The Memory Tree

by Linda Gillard

  ‘Why didn’t you ever tell her what had happened to him?’

  ‘I couldn’t explain because she’d forgotten! How do you tell a five-year-old her dad has hanged himself, if her brain is telling her it didn’t happen? Everyone said her memory would come back eventually, so I just played along. What else could I do? I was beside myself. Don’t you see, I loved Sylvester and I’d killed him!’

  ‘No, Phoebe.’

  ‘As good as! I drove him to suicide.’

  ‘That tendency must have been there already. Plenty of men have survived unfaithful wives. You might have contributed to his depression, but you weren’t responsible for his death.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to say so, Connor, but I haven’t changed my mind in forty years. I’m guilty as hell.’

  He regarded Phoebe’s ravaged face and said gently, ‘How did you cope with Ann – after she found him?’

  ‘She had hysterics, then she went to sleep. Out like a light. She slept for a very long time, then when she woke up, she seemed all right. Normal, almost. I remember she was very hungry, but she said nothing about Sylvester. So I rang Dagmar – she’s my agent – and asked her to come and take Ann back to London for a few days. She’d been to Dagmar’s flat before and knew her well, so I made out this was a special treat and told Dagmar to spoil her rotten. The minute Ann was gone, I took the damn swing down.’ Phoebe looked up, her eyes filling with tears. ‘He must have stood on it . . . before he jumped.’

  ‘That’s why Ann had the flashback. She saw me standing on a swing.’ Phoebe looked perplexed. ‘I made one for her. As a present.’

  ‘Oh God, you didn’t!’ Phoebe exclaimed.

  Ann stirred and they watched her sleeping figure anxiously until she settled again.

  Connor sighed. ‘I had no idea what a swing would mean to Ann.’

  ‘No, of course you didn’t. I’m sorry, that was stupid of me.’

  ‘I’d hung it in the wood and I was testing it for weight. I wanted to make sure it was safe.’ He bowed his head and looked at his hands. ‘If I hadn’t made that swing—’

  ‘No, don’t blame yourself! It’s probably better she knows what happened. It was a brain bomb waiting to go off at any time.’

  ‘When she came back from London, did she ask about the swing?’

  ‘No, that’s what was so very odd. She didn’t mention the disappearance of the swing, but if she’d wiped the incident completely, she would have asked what happened to it, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Did she ever mention it?’

  ‘No, never. Then after she’d been home for a few days, she asked me when Daddy was coming home. That’s when I realised. She didn’t remember anything. I didn’t know what to say, so I just played for time. I concocted some story about Sylvester going away for a long time. Abroad, for work. She asked me again and I stuck to my story, then after a few weeks, I told her Daddy wouldn’t be coming home any more. She asked if we were getting divorced. God knows where she’d heard the word. School, I suppose. I didn’t even know if she knew what it meant, but I said, yes, we were. I told her Daddy had decided he didn’t want to live with us any more – which was true. I said he’d gone away and I didn’t know even where he was – which was also true, in a way. It seemed the kindest thing to say. She was so very young and her brain seemed to be protecting her from the horror, so I thought I should too. I knew I’d have to come clean one day, but I thought it could wait until she was older, until she had a chance of understanding why Sylvester did what he did. Somehow the opportunity never arose. Then once she was an adult, I didn’t want to tell her because . . .’ Phoebe hesitated.

  ‘Because of the abortion.’

  ‘Yes. She and Jack went through so much trying to conceive a child. How could I tell Ann I got rid of a baby with scarcely a second thought? It just became impossible to talk about it, any of it. There were so many lies! Eventually the lies were so old, they seemed like the truth.’

  Ann stirred again, tossing her head back and forth on the pillow.

  ‘I think she’s surfacing,’ Phoebe hissed.

  ‘Maybe she’s thirsty.’

  ‘Hungry, more likely. It’s been hours since she ate anything and she only grabbed a bite at lunchtime.’

  They continued to watch as she rolled over in bed, mumbling. Connor thought he caught his name, then decided he’d imagined it. As Ann’s eyelids began to flicker, he said in an urgent undertone, ‘You have to tell her, Phoebe. All of it. She has to understand what happened. She will understand, if you tell her.’

  She stared at him, dull-eyed and exhausted. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘You treated Sylvester badly, but not Ann. You never did anything other than try to protect her from the trauma of what she’d witnessed, but couldn’t possibly understand.’

  ‘She might not see it like that.’

  ‘Maybe she won’t, but you still have to tell her.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’ve always known . . . I think perhaps you’d better leave us now, Connor. Would you mind? I’d like to be alone with my daughter.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You might bring me a whisky. In a while. Not yet. And pour one for yourself. It’s been a long day.’

  He got to his feet, still watching Ann. ‘I’ll put that pie in the oven. She’d want us to eat it, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, yes! She made it with such loving care. She had to make an extra trip to the supermarket because she’d run out of nutmegs. I said you wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘Damn right I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Ann said that wasn’t the point. She wanted to do it properly.’ Phoebe shook her head. ‘I love that in her. Her thoroughness. The attention to detail. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘You should tell her.’

  ‘I will when she wakes up. I’ll tell her everything . . . You won’t forget to bring me that whisky, will you? I’m going to need it. Gin for the good times, whisky for the bad times, eh?’

  Connor was almost out of the room when he heard a sharp intake of breath and the rustle of bedclothes. He spun round to see Ann sitting up in bed, staring at Phoebe.

  ‘Mum . . . ? Is something wrong?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Where’s Connor?’

  ‘He’s still here,’ Phoebe said, pointing towards the door.

  ‘I was about to put your fish pie in the oven,’ he said, approaching the bed again, glad to see recognition and relief in Ann’s eyes.

  ‘We can all have a lovely midnight feast!’ Phoebe announced with a fixed smile.

  Ann looked from Phoebe to Connor and said, ‘What happened in the wood?’

  ‘Tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘No. When I was five.’

  ‘Phoebe will explain. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.’

  He closed the door behind him and began to descend the stairs. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was almost 2.00 a.m. Still a long time till dawn, but at first light he would go up to the beech wood and take down the swing before Ann had a chance to set eyes on it again.

  ANN

  By the time Ann arrived at the clearing in the beech wood Connor had already taken down the swing. She stood at a distance, watching him, trying to remember what life was like before yesterday; before Connor rang the doorbell on a rainy January morning and asked to view the house; before he’d come to seem so very necessary in her life. She couldn’t remember that time. There was only now.

  She walked on towards him, stepping carefully on the mossy ground, heavy with dew. She made no noise, but he looked up, suddenly alert. Winding long pieces of rope round the swing seat, he said, ‘You’re up. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Very strange. Fish pie for breakfast was a new experience. It tasted surprisingly good.’

  ‘You can’t beat home-made.’

  As he bundled the seat into a holdall, Ann said, ‘No, don’t. Show me. I’d like to see it.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. Phoebe said you borrowed one of my
books on William Morris.’

  ‘For the decoration. I know you love what he does with plants.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Phoebe said. She explained about the Morris room. How he was your hero.’

  She smiled. ‘You like Phoebe, don’t you?’

  ‘I think I love Phoebe.’ He held Ann’s eyes. ‘But not as much as I love you.’

  She said nothing and looked down. When she felt able to speak, she said, ‘Show me what you made.’

  He unravelled the ropes again and displayed the wooden seat. A pattern of carved beech leaves curled around the edge and in the centre it said Ann de Freitas 2015.

  ‘I wanted to make something to remind you of the time we spent here. And I’m not really up to making garden benches.’

  She traced the shape of a leaf with her finger. ‘It’s beautiful, Connor. Such a thoughtful present. Thank you.’

  ‘I didn’t know—’

  ‘No, of course you didn’t.’

  ‘And I wanted to give you something that would last.’

  She looked up into his face. ‘Oh, believe me, you have . . . If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to hang the swing back up for me. It belongs here.’

  ‘No trouble at all.’

  He bent to put to the seat down. As he straightened up, Ann put her arms round his waist and laid her head down on his chest. He folded her in his arms and they stood in silence until she said, ‘Phoebe always said he loved us. She insisted on that. I suppose that love just wasn’t enough.’

  ‘If you’re very ill, sometimes it’s not. My dad didn’t love me enough to stop drinking.’

  ‘She talked about him recently. Sylvester. I’d brought the subject up. I said I wondered if he ever thought of me, the way I often think about him. She said something rather odd. It seems even odder now that I know.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said, “I’m absolutely convinced, wherever he is now, your welfare still matters to him.”’

  ‘I think she believes that.’

  ‘Do you? I wish I could.’

  ‘You could try. Can’t do any harm, can it?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  She laid her head down again and they listened to the silence of the beech wood until Connor whispered, ‘Could you use some coffee? Let me make you some.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  He took her hand and they walked through the wood, past the laughing Green Woman, into the spring sunlight.

  Connor looked up at the cloudless sky and said, ‘It’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ann replied. ‘I think it is.’

  THE BEECH WOOD

  She has remembered what she saw long ago, what she found. There was a dark place in the wood and in her heart, a place that held secrets. Now nothing is hidden. Now she can grieve. Forgive. Love. Her life is full.

  We, who have lived long, have borne witness to these things.

  Were we human, we should rejoice.

  Were we human, we should weep to see what we have seen, see what we see.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank the following people for their help and support in the writing of this book: Tina Betts, Clare Cooper, Amanda Fairclough, Lorna Fergusson, Margaret Gillard, Amy Glover, Philip Glover, David J. Hogg, Bill Marshall, Erica Munro, Joanne Phillips, Sally Salmon and Katherine Wren.

  I would also like to thank the staff of the National Trust at Tyntesfield, Somerset.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Linda Gillard lives in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, and has been an actress, journalist and teacher. She’s the author of eight novels, including Star Gazing, shortlisted in 2009 for Romantic Novel of the Year and the Robin Jenkins Literary Award. Star Gazing was also voted Favourite Romantic Novel 1960–2010 by Woman’s Weekly readers.

  Linda’s fourth novel, House of Silence, became a Kindle bestseller and was selected by Amazon as one of its Top Ten ‘Best of 2011’ in the Indie Author category.

  Find out more about Linda at www.lindagillard.co.uk.