The Juniper Tree (9 page)

‘Hardly that, mother,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry but I must clear away now because we’re going away for the weekend.’

Mother jumped to her feet and snapped, ‘Get on with it, then, we won’t detain you.’

At that moment Tommy, who had very sharp ears, suddenly shouted, ‘Bernard’s here,’ and darted to the shop door, returning a minute later in Bernard’s arms.

I was hardly in a state for introductions so he introduced himself and told mother how much he had wanted to meet her. Then he turned to Mr Crimony and said in a very friendly way, ‘You’re in coal, aren’t you? Bella tells me she worked for you at one time, her first job, wasn’t it?’

Mother interrupted, ‘Yes, and a very nice job too, but she threw it away and went in for antiques. She would have done well if she’d stayed, wouldn’t she, Mr Crimony?’

He looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think she would have if she didn’t like the work. She tried, mind you, but she never seemed interested in coal. No, she’s better as she is.’

Bernard agreed, then asked if he could drive them home to Kilburn. ‘You see I know where you live,’ he said reassuringly.

Mother declined. ‘We came by car,’ she said grandly. ‘We wouldn’t attempt a complicated journey like this by public transport.’

Within a few minutes they had left the house. Mr Crimony had kissed Tommy goodbye but mother had only patted her on the head exclaiming, ‘Gracious! her hair feels as woolly as it looks!’

We watched them drive away from the shop window and Bernard put his arm round me for a moment and said, ‘My dear, it wasn’t too bad, was it? Your mother was a bit difficult, but old Crimony isn’t so bad and I didn’t smell the coal dust you mentioned.’

I gave a shaky laugh. ‘He may not smell of coal dust any more, all the same I don’t want him as a stepfather. Perhaps it won’t happen after all these years. It’s a strange relationship they have.’

Chapter Eleven

I
t was arranged that the shop was to be closed for the first two weeks in August while Tommy and I stayed with the Forbeses in Richmond. Gertrude’s baby was due in late September, but already Bernard did not like her being more or less alone in the house all day. I felt that he was too apprehensive and encouraging disaster with all his fears. Why should Gertrude, who had been up and down the stairs thousands of times, suddenly take to falling down them? She was no longer allowed to take her aged and gentle greyhound for walks, driving the car was forbidden and also household shopping without a companion. Gardening was frowned upon too, so the gardener put in far more hours than he used to. ‘It’s such a bore having the little man around so much,’ she complained. ‘At least he never puts a foot in my thicket. He’s really a spy, you know. If I bend down to cut off a few dead flower heads, he tells Bernard. Now you are here perhaps he will leave me alone.’ All Bernard’s fussing had made me nervous too, particularly when she insisted on bathing Marline herself, lifting her in and out of the bath as if she were as light as a kitten.

Except for the air of apprehension creeping round the house it was a happy fortnight. The weather was good and we spent a lot of time in the luxuriant garden and ate picnic luncheons in the thicket under Gertrude’s juniper tree. The clearing had been enlarged and there was a table to eat from, and urns containing red and yellow nasturtiums which had become almost wild and were climbing freely up the bushes and trees like flames. I called it the Burning Bush Restaurant. We ate such lovely things there – salads and French cheeses, smoked salmon and raspberries and cream, all my favourite things. Sometimes we drank white wine and other times iced coffee. It was a very good restaurant indeed. Gertrude looked the picture of health, sitting there glowing against the background of flowers and intense greenery, rather like someone in a Rousseau painting, particularly when the magpies appeared amongst the leaves. One day she said in her dreamy way: ‘I’ve asked Bernard to scatter my ashes here when I die. You will remind him, won’t you?’

I smiled and said I’d try to remember, but might be dead myself by then. ‘What about Bernard?’ I asked teasingly. ‘Where will you scatter his ashes?’

She appeared quite startled: ‘Of course Bernard won’t die before me! I couldn’t live without him. I’d never manage. Even as a joke don’t suggest such a thing.’

She made me feel almost guilty and to change the subject I turned her attention to Marline, who had climbed a little way up the cherry tree, trying to reach the remaining withered fruit. We sat watching her, then Gertrude said: ‘You have been such a good mother under great difficulties. We often talk about it, Bernard and I. If anything happens to me you would look after my child, wouldn’t you? There’s no one I’d trust as well as you. I know I’m being morbid, but just say you will and we’ll never mention it again.’

I promised, although I felt afraid of such a responsibility, What did ‘looking after’ exactly mean? Suppose I died, who would look after Tommy-Marline? Not my mother, I hoped.

We had no more morbid conversations and I’ll always remember that two weeks’ holiday as a very special time. There were no more visits to the theatre now because of leaving Gertrude alone, but almost every evening Bernard gave me a chess lesson, which I enjoyed although I found the game very difficult: my mind was too undisciplined and more suited for a game of drafts. Some evenings we sat listening to classical records, with the french windows open to the dusky garden, and music began to mean something to me. It was as if I’d been deaf before. When I went home I borrowed a stack of records to play on my inferior machine and my lonely evenings disappeared because the musicians became my dear friends. I hoped that one day Bernard would take me to a concert. I don’t know why but I imagined they would be very formal affairs with everyone wearing evening dress, far grander than the theatre.

The shop was very quiet during the second half of August and I did little business. One afternoon Stephen arrived in a great state because the musical was about to close and Brit was considering returning to the States as she had had several attractive offers, one a straight part which appeared to be exactly what she so hoped for. She was determined to be a serious actress, not just a beautiful one, and couldn’t afford to miss her chances. I advised Stephen to let her go and to follow a little later when she had settled down. He could combine a visit to America with his advertising work and it was quite likely that his firm would pay most of his expenses. On the other hand if things became desperate, he could live there more or less permanently.

I tried to reassure him with my trite suggestions, but he turned on me almost shouting, his voice was so angry: ‘So you want to get rid of me! You don’t really care if I marry Brit or not or if you ever see me again for that matter. You only care about the pompous Bernard and his bloody Volvo 245.’

It took me a moment to remember what a Volvo was: I’ve never been interested in cars. How clever of Stephen to know the car’s number! I said, ‘Of course I care about Bernard and Gertrude, they are my special friends and so are you. I haven’t many. To tell the truth, I’ve missed you a lot lately since you have been so occupied with Brit. I didn’t resent it, but I missed you. It’s not so bad now I have all these records to listen to. I play them most evenings.’

‘Records!’ he said scornfully. ‘You speak like a child. I suppose Bernard is improving your tiny mind with music now.’

I laughed and slipped my hand into his. ‘I think you’ve had a bit of a quarrel with Brit and are taking it out on me. Let’s collect Tommy from the nursery and eat ice-cream together by the river. It’s too early for a drink.’

We called for Tommy and drove to Teddington Lock and, leaving the car outside The Anglers, crossed the blue and white footbridge to the tow path on the other side and walked towards Ham House. It wasn’t long before we heard chimes playing a few bars from the Harry Lime theme and Tommy ran ahead to catch the ice-cream van, which was about to leave the river bank for the more profitable housing estate in the village. We sat by the river slowly licking our cornets and Stephen asked, ‘Do you think Bernard ever eats pink ice-cream on a public path?’ I said he might if the chimes played Scarlatti, even then it was unlikely. We slowly walked back to The Anglers and collected the car. It was three weeks before we saw Stephen again. The next morning it was raining and Tommy was covered in midge bites.

But life wasn’t all rain and midge bites. I bought some beautiful Georgian chairs from a private house that was being dismantled in a hurry. There were four of them and I brought them home in a taxi because I knew they would be snatched up immediately if I left them behind. I gave their delighted owner a cheque for the eighty pounds they asked and couldn’t believe my luck. As far as I could see everything else in the house was almost worthless, but these chairs were part of a set divided between the family when their granny died. ‘Real mahogany they are. You don’t often see chairs like that now; but we can’t take them with us, we’re going to Australia, you see.’

As soon as I got home I telephoned Mary Meadows and she hurried round and we spent the evening cleaning and polishing them. Mary sold them on her stall the next day and we divided the profit between us, sixty pounds each. It was the best thing that had happened to me since I’d been in antiques, my first real success. After that Mary trusted me to buy for the shop, and sometimes on slack days I went to sales and bought from private houses as well. It made a pleasant change because occasionally I resented being confined to the shop for so many hours, particularly during the summer, seeing girls flashing past my windows in their pretty summer dresses and with the sun shining on their hair. In September my weekend visits to the Forbeses would cease for a time because Charlotte was coming to live in the house for at least a month and a nurse was expected. Gertrude had insisted on having her baby at home although the doctor was against it. She felt that a hospital was too impersonal a place for such a wanted and special baby. ‘This is just the right kind of house for one of those blue plaques. I know this child will grow up to be famous in some way, but perhaps most mothers think that. Anyway, famous or not, I won’t have him born in a hospital.’

We had our last picnic under the juniper tree, Gertrude ignoring the food I’d arranged on the table but almost greedily gulping down the last of the juniper berries that grew on the shady side of the tree – the berries so blue and poisonous-looking, and smelling strange too. I’d seen her do this before; but this time she was snatching at the fruit with her long white hands and putting several in her mouth at once, and her lips became stained and her dress all spattered with the needle-leaves. I wished Bernard were there to control her. Eventually I did get her to eat a little of the salmon mayonnaise, but her lips and indeed her dress were so stained with the juniper juice that she had a wild look. When Bernard came home I told him what had happened in the thicket. Although the stains had been removed I thought he should know in case she were taken ill during the night.

The gardener was told discreetly to destroy any berries that appeared on the tree, but we need not have worried because she stopped going to the thicket and we had no more picnics there. Sometimes she walked in her garden amongst the great dahlias with their brilliant fleshy flowers and wished she had not planted so many. ‘I’d no idea they would grow as large as this,’ she said and walked among the roses instead. She mostly kept to the house during her last month of pregnancy, often sitting by the open french windows reading seventeenth-century poetry. She was particularly fond of Marvell and Donne. In spite of her enlarged body, she looked extraordinarily beautiful sitting there with the greyhound lying at her feet. The dog was so quiet I often forgot she existed. I had never heard her bark, but sometimes on walks she would suddenly start running in ever-widening circles, and when she returned she had such a proud and happy face as if remembering old triumphs.

When Charlotte came to stay she took over most of the cooking and the food was not so imaginative, in fact there was an air of school dinners about it – steak and kidney pies that were not pies because the pastry had been cooked separately, nourishing but tasteless stews, boiled fish, bread and butter puddings and large jam tarts on Sundays. Bernard ate out as much as possible. Charlotte and Bernard had promised they would not quarrel, so he could not mention the cooking. Sometimes they sat quite tongue-tied; the compulsion to disagree was so strong they dared not exercise their tongues.

Chapter Twelve

L
ooking out of my bedroom window, I saw that yellow leaves were falling from the chestnut trees like large yellow gloves. It was a late September Sunday and neatly-dressed members of the Salvation Army, carrying music cases and shimmering brass and silver instruments, hurried across the Green to their nearby citadel. There was a faint smell of chicken casserole floating up the stairs, which reminded me that Brit and Stephen were coming to lunch, Brit to say goodbye. ‘But we have good news for you too,’ she had said as she snatched the receiver from Stephen before he rang off. I had heard them laughing together and wondered if they were engaged to be married; they sounded so happy in spite of Brit’s departure.

As I prepared the meal heavy rain began to fall and when they arrived they kissed me with wet faces. They sniffed around my steaming pots and pans as if they were starving, Brit even lifting the saucepan lids. It was then I noticed the ring on her left hand, a sapphire and two diamonds in a rather old-fashioned setting. I’d worn that ring myself for nearly a month so knew it well. Before that it had belonged to Stephen’s mother. Brit held her hand close to my eyes as children do when they want to show you something. ‘Yes, we’ve been engaged for three days now,’ she said gaily. ‘That’s our good news. How do you like my ring? It was Stephen’s mother’s and it means a lot to him.’

I could hear a faint disappointment in her voice and guessed she would have preferred a new one that they had chosen together. I admired it and said, ‘I know that ring does mean a lot to him and he always planned to give it to the girl he intended to marry. He may have shown it to other girls, but he never let them try it on. I’m sure you are the first girl he has truly wanted to marry, and I don’t blame him,’ and I gave her a friendly hug.