me. Sylvester was the only man I ever loved, but he found that hard to believe. He couldn’t understand hurting people you loved . . . But just look at what he did! What he did to Ann and me! Yet I know he really loved
us. He was ill, you see. Very ill. And I had no idea . . . It took me a long time to forgive him, but in the end I did. I’m still working on forgiving myself.’

  ‘He found out you’d been unfaithful?’

  ‘No, he didn’t suspect a thing! He was a trusting soul. No, it was more complicated than that and I didn’t handle it well . . . I had an abortion, you see. Sylvester was furious. Heartbroken. He’d wanted another child for years and I’d refused. This one was an accident, but he’d guessed I was pregnant. I was throwing up and couldn’t work. So I got rid of it. In Sylvester’s eyes that was murder. I’d murdered a child, his child. I should have left it at that, said no more, but I thought the truth might make things easier for him.’

  ‘I’m guessing it didn’t.’

  Phoebe looked at Ann and murmured, ‘When does the truth ever make anything easier?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him the truth, which was that the baby wasn’t even his.’

  Connor winced.

  ‘What else could I say? I didn’t want him thinking he’d lost a child. He hadn’t.’

  ‘But he took it badly?’

  ‘The marriage didn’t recover. Nor did Sylvester. He moved into the spare room and started putting things in order. Filing. Accounts. I assumed he was preparing to leave me, which was what I deserved, so I didn’t say anything. Nor did he. We both suffered in silence.’

  ‘You didn’t realise he was cracking up?’

  ‘No, I was used to his black moods. They’d always passed. Eventually.’

  ‘And Ann knew nothing of all this?’

  ‘She was only five. If she’d overheard anything, she wouldn’t have understood. But I should have seen it coming. It was all too much for him. The abortion. The infidelity. I think he even began to doubt whether Ann was his child. But he said nothing, just went quietly mad. Towards the end he was very tender with Ann. Spent a lot of time with her. I thought he was trying to compensate for landing her with a monster for a mother, but he was saying goodbye. He wanted her to have good memories of him. And he succeeded. She didn’t remember any of what came afterwards. Until today.’