Silver Birches Read online

  “Does that help?” he shouted.

  “No!” I screamed. “It bloody well — ”

  If the tree that my bruised and whitened knuckles were clenched around had not chosen that moment to stop kidding and lower me slowly down to the ground, I would undoubtedly have died in mid-chortle that chilly afternoon. The thought of Peter shining my torch so that I would have the inestimable benefit of being able to actually witness the moment when my hands parted company with my uncooperative tree was as funny two seconds before dying as it would have been at any other time. As it was I ended up prostrate on the damp grass, unharmed but limply incapable of controlling successive gusts of hysterical, relieved laughter. Peter joined in, thank goodness, though I don’t think he had much idea of what we were laughing about.

  A few minutes later, as we trudged back through the darkness toward the lights of the big house, I said, “So you’re gay, Peter.”

  “Yes,” he replied with brittle calm. “Pretty well ever since I can remember I’ve known that I was a homosexual. When I was a teenager I became a Christian and read the Bible. It seemed to say that God doesn’t want people to — you know — actually live out a homosexual lifestyle, so I asked him again and again and again to make me not be one. Over and over again. All night sometimes. Crying and asking. That prayer was never — has never been answered. I don’t mind. I mean, I do mind very much, but I don’t mind God doing whatever he wants to do — or not do. He’s God and I’m only me. So I had to make a choice.”

  “Two roads.”

  “Yes. We did the poem at school one day. I took the book home and read the poem to myself many, many times until I nearly knew it by heart. I knew I had to choose, so I did. I chose to go on being me but not do anything about it — if you know what I mean.”

  “It must have been so hard.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Two main hard things. One is when people at church talk about being gay. They talk about the problem — the issue of homosexuality. The things they say are hard and — and not really understanding. Jokes sometimes. You sit there and you nod and say yes or no and laugh or frown whenever they do, and wish you could be somewhere else. You feel like a dirty thing. And you’re not. You’re not an issue or a problem. You’re you. You just want to — to be loved.”

  “And the other hard thing?”

  We walked several more steps before Peter spoke again. The swish-swish of our passage through the lush, damp grass was like the amplified beating of a heart.

  “Never to, er, love someone — you know— love someone. Never once. Thinking of that has been very hard. But Jesus gave up everything as well. The way for me to get through has been to . . . well, to look at him all the time. Yes, all the time. I know it makes me a bit . . . but I don’t mind.”

  “And the birch swinging?”

  I switched the torch on just so that I could see his smile. It was worth it.

  “David, it was wonderful. Ever since I first read that poem when I was sixteen I’ve wanted to do it. To leave the earth and go up and up and up toward heaven and then be allowed to come back again by flying through the air. And now I’ve done it. Thank you! Thank you! You see, I came to this weekend having made up my mind that I was going to tell someone at last — about me, I mean. And then, earlier on in the library I was sitting by the window feeling not good because I thought I probably wasn’t going to be able to manage it. Then you came in and I thought — well, I thought, if we just go and do this birch swinging — well, who knows what might happen. And then, just now, seeing you hanging up there, that was it. God gave me the chance. That was the chance!”

  “And you took it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And are you going to tell the others?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think I am — or you can, if you don’t mind — on Sunday.”

  By the time we arrived back at the house I found that my mood had shifted slightly. I managed to get my book in the end and my very hot bath and even my little rest in bed just as I had planned. The difference was that, for the first time in months, I thanked God for all those luxuries, and for some other very special things as well, things that I had lost, things that Peter would probably never have.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Saturday Evening

  So, come on, Angela, tell us about your ghosts. Give us a bit of a scare!”

  It was seven o’clock on Saturday evening. Remnants of a quaintly incongruous takeout dinner lay uncleared on the massive oak table in front of us. Mike had been the only one to have a very large meal at lunchtime, but this evening it didn’t seem to have affected his appetite for Chinese food in the slightest. He was the one who had driven down to collect our order from the place in the village where I had stopped to read Angela’s directions.

  We were seated in what Angela referred to as the Banqueting Chamber in her publicity leaflets about the house, though I guessed that it had functioned as a spacious, elegantly proportioned drawing-room for most of its lengthy existence. In daylight hours an array of well-preserved leaded windows afforded wide views over more than an acre of overgrown, strikingly radiant green grass, the remains of what I imagined to have been an expansive and immaculate lawn in some distant age of unlimited cash and human resources. Nowadays the head gardeners and the under-gardeners and the gardeners’ boys and whoever they had been allowed to kick no longer toiled to create an idyll for a handful of privileged people fancying the odd stroll or game of croquet on the front lawn. Perhaps their ghosts were here, but if so, they did no work. There was just deserted Angela, and a man she paid to bring his sit-on mower up from the village now and then to prevent the grass from getting completely out of control.

  Now, of course, as we slumped in post-prandial repletion, apart from our own reflections nothing at all was visible through the tall, uncurtained windows, just the blackness of a cloud-laden, starless night and a very occasional isolated shock of splintered white light when a vehicle passed behind the bank of giant conifers that separated Angela’s property from the public road leading to the village.

  The bleakness of the afternoon had been dispelled, especially in this room. In the depths of the smoke-blackened chimney recess, spacious enough on its own to accommodate the six of us if we had desired to be that crazily intimate, yet another, much larger wood fire than the one in the kitchen sparkled and roared, its flames leaping like a male dancer. It needed to sparkle and roar. This house was huge, freezing, and unmanicured. Staying in it was the nearest I had got to camping out for quite a number of years. Both Jessica and I had always enjoyed camping, but neither of us had ever enjoyed the sensation of being cold.

  The room was somnolently warm by the time we finished our meal and atmospheric beyond most places or experiences that I could remember. Apart from the roasting glow of the fire itself, the central section of the dining room was lit by the soft orange radiance emanating from a pair of brass paraffin lamps that had been set on opposite ends of the shelf above the fire, their tall glass chimneys narrowing like praying hands toward metal heat reflectors hanging from the high ceiling. Six candles set in wax-encased wine bottles of assorted shapes and sizes had been lit and placed by Angela at more or less regular intervals along the length of the dining-table.

  As usual, these traditional, emotively simple sources of illumination had the interesting function of soothing and exciting soul and imagination at the same time. In addition, they obscured a hundred imperfections in us and in our surroundings. Light and shadow succeeded in turning the humblest object or artifact into a thing of beauty.

  The far ends of the room and the lower part of the long paneled side wall opposite the fire were shrouded in a host of tumbling, quivering shadows, but at this particular moment the edges of this little world of ours mattered not a jot. We were in the center, we were warm (apart from my bath I was properly warm for the first time), and we were well fed. The faint odor of wax and paraffin merging with the subtle scents of Chinese food had made one or t
wo of us a little thoughtful at first, but not for very long. The various dishes had been substantial and tasty. All that remained before us now was a polystyrene tub or two of that stuff no one ever puts on their food anyway and a litter of empty foil containers, scraped clean by Mike after the rest of us had indicated that we were defeated and could eat no more.

  Conversation during dinner had tended to be light and inconsequential. Between Jenny and me a slight barrier had erected itself, presumably because of the intensive burst of mutual intimacy and revelation that had taken place up on top of the world. As far as I knew, no one else was aware of what had passed between us. Sitting opposite me now, she seemed to be having a little difficulty meeting my eyes. I wasn’t doing very much better.

  Around Graham, on the other hand, an almost visible aura of peace and catlike pleasure was beginning to form. Some inhibiting tension in him must have been eased. Possibly he had made a decision to appreciate — perhaps even to relish — the novelty and unpredictability of this weekend. Angela had been very kind and warm in all her dealings with him. That would have helped. That would have helped anyone. I frowned in disbelief at the thought of this Alan character upping and offing with his bimbo assistant. How could any sane man decide that it was a good idea to leave a woman like Angela?

  Two glasses of wine in the course of his meal had painted a rosy smudge on each of Graham’s cheeks, but it was not just the alcohol that was making his eyes shine and his mouth widen in that small smile of contentment as he stared into the fire or glanced up from time to time when someone spoke. For whatever reason, he was happy.

  Next to me, and directly across the table from Graham, sat my birch-swinging companion, Peter. As usual, Peter had elected to drink water rather than wine, but perhaps God, in honor of what had happened this afternoon, had generously allowed a Cana-style miracle to transfigure the hydrogen and oxygen cocktail as it entered his carefully organized system, because he too seemed comfortably at peace this evening. Predictably, he had very little to say when our conversation was not focused on religion, but tonight, I said to myself, the persona of this man is manifesting itself in gentle curves instead of sharp right angles and symmetrical rhomboids. Could it have been the spirit of Jessica who, following this thought, whispered gently in my ear that a tendency to classify people in geometric terms is almost certainly an early sign of lunacy?

  It was Mike, sitting with Graham and Peter on either side of him and facing Angela along the length of the table, who had asked the question about ghosts. Angela’s magic — someone’s magic, certainly not mine — must have done quite a bit of work on him as well, if not quite so successfully. Since the drama of last night he had regained his shape, but rather as a screwed-up sheet of paper regains its shape when you straighten it out. The creases were visible. Earlier in the day his renewed high spirits had had an air of feverish pleading about them, like a child who has been forgiven for some major wrongdoing and feels the need to expunge his debt to the grown-ups by contributing energetically to everything that’s going on. That had largely faded now. Nevertheless, I thought, as I noted the way in which his spaniel eyes were fixed on Angela as he waited for her reply, having Mike here was rather like having a child with us. Two decades on, and he gave the impression of being no more fully formed as a personality than he had been when we knew him at St. Mark’s. I found myself wondering if the conversation I had tried to start in the pub would ever be resumed.

  “I don’t mind. That’s fine with me.” Angela folded her arms, leaned them forward onto the table and looked from face to face. “We mustn’t forget, though, that tonight we’re scheduled to carry on sharing our greatest fears. We’re not going to chicken out of that, are we?” She challenged us with her eyes. “Well, are we?”

  Two little lines of worry disturbed the placidity of Graham’s expression on being reminded of this prospect, but he moved his head slowly and definitely from side to side, as though, for him, that particular decision had been made and done and dusted long ago.

  Jenny carefully placed both hands flat on the table as she addressed Mike and then Angela.

  “Forgive me, Mike, but I do have to say this — you are completely sure, Angela, that it’s— well— safe to continue doing this thing about what we fear most? I’m only thinking that — I mean, it was so awful what happened with Andrew. Such terrible anger and hurt!” Her eyes, glistening with unshed tears in the flickering candlelight, seemed to me, irrelevant though the thought was, quite beautiful. “I was truly, truly shocked that all those horrible feelings could have been saved up and allowed to fester away for all those years, and then be dumped on poor Mike so cruelly. So, I was thinking, if there’s any danger of anything at all like that happening again, it would be better if . . .”

  Without finishing her sentence Jenny folded her outstretched hands into fists and crossed them self-consciously over her chest. Mike was studying his fingertips at the other end of the table. A protruding lower lip signaled the depth of concentration required for the task.

  “I agree with Jenny.” Angela sat back in her chair. She spoke with the kind of uncompromising frankness that is so useful in inspiring others. “I’ve got nothing negative to say about anyone who’s here this weekend, and that’s not why we’re here anyway. The point — one of the points — isn’t to tear the past and each other to bits but to find out where we are now compared with then. I’m a bit nervous about telling you what scares me most at the moment — certainly not ghosts, that’s for sure — but this weekend is very important to me. And I really do want to know what’s happened to you all since the old days. I honestly do. The idea of the fear thing was just to provide a sort of shortcut. We haven’t got very long, after all, have we? So, before we go any further, is anyone else planning to do an Andrew on any of the rest of us, because, as Jenny’s already said, that’s not what we want.”

  There was a brief, classroom-like silence. Angela nodded once, firmly, before continuing.

  “Good! No more heavy personal burdens from the past to be unloaded here, then — not ones that hurt others anyway.”

  I selected that moment to look up at Jenny, just as she happened to lift her eyes and look directly at me. We blushed like a pair of burning bookends, but as all of us were acquiring a fairly ruddy hue by then, I doubted that anyone else had noticed.

  “So! You want to hear about one of my little ghosts before we start, do you? Is that unanimous, or is it just Mike who wants to be scared out of his tiny mind?”

  “Yes, go on, Angela,” said Graham, “I can’t think of anything nicer than a good, spooky story to finish off our meal.”

  Jenny laughed at this, shrugging lightly to indicate her acquiescence in whatever the rest of us decided.

  “We don’t actually believe in ghosts, of course, and we would be most unwise to have anything to do with them,” offered Peter matter-of-factly.

  “We don’t actually believe in ghosts, of course, and we’d be most unwise to have anything to do with them,” mimicked Mike shrilly, his head on one side. “Oh, for goodness sake! Never mind what we don’t believe in just for the minute.” He reached across the table and made as if to baptize Peter’s head with his own half-empty glass of water. “How are we supposed to have our hair stood on end by Angela if you’re going to be reminding us every ten seconds that we don’t believe in ghosts? Look, we’re going to have a little ten-minute holiday from not believing in them. Then we’ll repent. Okay? Tell you what — ask the famous Christian what he thinks.”

  I hated it when people did that to me, mainly because I had never had much more to say in any given area than anyone else. I just happened to say it in public. One of the problems I had discovered in the past about being a speaker on Christian subjects was that genuine protestations of inadequacy or uncertainty were sometimes disregarded. They were mere pebbles, skittering harmlessly about on the bedrock of my faith — that was what some of my wide-mouthed, baby-bird listeners wanted to believe.

 
Interestingly, there had been a faint worry about the whole ghost business in the back of my mind ever since I accepted Angela’s invitation. Back in the good old St. Mark’s days there had been a widespread if vague notion that masturbation, copyright violation, and pursuit of the occult were the three greatest sins known to humanity. Ghosts, as well as not existing, were bad things. It wasn’t just a silly contradiction or paradox though. I had always believed that experimenting with darkness was bound to be destructive to the soul and the mind regardless of what existed and what did not. On the other hand, dealing or not dealing with Jessica’s death had distracted me from the wearisome business of constantly policing myself. I felt the same as Graham tonight. A good shivery ghost story would just about touch the spot. Here we all were, satisfied and warm, sitting comfortably round this big old table together in the middle of a weekend that was orbiting around our real lives like a space capsule. Perhaps God would allow these two days to not count. I suspected that a stand-up comedian could not have got a better response from the hosts of heaven than I did with that last half-thought. I turned to Mike.

  “Call me a famous Christian one more time, Mike,” I said charmingly, “and regardless of your theology, you’ll get that entire jug of water over you.” Realizing the rashness of such a threat to such a personality, I continued hastily to our hostess, “Okay, Angela. Do your worst. If it gets too frightening we’ll all sleep in here together in front of the fire tonight.”

  In fact, at that moment, in that situation, the idea of being very frightened by anything seemed little short of ridiculous. We tended to our own and each other’s glasses (Jessica used to say that wine by candlelight is a poem that could only be destroyed by someone being foolish enough to write it), then turned expectantly toward Angela.