The Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sonia Tilson

  “You go to my head like wi-ine,” they sang along,

  “You ruined the life of many a poor girl,

  And you ver’ near ruined this life of mine.”

  Gordon danced around the scruffy room, waving his wine glass, his dark hair flopping on his forehead.

  Dear Gordon. Why couldn’t it have been you? Giving him a quick goodbye kiss, and asking him to thank the hosts for her, Gillian stuffed Diana’s brochure into her handbag, stepped over a recumbent junior lecturer by the front door, and left the cottage to follow the winding stony path to the car.

  W

  As she sat by her sleeping mother later that morning, Gillian thought how those events during that long-ago summer had all pointed in the same direction: away from Llewellyn, and away from her mother. Canada would offer a fresh start, new possibilities. And so it had, even if it had not created a new Gillian.

  The room was quiet, apart from the rasp of laboured breathing. Her mother’s dentures grinned from a glass of water on the bedside table. Stripped of her feistiness and make-up, she was fearfully diminished. Taking in the pallor of the sunken cheeks, the hollowness of the eye sockets, and the collapse of the half-open mouth, Gillian saw ‘the skull beneath the skin’. The eyes opened to drift unseeingly around the room until they lit on her, stilled, widened for a long moment, and then with a wince closed tight, her mother seeming to shrink even further.

  “What’s wrong, Mum?” Gillian leaned over to stroke the hot, dry forehead.

  “Nothing. Why d’you ask?” With an obvious effort, her mother roused herself. “Give me my glasses, would you, and my dentures. I wasn’t expecting you today.”

  “But I said I’d be coming. I come to see you every day.”

  “Yes, now you do.” She strained to sit forward as Gillian placed an extra pillow behind her back, and supplied the missing items. Settling back against the pillows, she added, “After over thirty years.” With her teeth in, and her glasses on, she was back in the world of the living.

  Gillian straightened the bed, pulling the sheet tight and refastening it with ‘hospital corners’ as she had been taught long ago at school. She shook out the cotton blanket with a snap. “Has Tom been in?”

  “Yes he has, but he was so noisy and made so much fuss, I told him to go away.”

  Gillian threw the blanket down on the bed. “Tom loves you, Mum, and he tries hard to please you. Why are you so harsh?” In her anger on her brother’s behalf she pushed the question further, surprising herself. “Why have you always been so cold and hard towards both of us, all our lives, even when we were little children?”

  Her mother’s fingers flew to the base of her throat, her rheumy eyes wide. “Me? Cold and hard towards you? Oh, Gillian! If you only knew what a sacrifice I made for you both, so that you could have every advantage and never go without.” She closed her eyes. “What happiness I gave up for your sakes.”

  Gillian stepped back, colliding with the chair, “What? What are you talking about? What sacrifice? What happiness?”

  Her mother kept her eyes closed and waved a hand. “Water under the bridge, Gillian! Water under the bridge!”

  “‘Water under the bridge’ my foot! Bloody great dam more likely! What’s this all about, Mum?” She gripped the frail shoulder, close to giving it a shake. “Tell me!”

  “Don’t you bully me, my girl! It’s none of your business.”

  “It damn well is my business, if it has anything to do with what came between us.” Gillian sat down, trying to breathe slowly. After a moment she took her mother’s hand. “I’m sorry I was cross, Mum, but what you said about sacrifices and lost happiness shook me. Will you tell me what you meant?”

  Her mother looked away, coughing. “I was very hurt to hear you say I was cold to you,” she wheezed, “I did my best, you know.”

  A straight answer would be nice. “I know you loved me when I was very little.” With a sigh, Gillian stroked the translucent skin on the back of her mother’s hand. “I remember going through scraps of cloth in your rag bag, feeling the textures while you told me the words for them: crepe de Chine, taffeta, bombazine; and the names of colours I didn’t know: heliotrope, crimson, Nile green … you said that was the colour of my eyes. There was tenderness and closeness between us then, I’m sure of it. But something changed.” She looked up. “What happened, Mum?”

  “I’ve always loved you, Gillian, despite your difficult nature, but … things got complicated.” She glanced at Gillian out of the corner of her eye, pleating the sheet between her fingers and clearing her throat. “Do you, by any chance, remember a man coming to visit us when you were four years old? A tall man, very tanned? He brought you a stuffed toy—a Koala bear.”

  “I remember the bear, Ozzie. Tommy threw him into the duck pond in Brynmill Park.” She looked sharply at her mother. “Why? What about him? That man?”

  “Well he …” Her mother took a deep breath, setting off a fit of coughing that left her ashen and gasping. “He was …” Another paroxysm gripped her. “I’m sorry, Gillian,” she gasped, “I can’t talk now.” She lay back, deathly pale, her chest crackling and her eyes closed.

  Hardly able to breathe herself, Gillian watched her mother struggle for breath as something rolled, clanking, down the hallway. Hoping to find Sunita, she went to the door, but found the passage silent and empty.

  A minute later her mother looked up with a start and seized Gillian’s wrist.

  “That time …” she whispered hoarsely, “… that time when you were at Croesffordd.” She pulled on the wrist. “Was it all right, Gillian? With that boy, Angus, I mean?”

  Gillian stared at her, the blood pounding in her head.

  Is this it? Now?

  Her mother tugged again, nodding encouragingly. “Tell me it was all right!” The wheezing grew louder. “I’ve always been a bit worried …” She fell back, seized by another fit of coughing.

  Gillian pulled her hand away. At the window she laid her forehead against the cool glass.

  She knew!

  Outside, gulls screamed and wheeled in the wind.

  She has always been “a bit” worried? Gillian clenched her teeth, her eyes squeezed shut.

  And now, when she’s at death’s door, and I can’t tell her, she needs to know it was “all right”?

  After a long pause, filled with the thump of her own heartbeat, her mother’s wheezing, and the shrieks of gulls, she opened her eyes and said, still facing the window, “Yes, it was all right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  For a moment she wavered, but made herself turn back to the bed. “It was all right, Mum.”

  Her mother put her head back, closing her eyes. Gillian let out a long breath and tidied up the bedside table.

  With a clatter at the door, Sunita came in, carrying a loaded, stainless-steel tray. “It’s time for your Lasix injection, Iris, and for your sponge bath, and your pills.” She turned to Gillian. “Mrs. Davies asked me to call her Iris. She said it made her feel more at home.”

  “It’d make me feel the same, Sunita, if you’d call me Gillian.”

  Sunita smiled and turned back to her patient, her face becoming serious. “How are you feeling, Iris?” She looked at the water glass. “Oh dear, you haven’t drunk any of your water! Remember Dr. Gabriel said it was very important for you to drink plenty of fluids.” She felt her patient’s pulse. “Is there anything you’d like to drink? Does something tempt you in particular?”

  Gillian’s mother made a big effort. “That stuff you found for me the other day, Gillian, what was that called now? I liked that.”

  “Lucozade. I’ll get you some more right now, Mum. What about a bottle of Ribena too? I know where I can get that.”

  “Thank you, darling. That would be lovely.”

  So that was that. It had been close, but there would be no
revelation, no heart-to-heart reconciliation, and no closure. Holding onto that ‘darling’, Gillian left her mother to Sunita’s care.

  Walking up to the shops, she searched for memories of Ozzie, and fetched up an image of the little bear with the funny face being held out to her in the thin, brown hands of a tall stranger smiling down at her. Something stirred in the back of her mind, but slipped away as Tom’s BMW, a perk from his years at the Croyden dealership, drew alongside with a gentle toot.

  They bought Lucozade and Ribena at the chemist’s, and located a box of Meltis New Berry Fruits, their mother’s favourite candy, in case she could be tempted.

  “Sunita’s going to be a while with Mum.” Gillian looked at her watch. “Let’s just drop off the Lucozade for her, and then drive over and look at the ducks in Brynmill Park. Like when we were little.”

  The pond was still there, complete with panhandling ducks, beady eyes fixed sideways on them. Holding ice cream cones from the park kiosk, they sat on what could have been the same iron bench as that used by their mother or Olwen fifty years ago, while Gillian described to Tom how ill their mother seemed.

  “She’s probably dehydrated,” he said, “It’s surprising what that can do to you.”

  He took a bite of his ice cream. “Do you remember the rude monkey that used to be in the cage behind this bench?”

  Gillian smiled. “We were never allowed to watch him, were we? There was a fox here too, in a pen behind the bushes on the other side of the pond. Remember? Sometimes you could smell it.”

  “What was the point of that? We couldn’t look at the monkey, and no one could see the fox.”

  “Who knows?” Gillian licked her cone and looked at him sideways. “You threw my Koala bear, Ozzie, into this pond, Tom, and Mum wouldn’t get him out because he’d be filthy. I was pretty upset.”

  “Sorry!” Tom sighed. “I seem to have spent my life saying ‘sorry’.”

  He broke off a piece of cone and threw it to the ducks which squabbled as if it were their only source of nourishment for the day. “Do you remember Gill, when you didn’t write for almost a year; that second year you were in Canada? What happened there? You’ve never told me.”

  She lowered her ice cream. “I’ve always felt bad about not writing, Tom, especially when you told me about Gladys and the baby. But Mum had already told me it was all over. No baby, and no more Gladys, and then I just shelved the whole thing, probably because I was so caught up with Doug.”

  “We’re a right pair, aren’t we?” He smiled at her over his cone. “But I never heard much about Doug; you sort of clammed up on that subject. Was it a rebound thing after Llewellyn? I’ve always felt you were more hurt by that jerk than you let on.”

  “I suppose I was on the rebound, really. But it seemed so wonderful at the start. I really thought I’d found true love at last, Tom. I forgot everybody and everything while I was living in that farmhouse with Doug. I’ll tell you all about it later when we have more time. And about how Diana rescued me.”

  “Diana from school? I remember her. She came to see you at home one holiday. I thought she was smashing. What happened to her, do you know? Did you keep in touch?”

  “Oh yes, we see each other from time to time, even though we live so far apart. She became an executive for a big travel agency and made enough money to retire early. Now she breeds Staffordshire bull terriers with her partner, Penny, on Vancouver Island.”

  “Oh I see.” He smiled. “I can imagine.” He crunched up the mini-cone at the bottom of his ice-cream and brushed his hands together. “I’ve got to go now. But when we’ve got time, I’d like to hear the story. I’ve often wondered.”

  As he gathered up the napkins and took them to the bin, Gillian looked across the grey pond to the bushes where the fox’s cage had been, mentally reliving her disastrous attempt at giving her all.

  W

  She was frying bacon for Doug’s breakfast when the phone rang, unusual at any time, let alone at eight in the morning. She picked up the phone, jerking the receiver away from her ear as a clear voice rang out, echoing around the bare kitchen the way it had years ago on the school hockey field. “That you, Gill?”

  Afraid that The Voice of Authority, as Diana had been called at Deer Park, could be heard upstairs in the bedroom, Gillian almost whispered her reply, but her friend was too excited to take the hint. She was actually in Ottawa, she declared, and had managed to track Gillian down! She’d have to return to Vancouver in a few days, but she could come to see her that afternoon. Would that be possible? It’d be such fun to meet! They hadn’t seen each other in such ages!

  Gillian lowered the receiver, holding it in both hands, and looked out over the snow-covered fields. Doug was not keen on visitors, she knew, but surely he wouldn’t want her to miss this chance of seeing her old friend again. Raising the phone, she gave Diana directions to the farmhouse and invited her to lunch. She squared her shoulders and went upstairs to the bedroom.

  Doug was awake and awaiting her explanation for the call. “I’m not sure about that, honey.” He sat up and settled himself against the pillows. “You’d better call her back and tell her not to come.” He glanced out of the window. “The weather looks really bad. These early March storms can be the worst.” He reached over and switched on the bedside radio.

  “But, Doug, I don’t know where she’s staying.” Gillian raised her voice over those of The Platters. “And anyway, she’s probably left already.”

  With a sigh, he turned down the volume. “How come you didn’t talk to me before inviting her here, Gill? You know I like it best when it’s just the two of us.” He held out his hand. “I thought you did too, my darling.” His eyes were watchful. Choirboy eyes, Gillian called them, dark blue, heavily fringed with black lashes.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said. “Besides, we’re not really doing anything today.” She sat down on the bed, still holding his hand. “Diana was my best friend at boarding school, Doug, and I haven’t seen her since we left school six years ago. I really want her to come.”

  Turning his head, he raised the volume on the radio and closed his eyes.

  The melancholy harmonizations accompanied her downstairs, followed by a severe-weather advisory.

  “With any luck,” Doug came into the kitchen five minutes later in his ratty dressing gown and broken-down carpet slippers, “she’ll hear that storm warning on the car radio and turn back. I mean we wouldn’t want her going into the ditch, would we?”

  Gillian put his breakfast down smartly in front of him as the ancient percolator finished gargling. “Diana’s very competent. She’s been living out west for years. She’ll cope with the snow.”

  He stabbed the two egg yolks so that they bled all over the plate and ate in silence, the ticking of the wooden wall clock the only other sound.

  An hour and a half later, a car turned in through the gate Gillian had managed to pull open after clearing the driveway. “She’s here!” she called out to Doug in the back room, and flung on her sheepskin coat and boots to skitter down the front steps.

  Diana, in a bright red duffle coat, jumped out of the car, hugged her and held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “Skinny as ever! Still that crazy hair! You haven’t changed a bit, Gill.”

  “Neither have you.” And indeed it was true in Diana’s case. She had the same round face and rosy cheeks, her straight black hair still as short as at school, if rather more stylish. As they turned laughing towards the house, arms linked, Gillian saw Doug pull back from the window.

  “What the hell’s that?” Diana stopped to look at a metal structure beside the steps, consisting of four sleigh runners curving vertically away from an upright steel drum of the type used for storing toxic materials. Great lengths of rusty chains, their links at least three inches long, were welded to the tips of the runners, piling up on top of the drum
before dropping down its sides into the snow.

  “That’s one of Doug’s creations. He makes them out of metal things he finds around the property. Metal things sprout out of the ground here like the soldiers in that Greek myth.”

  “He’s an artist?”

  “Yes, he had an exhibition last year. Had a good review and sold three pieces. People in downtown Toronto put them in their gardens.”

  Gillian saw Diana look back askance as they went up the steps into the house.

  Unshaven, his dark hair straggling over his collar, Doug was standing in the middle of the floor in corduroy pants, bald at the knees, and a grubby red and black plaid lumber jacket. He held a cigarette in one hand and a stubby bottle of Molson Export in the other. Gillian could not help wishing he had made more of an effort to brush up for her friend, as he had for his exhibition when, in black pants and turtleneck, he had attracted at least as much appreciative scrutiny as his creations.

  “Doug, this is, Diana.” She stood back for them to shake hands.

  “Charmed I’m sure!” Ignoring Diana’s outstretched hand he raised his beer bottle in salute and took a drag on his cigarette before ostentatiously blowing the smoke away from her. After a long swallow, he banged the bottle down on the counter and smiled his sudden dazzling smile. “Whatcha want to drink, Diane? How ’bout you, Gill? We must celebrate this great occasion!”

  Maybe it was going to be all right after all. Gillian smiled back at him. “Let me get Diana comfortable first.” She took her friend into the warmth of the back room to settle her in the capacious if threadbare armchair by the wood stove. “How was the drive?”

  “It wasn’t too bad, actually,” Diana held out her hands to the warmth. “The car I rented is new and it’s got good tires and a heater, but I borrowed chains and a snow shovel just in case. There is an awful lot of snow, though. Perhaps I should try to get back before it gets too late.”

  “I think you should.” Doug came forward to chuck a massive log into the already pulsating stove. “There’s a severe storm warning for later this afternoon, and the temperature’s going down to minus thirty, not counting the wind factor. I don’t want to sound inhospitable,” he stood up, poker in hand, smiling at both of them, “but if I were you, I’d set off right away.”