The Friday Tree (35 page)

Mr Doughty bowed his head to step into the sitting room, and, with an air of apology, sat down. Even sitting towards the edge of the seat, he filled the chair, and his legs stretched almost to the fireplace. Brigid waited with Mr Doughty while her mother went to make tea. There was no Isobel today. She was being unreliable. He asked Brigid how she was, and how her brother was; he said she was going to be tall like her mother; he was kind, but he was clearly uncomfortable. When Mrs Arthur came into the room, fragile still, with a tray in her hands, he stood up at once to take it from her.

“I am sorry, Mrs Arthur,” he said. “I wouldn’t disturb you at such an hour, and on a Saturday morning, if it were not necessary.” He paused, and twisted his cap in his hands. “I was wondering,” he said, after a moment, “if your husband might be at home this morning. I have a little matter I need to talk to him about, if it is convenient.”

Brigid thought for a moment of the smoke under the Friday Tree. She wished Francis were there: but Francis, of course, had school on Saturday morning.

“He was about to go down to his office, Mr Doughty,” said Brigid’s mother in some surprise, “but I am sure he will see you. Brigid,” she said, gently turning her away from the gun and the holster, “go up and ask Daddy to come down to see Mr Doughty.”

Brigid took her eyes away with some reluctance.

“And Brigid?”

Brigid stopped, one hand on the door handle.

“Don’t run.”

Brigid nodded, and ran upstairs.

Her father was standing in the bathroom, his face white with foam. In one hand he held the shining curve of his razor, sweeping it up and down the length of a leather strap.

“Daddy,” said Brigid, running into the bathroom, “can you please . . .”

“Brigid,” he said, and raised his hand away from her. “Be careful. This is sharp. Were you not told not to run in the house? Go on, you should be outside playing that good day.”

Brigid, on a reflex, was about to turn round and do just that, when she remembered why she had come upstairs. “But Daddy,” she said, “I have to get you. Mr Doughty is downstairs. He has his cap and his gun.”

Her father stopped moving the razor, and stood perfectly still. He turned and looked in the mirror and then, slowly, carefully, he towelled away the white cream, and Brigid could see a dark shadow on his face. “I’ll have to put on my collar,” he said, reaching for the stiff crescent of cloth. Then, quite suddenly, he seemed to fold in the middle, and Brigid saw him sink into a kind of crooked sitting, on the edge of the bath. The collar fell unheeded to the floor.

Brigid let it fall. She put out her hand and caught her father’s arm. It felt thin and bony in a way she did not remember. “Daddy?” she said. “Daddy?”

He passed a hand across his forehead, then removed it and placed it on hers, still on his arm, and patted her twice. “It’s all right, Brídín,” he said. “I just moved too quickly.”

Brigid saw a frown cross his face, a swift shot like pain, and she remembered when her head had caused her so much pain in the autumn. “Does your head hurt, Daddy?”

He looked up at her from his awkward seat on the edge of the bath, and touched his hand to his forehead again. “It does,” he said. “But it often does when I wake. It goes away. It’s nothing. Anno Domini, probably.”

Brigid was puzzled. “Who is that, Daddy?”

He smiled a little, and the creases at the sides of his eyes deepened. On impulse, Brigid reached out her arm, placed her hand on his face, and gently stroked it. He reached his own hand again to his face, and kept it there, over hers, for a moment.

“Wee soft hand,” he said. “
A Bhrídín dhílís
. Anno Domini just means your daddy is getting old.”

Just as Brigid felt the cold of fear run all through her, he stood up, quite steadily, reached down with one hand on the wash basin and, retrieving the collar, placed it round his neck, swiftly and accurately, pushing in a stud, right at the back.

For a second, Brigid remembered the round collar that had sprung at her in the house at Lecale, but she blinked that memory away.

Then her father eased on his jacket, patted the pocket, ran his hand over his hair, and said: “Mr Doughty, then.” He sighed. “All right. Let’s go.”

He took her hand as they went downstairs. The weakness of the minutes before seemed like a dream: he was strong now, himself again. She felt almost happy as she prepared to go in with him to see what Mr Doughty had come to say. Yet, at the door of the sitting room, he released her hand. “Off you go, now,” he said, patting her shoulder. “Go up into the garden and play, like a good girl.” Then he closed the door, and Brigid was left alone in the hall.

Making her way to the garden, she did not know what to do with herself, so suddenly excluded from everything that was happening. Idly, she picked berries from the blackcurrant bushes. Some were green and bitter, but others were turning a promising red-purple. Brigid, with Francis, had been sent to collect them the summer before, and she thought she might put some in her pocket and be useful without being told. They were hard to pull away, and she soon gave it up, wandering without purpose to the fence at the edge of the plot. She trailed her hand along the tops of the bushes, and took a covert glance over to the Silvers’ garden, for she would have been glad just then to see even Ned Silver, though she knew he must still be away at whatever school he was trying now. There was no one there but Mrs Mulvey, sweeping the passageway. Brigid waved at her, but Mrs Mulvey did not see her, or pause in her work. After only a few minutes, the sound of her stiff brush on concrete stopped, a door opened and closed, and there was nothing then to hear but the silence of the garden, and the calling of the birds above.

Brigid climbed a little way up the fence. She had never been in the plot without Francis, and she had no intention of going in now. Stretched on tiptoe, she leaned against the concrete post: she might climb up a little more, but she would not go in, though she thought she could get over quite easily; she would just put both legs over to the other side, to see how far it was to jump down. And then, to her own surprise, she was in the plot, and it was easy. Brigid looked back quickly to the house, but it gave away nothing. In any case, her parents were inside with Mr Doughty. They would not be looking for her.

All round her feet young things gathered, green shoots and bright flowers. There was the waving blue of the plants Mr Doughty would dig later on from the ground: potatoes would be on the end of them, smelling of earth. Feathery green tops had little carrots hiding beneath: he would pull those too from the ground, and give them to her to take in. It was like last summer, but with a delicious sense of freedom, Brigid realised it was even better, for she had not asked anyone to help her. She was here by herself, big enough to climb in by herself, and she moved easily through the tall grasses, picking one and chewing it as she had seen Francis do. It was sweet, and it felt very daring and free to be doing it. She looked up at the Friday Tree and wondered if she might make her way by herself to it. She drew a deep breath, and took a step. That was when the first nettles stung her and, though she reached for a docken leaf and rubbed hard, the stings remained painful. Brigid rubbed until the leaf came away in green streaks on her fingers, backing towards the fence as she did so: she no longer wanted to make her way to the Friday Tree by herself. Her leg was coming up in ugly raised welts, and it was all she could do not to cry. She had managed to get as far as the overhanging trees between the Silvers’ house and her own, just at the fence, when she heard a sound. It was a low whistle, like a bird’s call, but it was not a bird’s call. It was more like the whistle Francis had used for Dicky when he was lost in the plot. Someone was in the plot and was whistling.

Brigid pulled back into the shadow of the trees, and then she saw something strange. It was a coat, quite like the one George Bailey had worn, very like the one she had thought she saw outside school on her birthday. It was not George who was wearing it. Someone was whistling, but not to Dicky, and not to her. She flattened herself into the bushes. The whistle came again, and now she saw a head, sleek and dark like the head of a seal, emerge from the blue and green of the potato bushes, halfway up the plot. It was too far for her to see features, but she knew it was not the shape of George, and somehow she also knew to stay still and remain quiet. Another whistle came, from further away and, this time, she saw that a person was standing at the edge of the plot, almost too far for Brigid to see. She stopped. It was not too far to see, after all. That outline. She knew who it was. Standing at the edge of the plot, whistling with two fingers to her mouth, was the unmistakable shape of Isobel, unreliable Isobel. Brigid thought of her mother, frail and thin, struggling with the tray for Mr Doughty. She enjoyed a new, brief rush of anger at Isobel for being in the plot and whistling instead of helping her mother in the house. In the same moment, she wondered why Isobel was standing whistling at a man with a head like a seal, crouching in the potato plants.

It was scarcely possible to draw back any further into the bushes. Brigid did her best, and held her breath as the seal-man slid quite close to her, through the plants, crushing the delicate fronds of the little carrots, and she hoped the nettles would sting him for that. If they did, he did not stop, and he slid on towards the top of the plot, where Isobel, from the opposite direction, was making her stealthy way. Now and again one, or the other, disappeared: then, at the very foot of the Friday Tree, Brigid, screwing her eyes half-shut, could just make out the shape of their two forms, standing close together. It seemed to her that Isobel handed something to the seal-man, and then he slid back into the bushes and Isobel, glancing from left to right, retraced her steps, and disappeared from Brigid’s view. She had her chance then to climb back over the fence, and wish with all her heart that Francis would come back so that she could tell him what she had seen.

As she dropped to the path from the fence, she heard the sound of the gate, one long creaking note, and her father’s tread on the passage. His steps were heavy. Brigid ran down the steps and through the back yard, reaching up easily for the latch of the back door. In the cool kitchen there was such a waiting, so much silence and anxiety that she almost turned and ran out again, but she could see the outside world shining in through the length of the kitchen and the hall. Mr Doughty must have gone. She heard the clanging scrape of the gate: then, her father stood tall in the open doorway, and the sun shone round his darkness. Beside him, another light shadow crossed the doorway: Francis was home from school. Brigid heard his voice, asking what was happening; she did not hear her father’s reply, but she saw him put his hand on Francis’ shoulder. Then she saw him shake his head, go into the sitting room, and close the door. Whatever had happened, he was no longer going out to the office.

“Francis,” called Brigid. “I have to tell . . .”

“Oh, Brigid,” said Francis, “please, can it wait a minute?” and he went upstairs, and his tread was as heavy as their father’s had been. She heard him shut his door.

Something was happening, and no one would tell Brigid what it was. Stopping at the sitting-room door, she heard the low voice of her father, the softer voice of her mother, but the sounds were muffled. Guiltily, she listened for a moment, thinking of Isobel. All she heard was one word: “Sue.” What was Sue? Was that a person? Brigid was prepared to wait no longer. She ran up the stairs as she had been forbidden to do, down the corridor, under Blessed Oliver, and straight into Francis’ room.

Looking up, he did not even tell her that she should have knocked. He sat on his bed, his fingers stained with ink, his tie loosened at the neck. He looked tired, and Brigid knew she should not trouble him, but she had to know what was happening.

“Francis,” she said, “do you know what’s wrong?”

He sighed and nodded his head, patting the bed beside him so that she could climb up.

“Do you remember a day when you were with Daddy and there was a bump in the car?”

Brigid said: “Yes. My birthday. A girl on a bicycle. Daddy said she shouldn’t have tried to turn in front of him.”

“Yes. Well. The girl’s family has pressed charges. That means she says it was Daddy’s fault. They’re going to sue. He may have to go to court.”

Sue. That is what that meant. Brigid felt fear rise, not hidden now, but full and beating with black wings. She knew it was her fault that he had hit the girl. She had jogged his arm.

“Francis. What will happen? Will he go to jail?”

“No,” said Francis, “No. He won’t go to jail, but he could lose his licence to drive, or he could be fined, or both.” He nudged his elbow against hers. “He won’t go to jail.”

“That’s what Mr Doughty came to tell him?” said Brigid, trying to take it in.

Francis bit his lip, and nodded his head. “It was, yes.”

Brigid felt the enormity of what she had done. Daddy not able to drive would be Daddy sad, his wings clipped, and she had caused it. She put her hands over her own eyes.

Francis nudged her again. “Don’t, Brigid,” he said. “That won’t help.”

Brigid shook her head. “I did it, Francis. It was my fault.”

“What was your fault?” His voice was patient, but very tired.

“I bumped his elbow. I made him drive into her.”

Francis reached away, and pulled her hands down. “Turn round,” he said, “and look at me. You didn’t cause it.”