Tree Surgery for Beginners

by Patrick Gale

  While Darius saw his bridge groups decimated by inertia, Reuben and Bee produced fat nineteenth-century novels and sat in the least populous corner of the sun deck in companionable, frowning silence, paperbacks held aloft like insufficient shields. They broke off their reading only to order fresh Tom Collinses or to shift their loungers so as to remain in a shrinking patch of protective shade. Reuben and Darius appeared to have quarrelled during the Miami excursion. At least, neither spoke of it and each was pointedly incurious as to the details of the lunch chez Lala, as though the entire day were something to be shunned.

  In the air-conditioned gym, Lawrence rowed substanceless leagues and pedalled uneventful miles, punishing himself for his weakness as a father, thrashing his body through its paces as though he could reverse the mechanical process that was dragging him further and further from Lucy. He worried at first about being approached by Lala as he dreaded further gossip. She was not due to perform again until their night in St Martin however, and meanwhile she kept closely to her quarters, even for her meals, so that rumours began to circulate that she might be ill. Receiving no further fruit or flowers, he wondered if he might somehow have caused her offence. Far from hiding away as he had first, absurdly, planned to do, he haunted those parts of the deck he knew would be visible from her lofty suite.

  Self-conscious at the thought of her possible scrutiny, he sustained a long vigil, sharing his table now with strangers, now with those who knew him. Jess, the teenager with Down’s syndrome joined him. Infected by the omnipresence of bridge, she had acquired a sticky pack of cards and grinningly taught him a futile game called Go Fish, seemingly endless, full of minor retributions and small triumphs. It ate time and required little concentration or speed. They played for over an hour, drawing patronizing smiles from passers-by, and he was saddened when her mother took her away, red-faced and indignant from a long search. Clumsy, dark, the antithesis of Lucy, Jess’s gentle approach and quiet confidence in his interest had nonetheless set off sad echoes within him. She left the cards with him and before long he was joined by Martha, puffed from an over-fifties basketball game, who taught him a version of patience.

  ‘It’s great for small tabletops and trains,’ she said, ‘because it uses little space and it’s satisfying too because it hardly ever works. You place the pack so, draw four cards off the top and look at them. If the first and the fourth are the same number, you discard all four. If they’re the same suit, you discard the two in between and draw two more and if they’ve nothing in common, you draw another card and see how that matches what was the second card but is now the first to your new fourth. See?’

  ‘Show me again,’ he asked. ‘Slowly.’

  He saw eventually and he continued to play while the afternoon drew on and a succession of strangers came to sit beside him and talk with one another in lowered voices. It became a form of moneyless gambling.

  ‘If I can make it work,’ he told himself, ‘if I can discard the whole pack, then I can go and tap on her door.’

  So of course he had to play on. And on. He thought through the events in Miami, seeking what insult he might unwittingly have offered her and found nothing. If anything, she had insulted him. She had treated him as a thing. She had used and, apparently, discarded him. He narrowed the field of risk.

  ‘If I can discard half the pack, I have to call on her,’ he conceded, and later: ‘If the last card I can discard is a red card less than eight.’

  Afternoon drew in to evening and a light coming on in one of her ungiving windows only spurred him on. At last the cards gained him permission but it was too late to act on it as it was time for dinner and he had promised to play bridge with Bee afterwards. He could, of course, have skipped dinner and barged upstairs anyway but he was uncertain of her dining habits. She might be entertaining. He imagined formal clothes, smart, enquiring faces turned with a touch of mockery at his sudden interruption of a witty conversation. He imagined Lala’s feigned ignorance, imagined her cruelty, and he shied away.

  After several attempts and much encouragement, Lawrence was at last coming to see the appeal of bridge. At heart it was the simplest of courteous card games, a kind of whist, but the codified bidding, indeed the codified play, made it also a test and celebration of partnership. At first he made repeated blunders because he was too intent on viewing the game as a solitary struggle in which each player stood or fell on their own strengths. Then Bee made him see that, with the right communication, two relatively weak-handed partners could tumble a lone Goliath.

  ‘I don’t need to know about your clubs,’ she said. ‘I’ve got good clubs. That’s why I bid them twice. But your queen and jack in hearts are perfect, you see? And your long diamonds may look like nothing to you but paired with my singleton ace, they’re dynamite.’

  He began to see that, in theory, if everyone played by the rules and bid with textbook precision, there could be perfect, unambiguous communication. Pride, he saw, was his downfall. Playing football at school he used to find himself surging up the field in hot-headed command of the ball and, ignoring the shouts of his team-mates, make a bid to score on his own only to find himself ignominiously offside. So now he had to learn to listen and accept that if his partner rejected his powerful spades in favour of diamonds, he must offer up his four feeble diamonds as humble support and let his partner play rather than pursue his own suit into disaster.

  That night, for the first time he played rubber after rubber rather than making his excuses and sloping off. He became the one determined to play on when all around him were pointedly yawning and murmuring about calling it a day. Only when Bee finally insisted on breaking up the party and congratulated him, as she pecked him goodnight, on how he was progressing did he remember his earlier resolution to call on Lala.

  He pretended to head for his cabin then ducked into a stairwell and hurried upstairs. There was no light coming from under her door, however. He lingered a few minutes, heart racing, but, intimidated by the rude stares of an overdressed couple mounting to their suite and shaken by the pointed marches past of a cabin boy who seemed to be doubling as the mistress’s night watchman, he lost his resolve.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Until now, Lawrence had imagined Caribbean islands as low-lying arrangements of cocoa palms, sandy beaches and rush-thatched seaside cafés at which one arrived by a small, putt-putting launch. Emerging from his cabin to watch their arrival at St Martin he realized his imaginings were fed by rum advertisements and wishful thinking. He saw no palms, only a dense mass of scrubby woodland, and black rocks where he had expected beaches. Instead of picturesque huts, a bustling commercial centre had been thrown up, much of it in crude concrete. It was also disillusioning to find that, far from cruising the Caribbean in isolation along a route of its own, the Paulina had been accompanied all the way from Miami by three other cruise ships. All four were easing into St Martin’s deep harbour in preparation for a simultaneous credit card invasion. Darius had been here before, however, and took command.

  ‘The Dutch side’s a nightmare,’ he said with his customary snobbery. ‘Even more so when this lot have landed and started shopping. We’ll hire a Jeep and head over the mountain ridge to the French side. No one bothers to go there as they all want to be back on board to eat a lunch they think they can trust. We’ll find a good restaurant on the water somewhere. Maybe a beach, if there’s time.’

  Bee and Reuben were to come too – apparently Reuben and Darius had settled their differences over a card table-but not George and Martha as Darius was finding them a little wearing and Jeeps only took four comfortably. Imperious as a dowager at a car boot sale, he swept them through the hordes who were already snatching up ‘cut price’ jewels and imported tee shirts from the waterfront traders, and led them up a confusing network of side streets to a hire car lot where he began to haggle impressively over the price of a white, open-topped Jeep.

  It transpired that the Jeep only came with a guide-cum-driver thrown in and a
ll the self-drive cars had been reserved for passengers from one of the other liners.

  ‘Why would we need a guide?’ Darius huffed. ‘I’ve been here before. There are barely three main roads on the entire island and with five of us the Jeep would be so cramped.’

  The clerk was adamant however.

  ‘My brother is an expert on flora and fauna,’ she said. ‘But if you only want a silent chauffeur then he’ll be happy to oblige.’

  At that moment she glanced across to a Sidney Poitier lookalike in white jeans and flame-red shirt who was drinking a cup of water from a dispenser. The others all glanced the same way, the man smiled and Bee said,

  ‘Oh, I think having a proper guide might be rather fun. That’s if you don’t mind, Darius?’

  ‘Who me? Not in the least.’

  Forms were duly signed, the deposit paid and the brother, Jerome, introduced. He shook hands firmly all round and seemed relieved when he heard that they wanted to get as far from the shops and traders as possible. As they walked out to the Jeep, Lawrence noticed that Bee was more animated than usual and had removed her dark glasses as though to make herself more accessible.

  ‘I’m sorry none of us speaks any Dutch,’ she said.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Jerome told her with a grin. ‘Amelie and I are from the other side.’

  ‘You speak French.’

  ‘Mais oui.’

  Bee laughed and promptly slipped into rapid French. Jerome banteringly responded in kind. Thus excluded, Lawrence thought it best he sit on the rear bench beside Darius and Reuben while she sat in front. They headed off through the outskirts of St Martin, bouncing out of town past lush gardens, shouting children and sly, scavenging dogs. Bee turned to call over her shoulder,

  ‘Jerome says he’ll take us up over the hills in the interior to see the trees and the view, which is marvellous apparently. Then down onto the French side to a beach where we can swim and eat a simple lunch.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Darius acidly, one hand raised to stop his hat from blowing off. ‘We understood perfectly.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Lawrence said but no one seemed to hear him. He saw Darius slip his other arm across the seat back behind Reuben to steady himself. The gesture excluded him as effectively as Bee’s effortless, gurgling French.

  He wondered what Lala would be doing. Perhaps she had left the ship to visit another friend. People like her must have friends everywhere, friends with large, secure houses. Maybe it was some other passenger’s turn today. Some big-footed lunk of a Canadian was even now breaking out in a sweat as she unbuttoned his shirt at some borrowed poolside where his star-struck wife sprawled happily comatose from spiked fruit punch. Good luck to him.

  He looked about them. Now he did feel as if he was in a rum commercial; five people in light, summer clothes and dark glasses driving heaven knew where and not caring, dazzling sunshine, balmy heat. As the road climbed, the houses to either side grew increasingly ramshackle and gaudy, concrete gave way to wood, garden to chicken run, then they were out in open country. The road surface began to deteriorate and the trees to encroach until they were climbing steeply through a kind of tunnel, flashing in and out of sunshine at the occasional breaks in the foliage overhead. Many of the trees were some kind of eucalypt, with dusty-blue leaves and gum that left a sensuous tang on the hot air. He looked at his uncle to see how he was managing. Darius had taken off his hat to look up at the sunlight slanting through the trees. Sensing his nephew’s eye on him, he turned back and smiled for the first time, it seemed to Lawrence, smiled with sincerity, with kindness, even.

  Jerome drove them off the road up a dirt track which led to a hill’s dry brow. They stopped to walk a few hundred yards to admire the view of undulating woods and distant beaches and the entire island coastline spread out around them with the simplicity of a treasure map. The air was resonant with eucalyptus scent.

  ‘Bee tells me you are a tree expert,’ Jerome told Lawrence in English.

  ‘A tree surgeon,’ Lawrence said. ‘Hardly an expert. What are those?’

  Jerome looked where he was pointing. Tall trees with ragged bark hanging off in strips and rustling, grey-green foliage.

  ‘Eucalyptus coccifera,’ he said and translated the Latin with a smile. ‘ Well covered berry-bearing. Mount Wellington Peppermint. Here,’ he added. He broke off a leaf, crushed it and held it under Lawrence’s nose. Lawrence sneezed, apologized and took it from him to breathe in the intense peppermint scent.

  ‘Delicious,’ he said quietly. ‘Délicieux.’

  Bee laughed at him and took a photograph.

  Jerome then drove them down deep into the French side through a pretty village of old Colonial houses in painted timber, to a restaurant raised on stilts at one end of an empty beach. Chickens and fish were sizzling on a barbecue, red and white tablecloths fluttered in the warm breeze through the glassless windows and Lawrence realized with a delighted shock that what he had taken for pillars were actually the trunks of living coco palms growing up through holes in the wooden floor and disappearing through cunningly constructed sliding hatches in the roof. Another rum commercial.

  Lunch – crab, chicken and a mound of fried christophine – was slow and delicious and foolishly alcoholic. The swaying of the palm pillars and the gentle plashing of low waves on warm sand was a tranquillizing combination even without wine and p’tit pouches. Although he felt obscurely peeved, jealous even, to see Bee insist that Jerome eat with them then continue to be so openly flirtatious with him, the setting and food conspired to leave Lawrence helplessly tongue-tied and aglow with love for his fellow man. Bee was beautiful and Reuben and Jerome were beautiful. Even Darius, puffing on his cigar and telling a rambling anecdote about his last visit to the island, seemed supremely distinguished.

  Fortified by strong coffee, laughing at Darius’s warnings against cramp, he wandered down the beach, stripped to his trunks and waded out into the impossibly warm and limpid water. He swam a few minutes of indolent backstroke then walked about in the sandy shallows, amazed at the spangled fish that darted fearlessly about his legs but vanished when he pursued them with his hands.

  Lingering at the restaurant table, Jerome and Bee were deep in conversation. As he emerged, Bee waved to him and smiled invitingly. He raised a hand back but something in the intent way she had been listening reminded him of Bonnie listening to McBugger and he felt compelled to walk further along the beach, past the heap of his clothes, following the route he had seen the others take. The tawny sand formed a smooth-sloping, duneless shelf but the view along its length was broken here and there where clumps of the desiccated scrub and long grass had made inroads towards the water. Rounding one of these, he came across Darius and Reuben. Defeated by the after-effects of lunch, they were sitting on the sand, leaning against a fallen tree. Barefoot on sand as he went, they were unaware of his approach. When Reuben raised his hand to push Darius’s hat off and run his fingers through his hair, Lawrence was as startled as if he had chanced on the two of them locked in a naked embrace. His uncle’s expression showed a tender vulnerability of which Lawrence would never have believed him capable. Lawrence hastily backed off and turned towards the restaurant again then realized he might be de trop there as well. He sat in the shade, halfway between either couple, tossing sticks and shells into the waves’ retreating foam and feeling the bonhomie of lunchtime curdle into the self-pity of the loveless inebriate.

  ‘Lawrence? What are you all doing?!’

  Bee was running along the beach to find him. He jumped up, thinking of her brother and his uncle, thinking fast.

  ‘Hi,’ he said in a clumsy stab at casual good cheer.

  ‘Isn’t it heaven here? Jerome wants to show us his house. It’s only two bays on from here. Where are the others?’

  ‘Ssh.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re both sound asleep in the shade. Too much rum and sunshine. I think we should let them be.’ He walked a little way past her towards
the restaurant and succeeded in drawing her back with him. Jerome was waiting by the Jeep, tossing the keys on his palm and looking more like Sidney Poitier than ever. ‘You go,’ Lawrence said. ‘I’ll keep watch.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course I am. I quite enjoy just sitting and looking at the waves. I might swim again.’

  ‘You are sweet,’ she said and darted forward to kiss his cheek then hurried off. ‘We shouldn’t be more than an hour,’ she called as she ran.

  Lawrence watched the Jeep turn and vanish up the track to the village. He swam again, finding that the water felt still warmer second time around. Then, taking care not to cast so much as a glance towards Darius and Reuben, he carried his clothes into the shade, made a pillow of them and lay down to doze on the warm sand.

  In his dream he was spreadeagled on a big white lilo, floating further and further from the beach where his mother, Bonnie, Lucy and McBugger were merrily dining with the others. He was powerless to swim against the current and could not cry out to them for help because he was naked. So he drifted and they dwindled. He was woken by Reuben’s hand on his bare shoulder.

  ‘Time to go,’ Reuben said. ‘You’ve been asleep for ages.’

  ‘Rum,’ Lawrence croaked, his mouth dry as the sand beneath him.

  Bee had returned alone, apparently trusted by Jerome to take the Jeep back unassisted.

  ‘Great excitement because there’s a storm coming,’ she said. ‘His brother’s out on a fishing trip with some tourists and he had to radio him to check he was on his way back to safety and the radio set’s at some friend’s house up in the hills. Do you think the Paulina should be sailing on? It’s rather nerve-racking.’