The Tree (3 page)

‘Oh God,' I heard my mother say, and she called me to the toilet to show me four green frogs the colour of limes clinging to the inside of the bowl.

‘Look,' she said, trying to flush them away. We watched the frogs swilling about in the current, before they were sucked down the U-bend. The two of us kept guard to make sure they'd gone but it wasn't long before they reappeared, crawling slowly back up from the bottom of the toilet.

Later that afternoon the toilet stopped flushing altogether and an hour later when Mum turned on the tap in the kitchen a load of brown gravelly muck poured out into the sink.

I'd noticed a snowballing of things falling apart about the house: loosening boards, leaking fixtures, errant latches. A build up of what I assumed were the jobs my father had done without us even being aware that he did them. They were just part of the constant stream of misdemeanours committed by a house against its occupants. Jamming drawers, cupboard doors falling from hinges. They all could be and had been ignored, firstly, because my mother had never dealt with them before, and, secondly, because they required a type of action she was incapable of – asking for help. Edward had done what he could, but planing down jamming doors and unblocking toilets were beyond him. It wasn't until we'd used the toilet in the Kings' shed for a week because ours was blocked that my mother finally decided she had to do something.

I watched her struggle with the yellow pages. It kept falling from her lap like an injured gull, flapping south towards the floor. When she finally located a plumber's phone number and rang, he was on holiday. The message on his answer phone gave the number of an alternative plumber. She tried that, but no one was home.

‘It's too difficult,' she said, and Edward, who had been watching my mother perform for half an hour, prevaricating and mumbling into her mug of cold soup, was so frustrated he couldn't watch and he stood to leave the room. Then something drew our attention through the slats of the front blinds. It was a pair of legs running up the path of the Johnsons' house. The legs belonged to a plumber and he was about to jump into his van and drive off.

‘Quick. Stop him!' my mother called.

Edward charged out of the house.

‘Stop!' she called over Edward's head to the plumber, but Edward had already done that.

‘Stop!' she called again, though the man had stopped and was walking towards her.

I trotted up the front path, behind my mother, nervous for her that she would be incapable of wording her simple request.

She pushed me aside. ‘We've got frogs in our loo,' she said.

‘And that's no good.' The plumber's words joined on to the end of hers and seemed to make a perfect sentence.

He followed my mother down the side of the house to the septic tank. She pointed out the man-hole cover and we watched him lift it off.

‘Same trouble as next door,' he said, flinging the heavy square of cement on to the grass beside him. He peered inside, then he was gone, striding up the side of the house towards his van, stopping for a moment to stare up at the tree on the way.

‘Great tree,' he said. ‘No good for your drains though.'

A minute later he came back down the hill carrying some drain-clearing device. He fed the arm of it down into the dark pit of the septic tank, glancing once at my mother. In that instant he took in the mess of hair, the odd un-matching clothes, the bare feet and the uncertain eyes. He seemed to see it all and know it.

‘Stand back,' he said, as a load of chopped roots and mashed cockroaches spewed across the grass in front of us.

They stood together for an hour hosing the chopped roots down the yard towards the back fence. The spray from the hose plumed above them as they continued to talk into the orange dusk.

Edward had got fed up waiting for her and was cooking burgers in the electric frying pan. He squeezed blobs of tomato sauce over each lump of meat, then flipped the round of meat on to another saucy bed he had spread on some stale bread. We sat around the kitchen table eating and trying not to feel like we were waiting for our mother. Only Gerard objected openly by kicking his legs hard against the wall behind him. Finally Edward pushed him to the back door. I watched him from the top step run down the yard to our mother. She picked him up and he stuck to her, his legs and arms clinging like the frogs hanging on the porcelain toilet bowl.

When she finally came inside, even under the flat fluorescence of the kitchen light, I could see that her face had gained an evenness. The corners of wildness that had moved in months earlier seemed to have leached away. She took Gerard to the bathroom, washed his face, cleaned his teeth and tucked him in his bed. Then she came into the kitchen to tidy up. The worktop was a row of bowls and plates covered in a film of flour from Edward's cooking. She wiped away the powder then started scratching at the burnt meat on the frying pan. Then she found her washing-up gloves and began to clean.

The noises of the house were different that night. Scrubbing and scouring, mopping and brushing. Buckets were filled and tidal waves of grubby water were emptied. She dusted the top of the kitchen cupboards, she pounded rugs, poured disinfectant into her sponge and wiped everything, the doors, the handles, the windowsills – under the kitchen table. Then the clearing began. The acres of sympathy cards and letters from distant relatives focusing on a memory or a phrase about our father, they had been scattered across the dining room table, she piled them up and put them in a box.

I lay in bed and listened to the rubbing and scratching, then the purposeful steps of my mother transplanting her tidying frenzy into another part of the house – her room. Cupboard doors creaked open and I heard the flumph of clothes being tossed on to the floor. The sound became lighter as the pyramid of possessions was growing. Then a rattling in the very top cupboard; papers and boxes being lifted out. I stood by my door and listened, concern pressed into my brow. Did my dad know he was being evicted from his house?

The back door rattled and I jumped. My mother who was careering around her room with boxes and colliding with the cupboard doors, stopped. We waited. Me, my mother, my brothers, the tree, all waited for the second knock. It was the drain man, we all knew that, with his brazen smile and a bottle of beer.

I peeked around the edge of my curtain. I could see him on the top step. My mother had slunk to the back door; I saw her caught behind the fly-screened door. She hesitated, then I heard him say her name.

‘Dawn.'

My mother was twitching and jigging and side-stepping.

‘Come in. No,' she said, staying safe behind the screen door. ‘Go,' she said. ‘Come in. No go.'

I wondered, as did the drain man, what she meant. I noticed her eyes darting in the direction of the tree.

‘I'm sorry. Tomorrow? I know I said tonight, but – '

‘Dawn, I'll leave this here.' He raised the bottle of cold beer he had in his hand. ‘Tomorrow night, maybe,' he said, and then the drain man left, his feet turned out in his workmen's boots as he hopped down the back stairs, the cold bottle of beer left on the top step.

The door opened and my mother skimmed down the steps taking the bottle of beer on the way.

That night the tree shook with jollity. It was a forced laughter though; I assumed a result of my mother's guilt.

While my mother was visiting my father, I crept into her room and found his possessions piled on the bed. Boxes of papers stacked by the door for disposal. The curtains were drawn so he couldn't see in, as if she was trying to hide the fact that he was being moved on. When she returned later that night, barefoot and merry from the beer she had drunk in the tree, she replaced the pile of clothes. I heard her re-hang each shirt and re-fold each jumper and pair of pyjamas. The heat I had felt from the tree when the drain man was on the back steps abated and the animals went about their business, trawling the sky in search of food.

My mother saw the grey heads first, bobbing up and down through the Venetian blinds, like a line of yachts seesawing towards a finish line. It was a trickle of grey-haired women stepping down the path towards our front door.

‘What are they doing?' she said, watching the women. Like a determined flank of soldier ants they marched closer.

‘What do they want?' She jogged nervously on the spot.

The inevitable knock on the door sent my mother into a spin, zig-zagging across the cool wooden floorboards. We dived for cover. It struck the same chord of recognition in all of us. They resembled so completely the grey stream of women who came to our house the afternoon after our father's funeral. It brought back the pots of tea, the muffled voices, the sniffling, the occasional howl, then the sound of tissues being plucked.

It was a terrible return to that fearful hot day. The heat in the church had been unbearable, even with all the doors open. That much black cloth on a February day in a church in the sub-tropics with only the ceiling fans to churn up the air can push the temperature beyond the tolerable.

It was too much for the old folk. Aunt Kit folded at the knees ten minutes in and the rest of the church swivelled to watch as she drifted to the pew, so convinced they were that she was going to drop dead and upstage the service and the untimely death of her niece's husband. Waiting in the wings for such an event, Uncle Jack in the seat behind extracted the smelling salts from his chest pocket. Once Aunt Kit had come round and her hat, a flat, black saucer darted with a purple feather, was rearranged on her white tufts of hair, Uncle Jack offered her his hip flask of brandy. When it became clear Aunt Kit was revivable and she'd had more than a few nips of brandy, the congregation returned to their ruminations. They bowed their heads to the power of their Creator, they thanked him again that it hadn't been their turn this time.

I could see from my seat beside my mother, through the wall of louvred glass, my class lined up outside the church. The blood-red glass was difficult to see through, but the yellow and orange panes were less opaque though they distorted their faces giving them all monstrous chins and shallow foreheads.

The heavy box in the aisle beside us seemed too black for my father. I wished it was decorated, painted with some swirls and messages.

Now, as the women, the busy beavers who had supplied the tea and sandwiches at our house for the mourners, came down our path, we scattered in fear, leaving our mother to open the door.

‘Yes?' Her bare feet and thin legs greeted the women. Gladys Havelock led the way holding up her Neighbourhood Watch folder. ‘Dawn, the rota! It's your turn.'

Mrs Sanders patted my mother on the arm on her way into the house.

‘I thought you were going to remind her,' she whispered to Gladys.

‘Didn't I?' Gladys looked at my mother who shook her head.

‘Too late, the gang's all here.' Gladys clamped a clipboard to her side.

The mass of grey-haired widows pushed into the lounge, pressing elbows into each other's sides and exchanging worried glances. The unspoken consensus seemed to be it would be good for everyone to continue as normal.

My mother watched the stream of women take up their seats in her front room. They shuffled and sighed and waited to be offered tea. But mother didn't drink tea, so she didn't offer.

‘Anyone have anything to report?' Gladys started.

‘It's been dark, this last week, at night,' said Mrs Sanders.

‘I've seen someone dark,' Mrs Drummond, old and deaf, chipped in.

‘Were they black?' Mrs Layton was on the edge of her seat trying to choke back her fear.

‘Very . . .' Mrs Drummond hesitated. ‘Black as the night. I couldn't really see they were so black.'

‘I saw
you
looking at something the other night,' said Mrs Sanders.

‘I was watching Sandra.' She nodded towards Mrs Layton.

‘I was watching, Daisy.' Mrs Drummond referred to the woman sitting next to her.

‘I was watching Gladys.' The old woman spoke gruffly, not sure what she was being accused of.

‘What were you watching, Gladys?' Mrs Layton sucked in her lips and the skin of her chin shrivelled.

‘I thought I saw you, Dawn.' Gladys leant over to my mother. ‘Up your tree.'

Lying on the cold tiles in the hall, I slid an inch closer to see how my mother would respond. There was a pause and it felt to me like the ceiling was starting to lower. They'd seen my mother up the tree. They might try and take her away from us, that was my first thought.

I noticed though she didn't comment. I saw her perfect non-reaction. Mrs Layton tried again. ‘There has been a lot of noise coming from up there, the last week.'

‘Maybe it was the fruit bats.' My mother spoke without a hint of sarcasm.

Her face had tensed slightly, but no more than it was already from being confronted in her own home by a group of uninvited pensioners.

It was true my mother had made very little effort to cover her tracks. The Johnsons who lived directly beside us were old and the Kings behind had a noisy house full of children, so she was safe from the nearest neighbours. But she had made no attempt to conceal her tree climbs or to disguise the noise they made. Especially the night the drain man called. After he left she was so loud I was sure the entire suburb must have heard. Vonnie, who lived next to Megan's house and directly behind the Johnsons, saw my mother struggling for another excuse. She cut in.

‘All the kids were up there again. I noticed the other evening.' She sounded as if she was displeased, but there was a playful tone in her voice.

‘After what happened, you'd think you'd be a little more careful.' Gladys challenged my mother with a look of scorn.

‘I see the roots have got in the drains again,' she continued.

‘Not badly,' said my mother.

‘Not what the Johnsons said.' Gladys sounded very pleased with her private knowledge.

‘It's been worse,' Mum countered.

‘Have you got any plans' – Gladys hadn't finished yet – ‘for the future, assuming present root growth continues. Not that it affects our side of the road, but I would have thought your immediate neighbours may be interested.'

‘Doesn't bother me,' said Vonnie. ‘And the Johnson's back yard is so full of gum trees. It's questionable which tree is doing the most damage.'

Mum was off the hook for the minute, thanks to Vonnie, and the old girls huffed and puffed and waited for the cups of tea my mother had no intention of offering them.