The Memory Tree Read online

  I believe I hoped Mother might yet appear to comfort me, as Nanny Dryden used to do when I woke crying after one of my bad dreams. I sat waiting, but Mother did not come. None of my ghosts appeared. Not Father, nor Arthur, nor Eddie. Walter Dowding did not come, nor did William Hatherwick. No one came. Not even Nanny Dryden.

  I was roused eventually from my stupor of self-pity by the distant sound of little Ivy crying. As I dried my eyes, it struck me forcibly that ladies’ handkerchiefs are quite inadequate nowadays. How can such small squares of lace absorb the outpourings of grief this war has occasioned? As I thrust the ridiculous scrap of cloth into my pocket, I recalled Violet standing in the kitchen of Garden Lodge after William had enlisted, mopping her face with her coarse linen apron.

  I set off along the corridor in the direction of Ivy’s nursery, where I found Violet trying to console her. I took the baby in my arms and held her red, tear-stained face up to mine – no doubt equally red and tear-stained. She stopped crying and in the silence that followed, we regarded each other solemnly. I smiled first. It is impossible to contemplate that fierce little soul for more than a few moments without feeling grateful.

  I shall not play the viola again. I have no heart for music now. What should have been a consolation serves only to remind me – and, I fear, Mother – of all that we have lost. Thus we must add to our long list of war casualties the blessed consolation of music.

  Sometimes I look at little Ivy and envy the emptiness of her infant mind. I wish I could erase mine and begin again, with a fresh start, new born, like her. Would a man without memory be a happy man, I wonder? If we did not always look back, could we move forward, unhindered by a crippling sense of loss?

  I shall begin again. I must. Ivy and Violet are my future now. My new family.

  THE BEECH WOOD

  When all hope was extinguished, she came to us, to the wood, to finish something that had begun here. There was no body to inter. Instead she buried his love, concealed it in a place known only to the birds and small creatures who seek sanctuary among our boughs.

  She had chosen a container to keep out wind and weather, a humble tin decorated with flowers. Now she stood, hesitating, at the foot of the largest tree, one on which so many had declared their love. She spread her arms and leaned against the trunk, embracing it, feeling with her fingers, like a blind woman, for the lovers’ hearts and initials crudely incised on the smooth bark.

  She released the tree and went to sit on the wooden swing that had hung from the beech’s arm since before she was born. The branch creaked as it took her weight and the leaves rustled above her head. Looking up, she saw the perfect hiding place, but it was out of reach. Undaunted, she stood and bound the tin to her body with her woollen shawl, then, grasping both ropes, she lifted one foot and placed it on the wooden seat. As she leaned back to draw up her other foot, she began to swing. Kicking her skirts aside, she straightened up and swung back and forth, gripping the ropes, gazing up at the dark hole in the grey bark.

  When the swing came to rest, she let go of one of the ropes and withdrew the tin from the folds of her shawl, which slithered undone and fell to the ground. Leaning against the taut rope, she reached out and pushed the tin into the hole. She heard it tumble a little way and knew it would never be found.

  She descended from the swing, retrieved her shawl and flung the soft wool round her shoulders, then she stood for a moment, observing the silence. Lifting her head, she regarded her hiding place and murmured, ‘May light perpetual shine upon you.’ His love consigned to perpetual darkness, she left the wood, her footsteps slow and heavy.

  We guarded her treasure for nearly a hundred years, but even we are not immortal.

  WILLIAM

  July 8th, 1916

  He assumed he was dead. All he could see was sky, so blue and bright, it hurt his eyes; sky that stretched so far, it seemed infinite. He remembered sky. Sky was what you saw when you looked up from the graves. He couldn’t remember much else, but he recalled that you saw a lozenge of sky, as narrow as a coffin. All else was mud and stench, things broken, dead or dying. Since he could not account for the vast expanse of blue above, he assumed he must be dead.

  He tried to feel something in response to this surprising new knowledge, but found nothing in his heart save a great emptiness, a void as infinite as the blue above. When he thought of death, he remembered noise, indescribable noise, noise to drive a man mad, but here, now, there was silence. He wondered if perhaps he was deaf, not dead. For reasons he could not comprehend, dead seemed more likely.

  He hadn’t thought death would be so peaceful. Gratitude overwhelmed him and tears blurred his vision. As they trickled over his face towards his ears, he realised he must be lying on his back. As the salt water travelled, his face began to sting on one side and he noted – as if it were a matter of small consequence – that he was in a good deal of pain. He began to wonder if perhaps he was not dead.

  He tried to lift a hand to his face, to ascertain if he still had a face. A memory of faceless men struck him with the force of a blow. As his hand drew an arc in the air, he examined his arm, as if it belonged to another man, then lowered his eyes to look at the rest of his body. It seemed to be caked in a dark substance, mostly brown, but red in places. He looked not like a man, but a creature made of earth, or one that lived in the earth. He thought of moles and knew – unaccountably – that he’d been responsible for the death of hundreds. Then he thought of men and knew he’d killed them too. His tears flowed again.

  He regarded his filthy hand, poised in the air and spread his fingers. As the mud cracked, sprinkling his face with dust and small clods of earth, it revealed streaks of skin beneath, pale and branched, like the roots of a plant. He observed his hand, forgetting his pain for a few moments, absorbed in the action of moving his body and the sensations it provoked.

  He felt sure now he must be alive, but he had no idea where he was nor how he came to be there. He lay still, overcome by a desire to sleep, but feared that if he slept, he might lose his tenuous hold on life, so he stared unblinking at the sky, willing himself to remain conscious. As he watched a cloud’s stately progress across his field of vision, he knew there would be no rain. He didn’t know why he felt so certain, how he could tell, just by looking at the sky.

  His certainty brought him inexplicable comfort, a comfort soon dispelled when he realised he couldn’t remember his name. Panic rose from his stomach to his throat as he acknowledged he didn’t know who or what he was. His body jack-knifed and, as he sat up, he turned his head to one side and vomited.

  He was able to walk. He’d taken an inventory of his body and found a deep gash in his neck and superficial wounds on an arm and leg. One side of his face was too painful to touch, but he had no idea what had caused the injury or if it had left him with a recognisable face. He staggered on, covering the marshy ground slowly, fearful that he might fall and be consumed by the bog. He thought he’d seen a man drown in mud, but that was surely impossible. It must have been a dream, a very bad dream.

  He acknowledged that he was indeed deaf. The world he walked through was silent, blighted, hellish. For some time – he had no idea how long, but the sun was high enough in the sky for him to long for shade – he’d seen no feature on the landscape other than ruined buildings and blasted trees, black, leafless, with broken or amputated limbs. Sometimes, when he passed the trunk of a dead tree, he would lean against it, panting, and touch the scorched wood in a gesture of tenderness, then he moved on.

  At the crest of a low hill he came upon a writhing, knotted bole where the earth had been eroded from its tangled roots. He stopped to pay his respects to the tenacity of the tree which stood sentinel at the roadside, bearing witness to the devastation of the village below. The nameless man laid his hand on the gnarled bark while his memory groped for a name. Finally, it came.

  ‘Crataegus laevigata.’

  The faint sound of his own voice, deep and hoarse, startled him, but his
spirits rose a little to think his hearing was returning.

  As he plodded onwards, the eerie silence was broken only by the raucous croak of an occasional crow. After some hours, he came upon a stand of living trees, their smooth, grey bark unscathed. He knelt at the foot of one of them, overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity, of joy, of love for these living things. Gasping, he named them, ‘Fagus sylvatica’, before passing out.

  He awoke, shivering and damp, his head throbbing. The ground beneath the trees was dry, so he assumed he was drenched in sweat. He struggled to his knees, then crawled, dragging himself over tree roots. Clinging to a trunk for support, he got to his feet and launched himself along a path through the trees.

  When he emerged from the wood, stumbling and blinking in the sunlight, he saw a large building in the distance, a grand mansion that for a moment seemed familiar, even though he felt sure he’d never seen it before. As he approached, he saw that much of the roof had fallen in and one corner of the house appeared to have been blown away, exposing the interior like a doll’s house. A conical turret still stood, but there was no glass in the many ornate windows.

  He wondered if he might find food in the garden or at least water. Fixing his eyes on the ruined building and his hopes on a walled garden, he limped towards the abandoned house.

  Climbing over rubble where the walls had been breached, he entered a formal garden. As he registered beds full of wilting flowers and vegetables, he knew at once what work needed to be done, knew the garden had been neglected for many weeks. He didn’t know how he knew this. As he trod weedy gravel paths searching for something to eat, he recognised the foliage of potatoes, spinach, sorrel, the ferny leaves of asparagus and carrots, the flower heads of bolted lettuce gone to seed. He knew the lettuce had flowered because it hadn’t been watered, but he didn’t know how he knew such things.

  He saw some plants covered with netting and dropped to his knees, knowing there would be good food beneath. He dragged the netting off, pulling up plants as he did so in his desperate efforts to get at the red fruit he’d spied. He crammed strawberries into his mouth and laughed with relief as the warm juice ran down his chin. When he could eat no more, he looked for a container to collect the remaining berries. As he cast an eye round the garden, he noticed the gravel paths led to the centre of the garden where a headless stone deity presided over a broken fountain. The water no longer flowed, but some lay in a pool beneath.

  He lurched towards the fountain, removing his mud-encrusted khaki tunic and undershirt. He dropped them on the path, reached up to his swollen neck and tugged at the leather bootlace irritating his wound. Without stopping to consider their significance, he tossed two tags into a flowerbed, then sat down on the edge of the fountain to remove his boots. He shed his remaining clothes, opening up wounds as he pulled at scabs of dried blood. Pale, naked and bleeding, he stood and stared down at the surface of the water, curious to see what he looked like, anxious to know if he would recognise himself.

  The gaunt face that gazed back at him seemed scarcely human. The eyes of a hunted animal looked out from sockets ringed with blood and dirt. Turning his head, he saw that one cheek looked flayed, like raw meat. He plunged his hands into the stagnant pool, dispersing his reflection, then washed off the dirt and strawberry juice. When he removed his hands from the water, he was surprised to note they were still brown, tanned to the wrists, as if they belonged to a body other than his.

  He stepped into the fountain and lay down. The water was warm and slimy with algae. A gentle breeze riffled the surface and brought the scents of roses and lavender to his nostrils. He knew he should find a lavender bush to make some sort of dressing for his wounds because the oil in the leaves would help him heal. He didn’t know how he knew this.

  He climbed out of the pool and sat on the edge, staring at his discarded bloodstained clothes. Turning away, nauseated, he bent and picked up his boots, then dropped them into the pool where he rinsed off the dried mud. When they were clean, he set them in the sun to dry and hobbled along the path towards outbuildings tucked away at the edge of the garden, storerooms where he knew (but how?) that he might find tools, perhaps even some old clothes. As he passed a flowerbed hedged with lavender, he plucked handfuls of leaves and flowers, then crushed and rubbed them to release their scented oil. Wincing, he pressed the leaves against the wound in his neck.

  When he got to the door of one of the outbuildings, habit made him hesitate as he reached for the handle. He knocked, smiling at the courtesy of a wet and naked man presenting himself at the door, then opened it and walked in. The storeroom was dark and musty, festooned with cobwebs. Looking round, he saw what he wanted. Some canvas, a ball of twine and a sharp knife to cut it with. He could use the knife to defend himself if the need arose. But why, he wondered, might he need to do that? How could he know he had enemies, yet not know who they were?

  He opened a tin and found string, scissors and a pencil. Another contained envelopes of harvested seed and some empty printed packets. He recognised the illustrations, but not the names of the flowers: penseé, oeillet, pois de senteur, verveine . . . As he studied the packets, his hands started to tremble, then his whole body began to shake. It was as if he stood on the brink of an abyss, about to descend once more into darkness, a darkness where he would understand everything, but the knowledge would kill him. He thrust the seed packets back into the tin and shut the lid, his chest heaving.

  Looking round for anything that might be of use, he pounced on a brandy bottle, thick with dust, but it was empty. An old overcoat with no buttons hung on a peg beneath a frayed straw hat. He put the bottle and his other finds into the deep pockets of the coat, then tore the canvas into strips. As he bound up his wounds, he placed sprigs of crushed lavender against his skin, then put on the coat. He cut a long piece of twine and tied it round his waist to keep the coat closed, then donned the hat and went out into the garden again in search of a well.

  When he found it, he turned the winch handle, lowering the empty bucket until he heard it hit the water. When the bucket felt heavy, he wound it back up again and set it down. Cupping his hands, he drank the cold, fresh water until he could swallow no more, then immersed the brandy bottle in the bucket. He waited for it to fill, then carried it back to the fountain where he sat down again and struggled into his damp boots.

  He explored the garden, filling the hat with onions, young carrots and peapods, which he then covered with a layer of gooseberries, plucked from a warm south-facing wall. When the hat was full, he turned his back on the kitchen garden and headed for the front of the house and the long drive he knew would lead to a road. The sun was sinking now and he thought he should head north, but he wasn’t sure why.

  At the end of the drive he found buckled wrought iron gates swinging on their hinges. He pushed one open and set off along a rutted lane. Arriving at a crossroads, he studied the names on the fingerpost, but they meant nothing to him. Keeping the sun on his left, he set off in a northerly direction.

  He found an empty barn to sleep in. When he woke, he breakfasted on water that tasted of brandy and a few gooseberries, then he continued north. When his hat was almost empty, he put the remaining food in his coat pockets and placed the hat on his head to shade his face. The skin had become painfully taut as it had crusted over, so he strove to keep his face immobile.

  The sky remained clear but he thought he could hear distant thunder, thunder that continued throughout the day, thunder that he knew could not be thunder, but his mind baulked at identifying the sound. He increased his pace and walked on, veering away from the sound. After a last meal of raw onion, he lay down under a hedge, his stomach protesting.

  He woke to find an old woman standing over him, scowling and wielding a pitchfork. He sat up slowly, his hands raised in a gesture of submission. The peasant woman said something guttural and unintelligible. He spread his hands. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’ He pointed to an ear and said, ‘Deaf,’ then he tapped his chest
and said, ‘English.’

  At the word, the old woman lowered her pitchfork. She rattled off more questions, to which he could only shrug and shake his head. As he got to his feet, his hands still raised, the buttonless overcoat fell open, revealing his nakedness. The woman’s eyes widened, then she burst into gales of wheezy laughter, revealing a mouth almost entirely lacking in teeth.

  He thought it politic to join in, though smiling hurt his face a good deal. It must have started bleeding again for the woman pointed and exclaimed. She indicated a building, possibly a farmhouse, a few hundred yards distant, then laid a hand on her generous bosom. ‘Reynaud. Simone Reynaud!’ she said in a loud, clear voice, as if addressing someone simple-minded. ‘Et vous?’ She regarded him, not unkindly, as he tried to remember his name, any name.

  Defeated, he extended a shaking hand and, with a small bow, said, ‘Fagus. Fagus sylvatica. At your service.’

  HESTER

  Sharpitor V.A. Hospital

  Salcombe

  Devon

  March 2nd, 1917

  My dear Hester,

  Thank you for your last letter. I was sorry to hear Cicely has not rallied, but scarcely surprised. When I lost Walter I thought I should not be able to carry on without my only son and your poor mother has lost two. If it were not for my work here, I believe I too might succumb to melancholy.

  I must apologise for this tardy reply, but I have very little leisure. I would not have it otherwise. To be both busy and useful is a great comfort. Though I can do nothing now for Walter, I can tend to other mothers’ sons and that is both a privilege and a consolation.

  I am writing to ask for your help in solving a mystery. Among the many Tommies convalescing here, there is a man with no name, no number and apparently no memory. He was patched up in France some months ago and we admitted him knowing only that he’s English and suffers from amnesia and shell shock.