Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  Three weeks later, Mary and Katia wave goodbye to Madame Murville at the airport. Mary links her arm through her new friend’s and promises herself she’ll be back one day. For the first time since becoming Mary, she’s found something she wants. This isn’t simply rebellion against her mother or the R– she used to be. She’s Mary, and she’s determined to become a Parisian.

  Part V

  Budding

  Rainbow and Mary, 1993–1995

  Chapter 24

  Rainbow

  Rainbow failed her first year at lycée – in England it would have been Year 11. She was already sixteen and would have to retake the whole year after the holidays. The thought of adding more time to her prison sentence of sweat-infested classrooms made her body cry out for greenery.

  From being an outsider at school in Dorset, she’d progressed to the status of foreigner and ‘commune freak’ at school in Cognac. It was an improvement. English was in fashion in France and she was in constant demand to translate song lyrics and to help with homework. She set up an informal business doing English exercises in exchange for maths and science, which didn’t help her pass the regular tests. It did, however, reduce her number headaches. She never managed to give the answer the teacher expected, no matter what the subject, and blamed Mum for her missing ‘right-answer’ gene.

  But school was over for the summer. She wouldn’t have to think about it for months. She was determined to enjoy the freedom of the precious holidays by spending as much time as possible outside, preferably in the arms of one tree or another. The July sun was hot and today she was harnessed to a cedar tree in a Cognac garden. She crawled along the horizontal branch, twenty metres above the ground, towards a stranded cat.

  Halfway along the branch she became aware of a strange sensation under her skin. It started in the nape of her neck and shivered its way down to her coccyx. She froze, her eyes fixed on the cat. It made a long, howling miaow. Another wave washed down her back. Below her, on the car-maintenance garage radio, Francis Cabrel continued his metallic rendition of ‘Petite Marie’. The lyrics wove through her body and buoyed her up towards the sky. She felt her spirit rise through the canopy of the cedar top. Gripping the branch, she let her inner self go and floated up. She could see the whole town, the whole of the Charente, the whole of France below her. She could see Paris, the Eiffel Tower.

  She gasped. There was a sense of endless, countless triangles of metal. Then, before the cat could finish the last syllable of its miaow, a heavy weight of foreboding thrust her back into her clenched body. The vision was over.

  She clung to the branch. Her eyes refused to focus and she was overwhelmed by the sense of depression that had accompanied the vision. The cat, tuning into her sudden fragility, took a nervous step towards her and nuzzled her neck, its howls of fright turning into mews of reassurance. She sat up, let it climb into her arms and stroked it while she recovered. Then she eased it into the rucksack and lowered herself slowly down the smooth line of the climbing rope.

  Sylvia, her English school friend, had belayed her while she climbed up to the branch. Sylvia was a rock climber who, under Rainbow’s influence, had taken to climbing trees. She had taught Rainbow the art of climbing.

  When her feet touched the ground, Rainbow crouched to release the rope tension and then unclipped her descender. The handful of onlookers had already left, leaving Sylvia standing alone at the foot the cedar. Before Rainbow had even peeled off her harness, Sylvia had put away her equipment and hoisted her cat and rucksack onto her back. She jumped onto her mountain bike and sped away, shouting over her shoulder that she’d see Rainbow later at the train station.

  Rainbow, still in a daze from her vision, looped the rope into chains and piled it into her bag. She laid the slings and carabiners on top and added her harness. Then she sat and gazed up into the tree, her drawing pad on her knees. It was far easier to draw its branches now she had communicated with it.

  She’d been trying to persuade Sylvia to let her cat get stuck in this tree for months. She needed a valid, non-spiritual reason so that the owners would allow her to climb it. Finally, a short negotiation involving an English film showing in Angoulême was all it had taken.

  The men from the garage had watched her climb the tree to rescue the cat. She hated having to pretend she was doing something normal, but at least she didn’t get hassled this way. They were only interested in looking at her bum as she climbed and at Sylvia’s boobs as she belayed. They didn’t heckle. They didn’t accuse her of being a witch. And now she could add the cedar’s intimacy to her collection. The cedar was special. It was the first time she’d had an out-of-body trip. What was it trying to show her?

  On her return to Le Logis, Rainbow parked her moped and joined Domi in his meditation corner of the garden. He was sitting on the improvised decking under the shade of the walnut tree, his eyes closed. She couldn’t understand why he meditated here. Walnut trees had a reputation for being unhealthy.

  He spent increasing amounts of time meditating and she suspected he was searching for a solution to her tree problem. She tiptoed towards him and stopped under the leafy canopy. He’d aged. His face was beginning to sag and the despondent expression that had begun to settle there was noticeable, even with his eyes closed.

  She sat cross-legged with her back against the trunk and tried not to bubble over with excitement. An out-of-body experience! He’d be delighted.

  “Rainbow,” he whispered. His eyes remained closed.

  She knew she shouldn’t jolt him to full consciousness.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “You’re perplexed about something. No … excited.”

  Rainbow smiled. It had been over two years now. Two wonderful years shared with her father – not that she’d ever told him she knew who he was. They had an intuitive understanding that went beyond the need for words and explanations. She appreciated him all the more because he’d been missing from her life for so long.

  He opened his eyes, took a second to focus on her and then smiled.

  “Tell me. I’m ready.”

  “I think the answer is finally coming,” she said.

  Domi sat upright. “What happened?”

  “I had an out-of-body. In the cedar.”

  “At last! Give me your hands.”

  Rainbow held them out. He took them in his own and fixed his eyes on her face.

  “It’s definitely a sign. What did you feel?”

  “It was like being in the heart of France, but it wasn’t very nice. There was an awful feeling of depression. It was like an unbearable weight.”

  “That’s strange. People usually feel light. You must look for signs next time.”

  “Okay. I saw Paris and the Eiffel Tower. Were they signs?”

  “Perhaps. Write them down.” He pulled her up and hugged her. “You see? There is a spiritual future for you, after all. This is great, Rainbow! Let’s celebrate.”

  A glint of hope had displaced the dejection in his eyes. She hugged him hard. She so wanted to make him proud of her, to dam the flow of disappointment he tried to hide.

  Chapter 25

  Rainbow

  Rainbow was frying courgettes for dinner when she heard the growl of Christophe’s motorbike. It had been his first day at the motorbike shop. She turned down the gas and asked Sandrine to watch the pan. He’d looked nonchalant that morning, but she’d noticed his fingers worrying the loop of elastic on his jeans pocket while he drank his bowl of coffee. She hurried outside and met him under the red leaves of the silver maple.

  “How was it?” she asked.

  Christophe’s brown eyes glowed. “Génial!”

  He always spoke English when they were alone. His slip into French jolted her. She had a sudden vision of him moving away and out of reach.

  “What’s up, Rainette? You look sad,” he said, reverting to English.

  “No, it’s just strange, you being at work now. I feel left behind.”

  He ru
ffled her hair. “If you don’t put more effort in at school you’ll certainly be left behind; condemned to live eternally in the commune.”

  He’d told her that the baccalaureate was the best escape route from the commune. But she didn’t want to escape and hadn’t bothered with schoolwork, especially as she was retaking her first year at lycée. She didn’t need to understand physics or read literature to work with trees.

  “Anyway,” Christophe continued, “you’re working too.”

  During the summer she’d offered her services to the regular Logis spiritualism clients. They could hire her to heal sick trees and to stretch branches into more convenient directions as an alternative to chopping them off. She’d also offered fruit-tree reshaping to facilitate harvesting, as long as the tree’s balance wasn’t endangered.

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  “What? You didn’t tell me you’d stopped.”

  “You’ve been busy with your smelly engines. The clients don’t like what I do. They were fine with the healing, but my tree-shaping work made them ill at ease. The ones whose trees I shaped stopped coming here at all. I pulled out before the commune lost all its clients.”

  “Merde!”

  “Yes. Anyway, I didn’t like changing the shape of the trees just to suit people.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. What did Domi say?”

  “I didn’t tell him.” She put a hand on Christophe’s arm. “Don’t say anything to him. He’ll be upset if he knows people won’t accept my gift.”

  He nodded. It wasn’t the first secret she’d shared with him. She would trust him with her life.

  During dinner, Christophe announced he’d been offered the flat over the motorbike shop and that he’d be moving there at the weekend. Rainbow felt his eyes on her as he spoke. She concentrated on watching Mum wink at Céline. In some ways it would be a relief not to have him around. She often sensed him watching her and it made her uncomfortable.

  She joined in the toast to his independence, already wondering what would happen to his old bedroom. She was the second-oldest child, so maybe she could take it over. It was a huge room. They had converted it the previous year from the former hay attic. Although Mum now slept with Domi, she used Rainbow’s bedroom for everything else, and her makeup and clothes were scattered everywhere. Rainbow wanted her own space.

  After the meal, Christophe volunteered to wash up with Rainbow. But Domi told Sandrine to take Rainbow’s place because he wanted her to participate in his healing session. He’d never invited another person before. She agreed quickly and followed him to his healing room.

  “What’s this all about, Domi?”

  “I want to see if you’re tuned into human energy,” he replied.

  “I’m not interested in healing people.”

  “I know. Let’s just see. There’s no harm in checking out the possibilities.”

  “It won’t work.”

  Domi sighed, which accentuated his worry lines.

  “Okay, we’ll give it a go,” she said. “What do I have to do?”

  His client arrived. Rainbow watched and listened while Domi relaxed the woman with his voice and hands. The client had a problem with her stomach. Once she was lying down, her eyes closed, Domi beckoned Rainbow over and showed her how to lay her hands on the woman’s belly.

  Rainbow’s palms were so gnarled she could hardly feel the client’s skin. The woman flinched. Her eyes sprang open and she protested.

  Domi calmed her. He laid his own hands on her stomach and motioned Rainbow to do the same. This time the woman was ready. Rainbow felt her relax. She sensed Domi’s energy pour into the woman but she could feel no flow from herself. She concentrated. There was no contact at all. She kept her hands in place so Domi wouldn’t complain that she hadn’t tried. When he took his hands away, she did the same.

  After the session, Domi washed his hands and sat down. He looked dispirited. Rainbow considered lying, rekindling the hope she’d seen in his eyes after her out-of-body experience a few months before. Domi sighed.

  “Well, that didn’t work. We’ll have to try something else,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with the tree healing I already do?”

  “At some point in the future you’ll need to earn a living and I’m not convinced you’ll get paid to work with trees. You said there was no interest in tree-shaping or healing. So I thought we’d try out some classic commune work.”

  “I’m useless with everything except trees.”

  Domi didn’t answer immediately.

  “It’s my fault for having big ideas. I think I’ve been too ambitious for you,” he said eventually.

  Rainbow bit her lip. She was a continual disappointment to him. He carried on.

  “I told you my destiny is to save the world, but my contribution is miniscule because I can only treat one family at a time. When you arrived with your unique gift, I was sure it was a sign. I realised that my destiny was to lead you to yours. I believed you had a role of coordination. I saw you as a focal point for trees’ voices and I thought they would communicate with humans through you. And I imagined you tapping into a network that would tell us how to save our planet.”

  Rainbow eyes lit up. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could lead a tree revolution. She thought about her contact with trees. The oak beside Michael’s garden had been wise and given her its history. The beech in France had reassured her of the trees’ forgiveness for what she’d done to the English beech. But she’d never received any messages about the future. For the first time, she wondered how much of Domi’s faith was simply ideas in his own head. He was still talking.

  “The problem is that you haven’t seen any sign of collective communication. You haven’t sensed anything other than passivity, have you?” he said.

  “No.”

  “I’m starting to think your gift is the same style as my mine. I’m afraid your destiny may just be to heal one tree at a time.”

  She frowned. Destiny was supposed to be something great, something to die for. She didn’t just want to carry on as she had done for years. Of course she wanted to help trees. But she’d thought Domi was going to find her something on a heroic scale. She’d thought she was going to save the planet. What was the point of her gift if she couldn’t do anything worthwhile with it?

  Chapter 26

  Mary

  Mary looks around the refectory at the other students wading through the bland food. It’s close to the end of her first term in sixth-form college. Usually she feels bright and engaged in the adult atmosphere that’s so different from secondary school. Not today though. She drums her fingers on the table. She’s just told her squash partner Caroline that she’s giving up squash. With the prospect of a free afternoon ahead, the old rebellious itch crawls to the surface.

  She’s sitting with friends from the eleven clubs she’s already enrolled in and then left. From climbing to sewing, from book clubs to motor mechanics – nothing outlasts the pointlessness that attacks her after a few meetings; nothing corresponds to what she really wants, to who she really is. When she came out of her cocoon and decided she was going to please herself, she expected to find lots of things to interest her. But the only thing that means anything to her is Paris.

  She’s conscious of the familiar itch, but hasn’t felt it for so long that she’s forgotten the force of its acceleration. Her friends have all finished eating. She places her plate on her glass and begins to build a crockery tower. As she positions her neighbour’s glass on the top plate, the tower wobbles. The lively chattering around her peters out. The tower is now as high as their faces, and is attracting attention from the other tables in the vicinity.

  “It’s going to fall,” says Caroline.

  Mary picks up the salt and pepper pots.

  “Here comes trouble. You’re in for it,” says Deb.

  One of the refectory staff in her blue-checked overalls is hurrying towards their table. Mary dangles the salt pot over the tower, l
owers it delicately and counts the approaching steps. The rise of adrenalin is the fresh air of spring kissing her into life.

  “What’s going on?”

  The voice of authority sounds so familiar that instead of ignoring it, as she had intended, Mary looks up. Mrs Bellamy is standing opposite her. She hasn’t seen her since their confrontation over Gus a year ago. The tower looms between them.

  “What are you doing here?” Mary asks, her voice quiet.

  She nonchalantly replaces the pepper pot on the table. Caroline lets out her breath, which intensifies Mary’s itch. She picks up the pepper again. The expectant hush is a soothing balm.

  The refectory woman in her blue checks puffs up to the table beside Mrs Bellamy and starts to speak. Mrs Bellamy silences her with a hand on her arm.

  “I’ll handle this, Jean.”

  The woman looks uncertain, then relieved. She shuffles away, ordering the onlookers to get back to their meals. Mrs Bellamy waits as Mary’s friends leave. Mary positions the pepper pot on the tower.

  “Don’t forget that children’s games always end in tears,” says Mrs Bellamy.

  “I’m not a child.”

  “Really? Then why the childish attitude?”

  “My attitude is my concern, not yours,” Mary replies. “As I told you once before.”

  “Actually, as a member of staff, your attitude is my concern. Take down the crockery and then come to my office.”

  Mrs Bellamy’s order inflames Mary’s irritation to a level of fury she hasn’t felt since Gus left.

  “I’ll come when I’m ready.”

  Mrs Bellamy turns around and walks towards the door. Mary watches her leave and then adds a serviette to the crown of her creation. She leans back in her chair and admires the structure for nine seconds. Then she picks up her bag and leaves the refectory. Nobody stops her. By the time she has pushed through the swing-door she feels flat. What is it about Mrs Bellamy that makes her feel so cantankerous? Their argument was ages ago. She should be able to put it behind her, like she has done for the rest of that rebellious period.