Life (2 page)

For a long time, I used to share a bedroom with my sister…

The Spirit of the Beech Tree

i

For a long time Anna used to share a bedroom with her sister. They were close in age, incompatible in temperament. Anna was fifteen months older: stoical, reserved, well-behaved, and single-minded. Margaret was a creature of enthusiasms, with a flaring temper and quick resentment of any authority-figure. When they were small, they were often happy together: by the time Anna was ten Margaret’s very presence could fill her with despair. She marked her half of their space with string and tape, and begged her sister to respect the law. Margaret took up the challenge energetically, so that whenever Anna opened a drawer, looked for a dress in their shared wardrobe, took a book from her bookshelf, she found defiant spoor: torn and scribbled pages; missing toys; clothes tried out, dropped, stepped on, and left in a grubby, fingered heap among the shoes.

Anna’s bed was the one by the window, by right of primogeniture. When she came upstairs, an hour later than Margaret (their parents, pining for child-free time, had tried sending the sisters off together: they’d had to give up the idea), she would pull the curtain round her and sit with a torch and her library book as if crouched in a cave—a mountain between herself and the hateful sound of her sister’s breathing; the entrance of her refuge facing through chill glass into the night. Out in the dark there lived another girl. She was Anna’s reflection, but there must have been a time when Anna genuinely didn’t know this, because some of the mystery of the impossible had survived. The other girl floated in space: cold, wind washed, barefoot, marvelously free. She was both an ideal sister and an ideal Anna. She was closure. Between the shell of the reflection and the shell of her own body, Anna was poised, safe in her own territory, her privacy ensured. It did not occur to her to make up adventures for the wild girl or to invent imaginary conversations. She would simply look up from time to time from her reading, to meet the bright eyes of the other. They would smile at each other. The wild girl vanished at last when Anna was fourteen, which was when her parents had the loft converted and the two girls were able to have a bedroom each. She was not entirely forgotten. It was because of her that Anna, usually so levelheaded, had the curious impression—which she confessed to nobody
—
that she had
invented
Ramone Holyrod the night when they first met: called up this mischievous, erratic guardian spirit from nothing and darkness, with a past and circumstances all complete.

It happened like this. Anna was wandering the campus alone in the middle of the night. This was supposed to be dangerous for a female undergraduate. Anna, accustomed to street life on an inner-Manchester estate where the Rottweilers went around in pairs, saw no reason for alarm. Her sister had been staying for the weekend, sleeping on Anna’s floor; it had been a strain. Her mind was buzzed and bruised from lack of sleep, but either her room or her head was still full of Maggie (still Margaret in Anna’s interior monologue, for old time’s sake), so she had been forced to come out for a midnight stroll. She was trespassing at the Arts end of the campus. Owing to savage prejudice on the part of the planners, the grass was literally greener up here, because there was more of it. The library was here (do they think we can’t read?); and the great beech trees that Anna loved. Light from uncurtained windows and security lights along the paths and roads filled the dark valley, but when she looked away from them the sky above her was cobalt clear and bitten by more stars than you ever saw in inner Manchester.

She had been stupid enough to confide that she was in love.

“Do you sleep with him?” demanded Margaret.

“It’s not like that. We’re friends, we’re in the same…social group, I suppose. He…he isn’t interested.”

She
must learn
that you didn’t have to answer those kinds of questions. You could ignore them, or change the subject, or lie. Everybody did it.

Margaret laughed. “You don’t have to wait for him to be ‘interested.’ Make him an offer. Men will fuck anything, the pigs. Didn’t you see that thing on the news last week, a ninety-three-year-old great grandmother gang-raped by a bunch of thirteen-year-olds? Or something like that. It’s always happening. I don’t mean to be crude, but if
she
can get some, what is your problem? Offer sex, you don’t have to worry about anything else. He’ll fuck you once, he’ll fuck you twice, he’ll get used to the idea, you become a habit, and bingo!” Margaret waved her white hand in the gloom of Anna’s sleeping cell, spreading the fingers daintily. “The engagement ring!”

“You’re nuts,” muttered Anna from her bed, wishing to God being drunk made Margaret fall asleep like a normal person.

“What d’you say?”

“I’m going to sleep.”

If Margaret was right about the way things had to be between men and women, then Anna wanted no part of the business. The idea that you could carry on in such bad faith to the point of
marrying someone
was disgusting. Margaret said they expected nothing else, wouldn’t understand if you were honest. Anna couldn’t believe that the boys, the men, she knew were really like that. Straightforwardness and fair-dealing must be better. It only needed somebody to make the first move. If it was true that human beings were the helpless puppets of their sex hormones, then why didn’t Anna herself have six children by this time? Surely men must be human as well as sexual, same as women? Surely they must be. Suppose Margaret was right? Anna shuddered. Then too bad; she would stay celibate her life long. Can’t play; won’t play!

Getting married young was crap anyway. When she married—if she married, it wasn’t essential—it would be at the end of an extended and intense single life, and with somebody she had met long after this callow apprenticeship as an undergraduate. The cold kiss of dew on her bare ankles, she lifted her face to gaze at the stars: distracted by reasoned argument and comforted by exquisite dreams. The house in the country where she and Rob would live together. Their cats, their dogs, their two children, Richard and Delphine. But as she approached one of the beeches, a solitary tree that she regarded as her particular refuge, a dart of anguish pierced her:
he doesn’t love me and he never will.

It was the truth. She could read the game-board; she knew her hopes were doomed. She could see other couples moving together, possible or probable configurations:
not
Anna with Rob. Either he had a girlfriend elsewhere, though he’d never mentioned one, or he was gay and shy about letting people know, or (the most likely) he simply did not want to do it with Anna. These things happen at first sight, or at least soon: chemicals are involved. Sexual attraction is not something people ponder over for weeks. He must know that Anna wanted him. She hadn’t offered herself on a plate, the way Margaret would advise, but she’d made her moves. She had gone as far as self-esteem allowed, done and said all the things people do and say that code for
would you like to do it with me?
The answer was no.

She huddled down between two of the tree’s massive roots, feeling very glum. It was not to be. She’d been wanting him for too long, anyway: weeks,
months.
If he turned to her now it would be no use. She’d transformed him into the object of desire; she couldn’t make him human again. How could a happy relationship be built on such an unequal foundation? Perhaps she should try a modified version of Margaret’s way, smuggle herself naked into his bed one night. That way at least she’d get to fuck him once. And then walk away. That would be noble. But if he turned her down? If he said,
um thanks but I have an essay to write,
or
um thanks, er, meet my girlfriend/boyfriend.
Awful, awful: and not untypical for the results of taking Margaret’s advice.

Her worldly wise little sister! If Margaret was so smart, why wasn’t some merchant banker loading her with jewels right now? No, Anna would be Rob’s friend, not even a close friend; that was best. Free to look, free to stay near that gorgeous body, to catch a smile from those wonderful lips… Oh, but the night was beautiful. If you managed not to hear the dance music from someone’s late night party. It was the end of April, dry and fair. The beech tree was in fresh and trembling leaf; the breeze that touched her face carried scents of sap and blossom. It was bliss on a night like this to be alive. And free, and at the beginning of things…

Suddenly she heard a strange voice, a woman’s voice chanting softly.

I may love him, I may love him

For he is a man and I am only a beech tree…

And then, a low musical wailing.

Ooooooooooooh, Oooooh…

Oooooooooh, Ooooooh…

Anna said sharply, “Who’s there??”

There was a rustling pause. She wished she hadn’t spoken, she’d probably interrupted a pair of lovers—damn it, how embarrassing. But there had been something truly scary about that long moan. Maybe it was murder not sex that was going on. Then what would she do? Her skin crept, her heart thumped. A figure emerged from around the bole of the tree. It was a girl, a girl with long draggled hair, a round and pallid face, a nose ring, and wire-rimmed glasses. They stared at each other. Involuntarily, Anna brushed a hand across her cropped, dark curls and touched the bridge of her own nose. Her skin felt warm.

“Hi,” said the girl. “I’m sorry, did I frighten you?”

She was small, shorter than Anna. She was wearing a long skirt, and her feet were bare. A large, fringed shawl was wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes were round behind the round-rimmed glasses, her mouth curiously wide and thin lipped. It was almost comical, a cartoon sketch of a face; and yet somehow arresting. The question,
did I frighten you?,
was definitely aggressive. Anna admired this: you had to admire a person caught moaning behind a tree who was instantly ready to snatch the initiative.

“No.” Anna knew she was now expected to get up and go away, but she sat her ground. The girl sat down too, tenting herself in the shawl like a savage in a blanket or a cloak of animal hide. Her bare feet were dirty. The colors of her shawl and skirt were lost in deep twilight, but the skirt seemed to be covered with unraveling machine embroidery, and the tasseled fringe of the shawl was a mess. Someone who did not iron or mend. A hippie, possibly a tree-hugger.

“Do you often wander around the campus late at night?”

“Sometimes,” Anna answered coolly. “Do you?”

“Aren’t you afraid of rapists?”

“No. Aren’t you?”

“I’m all right. I can scare people.” She raised her shawl in dark wings and shook out her unkempt locks. “Oooooh! Oooooooh! I was practicing when you came along.”

Anna nodded politely.

The strange girl laughed aloud. “Actually, I was masturbating. You yelled out at
just
the wrong moment.”

“Well, don’t let me put you off. Go ahead.”

Silenced, for a moment, the girl started to pick at the skin around her toenails.

“Are you a first-year?” asked Anna.

“Nah. I’m a drug dealer. I hate students. I prey on them. I take all their money and ruin their little lives. Are you? You look clean enough.”

Anna folded her hands around her ankles beneath the neat hems of her jeans. Her deck shoes, blue and white gingham canvas, were very clean. She had cleaned them herself. She wished she had not. “I think you’re a first-year. I think I’ve seen you around.”

The girl wrinkled her long lip, looking like a very intelligent chimpanzee. She shrugged. “Okay, you’re right. I’m Ramone Holyrod. I’m doing Modern Cultural History. I bet I’ve seen you around too, it’s a small world. But I don’t remember.”

One of those do-nothing made-up Arts courses, thought Anna the Unmemorable. Just what I would have guessed. “My name’s Anna Senoz. I’m doing Biology.” She noticed that the other girl had said
I’m Ramone,
not “my name’s Ramone.” As if being Ramone Holyrod was important.

“Oh, a
scientist!
” Ramone Holyrod had the conventional reaction: Anna was disappointed in her. Suddenly she laughed. “Hey, I
do
know you. You’re a friend of Daz’s, I’ve seen you with her and her boyfriend, and that rich guy, Tim Oliver, and the American Exchange student, whatsisname. He’s in my tutor group.”