The Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sonia Tilson

  What more could I ask?

  The back of her neck prickled and her face burned.

  Is he insane?

  Clutching her napkin, she leaned forward, her eyes fixed on his. “I’ll tell you what more I could ask, Angus.” Despite the nearness of the waiter, and the distinct drop in the volume of noise around them, she raised her voice. “I could ask to have been left alone to grow up unashamed and unafraid; sure of myself, and,” twisting the napkin, “… proud of myself.”

  As Angus glanced to either side, loosening his tie, she pressed on. “I could ask to be not just someone who can get by and keep up appearances, but someone who can live her life freely, and,” she swallowed, “and joyfully. And most of all, Angus,” she stared into his furious, frightened eyes, “I could ask to be someone who’d be able not just to fight, but to win.” She threw down the napkin, pushed her untouched sherry away, and planted her hands on the table, ready to rise.

  She had never seen a man sweat like that. Large whitish drops sprang out on his forehead and ran together to slide down his face. “Gillian,” he whispered, “Don’t go! Listen to me.” He wiped his brow, managing a nod at two women at the nearest table who promptly lowered their eyes. No doubt he would tell them later that she had turned out to have been a madwoman. He turned his eyes back to her. “There’s something I must say to you.”

  “What?” She sat back, seeing his age catch up with him in front of her.

  Waving away the waiter’s attempt to top up Gillian’s glass, he glanced around and leaned forward.

  “You have never been far from my thoughts.”

  What was that? She had never been far from his thoughts? She blinked and looked away to where, beyond the latticed window, the sun shone on trees and traffic and shop fronts, and on people going about their normal daily business. She blinked again and looked back at the lined, blotched face.

  Was this some sort of acknowledgement?

  An apology, even?

  He shovelled in a forkful of curry, and took another gulp of whisky as she slaked her mouth with water, watching him.

  “The truth is Gillian,” he swallowed the last of his mouthful and wiped his lips, “all my life you have haunted me, whether I’m awake or asleep. In a way, you know, it’s you who have ruined my life, and not the other way round.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  “And as for the shame,” he cocked his head, “consider this, if you will. It was not I, you know, who made you … uncomfortable, but society in general, and your shaming mother in particular.” He raised his eyebrows, nodding agreement with his own argument. “Anyway,” he went on, “what we did was just natural, eh? After all, I was only eighteen.” He sat back with a smirk and saluted someone across the room.

  She straightened her back, narrowing her eyes. The man had no idea whatsoever of what he had done to her, or worse still to Gladys; their feelings unimaginable to him and of no interest. “I see,” she said, “So you’re not at fault, is that it? In fact you’re the victim. You were just innocently doing what was natural.” She gripped the arms of her chair and leaned forward. “Natural, Angus? All that? It may have been natural for you, maybe; but for a six-year-old? Forget the fucking sophistry! You knew it was wrong.”

  A woman with a long pheasant feather in her mannish hat got up from across the room to sit at the table behind Angus, the other two making room for her without a word.

  Angus drained his cut-glass tumbler and held it up, eyeing Gillian with a small, twisted smile as the white-faced waiter came forward and slipped away with the glass. “If you think that was so very bad,” he said quietly, “you should count yourself lucky.” He leaned closer. “Did you ever consider, Gillian, how amazingly well I controlled myself with you, so little, and fragile, and … accessible as you were?” He raised his eyebrows. “There certainly could’ve been more cause for so-called complaint in your case, couldn’t there?” He sat back.

  More cause for complaint?

  In your case?

  Those words, and the easy way he said them, along with the smile, revealed suddenly to Gillian that what had happened to her, and to Gladys, all that time ago had not been, as she had assumed, a matter of raging adolescent hormones, but the start of something much darker. Registering what he meant by “more cause for complaint,” she realized that there must have been other, perhaps many other, little girls since that time, who had suffered not only her lot, but Gladys’s; and that there could be more to come. Remembering Sally, the ‘real little beauty’, she jumped up and stood over Angus, staring down at him.

  The buzz of conversation died, and the clatter of knives and forks around them ceased. As faces, near and far, lifted and turned towards them, she said loudly and distinctly, her voice shaking, but growing louder with every question, “With how many other little girls did you so considerately restrain yourself, Angus?”

  A high laugh and the clink of glasses came from the bar at the far end of the dining room. A child wailed out in the street.

  “In how many cases could it have been much worse?”

  The pheasant feather shot up, quivering.

  Seeing again the audacious little seven-year-old Gladys, she pressed on, her voice rising to a shout at the last word.

  “How many little girls have you actually raped?”

  She turned and walked out through the hushed room, her cheeks flaming but her head high.

  A few minutes later, watching from the hotel entrance, she saw him lean heavily on the door of his absurd car, head bowed, before stiffly lowering himself in. Her eyes followed his slow retreat down the hill to the hospital.

  Re-entering the bar, she called a taxi to take her back to Maenordy.

  From under the monkey puzzle tree, she watched the taxi rattle away. Her stomach clenching and her palms wet, she turned to face the house. She knew what she had to say to Janet and Rhiannon now that she had grasped the full truth about Angus, but could not imagine how to say it. How could she explain to Janet that her husband of forty-odd years preyed on little girls? How tell Rhiannon that she was placing her daughter in horrible danger? Would they believe her? What if they did not? Would she be coldly, or furiously, driven away? Or, if they did accept what she said, could they handle it? Rhiannon seemed resilient enough, but Janet had struck Gillian as fragile and exhausted. Whatever the case, there was no turning back now.

  Tucking in her chin and drawing a deep breath, she climbed the steps to lift again the fox-head knocker. Rhiannon opened the door, a solemn, red-cheeked child astride her hip, the wriggling dog at her feet. “Back so soon?” Eyebrows raised, she smiled at Gillian and looked beyond her for Angus.

  “Angus has gone to the hospital,” Gillian said. “But I’ve come back because I need to talk to you and Janet alone.”

  Rhiannon’s smile faded. She stood aside to let Gillian into the hallway as Janet, her hair trailing from its bun and dark smudges on her apron, emerged from the door to the back of the house.

  “Gillian wants to talk to us,” Rhiannon said.

  Janet stood still, her hand on the doorknob.

  “Is there somewhere we could sit down?” Gillian looked around the austere entrance hall with its grandfather clock, narrow table, and single, upright chair.

  Janet hesitated, her hand at her throat. She looked for a moment at the closed door to the reception room, furnished, as Gillian remembered, with black leather armchairs, cold and hard as boulders, but led them instead down the passage to the kitchen. They sat again at the table, Rhiannon pushing aside the heap of half-polished silverware. Sally scuttled under the table to play with her toy monkey on the small threadbare rug, while the dog took up its former place, leaning against Gillian’s leg.

  Taking off her apron, and tucking her hair back from her face, Janet sat down at the head of the table. She pursed her mouth and straightened her faded, Liberty-pri
nt blouse before clasping her hands in front of her on the table. “What’s all this about, Gillian?” She put her head on one side, and raised her eyebrows as if addressing a wayward element of the local Women’s Institute.

  Gillian saw fully, with dismay, what she was about to do to this nice woman, her social life and local standing obliterated with one stroke, her careful shoring-up all swept away. People would turn away from her in the street. Shopkeepers would pretend not to see her. It would be a brave friend who would stand by her now in this small, tight community. Closing her eyes for a moment, Gillian put her hand on the dog’s head, feeling, beneath the warmth and softness, the hardness of its skull.

  “When I was evacuated here,” she looked from one puzzled face to the other, “I had some very … damaging experiences.”

  Janet stiffened, her eyes fixed on the Aga, while Rhiannon stared at Gillian in astonishment. “What was it that happened to you here, then, Gillian?” she said. “And, if I might ask, what business is it of ours?”

  Janet’s chair screeched on the slates as she stood up. “Would anyone like a cup of tea?” she asked with a nervous, social smile.

  “No, thank you.” Gillian and Rhiannon spoke as one, and Janet sat down again, picking up a dessert spoon and turning it over.

  There was a stir under the table. Sally was popping her monkey into the dog’s face. “Hello!” she piped, “My name’s George. D’you wanna play wi’me, Daisy?”

  The dog turned its head up and away as if embarrassed.

  “I’ll give you a present!”

  Daisy buried her muzzle under Gillian’s elbow as the little girl returned, pouting, to sit at her mother’s feet.

  “Janet,” Gillian said, “Rhiannon. I have to tell both of you about what happened to me here all that time ago because I’m afraid it is very much your business. Because of Sally.”

  Rhiannon froze, her hand on Sally’s head, then looked up sharply. Janet scrutinized the back of the spoon handle as if doubting its provenance.

  “Please believe me,” Gillian went on resolutely, “I had no intention of upsetting you when I arrived this morning. I just wanted to find Angus and settle an old score. But after listening to the way he talked at the Hare and Hounds, I knew I’d no choice but to come here and tell you what …” she dropped her eyes to the scrubbed, battered tabletop, then looked straight at Janet, “what he did to me when I was six and seven years old.”

  The spoon dropped with a clatter as Janet stared at Gillian. She had turned so white that Rhiannon ran to fetch a glass of water which Janet took with a trembling hand, spilling some on her blouse as she raised it to her lips, the glass rattling against her teeth.

  “I’m so sorry, Janet,” Gillian said, “but for Sally’s sake, you must listen to me.”

  “Jack and Jill went up the hill …” a little voice rose up from under the table.

  The slates at Gillian’s feet shimmered in dark iridescence. She blinked, and raised her head.

  “You should both know, “she said, looking from Janet to Rhiannon, “that whenever Angus was home from boarding school that year, he molested me.”

  “Jesus wept!” Rhiannon clapped her hand over her mouth, staring at Gillian. Janet bent to pick up the spoon.

  “I don’t mean just one little fumble, either,” Gillian went on doggedly, “but systematically, and repeatedly, whenever he could get me alone, which was often. And after I left,” she said, trying to control the tremor in her voice, “he did the same thing to another little evacuee in the village, except,” she kept her eyes on Janet, “that he actually raped her.”

  A bare branch rapped on the window pane as dead leaves whirled by on the wind.

  “He never!” Rhiannon stepped back, her fingers across her mouth, staring at Gillian. She sat down hard on her chair.

  Janet got to her feet. Pulling open the neck of her blouse, she hurried, slipshod, to the window to stand with her back to them, hunched over, clasping her elbows, the drooping hem of her skirt visibly trembling. “That’s impossible!” She spun around. Her colour rose as she faced Gillian, head high. “Who do you think you are, you … you mischief-maker! Coming here out of the blue like this, and saying these terrible things about my husband without a shred of evidence! You must be mad! Or maybe you think you can blackmail an innocent man? Yes! That’s more like it! I’m going to call the police right now!” She set off towards the passage.

  “Janet,” Gillian moved in front of her. “That woman told me herself about the rape some months ago in Swansea, and will confirm what I’ve just said. Her name then was Gladys Jones.”

  A magpie landed with a flutter on the branch outside the casement, bending the twigs and seeming to peer into the room. “One for sorrow …” the old rhyme came into Gillian’s head as she saw Janet turn back to grip the windowsill, her knuckles white.

  “Ah! I see it all now!” Janet said over her shoulder, “I did meet a very common young girl called Gladys Jones the first time I came here, before we got married. I didn’t like her one bit. I thought then that she was very shifty-looking. I’m not surprised that she’s involved in this.” She faced Gillian again, a tall, gaunt figure, backed up against the sill, her face whiter than ever, but her head still high. “I think that you’ve been plotting with this Gladys Jones, and that you’ve made up this whole horrible thing between you.”

  Gillian shook her head. “Tell me, Janet,” she said steadily, “Was there never any problem at all concerning Angus’s treatment of little girls? Were there no complaints of that sort in all the years you’ve lived here? No strange, angry phone calls? No mothers coming to the door?”

  Janet bridled and opened her mouth, but closed it, her eyes wide and her fingers pressing against her lips.

  “What?” Rhiannon said. “What, Janet?”

  “Nothing.” Janet turned her back on them, her shoulders hunched and her head low.

  “It’s terrible, what you’re telling us, Gillian,” Rhiannon said after a pause, running the tip of a knife into the soft white wood on the tabletop. “But if it did happen, that was half a century ago, when he was still in his teens.” She looked up. “There’d be no danger now, of course, of anything like that happening again.”

  A soft clunk came from the Aga as the anthracite shifted and collapsed on itself.

  Janet turned, nodding vehemently. “That’s right, Rhiannon! He was just a boy! A young lad! That’s all water under the bridge now.” She arched her neck, her face red and her hair trailing loose. “Why are you trying to wreck our lives like this?” she hissed. “Why?”

  Gillian put her finger on the maze-like marks Rhiannon had made on the tabletop. “I’m sorry, Janet, I know this is a terrible thing for you to hear, but there’s more. There’s something worse that I must tell you …”

  Rhiannon fixed horrified eyes on Gillian, as Janet, her colour still high, twisted away to stare out at the garden.

  “From the way Angus spoke to me at the pub,” Gillian said to Janet’s back, then to Rhiannon’s white face, “I realized that that sort of behaviour is not over. Not at all! I’m afraid it’s … well, it’s …” she squared her shoulders. “I think it is, and always has been a …” she directed her words to Janet’s rigid form, “… a way of life for him.”

  “What?” Rhiannon leapt up. “Bloody hell! A way of life, you say? You mean you think he’s still doing that? Oh my God!” She snatched up Sally and backed away, her face flooded with colour and her eyes blazing. “That fucking bastard! Jesus! I could kill him!”

  Sally began to whimper.

  “Rhiannon!” Janet cried. “For shame! You don’t mean to say you believe any of this … this preposterous story? This is your father-in-law we’re talking about here, Rhiannon! Sally’s grandpa! You live in his house! How can you even think such things?”

  Rhiannon looked away for a moment, her lips trembling, “I do
n’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure, but …” With Sally’s head buried in her neck, she turned to face Janet. Shaking her head slowly, she said over the child’s sobs, “I’m sorry, Janet, but something here rings true to me. A lot of things are beginning to make sense and sort of fit together.” She sat down. “Now that I think of it, without knowing why—just a feeling I had—I never liked to leave Sally alone with Angus. To tell you the truth,” she stroked the little girl’s back to calm her. “I can’t stand seeing those big old hands on her—or the way he looks at her, now she’s stopped being a baby. And he’s always bringing her presents and treats …” She closed her eyes. “And the other day,” she looked at Gillian, “while I was soaping Sally in the bath, he came in and asked if he could help! Of course I said no.” She shuddered, putting her head against Sally’s. “Oh, dear God!”

  Gillian shivered too at the image conjured up. She had come none too soon.

  Janet tearfully reached out a supplicating hand. “Rhiannon! Please! Don’t do this!”

  Rhiannon kissed the child’s cheek before settling her down on her lap. She turned to face her mother-in-law. “No, I’m sorry, Janet, but terrible as it is, what she’s saying, I have to believe Gillian.”

  The telephone shrilled in the entrance hall. Gillian and Rhiannon exchanged a quick, almost shame-faced glance as Janet stumbled off down the passage. That would be Angus, probably, Gillian thought, sounding the waters at home.

  Janet returned, her face as white as the handkerchief she was twisting in her hands. “That was some man wanting to get hold of Angus.” She collapsed onto a chair. “He sounded very angry.” She put her head in her hands. “I can’t bear this! It’s a nightmare!” She turned on Gillian. “This is all your doing! You’ve already spread rumours about him in the village, haven’t you? Telling these obscene lies to everyone you met down there!”