The Realities of Aldous U

by Michael Lawrence

  Thursday: 14

  When the tree jolted, Alaric thought that he was already on his way out of this reality. But nothing changed. It was someone climbing onto the bough below the bank of leaves that concealed him from the water.

  Thursday: 15

  Squatting on the sturdiest of the lower boughs, Aldous heard the delighted laughter of his sisters and brother as Larissa rowed erratically, constantly changing direction to fool them. Away from them, their rowdy good humor, he began to feel left out, and rather mean. The others – even Ursula – had made an effort because their aunt was going away, and Larissa had bought those masks in the cause of making the excursion memorable for her nephews and nieces before she left them, possibly for good and all. And he? He had scowled and pouted and refused to enter into the spirit of things. Feeling bad about it now, he raised a foot and kicked the tree with his heel as if to blame it for his attitude. As he kicked, something caught his eye a little way along, dangling from a stump on the bough.

  Thursday: 16

  Amid all the laughter and silliness, Ursula glanced back at the tree her brother had climbed into. There was no sign of him among the bright profusion of leaves, but, wanting him to know that she was displeased with him, she cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, in a sing-song voice: ‘Aldous is a mi-se-ry!’

  Thursday: 17

  Along the bough Alaric had climbed to, a blackbird stood watching him, ready for any movement that might signify danger. He ignored the bird. He’d heard Ursula’s taunt – obviously directed at the boy he and Naia had met here previously – but he had no way of knowing if it was he who had climbed into the tree’s lower reaches, and dare not part the leaves to check for fear of giving himself away to someone who might not appreciate his presence.

  So he remained absolutely still. As still as the blackbird along the bough. Until he began to develop cramp in his right leg.

  Thursday: 18

  Aldous unhooked the bag and examined it. Thick, strong, transparent, it was far from new in look or feel, yet he’d never seen such a thing, such material. But almost at once it gave him an idea. A way to repair his image with the others, by playing the fool, adding to their laughter. He seized a fistful of leaves and stuffed them into the bag. Loosening the drawstring to open it out further, he tipped his head into it, tightened the string around his neck just enough to stop the leaves falling out of his hair, and threw the loop over one shoulder like a scarf. Everything looked a bit hazy through the discolored material, and when he breathed in it followed the breath and clung to his mouth. He wished he had a mirror.

  He peered down. It was a fair drop and he’d be soaked, but it would be funnier if he made a big splash, then rose like some monster of the deep, pulling a mad face inside the bag and wailing and shouting as he loped toward the boat, arms waving wildly, leaves slithering from his hair. The girls would squeal and yell – Aunt Larissa too, with any luck – and Ray, probably. Ray might have nightmares afterwards. Maman would never let him hear the last of it if he gave Ray nightmares. But it would be worth it.

  Thursday: 19

  The blackbird continued to keep a watchful eye on the motionless Alaric. Only sharp movements were a threat, but it was as well to keep alert. Alaric found it harder to remain still. The cramp was worsening. He stretched his leg out, cautiously. The blackbird watched the stretching, ready to take flight at a split-second’s notice.

  Thursday: 20

  Oak leaves in his hair, breathing with difficulty inside the strange material, Aldous prepared to jump into the water some five feet below and launch his jape.

  Thursday: 21

  Unable to stand the cramp a moment longer, Alaric shook his leg – and the blackbird panicked, took off, careered away through the leaves. Startled by the spirited rustling above him, Aldous looked up so sharply that he lost his balance. With the breath-misted bag around his head, the leaves in his hair slipping down across his eyes, he was unable to see clearly enough to catch hold of anything, with the result that the planned dramatic leap became an ungainly sideways plunge. As he fell, the loop of the drawstring twitched, caught, encircled the stump he’d plucked it from minutes earlier. His body weight jerked the cord taut around his neck, and he swung below the bough, feet just above the water’s surface, gasping within the tough polythene, struggling helplessly.

  Thursday: 22

  The jolt was so violent and unexpected that Alaric ceased to notice the cramp. He bent down, pulled leaves apart, saw the boy thrashing about, something over his head, a hood of sorts, translucent, like…

  Shaken by the sight, and by tumbling thoughts and fears, he wasted time trying to decide what to do, but at last lodged the photo album in a nest of leaves and dropped to the lower bough. He moved along it, as rapidly as he could, but carefully so as not to fall, until he was within reach of the stump that held the loop of the drawstring. Leaning out, he reached for the boy’s collar, intending to lift him enough to loosen the cord and tear the bag from –

  The light changed with the efficiency of a slap, the water level dropped, and the hanging boy, less than a minute from death, vanished.

  Thursday: 23

  It was Mr. Knight who found him. He had come to inspect what he could of the garden that was beneath his reach until the flooding subsided. Marie fainted clean away when she saw the body. Ursula and Mimi were inconsolable. Little Ray could only stare blankly, trying to make sense of it all. His brother? Dead? Impossible!

  Larissa blamed herself. No one had ever seen her so distraught. ‘I should never have left him, I should never have left him. Why did I leave him? I don’t deserve to live!’ In other circumstances, her brother would have comforted her. Not today. Alaric Eldon Underwood was already what he would remain – a broken man – until his own early death the following year.

  Thursday: 24

  The Westminster clock on the mantelpiece struck seven. Naia glanced at the pale gold face, the stark Roman numerals, the serious arrow-hands, so commanding in that position. Do it, the clock seemed to say. Now’s the time. And her mind was made up, yesterday’s vow not to approach the tree for a while vanquished.

  She’d been thinking about little Ray on and off all afternoon. Aldous too, and Withern as it was back then; but Ray most of all. Now that she knew for certain who he was, she wanted to see him again, even if it meant another incapacitating energy drain afterwards. She might introduce herself this time. She wouldn’t be able to say who she was, or when she came from, but there was no harm in telling him her name. Her first name. She grinned to herself. If she told him her name he might remember it, and maybe, when he became a grandfather many years later, he might suggest Naia as a name for a certain newborn baby girl.

  She put on the waders that Ray would buy in much later life, climbed out of the window, and set off across the south garden. She hesitated at the tree, touched it with a tentative finger, and, when nothing happened, decided to climb up through the canopy of leaves directly above her and make herself comfortable while waiting for ‘it’ to happen, if it was going to. But it did happen, and very quickly once she had settled herself on the sturdiest of the lower boughs. A tiny lurch, that was all, an almost infinitesimal adjustment of light, and there she was, in the same tree, sixty years earlier. And there were voices. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were too close for comfort, so she climbed to the next level. It was there that she saw something cradled in leaves. Something whose presence made no sense at all. The family album. For several moments she could only stare at it, thinking no wonder I couldn’t find it. But how could it be here? It isn’t possible for it to be here.

  But she was too happy to have found it to worry about impossibilities. Time for mysteries later. The voices of the people in the garden were drifting away. She tucked the album under her arm and returned to the lower bough, where she once again tried to decide what to do next. In order to see little Rayner she would have to leave the tree, but she didn’t like the idea of bei
ng caught in the garden again. Maybe, she thought, I’ll seem less of an intruder if I’m seen emerging from the drive, like any other visitor.

  When the voices had faded completely, she slipped into the water, clutching the album tightly to her, peered around the great trunk to make sure there was no one about, and started toward a break in the greenery that lined the drive. Keeping the oak as much between herself and the house as possible, she planned on joining the drive at about its half-way point, and from there wading along and out of it, into plain sight of the house. If a face appeared at one of the windows she would wave, and if it was anyone but the egg-collecting great-grandfather she would claim to have promised Ray that she would say hello to him this evening. Hopefully, whoever it was would either let him come outside or chat to her through one of the downstairs windows.

  She’d not quite made it to the drive, however, when she heard voices again, this time from inside the house. Loud voices, anguished voices, sobbing, wailing voices. She stopped, listened hard. She couldn’t make out any words, but people sounded pretty upset in there. Some sort of family argument? No way of telling. But whatever it was, it didn’t sound like the perfect time to make house calls. She went back to the tree and climbed it once more to wait out the unpredictable duration of her time here. She might not have managed to see young Rayner again, but she wasn’t entirely unhappy about the failure of her mission. At least she’d got the album back.

  Thursday: 25

  Emerging from a sleep of utter exhaustion following his return, Alaric was struck by the quality and depth of the silence. Out on the landing it felt even more intense. A silence of shock or sorrow that seemed to fill and overwhelm the house. And him. He sank to the floor, still weak, leant against the wall. The boy’s face returned to him as he’d last seen it, desperate eyes lifted to him, beseeching, the yellowed polythene clinging to his cheeks, covering his open mouth, as the cord around his neck throttled him. A few seconds more and he might have saved him. But there hadn’t been any more seconds.

  Needing to free himself of this image, Alaric forced his mind to drift, and in the drifting a new thought came. One so outrageous, but so true, that it shook him to the core. That he – he personally – had provided the instrument of death for his grandfather’s older brother, forty-three years before his own birth.

  Part Three

  LEGACY OF A POET

  FRIDAY

  Friday: 1

  It was only toward the end of the dream that he came to understand that it wasn’t a dream at all, but a returning memory. He was wearing something over his head, which clung to his face, limited his vision. He was unable to breath. His throat was being squeezed as the weight of his body pulled him down. The horror of swinging by the neck from a tree brought him to wide-eyed wakefulness in the sallow light of a new day. Finding himself suspended in a mid-air thick with leaves, he yelped with alarm, tipped sideways, out of the hammock, plunged into water. The water did not cover him, but his heart thudded as he sat up, tormented by the images and sensations that had woken him. These faded, however, as physical discomfort achieved dominance. He looked about him. Sniffed. The shallows stank. The water was slimy and dark, dotted with rubbish. He sent the corpse of a large brown rat on its way with a broken branch.

  He got to his feet, dripping, and looked toward the opposite bank. The water level had dropped a little overnight, but the landing stage was still covered, and the lower steps. His gaze drifted to his old room up in the right-hand corner. There was someone at the window, looking out. He stepped back. The leaves folded about him.

  Friday: 2

  Naia had woken early for no reason other than that it was light. A delicious waking; a leisurely coming to in the sliver of time between night and morning when the world holds its breath and the wrens and blackbirds and thrushes, and all those other hungry attention-seekers, announce their presence, the news, the day. Then the squawks and croaks of the moorhens began, and she opened her eyes, and because she slept with the curtains drawn back watched the light creep along the walls, the water’s reflection dance across the ceiling. For a little while, lying there, it was as if the past four months had been nothing more than a fiction created during a single night’s sleep, with both of her parents still in bed along the landing and a good day about to begin.

  But then it returned, the actuality, carrying with it a swell of sorrow that she quashed at once, with a ruthlessness that few in her position could have managed. This is it. My world. I can handle it. And at least there’s the house, there’s always the house. Focusing on these positives, she kicked the duvet back and knelt on the bed to look out. The window was open, the way she liked it at night except in the real depths of winter. The air it admitted this morning was as soft and smooth as fine silk. Glad to see that the water level was down a bit, she was still at the window when Aldous emerged from the cover of the opposite bank. So he did live there. Watching him, so lean, bedraggled, old, she suddenly felt quite sorry for him. Living in trees at his age, like an animal. It wasn’t right.

  She was still gazing across at him when he looked up, saw her, stepped smartly back. The leaves closed about him like a curtain. Naia remained at the window, and in a few minutes glimpsed him weaving through the thicket, and out of it. She saw him set off along the bank, but the great willow between her room and the water prevented her from following him further. He might go any one of several ways from there, in three different directions across the Meadows, or to the bridge, which would bring him over to her side of the river, but it didn’t matter where he went, for now that she knew he was ‘out’, she found herself very curious to see his chosen domain. She jumped into jeans and a sweater, crept downstairs, and in the hall pulled on Grandpa Rayner’s trusty waders, quietly raised the usual exit window, and clambered out.

  Friday: 3

  Crossing the bridge, descending once more into water, Aldous followed the line of the path that ran parallel with the river. Just before the high southern boundary wall of Withern Rise the path looped to the right, to pass the ever-open five bar gate. Wading by the gate with his customary glance along the drive, he turned left onto the path which, in a couple of dozen strides, delivered him to the old cemetery. An early mist clung to trees and some of the loftier memorials, but all the graves were visible once more, just about, though the ground squelched underfoot. He made his way to the ancient wall that separated the formerly consecrated ground from the house.

  The only clear view of Withern at this or any other time of year was from across the river, but it was a bland aspect with the shutters gone, the ivy cut back in recent times but now in disarray. Besides, he saw it all the time. There was more satisfaction in peeking across the vegetable garden from the side gate, struggled-for glimpses over walls, through matted branches, breaks in foliage. Stretching up or round or forward to peer in, he was a boy again, about to run along the path and fling the door back, to be received by his gran with chuckly hugs. But his family no longer lived there. If he were to approach the house, what would he say to the strangers who opened the door? Even if they were Underwoods, as Mr. Knight said they were, they weren’t his little brother and his sisters, his mother and father, his aunt. Aunt Larissa: what had happened to her? What had happened to any of them? Were they still alive? If they were, why had they left him at the clinic all those years and never been there when he woke?

  But this early morning, this perfect hour, he was not seeking glimpses of the house, or trying to claw back elusive fragments of the past. His dream, which haunted him still, had concerned the tree that bore his name, but stretch and crane as he might, he could see very little of it from there. Too many other trees in the way. One, an apple tree, partially overhung the wall. The apples were small, not yet ripe, flecked with dew. He twisted one off at the stem and polished it on his sleeve. When he lived at Withern there was a wooden shed where this tree had grown up. Recalling this, he remembered the gardener showing him inside the shed as if into a secret treasure tro
ve. Gloomy in there, musty and earthy, and there were cobwebs, and plant pots of all sizes, and an enormous watering can, and forks and hoes and rakes. He also remembered, now, that there’d been complaints from the church warden that the shed looked ugly from the cemetery. Someone at the house must have eventually taken note of that and removed it. Planted the apple tree in its stead.

  He bit into the apple. It was cold and crisp and not ready to be eaten, but the flavor brought back another apple, another day. One afternoon when he was nine or ten he and some pals had panicked some of the cattle on the Common, crushed a rabbit’s head with a stone on the Coneygeare, and, to finish a good day, pushed through the gap in Mrs. Kellaway’s hedge and torn apples from the trees in her little orchard. They’d taken a bite out of apple after apple, chucking them after each bite, hoping she would see them from the house – and so she had, and out she’d come, wielding a rolling pin, calling them all the names under the sun. They ran hell-for-leather, lobbing apples back at her, and as they ran Aldous bit into another, thought it tasted wrong, paused to look at it. He’d bitten a maggot in half. The half that remained in the apple was still wriggling. He stood there spitting and spitting and spitting, and Mrs. Kellaway caught up with him and set about him with the rolling pin. He kicked up his heels and got away with a few bruises, but he could taste that maggot for the rest of the day, and it was almost a year before he could bring himself to eat another apple.