The Friday Tree (28 page)

Out of the side of her eye, Brigid thought she glimpsed another figure, but was not sure. Then a voice called, “Hero! Bruno!” and round the corner of the lorry came two collie dogs, winding themselves in a U-shape, bending low in greeting to a small thin figure. Brigid drew in her breath. The figure was Ned Silver. The children looked at each other, climbed out of the car, and steadied themselves on the clean-swept ground.

“Now, you two,” said Rose, closing the car door, “I told you I had a surprise. Here’s your friend Ned to keep you company for Easter!”

She seemed not to notice their silence, ushering them inside, seating them at the table. She made tea that was strong and good as the tea in the hospital, and she gave them each a boiled egg, in a delph eggcup, blue and white, and there was wheaten bread she had made herself that morning. It was all they could have hoped. Yet, Brigid could hardly swallow. Ned Silver was here, in yet another of their family places, sitting with his feet under the table as if he belonged. Rose was telling them that there would be extra special eggs the next morning, for Easter, and Brigid, who had scarcely touched anything sweet for six long weeks, thought longingly of the end of their fast. Then Ned’s covert look at Rose under his lashes, as if he had the right to love her, renewed her fury. Suddenly the food tasted of nothing, and she pushed it away.

“Are you sick, Brigid?” asked Rose. “You’re not eating.”

“She’s in a Lenten frame of mind,” said Francis, buttering a warm, nutty farl of bread, and placing it on her plate.

The fragrance of the oaten cake, and the warm melting butter, drifted across to Brigid, and hunger began to return.

“Material things mean nothing to Brigid. She’s a walking saint,” Francis said and, in spite of herself, Brigid had to relent.

So, Ned was here. Brigit the Fire Goddess and walking saint would consider the matter. Brigid herself took another slice of bread.

Then, when they had eaten to Rose’s satisfaction, and helped to clear away their dishes, they were told they could go outside, but they were not to get in Michael’s way if they saw the tractor. Ready to stretch legs too long confined, the children stood up, excused themselves, and made it quietly as far as the half wall in front of the door.

“Fairy House,” said Francis, very low, in Brigid’s ear. No one could have heard it, but Ned Silver looked narrowly at them as if he had, and made for the Big Field. Francis said, “Right,” then broke into a loping run, out across the narrow lane, and overtook Ned, followed by Brigid who, in a swerve and a scramble, managed to avoid an offended chicken, pecking its way with careful dignity across the yard. Francis cleared the gate into the Big Field with ease, Ned with effort, but Brigid, following them, struggled. Francis, to her surprise and disappointment, seemed to have forgotten her. He had already begun to sprint across the field as if he were by himself.

“Help me, Ned,” she said.

Ned reached out his hand but, instead of pulling her over, he suddenly pushed her, so that she landed on her back in the grass.

Brigid, breathless and angry, shouted, “Ned, you pig!” and Francis, hearing this, stopped, turned, sighed and ran back.

Ned, well over the gate, passed him without a word, running as if the field were his own. Brigid was speechless with fury.

Francis, looking grimly after Ned’s departing back, said nothing. He lifted Brigid with ease, and placed her on the other side of the gate. “Take my hand,” he said. “You’ll have to keep up, if we’re to get to the Fairy House before him,” and he began to run, followed hard by Brigid. They ran to the top of the field, where the Fairy House sat, and when they reached the place, a cluster of thorn trees, they stopped and, hearts beating in time, caught their breath.

They looked about them. There was no Ned. All around was simply silence, but for the grass of the field and its birds, its insects and, somewhere, the sound of water.

“Made it,” said Francis. “He doesn’t know about this. Come on. Race you!” and he began to scour the ground.

At the Fairy House, Brigid knew, there was something that could not be found anywhere else: fairy pipes. She was the first to find one and, proudly, she held it up.

“Francis!” she called.

Francis stopped searching and stood up straight. “Ha! The first! Well done.”

“Not quite,” said a voice. From behind the thorns, Ned came out. “I got one first,” he said, “if you mean these little acorns.”

“They’re fairy pipes,” said Brigid, scornfully. “The gentry left them for us. For
us.
You have no right.” She tried to snatch the little pipe from Ned.

He held it over her head, just out of reach. “No?” he said. “I’m just collecting acorns, as Rose showed me how to do.”

“They are fairy pipes!” cried Brigid. Rose knows that, she thought, and how did he dare to call her by her name?

Ned laughed. “To little girls they may be fairy pipes, but, in fact, they are just acorns. Francis?” he said, his eyebrow raised. “What do you think?”

Francis, his face flushed and closed, looked hard at Ned. “I think you needn’t have spoiled the Fairy House for Brigid, especially when you’re a guest here,” and he stood closer to Brigid, taking her hand.

“Superstition,” said Ned. “My father says you Catholics,” and he paused, turning over in his hand the shining little pipe, “are riddled with superstition.”

Francis said nothing, but Brigid felt his hand grow tight and still on hers. Then he turned round, and drew her with him. “Come on, Brigid,” he said. “Let’s go back to the house.”

Brigid and Francis walked back down the field in silence. Ned did not accompany them. Brigid could not understand why Francis had not simply told Ned that he was wrong, and that these were the fairy pipes left behind by the gentry, the Good People, since he knew it as well as she did. He saw they had left a fairy pipe for her. And she did not know what superstition was, or why Ned’s father had said Catholics were riddled with it, or what it meant to be riddled. Looking carefully at her brother’s flushed face, she saw it was not the time to ask.

Back at the gate, Brigid once more found herself trying several times to gain a foothold. In frustration, she pushed Francis. Then, she was sorry, because his face as he turned it to her looked so surprised.

“Don’t take it out on me,” he said.

The day felt spoiled.

Then, as if the sun had come out from behind clouds, Francis smiled. “I know!” he said. “We’ll go round all the fields, and we’ll do the names. Would you like that?”

“Oh Francis!” cried Brigid. “Just us?”

“Just us,” he said, and he took her hand again. “Let’s see how much you remember from last time with Mama. Okay?”

“Okay!” said Brigid, and they made across the yard straight into the Limekiln Field, at the bottom of the hill before the house. He told her the lime was for spreading on crops, like the potatoes just planted on St Patrick’s Day, and to make whitewash for the house. They ran on to the field where the undertakers used to keep their black horses. There were none now: Brigid and Francis were the horses, galloping across the meadow, nodding to each other their imagined black plumes, whinnying as they flew across the field. Their canter took them into the Bog, with the trembling grass where the men cut turf, and on again to the Whinny Brae where wild pansies and primroses grew, Francis pausing to look at the spring well. He explained how water was pumped up there, and pumped through again for the farm horses, Nelly and Charlie. Francis liked being with the horses; Brigid did not. Nelly, blind in one eye, was gentle, but Charlie had bitten her once, and she had not gone near the horses again. Francis told her to forget about all that and look at the clear water bubbling out of the ground, and the forget-me-nots, and the rabbits scuttering away at their approach. He led her across the Near Hill and then the Middle Hill, on to the Back Hill and its hazelnut tree with only one nut, and then to the Field Above the Road, with its hedge of wild cherries, then to the field that was taken by neighbours for strawberries, and the field that had once belonged to an old man,
his abandoned house still on it – and Brigid thought again of the little house by the sea – then on to the huge field, the Towns Meadow, where in the summer they had heard bees humming in the grass. And now, their circle almost complete, the sun no longer high in the sky, they arrived at the Field Above the House and the Field Behind the Garden. Brigid, who had climbed and run without fatigue, felt suddenly tired as they came to the haggard, behind the house, where hay was kept, and Charlie himself sometimes went round and round to turn the churn and make butter. Remembering his teeth, Brigid was glad he was not there. Now, they were in a little garden, long overgrown: no one had time to tend it any more. Then it was the front orchard and the back orchard. Bramley apples grew there, Francis said, and Beauty of Bath and Lord Derby. One tree was the Buttermilk tree, and the green and white apples in autumn from that were oval, not round. Blackcurrant bushes grew through the apple trees, and over across the lane, beside a gate into the Big Field where they had begun, they could see the crab-apple tree: it gave apples for Rose’s jelly. Now, the apple trees were just coming into bloom, their light, delicate scent wafting towards them as they came back to the house.

Brigid’s annoyance had dispersed on the air. “I’m sorry, Francis,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. It was Ned I was angry at.”

Francis pulled a piece of grass and began to chew it. “I know that,” he said.

“And Ned didn’t see any of this, did he?” said Brigid. “He only knows the Fairy House.”

“That’s all,” said Francis, and then he stopped. Shading his eyes with his hands, he looked across to the Fairy House.

Even Brigid, with her dim vision, could see, sitting there, a small solitary figure. “Ha,” she said. “Serve him right. He’s on his own.”

Francis stood still, chewing. “He is on his own,” he echoed and, to Brigid’s surprise, he said, “Stay here,” ran again to the gate, vaulted over it, ran up to the Fairy House, and ran down it again with Ned Silver by his side. Ned arrived first at the gate, which Brigid could not understand, because Francis was taller and faster than Ned, and could easily have beaten him. Yet Ned won the race, if it was a race, and stood by the gate with his hands on his knees and a grin on his face.

Francis let him go through the door before him, and held Brigid back so that she had to do the same. “We shouldn’t forget,” said Francis.

“Forget what,” said Brigid. “He was horrible.”

“That he is on his own,” said Francis, “and that he is our guest, too. Come on. We have to.”

Rose came through the back doorway with a round brown teapot in her hand.

“Ah, timing! A minute earlier and you could have emptied these tea-leaves for me.”

From the heavy kettle simmering on the range, Rose poured water into the teapot, extra drops hissing and scudding across the black stove. “Come, come on,” she said, and motioned them to the table, where their hungry eyes took in sweet ham and lettuce and little tomatoes and bright green scallions on plates. On the dresser, big and dark against the white wall, there sat a fragrant
apple pie, brown and crimped at the edges, the scent of cinnamon and clove floating unbidden into Brigid’s mouth. She sighed, content.

“Where did you go, today?” Rose asked, when they were seated. “Brigid?”

Brigid, avoiding Ned’s sidelong glance, looked at her plate. “Round the fields. We said their names.”

Rose said: “Look up when you speak, Brigid. Good work. I’m glad you remember the names of the fields, for when that’s lost, all your family has worked for is forgotten. And what did you make of that, Ned?” she added, turning to the silent boy. “You’re not usually so quiet.” She stopped, put down the plate she was offering, and looked from one child to the other. “There was no quarrel, I hope?”

Brigid, eyes cast down again, said nothing. Even Francis was silent.

Ned opened his mouth, and Brigid thought: now he will tell, the clashbag, and we will all be in trouble, but all Ned said was: “I stayed at the Fairy House. I like it there.”

Brigid looked up. He had behaved.

Rose nodded. “You wouldn’t be the first child to like it there,” and Ned met her smile.

For a second Brigid thought: how different his eyes are when he is not scowling. Then she dismissed the thought.

“Besides,” Ned, said, accepting from Rose the plate she offered him, “they’re not my family’s fields.”

Rose said nothing, then, but Brigid saw that she looked at him for several moments, then at Francis, quietly lost in his own thoughts. Brigid flicked her eyes down to her own plate and kept them there. No one spoke for a while, until all the good lunch was eaten, ending with the glory of the apple tart, which left Brigid sighing with satisfaction. She was truly sorry when Rose signalled that the meal was over.

“Come, children,” she said. “Michael will soon be in, and he’ll be tired after his day. Help me clear away, now, and give him the place to himself. You’ve had a busy afternoon, running round. Tomorrow will be a holiday for us all, and you must have a good rest.”

It was almost April, yet the evening was drawing in to darkness, the warmth from the range making Brigid’s eyes sleepy and hot, pictures beginning to dance. She was not sorry when Rose brought her to the room where Brigid’s mother had slept when she and Rose were children. Later, she heard Francis climb the narrow brown stairs with Ned, their feet on the wood like horses’ hooves, up to the room they would share beneath the eaves; and she remembered running over the fields with Francis, and she began to slide away into dreams. The last thing she heard was a car coming into the yard, its lights sweeping above the curtains in an arc that was just outside sleep. A dog barked, far away. She felt, but did not see, Rose get up to answer the door, and then she was deep in sleep, where fairies danced in the Big Field, coney rabbits slept quiet in their burrows down in the Whinny Brae, and she and Francis were plumed horses, flying across the grass.