The Quivering Tree (10 page)

‘Oh no!' I protested, my eyes filling again despite all my efforts to discourage them. ‘Everyone's been very kind.'

‘Kind!' Mr Betts exclaimed ferociously, and spat to one side himself, as if averting the evil eye. ‘Gawd keep us from kind!'

Soon I was telling the knobbly little bow-legged man almost everything. How Maud and my mother had gone to London and how I had refused to go with them. How, because everything was changed, I didn't feel that I could go any more to Salham St Awdry to visit Maud's family, as I used to
¹
because it would be like stepping back in time and time had to go forward, hadn't it? – it had to.

I told him how I had wanted to lodge with Mrs Curwen, only Mrs Crail had put a stop to it. I told him how at lunch Miss Locke had said she thought I would like another slice, which I would have done, ever so; yet somehow, when I'd been asked directly, I had felt compelled to say no, I was full up thank you: could you understand a thing like that? I told him, whimpering a little, how happy I was, how I couldn't help it, even though in the circumstances it was awful. I also told him how unhappy I was because my father was dead.

‘Snuffed it, did he? When was that? An' how old are you?' When I had answered his questions Mr Betts cocked his head to one side and regarded me with a quizzical eye. ‘Twelve years to have yer dad by yer! Some people don't know when they're lucky! How long d'yer think I had mine?' The man looked at me with bright-eyed anticipation, as if we were playing a game and it was my move. ‘Go on – have a guess!'

Just to say something, I said twenty years; whereupon the gardener shook his head triumphantly.

‘Dead wrong! T'weren't twenty seconds! T' weren't twenty nothing! Never had no dad except technically, as you might say. Bugger lit out afore I were even born, what you think o' that? But do you see
me
weepin' an' wailing' like I'd backed the winner of the Thousand Guineas an' then lost the bloody ticket? You do not! So what you on about, what's had twelve glorious years?'

Back indoors and feeling the need for celebration, I opened the music stool and found a pile of sheet music, old-fashioned songs with fancy print on the title pages as well as pictures of ladies who stuck out front and back simultaneously, as if they couldn't make up their minds whether they were coming or going.

I enjoyed playing songs. It was like a game, compressing the three lines of music – the two of the accompaniment plus the single stave which carried the melody – into a recognizable version of a piano piece, something that didn't need a singer to make sense of it for you. I picked out one because of its exotic title – ‘Indian Love Lyrics' – and because the lady on the cover was dressed up in Indian clothes, though anyone could tell at a glance that she wasn't Indian; besides which, she stuck out in the same places as the ladies in all the other pictures, something – though without having any proof, my geography lessons with Miss Howell not having covered this particular point – I felt sure genuine Indian ladies did not do.

I played the introduction, pleased with my choice, even pleased with the piano, whose jangly tones had what I could easily imagine to be an authentic Indian sound. I had a vision of jangly bangles tinkling around slim brown Indian ankles.

Framed in the dining-room door, Mrs Benyon sang:

‘Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?'

The housekeeper's voice was not exactly musical, but not negligible. Not at all like my father's records of Tetrazzini and Galli-Curci, but not like the ladies who sang in charity concerts either. It was deep and powerful, a voice with teeth in it. It took the song by the throat and shook it, the way a terrier shakes a rat to show it who is master. Mesmerized by the sheer volume of sound I almost stopped playing, except that I was afraid to, especially when the singer advanced into the room with her slow massive gait that was like a statue moving; approached the piano and put her hands on my shoulders, her head pushed forward a little to peer at the text. Abandoning the melody line for the accompaniment pure and simple, I soldiered on, thinking how very different Indian love songs were from English ones.

‘Pale hands, pink-tipped, like lotus-buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat
Crushing out life than waving me farewell.'

Mrs Benyon's breath, curling round my cheeks, smelled sweet, much too sweet for comfort. As she stood there, puffing it out over my shoulder I felt myself positively drowning in its dreadful sweetness, which was no perfume I recognized – that is to say, not lavender water, Parma violets nor eau de Cologne, nor that Evening in Paris scent Phyllis went in for and which I always felt – not that I would have dreamed of mentioning it – smelled like cat's litter slightly the worst for wear. With that smell wafting about me, hitting the piano front which promptly batted it back into my face, I could easily have brought my tea up, except that I was hanged if I was going to be parted from the only decent meal that had come my way since coming to lodge at Chandos House.

I hurried to the end of the song as fast as I dared, and then stood up, dislodging the podgy hands from my shoulders as if by accident: full of a desperate admiration as I edged towards the french window, seeking air.

‘How marvellously you sing!' I gasped, I gushed. ‘You ought to be in opera!'

‘Opera!' Mrs Benyon looked as if I had insulted her. ‘I hope I got something better to do with my time.'

‘Do you sing in the church choir?'

‘I do not!'

‘The chapel, then?' I persisted, unwilling to let go this possible key into the closed life of this closed woman. I hated not knowing about people.

‘I don't sing anywhere!'

‘Except here,' I corrected winsomely, my lungs recharged. ‘I'll always be happy to accompany you.'

The housekeeper was looking annoyed. It was strange that such flat, immobile features could convey emotion, but they could, to perfection.

‘How many times I got to say I don't sing anywhere, ever?'

‘But we just –' I stammered.

‘But we just what?'

‘Sang. “Pale hands I loved” – you know –' I managed feebly.

‘Pale hands I what?' Mrs Benyon drew herself up and I saw that she too stuck out front and back like the old-fashioned ladies on the song sheets – except that you could tell by the look in her eyes, whatever the others might or might not have known, she knew all right whether she was coming or going.

Both at the same time, it wouldn't have surprised me.

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On Saturday morning the sun shone, birds sang. The leaves outside my bedroom window quivered excitedly, or so it pleased me to imagine. ‘Food!' I distinctly heard them rustling, as I hurried through my dressing. ‘Lovely food!'

I ran downstairs, anxious to put away my meagre breakfast without delay; get off to the city and on with the task of stocking my private larder. The thought of putting myself into a position where I no longer felt compelled to think about food all the time intoxicated me. I was high on hopes of, at last, contriving to fill the churning crater which seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my innards. Mrs Benyon's teas, during the week, had been extraordinarily variable in quantity, the magnificent opulence of the first afternoon never repeated, and subsequent teas ranging between fair and two desiccated triangles of bread without so much as a smidgeon of butter between them. I had given up trying to puzzle out whether it was some inadvertent blunder on my part which determined my allotment on any given day. Like Jehovah, and equally unknowable, the housekeeper at Chandos House was that which she was, stony as marble and unpredictable as Fate.

By the time the weekend actually came round I had, in my dreams, spent Alfred's pound note twenty times over. Every idle moment had been taken up with a writing of lists, with a weighing of pros and cons of great moment. Penny for penny, did monkey nuts fill you up better than shortbreads? Were doughnuts to be preferred to sticky buns, and which of the two went stale first? Was chocolate, however delicious, a better buy than almond brittle which, given an iron determination, you could suck practically from one week to the next before the last sliver dissolved on the tongue? How long before apples went soggy and Cornish pasties grew mould? Would Dutch cheese, when Mrs Benyon came into my room to dust, give itself away by the smell?

My choice of cache being strictly limited, I had nominated the book box under the bed as my hiding-place. If I hid the food under a good thick layer of books, the housekeeper would never know.

Or would she? I decided, quite calmly, without any crass upsurge of anger, that if she did, I would kill her.

Tremulous with anticipation, I took my seat at the breakfast table; smiled into the smiling faces of Miss Locke and Miss Gosse. Miss Gosse was dressed in a green Aertex shirt and a white skirt, Miss Locke actually wore trousers. There was a different, a weekend, atmosphere – no school gong, as it were, lurking over the horizon, ready to sound off with its horrible, triumphant sound. Instead, leisure, pleasure, food. Food! It was going to be a lovely day.

Miss Gosse handed me my shilling pocket money, happy to do so, I could see, even though it wasn't her own money she was giving away. Money seemed to make her less shy; the way, I had often noticed, it did with a lot of people. She informed me that Saturday, beginning at noon, was Mrs Benyon's time off – that she had every Saturday afternoon, as well as alternate Sundays, when she had the whole day. It did not necessarily mean that on such days she left the house, the choice was hers: simply that, at such times, in or out, her services were unavailable under any circumstances. On Saturdays, cold collations would be left out for whoever wanted them, to be taken or not as desired. On Mrs Benyon's Sundays, of which, incidentally, tomorrow was one – Miss Gosse paused in her exposition of Chandos House ways to remark comfortably: ‘But then, you'll be spending your Sundays with your brother, won't you?'

I blushed scarlet. What had my mother, a woman incurably addicted to saying whatever she thought her listeners would be best pleased to hear, led my landlady to believe? That I should never be hanging about the premises to trouble the schoolmistresses' sabbath peace?

For some reason I found it impossible to say outright that actually I had no plans to spend my Sundays with Alfred: in fact, quite the contrary. I hoped he wouldn't think I was sulking, that I was jealous of Phyllis, which I wasn't, not in the least. I loved my brother, I wanted him to be happy. I was a great believer in happiness. I simply had not the words to explain to him or to anybody else that the death of my father had made me realize, as perhaps my brother himself did not, that, in the natural way of things, the time had come for us go to our separate ways, each waving lovingly to the other across an ever-widening distance. Freedom came into the equation somewhere, though I was not sure how: my father free of life, myself at last free to live, nobody's daughter or dear little sister, but the irreducible me. Sometimes they seemed bleak alternatives rather than choices. At others, I wanted to jump up to the sky with the excitement of what was in store for me.

As it was, I managed to get out that I needed to go into the city that morning to make some small purchases; and finally, hot with effort, let it be known that, shopping apart, I had no plans to go anywhere, Saturday or Sunday. It was my intention to stay home catching up on as much as I could of the school work I had missed during my absence. Amid my stumbling and stammering, it was with surprise and some elation that I heard myself calling Chandos House home.

Miss Gosse looked taken aback, I thought, but pleased in her shy way, as if she too had noticed the word. Miss Locke, intent on forcing her napkin back through its ring, her straight nose and brow inclined over her task, glanced up to comment mockingly, ‘A model child!'

She made me blush all over again, of course: at that time almost anything could set me off. Miss Gosse said, smiling affectionately at her friend: ‘You mustn't mind Miss Locke, Sylvia. She's a great tease!'

I ran upstairs, put on my blazer and opened the left-hand drawer of the chest of drawers to take out Alfred's pound note.

It wasn't there.

It wasn't anywhere. I had tucked the money inside the folds of the handkerchief Alfred had brought me back from Switzerland. With its blue gentians embroidered round the edges it was my favourite, and I had selected it especially. I could not possibly have been mistaken.

On the chance, nevertheless, that I
was
mistaken, I pulled all the handkerchiefs out of the sachet, pulled out everything in the drawer, everything in all the drawers. Then I levered out each one in turn and examined the space behind, coated with fluff and a dead ant or two. On the chance that the note had dropped down to the floor, I squeezed myself into the narrow space between the chest of drawers and the window. There was so little room to move that when I turned round my nose pressed up against the window, up against the quivering leaves, only the glass between us. I could tell by the way the leaves stared at me that
they
knew. They knew who had stolen my money.

As I did myself, for that matter. Who else could it have been? I slid the drawers back into place, slammed the handkerchiefs and clothes in all anyhow, and sat down on the bed to consider what I was going to do about it. Actually, I knew even before I sat down what the answer would be.

Nothing.

I saw myself crossing the landing, going downstairs, along the hall and through the door into the dining-room, to tell Miss Gosse and Miss Locke that their housekeeper had stolen a pound note from my drawer when she had come into my room to tidy it up or make my bed –
I saw myself, my eye!
Either they wouldn't believe me, or they would – which, if anything, would be worse. In the latter case they would feel obliged to sack the woman, send away the servant upon whom all their creature comforts depended. Bad as it was to steal – they wouldn't be able to deny that, that was something at least – I was the one who would come in for the real blame, the tale-bearer who, taken up with her own selfish concerns, had turned their cosy world upside down.