10 Monkey puzzle

Soon the jaunts in the car over the hills and back again cease. My hunch that we would find somewhere else to live is justified. I will be in walking distance of the school I am to attend and the house we are moving into is exactly between the school and where Auntie Ada lives on the farm with Aunt Jane and Uncle Arthur and Jack. So we leave the hilltop village and move into an imitation Georgian house with only a high wall separating it from the main road.

I am three and a half. When asked I usually say half past three, because I don’t yet know about age and time. Abstract ideas are for grownups. I am still at the stage when other people decide which time is the right one for doing something. My biological clock tells me that do not I need to go to bed at seven o’clock even after being on the go for about thirteen hours if I deliberately haven’t yawned once. My cerebral clock confirms over and over again that things don’t really get interesting until I am safely tucked up between the sheets and I should therefore avoid that status as long as possible. Avoiding bed and banishment is a skill I cultivate from an early age.

At the front of the new house there isn’t much room for flowers. There is an oblong lawn that is ideal for rolling snowmen. At the back there is a beautiful big yard. Neighbouring children are allowed to come and play with me under the shady fruit trees in the sand pit Dada has made. I am also allowed to go and play with a neighbour’s child. I don’t remember her, but I do remember that she has a grandmother.

Our neighbour on one side, between us and the old parish church, is a nice, rather deaf lady. Sometimes I push my head through a gap in our hedge to talk to her. Then she invites me to climb into her garden over a low part of the wall at the back of the house. I think she is lonely, so I tell her a lot about my own fascinating life.

She keeps bees and every year she harvests their honey. She tells me all about the habits of the bees, and teaches me to talk to them. One day some of them swarm quite unexpectedly, and I am at first very frightened because she is in the house getting us a drink of lemonade. But I remember how she handles them and start to tell them what I think about them leaving home and pestering me. A few of them rest on my head and I have to keep talking very loudly to stop myself running away. They are communicating with each other. Are they deciding whether to sting me? I tell them I am here to visit Mrs Logan, so would they please find another head to rest on.

"That was very clever, my dear."

Mrs Logan has been listening to me.

"You did exactly the right thing."

"Why did you leave me alone with them?" I sniff.

"I wanted to see what you would do," she explains. "The bees know you and like you. They won’t hurt you unless you frighten them."

Mama has also seen the incident and tries to stop me visiting Mrs Logan, but the bees start to fly over the communal hedge into our garden to visit me instead and I have to be very firm with them to make them go back home at all.

Mama isn’t really angry. She likes Mrs Logan, who has a deaf sister who is prepared to come in and do our washing on Mondays and ironing on Tuesdays and clean up on Fridays. This takes a load of Mama’s mind. She is now very round and fat and it won’t be long before my sister arrives.

So I am allowed back into Mrs Logan’s garden. Now I always visit ‘my’ bees before joining Mrs Logan on her patio, because the bees seem to expect it. Mrs Logan gives me pots of honey to take home. It is sweet and gooey, and I eat it with spoon and fingers.

Angel food.

Do angels eat honey? Do angels eat anything?

I can’t use up all my days visiting Mrs Logan and the bees, for I have to do some intensive staring at the neighbours on the other side. Staring is a very important part of my life. Staring is like watching stories as they happen. Staring is even better than Mama’s books, if something unexpected is happening. I stare on buses, because buses are always full of funny people. When Mama tells me not to stare, I wriggle and squiggle, like the fly inside the old woman.

One day I am wriggling and squiggling so hard that a lady in the bus tells Mama she is not keeping me under control. I think Mama must have been of the same opinion because she challenges her.

“You have a try, as you seem to know all about controlling children,” she says, and pushes me across the aisle in her direction.

The woman takes me on her lap. I am astonished that I have been handed over like a lapdog. And anyway I’m much too big for laps. I turn round to stare at her. Now I am very quiet indeed and Mama is bracing herself for the worst.

She doesn’t have to wait long.

“You’ve got big teeth like a rabbit,” I inform the lady in a voice everyone can hear.

The passengers on the bus all laugh heartily. All except for Mama, that is. The big-toothed lady is quite a well-known interferer and do-gooder and Mama is acutely embarrassed at my comment, because I am actually quoting her, though the bus passengers don’t know that. But I may be quoting them, too, which would explain the laughter.

The big-toothed lady pushes me back across the aisle and looks at Mama very reproachfully. Mama’s eyes are bright and she is feeling quite victorious in a told-you-so sort of way. I know that, because she doesn’t give me the smack I probably deserve. Smacks are warnings in our house. I avoid smacks whenever possible, but sometimes they are a small price to pay for getting my own way.

I am curious about the neighbours on the other side of our house because I have only ever seen them fleetingly. My month long vigils have led to almost nothing, until one day, after dinner, I take my doll’s pram for a walk along the dividing hedge and peer as if by accident through a gap that I keep open by snipping the twigs off with the smack-worthy kitchen scissors, which I smuggle out and in again under the blanket in my doll’s pram.

Today, on the gravel path leading up to the white-washed house with its elegant bay windows and topiary bushes, I can see a rather large wheel-chair. It isn’t like the wheel-chair from the local hospital, from the time Uncle Arthur’s farm-hand broke his shin and had to be wheeled around. It’s sort of flattened, as if you wanted to lie in bed with about three pillows to slant you up a bit. And there are foot rests with what look like spurs on them.

And half sitting, half lying in this contraption is a melancholy creature with metal things on its legs. She’s a lot older than me, so why is she lying in a portable bed? I try to attract her attention, but she either doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t want me to know she can hear me.

After a few minutes I get fed up, and wheel my doll’s pram back into the house.

I am just putting the scissors back into the drawer when Mama comes into the kitchen. She thinks I am taking them out.

"You can’t have those," she scolds. "They’re much too big for you. What do you want them for, anyway?"

Though she minds most of her own business, Mama still wants to know everything about mine, so I think she may have found out something about the occupant of the strange bed.

I don’t answer her straight away, which Mama interprets as guilt. She seems to be reading my mind.

"You must not pry on other people," she scolds. "They have enough problems of their own without having people spy on them."

"But I could play with her," I start to say.

"No, no, no." Mama is horrified. "You might catch it."

"Catch what?" I can only connect catching with playing ball.

"Infant paralysis," Mama replies in a matter-of-fact voice, and I am none the wiser.

"One night, that little girl got a high fever, and next day she couldn’t move a muscle. And that’s how she’s been ever since."

"Like this," I ask, and demonstrate how she is lying.

"You naughty girl, making fun of her. Count yourself lucky that you’re not like that."

I am lucky. I know that. I don’t need callipers on my legs, or a portable bed, or people to be sorry for me, and I don’t make fun of unfortunate people. I only poke fun at busy-bodies with big teeth in buses.

Whenever I can, I go and peer through the hedge again, just to see if the girl is still there.

But I never see her again.

Is she an angel now?

I ask Mama if the girl is dead.

"I don’t know," she replies. "But if she is, she’s better off than in that wheel-chair for the rest of her life."

My childish reasoning tells me that any life is better than no life at all. I think of my sister opting out without even giving it a chance.

"But she could still hear the birds and see the sea, and read books," I argue.

But Mama isn’t interested in serious discussions. She has to get the tea ready for when Dada comes home from the office. In her family, women’s priorities revolve around waiting on the men-folk. Children are to be seen, not heard. She can’t help being like she is. And because she is Mama, I love her. But being her daughter doesn’t necessarily mean that she loves me, at least, not so as you’d notice.

In the front garden of our new house, right underneath my bedroom window, there is a very strange tree. It has curious outstretched arms and no leaves at all, just unfriendly scales with prickles on the tips. A skeleton tree without leaves, or flowers, or fruit, can’t be of any use to anyone, I decide.

Every evening, before getting into bed, I open my curtains. The street lamp burns brightly behind the tree so that its grotesque shape throws eerie shadows across my window. Lying in my bed I watch the skeleton. When it rains, its armadillo scales glisten in the lamplight. When it’s windy, the skeleton rattles a bit and sways to and fro without any symmetry of movement. In winter, the snow puts sleeves on the grotesque limbs. It seems to thrive without any attention. It grows and grows without any regard for the seasons. The birds ignore it.

When I wish it were an apple tree, Dada explains that burglars could climb up an apple tree and in through my window. But no burglar will tackle a monkey puzzle tree, just as no monkey in its right mind would attempt to scale those prickly heights.

The monkey puzzle tree becomes a symbol. It doesn’t have to be there at all. But since it is there, at least it remains true to itself.

Whenever I think of the monkey puzzle tree, I remember that.