by Lucy Wood
‘So we’re not lost. We know where we are,’ June said. The roads were narrow with high hedges. She drove fast and every time they went round a corner Tessa braced herself against the seat, imagining another car coming straight at them. ‘Stop doing that,’ June said. ‘You’re making me nervous.’ When another car did pass, they had to squeeze so far over that a kaleidoscope of nettles and bindweed pressed flat and star-like against Tessa’s window.
‘It looks familiar,’ Tessa said again. They had come down here a couple of years ago so that her mother could visit an old friend and got lost trying to find the town. Tessa had been talked into going then and she had been talked into going again now. June didn’t like driving long distances by herself and she needed an excuse not to stay at her friend’s because she hated her dog, which clattered up and down the wooden stairs all night and left hair on the beds. ‘We’ll stay in a bed and breakfast and have a few days away. I’ll pay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got vouchers.’
Now, Tessa definitely recognised that oak tree at the bend and the lay-by after it. ‘Could you pull in here for a sec?’
June sighed impatiently, but she pulled in and stopped the engine. She didn’t like stopping; she liked to be moving, on the move, even if she didn’t know where she was going. ‘I used to sit you on a newspaper to stop you getting car sick,’ she said. ‘I had to buy one especially.’
Tessa tried to open her door but the car was too close to the hedge. There was no way she could get through the gap; maybe a few years ago she could, but extra weight had started to creep up on her. Sean, her boyfriend of nine years, said he didn’t notice any difference. ‘You’re just the same, aren’t you?’ he asked, gentle and puzzled as always. She put on his slippers and jumpers as soon as she got in from work and wore his baggy T-shirts to bed.
June got out of the car so that Tessa could climb over. On her way, Tessa knocked into the horn and it let out a short bellow. It was mid-August and heat funnelled into the lane. The mud was dry and packed down. There were bees everywhere. The hedges were full of honeysuckle and the hard green beginnings of blackberries.
There was a narrow path leading away from the road. ‘I think we went up there,’ Tessa said, although doubt niggled as always – she could walk back up a high street the way she’d come from and not know it, go back in the same shops.
June flicked a horsefly off the back of her hand. ‘Where are you going?’ she called.
Tessa’s plastic flip-flops snapped against the ground. She remembered this. The path was overgrown and shady. There was a signpost with the top snapped off, thick ivy covering a gate; the ground was getting wetter and colder.
June caught up with her. ‘If you see a horsefly on my back, kill it, will you? It’s stalking me.’
The path ended suddenly and opened out on to a shallow pool of water with trees arching over. There, on the far side of the pool, was the tree they had found here last time. It hung low and wide over the water, its thin branches covered in hundreds of small yellow leaves and then, among the leaves, there were other things: a flash of red, something silver trailing almost into the water, a ribbon swaying from a branch. Up closer, the colours and shapes suddenly became hundreds of objects tied all over the tree: shoelaces, bracelets, plastic bags, plaited wool, gloves.
Everything seemed especially quiet and still. The water didn’t move; not even one ripple.
‘I’d forgotten about this,’ June said.
Tessa nodded, although she hadn’t forgotten. They had got lost here before and come across the tree, looking just as half-threatening, half-beautiful as it did now. It was like a strange bird crouched over. Tessa had heard something about wishing trees and knew it was one straight away, although somehow she had imagined it would have looked, or felt, different – more passive maybe, less like it was reaching outwards.
Last time, they had both made wishes. June had rolled her eyes when Tessa suggested it, but she looked at the tree for a while and took off the leather bracelet she wore around her wrist and hung it over a branch. Then she’d gone back to the car and sat in it with the engine idling, singing loudly and out of tune with the radio.
Tessa had taken the band out of her ponytail. She had looked back, heard the car’s faint noise. She couldn’t think of a wish. Her mind had emptied of everything; there was just her heart beating, just a vague tightness in her throat. She had thought it would be easy – why wasn’t it easy? Nothing had come into her head, or rather, suddenly, this did: a memory of that morning when she had walked in on her mother after her shower. It was a mistake, an accident; it should have been something to laugh about. But June, who had wiped clear a gap in the fogged-up mirror and was looking at herself intently, sadly, whipped round like a startled deer, grabbed a towel, and wedged the door so it wouldn’t open any further, peering round from behind it angrily. Afterwards, they had both pretended it hadn’t happened.
That was it. Nothing else had come into Tessa’s mind. It was ridiculous. She could never do anything properly. She knew that her mother was fidgeting around in the car, waiting to leave, so she had looped the hairband over a branch and stood back. What had she wished for, exactly? Nothing else had come into her mind. She had wished for nothing.
She’d tried to forget about it. Wishes she should have made flitted about like moths from time to time but she swatted them away. Maybe she would have forgotten about it completely, but now here they were back again.
‘Where’s the wish you made last time?’ June asked. She had found her bracelet and apart from having faded slightly it looked exactly the same: it looked like a good wish, a solid wish. ‘It’s a shame it didn’t work,’ she said. ‘They’ve stopped selling that design.’ She had a magnetic bracelet on now which Tessa hadn’t seen before.
Tessa looked for her wish but she couldn’t find it. There was a Christmas tree reindeer dangling from one branch, a key ring tied over another. A lot of the thinner branches were bent under the weight of wishes. There was a ribbon that someone had written ‘help’ on and a daisy chain that had shrivelled and dried, each flower closed up tight.
June walked further round the tree. ‘This glove’s gone mouldy. There’s mould all round the fingers.’
Tessa crouched low and looked up into the middle of the wishing tree. Then she saw her hairband. It looked like it had rotted. The elastic had erupted out of it and the whole thing was frayed, thin and crumbly. Her stupid non-wish had rotted. Her palms were hot and sweaty. All she wanted to do was take the band down off the tree and forget about it. She reached up and had barely touched it when it broke, one side falling away from the other. As it broke, she pulled her hand away because she felt something thick and invisible, as if she had moved her hand between two magnets. The band hung on the branch for a second and then fell into the water.
She stood up slowly, rubbing her knee, thinking ‘that’s that’. It was a comforting phrase and she used it a lot for cauterising loose ends. She turned back towards the car.
A breeze made everything on the wishing tree sway first one way and then the other.
‘Got it,’ June said, crushing the horsefly against her leg.
They stayed at the same bed and breakfast as last time. June said it would be easier, more convenient; besides, she hadn’t had time to look up any others.
The reception was all dark blue and dark wood, with silvery paintings of snow and mountains on the walls. The carpet had big flowers on it, the kind that Tessa used to walk over by stepping on one flower at a time without touching the gaps. She did it now, stepping one flower at a time, although she didn’t know she was doing it.
June took off her sunglasses and ran her hand across her eyes. She rubbed in circles over her eyes and her temples. Tessa watched her. She’d been rubbing over her eyes a lot during the drive. What were the next tests for again? Her mother had only mentioned it briefly, among talk of rain and what shoes she’d packed, and Tessa couldn’t remember the right words. Still, it was nothing worth thinki
ng about, she had definitely said that. It was only a precaution; they both knew it.
Magda, the owner, was on the phone. She looked over and gestured for them to sit down on the creaky wicker chairs. In the car, June had recounted all the things she and Magda had talked about last time – their allergy to bread; how Magda really wanted to work in sea rescue, winching people out of the water from a helicopter. ‘Her ex-husband sounds like a maniac,’ June said. ‘He used to phone her up talking in an Australian accent.’ She liked to hear about ex-husbands. Tessa’s father had left a long time ago, but just before he did, he bought a chainsaw out of the blue and cut the bottom hedge into a bear that reared up on its hind legs, its paws flailing in the air. Her mother used to stand in front of it when she didn’t know Tessa was around, watching it slowly grow over and disappear.
Magda put the phone down and June went up to the desk and smiled. ‘Hi,’ she said. She smiled a big smile, all teeth.
Magda said hello, smiled back politely and started the checking-in process.
‘How’s everything with you?’ June asked, tapping the pen against the form she was filling in. There was a brass bowl filled with brass fruit on the counter.
‘Fine, thank you,’ Magda said. She took the form and checked it. ‘And you?’
‘Great,’ June said. ‘Great.’ She twisted a short strand of her hair around. She dyed it mahogany, and her solid, cropped bob often looked like it was carved out of wood.
‘Now, breakfast is between seven and nine. If you’re allergic to anything you should let me know so I can try and find you something else.’
June stared at her.
‘Do you? Have any allergies?’ Magda asked again. ‘It’s just that I can’t eat bread so I know what it’s like.’ She reached up for their key. ‘I eat Ryvita now but it’s not the same.’
Tessa saw her mother hunch her shoulders up slightly, making the thin shape of her spine visible for a second under her shirt.
‘No,’ June said finally. ‘No allergies.’
Magda took them upstairs, walking slowly, once stopping to snatch at a cobweb, once to throw a feather out of a window. ‘Here are your rooms,’ she said. Her T-shirt had a thumbs-up printed on it.
‘Rooms?’ Tessa asked. They’d stayed in a twin last time.
‘I booked us a single each. My treat,’ June told her.
The rooms were small and each had a lacquered chest of drawers, a desk without a chair and a wardrobe carved with leaves. They both had a red plastic kettle and a mug with a photo of a Labrador on. Tessa’s room smelled of bleach but there was a sea view – just – a tiny stamp of water between two other buildings. There was also a pencil drawing of the sun and the moon on the wall.
‘We decided to keep that,’ Magda said. ‘It’s vandalism, but what isn’t?’ She kicked at the carpet in the doorway to straighten it. She showed them their bathrooms, told them what time breakfast was again, and then left.
June bustled around Tessa’s suitcase, taking out clothes, putting them on the bed and refolding them.
‘This place must get busy,’ Tessa told her. ‘They must get hundreds of visitors.’ She moved towards the window, which was dusty and the sun was hitting it, making it look like there was nothing outside except webbed light: no street, no other buildings, no window even.
‘What kind of pyjamas are these?’ June asked, holding them up.
‘Oh,’ Tessa said, turning round to look. ‘They’re Sean’s.’
June pursed her lips a little, folded the pyjamas smaller and left them on the end of the bed. She opened the wardrobe to hang up Tessa’s coat but the hangers were locked to the rail and she couldn’t manoeuvre the coat on to one. ‘Why would we steal hangers?’ June asked. ‘I find it offensive that they think we’d steal hangers.’ She shook her head at them and then gave up, throwing the coat over the bed. ‘Do you find that offensive?’ she asked Tessa. Her scarf had come loose and she re-tied it, tucking one corner tightly into the other.
It was late afternoon and still warm. They followed the road into town. Most of the houses they passed were pebble-dashed bungalows, built for facing storms head-on.
Tessa wanted to find a café, maybe buy a newspaper. She liked to look at the photography – the country lit up at night, deserts, people – sometimes she didn’t even read the articles, she just studied all the drawn, pensive faces. By now she would have had a mug of tea with three sugars after work; she had got used to tea at five and felt shaky without it. She worked at a garden centre, which was huge and sold everything from cactuses to chandeliers. She liked the sacks of dried beans and the rows of spades and vases. ‘Where else can you get a cactus and a chandelier under the same roof?’ she liked to ask people. She had worked there for years.
June wanted to go for a walk along the coast path.
‘Are you sure you should?’ Tessa said.
June stopped walking. ‘Why not?’
Tessa took her purse out of her bag, looked at it and then put it back in again. ‘It’s just, is there enough time?’ Her mother looked tired; she had that hard set to her mouth. A few years ago, they had gone on a day-long cookery course together and learnt how to spin sugar. They had to put their hands in ice before plunging them into boiling caramel. Tessa didn’t trust that the ice would work, but June set her mouth into a hard line and did it quickly, coating her hand in boiling caramel and spinning it into a lumpy basket.
‘We don’t have any plans,’ June said.
The road curved along the edge of the beach and started to rise up towards the cliffs. They went through a field with sheep grazing on the springy grass. The sheep looked up and watched them, scattering at the last minute. After the field there was another gate which opened on to the cliffs. The path ran close to the edge. There was gorse covered in tattered wool, thrift at the edges. Sand martins flew in and out of their nests, following the shape of the wind.
It was much windier up there than it had been in town. Tessa’s loose trousers pulled back against her legs and then flapped out like a tent. There was a low fence where part of the cliff had eroded, but otherwise there was nothing between the path and the sea and she kept imagining the wind blowing her off – she didn’t imagine falling, but rather being carried over the sea for ever without being put down.
June was walking ahead. She had always walked fast, pulling Tessa along behind her when Tessa was younger and they had held hands in busy streets. Suddenly, she stopped and leaned right over the edge of the cliff, so that it looked for a second like she was toppling forwards. Tessa’s heart jumped into an uneven beat. She rushed over, her T-shirt sticking to her back.
‘Look at that,’ June said, straightening up. The waves were smashing and breaking on a line of rocks, throwing up huge plumes of spray. The rocks were a long way down. The sea glittered like fish.
‘The cliff might break,’ Tessa said. The drop was sheer, the rock smooth and striped burgundy.
‘Cliffs don’t just break,’ June said. ‘I’d know about it first.’
‘You might not,’ Tessa said. ‘It might happen suddenly.’
‘Look.’ June jumped up and down twice. ‘It’s solid.’
‘It could happen suddenly,’ Tessa said again, wanting to grab her mother’s arm and pull her away. She watched her jump again. A tissue flapped out of June’s pocket and over the edge.
‘Remember when you used to hide under the table whenever an aeroplane went low over the house?’ June said. She looked down once more then rejoined the path. ‘You thought it was going to crash through the walls.’
‘That only happened once,’ Tessa told her, although she still imagined it every time she heard an aeroplane. They came so close! She struggled to get her breath and talk at the same time. Her body felt heavy and difficult, unfamiliar. It felt as if someone had hold of her ankles. She could smell her deodorant wafting up, sweet and strong.
The headland leaned out like a boat. Up ahead, the path they were on forked and a smaller path slo
ped downwards towards the sea. June stopped and looked at it. ‘We should go down there,’ she said.
‘It looks steep.’
‘We should go down. There might be a beach.’
‘There’s a beach in town. Maybe we could go to that one?’ Tessa said. The town beach was easy to get to from the road. There were other people. You couldn’t get stranded on the beach in town.
June made an indecisive noise but veered on to the steeper path. She did that a lot: she would make an indecisive noise even though she had already decided.
It was hard to argue with her. When June had phoned that very first time, to say that she’d been into hospital and had to go back, Tessa had asked whether she should drive up and go with her. ‘Don’t drive all this way,’ June had told her. ‘It’s absolutely nothing, it wouldn’t be worth it.’ Tessa couldn’t remember the exact conversation; all she remembered was her pen pressing swirls on the notepad harder and harder and her mother’s dry little breaths falling like snow into the receiver. She hadn’t pushed it; she had taken her mother’s word for it, had never just said: of course I will go.
Tessa put a foot out on to the path. It was steep and stony and difficult to get a grip on, especially with flip-flops. She took a step and a few stones clattered down and rolled past her mother, who was walking steadily with her body tilted backwards for balance. ‘Wait up,’ Tessa called. She tried to lean backwards too but every time she took a step her body would automatically lean forwards instead.
‘Bend your knees,’ June called.
How? Her legs refused to bend; they stayed straight and stiff and refused to bend. She skidded and more stones rolled down and her bag thumped into her shoulder. The whole cliff was swathed in pale heather which looked like a lowlying mist. It distracted Tessa, made her lose her focus. She tried to watch how her mother was walking, but when she looked up she skidded again. This time she couldn’t find anything to grip on to with her feet and she fell down hard, pain jolting along the bottom of her back.