The Wedding Cake Tree (6 page)

After Annie was born my parents tried desperately for another child, but no baby came. Then, out of the blue years later, yours truly happened along. My sister is eight years my senior and there is no question that she had, in the early years at least, a much harder life. She was more like hired help than Mum’s daughter while I, on the other hand, was the pretty little child with golden hair. I was encouraged to take my studies seriously while Annie was expected to devote her time to running the farm. I had pretty clothes and a dolls house but I don’t believe Annie had any of that. Needless to say, Annie and I were never close, and it’s no exaggeration to say that over the years she grew to despise me.

I would try to get into her good books, follow her around, try to help, but she had absolutely no interest in me. It sounds as though she wasn’t loved, but nothing could be further from the truth. What I’m trying to say is she had different expectations placed upon her.

And then there was this boy, Ted. He was the eldest son from a neighbouring farm. Ted and Annie were inseparable during their early teens, always out and about with the dogs, or fixing tractors – Annie was such a tomboy. I confess I was always a little jealous of their friendship. On my sixteenth birthday I had a party at home. I made a special effort to look glamorous – older. What with my party dress and a little makeup, I suppose it was the first time anyone had noticed me as a young adult rather than a child. Annie had invited Ted. I noticed him look twice in my direction when he arrived at the party, so I flirted with him a little that evening – more than a little in fact – but he never really took his eyes off Annie. Every time he tried to move away from me I found another reason for him to stay. I knew how it looked, the little sod that I was. When the party was over Annie grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the front room. She was hysterical and started to sob. ‘Why must you always ruin everything for me?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you already have everything you could ever want? Why can’t you just leave Ted alone?’ I tried to explain that I hadn’t thought I was doing anything wrong, that I thought Annie saw Ted as a brother – she knew I was lying. She knew I had gone out of my way to flirt with him. The truth was I wasn’t remotely interested in Ted. All I wanted was Annie’s attention. It was a stupid, childish thing to do, but I suppose that was the point, I was only a child.

Anyway, the damn stupid folly was a major miscalculation on my part. In my quest for Annie’s attention I failed to consider her unforgiving nature – not just towards me, but Ted too. She felt betrayed, even though it wasn’t his fault. As a result, despite years of inseparable friendship, she cast him off. He tried to make her see sense, but she wouldn’t listen. Mum told me later that Annie had expected Ted to propose at my party. I was devastated. Why had no one told me, or pulled me to one side? Ted eventually gave up on Annie and married a woman from Leyburn. My foolish prank cost Annie a great deal, although her bloody-minded attitude didn’t exactly help.

In the months after the party I would take myself off for long walks, just to keep away from the house – which is why I spent so much time sitting where you are now, trying to hold a school book down in the wind, or, in the summer, stretched out across the heather reading a romantic novel. It’s also where I dreamed up my future life away from the farm.

Royal Air Force aircraft flew up and down Wensleydale quite often in those days, they probably still do. I would lie on the heather and watch the aircraft whistle past in the valley below or gaze at them practising aerobatics. I fell head over heels in love with the idea of joining the RAF, imagined myself walking around an air station in my glamorous uniform. I even practised saluting. On one particular day I made up my mind to join, tripped down the hill and announced my intention to the family. Annie just scoffed, but Mum and Dad were surprisingly encouraging. And so, I stayed on at school to gain the qualifications required to join directly as an officer.

There is no denying the fact that my decision to leave home was based, in part, on Annie’s untiring wrath in the aftermath of the party, but I also wanted to leave her the farm. I knew the day would come when Mum and Dad would no longer be able to run things, and two sisters inheriting one farm would never work. One of us had to go and it seemed right that I should be the one – I think they secretly felt this too. I was no martyr though. I had much more of a sense of a world beyond the Dales than Annie. I found living in such a remote farming community terribly claustrophobic; everyone knew everyone else’s business and Yorkshire folk can be brutishly frank to a daydreaming teenager like me.

I trotted off to the RAF in the April that followed my twenty-first birthday. Mum and Dad sobbed as I stepped onto the train at Northallerton Station. Annie chose not to see me off and stayed at the farm. Although I would pop back to see them from time to time, I didn’t go home as often as I should have because I became completely absorbed in RAF life.

Tragically, nine years after I left, my father died of a heart attack. It was shearing time and he’d been halfway up the Dale with Annie when it happened. He was only sixty-three … my goodness, around the age I am now. I was on leave in a village called Arisaig on the west coast of Scotland when it happened. The news didn’t reach me until the day of his funeral; obviously it was too late to get back.

I rushed home as soon as I could to find Mum sitting in Dad’s chair by the stove in the kitchen – a silent wreck. And, as for Annie, she threw years of jealousy and bitterness at me almost the second I walked through the door. Mum begged her to stop but I let her have her say – she needed to get it out. I said nothing (once words are spoken they can never be taken back) and I left the same day.

We weren’t aware at the time but Mum was also suffering from a heart condition and she passed away three years later. I made it back for the funeral this time. Annie decided to turn her fury into silent treatment, and once again I left immediately afterwards. I have never been back to Wensleydale and I have never seen or spoken to my sister since.

I could write reams about the whole sorry saga, but all you really need to know is that I had loving parents who failed to appreciate the consequences of the way they treated their offspring. I lived on a farm and I had a sister who, despite everything, I loved.

However, the main reason I sent you to the Dales is because as a child I firmly believed that Penhill was my very own mountain. I would grow terribly cross when hikers appeared over the brow, breathing my air and taking in my view. I was honed out of the very limestone that makes up the valleys, hills, caves and moorland that is all around you. The Yorkshire landscape shaped me as a person – it was my foundation.

As you look down into the Dale remember your grandfather fished in the River Ure (whenever he had the time), your grandmother travelled by bus up to Leyburn every Wednesday and your aunt was a shepherdess who walked a million miles over the farm’s two hundred acres with her beloved dogs by her side. And as for me? Well, I lived my youth running up and down Penhill, dreaming of another life, in another place.

I would give anything to be a young woman once more – to sit where you are now – to stand at the highest point of the hill, close my eyes and just let the breeze roll over me. In the summer I would sometimes run up the hill after dinner and sit waiting for the sun to set. I do love Penhill so very much, which is why I believe that a little part of me still belongs there.

Enjoy every moment, my darling.

Mum

PS As you travel around the country have a good look at the sky; it’s a different kind of blue wherever you go. I’m sorry I never showed you this in person. Oh, and if you see Annie, ask her to show you my tree. Dad planted it for me when I left home; I think it was his way of saying thank you … for giving Annie the farm.

PPS You can open the second letter now.

A little bemused, I looked up at the sky, then turned
to Alasdair who had perched himself on a boulder a little way up the hill. He mouthed ‘Okay?’ I nodded and opened letter number two.

A little bit about Alasdair Finn

You must be wondering why I asked Alasdair to travel with you.

As you know, some of the soldiers who go to St Christopher’s suffer from combat stress. I have tried to help them all, but have always appreciated the need to remain detached – Alasdair was different. His first visit to the retreat was not for himself. He brought a friend called Alex who had been injured in Afghanistan. They spent two weeks with us and I began to realise that their time away was just as beneficial for Alasdair as for Alex. Over time we became good friends. He would pitch up at the cottage, often unannounced, always insisting that he had just nipped in to see Jake and me (but really, who ‘nips’ to North Devon?). I tried to get him to open up about some of the horrors he had witnessed during his military career, but he never did – not face-to-face. However, I did manage to persuade him to write a journal (I bought it for him – a beautiful leather-bound notebook). He felt a little odd
about it at first, but I told him to write the entries as if he was writing a letter to me – maybe you will see him writing in it while you are away? I hope so.

I never kept in touch with any of the other servicemen, but there was something about Alasdair. Maybe I wanted to mother him as he has never had a proper mother of his own, not a good one at any rate. He spent most of his childhood bunking off school, fishing or poaching. At seventeen he quite literally ran away to the Royal Marines to find a family. He then became educated and progressed through the ranks quickly – you will have noticed by now that he is a very capable man.

Enough from me. The best way to understand your companion is to read his own words. Overleaf is an email I received from him the last time he returned from Afghanistan. I have learned that the best – if not the only – way to get Alasdair to talk about his emotions is through the written word.

Mum xxx

I turned the page over.

From: Major Alasdair Finn

To:
Rosamund Buchanan

Dear Rosamund,

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve been in touch. I could reel off a long line of excuses, but you would see right through them.

Your request for me to escort Grace on this bizarre journey has been playing on my mind, and you can’t know how many times I’ve intended to contact you and call it off (she’s going to think I’m nuts). But you played your
I’m going to die, Alasdair
trump card on me, and coughed a bit, and now there’s nothing to be done but take off work for a few weeks and trip around Blighty with Grace (tell Jake I’m not doing it because she’s a looker, by the way).

I think you were right when you said I could do with a bit of a break. I’m knackered. The bags under my eyes are getting worse. I’ve been applying that moisturiser you gave me (do not tell ANYONE) but it’s a lost cause. The thought of one more trip to some rancid shithole in the middle of a desert makes me want to vomit, and just lately I’ve been wondering if the intelligence/special forces route was the best option for me. I’ve also been thinking about our last discussion (the one about my marriage) and you were bang on the money when you suggested that my marriage failed because I put the job ahead of my ex-wife, Jane; she made the right decision to leave. My biggest regret is that I never gave her children, but ‘what’s done is done and cannot be undone’ – a bit of Shakespeare for you. See, I did go to school (sometimes).

Listen to me! All your chats have turned me soft. Note to self: pull yourself together, Finn, you big bloody softie.

I have a briefing to give in five minutes so must be off. Hopefully I will see you soon, but just in case I don’t, I do have something I need to say. I want you to know that you’ve been a mother, a sister and a friend to me, and from the moment I walked down the lane to St Christopher’s, I felt like I had finally found a home – thank you.

Yours aye.

Alasdair

I closed the letter and turned to look at my companion. Seemingly in a world of his own, he was standing with his back to me a few feet away, on the edge of a crag that balanced like a cantilever over the hilltop. His body was strong against the breeze.

‘Alasdair,
’ I shouted into the wind, ‘I’ve finished reading.’

Broken from his reverie, Alasdair took a few steps down the hill and handed me a small colourful container, like an old-fashioned tea caddy with a hinged lid.

‘
I know this is a sensitive moment,’ he said with a warm smile, ‘but remember to keep your back to the wind when you tip out the ash.’