THE TREE HOUSE

You mustn’t tell Michael, but I did actually find a better house than this one. Better in some ways. Not – quite definitely not – in others.

It was over on the far side of town, up the hill, towards the golf course but not, if you see what I mean. Very odd. You had to go along a single-track road with passing-places, as if you were in the middle of the country, yet it wasn’t that far from the ring-road, though you couldn’t hear the traffic, and you know how busy that gets.

Anyway. It was probably Edwardian, modified Garden City style, garage added in the twenties with a room over – Byzantine brick, very tasteful – honeysuckle, jasmine, roses on the sunny bits, clematis on the shady bits, variegated ivy everywhere else. In short, a dream.

I was just in my second month, very proud, very bouncy, nothing showing, the steroid rush had started but I wasn’t throwing up yet and I could still concentrate. I felt active. I felt I wanted to be active. I felt I wanted to do all the things that pretty soon I shouldn’t – shouldn’t want and shouldn’t ought, if you see what I mean.

I was looking for a place where young Brendan could have a marvellous childhood. No, of course he isn’t going to be called Brendan any more. That was then. And Colin’s out of the running, too. Kevin? Wayne? Dean? Don’t be silly! You’re not supposed to make fun of a heavily pregnant woman. She might sit on you.

Anyway. Michael always goes on about the marvellous childhood he had – freedom, adventures, swings, tree-houses, going exploring – it’s all Richard Jefferies and King Solomon’s Mines. Sometimes, I think his family must have been living in a time warp. Of course, it makes him sweet – but a little unworldly, if you know what I mean. You’ve got to respond to the world you live in. What would kids do nowadays if they had all that stuff? Vote on who’s going to be kicked out of the tree house next, probably. And you can’t expect to impress a native tribe with a set of false teeth and a monocle and a knowledge of the date and time of the next solar eclipse, when a quarter of them have artificial limbs from treading on landmines, and they can all take a Kalashnikov apart in the dark...

Anyway. I was in an idyllic state of mind, and the house was an idyll. I’d bought it before I even got out of the car. And the couple selling it were sweet, too.

It was funny, but I couldn’t quite work out how old they were. Sort of fifty, but going on eighty, if you know what I mean. No age spots, or anything like that. The skin all taut, none of those wrinkles like a bull-terrier with a huge dewlap. But kind of stretched – a bit like Bilbo Baggins when he still had the Ring, and didn’t get as old as he should have done.

I tried to work it out from the ornaments and photographs – I mean, you don’t ask that kind of thing. There were lots of photographs, and they were very good, which suggested they must be old. Yes, I like sepia. Or do you think people just looked more handsome then? A new kind of photographic emulsion in the sixties? Of course I can concentrate!

Early photos of him and her. Hard to date. Men in loose white shirts and cricket flannels haven’t changed that much, nor have young women in chiffony dresses. Told me more about their class than their age. Lots of wedding guests in uniform. Well, maybe he’d been in the Army.

Then there was their son – a whole row of him in real silver frames. (How do I know they were real silver? What’s my job, dear? Thank you!) But nothing after seventeen or eighteen. And all in open-necked shirts like his dad. No clues at all. Well, perhaps he was away at university.

Then the clock struck. Real Westminster chimes, pendulum, restrained Art Deco face. A gem. And of course it was time for tea. It always feels as though it is in that kind of house, if you see what I mean. Thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches. Cake tower. Crystal milk-jug with a beaded milk-net. Style, style, style!

But there was something wrong. I could hear voices in the kitchen. The wife was saying, “I did, I did, I did!” And the husband was saying, “You couldn’t have!” the way men always do, because we know what’s really happened and they know all about the rules that say it’s impossible.

Well, I thought it had all been sorted out, but the moment they’d brought the tea-trolley in (wooden, with marquetry and detachable trays, but a little battered) she collapsed in tears. The husband raised his eyebrows at me pleadingly, so I instantly volunteered to go and have a look at the garden.

Anyway. The first thing I saw was this huge tree in the middle of the lawn. And dangling down from it, a real rope ladder. Of course, I squinted up, and what do you think I could just make out? That’s right, a tree house. There was no stopping me. It was what I’d always wanted. Well – ever since Michael made me envious about his childhood. Before that I’d been quite content with dressing up in Mum’s Laura Ashley, crashing the film producer’s party two floors up and drinking five glasses of Pimms before I threw up down the stairwell. But everybody’s urban now, and rural’s so much more laidback.

Besides, I was still in a condition to be able to climb it, and the tree house wasn’t that far off the ground. The leafy branches started quite low and concealed it and made everything mysterious. So up I went – like a rat up a drainpipe. (That is what men say, isn’t it?) I sat on the platform and let my legs dangle and hoped nobody could see up my skirt.

Then I became aware that there was somebody else up there. They were actually sitting beside me on the platform, but I couldn’t see them because of the branches.

“I’m not coming down, you know,” said this voice – sort of late teenage, if you know what I mean. Male.

“No,” I said. “Why would you want to? It’s nice up here.”

“I can’t talk to them, you know,” he said. “Mum’s all right, but I couldn’t ever tell her – not about – and Dad – well – ”

“Surely there must be somebody you can tell?” I said, making an effort. I don’t do sweet reason very well. I’m better at panic. And I certainly don’t tell people things when I ought to. I never have. Apart from you. And even then, usually when it was all over. Like now.

“No,” he said, “there’s no one I can tell – no one who’d listen. And if they did listen it’d only make matters worse. They’d tell me to do things I don’t want to do.”

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, I thought. And just then I heard the husband calling out to me. Embarrassing, really. You shouldn’t climb the tree until you’ve bought the house. Also, I didn’t want to show him my bum coming down the rope ladder. Vanity, really. So I waited till he’d gone past, looking for me at the far end of the garden. (It was very long). I scrambled down and trotted after him, calling out.

He didn’t hear me for a while, which was just as well. Then we walked back up the garden towards the house, with him pointing out all the plants and me forgetting immediately what they were called.

We’d just reached the big tree when he said, “Wonderful place for children. Do you – ” I never know whether that sort of restraint is diplomatic or just cowardly. Pretending that we don’t have emotions in the same way that we all pretend we don’t have to go to the toilet, if you know what I mean. Well, I matched him. You know me, the chameleon. I just patted my tummy and glowed a bit.

“And you – ” I began, matching him again. And he said, “Well – ” and I was just about to say, “I’ve met your grandson,” when something or other made me shut up. And just as well.

“Well,” he said again, and I thought Don’t talk about rope in the house of the hanged man, but it was already too late, “we did have a son, called Mark. He loved this tree.” He was patting its trunk affectionately. I wondered whether he’d ever patted Mark that affectionately. “He used to have a tree house in it.”

I walked round to the house side of the tree, being polite, but not giving away that I knew all about the tree house. The rope ladder was gone. He must have pulled it up, to be more private, I thought, and looked up to see if I could spot the young lad through the branches. That was when I saw the frayed end of the ladder, and the wooden rungs hanging from the right hand rope, which was the only one with any length left. The platform, on which I’d been sitting so securely not five minutes ago, consisted almost entirely of end-on cross-pieces with a few bits of rotten plank clinging to them.

“Spent all day up there, sometimes. All night, too. And then there was the – accident. My wife – my wife didn’t think it was an accident. I thought that was just her first reaction – grief, you know. Refusal to accept things. I thought it would get better in time.”

No, I said to myself, it won’t get better in time, unless you admit to yourself how bad it is at first.

“But it got – worse. She – she accepted it – less and less. She began to say she could – still – see him.”

She could, I wanted to say. She can, I should have said. You couldn’t even see him properly when he was alive.

“That’s why I want us to move away from here, away from the memories. Make a fresh start. Somewhere else. After all, it’s been a long, long while now – it’s time to – to – let go. But every time someone comes to see the house – like you – it – it – affects her, badly, like this afternoon. And nothing comes of it.”

I stood and looked at him, from a sympathetic distance, with my head on one side, trying to radiate understanding, if you know what I mean. Poor bloke. I felt almost as sorry for him as I did for his wife. And for his son. He was a man of action, and a man of action tends to have the same degree of emotional literacy as an Action Man.

“I understand,” I said, though he had no idea how much. I even squeezed his arm. It was thin and bony and stick-like under the sleeve of his cardigan. He must have been much older than I thought. Maybe that was what the place did to you – slowed down time, even though it couldn’t stop it passing.

“I’ve got to be going,” I said, “we’ll be in touch.” We both knew it was a lie. Like his son, I didn’t have the courage to tell the truth – whatever the truth may have been.

“Give my regards to your wife,” I said, from behind the wheel, and I drove off without seeing the wide range of original features, the stucco decorations in the style of John Rennie Mackintosh, the pierced work in the upstairs banisters, the friezes, the dado rails, all of it.

I just ran away and opted for this little box. Well, it’s not that little. Though it is a box. And Douglas, or Stephen or Sean or Iain or Malcolm or James or Marmaduke will love it anyway, because it’s home, and that’s what’s important, not the bloody dado rails. Hey! You in there! I know you can hear me, because you’re kicking! This is your mother, right? If you ever have any problems, you tell me, right? Because I love you, right? And I’ll never, ever stop loving you, right? Right? Right!

28.iii.2002 finished 23.20