The Friday Tree (7 page)

Today, they did not walk up to the bus stop, but down to the depot. It was a longer walk, which Brigid disliked: on the way, they would have to pass the Glen, where the houses sat so far back they could not be seen. Brigid feared the Glen. Isobel had told her a judge’s daughter was murdered there. She said the papers called it “Murder in the Glen”. “And,” she said, leaning down to Brigid’s face, “she was no bigger than you.” When Brigid told this to Francis, he shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “She was much bigger and far older than you. And, it was another glen, very far away, where you will never be. Don’t listen to stories like that.”

Still, Brigid stayed afraid. The ghost of the judge’s daughter might make the same mistake and, suddenly the same size as Brigid, a ghost child, appear in this glen. With ghosts, who could tell? She was glad to be safely beyond that green darkness, to be walking past the post office and the police station, square and solid, where the policemen grew their roses and parked their bicycles against the wall.

Just as they passed, Mr Steele came out, tipping his cap, harp and crown glinting. “Good morning, Mrs Arthur,” he said. “Good morning, children,” and, as he spoke, he threw his leg over his high bicycle.

Brigid was transfixed by the sight of this great leg directly in front of her. At its top, at his belt, was a black leather holster, and sitting up out of it, at the ready, the handle of a revolver. Brigid tugged her mother’s hand and her mother squeezed it back, rather too hard for reassurance, and then shook her slightly as they waited to cross the road.

“I’ve told you,” she said, “and I’m not going to tell you again. Pass no remarks.”

“But, Mama, Mr Steele has a gun!”

Her mother did not answer. Instead she stopped in the street, turned, and looked down at Brigid.

“Brigid,” she said, “did I or did I not tell you to change out of those shorts? I’ve a good mind to march you straight home.”

“Oh, Mama,” said Brigid, puzzled and displeased. How could she be in trouble for something she had not done? “You didn’t tell me. Isobel got me ready. She said they were all right.” She saw her mother’s eyes travel upwards, beyond her.

“Did you, Isobel?” said their mother, but Isobel, now examining quite closely the brickwork on the barracks, did not respond.

As Brigid watched to see what might happen next, Francis suddenly reached behind and pulled at her sleeve. “Look,” he said. “The new buses. See – there’s one like a pirate.”

Brigid swivelled round, and there they were. Beside the old, lazy trolleybuses, with their flat faces and straight horns attached to the wires above, there stood, reined in, the fierce new petrol models. They had angry faces, with a deep-set space at the side, as if they had only one eye apiece, a pirate’s dark patch where the other should be.

“I don’t want to go on one of those,” said Brigid, immediately. “They look cross, and they don’t hold on to anything.”

“You won’t be on one of those,” said her mother, taking Brigid’s hand as they crossed the last road to the depot. She was finished now with Isobel, whose face was red and closed. “Pick up your feet now, or you won’t be on any of them.”

They trotted in a linked chain to a trolleybus about to slide away, and Brigid was almost out of breath by the time her mother and Isobel lifted her on to the open platform. “Sit down, you spoiled monkey,” Isobel said, in a voice too low for Brigid’s mother to hear, but Brigid did not really mind. It was impossible to remain out of sorts on the bus. They sat on the long seats at the back, where they could see everyone and everything. Brigid was tucked between Isobel and Francis. He was close enough to reach out to the silver knob at the side of the first double seat. Brigid envied him that. Still, there was the conductor, with his glittering punching machine, like a little typewriter round his neck. He had black fingers, from the ink on the tickets. Standing over them, a dark shadow, he took the money their mother reached to him and, looking hard at Francis, punched two pink children’s tickets. He said: “You’re going to need full fare soon, sonny.” Francis said nothing, but, in the window, Brigid saw on his face a small, pleased smile.

The bus rocked slowly down the road, past the park, the cemetery, and the hilly road leading right to the top of the mountain. Over a stone wall they saw the trees and golden stone of the convent. Far away, black-and-white penguin people walked in a line. They passed a narrow road leading upwards to black chimneys, lines of smoke above them darkening the sky.

Isobel nudged Brigid with a sharp elbow. “Your school’s up there,” she said, but Brigid saw only a street, bright, full of noise and children twisting and swinging on ropes round lamp-posts, row upon row of neat, busy shops, a great two-towered church and then the high, wide streets that meant they were down town.

To Brigid, town was not for summer days. There should be a purple sky above, and the bright promise of Christmas. The air should be patterned with wheeling birds, starlings calling to each other that it was coming towards evening. Down town there should not be blue sky, such vastness of wide singing blue, even above the ruined places that were blown up in the German Blitz. Isobel told them about that, about how she hid under the table in the time of the bombs. Even now, as they all got up and moved to the platform to get off the bus, Brigid could make out directly across the street, above the shining black of the cars, the last corner of a bombed house: an empty bedroom, the peeling of its tired paper, the cold remains of a fireplace. She pictured children there, getting ready for bed, and then that sound Isobel described, the low drone, the silence, the flash, and the explosion, and the world coming in . . .

“Wake up, Brigid,” said her mother, taking her hand. “Francis, remind me to get fish.”

Brigid, her mind on bombed-out houses, also remembered she hated the damp smell and chalky taste of fish, and her mood did not improve at the shoe shop. Brown shoes and black shoes with impossible laces, their very touch setting her teeth on edge, were pinched and poked, Brigid’s feet still in them, and it was not just her mother doing this but also a stout lady in black. Brigid did not like her. She tried to concentrate when Francis pointed out the tin cylinders whirring along pulleys on the ceiling, carrying change to and from the great cash register where people paid, but it could not relieve her boredom and her sense that the day was slipping away.

Worst of all, the shoe lady suggested that the little girl might like to break in her new shoes by wearing them home, and then offered, to Brigid’s despair, to dispose of her friendly summer sandals. “They’re practically done, aren’t they, madam?” she said, lifting them with disdain. Under her arms her black dress had white lines, like cracks in the wall. Brigid saw her taking the whole summer away, and closed her eyes. Then, to her surprise and relief, she heard: “Well, no, thank you,” and then, “I think there’s a little wear left in them yet, for playing about the garden, don’t you, Brigid?” And Brigid, almost believing that playing about the garden was not over forever, could only nod her thanks.

Francis, his own lace-ups already in their box, nudged her elbow. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll watch TV with you when we get home.”

Brigid said: “Will it be my film? With the angel? And George Bailey?”

“Well, maybe not,” Francis said. “That’s a Christmas film.
The Cisco Kid
, maybe? Or
The Range Rider
? Roy Rogers?”

“Trigger?” said Brigid.

“Yes,” said Francis. “If it’s Roy Rogers. I didn’t look before we came out. I was too excited about the shoes.” He nudged her again. “And the fish.”

She nudged him back; he made a fish face.

When they were out on the street, Brigid watched a rag-and-bone man go by. His horse, leather patches over his eyes, looked tired and old. Brigid’s heart contracted. She turned again to Francis: “You know in Cowboys and Indians? I don’t like it when the horses get shot.”

“You don’t mind when the people get shot?”

“Only bad ones get shot, Francis.”

“Maybe the horses are bad. Did you think of that?”

Brigid stopped walking, and he started to pull her along after him, laughing at her. Still, she held back. “Horses are not bad, Francis. You know that. And you told me they don’t really get shot, any of them.”

He nodded. “That’s right. Everyone is just beyond the camera, all queuing up to collect their pay cheques.”

“Even the horses?”

“Especially the horses – who works harder?” and he began to whistle.

“No whistling on the street, Francis,” said their mother. “Now stand here while I talk to the pair of you.”

“Daddy’s office,” cried Brigid, in surprise, pointing up to the high brown building before them. “I didn’t know we were coming here. Can we go up? Can we go in the lift?”

“Don’t interrupt,” said her mother. “And don’t point. I was about to say that I will go up and see if Daddy is ready. I know I’m ready for some tea, after that session. Then Isobel can take Francis to have his hair cut and I –”

“Have to get fish,” said Francis, and no one told him he had interrupted.

“Yes, thank you, Francis,” said their mother, tapping her forehead. “I would have forgotten – and I’ll take Brigid on home with me.”

“Mama!” said Brigid. First she was not to be in the lift, and now she was not to be in the barber’s shop, and there was a rocking horse there. “Can I not go on the rocking horse?”

Her mother sighed, and passed a hand across her brow. “Brigid, sometimes you . . . Now listen, both of you. I’ll go up in the lift – by myself, if you please – and see what way Daddy is for time. Isobel, will you stay here, please, with the children. We don’t need a deputation.”

Brigid breathed hard, but she said nothing, and in spite of herself listened as Francis whiled away the time with a story of the shoe lady, of the morning when, dreaming of Spanish leather, she had wakened and known without a shadow of a doubt that she must give her life to shoes, practising in any spare moments the only correct way to ascend and descend the high and precarious ladder.

“All this I learned,” he said, “in a quiet moment when you were deciding between the black and the brown.” Brigid, light dawning, laughed and hit his elbow lightly with the side of her hand, but he caught it and, with a gentle shake, said: “You see, Brigid? When you laugh at it all, it’s easier.”

Their mother came through the glass door, but their father was not with her.

“Where’s Daddy?” said both children at once.

“Daddy’s . . .” She paused. Her face was tight. “Daddy’s not feeling well, and I’m going to order a taxi and take him home.”

“A taxi!” said Brigid. They did not take taxis.

Francis squeezed her arm, quite hard, and said: “What’s the matter, Mama?”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not very much, Francis. He just went out too soon, that’s all, and now he has a bit of a headache.”

“Tea will help him,” said Brigid, her eyes on her mother’s face. “Tea with us will make him better.”

As if she had not spoken, she heard her mother say: “Isobel, take both of them to the barber’s. I’m going to get my husband home,” and then she said to the children: “We’ll have tea with Daddy another day.”

That was the end of it. She handed something from her purse to Isobel, then once again, without another word to them, disappeared through the glass door.

Brigid said: “He promised,” but no one, not even Francis, was listening to her, and she trailed unhappily with Isobel’s hard hand in hers down to the arcade where the barber had his shop. Not even the rocking horse, dappled and smooth and high, could cheer her. She shook her head when Francis offered to lift her up, and when Isobel said she could stand then as long as she wanted, she did not care. She sat down by the side of the horse, pushing its rocker back and forth. She did not care about anything. He had broken his promise.

Sitting on the ground, she tugged at one of her plaits, as he had done that morning and, as she did, she saw a shining something behind the rocking horse. Moving across on her hunkers, she picked up a pair of scissors, sharp, the kind the barbers used. She made a little cut on her finger just by touching the blade. A fine line of blood appeared, and it hurt just enough for her to feel that she had been wronged. She opened and closed the scissors: she wanted to cut something. And, then, on impulse, she pulled taut one of her plaits and cut it off. The deep, giving thickness of the hair as it suddenly sheared away, releasing itself into her hand, was a satisfying surprise and, hardly looking at the plait as she threw it with its neat blue ribbon across the floor, she pulled the other one tight, until it hurt. In a moment of inspiration, she cut it too, so close to her ear that she felt a sharp stinging pain in her lobe. Then, as she sat on the floor, with one blue-ribboned plait in her hand and the other abandoned under the rocking-horse, she felt suddenly flat. There was nothing else to cut. She was thinking seriously of slitting her shorts along the side when she heard above her a voice she knew.

“Hello! What’s this: do-it-yourself?”

She looked up and up and was surprised to see Uncle Conor, looking, from her new low perspective, bigger and wider than ever.

“What have you been up to?” he said as he stretched out his hand to raise her. “That’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” His voice was unexpectedly gentle, and it made Brigid want to cry.