neck was broken.’
I only nodded because there isn’t much anyone can say when a fact like that is related.
‘I had always wanted to climb that tree, I had been told I never must. “I dare you,” she said. “I dare you, Dorothea.” I was frightened, but when no one was looking we climbed it together, racing one another to the top.’
She spoke of the funeral of Agnes Kemp, how the dead child’s parents had not been present because it had been impossible to contact them in time. ‘We don’t much hear of them now,’ Dorothea said. ‘A card at Christmas. Agnes was an only child.’
We walked a little in silence. Then I said:
‘What was she like?’
‘Oh, she was really awfully spoilt. The kind of person who made you furious.’
I suppose it was that last remark that started everything off, that and the feeling that Wistaria Lodge was a kind of theatre. The remark passed unnoticed at the time, for even as she made it Dorothea turned round, and smiled and kissed me. ‘It’s all forgotten now,’ she said when that was over, ‘but of course I had to tell you.’
It was certainly forgotten, for when we arrived in the garden the white table had been moved beneath the beech tree out of the glare of the sun, and tea with scones and sandwiches and cake was spread all over it. I felt a dryness in my mouth that was not dispelled when I drank. I found it hard to eat, or even to smile in unison with the smiling faces around me. I kept seeing the spoilt child on the grass and Dr Lysarth bending over her, saying she was dead, as no doubt he must have. I kept thinking that the beech tree should have been cut down years ago, no matter how beautiful it was.
‘You’re mad,’ Felicity shouted at me more than once. ‘You’re actually mad.’ Her voice in its endless repetition is always a reminder of my parents’ faces, that worry in their eyes. All I had wanted to know was the truth about ourselves: why did the offices and the warehouses still bear our name, what had my grandfather done? ‘Best just left,’ my mother said. ‘Best not bothered with.’ But in the end they told me because naturally I persisted – at eight and twelve and eighteen: naturally I persisted. My grandfather had been a criminal and that was that: a drunkard and an embezzler, a gambler who had run through a fortune in a handful of years: I’d guessed, of course, by the time they told me. I didn’t know why they’d been so reluctant, or why they’d displayed concern when I persisted about Miss Batchelor: why did she weep when she walked along the promenade? I had to guess again, because all my childhood Miss Batchelor’s tears possessed me so: she wept for the music teacher, who was married arid had a family, and I did not forgive my parents for wishing to keep that covered up. Passionately I did not forgive them, although my mother begged me, saying I made myself unhappy. ‘You sound so noble,’ Felicity snapped at me. ‘Yet what’s so marvellous about exposing a brothel-keeper for peddling drugs? Or a grimy pederast and a government minister?’ Felicity’s mother called her ‘a tricky kind of customer’. Arid tricky was just the word. Tricky, no doubt, with bank tellers and men met idly in bars. Tricky in beds all over the place, when I was so often away, having to be away.
I crossed the bedroom to the window. The beech tree was lit by moonlight now. Gazing at it, I heard the voices that had haunted me ever since Dorothea told me the story.
‘Then I dare you to,’ Dorothea angrily shouts, stopping suddenly and confronting the other girl.
‘You’re frightened of it, Dorothea. You’re frightened of a tree.’
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘Then I dare you to.’
In the garden the boys, delighted, listen. Their sister’s cheeks have reddened. Agnes Kemp is standing on one foot and then the other, balancing in a way she has, a way that infuriates Dorothea.
‘You’re a horrid person,’ Dorothea says. ‘You aren’t even pretty. You’re stupid and spoilt arid greedy. You always have two helpings. There’s something the matter with your eyes.’
‘There isn’t, Dorothea Lysarth. You’re jealous, that’s all.’
‘They’re pig’s eyes.’
‘You’re just afraid of a tree, Dorothea.’
They climb it, both at the same time, from different sides. There’s a forked branch near the top, a sprawling knobbly crutch, easily distinguishable from the ground: they race to that.
The boys watch, expecting any moment that an adult voice will cry out in horror from the house, but no voice does. The blue dress of Agnes Kemp and the white one of Dorothea disappear into a mass of leaves, the boys stand further back, the dresses reappear. Agnes Kemp is in front, but their sister has chosen a different route to the top, a shorter one it seems. The boys long for their sister to win because if she does Agnes Kemp will at least be quiet for a day or two. They don’t call out, although they want to: they want to advise Dorothea that in a moment she will have overtaken her challenger; they don’t because their voices might attract attention from the house. From where they stand they can hear the grandfather clock in the hall striking ten. Most of the windows are open.
Dorothea slips and almost falls. Her shoes aren’t right for climbing and when she glances to her left she can see that Agnes’s are: Agnes has put on tennis shoes, knowing she will succeed that morning in goading Dorothea. This is typical of her, and when it is all over Dorothea will be blamed because of course Agnes will blurt it out, in triumph if she wins, in revenge if she doesn’t.
The blue dress reaches the fork and then advances along one of its prongs, further than is necessary. Dorothea is a yard behind. She waits, crouched at the knobbly juncture, for Agnes Kemp’s return. The boys don’t understand that. They stare, wondering why their sister doesn’t climb down again so that they can all three run away from Agnes Kemp, since it is running away from her that has been in their minds since breakfast-time. They watch while Agnes Kemp reaches a point at which to pose triumphantly. They watch while slowly she creeps backwards along the branch. Their sister’s hand reaches out, pulling at the blue dress, at the child who has been such a nuisance all summer, who’ll be worse than ever after her victory. There is a clattering among the leaves and branches. Like a stone, the body strikes the ground.
‘Now what did anyone dream?’ Mrs Lysarth inquired at breakfast. Knives rattled on plates, toast crackled, Dr Lysarth read
‘I’ been skipping French classes again,’ Adam said. ‘For a year or even longer I’d been keeping so low a profile that Monsieur Bertain didn’t even know I existed. And then some examination or other loomed.’
