The Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sonia Tilson

  Things were better after school and at weekends since Gillian and Tommy could go wherever they liked outside, and could play in the barn if it rained. At first it was warm and sunny most of the time, and it was exciting to be free to wander in the woods and fields. In one field there was a white calf which would let Gillian climb on her back. In another there was an old cart-horse who did not seem to mind sharing his space with them. On the hill behind Maenordy they found an abandoned cottage which at first they joyfully imagined making into their own house, but the dried-up dead crows and stained, ripped mattress in the bedroom gave them such a bad feeling that they never went back.

  Another time they heard screaming, thin and high, and searched the field until they found the rabbit, its leg caught in a trap. They managed to lever the trap open with sticks and watched the poor little thing limp trembling away, after which they dropped stones on all the traps they could find to spring them until the farmer complained to Mrs. Macpherson, who said he would shoot them if he caught them at it again.

  There was a fox’s den, too, in the woods, with a stink that made Gillian want to blow out hard through her nose. Once they saw the fox himself, so fine and delicate, with his gleaming eyes and pointed snout, twenty times better than Red Riding Hood’s wolf. They watched and waited for him for weeks, but they never saw him again until the day they found him hanged. A trap had been laid for him too, and he swung from a tree by the neck, stiff and snarling.

  “Why was the fox hanged?” Gillian and Tommy stood hand-in-hand in front of Mrs. Macpherson.

  She squinched her eyes at them. “For a warning,” she said.

  They stared back at her. Tommy turned to Gillian, his mouth wobbling. “What’d we do?”

  “Nothing.” She held his hand tight. “It wasn’t us. It was a warning to the fox.”

  He gaped at her before running off with his chin in the air and his arms flung out behind, being not a goose but a Spitfire, the low sun shining red through his sticking-out ears.

  The good weather came to an end in October, and there were many days of wind and rain when they played after school in the almost empty barn. In a dark corner of that shadowy, sweet-smelling place where the odd ray of sunlight lit up the dancing dust, they built, out of leftover bales of straw and metal milk crates, a little golden room. Straw-covered boards made a roof, two bales served as seats, and an upside-down crate became a table on which Gillian put a jam jar full of Michaelmas daisies. An old calendar with a picture of baby rabbits on it made it even more home-like.

  Sitting on the prickly bales along with Tommy, Glory Anna, her doll, and Tommy’s teddy bear, Rupie, she would teach Tommy his alphabet with a slate and chalk, rewarding him with miniature Dolly Mixture sweets doled out one by one while Dinah, the Macphersons’ brown and white spaniel, who was going to have puppies, drooled in expectation of her share. Gillian would make up stories there about The Little People who lived right beneath them in The Kingdom Under the Earth, or she would read to Tommy from her big red book, The Children’s Golden Treasury. Sometimes they would sing: London Bridge is Falling Down, A Bicycle Made for Two, or, still one of Tommy’s favorites, Incy, Wincy Spider. They would study Dinah, too, wondering about the puppies.

  They decided to call this secret den Cartref, ‘Home’, like their grandparents’ house, and for months, from autumn until the Christmas holidays, they were safe and free and happy enough there.

  There was excitement at Maenordy. Angus was coming home from boarding school for the Christmas holidays. Mrs. Macpherson bustled around, getting ready for his arrival, polishing and baking, and, astonishingly, bursting into a carol once in a while. She even put up a Christmas tree, rather dingily decorated in Gillian’s opinion, and gathered holly and ivy to stick around the newel post and drape along the mantelpiece.

  The children first met the great, grown-up boy in the lamp-lit, wood-panelled dining room that smelled of the rabbit pie Mrs. Macpherson was cooking for dinner.

  “Well, hello! What have we here?” He was smiling a funny sideways smile and rubbing his big hands together like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk’s giant as the children stood, hand in hand, on the patterned carpet looking up at him. Gillian saw that he was tall and thin, with thick, red-brown hair and a long nose.

  “Are they good?” he said to his mother. “They look good. Matter of fact, they look good enough to eat.” He laughed and fished in his pocket to give them each a black toffee.

  To their surprise, Angus spent a lot of time with them. He would take them for walks through the bare, silent woods and fields, talking and even sometimes listening to them. One afternoon he scared Gillian by taking a gun with him and pointing it all over the place, but to her relief all the birds and animals hid from him. It was hard to keep up as he strode along in his tall, shining boots, especially for Tommy, but when Angus suggested one day that only Gillian should go for a walk with him, Tommy set up such a racket that the subject was quickly dropped. Bicycle rides, though, were for Gillian only, since Tommy was obviously too little for that.

  “Just you and me, eh?” Angus would say, as they hurtled down the hill to the sweet shop on the corner, Gillian perched on the crossbar. “You like that, don’t you?” She did too, especially when they bought a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, or a triangular packet of sherbet with a liquorice straw.

  Angus was kind to them all right, and they enjoyed the sweets he bought, but they were never by themselves anymore, and could not get to their den for nearly a week. Finally, however, the day came when he had to go to Brecon with his mother to do some Christmas shopping, and they were free at last to go to Cartref.

  In the gloom of the barn, Gillian saw that their den had stopped shining. She looked at the dusty, straw-scattered boards and the dried-up Michaelmas daisies. The place definitely needed cheering up. “I know what, Tommy!” She clapped her hands. “Let’s decorate Cartref for Christmas!”

  He gawped at her. “But what’ll we do for decorations?”

  “Just you see!”

  Using an old pair of clippers they found in the barn, they gathered armfuls of holly and ivy from the woods, Gillian even managing to wrench a bunch of mistletoe off the low, twisty apple tree which Angus had shown her how to climb. They stuck the stems into crates and between bales and planks until Cartref glowed with shiny, dark green leaves, red and white berries, and golden straw. When they finished, they stared at it in awe. It was as beautiful as Aladdin’s cave in the pantomime.

  Tommy wiped squashed mistletoe berries off his hands onto the front of his new coat. His nose was running, but his cheeks were bright red and his blue eyes were blazing. “Gilly!” he whispered, “Let’s show it to Angus!”

  “But it’s our secret, stupid.”

  “Oh, please, Gilly! He’s our friend. He won’t tell. And we can have a party! Pop n’ sweets n’ things! It’d be fun!”

  Gillian looked around at their gleaming creation. She wanted to keep it safe and secret forever, but in a way she wanted to share it too. She wanted it to be admired. And it was true, Angus was their friend. “If you like,” she said. “It’ll probably be all right.”

  “I say! Just the thing, eh?” Angus was impressed. He crouched in Cartref and looked around with his twisted smile. “You mean to say, you clever little monkeys, you’ve had this smashing place all to yourselves all along, and you never told anyone?”

  They declared proudly that no one had any idea of their secret, and they all settled down comfortably, bulgy Dinah included, to share a bottle of fizzy Tizer and the striped humbugs Angus had brought, and to examine the disc of ice, clear as glass, which had come off Dinah’s drinking bowl.

  As they sucked the sweets, Angus did a strange thing. He slid his hand under Gillian’s jersey and stroked her back, moving his hand around, over and over, as if learning the shape of her bones off by heart. She squirmed away from him, but he kept on stroking.

&n
bsp; “Tell us about the puppies,” Tommy said, dribbling. “How’d they get in there?”

  Angus stopped his stroking. He looked at Dinah, and then at Gillian.

  “Tell you what, old chap,” he grinned at Tommy. “Be a sport and go look in my bike basket for some more sweeties.”

  Tommy scrambled off, and Angus turned back to Gillian, getting his hand under her skirt that time. “Come on, Gilly! Why won’t you let me do that? I won’t hurt you. Now this doesn’t hurt at all, does it?”

  She shot to her feet. “Angus, that’s rude! Don’t be so … so common!” She was shocked. He should have stopped all that sort of thing when he was little, as she had. “Grown-ups don’t do things like that.”

  “Is that so?” He seemed to think that was funny, but then grabbed her arm, his face suddenly serious. “Listen. Come here tonight, after he’s asleep.”

  What was he talking about? “No, I can’t. Let go! You’re hurting me, Angus!”

  He looked down at her, frowning. “You must. If you don’t, I’ll have to tell my mother about this place. You’ll get a royal beating for being so sly, and you’ll never be allowed to come here again. I bet she’d tell on you to your mother too.”

  Gillian thought about it. The beating she could stand perhaps. She had already survived some of those. But to make her mother disappointed in her? That would be awful. And what about Cartref? Mrs. Macpherson was so mean, she’d surely put an end to it. But how could they live without their den? Where would they go? What would they do?

  “Come on. What’s it going to be? Make up your mind.” He let go of her arm and stroked it gently, smiling at her, nice again. He lifted her chin with his finger. “I won’t hurt you, you know. I’m your friend. I won’t even touch you, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  That was a real promise. No one would say that if they didn’t mean it.

  “All right,” she said, as Tommy stumbled in, proudly waving a Fry’s peppermint sandwich bar. “I’ll come.”

  They were in bed by six o’clock, as usual, and it was not quite dark. It was cold in their bedroom, and Tommy had trouble getting to sleep. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “Stay here with me.”

  “I must go. I said I would. If I don’t, he’ll tell on us. I’ll only stay for a bit, though. I won’t be gone long.”

  As soon as they had warmed up under the heavy blankets and lumpy eiderdown, and Tommy had finally fallen asleep, Gillian slithered from the high bed onto the icy floorboards and put on her sheepskin slippers and the red wool dressing gown her grandmother had made her. She tucked Glory Anna under her arm and crossed the shadowy room to the door. From there she looked back at Tommy, deep in his hot sleep, with Rupie beside him. He looked like a baby, not like a big boy of four at all, his cheeks red and his dark hair stuck to his forehead.

  She managed the stairs, avoiding the creaky bits, tiptoed past the sitting room where she could hear people on the wireless, laughing, and crept along the dark hallway to the back door. Slowly and carefully she lifted the latch and slipped out into the cold night.

  By the upward-leaping shadows from a hurricane lamp on the floor, she saw that Angus was in Cartref already. He was sitting on one of the bales, white and strange-looking, as though he too were scared. The hands he held out to her trembled as he pulled her to him between his knees, and she could feel his heart thudding. A smell of mothballs came from the rough blanket he had brought. He reached up under her nightdress and put his hands right around her waist and shook her.

  “Why did you come?” His voice was shaky, and his breath smelt funny, like his father’s.

  “What?”

  “Why did you come?” He stared hard into her eyes. “It was because you wanted to, wasn’t it?” He shook her again. “Wasn’t it?” The fierce expression and the upside-down lighting made him look like the Demon King in the pantomime she saw last Christmas.

  Gillian nodded dumbly.

  “That’s right. You came because you wanted to.”

  Dinah whined and struggled out of her cwch.

  Angus pulled Gillian hard against him. This felt all wrong, and she was frightened. She struggled to escape, trying to think what to do. If she screamed loud enough, Mrs. Macpherson might hear her and come, but she would be furious with her for being in the barn at that time, and would probably tell her mother, who would also be very angry. She knew, too, that Mrs. Macpherson would never take her side against Angus. Grown-ups always stuck together.

  “Stop it Angus, please! You’re scaring me!”

  Kicking Dinah out of the way, Angus pushed Gillian down on the blanket and undid the snake clasp on his belt.

  Was he going to beat her?

  As she tried to scramble out of Cartref, he reached after her, grabbed her ankle and pulled her back in. “You can fight if you like,” he said, holding her down with his knee and grabbing both her flailing fists with one hand. “But you can’t win.”

  “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” he said later, doing up his belt. “You see, I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He brushed the straw and dust off her and dabbed with his handkerchief at the sticky mess, like squashed mistletoe berries, on her thighs and stomach.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Gilly. It’s your fault really, you know, the way you look, so little and skinny, with that soft, frizzy hair and those big green eyes, making me feel this way. Anyway, we’re special friends now, right?” He fixed his hot, red-brown gaze on her. “But this is to be our secret. D’you understand? You breathe a word of this, and I’ll tell them it was all your idea; that you suggested it. What would your mother think of that, eh?” He grabbed her wrist. “Now come here, I want to play some more.”

  A high scream came from the house, and another, and another. Angus dropped her wrist and ran to the back door of the barn. Looking back, he bared his teeth at her. “Remember what I said!”

  Trembling, Gillian crept with Dinah to the other door. Lights came on in the house. The side door opened, and she saw the Macphersons come out with torches, calling her name. The screaming kept on: “Gilly! Gilly! Gilly! Where are you?”

  She ran towards the screams. When a beam from a torch picked her out, Tommy shot past the Macphersons into her arms.

  “It was the fox!” he shouted between hiccupping sobs, as she grabbed him under the monkey puzzle tree. “The fox was alive, and he was blowing the house down. And then he ran away with you on his back! And then I woke up, and you were gone, and I thought the fox had really got you!”

  She held him tight and looked around at the grown-ups, Angus somehow included, who were staring at them indignantly.

  Mrs. Macpherson was coldly angry. “What’s the meaning of this shameful behaviour, you sly, disobedient girl? Would you mind informing us where you were, and what, exactly, you were doing?”

  Gillian looked helplessly at Angus who seemed lost in staring up at the twists and turns of the tree. There was a frozen silence while her brain raced from one barrier to another. Then she heard herself say, bold as brass, “I just wanted to see if Dinah’d had her puppies.”

  Back in bed, still shivering and stinging from the slaps, she slowly calmed down. With Tommy finally asleep again beside her, she began to think about herself. Mrs. Macpherson had said she was sly and disobedient, and she’d obviously become an awful liar. And what about what Angus had done? Was she common now? It must have something to do with that secret, too shameful to be talked about, that only grown-ups knew. What was more, her mother, besides asking her to be brave and not whine, had most particularly asked her never to do anything to make her ashamed of her. Gillian knew, as well as she had ever known anything, that if her mother ever heard what had happened that evening, she would be horribly ashamed. “I can’t love you if you are not good,” she had said more than once. So Gillian would not tell her, ever.

  Before she finally warmed up and calmed
down enough to go to sleep, she remembered that she had left Glory Anna in the barn, but decided she did not care.

  The day arrived for their mother’s Christmas Eve visit, her first since she had left them at Maenordy. She had telephoned once, causing Tommy to be so upset that Mrs. Macpherson had asked her not to do it again. Their father had written a letter, almost indecipherable despite being printed, which Gillian would take out and work on from time to time, planning to write a reply. He had been supposed to come for the Christmas visit too, but had phoned that morning to say he had an emergency at the hospital.

  Tommy had pestered Gillian for weeks about how many days were left until they came, and she had been as excited as he was, but now that the time was nearly here, the tight feeling that took hold in her chest at the thought of seeing her mother again closed in until she could hardly breathe.

  First they heard, and then saw the car crunch up the drive to park under the monkey puzzle tree. Then there was their mother, beaming with love and joy, holding out her arms. Tommy hurtled into them to be hugged, kissed, and exclaimed over. But when her mother opened her arms to her, Gillian could not move. When she took Gillian’s chin in her hand, Gillian had to force herself to look into her puzzled eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” Her mother smoothed Gillian’s hair. “Are you forgetting all about your poor mummy?”

  “No, Mummy. I’d never do that.”

  Her mother hugged her. “That’s my good girl. I’m so proud of you. Daddy says he’s sorry he couldn’t come—you know he had to go to the hospital—but he sends his love to you both. He said to say he’s proud of you, too.”