The Memory Tree

by Tess Evans

  I took Grace from you. I struggled with God, but his holy will was clear. At that moment, the evil voices were silent and I know that it was God speaking to me. She was too good, too pure and I had to save her. I argued with God. Pleaded with Him. But that’s because I was selfish. I wanted to keep her here, in our world, with us.

  Zav groans, holding his head in his hands.

  I want to give her back to you.

  What the fuck is he saying?

  Your daughter, Grace, was truly a gift of God. She had those huge grey eyes you all had, and she’d look at people quite steadily, as though she was working them out. I don’t know how else to put it. She smiled when she was just a few weeks old and her smile lit up the dreariest day. She had black hair, just like you, and chubby little cheeks. Her favourite games were This Little Piggy and Round and Round the Garden. She was so smart. As soon as you’d start Round and Round, you’d see the twinkle in her eye. She was only a baby, but she remembered. She loved the tickly bit. She’d giggle and wriggle and screw up her nose, just the way Kate did when she laughed. Poor Kate. I loved her too.

  She really enjoyed her bath. She’d slap at the water and scream her head off when we got her out. I bought her a little yellow duck—she liked to watch it bounce. She wasn’t quite able to pick it up, but you could tell she wanted to.

  She loved her teddy. Especially when I made him tickle her tummy. Sealie bought her fairy wings once. She looked just like a little fairy too, all smiling and cute. There’s a photo somewhere. Ask Sealie.

  Zav puts a hand to his face and feels the tears that scald his cheeks. They have squeezed their way out one by one— painful, fat, unfamiliar drops, oozing, sliding, gathering speed. He wipes his eyes as a child might, using the back of his hand.

  The photo—Kate had left him a photo. He swings his legs over the bed and rummages in the top drawer—and finds me. I’ve been there all this time—waiting.

  He peers at the photo. Yes—there’s the smile, the black hair, the crinkled nose, just as Hal had described. He touches the image of my toes. This Little Piggy . . . He doesn’t know Round and Round the Garden. He would have, given half a chance. He says my name aloud. ‘Grace—Grace.’ The sibilance slides into the surrounding dark.

  My name. My father has spoken my name.

  He is crying with abandon now. Great, wracking sobs shake his whole body. The faces of the dying and wounded turn mercifully away. The shut, fear-filled faces in the villages retreat. The silent rubber-shod figures fall back. They are not gone, but they give way to horror and grief on a human scale.

  This is my moment. I have found the shore I’ve been seeking. As my father sobs in his rumpled bed, he finds space in his heart for me.

  8

  MY STORY HAS ENDED, BUT I want to look one more time at my brave aunt Sealie, the woman who now, in middle age, finds herself all at once without an anchor. She has no compass to guide her, no reference point for the freedom she has been given. For so many years, there have been three men in her life: Hal, Zav and Scottie.

  Now Hal has gone.

  Zav is not going to stay either. ‘We’re free to do what we want now,’ he tells her. ‘I’m going to travel for a year or two.’ He smiles. ‘Time I found myself.’

  Sealie, once so necessary to him, feels abandoned. (Honestly, who can blame her?) ‘When?’ she says, ‘Do you have to go straight away?’

  Unused to considering other people’s feelings, Zav’s response is matter-of-fact. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay till we sell the house. And help you to find a place, of course. What? What’s the matter?’

  Sealie is crying. ‘I’ll miss you—that’s all.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, Seal.’ Zav only now remembers how it felt when he thought he was losing her. ‘Here.’ He puts his arms around her. ‘You have a life now. I’ve relied on you for too long.’ He steps away so he can look her in the eye. Wills her to understand. ‘I can never repay you for all you’ve done. It sounds hard, I know, but we must learn to live our own lives.’

  That’s quite a perceptive speech for Zav the Obtuse. Still, better late than never.

  After allowing Sealie a mourning period, Scottie asks her to marry him. Being romantic at heart, he chooses to do this under the magnolia, where they sit for the last time as the shadows lengthen around them.

  Sealie has been expecting this and has rehearsed her response. Despite her procrastination, despite his marriage, despite the number of times they had broken off their relationship, he remained steadfast. ‘You’re free now,’ he says, ‘and I want to marry you more than ever.’

  The years rewind and she sees the blushing, red-haired young soldier, fumbling with his box of chocolates. Now here he is, a middle-aged man, with slightly sagging jowls, faded, thinning hair and the small, rimless glasses, without which he could barely see a yard in front of him. His smile is almost too kind to bear.

  Without his loyal support she doubts that she could have survived with her own sanity. Now he wants them to spend the rest of their lives together. The rest of their lives. The rest of her life. But how much life has she had so far? She is forty-six and her life was arrested at the age of nineteen. Even before she left primary school she had been old beyond her years. Mature, responsible, caring. That’s how people described her. What she wants now is to be young again. To start afresh. I don’t want to be tied down. That sentence, running on a kind of loop through her mind, contains the fear at the heart of her thinking.

  Despite her preparation, she begins as she always has. ‘You know I love you . . .’

  For too many years, Scottie has heard sentences that begin like this. He waits, grim-faced, for the ‘but’.

  Sealie feels her colour rise. ‘It’s hard to explain. After all you’ve done for me . . . I just can’t go on as before. Scottie . . . Dear, dear Scottie . . .’ She rummages wildly, discarding one thought after another. Where are all those well-rehearsed sentences? The kind, thoughtful responses she had crafted? I can’t be responsible for your happiness when I don’t know what happiness is. As soon as she retrieves this sentence, it slips away. She places her hand over his. It’s inert, and cold to her touch. When she speaks, her voice is so low that he can barely hear her. Rather, he senses the vibrations, feels the words as they trace their pattern on his resisting brain. ‘I can’t remember waking up . . .’ Sealie finally blurts out a fully formed sentence. ‘I’ve never woken up and thought, Today belongs to me.’ She gives him a bleak little smile. ‘You’re my dearest friend. Please understand.’

  He removes his hand from her grasp. He has finally lost her for good. He licks dry lips and can taste only bitterness.

  ‘If you send me away now, I won’t be back.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Scottie. I truly am.’

  Scottie leaves without another word and Sealie’s remorseful grey eyes follow him as he crosses the lawn, hands jammed deep in his pockets. She hears the gate squeak open, then shut. The sun has gone down and the air is chill. She clutches her cardigan across her chest, bows her head, and walks slowly back to the house.

  ‘Did you see the date on your letter?’ Sealie and Zav are at the gate. Zav is wearing a backpack. ‘Four months ago, he wrote them. Can you imagine—he planned this all along.’

  ‘He was right about one thing, I suppose. We’re free to live our lives now.’ But she still didn’t want him to go.

  Zav hugs her tightly. ‘Look after yourself, Little Sis.’

  ‘You, too.’ Sealie, hiding her tears, waves Zav out of sight. She walks back up the path, smiling faintly as she looks at the shiny sports car that’s parked where her old Toyota once stood. She had asked them to spray it yellow. She wanted something cheerful.

  Within days, her home will be a pile of rubble; a few days after that, a cleared block of land, looking, she supposes, much as it looked when Hal envisaged that wonderful wedding present for his bride.

  The magnolia is in bloom. She walks over and takes a few petals to press in her
father’s Bible which finally, she couldn’t bring herself to discard. The petals are cool and velvet-soft. She holds them to her cheek and looks back at the window, at the lonely figure of a woman, her face pressed against the glass. She hesitates, but is tempted only briefly. That woman no longer exists and the image crumbles away like an empty chrysalis—Sealie has emerged from that dark place and her cramped and crumpled wings open to the light. The power she feels is physical; it cannot be contained, so she celebrates her strength in the only way she knows. Turning to the tree, she curtsies, then raising her arms, begins to dance.

  I’m here. They are all here—all the ghost dancers from the wedding. They swoop and circle with long-practised grace, but Sealie, who each year watched from the window, no longer sees them. No longer needs to see them, so they fade one by one.

  Exodus

  THAT NIGHT SEALIE FINISHES HER packing. There are already boxes and two suitcases in the hall ready for the removalist. She’s surprised at how little she needs of the forty-six years she has accumulated.

  There’s just one more task. She climbs the stairs to the attic and rummages around in a trunk until she finds a white vinyl beauty case. Years ago, Mrs Mac had given it to her for Christmas. Men don’t understand what a girl needs, Mrs Mac explained. It’ll be just the thing for your stage makeup and shoes. Sealie’s young self had been overjoyed. All the other girls had one. Mrs Mac had noticed, of course. That was what she did.

  Sealie opens the case and empties out the old jars and lipsticks and wipes the inside with a cloth she has bought with her for the purpose. The first thing she puts in is the little Japanese box, where her mother’s pearls still lie. She touches them lightly and then opens a biscuit tin with the picture of a Highland lass dancing against a background of snowy mountains. Among the bits and bobs within, she finds the leather-covered book of psalms that Godown gave her for her thirteenth birthday. She places it in the case with a lot more reverence than she had treated it when it was new. This is for later, the pastor said. You’ll be in need of a song one day. Sealie had thanked him before storing the book away unopened. She puts it in the case and promises herself to ask Godown to find a psalm for her new life. She smiles as she imagines his delight. It has taken her thirty-three years to understand what he meant.

  She opens and then closes the trunk with her ballet mementos—opens it again and takes out her first ballet shoes. Black for practice. She finds her nurse’s watch and sees that it stopped at eight forty-five. She can remember the year she put it there, but not the date. She winds it and finds, to her astonishment, that the second hand begins to sweep its cycle. She puts it in the box with Paulina’s pearls. Not for long, she promises the sternly functional timepiece. I’ll be needing you.

  She is wearing the aquamarine pendant that Scottie gave her. She takes it off, and after some hesitation, places it beside the pearls. Scottie was a big part of her life and she will not deny him his rightful place among her memories.

  She has left the cream cardboard box until last. She unties the ribbon and takes out the photos. She keeps only two—one of Zav in his uniform, the other of me, sitting on a sofa wearing fairy wings. She is leaving the past behind, but acknowledges the people, the events that have made her who she is.

  She has all she needs now so my task, my tale, is done.

  She stands a moment on the threshold, then simply shuts the door. The bulldozers can deal with the remnants. As the lock clicks into place, she feels a little shiver of excitement. Tomorrow. The first day to be truly hers. Swinging the beauty case, Sealie skips down the stairs, feeling lighter than she has for years.

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to my agent, Gaby Naher, and the editing team at Allen & Unwin—Annette Barlow, Catherine Milne, Clara Finlay and Angela Handley, all of whom helped nurture this book into being.

  Thanks also to my first reader, my daughter Carolyn, and my wonderful family—Terry, Timothy, Julian, Stephen and Michelle, and my grandchildren, Caitlin, Michael, Charlotte and Ruby. Thanks also to my many friends and extended family whose continued support I value so dearly.

  I am especially grateful to Kathleen, who despite her illness, never failed to encourage my writing.

  This book could not have been written without the generous and expert assistance of George Dunkling, Deputy Charge Nurse, Aradale (including J-ward), John Mason, Nurse Educator, Aradale, and Bernadette Scammel, RN.

  Many thanks also to Kerry Scuffins and the SPAN writers, Louise Le Nay and the Novel 2 class at NMIT for their thoughtful critiques and encouragement.