The Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sonia Tilson

As the day went on, with Angus nowhere to be seen, and Mrs. Macpherson being weirdly nice and kind, not saying a word about shameful behaviour, and even telling their mother how good the children always were, Gillian began to be able to breathe more easily, to talk to her mother again, and even to smile once or twice.

  Before she left, her mother brought in from the car the gaily-wrapped Christmas presents, not to be opened until Christmas Day. The huge one for Gillian would turn out to be a life-sized Shirley Temple doll, all dimply smile and curls, doomed to be stuck at the back of the wardrobe to simper alone.

  As she was getting ready to leave, and they were all, Angus now included, standing by the car, Gillian’s mother put her arm around her. “Gill, you’re very quiet. Is everything all right? You are happy here, aren’t you?”

  This was it. She had to be strong and brave. She stood up straight.

  “Yes, I’m very happy here, thank you, Mummy.”

  But she had bargained without Tommy.

  “Mummy!” He stood in front of their mother, hands on hips. “Angus makes Gilly go to the barn with him in the night!”

  The two mothers drew in their breath sharply. Gillian hung her head and closed her eyes. She wanted to disappear forever.

  “Gilly is this true?” Her mother opened her eyes wide at her. Gillian stood there, frozen, unable to move.

  “Is this true, Angus?” said Mrs. Macpherson.

  “No! No! I never!” Angus’s face was white.

  “Yes he did!” Tommy shouted. “She had to go last night, an’ the night before!”

  “Angus?” Mrs. Macpherson’s voice had a dangerous lift to it.

  “It’s her fault.” Angus looked as if he was going to cry. “She suggested it, not me. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

  “Get in the house!”

  Gillian knew she must stop the truth coming out! “We didn’t do anything, Mummy,” she said. “We just talked.”

  Mrs. Macpherson and Angus stopped on the steps and looked at her.

  “Angus.” Her mother’s voice was sharp. “Tell me the truth now. Why did you take Gillian into the barn with you at night?”

  Angus clasped his hands together in front of his chest and smiled his twisted smile.

  “Well as a matter of actual fact, Mrs. Davies, to tell you the honest truth, we did go there a couple of times just to have a look at Dinah, who’s going to have puppies any day now, you know. Gillian wanted to see if the puppies were here yet.” He blinked at her. “And it wasn’t, really speaking, all that late. Not even seven o’clock.”

  Gillian saw her mother draw herself up to her full height, an expression on her face that meant trouble. “And you think that’s a suitable subject for a child her age?”

  Angus did a sort of squirm. “No, of course I don’t. I see that now. It was a mistake on my part. I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Davies. Honestly, I’ll never do anything like that again. I promise you. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Gillian felt herself being led around to the far side of the car. “Is that really what happened, Gillian? Was it just to go and see Dinah? Tell me the truth now. It’s very important.” Her mother knelt down to hold her chin so that she could not look away.

  “Yes.” Gillian was sure of only one thing in all this confusion. “That’s why we were there.”

  Somehow she managed to look straight at her mother, her back stiff.

  “Mrs. Davies, I’m going to send the dog over to the farm,” Mrs. Macpherson said, adding to Gillian’s misery, “That way there’ll be no more temptation.”

  Her mother looked up at the sky, biting her lip and thinking. After a pause she stood up. “Well, I suppose that’s all right then.” She stared, frowning, at Angus who gazed back, his eyes wide open.

  Turning again to Gillian she said, “But there must be absolutely no more going out at night. All right, Gilly? None whatsoever! Do I have your promise?”

  Gillian nodded, numb with misery.

  “Goodbye, my darlings.” Their mother gathered them both to her. “Oh, I do so wish I could take you home with me, but it’s much too dangerous.”

  Tommy began to cry. “Take us home, Mummy! Please! Don’t leave us! We don’t want to be evaporated!”

  She covered a smile, exchanging a glance with Mrs. Macpherson. “Now, don’t be a tiny-whiny, Tommy. You know there’s a war on, and you have to be safe, the two of you. I’ll come back as soon as I can.” She kissed them both, thanked Mrs. Macpherson again, and in a swirl of silk and Je Reviens, got into the car.

  “Goodbye, sweethearts. Merry Christmas! Be good children now.”

  Still keeping her chin up as Tommy sobbed beside her, Gillian watched, dry-eyed, as the little grey car disappeared down the drive.

  W

  “You must be Mrs. Davies’s daughter from Canada.” The doctor walked briskly down the hallway towards Gillian, smiling, pristine in his white coat, a stethoscope around his neck. “I’m Dr. Gabriel.”

  Getting up to greet him, Gillian saw glossy hair greying at the temples and deep lines in his cheeks, becoming parentheses when he smiled. He must have been a lovely little boy, she thought: black curly hair, dimples, quick to laughter; like Tommy in that photo of him at four years old just before their evacuation, with his dark curls, big ears, and wide grin.

  “Let’s take a look at the patient.” Dr. Gabriel stepped back for her to enter the room. He raised his voice as he followed her in. “You must be so pleased that your daughter’s come all this way to see you, Mrs. Davies.”

  Her mother snapped to attention at the sound of the doctor’s voice, her hollow eyes suddenly bright, and her smile at full wattage.

  “Doctor! You’ve come to see me at last!” Ignoring Gillian, she held out a still elegant hand. “I’ve been waiting for you all morning.”

  “Well, you see, Mrs. Davies,” he winked a dark eye at Gillian, who had slipped around to the other side of the bed, “I keep the best for last.” He put the stethoscope to the old woman’s chest and listened, his eyes on the ceiling, his smile slowly fading. He moved the instrument around, repeating the procedure several times.

  “How do you feel, Mrs. Davies?” He trained a pencil flashlight into her eyes.

  “All the better for seeing you, Doctor!”

  Oh for Heaven’s sake! Does it never end? Gillian turned away to busy herself with the flowers, a type of small lily, she had brought. A refrain from her childhood, “Your mother could charm the birds from the trees,” entered her head as she pulled the red, trumpet-shaped blooms to the front and pushed the paler ones to the back.

  “Can you turn on your side, Mrs. Davies?”

  She seemed to lack the strength to move her own weight, little as it was. The doctor pushed her half over and asked Gillian to hold her there, a bundle of bones, while he listened to her back. He straightened up and helped Gillian ease her on to the pillows before turning to leave.

  “You’re going, Doctor? So soon?” The old woman held out her hand again.

  “I’ll be back to see you again before long, Mrs. Davies.” He smiled at her, then looked at Gillian and glanced at the door.

  “I’m worried about your mother.” He had pulled the door shut after them as they left the room. “Her lungs are still very congested, her heart is weak, and her temperature is up. It’s not a good combination, but we’re going to try a different antibiotic to see if that might do the trick.” He walked off down the hallway, coat flapping, through the smells of eau de cologne, Johnson’s baby powder, and Depends, to descend the wide, curving stairway.

  Her audience gone, her mother dropped the façade. “I don’t feel well at all,” she said breathlessly. She lifted her sunken eyes to Gillian’s, their faded pupils rimmed with a raised whitish circle. “I’ll be better soon, though, won’t I?”

  You have an infection, your lungs are sho
t, and your heart is giving out. What do you think?

  “You’ll be all right, Mum,” Gillian said. “The antibiotics will fix you up. They always have, haven’t they?”

  Her mother relaxed into the pillows, until she was seized again by another paroxysm of coughing. When she had caught her breath, she said, wheezing, “Grandma was here, you know. She was here for two months before she died.” She shot a look at Gillian. “But as I told you, I have no intention of dying. I’m going home to my little bungalow, and to my Tweetie-Pie and Sylvester, who are pining for me.”

  Neither the cat nor the canary had shown any signs that Gillian could see of decline. “They’re just fine, Mum.”

  Her mother pursed her lips and shook her head. “They really feel the separation, you know, animals do. Grandma’s old cat, Twm, died while she was here. I remember her talking about it. It was very sad.”

  This could be the opening she had been waiting for. Gillian sat down beside the bed. “Mum,” she took her mother’s hand and stroked the raised blue veins and brown age-spots on its back, “did you and Grandma talk much while she was here?” She could tell her mother that children felt the separation too; that she and Tommy certainly had. After which she could bring up the years when they had been evacuated at her grandparents’ home; and that, perhaps, could lead back to the previous year at Croesffordd, at which point she would be able, at last, tell her mother what had happened there.

  Her mother removed her hand. “Yes we did. We talked about old times, and about Grandpa, and about your father of course, and my family, and people in Tregwyr. She talked about you and Tommy too; those years you spent with them, and how happy you were there.” A theatrical sigh brought on a fit of coughing. “As a matter of fact,” she resumed after she had caught her breath, “I always felt that you two loved being there so much, you didn’t want to come back home to live with your father and me.” She shook her head, flicking a sideways glance at Gillian. “It was very hard on me, you know, Gillian, being separated from you children for so long.”

  What was that? Gillian stared at her. We didn’t want to come home?

  She stood up. It was hard on you?

  “I’ve got to go.” She grabbed her coat and purse off the foot of the bed, and before her mother could raise any argument, was at the door. “I hope you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  Her mother seemed to shrink, suddenly looking even older and frailer. Raising her eyebrows she looked out of the window. “Don’t you worry about me! You go off and enjoy yourself. I’ll be all right.”

  “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “If you have the time.” Her mother studied the ceiling.

  Hearing the rattling cough as she reached the stairs, Gillian stood still, her hand on the polished banister and her head turned, until she saw Sunita slip into her mother’s room and heard the coughing die down.

  She hurried down the stairs and out onto the quiet street, the words You didn’t want to come home playing over and over in her head. It had been all they had ever wanted, both at their grandparents’ house, kind as they had been, and of course before that, at Maenordy where she and Tommy had kept a calendar, crossing off the months, weeks, and days of their exile until the great day finally arrived when they left Croesffordd for good.

  W

  Gillian sat in the shade on the steps of Maenordy, clutching her cardigan around her and staring at a daisy that had struggled through the gravel at her feet while Tommy, panting and red-faced in the August sunshine, galloped back and forth between the steps and the bend in the drive. He was watching for their parents’ car to come into sight and chanting, “We are going ho-ome! We are going ho-ome!” at the top of his funny, gruff voice.

  Gillian narrowed her eyes at him. “Shut up, you idiot!”

  He skidded to a wide-legged stop on the gravel and stared at her, his wet, red mouth open.

  “What? Whassa matter? Don’t you want to go home?”

  “Course I do, stupid! I hate it here. It’s just …” Why did she wish that the car buzzing unstoppably along the road towards them would turn around and go back? It didn’t make any sense.

  “You look like a dumdum running around like that,” she said, as Tommy went on staring, his mouth drooping, “You’re all red, your socks have fallen down, and your shirt’s hanging out at the back. Mummy and Daddy will think you’re a mess when they come.” She shrugged. “If they come. I heard the clock strike one ages ago. They’re late. They’ve probably changed their minds, and they’re not coming.”

  “They are coming!” Tears filled his eyes. “I know they are! You’re horrid!” He picked up a handful of gravel and threw it at her just as a toot came from down the drive.

  Brushing off the gravel, Gillian picked the daisy and scrutinized the slender, fuzzy stem and pink-tipped petals while Tommy slobbered over their mother in the front seat.

  A crunch of footsteps announced her father’s approach.

  “Hello, Gill.” Balding sandy head on one side, he was stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see us?”

  “Yes Daddy.” She glanced up at the grey flannels, and down again at the pattern of little holes in his polished brown brogues. The fragrance of his tobacco, mixed with that of Imperial Leather soap, brought back the sensation of being held giggling in his arms as he rubbed his scratchy chin against her cheek. In the old days.

  “I expected a bit more of a welcome.” He lit his pipe, smiling and frowning at the same time, as she squinted up at him. “But perhaps you’re overwhelmed. Is that it?”

  “What does overwhelmed mean?” There was comfort in being able to talk the way they used to.

  “It means ‘overcome’—feeling it’s all a bit too much for you. Is that the problem?”

  “Yes.” She was grateful for the word and stashed it away for future reference. “I’m overwhelmed.”

  After the suitcases and bags had been loaded into the boot, Mrs. Macpherson shook hands with their parents and made to kiss the children goodbye. Tommy hid behind their mother, and Gillian, stiff as a post, turned her head away at just at the right moment as Mrs. Macpherson’s long nose and sharp chin approached. Her mother raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

  As her father started the engine, Angus came running out of the barn. “Here,” he thrust Glory Anna at Gillian, panting, “You forgot this.”

  Gillian looked at the dirty, straw-covered doll she had not played with since before Christmas, and pushed it back at him. “I don’t want it. Keep it yourself.” She wound up the window and flung herself back in her seat. As they drove away, she saw him watching from under the monkey puzzle tree, the doll dangling from his hand, and thanked her lucky stars she had escaped from him and from what he had said he was going to do the next time.

  “That was very rude!” Her mother looked around at her. “I thought it was really nice of Angus to fetch your doll for you. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Yes,” her father said, “What was that all about?”

  “I’m sick of the stupid doll. It’s babyish.” She wrinkled her nose at Tommy and they drove on in silence.

  As they passed through the village, she saw Gladys, weighed down by a full basket, come out of the greengrocer’s shop. Leaning out of the car window, Gillian thumbed her nose and stuck out her tongue. Gladys dropped the basket and ran into the middle of the road to make what Gillian knew was a very common gesture after the car.

  The silence in the car persisted for a while until Tommy began bouncing around in the back seat, starting up again with his We are going home! song. Their mother turned around in the front seat. “You’re not going home, darlings,” she said. “It’s not safe yet for you to come back to Swansea. Grandma’s better now, so you’re going to live with Grandma and Grandpa in Tregwyr! Won’t that be fun? We can come and see you at weekends, and you might even be
able to come home for the day sometimes!” She beamed at them, seemingly thrilled with the arrangement.

  Tommy shrank like a punctured balloon. Gillian bit her bottom lip and picked the scab off her knee until it bled. Only the day before, Mrs. Macpherson had told them their parents were taking them away. And now they really were leaving Croesffordd, but not to go home.

  “Is underwhelmed a word?” she asked, lifting her head, but received no reply.

  By the time they reached Tregwyr, their grandparents’ village, which lay about six miles from Swansea, she was getting her mind around to the idea. Even though they would not actually be at home, they would be closer to it and away from Maenordy anyway, and she would be safe at last from Angus and his terrifying plans.

  She remembered helping her grandmother with the baking, putting wings on butterfly cakes and placing glacé cherries just right on queen cakes. Perhaps Grandma would teach her how to knit. Also, school would be taught in English, and, even better, there would be no Gladys. Tommy was cheering up too, asking if Grandpa would take him to the market to see the animals. By the time they got to the brick house on the corner they were ready to run into the arms of their grandparents.

  Her grandmother took one look at Gillian. “Oh cariad!” She put her arms around her. “My darling! What have they done to my little girl?”

  It was all Gillian could do not to burst into tears, but she stiffened her back. She must not allow her grandmother to get too close. She could see too much.

  “Look at this child, Iris!” Her grandmother turned her around to face her mother. “She’s as white as a sheet and there’s nothing to her. We’ll have to see what we can do about that, never mind that old rationing. Tommy doesn’t look quite so bad, although he’s not the plump little fellow he was, either.”

  Their mother glanced at them. “It’s just their age, Mam. They’re bound to be thinner.”

  That evening, after their parents had left and Tommy had calmed down, they sat in the living room, Tommy sprawled, hiccupping, on their grandfather’s lap in the big leather armchair, and Gillian perched next to her grandmother on the brown velvet loveseat. Their grandmother wanted to hear all about Maenordy, and Tommy cheered up enough to tell her about the horrible pigeon pies which always made him sick, the burnt porridge, and lumpy custard. He started prattling on about the barn but caught Gillian’s eye and veered off the subject, and, when they were asked about Angus, did not contradict her statement that Angus was always away at school and they had hardly ever seen him.