The Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sonia Tilson

  In the morning, while their grandfather took Tommy to the station to see the train come in, Gillian helped her grandmother prepare the dinner. She was shown how to choose the best string beans from those growing up the garden fence; not too little and thin, and not too big and tough. They pulled up potatoes, which she scrubbed clean by herself, and then made Welsh cakes together, Gillian sieving the flour, and watching how to rub in the margarine. When the cakes were done, she was given one to take out into the garden.

  Wary of bees droning and bumbling in the hearts of the roses, she inhaled and rated the various fragrances. She rubbed thyme, sage, and rosemary between her fingers and nibbled a sprig of parsley as she watched a white butterfly lazily open and close its wings on a lacy, dark-green cabbage leaf. At the bottom of the garden, she found she had grown enough to sit on a low bend in the trunk of the elderberry tree, now laden with umbrella-like clusters of little black berries. Swinging her legs in the dappled shade, she savoured a handful of the bittersweet fruit along with her still-warm Welsh cake.

  That evening they listened to music. Their grandfather wound up the gramophone before carefully lowering the needle onto the old, familiar His Master’s Voice records: Madame Adelina Patti, performing something with lots of trills and amazing high notes, and Dame Clara Butt, sounding just like a man at times, splendidly belting out The Lost Chord. Finally he put on a record Gillian had not heard before: someone called John McCormick singing, I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.

  As the clear notes died away, Gillian saw tears in her grandfather’s eyes. She knew all about homesickness, that piercing, paralyzing ache for the feel of home, and went over to him, putting her hand on his knee. “When were you away from home, Grandpa?”

  “I spent a week in London once, with the choir.” He wiped his eyes with a spotted handkerchief. “Nearly killed me.”

  “Is that why you’re crying?”

  “No.” He put his arm around her. “It’s that voice brings tears to my eyes, Gillian fach. The voice of an angel!”

  On other evenings, their grandmother would recite poetry by heart. She favoured really sad poems like the one about the death of the miner’s only son, beginning, The cottage was a thatched one,/ The outside poor and mean. Gillian, who hated to be seen crying, would be out the door before her grandmother, her voice quavering with pathos, could get to I feel no pain, dear mother, now/ But oh, I am so dry!

  Gillian preferred the funny poems and stories, and the everlasting quotations. Heat me those irons hot! her grandmother would exclaim, taking the poker out of the fire and waving it. Or, raising an eyebrow over her flashing glasses, she would hiss, But Brutus is an honourable man!

  There were books too, mostly boring, apart from the heavy, leather-bound Bible, with its fancy metal clasps and bright, tissue-covered pictures; and Pilgrim’s Progress, with its embossed cover and scary black and white illustrations. Like most children in the village, they could never have comics in the house or play on Sundays, so they spent much of the day poring over those two volumes, puzzling together over pictures like The Sacrifice of Isaac, or Christian Struggles in the Slough of Despond, Gillian doing her best to follow the text. Sundays were not much fun, it was true, but it was a million times better than living at Maenordy.

  Pushing the matter of Angus into the darkest corner in the cellar of her mind, Gillian began to relax. Tommy took his cue from her, and the whole thing seemed to be successfully forgotten, apart from the nightmare that sometimes tore her nights open.

  In her dream, Angus was making her skate, although she did not know how, over thin ice with reeds growing through it, and cracks running across it, and bubbles moving under it. She could smell the ice and hear it cracking, but still she had to wobble on, in skates much too big for her, towards the bottomless middle of the pond, into which she knew she would fall. When she woke screaming as the ice broke, and her grandmother was comforting her and asking what her nightmare was about, she always made up a different dream.

  One afternoon, after such a night, she heard her grandmother say thoughtfully to her mother, “Deep as the well that girl is!” and had held her breath. Her mother had looked up in surprise but then changed the subject, and the scary moment passed.

  She liked the school and Miss Thomas, her teacher, who knew all about King Arthur, and the earth going round the sun, and all sorts of things. Nobody there behaved like Gladys. The other girls seemed to accept her, and Mary Bevan and Sian Lloyd had both asked her back to their houses to play and for tea.

  Tommy liked the Infants’ School too. Gillian’s alphabet and numbers drills seemed to have paid off, and he was not behind. She had seen him kicking the ball and playing conkers with the other boys and knew he was not being picked on or shut out, so it was annoying that he still clung to her, following her about and telling on her when she sent him away.

  The year after they came to live with their grandparents, there was great excitement in Tregwyr. An Apostolic convention was to be held in Swansea, a huge event, not to be missed, their grandparents said. Since the convention would take up a whole Saturday and Sunday, it was arranged that the children would spend those two days with their parents, going back on the bus to Tregwyr each night in case of bombs.

  They could hardly believe it. Two whole days at home! Tommy could not control his excitement, and clattered down the stairs, jumping the last three steps, running down the passage, shouting and singing at the top of his voice. He was making up for his year of imposed silence, their grandfather said, but their grandmother declared her nerves could hardly stand it. Gillian kept it all in, quietly savouring the prospect.

  Once home, they did the rounds. They inspected their indoor den, the mousy-smelling secret cupboard with its spiral ceiling under the attic stairs, the torn eiderdown on the floor still spilling feathers. They checked the attic and found their dapple-grey rocking horse still there, with his flaring red nostrils and real horsehair mane and tail, as was the German helmet from the first war, and, best of all, the skull. Putty-coloured and shiny with a wired, moveable lower jaw, and eye sockets and nose-hole you could poke your fingers through, it made a wonderfully gruesome puppet. At first, Gillian had imagined that some poor person must have died unnoticed in their attic, until she was told the skull was just something left over from her father’s medical studies. All the same, she thought, it was what was left of somebody’s head and still pretty thrilling.

  In the afternoon, left to themselves and fascinated by what they had been told about bomb sites, they set off to explore the changes in the neighbourhood. They had heard that big safe houses much like their own, houses they had been in, some of them, had been blown to smithereens. This they had to see. They did not have to look far, either; there was one such site just a few doors down.

  Defying parental warnings and threats and stern notices from the town council, they squeezed around the plywood fence to find their way onto the property. Inside they stared around at the exposed wallpaper, once so private, the twisted bedstead, the broken kitchen sink. Their brown Oxfords crunched on sparkling glass shards. They had a good laugh at the lavatory which had landed upright in the flattened rose bushes, but fell silent at the sight of a china doll lying amongst the stones, its glass eyes, the same bright blue as Tommy’s, staring up at the clear sky from its cracked face. A bony black cat watched their every move from under a one-legged chair.

  Giddy with the strangeness, the unlawfulness, the richness of it all, they poked around in the debris. Gillian found a high-heeled, peep-toed shoe and tried it on, giggling, while Tommy pretended to drink beer from a battered pewter mug, smacking his lips, and staggering about like Great-Uncle Tom.

  Sensibly resisting the lure of the stairs, they began to search for treasure, an emerald necklace maybe, or a bag of sovereigns, and found it when Tommy discovered a sixpenny piece, and Gillian picked up a shiny, black music box which played We’ll Meet Again every
time she opened the lid, and which she stashed away in the satchel she had brought along in hopes of finding something amazing.

  They were getting ready to go back on the bus with their grandparents when their mother picked up the satchel and discovered the music box. Having got out of Gillian where they had found it, she clutched it to her breast.

  “You took your brother onto that bomb site?” She stared at Gillian, the whites of her eyes showing all around. “After everything we told you? For shame, Gillian! You could’ve been blown up by an unexploded bomb, both of you, or crushed under a collapsing wall! And I’ll have you know, miss,” she wagged a pointing finger, “this music box belonged to old Mrs. Beynon, who was killed in the blitz, right there, where you were walking around. And you want to keep it and play with it? I don’t think so!” At seven years old, she said, Gillian should have known better. She had been irresponsible and disobedient and should be thoroughly ashamed of herself. She confiscated the box, telling them they would be forbidden to leave the house by themselves the following day. She was not sure they should be allowed to come home at all, she said, if they could not be trusted.

  The bus back to Tregwyr was packed with chattering, beaming people, so excited by the convention that Gillian, still smarting from the music-box scrape, was afraid they were going to hold another stupid prayer meeting right there on the bus. As soon as the bus reached the outskirts of Swansea, however, they began to sing: first Dai Jones, the baritone, “famous throughout the valleys”; then Ceinwen Rhys, the chapel soloist; then more and more, until they were all singing, their heads thrown back,

  Mae popeth yn dda!

  Mae popeth yn dda!

  Mae Iesu f’yngharu!

  Mae popeth yn dda!

  “Everything’s fine! Everything’s fine! Jesus loves me! Everything’s fine!” They rocked in their seats, Grandpa’s bass voice booming out behind her, Grandma’s sweet shaky treble rising up in descant beside her. She heard Tommy join in at the top of his voice, getting thumbs up all round; and when the bus driver threw his trumpet-like tenor into the mix, she could hold out no longer. Mae popeth yn dda! she sang, along with the rest of them, and felt for a moment that, despite everything, it was true.

  That night she had the dream again, but this time her mother was there, dancing on the far side of the pond, long hair floating behind her as she sang to the tune of the music box cradled in her arms. She did not seem to see Gillian trying to skate over the crazed ice towards her, or to hear her calling, but circled around, crooning to the box. Gillian could see the edges of the black hole widen as dark cracks in the ice zigzagged towards her.

  “There, there, cariad.” Her grandmother was holding her. “Shush, shush. Mae popeth yn dda nawr. Everything’s all right now. You’re safe as houses here with me and Grandpa. What was that old dream then? Tell Grandma.”

  Snuggled in her grandmother’s arms, drinking hot milk with honey, Gillian told her a story about a wolf with red eyes and big teeth that was following her.

  W

  Still brooding on You didn’t want to come home, Gillian hurried away from Saint Anne’s, her footsteps clicking on the pavement. She ran her hands through her hair before thrusting them deep into the pockets of her raincoat, tightly belted against the wind from the sea. Turning the corner, she came to the garden wall of her old home, now used, Tom had told her, for law offices. She stopped to put her hands on the rough stones, sheltered from the wind and warmed by the afternoon sun. The cushions of bright green moss between the stones still sprang back when pressed. The same clumps of tiny flowers, blue with yellow throats, like miniature snapdragons, trailed from the crevices. Breathing more slowly, she placed an awkward, adult finger and thumb around the throat of a single bloom, squeezed gently, and, bow-wow, the flower opened and closed its mouth.

  The wall was far older than the house, her father had told her. Like the huge pear tree that used to grow against it, it had been part of a farm that had been there for centuries before the town swallowed it up.

  Vanna Farrell, her childhood friend, lived further up the hill in a tall, gabled row house looking down over Cwmdonkin Park. Passing the house where Swansea’s poet, Dylan Thomas, was born and lived, Gillian entered the park where she and Tommy often used to play. The bandstand was still there, but the oval, bronze “Keep off the Grass” notices were gone, and the drinking fountain had lost the chained iron cup from which they all, germs be damned, had drunk as children, Dylan Thomas no doubt included.

  Vanna had not played there as a child. Gillian had met her in primary school in Tregwyr. According to Tom, she had become a successful stage actress, had starred in a couple of films set in Wales, and was currently playing a feisty older-woman role in a BBC Wales television series. Gillian had not seen her since leaving Swansea, apart from the few photos or newspaper clips Tom had sent from time to time, in which her height and shock of red curls seemed undiminished, her bony, freckled beauty still arresting. Remembering the early intensity of their childhood friendship, Gillian wondered if they would fall back into their old ways together. You don’t really change as you get older, she thought; you are what you have always been, only more so.

  The walk had done her good. By the time she reached Vanna’s house, out of breath from the steep climb, she had recovered her composure. Even if she had not succeeded in breaking any ground with her mother that day, she could try again the next. There had to be a heart-to-heart; that unfinished business had to be seen to; she had to find closure, and so on. Could she come up with any more clichés? But they were clichés for good reason: family secrets are common. She smiled at the once-dreaded word.

  Vanna greeted her, elegant in slim black pants and silvery silk shirt, her smoothed hair a modified red-gold, and her face, despite three decades of emoting, still beautiful. “Gillian! How marvellous to see you again! I’m so glad you came! You look wonderful!” She held Gillian by the shoulders; “Still positively willowy” (a kiss on one cheek), “and delicately complexioned” (a kiss on the other), “and cloudy-haired, of course.” She put an arm around her. “Canada suits you. Come. Tell me all your news.”

  They climbed the stairs to the sunlit living room, located on the second floor in order to afford a glimpse of the sea. The sea seemed to be everywhere in Swansea, Gillian thought. Rome might have been built on seven hills, but Swansea could have been built on seventy-seven, all jostling each other as if vying for the ocean view. You never walked on flat ground in Swansea, and never felt far from the ocean.

  In Vanna’s living room they drank Lapsang Suchong tea out of fine Belleek cups, from the same set perhaps as the cup Gillian had seen all those years before in Tregwyr in the work-worn hands of Vanna’s mother, sitting in her tattered chair amidst piles of books, surrounded by her five children. Sipping the hot, smoky tea, they talked of Gillian’s life in Canada, and of Mrs. Farrell, and Vanna’s brothers and sisters, all of whom, like Vanna, had done well, despite their unpromising start in life.

  Vanna walked over to the window. Looking back with a brittle smile, she said, “And how is dear Tom? Did he get his divorce from that Swedish air-hostess?”

  “I think it’s been made final.” The question puzzled Gillian. Vanna had known since Tregwyr days how Tom felt about her, but while never lacking for male company, had always averred contempt for men in general, and had kept him, in particular, at arm’s length.

  “That’s two now. Her and Gladys,” Vanna said.

  “Let’s not go into that.”

  “Third time lucky, maybe.”

  To change the subject, Gillian began reminiscing about their schooldays in Tregwyr, and Miss Thomas, their teacher. Skirting the touchy subject of the Eleven-Plus exam, they settled on the slightly less painful one of Gillian’s grandmother’s unfortunate prejudice against not only Catholics, but also the poor, and, worst of all, the Irish.

  Her grey eyes sparkling, Vanna came over
to sit by Gillian. “D’you remember when we lost Jesus?”

  Gillian looked out of the window, smiling.

  W

  “D’you want to come to my house?” The new girl chewed on the end of a dark red plait and slid a sideways look at Gillian.

  Gillian’s grandmother had forbidden her to play with “the little Papist girl” who had come with her family that September to live in Tregwyr; but Gillian liked her; and she liked the look of her tall, thin mother with her bony, beautiful face and proud way of holding her head. Gillian had seen her in the grocer’s shop with a little girl and a toddler beside her, and a baby in the pram, and had known by her hair that she must be Vanna’s mother.

  “Just for a minute then. My grandma said I had to go straight home after school.”

  They stopped in the middle of a row of narrow brick houses staggering up the hill by the railway cutting, houses facing right on the street, only the lowest of thresholds between them and the skimpy pavement.

  “Mama, we’ve got a visitor!” Vanna threw open the battered front door. “Gillian’s come to play with me!”

  There was barely room for the two of them to stand together in the gloomy hallway. Looking down, Gillian could make out bare floorboards through holes in the linoleum. Beside her, jagged white streaks marked where the brown anaglypta covering on the lower half of the wall had been bashed in. A strip of wallpaper had let go its hold halfway up the staircase and was flopping onto the stairs. Underneath the odours of nappies and cabbage lurked a strange smell: dark and sour, a bit tarry.