Jo Baker: A Country Road, a Tree

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“This is hardly your fault.”

—

From that frozen moment, the household stillness breaks into a cascade. Voices bounce and spin around the place like spilled ball bearings. Stairs are hammered up and down. Telephone calls are placed, timetables consulted, sketched-out plans become solid and concrete.

Lily turns out the hot press for the girls’ balled-up socks and folded vests and blouses; Sheila and Mollie discuss — at varying distances and volumes — the need for this item or that, the possible location of the other. Where are the girls’ good shoes? (They’re wearing them — which becomes evident on their return, all tangled hair and stickiness, dustily shod.) What about these books? Have you seen the hairbrush? Whose hairbrush? My hairbrush, the tortoiseshell hairbrush. Is this the one you mean? Feet clomp back and forth across the landing and up and down the stairs, then the voices become softer, closer, as the work begins to come together and be set in order.

He stays out of their way; he can’t be of any help. His head still hurts; he’s liverish; he’s wary of questions, doesn’t want to share his plans. He hides behind his book.

When they are done and the taxi is ordered, he carries the luggage downstairs and lines it up in the hall, the girls’ neat little cases and their mother’s larger one. Everybody waits, since that is all there is left to do now, the girls sitting side by side on the upright hall chairs, one set of white socks and buckle-shoes dangling and swinging slightly, the other set neatly instep-to-instep on the parquet, their owner made grown up by the gravity of the day.

Time stretches and slows; the clock ticks. Mollie expresses concern about the taxi. May is worried about the weather: they’ll have a rough crossing ahead of them, she dares say. They cannot say anything worth saying, but that does not stop them talking, and the soft words accumulate, like sand trickling through an hourglass. They are up to their knees in it and yet still they can’t stop.

Then there’s the sound of a car bumbling along the harbour road, which makes conversation break and scatter.

“Is that—”

“Ah, that must be—”

“Have you got—”

The motor idles in front of the house. Sheila has the front door open; the driver gets out of the cab and comes to help with the luggage.

The girls smell of wool, and boiled milk and soap, when they are kissed; they are solemn and excited, knowing this is all so very serious now; their cheeks are hot against his cheek, and they smell no doubt his guilty adult reek of cigarettes and sweat and last night’s whiskey.

Sheila hugs him sudden and hard. Words fail him.

“God bless you, dear boy.”

He manages, “God bless.”

And then Sheila slides in beside the girls, who shunt themselves across to make room, and the door slams on them, and the driver gets in the front seat, and the car turns and moves away, grinding alongside the slate-blue harbour water.

He goes indoors. He lights a cigarette. “Boy” is right. Child. Bear-cub that the dam didn’t bother licking into shape.

The house feels dim and cold. A limestone pebble has been left on the hall console. It’s greyish, skin-smooth and about the size of a peppermint. It had sat in the girl’s creased and grubby palm, revealed to him like a secret that she knew he would keep, then tucked away again with a little gappy smile. Abandoned now, forgotten, its meaning shed. He lifts the stone. It’s cool to the touch. He cups it in his palm a moment, and then he slips his hand into his pocket and drops the stone in there.

—

He lopes along like a broken-down hound at Mollie’s side. Mollie has taken his arm to tether him to her pace. Her body is compact and soft in her Irish tweeds. It is a glorious afternoon, breezy and blue, a mockery, the low sun making them squint.

“So are you going to tell me?” she asks him.

He peers down at her. “Tell you what?”

“Ach, come on now. Sheila and I could see it straight off.”

“See what?”

“Who’s the girl?”

Her arm hooked through his, they stumble on together. He says nothing. Seagulls wheel overhead; waves suck and spit.

“Come on, spill the beans.” She tugs his arm.

“What makes you think there are beans to spill?”

“You know what you’re like. Left to yourself, you’re a liability. You get ill; you get thin; you even got stabbed, for goodness’ sake! You can’t take care of yourself, can you? But look at you.” She stops and drags him round to face her. “Just look at you.” Rosy-cheeked in the wind, she studies him. “You’re clearly being taken care of.” She peers in closer, frowns. She flicks the back of her hand against his chest. “ Somebody has fixed a tear in that shirt.”

He peers down. His lips twitch. Then he offers Mollie his arm again; she takes it and they walk on.

“There’s a girl,” he says.

“I know.”

He doesn’t offer anything more, holds a smile at bay.

“And…?”

He shrugs.

“Ach, come on!”

He smiles. He says, “Years ago, we used to play tennis, mixed doubles, when I was at the École Normale. But I didn’t see her again until last year, after the attack. She read a report in the newspaper and remembered me. She came to the hospital and, well, that’s when.”

“That’s when you fell in love.”

It is to be supposed so. He does not confirm, correct or contradict.

“She made curtains for my flat.”

Mollie laughs.

“They’re actually quite fine.”

“Sorry. I’m sure they’re beautiful…” She waves a hand. “I didn’t mean — I just never thought of you — being the fellow that you are, I didn’t think you’d care about things like that.”

“I didn’t say I cared. But when it gets dark,” he says, “one has a need of curtains.”

That’s what Suzanne had said, anyway, lying naked on the tangled sheets, looking out through the high window of the sleeping loft, her dark hair tumbled, moonlight on her skin. He’d agreed, but had determined that on no account would he ever get any; if there were curtains, then they would lie together in pitch black, and that would be a shameful waste of her nakedness.

And then, when she had presented him with curtains, he’d thanked her, and had even participated in their hanging.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

“I’m just happy for you. Thrilled. That you’ve got a nice girl who’ll mend your shirts and make you curtains.”

“That’s not all she is. She’s a musician. She studied at the Conservatoire. She is a writer, too. She writes.”

“God help you then, the pair of you.”

—

The curtains are drawn that evening in the little house, even though it’s not yet dark. The radio crackles and shrieks as he hunts out the BBC again. When it’s tuned in, he goes to stand beside his mother, a hand resting on the back of her armchair. She has steeled herself to listen now.

At the back of her head, grey hair frizzes out from its pins. Her old hands clutch the armrests. Mollie is huddled in the seat opposite, her legs drawn up underneath her, chewing on a nail. Lily stands by the sideboard, included but separate, eyes downcast.

At five o’clock today, France declared war on Germany.

His mother fumbles a hand upward. He takes it. It is cold. They listen to the continuing bulletin, but little of it sinks in. Because the pieces are all in play now, are moving out across the board. He strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. One traces the possibilities out from here and ends up — where? Wire and trenches, is that what is coming all over again? He could volunteer for the ambulance corps, grind an old taxi over mud…Back in France, could he enlist? It is all so grim. His head buzzes as though the lid has been taken off a jar of flies. His mother twists round in her seat and looks up at him. Her hand grips tight and she pulls him down a little closer.