Forests of the Night Page 6

  ‘To chop or not to chop,’ said Jenver. ‘Let’s get rid of the godawful tree. I’ve always hated it.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Stemyard, ‘Jenver would agree with Marcusine.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Or not for the same reasons. Her arguments are logical. Mine are purely superstitious.’

  ‘Then you ought to know,’ snarled Stemyard, ‘that to cut down a living tree invites a curse.’

  ‘Does it?’ said Jenver. ‘How entirely fascinating.’

  He could be too clever sometimes, Marsh thought. Jenver was the kind who was knifed in alleys, razor-edged, but without the agility to back it up. He slashed mental skin negligently, and then forgot he had. The wounded, of course, remembered.

  Stemyard had reddened now. The spotted cat, Shoh, had also begun to spit and hiss.

  ‘It’s a very old belief. I still believe it. If you cut that tree down for no more excuse than that you don’t like it — ’

  ‘Hate it, I said. Not dislike.’

  ‘Children,’ said Marcusine, ‘please.’

  Jenver grinned. Stemyard went mad.

  ‘I have as much bloody say as any of you!’ she screamed. ‘If you dare touch that tree — ’ she stopped herself. ‘Don’t,’ she said and drank her tea in loud gulps.

  ‘What about you, Araige?’ said Marsh. He had finished his food and sought a new distraction. Araige wriggled elegantly and neurasthenically.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘But if Stem doesn’t want — ’

  ‘No, I don’t want.’

  ‘Well, I think,’ said Marsh, ‘it would be an excellent idea to get rid of the monster. You know, I’ve looked at the damn thing for thirty-odd years before any of you were born. I’m sick and tired of it. Let it go. Stemyard, we can plant something else, something more harmonious.’

  He occasionally pulled this trick on them, one or other or all of them, his weight of age and experience — what else was it good for? He sat back, watching them benignly, jealous and ill at ease.

  Stemyard found herself outnumbered and on the verge of tears. She loathed all of them, stupid unaware Marsh, smug Marcusine and spiteful Jenver, and her own sister who cared for nothing but her own pleasure and the savage flights she would take to get it. Stemyard’s mind diverted intellectually, in order to escape. She considered arcane curses, druids, tree-cults. The tree was old enough itself to recall all these. She thought of the land eleven centuries ago, open, spare, and the seed in the ground which would be the tree.

  ‘An Apple-Cyrus would be nice,’ said Araige vaguely.

  Stemyard stood up.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘This house and the land belong to me, too. If I say you can’t cut down the tree, you can’t. You know it.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Jenver. ‘You’re just a silly kid. Now shut up, for God’s sake.’

  Stemyard walked over to him. As he raised his smiling, inquiring face, she punched it. Jenver yelled. His book went to the ground and tapped Set in the ribs. Yowling, the Reverse cat leapt for the automatic inner door, which opened to let him hurtle through.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Stemyard. She was not. But she was acutely embarrassed.

  Jenver nursed his face, allowed Marcusine to examine it and assure him he was neither slain nor maimed. Marcusine laughed and shook her head at Stemyard. Stemyard ran out of the room after the cat.

  Presently the two other cats followed, Siddi eagerly, Shoh making excuses, searching the veneered wainscoting for beetles all the way, finally inventing one and chasing it upstairs.

  The cat-hatch in Stemyard’s door let them all in. Soon they were sitting in a neat line along the wide windowsill, staring out at the snow.

  Stemyard brushed her boyish hair, swallowing tears.

  After a while she leaned forward to look sideways at the tree.

  She could placate the tree. She would be forgiven.

  Shoh turned, purring, and bit her arm.

  Marcusine went into the garden. The sky was misty now, the tops of the orchard dissolving, the sun invisible as it had been all day, and would continue to be until darkness came.

  She went to the tree, as she seemed constantly to have to do, compelled.

  She stood on the snow, looking down at its roots, up into the inverted roots of its branches. She felt old, far older than Marsh, old as the tree itself, maybe. What type of tree was it? Did any of them know? The house computer would have a record. She should listen to the tape again. It was surely bad manners to destroy a thing of whose name and nature she was ignorant. But it would have to come down. It dominated them far too much. Look at the scene which had ensued. Its shadow fell in their rooms, their lives. There was a foolish pun in it all, somewhere, too: the tree, the family tree, roots…

  Marcusine grimaced idly. She put her hand on the damp, impenetrable bark.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the tree, as Stemyard had untruthfully said to Jenver. Another inch, and she would have given him a black eye, and probably well deserved.

  Their relationship, hers and her brother’s, was also unsatisfactory. It had never troubled Jenver. He took charmingly, and besides had experimented successfully with other companions outside their sphere. Marcusine herself found that people bored her. She was not even afraid of them, as Stemyard was, which would furnish a tolerable pretext for avoiding contact. With Jenver, Marcusine was neither bored nor excited. She was alert, comfortable, and at home. He sometimes exasperated but never offended her. She was conscious of his beauty, and occasionally the world-play of outsiders had caused her to wonder if she might ever try to seduce him. The hot revulsion such an idea caused her always inclined her to think that on some level she did desire him, and had evolved revulsion as a safeguard. Her sexual encounters in the world had been many and varied; she was greatly more experienced than her brother. She enjoyed the act, but found the complexities displeasing. She had never been in love, not even infatuated, merely attracted, and never for long. To some extent, then, she remained unfulfilled, not sexually, but emotionally in the sexual area of her life. Only once had she ever discovered herself in the wish that Jenver were not her brother, that the notion of making love with him did not revolt her, that everything had been different. But then, if he were not her brother, perhaps she would not have liked him at all.

  Something might be done with the stump of the tree. It would be a high stump. Vines would help to camouflage its nakedness, and then possibly leaves might still grow. A marble shape of some sort could stand on it, something aerial, lifting towards the sky.

  Marcusine walked back to the house, and went into the library. It was in darkness, unlit. She hesitated; somehow she had expected Jenver to be seated in the chair facing the window, the fire playing on his face, hands and hair. A kind of after-image persisted. For a moment she almost spoke to him.

  Marsh woke with a sense of dull deprecation. He had fallen asleep in his sitting-room — a wasted afternoon; already what had once been called the ‘shades of evening’ were filming the windows. He touched a button and amber sidelights came on. The windows snapped from charcoal to amethyst.

  He went into the bathroom, confronted the mirrors, and ran the tub. He lay in the hot water, trying to relax into wakefulness, but the sudden sleep had deadened and depressed him. Tonight, no doubt, he would have to have recourse to a sleeping capsule, or else read until dawn.

  He dressed tidily, refusing to attempt grace. As he came out of his suite, Jenver simultaneously came out of his across the hall. They looked at each other.

  ‘This place becomes more and more like a hotel,’ Jenver remarked. His velvet jacket was the colour of dying leaves.

  ‘A hotel out of season,’ Marsh amended.

  Jenver offered him a cigarette. Inconsequently, they stood in the passage, smoking.

  ‘It’s not that I object to cantatas,’ Jenver said eventually. ‘Not that I particularly like them, but I don’t object — ’

  ‘I apologise. Far too loud, I kno
w.’

  ‘No, it’s my fault. If I could stand the soundproofing — ’

  ‘A form of audial claustrophobia. I think you got locked in a cupboard once as a child, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I?’ Jenver was fascinated, as always, by details about himself he had forgotten or not known.

  ‘Yes, one of the cellar cupboards. You were playing some game and the door jammed. There was a great fuss. The machines located you, but you would have been badly scared.’

  ‘Poor me,’ said Jenver, with genuine sympathy.

  Marsh smiled. The boy really was delightful. One should make more allowances, perhaps contrive to be with him now and then.

  ‘That might be the cause,’ said Marsh. ‘A’ cupboard like that would certainly have been deadly quiet. You must have thought no one would ever find you.’

  ‘Yes. I must have.’

  They finished their cigarettes. It was two hours yet till dinner.

  ‘It’s rather odd,’ said Jenver, ‘you can remember what happened all those years ago. And yet suppose I asked you what happened yesterday?’

  ‘Much the same as today, I surmise. God knows. But that’s one of the penalties of senility, forgetting the recent past.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Marsh, you talk as if you’re a dinosaur. You look forty, a damn good forty at that. You know you do.’

  Marsh was grateful, even as he shook his head. He had the notion Jenver was flirting with him, but Jenver flirted with everyone who permitted it.

  ‘In any case,’ Jenver said, ‘I didn’t mean you, exactly. I meant me. I was trying to remember what I did yesterday. And I can’t quite pin it down, except that substantially it was like today. Oh, and it snowed heavily yesterday morning, didn’t it? I recall Marcusine coming in from the garden with fresh snow in her hair, and talking about the tree — which is also odd — ’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Marsh. He was losing the thread of the conversation, absorbed by the look of Jenver and the musical sound of his voice.

  ‘Déja vu, Marsh, that’s all. I suddenly had the feeling we’d stood here like this before and I’d said everything I just said… before.’

  ‘It’s quite likely you have. Why not? The suites face each other.’

  ‘My God. I knew you’d say that. Or something like it. I probably need to get away from the house.’

  Marsh shrugged. It would be a pity if Jenver went away. One man against three women seemed an unfair ratio. And just as he had begun to feel some point in getting to know Jenver better.

  They walked out of the passage to the head of the second staircase.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but that tree really ought to go,’ said Marsh. ‘Although I examined the base of it after lunch, and the roots seem quite firmly fixed, despite Marcusine’s analysis. Perhaps the snow misled her when she looked at them. Even so, it’s a blasted nuisance, it always has been.’ Had it? He could only remember its worrying him since… Since when? Quite recently.

  ‘When I was a child,’ said Jenver. ‘I used to think the tree would reach right up through the house at night and strangle me, or drink my blood. Or something.’

  They laughed, and went down the stairs.

  Jenver was slightly entranced. He had just told a lie, in order to be entertaining. He had never, as a child, actually felt anything about the tree, had he? Had he even been locked in a cupboard? That was too classic, was it not?

  Poor old Marsh. What would it be like to fall to pieces like this? Stupid, for one thing, with so many preparations on the market, over-the-counter drugs that could have helped. Why did he never try some of them?

  Jenver skipped off the last two stairs and offered Marsh a courtly bow. Compassionately, he took the older man’s arm, and conveyed him into the billiards room for a game of Shot.

  It could well be a good idea to go away for a time. Marcusine should get away, too. They could chop down the rotten tree and sell the timber and do something ridiculous with the unexpected money they didn’t need. Separately, of course. Their escapes had always been alone. For the pleasure of returning and being together again?

  But it was a long time since either of them had been away or been seriously apart.

  Araige finished her letter, read it through, rose and walked about the room.

  Yes, I know how we parted, but I refuse to believe —

  She took up the letter again.

  — to believe that a crazy quarrel on a frozen river —

  No, no, no.

  She tore the letter into pieces.

  She had written this letter so often, torn it in pieces so often.

  She sat down at her dressing-table and the soft lights bloomed about the mirror. She brushed dark green glitter onto her eyelids, and then, using a stencil, painted green stars over her nails.

  Stemyard closed her book on its silken marker. She preferred the book to a screen, the book’s actuality. It was more intimate.

  A piercing nostalgia rode her. Why had she been born now, why not then, the teeming, unhygienic, passionate, rose-red past — blind life, romantic bloody death, fearless, cruel and great.

  Had there been any choice? Had she chosen to be this, to be Stemyard now, instead of Cesare Borgia in 1501?

  Siddi snored in her lap. Shohset had fallen asleep fighting round her ankles.

  These were her family. She loved them. After all, love bound her to the present.

  Marcusine had changed into a burgundy dress. Yesterday evening it had been dove-grey. She recalled going out to look at the tree in the new snow and the grey dress.

  Was she becoming obsessive about the tree, or only about Jenver?

  Jenver was becoming horribly bored. It was truly horrible. Marsh was regaling him with anecdotes Jenver knew he had heard a hundred times, or more. Marsh had assumed a dreadful sprightliness. The game had been a mistake.

  Marsh scored twenty points and chalked his cue. He felt almost unpleasantly hysterical, drunk, in fact. Jenver seemed, however, to be enjoying his company. Perhaps he really was.

  Outside, the tree stood in the centre of the winter landscape, the light of day dying all around it.

  The machines had laid out a midwinter dinner, roast beef and chicken, sauces and stuffings, the tiny green cabbages that Jenver in his childhood had erroneously called ‘hassles’, potatoes baked within and without their skins, bowls of peas like green pearls. The carvers whirred. Corks exploded from bottles.

  For a while, it was quite festive.

  Siddishohset ate carefully boned chicken by the hearth. At some point, always, with chicken, however boneless, Shoh would pretend, or actually manage to think, he had a bone caught in his throat. Stemyard would rise in panic, and then Shoh would swallow, and indignantly resume his meal.

  It was bitterly cold beyond the house. A blast of wicked air had come in with Marcusine from the conservatory.

  ‘The tree,’ she had said.

  ‘It’s worse,’ said Jenver, drinking rye whisky.

  ‘I examined the base of it after lunch,’ Marsh said, also drinking whisky, bourbon. ‘The roots seem quite firmly fixed. Do you think the snow misled you, Marcusine?’

  ‘No,’ she said amiably. Her drink was generally vodkagne, and Jenver mixed one for her.

  As the first pleasures of eating dulled, however, Marsh began to tell old stories they had all heard before.

  Stemyard forked her dessert impatiently. Araige was far off, her eyes cloudy, not listening, smiling while the others forced laughter, uninvolved.

  Shoh choked. Stemyard started up. Shoh swallowed and resumed his meal.

  ‘Inevitably,’ said Marsh, ‘I find I repeat myself.’

  ‘I thought you’d never notice,’ said Jenver, with one of those isolated but snake-like flashes of spite almost unbearable after the charm and courtesy before.

  Marsh’s face fell. He lost the spurious poise he had acquired during the last two hours. It dropped from him with a sort of clank, embarrassing them all.

  ‘We
ll,’ Marsh said. He plucked at his napkin, discarded it, and drank down his wine like medicine. ‘I apologise for being a boring old fool. Excuse me.’ He rose from the table and walked stiffly through into the coffee-room.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jenver.

  ‘You really shouldn’t have,’ said Marcusine.

  ‘I couldn’t stand it any more.’

  ‘Now he’ll sulk all evening,’ snapped Stemyard. ‘You are a pig, Jenver.’

  ‘Shut up, Stemyard.’

  ‘Why should I? Why should you be the only one in this house to do as you like, say what you like, regardless of the trouble you cause? You’re useless, a parasite.’

  ‘And you are a loud-mouthed little bitch.’

  ‘I wish you’d get out and go to hell.’

  ‘Children, please,’ said Marcusine.

  ‘Hell is here,’ quoted Jenver, ‘nor are we out of it.’

  ‘Don’t quote things, you never get them right. When are you leaving?’

  ‘Children,’ said Marcusine.

  ‘When?’ Stemyard shouted.

  The cats looked at her.

  Jenver turned his smiling, inquiring face towards her.

  ‘Afraid I’ll really go?’

  Stemyard leaned across the table, raising her narrow fist to punch him. Marcusine caught her arm and held her.

  ‘No, Stem. You’ve already done that.’

  Stemyard writhed, red in the face.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  She subsided involuntarily and Marcusine let go of her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marcusine. ‘Let’s have some coffee, shall we?’

  Stemyard stalked away into the other room.

  Jenver and Marcusine strolled after her.

  Araige rose slowly to follow, and paused, and thought about herself for one minute. For whom had she dressed, powdered her eyelids, crayoned her mouth? For herself? She had wanted to go to bed and cry until she suffocated.

  She thought about Paris-Sur-Ône. The vision kept coming back, she could not stop it, nor did it lose its pain. ‘You’re only a whore. Do you think I care about you? You’re wrong.’

  She ran the gamut and wept. Then her tears ended and she walked through into the circular coffee-room.