Silver Birches Read online

  The living room got an especially good going-over. It seemed to me that there was little living left to be done in that room. It was the place where we had lived and done things — relaxed, eaten, sulked, made love, argued, prayed, written letters, watched television. Quite a lot of those things had happened on the long, high-backed, wine-colored sofa we had so excitedly managed to buy from a shop in Brighton for a drastically reduced price because it had been used as a demonstration model. That piece of furniture alone was littered with memories, some forgotten but no less valuable, like coins lost in the cracks down behind the cushions. I had been unable to bring myself to actually sit on our sofa since the day of the funeral.

  On that miserable day the sofa and every other chair belonging or imported to the living room had been filled with people holding plates of finger food and glasses of wine or fruit juice, the majority wearing their appropriate behavior as uneasily as they wore their appropriate clothes. Most were sad but no doubt glad to be reminded that they themselves and the ones they loved were still alive. I suppose that is partly what funerals are for. One or two of them, those who had lost partners in the recent past, must have been battling to survive deafening echoes of their own bereavement. I hated catching glances in my direction from those people. They knew. They were down there. They were still down there in that dark, cold place where the wind howls and desolation reigns and no one comes.

  “We know just how screamingly, hysterically cosmetic all this is,” their pain-filled eyes said to me, “and we know that the very ground beneath your feet has been turned into the thinnest possible sheet of ice. One thoughtless, overheavy step in the wrong direction and you will be plunged into such a freezing chaos of despair that you will come close to forgetting how to draw the warm breath of life into your lungs.”

  Much easier for me to handle were those guests who offered more conventional words of condolence. These well-intentioned sentiments really didn’t have to mean anything very much. They just had to be made up of the sort of conversational small change that you could comfortably slip into your back pocket with a word or two of thanks.

  “Anything you need — you know. Don’t hesitate...”

  “Must be such a relief to know she was a believer. At least she’s all right, even if we’re not...”

  “We’re praying for you...”

  Jessica’s only surviving relative, short and portly Aunt Vera with flabby arms and a face like an old-fashioned pie, was the best by far. She made piles of sandwiches and cut cake and washed up and made tea and looked consistently grumpy, but she patted my arm very lightly every time she passed and hardly said a word throughout the whole day. I came nearest to crying when I said thanks and good-bye to her that evening.

  One end of the window seat beside the table where I sat myself down with Angela’s letter had been devoted — still was devoted — to what I had jokingly and affectionately christened “Jessica’s rubbish.”

  My wife had been fascinated by old objects for as long as I had known her. In particular she relished the idea that there were ordinary, practical things that had somehow managed to survive into an age where they were far out of date. Every now and then she trawled charity shops and antique fairs, hoping to discover cheap items to add to her collection. Her personal favorites included a flat rectangular box covered with patterned leather and lined with blue silk, once used by a lady for conveying her prayer book elegantly to and from church, a highly evocative pair of Victorian ice skates, and a small wooden box fitted with an intriguing array of little shutters and screens whose function we had never been able to ascertain. Pride of place was given to a picnic set dating from the 1920s, still in its original box, and in truly excellent condition. Jessica loved to take out the little square china teapot with its matching set of flowered plates, cups, and saucers, the miniature spirit lamp, the lidded tins for cake and sandwiches or chicken, the early Bakelite beakers and the bone-handled knives, still preserved in their set of original paper sleeves, steel blades gleaming as if they had been made and bought yesterday. She had found a road map of Great Britain from the same period, designed specially for that new race of people called “automobilists,” and one of those thick school story volumes with a dramatic and highly improbable event involving three schoolboys and an elephant depicted on the front cover. These were propped up against the open lid of the box. Eighty years ago we would have been ready and equipped to strap our picnic to the back of the old jalopy, spread a rug over our knees, and motor off for a leisurely day in the country.

  As far as I was aware, Jessica’s collection had no great monetary value, although the picnic set had been relatively expensive.

  A vivid memory.

  Late one afternoon she had arrived home clutching a brown cloth-covered case and looking unusually guilty. She had seen something while passing the second-hand shop up the road, she explained before even taking her coat off, and had made a snap decision to buy it because she’d probably never get the chance to buy one again, certainly not in this condition, and she hoped I wouldn’t think she was completely mad for spending eighty pounds on it and she was sure I wouldn’t after seeing it because it was so adorable and look, she would just open it and here it was and please don’t get mad because she just hadn’t been able to help herself and there were lots of little economies we, that is she, could make to pay for it so what did I think?

  Leaving aside the more negative and hurtful manifestations of this particular variety of sudden madness, there is something irresistibly piquant about one’s partner departing from the habits of a lifetime and then begging to be forgiven for doing it. Jessica was never extravagant with money, least of all on things for herself, even in the pursuit of her “rubbish,” and I found it oddly charming that she had been on this occasion. Besides, there was no real option but to agree wholeheartedly with her. The picnic set was exquisite.

  I had to turn my eyes away from the corner that was still graced by these carefully arranged things. She had loved them so much. Come back to me, Jessica. Only come back, stop this silly dying business, and you can fill the house up with rubbish, spend every penny we have on things that make you happy. I would give it all for one extra week of ordinary days with you, my darling....

  Angela’s letter.

  I read it through again, more carefully this time. Why had I carried these sheets of paper through into the living room? Because it was bringing an unexpected, truly loose end into my life? Something to do with Jessica? Yes. Something about Jessica that was not finished and done with. Something that Jessica wanted me to have. Something I had not yet been given. It was like encountering heat after being frozen, little tendrils of warmth creeping almost painfully through the cold veins of my loss. There was still something to be done. Something to be lived. This was the room where that sort of thing might as well happen, or at least begin.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I read the early part of the letter for a third time. There was very little chance of Angela being forgotten by anyone who had encountered her at the age of sixteen or seventeen, which was when I had first known her. That “goofy smile” had been capable of reducing every male within the immediate vicinity to a jelly-like mass of simple-minded adoration. The wattage was incredible. A natural honey blonde with electric-blue eyes and a wide, generous mouth, Angela had had the very attractive, slightly bruised look about her heightened cheekbones that some girls are blessed with. In addition, even at the age of sixteen, she had been shaped like a delicious dream — she had certainly appeared in several of mine. She was beautiful, strong, always kind and caring, and she oozed with something that made feeble adolescents like me go weak at the knees. I remembered her being confident and competent, rather than bossy. All in all, though, it had been far too formidable a combination for most lads of a similar age to her, including myself. In any case, much as I appreciated Angela with various significant parts of my youthful being, I was giddily in love with her best friend, Jessica, a darkly pretty jewel
of a girl, who captured the attention of my mind as well as my body very soon after our first meeting.

  Lifting my eyes from the page, I stared out across my front lawn. In the distance, just visible above the serried ranks of bungalows that marched in three different directions from the bottom of the gentle slope beginning thirty yards from my gate, I could see the tops of the hills that Jessica and I had so loved to walk on. It seemed unlikely that I would ever walk there again. Why would I? How could I enjoy it? I would spend all my time looking for her, just as I had looked for her in the week following her death.

  But now this from Angela...

  I needed to be somewhere else to think this through. But where? I made a decision. Folding the letter and replacing it in its envelope I pushed it into my back pocket, went through to the kitchen, flicked the shed key from its hook on the board and left through the back door. Disentangling my bicycle from a miscellany of garden-related rubbish in the shed took a couple of minutes. I hadn’t ridden my bike for months. A quick check. Tires fine. Brakes fine.

  Seconds later I was pedaling toward the mini-roundabout at the end of our road. I thought I knew exactly the place to go.

  The morning after the day Jessica died had been warm and dull, the slate-gray sky heavy with rain. I had left my house and climbed into my car, numb with shock and lack of sleep, to drive unerringly, despite having no conscious plan, toward Grafton House, a large Christian conference center about three miles from my home.

  Standing in the middle of countryside at the end of a long, twisting, tree-lined drive, Grafton House was crumbling, ancient, and swathed in ivy. Specializing in such spiritual services as the casting out of demons and the healing of negative memories, the establishment was regarded with deep suspicion by many people living in the surrounding area. Some of them, mostly those who had never actually been there, had built up a picture in their minds of the old mansion as a variation on the theme of Dracula’s Castle or possibly Bates’ Motel. Unchurched locals with a vague awareness of what I did through my occasional pieces on radio and television would sometimes quiz me over a pint about what exactly went on there. They took it for granted that, being a person who traveled around talking to people about Christian things, I was bound to be familiar with the general philosophy of the center, and that, being a Christian myself, presumably I must sympathize with whatever strange methods they used there. I found those conversations uncomfortable. I certainly believed that demon possession was a reality and needed to be dealt with sensibly and properly, but I also felt sure that single-issue fanaticism was likely to be as harmful in the Christian church as it usually was in any other area of secular or spiritual life. I did know folk who had been greatly helped by visits to Grafton House. I knew of others who had ended up seeing demons under the bed, up the chimney, and coming through the letterbox, everywhere, in fact, when all they had ever really needed was a deeper assurance that God loved them. I usually met these inquiries by mumbling something into my beer about how I was sure they were all well-meaning people and we must be careful not to run something down before we knew enough about it to make reasonable judgments. Then I would change the subject as quickly as possible. Not very impressive. But the fact was that I knew next to nothing about the inner workings of the place. You see, I had never been there for the ministry. I had only been there for the lake.

  The lake nestled in a clearing in the woods down behind the center. Long ago, in the days when the big house had been privately owned, the water feature in this secluded spot must have been somebody’s pride and joy. Clearly artificial, probably originally constructed in Victorian times, the lake was shaped like a figure eight, with one of the circles half as big again as the other. A ten-foot-wide channel bowed out in a semi-circle on one side, effectively creating an island which, if you were a mere human being, could be reached only by crossing a dilapidated rustic wooden bridge, sadly in need of repair. This roughly half-moon-shaped island was awash with rhododendrons and azaleas, glorious when their pink, white, and purple blooms were in full flower, but abandoned, leggy, and tangled through years of neglect. Willow trees lined the banks of the lake, bowing humbly and with graceful puzzlement to greet their own reflections, and occasionally to salute one of the schools of giant carp that rolled indolently around near the bank on the surface of the water, safe in the knowledge that fishing had not been allowed in these waters for as long as anyone could recall.

  Jessica and I loved going there. We were never able to understand why this potentially idyllic little corner of the grounds had been allowed to deteriorate into such a wild and weedy state. The lake was far from huge, you could make your way all the way round it in twenty minutes if you were fairly brisk. Yet the only concession that had been made to ease of access was a narrow path that was severely chopped and shaved through the thick undergrowth and long grass around the edge of the water during spring and summer so that a complete circuit was possible. Three flaking, rusty old wrought-iron seats offered a chance to sit and cogitate, one at each end of the figure eight, and one (our favorite) on the edge of the island, hidden from the house by a bank of rhododendrons and facing out toward the widest part of the lake. Perhaps demon deliverance didn’t pay all that well, or perhaps work on the lake and its environs came very low down on someone’s list of expensive priorities, or possibly it was just that the people who ran the center liked their lake the way it was. Whatever the reason, the place was uncared for, to say the least.

  On the day after Jessica died I had felt glad that the area around the lake was so untended and rough. It matched the tangle in my soul. I crossed the dangerous little bridge, not caring much whether it collapsed or not, and sat on the old iron seat, trying to make sense of her not existing.

  I think it was the stilling of her voice that was the most difficult thing to believe. Difficult to believe, you understand, not just difficult to accept. More difficult even than believing that her body had stopped being a warm, live person and become a cold, inanimate thing. For goodness sake, how could such strength of intention, particularly toward me, be so totally quenched? How could it end so abruptly? How, if she still existed on any level at all, and if she had even the remotest, most obscure means of communicating with me, could my beloved Jessica fail to respond to the sound of my voice when I needed her? Never mind theology. Never mind anything I had ever learned or taught or preached about death. This was surely just common sense. I could not stop being who I was. She could not stop being who she was. We could not be anything other than us. At that moment I lacked all faith in the finality of death, but it was nothing to do with the hope of heaven. It was to do with the habit of living. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped together, and spoke to Jessica in hushed tones through clenched teeth, like a spy passing on messages to someone concealed in the bushes.

  “Jess, where are you? Can you hear me? Look, I just want you to be here for a moment — that’s all. Please, I can’t stand it. Come and see me so I know everything’s all right. Please, Jess. Only for a minute or two. Please...”

  Silence. Why did she not answer me?

  The lake and all that surrounded it felt old and tired. The surface of the water was still, but something dismally less than serene. It was dumb. Unhelpful. Disappointed. This place was as bereaved as I was. People take time and trouble to build and develop things. They look fresh, cared for, beautiful. The years pass. Nobody cares any more. Paths become overgrown, deep places get silted up and become shallow, wood rots and becomes unsafe when you need to walk or lean on it. People are just the same. Generation after generation after generation of men and women building something good and strong and worthwhile together, only to have it all snatched away when the monster, Death, comes trampling over the garden of their tiny achievements, picking out the plums like a greedy child. Generation after generation. What did any of it mean? A verse of a poem I had read came into my mind.

  I took my daughter to the park last night

  She ran wi
th a shout to the roundabout

  The roundabout went round and round

  But it never stopped anywhere very profound

  It just went round and round and round

  It just went round and round.

  Time to remind God of a precedent. Sitting up and resting my arms along the back of the seat, I crossed one leg over the other. This time I raised my voice a little.

  “You let C. S. Lewis come and speak to J. B. Phillips after he’d died, didn’t you? He just materialized all of a sudden, looking healthier than ever, talking sense. Well, did you do it? I think you did it. You can do it. Father, let me see Jessica. Let me see my Jessica. Please do this for me. I do lots of things for you.”

  My voice broke slightly as I continued.

  “Please do this one little thing for me. She doesn’t even have to speak to me. It would be enough just to catch a glimpse of her walking over there behind those trees on the other side of the lake. The quickest glimpse, that’s all I want. She could be looking for early flowers to pick for you. She could look up and smile when she saw me and then walk on again and disappear. That would be fine. Father, please let me see her smile one more time. Don’t give me a stone when I ask for something good to eat. Just one more time. Please...”

  Tears filled my eyes as I listened to the nonsense coming out of my own mouth. I fancied I could see the words I had spoken skimming across the surface of the lake like flat stones, lacking sufficient momentum to reach the other side, sinking irredeemably before my eyes. I came close to laughing through the tears. What on earth could have possessed me to suggest to God that he should be grateful enough to repay me for all the wonderful services I had rendered to him? Presumably this grief-distorted phase would pass eventually, and then —

  Suddenly I was sitting bolt upright, my eyes fixed on a spot opposite my seat, over on the other side of the lake where the path was partially obscured by long grass and straggling undergrowth. There had been a momentary flash of crimson, just the sort of rich, deep shade of red that Jessica had often worn because it suited her dark looks so well. Jessica! Jessica was over there on the other side of the lake! God had answered my prayer. I must go to her!