Tree Surgery for Beginners

by Patrick Gale

  ‘Screw them,’ Mary whispered to the baby. ‘We’re on honeymoon too.’

  Under the conditions of Lala’s will, all the earnings from her record and video sales would continue to be paid into the numbered Swiss account from which Mrs Humphrey Merle received her monthly dividends. In the months since her ‘death’ and her bewildering introduction to motherhood, she had spent a queen’s ransom in legal fees. She had sold all her properties and her chattels – auction houses had held grotesque memorabilia sales of Lala’s gowns and jewellery. The Swiss account grew ever plumper as her life was exhilaratingly pared down in order that it might begin afresh. She had seen to it that all her friends were remembered. In a touch she thought suitably, disconcertingly Lala, but which she borrowed from Ivy Compton Burnett, she had left each of them a looking-glass from her large collection as if to say,

  ‘Take a long hard look.’

  A fitting final stage in the myth, she considered, although she half-hoped that, Elvis-like, she would continue to be subject to reported sightings from time to time. That was the hardest part – both the necessary cruelty to her friends and resisting the temptation to call them up and say guess who. She had been surprised at her coolness, however. She had stepped out of Lala and her address book, as from a discarded skin, and observed that most of the friendships were fundamentally Lala’s not Mary’s. Still, it was better to be mourned and missed than reassessed and found less interesting.

  Running into Lawrence had been more upsetting than any number of catty newspaper tributes from long-faced obituarists. On the boat she had thought him a diversion, nothing more. He was a challenge, exciting in a smouldering, bad-tempered fashion. Had all run smoothly, she would have let him down gently by the end of the cruise then vanished, sending him some trinket to remember her by – some cufflinks from Tiffany or a good watch. He had penetrated her defences, however, reminded her of her father, caused her to fantasize about continuing to see him in another setting, and then, of course, he had made her pregnant. They had no future together, they had even less in common now that she was Madame Merle than when she had been Lala. Only if she could strip the years away and re-emerge as gawky Mary Kopek would they have any common ground and even had that been possible he would probably prefer her glammed up and strutting on his mental pedestal.

  She had no qualms about keeping the baby for herself. She had carried it about inside her, she had suffered the morning sickness, stretch marks and episiotomy. She would pay the nanny, shell out the school fees, spoil the boy as she pleased. He was hers to suffer and indulge, as a wealthy man might a penniless younger bride. Lawrence’s role had been biological chance. He had no rights in the matter. She would name him as father on the boy’s sixteenth birthday, but only if the child showed curiosity. If Lawrence were to pursue them, however, she might consider accommodating him, but he had to make a great effort; he would be granted nothing as his paternal due. There again, she reflected, he had done the domestic thing already, had the painful memories of a wife driven and a child torn from him. He was unlikely to tread that particular path again. If he had settled here in this lovely spot it must be because he had abandoned all thoughts of pursuing the dream family.

  She sat back against the hot jets, watched the steady flow of water over the thick glass wall that made up the pool’s seaward end, remembered Lawrence’s angry hunger for her on the Paulina, remembered the total power he had given her over him and thought of him alone and frustrated in the woods.

  Humphrey Junior began to fret. He was tired. Roused from her reverie, she stepped from the pool, carefully dried him, and settled him in his carrycot in the shade. From beyond a hedge came the sound of guests assembling for dinner. She was not hungry. She would have something brought to her cliff-top eyrie perhaps. There was just one other guest left in the pool area now, a young woman, painfully thin, sitting stiffly on her lounger, weeping behind her dark glasses while she pretended to read Architectural Digest.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Mary asked her. ‘Well, obviously you’re not but, well, is there something I can do?’

  The pale young woman shook her head. She was pretty, even with a red nose. She felt in her bag for a tissue, dabbed away her tears.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said and Mary heard she was English. ‘It’s just … He’s a beautiful baby.’

  ‘Thanks. Isn’t he.’

  ‘Is he your grandson?’

  ‘He’s mine.’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry. You must think me awfully rude.’

  ‘That’s okay. I did have him pretty late.’

  ‘Are you here with your husband?’

  ‘I’m not married,’ Mary said, sitting on the neighbouring lounger. ‘You?’

  ‘I was. Well. I still am, but we’re separated and I’m filing for divorce. That is, I’m going to. It’s time I did.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’

  ‘You’re not. I haven’t spoken to anyone all day. I was beginning to think my voice had seized up.’

  ‘Are you here alone, then?’

  ‘I came with my … my … Don’t you hate the word boyfriend? He’s not a boy, he’s a man, and– ’

  ‘Your lover.’

  They laughed sadly.

  ‘Yes. My lover. He designed this place.’

  ‘Did a good job.’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘We came for a holiday but it turns out he had clients to visit in Monterey so he’s left me on my own for a couple of days.’

  Mary lay back and looked out at the gaudy sunset that was assembling itself out to sea.

  ‘I can think of worse places to be left. Do you have children?’

  ‘Yes. A little girl. But she’s dead.’

  ‘Oh. Oh my God. I’m so– ’

  ‘It’s so stupid. She died over a year ago now and I still talk of her in the present tense. But I can’t say, no, I’m childless, because that would be like denying she’d ever existed. Sorry.’

  She reached for another tissue and blew her nose. Mary felt as if a cold breeze had blown down her back. She glanced instinctively towards the carrycot.

  ‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ she said. ‘I used to be so entirely selfish, always looking after number one. And now that there’s him, I’d rather die than have anything happen to him. I’ve gotten like a lioness.’

  ‘Strange isn’t it? I was just the same. Till I had Lucy I was such a child.’

  ‘What a lovely name.’

  ‘Everyone thought it was rather old-fashioned.’

  ‘No. It’s lovely.’

  ‘What’s yours called?’

  ‘Humphrey. Humphrey Junior.’ Mary pulled a face. ‘Crazy I know but it’s after his father. Humph died just after he was born.’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry.’

  ‘Look at the two of us! There’s me saying I’m not married because I can’t bring myself to feel like an old widowed lady and there’s you saying you’ve got a daughter then having to explain.’

  The girl sighed.

  ‘Orphans of the storm,’ she murmured. ‘My … Craig is worried I think of myself as a victim. First my husband, then Lucy.’

  ‘Good God. Did he die too? I thought you said you were filing for divorce.’

  ‘Things got pretty scary before I moved out.’

  ‘Jesus. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t be. If everyone’s sorry it makes me feel like I’m a victim. I have to take responsibility. Take control. It’s just that feeling hard done by can be like a really deep sofa. You just sink into it then it’s impossible to get up again and you think, what the hell, this is nice, everyone feels sorry for me, why move?’

  Mary nodded, glad of her dark glasses because her mind was buzzing and she didn’t want it to show. She thought of Lawrence in the jeep, briefly being allowed to hold his new baby, his son, and felt compassion well up like heartburn.

  ‘How did your husband take it? The baby dying, I mean.’

  ‘Oh. She wasn’t a baby.’ T
he girl threatened to cry again. ‘She was five.’ She gulped, breathed deeply and carried on. She must have been in therapy a while. She talked as though she were used to having to. ‘He wasn’t around, of course. He was away. On a cruise. It happened so suddenly. An asthma attack. I don’t know how he took it.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  ‘I was too afraid. I’m such a coward. And by that stage, after the funeral and everything I was … My mother-in-law went with my father. They hoped they could get him to go home with them but he wouldn’t. I don’t know where he is. It’s so strange. Sometimes, on my good days, I feel so lucky. Everything went so badly wrong and now I’ve been given the chance to start completely afresh, new country, new house, new work, new man.’ She broke off, stared out to sea.

  ‘But …’ Mary prompted.

  ‘Yes. But then I feel there’s something holding me back. Like a ship with its sail full of wind but a rope still holding it to the harbour.’

  ‘Are you in love with this new man, dear?’

  The girl smiled almost shyly.

  ‘He’s wonderful. He’s strong and clever and quite impossibly handsome – you know the kind of handsome that makes you feel plain in the mornings?’

  ‘I know, believe me,’ said Lala, briefly forgetting to be Mrs Humphrey Merle.

  ‘And he loves me deeply and wants to protect me and make me happy. And, well, I suppose I love him back.’

  ‘But you’re not in love.’

  ‘No. Not really. I’m not sure that can happen more than once.’

  They sat in silence, the one mourning lost love, the other contemplating just how many times she had thought she would die of heartbreak but lived to fall in love all over again.

  ‘I must just ask,’ Mary said at last. ‘You’ll think I’m a foolish old American trout but do you know a place called Barrowcester. Did I pronounce it right?’

  ‘Yes. Brewster. It’s pronounced Brewster,’ she added, amazed. ‘I grew up there.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘It’s where my father lived before he– And my mother-in-law. Why?’

  Mary thought fast, made up a name.

  ‘Do you know the Collie-Wakefields then?’

  ‘Sorry. No.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. It’s probably a huge place. They’re just some people Humph and I met on holiday once. Nice people. He was an attorney. Ah well. I better put the little one to bed properly. Say. Would you like to have dinner with another lone woman?’

  ‘Er. Well. That would be lovely.’ The girl hesitated and for a second Mary thought she had gone too far. ‘But come to my room. Craig ordered me dinner there as a treat and he always orders too much because he wants to fatten me up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive. But don’t let me drink or I’ll probably cry all over you again.’

  ‘I promise. I can bring the baby alarm with me.’

  ‘Can I see him before you take him off?’

  ‘Well sure.’

  Mary held the carrycot up and watched the woman’s face as she peered and sighed, and she tried to imagine what mysterious bad chemistry could have brought Lawrence to mistrust her so. She observed the risky openness in her. Perhaps it was just a symptom of the damage done her but she displayed a quivering vulnerability, doomed to inspire either protective Galahadism or intense irritation, never straightforward, reciprocal love.

  Mary put Humphrey Junior to bed then showered herself and changed for dinner. She set up the baby monitor, pocketing its radio receiver, kissed the baby then, following the little simplified map from the room’s welcome pack, made her way back along the path she had trod that morning down past the cluster of guest studios and into the thickening shade of the trees.

  The staff accommodation was a broad, uneven circle of log cabins, built around one end of the service road. She had made no plans for finding him short of making enquiries, but she saw him at once, sitting on the porch of a cabin at the far side, drinking beer from the bottle with the crop-topped girl who had given her such a memorably penetrating massage the previous afternoon. She was startled to see how alike they were, the same hair, skin tone, strong jaws and bony limbs. The girl was merely a softer edition of the same idea, a duplicate drawing whose ink had blurred in a humid atmosphere.

  Seeing her, they stirred, respectfully dropping their bare feet from the rail where they had been leaning them. Evidently startled, Lawrence rose to his feet. It was Mary’s unvarying experience that if one acted as though strange circumstances were perfectly ordinary, others could be induced to mimic one.

  ‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘Great place to live.’

  ‘Er. Thanks,’ said Lawrence.

  ‘We like it,’ said Crop Top. ‘Care for a Schlitz?’

  ‘No thanks. Lawrence. I wonder if I could have a word?’

  ‘You know her?’ Crop Top murmured.

  ‘Er. Yeah,’ he said. ‘Laurie, would you er?’

  ‘I’m already gone.’ She jumped off the porch on enviably long legs. ‘Nice meeting you,’ she called out as she went.

  ‘Bye,’ Mary said.

  ‘Sure you won’t have a beer?’ he asked her when they were alone again. The light had almost gone. She could hear the night sounds of the wood beginning. She had lain awake the previous night listening to them. He was still in his work clothes, hair mussed and dotted with wood chips, hands and forearms thickly dusty.

  ‘Better not,’ she said. ‘I’ve dinner with a friend. But thanks.’ She joined him on the porch. ‘So this is where you live now,’ she heard herself begin fatuously. He just nodded. She glanced through the screen door into the cabin’s stark interior. A pool of lamplight showed a table and two uncushioned, wooden chairs, a single bed, some magazines and a jumble of discarded clothes. ‘Sorry if I was a bit abrupt this morning,’ she went on. ‘I … I was probably as surprised as you were. I thought I’d never see you again.’

  ‘Well I thought you were dead.’

  She smiled at the truth of this.

  ‘You win. It’s good to see you, Larry. Are you happy here?’

  He frowned, leaning against the door jamb.

  ‘It’s peaceful,’ he said. ‘I like the work. Nobody knows me.’

  ‘So you’re starting over.’

  ‘Trying to.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him what she knew but she bit the confidence back.

  ‘Did you miss me at all?’ she asked.

  He smiled sadly.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She took a slow step towards him, which was all the sign he needed apparently and he drew her to him between his legs. As he kissed her, she could smell the sweat and sawdust about him and feel how much weight he had lost. He was thin and hard as a man of wood. He was eating off her discreet, widow’s lipstick. He was probably leaving great hand prints on the seat of her dress. She pulled back, holding his wrists to control him. She wondered if he had slept with anyone since her. It was getting so dark she could barely read his expression, the light from inside showed her only half a face.

  ‘Someone might see us,’ she muttered. ‘Your friend with the bone structure … did I disturb something there?’

  ‘Laurie’s just a mate.’

  ‘Do you want her to be more? She’s hot.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s very interested in men.’

  ‘Ah.’ He moved to hold her again but she leaned away, letting him only clasp her arms. ‘I have to go,’ she said quickly, fighting the urge to linger. ‘Come to my room later?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Late. I have company now. Wait till you see the light go out. It’s number eight. Just come straight in. Don’t ring or you’ll wake the baby.’

  She laid a hand on his chest, at once stilling him and indulging herself, then murmured her goodbye and hurried back along the ground-lit path towards the sound of the sea. Something moved in the undergrowth causing her to gasp. She froze. Whatever it was rustled aw
ay. She used to be fearless. Tigers and motherhood had left her jumpy.

  As she walked on she asked herself for the umpteenth time that evening whether she and the baby and a nanny would be quite a sufficient family, whether a large, protective male of some kind might not be an advisable addition. Perhaps if she settled somewhere with plenty of trees he might prove temptable. Vermont? West Virginia? Kentucky? She went to Bonnie’s room via the restaurant so she could effect a speedy repair in the washroom. Combing her hair and repairing the pale lipstick that was still a shock after the extreme crimson Lala had worn, she was assailed by doubt and wondered whether to duck out of dinner, stow baby and baggage and make good her escape.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Laurie sat on the end of Lawrence’s bed watching him dress.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you’d had an affair.’

  ‘It never came up,’ he said. ‘I never thought I’d see her again.’

  ‘She’s quite old.’

  ‘She’s not as old as she seems. She’s changed her look. She’s dressing older.’

  ‘Ohh so that’s it … Are you the father?’

  ‘No. That was someone after me.’

  He turned aside to avoid her gaze and tuck his only clean shirt into his least dirty jeans. He had thought of wearing the linen suit Darius had bought him, which had gone unworn for so long, but decided it was best to appear as himself. Laurie’s questioning and his denials were exciting him. He checked his face in the soap-spattered mirror over the sink.

  ‘You going to rekindle the flame?’ she teased him laconically.

  ‘She just asked me up for a drink.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘If I’d known you were into older women, I’d never have wasted so much time hanging around you.’ He fell for it, stopping with a hand on the half-open screen door to look back at her. ‘Only kidding,’ she said and grinned. ‘Just pray that baby isn’t colicky or you’ll have a really unromantic time.’

  The night felt immense around him, its velvet blackness only broken by the low-level lights which illuminated the path beside them so that, in the blackest parts, it seemed like a walkway floating in a void. Then, emerging from the woods, he saw a canopy of stars and a few guests’ windows still lit up. Room Eight was one of the studios designed to blend into the trees. It was tall and circular and clad in what looked like redwood bark but was actually a cunning synthesis of wood fibres and resin. One third of the circle was balcony, facing out over the Pacific. It was known to be the best room, the one Laurie claimed was always taken by post-detox film stars or discreetly philandering senators. Lala might have died but Mrs Humphrey Merle had evidently inherited some of her influence and all of her money.