In fact, the near-naked tree reminded her of Annabel in the last months of her illness, sitting half-undressed at home, wearing shabby, scanty underclothes that revealed rolls of sallow flesh, and with patches of pale, blotchy scalp showing through her thin and straggly hair. And her hands would shake continually, as the last leaves on the sickly birch were trembling even now, perhaps anticipating the same dire fate that had befallen their companions. One fell as she sat watching, dropping abruptly to the ground with an air of stern finality.
Deliberately she transferred her gaze to the sturdy oak that stood beside the bench – a much healthier tree, with a luxuriance of foliage, still mostly shiny-green. The leaves were rustling in the breeze and shimmering in the sunlight, so that the whole tree seemed astir. She envied its solidity, its massive girth, the anchor of its roots plunging deep into the earth. She tried to imagine herself with roots, and immediately felt less frail. No more risk of tripping on loose paving stones, her legs giving way beneath her; no more early-morning vertigo, as her bedroom turned a nervous somersault. But there would, of course, be a downside – she would have to stay put in one particular spot, no longer able to walk to the park or wander round the shops. A fair exchange, she wondered? Difficult to say.
‘Mind if I join you?’
A young girl had stopped beside the bench, arms crossed, brows drawn down. Laura, she thought, with a jolt of rare excitement, as she gazed at the dishevelled clothes and blaze of red-gold hair. ‘Please do,’ she said, patting the battered wooden slats by way of invitation. She would happily sit next to Laura for all eternity and, although this was a much younger version, there were still striking similarities: the same tiny (enchanting) gap between her two front teeth; the same dark, sleek, tidy eyebrows, in contrast to the wild mop of wiry hair.
The girl sat down heavily, jabbing her shoes in the dirt. ‘Bother you if I smoke?’
‘Not at all.’ Nothing about Laura had ever bothered her, except the fact she was unobtainable. She closed her eyes, to savour their first meeting. Yes, already she was there again: in New England, in the fall – the five-hour flight contracting to five seconds – she and Laura standing side by side, admiring a whole mountainside of maples. The trees were flaming in a trumpet-blast of colours: vermilion, amber, crimson, topaz, russet. The entire holiday had been tinged with red and gold: torrid sunsets setting the whole sky alight, the blaze of real log fires, heaps of glowing pumpkins, piles of tawny apples, shaggy bronze chrysanthemums running riot in the gardens. And Laura, too, continuing the theme, with her exuberant hair and crazy clothes: orange sweatshirt teamed with scarlet jeans; madcap yellow coat – Vermont yellow, which meant deeper and more vibrant. Returning to London, Laura-less, everything seemed weak and faint, as if the whole country had been stricken with anaemia.
‘Warm today, in’it?’ The girl was trying to light her cigarette, cupping her hands around the lighter and flicking at it irritably.
‘It certainly is.’ In Vermont, she’d been permanently flushed, as if she’d had a blood transfusion; Laura’s own impetuous blood careering round her arteries, scorching all the dross away. Laura had changed the world for her – and changed several words. Until that particular autumn, ‘Fall’ meant only sin and shame: Adam’s fall from innocence and grace, his expulsion from Paradise, along with guilty Eve; humanity’s former happy state banished at a stroke. But once Laura had exploded onto the scene, ‘fall’ took on new, convulsive meanings: falling in love, falling under someone’s spell, falling into temptation, falling into despair, falling ill because her passion wasn’t returned – or even so much as noticed, come to that. Laura had been a youthful not-quite-forty; she an already fading fifty-nine. A whole generation between them; a husband and twin boys between them; the vast Atlantic Ocean between them – a bleak, forbidding ocean. And, even in America, they’d been strangers, more or less, bonded only by the fact that they were staying at the same hotel and booked on the same excursions. In fact, their total fortnight’s intercourse had comprised nothing more than the exchange of a few pleasantries, when they happened to rub shoulders in the lobby, or sit behind each other on the coach.
‘I’m skivin’ today.’ The girl blew out a plume of smoke, twisting one leg round the other.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Off work. Just couldn’t face the aggro.’
‘What sort of work do you do?’
The girl shrugged. ‘Rubbish work.’
Could any work be rubbish? After her retirement from the bank, she had longed for even the lowliest of jobs, so long as it brought company and colleagues, a sense of purpose, a reason to get up. But this girl was barely twenty and thus couldn’t understand. So many things she knew now, she hadn’t known at that age: that there wasn’t any truth, either in science or religion; that the health of teeth depended on the health of gums; that love brought more pain than pleasure, and that high heels always exacted their revenge.
‘I’m Sharon, by the way.’
‘Oh. Nice to meet you, Sharon.’ Everyone used Christian names these days, even doctors and dentists. Yet they were still ‘Dr’ and ‘Mr’, which didn’t seem quite fair. For most of her life she’d been ‘Miss’– considered now almost a badge of shame. People assumed that because you were ‘Miss’, you had never been in love; never prey to the sort of delirium that could shrink planet earth’s whole teeming populace to one small, slim-boned female. That first evening in Vermont, she had sat in the hotel dining-room feasting on the pith and core of Laura, consuming her in great intoxicating gulps, along with the four-course meal. And everything on the menu just happened to be gold that night: corn on the cob, honey-roasted chicken, sweet potatoes, braised squash, pumpkin pie.
‘And your name?’
‘Cecily.’
‘Come again.’
‘Cecily,’ she repeated. ‘It means “blind one” – well, according to the Book of Babies’ Names.’
The girl swivelled on the seat to peer into her eyes. ‘You’re not blind, are you?’
Yes, in a way, she thought. In Vermont, she’d been completely blind to reality; had actually dared to hope that she and Laura might somehow get together, despite the hulking husband, the raucous, clingy twins, the smug gold wedding ring. Certainly, in her fevered mind, she and Laura spent their nights together. That first frantic kiss – she was experiencing it now again – all the concentrated colour of the blazing maple trees pouring into her body, leavening its pale and passive flesh. She was tempestuous yellow, sizzling scarlet, cascading molten bronze. Sleep was out of the question. Indeed, she had hardly closed her eyes the entire fortnight of the trip. With Laura dazzling beside her, it would be a crime to waste a single second in dull unconsciousness.
Sharon flicked a worm of ash off her jeans. ‘See that big tree there?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s it called? I don’t know the names of trees.’
‘It’s an oak – an English oak – and probably twice as old as I am, at a guess.’ Did oaks get tired, she wondered, of living on their memories, looking back, regretting? ‘It may surprise you, dear, but the whole of Britain was once covered in oaks like that. And even as late as Henry VIII’s time, a third of the land was still forested with oak-woods.’
‘How d’you know?’ the girl enquired suspiciously, as if used to being duped.
Yes, how did she know, Cecily reflected? By trusting books and historical accounts. Yet such trust might be misplaced. After all, so much of what she’d once believed had proved erroneous. ‘One thing I am quite certain of is that there are four hundred and fifty different kinds of oak tree in the world – white oaks, black oaks, cork oaks, holm-oaks …’
‘You’ve seen them all, you mean?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, no.’
‘But you’ve travelled a lot?’
‘Yes, quite a bit.’
‘I ain’t been nowhere.’
‘That’s a shame. Maybe you will when you’re older.’
The girl gave a derisive snort. ‘And who’ll cough up the cash, I’d like to know?’
Cecily all but said, ‘I will.’ She didn’t need her savings any more. Why not hand them over, so that this unschooled child – Laura’s double physically, yet so different in both age and education – could see something of the world? She was aching to transform the girl, endow her with intellect, discernment; turn her into the woman she had idolized – and lost.
‘So, what’s your favourite country, then?’ Ash was falling on the jeans again – tattered jeans, worn thin around the knees.
‘Oh, America, no question. And New England in particular. In fact, I can narrow it down even further. There’s a small town in Vermont called—’
‘Oh, look – them squirrels!’ Sharon gestured with her cigarette. ‘They’re so close I could almost touch their tails. You’d think they’d be scared, with us two sittin’ here.’
‘No, they’re very tame. And, of course, they love the acorns. As do many of the birds, especially the jays. It’s amazing, when you think about it, how much other life oak trees support. All sorts of different creatures – squirrels, spiders, oak-moths, gall-wasps, and every type of bird – live in, or on, them.’
Sharon shot her a guarded look. ‘Are you a teacher or some-thin’?’
‘No, just interested in wildlife.’
‘So I s’pose you come here often, then?’
‘Most days, yes.’
‘Lucky sod!’
‘It can be boring, you know, without a job.’
‘Not as borin’ as slavin’ nine to five.’
‘Can’t you find something more …fulfilling?’
The girl yawned hugely in response, turning her face up towards the sun. ‘Weird!’ she said, grimacing. ‘It feels really hot – like summer.’
‘According to the News, it’s the warmest late-October day since they first started keeping records.’
‘Yeah, I heard that too. And Prince poncy Charles has to go and spoil it. Says it’s due to global warmin’, and we’ll all pay for it in years to come.’
Years past, not years to come. Global warming had already taken place. In 1984. In Wilmington, Vermont. Laura’s dangerous fire had ignited the whole cosmos, left it scorched and torrid.
Sharon was still gazing at the tree, where, even at this moment, a couple of jays were hopping from branch to branch, in their search for the choicest acorns. ‘I’d like to be a bird myself. Then I’d fly away.’
‘And where would you go?’
‘Somewhere no one could soddin’ find me, that’s for sure.’ The girl tossed her cigarette end on the ground. ‘Shit! I’m completely out of fags now. That’s my last – fuck it! I suppose you don’t smoke, by any chance?’
Cecily smiled at the very idea. So many things she had never done: been drunk – or even rude or loud – shared a bed, given birth. She watched a woman strolling past with two babies in a pushchair; an entire world in themselves. Children were so powerful, could chain a mother down, prevent her even contemplating other sorts of attachments. Perhaps she should have declared her love; not restricted herself to banal remarks about the weather or the coach-trips. Strange how every detail still vibrated in her head, two long decades on. That dinner-dance the last evening in the hotel; the knife-sharp pain of watching Laura cheek-to-cheek with Hamish. She had murdered him a thousand times, but he would keep resurrecting; his hateful, hairy hand clamped against his wife’s bare back. The dress was backless, strapless – and she sat transfixed, trying to wrest her eyes away from the exquisite, dangerous curves.
Finally she retired to bed, having neither dined nor danced. Another fevered, sleepless night, shattered by wild dance-music mocking in her head. The next morning, late for breakfast, she rushed down in a turmoil, desperate for her fill of Laura, to last her through the starving days ahead. Her love-feast had been interrupted by a callously cheerful waitress bringing waffles and a jug of maple syrup. ‘Thanks,’ she’d murmured vaguely, still so intent on Laura she’d kept pouring and pouring the syrup until it overflowed her plate and actually trickled across the tablecloth and down on to her lap. And at that very moment, Laura rose to leave, laughing and joking with Hamish and the twins, and totally oblivious of the fervent glances cast at her from the table-for-one tucked away in the corner. Stricken, she remained sitting where she was, trapped in sticky sweetness; spooning up the syrup from her plate, even scraping it off her lap, needing to swallow every smallest trace, mouthful after mouthful …
‘Ta-ra! I’m off to Tesco’s.’
‘For maple syrup?’
‘What?’ With a bewildered shrug, the girl heaved herself off the bench and slouched away along the path.
Watched her depart, Cecily changed the clumsy, plodding gait into Laura’s graceful stride. Laura had moved like a dancer, with elegance and poise. Even her posture was imposing: head held high, back imperiously straight. Though she also had a childlike streak, and could skip and jump, bounce balls about, and play leapfrog with her boys. And on one excursion – a day-trip to Mount Snow – she’d suddenly kicked up her heels and raced ahead along the path, leaving Hamish and the twins behind, as if impatient to break free of them. In her mind, she’d followed, running at full tilt until she’d caught up with the yellow coat, taken the eager hand; she and Laura eloping as they sped towards the mountain top, together and alone at last, escaping ties, convention.
Skittish little flurries of leaves began falling in a sudden gust of wind. She reached out to try to catch one the exact shade of Laura’s hair, and with Laura’s same exuberance. Eluding her grasp, it was carried on the breeze and began dancing in the air – frolicking, cavorting, refusing to come to rest.
On impulse, she rose to her feet. She, too, would dance, as she had longed to do since that final harrowing night at the hotel. Self-consciously, she looked around, to ensure she was alone. Yes, nobody was watching, save the squirrels and the birds. Venturing across the expanse of grass, she held out her arms – to Laura – and, suddenly, astonishingly, romantic, yearning music began throbbing through the park. For twenty years, she had waited for this moment: to feel her body pressed against those forbidden, willing breasts; Laura’s maple-scented breath warm against her face; her ardent blaze of autumn hair out-shining even the sun.
Rhythmically, bewitchingly, they went waltzing through the drifts of whispering leaves. No risk of falling – not with Laura there. She was too young to fall, in any case – a girl again, in love again, experiencing the first and only passion of her life. All thought of death was banished; all choking fears about the great beyond. Time had stopped, this instant, as she and Laura dipped and twirled amidst the rustling trees. And, as they danced, the insipid browns and bashful yellows erupted into Vermont gold and crimson; the grass aglow, the clouds aflame, the entire tame and tepid park now scalding, incandescent.
And suddenly she understood that Laura’s love could help her to survive, like a revivifying wonder-drug, conserving her for many winters more, to be the last blazing, brilliant, tenacious leaf still clinging to a life-sustaining oak.
Kentucky Fried
‘Was it good for you, darling?’ Graham reached out to squeeze her hand. He was still flushed and out of breath.
‘Yes, wonderful,’ she murmured. No man should ever need to ask, especially a husband of ten years. Ten years; a thousand lies. Did one more really matter?
‘Hey! Is that the phone?’ He leaned up on one elbow, poised to run.
Leave it, she longed to say. Make love to me. Again.
‘I’d better get it. It might be Tom.’ Scrambling into his dressing-gown, he disappeared downstairs.
She turned over on to her back, all the feelings dammed inside her, aching to explode. Her skin was sheened with sweat; her whole body restless and alert, like a racehorse at a starting gate. She slipped a finger between her legs, biting her lips, so she wouldn’t make a sound. The walls were thin and the neighbours might complain. Graham often shushed her. ‘Ss
shh!’ was such a putdown.
The finger didn’t seem enough – too feeble and too small. If only she could tell him what she wanted, but that would be bad-mannered. She hated the thought of appearing ungrateful and demanding, when he was so good to her in other ways.
‘No, I’m sure she won’t mind. I think she’s going out herself.’
What wouldn’t she mind, she wondered, as she heard his voice rising from the hall. She stroked her other hand across her breasts. The nipples were erect still, clamouring to be touched.
‘Hold on, and I’ll ask her.’
Hastily she returned both hands to her sides, as the bedroom door clicked open. Once Graham had come, he immediately lost interest, and assumed she did the same. But their reactions were quite different. He was a gas-stove, she an electric hob. Switch them both off and whereas the saucepan on the gas-stove would instantly go off the boil, that on the electric hob continued to seethe and sizzle.
‘It’s Angus, darling. He’s been let down by his golf partner and wants me to play this morning. Would you mind?’
‘’Course not. I shan’t be here in any case.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
Her body was still begging to be touched, but Graham was pacing around the bedroom, making arrangements with Angus: they’d meet for coffee in the lounge, tee off at half past ten. She had always thought of golf as a low-libido sport, along with billiards, bowls and ping-pong, whereas football, rugby and wrestling were more macho altogether. Then, further up the scale, came the extreme pursuits like bungee jumping, skydiving, white-water-rafting, hang-gliding. She tried to imagine being married to a white-water-rafter. Would they plunge and soar in perfect unison, shoot the rapids together?
‘Want to go first in the shower?’
‘No. You go ahead.’ Once he was out of sight, she ran the tip of her tongue round and round her palm, in slow, caressing circles, then up and down each finger and, lastly, between the fingers, taking her time gently to nuzzle and probe. Tongues were such amazing things, lodged in the cave of the mouth, yet connected to more intimate parts by an ingenious sort of current that, even now, was sending tiny (exquisite) jolts from her fingers to her pelvis. Often, when she and Graham made love, her tongue felt underused, fretful and caged up; craving to find release with some equally responsive tongue. The white-water-rafter’s, perhaps. Yes, quicker than the thought, it began flicking in and out between her legs, as she lay frothing and churning, a wild wave about to break.
The Biggest Female in the World and other stories Page 11