The Kind Darkness of Trees

By Valerie Adam Freeman

Frank Monro is dying all over again.

Having believed her beloved, unreliable dad died decades previously, Fran Peterson now receives a letter revealing otherwise.

Meanwhile others in Fran's life are sustaining injury. Alec plays snooker religiously to fend off his helplessness as he desperately tries to piece

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blink in the Endless
• Release date: Jan 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838085117

Valerie Adam Freeman

Valerie Adam Freeman (née Stephen) grew up in East Kilbride, Scotland, before attending Dundee University from 1988-92. In 2015, inspired by Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way", she rediscovered her love for writing fiction and over the next two years delivered "The Kind Darkness of Trees". Valerie lives and works in South London with her husband, Daniel. She is passionate about looking after the environment and has a deep, inclusive Christian faith, reflected in her love of retreats and interest in contemplative spirituality. She enjoys eating with loved ones, sharing creativity as a way of knowing one another in community and walking amongst giant pine trees.

Book preview

Prologue

The woman edged her fingers along the rough sides of a large stone lodged in the wall of the old bothy and prised it loose. Holding it effortfully she looked inside to where there was a space, lined by sparse lichen, instantly naked and vulnerable. Her face set, she lowered the stone to the tufted ground, then took from her leather bag a plastic one, cheap and noisy, that rustled brazenly in the gusty wind let loose by the sea below.

What you’re going to do, do it quickly.

She stuffed the bag into the crevice and replaced the stone, the shuffle and crack of noise at once subsiding, finally muted and gagged in the silence of the ancient wall. She turned against it and slid downwards to the earth, then gazed for a long time at the dust particles newly decorating the lines in her fingers and palms.

* * *

APRIL, Larch

i.

Fran watched from the window as the man who had been in her bed that morning pulled his four-by-four out of the drive and roared off. Long after the noise had faded out, she was still holding on to the curtain edge, gazing unseeingly through the glass. Presently she turned her neck to face the living-room door, her body then following as though in obedience to some unspoken summons. Her hands found the door knob, then the newel cap that signified the bottom of the stairs. Her feet found the rising stairs, the landing, the threshold to the bedroom. She paused in the doorway and looked down at the clothes she was wearing; then moved in slow increments towards the bed and bent her shape into a sitting position. On her body were normal items - blue jeans, a soft green jersey - but still, she looked at them as though they were new information. She heaved in a breath. She was a person now sitting on a bed that someone, presumably she, had made. She had a name; it was Francesca or Frances or Fran.

Am I speaking to Frances Peterson?

There had been a phone-call, she remembered. She had answered yes. So it was Frances Peterson who now, in a sitting shape on a duvet cover patterned with tidy blue swallows, took a deep breath and picked up a photo frame from a bedside table that was there. Looking squarely at the two faces poised with happiness in the centre, she saw two smiles and four gleaming eyes amid petals of pastel-coloured confetti caught in flight. Well, there it was. A kind of proof that she and the man were not strangers.

ii.

Muriel set down the receiver and stood up briskly.

Well, she sounded normal enough, she stated, prompting Will to cock his head like a curious bird. Frances Peterson. Coming for interview.

Right.

So all three of our chosen applicants are attending. I think that deserves a cup of tea, Will, don’t you?

Sighing dramatically, Will uncoiled his long body out of the too small chair behind the too small desk and swung lankily towards the staff kitchen. As the kettle boiled he stared at the mug shelves and relived his annoyance with himself for buying tickets for two gigs happening on the same night. How could he be such a klutz? The thought intensified as he dripped tea from the badly squeezed bag to the floor. He cursed softly to himself and wondered about these life irritations, why they happened and how it would be without them. If gigs didn’t clash and tea-bags didn’t drip and jobs weren’t boring and dead-end.

Thanks and what took you?

There was a dripping scenario.

Ah.

With her tightly curled hair and cross forehead, Muriel might have been imposing had it not been for the softening weight she carried. Her plumpness slowed her down, mercifully for her staff team, and limited her air of power. Now she busied herself at her computer, re-working the interview questions over again to ensure the very best candidate would be chosen.

Questions, Will, good interview questions. Something to sift the wheat from the chaff.

But with only half an hour to go before his deadline, Will was too distracted to offer anything worthwhile. Once again Muriel would have to sort things out by herself.

iii.

Alec turned the key and the burly car fell silent. Leaning back on the headrest he shed a long nasal sigh. And he noticed, this is becoming a habit. Sitting in the car, in the driveway, hesitating. Waiting for something, some hook to catch him and haul him out the door, trail him into the house and plop him in front of Fran. At Fran’s feet. Like some bloody offering.

He looked up at the house. The bedroom curtains were shut hard and all the lights dead. Under the glowering sky the house appeared inattentive, as though with its back turned to him, though he knew it would look like that all the way round. Get a grip, he thought, and cast himself into the cool evening.

Inside, dumping a heavy briefcase in the hall, he called out and started hitting switches; lights, lamps, kettle, computer. Time for a Jesus job, he thought grimly, a spot of resurrecting after a hard day’s work.

Franny! You up, Fran?

The house bristled with silence. Alec plodded upstairs to find the bedroom empty of his wife. His mouth stretched into a curious squint. There was no note, which was unusual; no text message or missed call. Just a stale house without even the promise of dinner. And alongside his frustration and annoyance and tiredness and hunger, his eyes darted uneasily.

iv.

Meanwhile Fran stared at an evergreen tree in the park. With the light beginning to fail its foliage appeared multi-dimensional, as though within were quiet mysteries. Mentally she strolled into the tree, through its thick coolness and into a generous clearing. There was a pond with rainbows and gentle reeds surrounding it. She let her coat slide to the grass and stepped into the warm, silken water. Gently, it inched over her feet, encircling her ankles, brand new friendship bands. She stood a long time within the kind darkness of the tree’s centre, breathing in its heady fragrance. Then, noticing, came back to where she was seated on a park bench, looking at an evergreen.

It must be time to leave. Coolness gathered round her and she pulled her zip up to the neck. She thought vaguely of Alec, that he might be home, that he might be concerned. But there was not much room inside to consider another. The spaces were nearly all filled with what she had learnt from the letter. Although many days, weeks, months had passed since its arrival, still it choked up the spaces she used to have free, reserving her for it, colonising what might have been and used to be her territory. The letter broke her with the promise of re-shaping her, but she remained in fragments. Her fingers searched for it in her pocket, finding its papery thinness and holding fast. Such an insubstantial thing, apparently. If set on a pond, it would simply drift away.

v.

Why is it you want this job, Frances? Sorry, is it Frances or Fran?

She wasn’t on a park bench, she wasn’t in a tree. There were two tidy eyes belonging to a middle-aged woman with tightly curled hair and they were searching her out. Meanwhile a young, lethargic man hovered a pen above a notepad. She gave herself a brisk inner shake and opened her mouth to speak.

Fran is fine. Well, I’ve always been interested in history.

Muriel nodded approvingly, the boy wrote something down.

And it was the artefacts of the past that really brought it to life for me. I remember as a child visiting an exhibition on Mary Queen of Scots and being amazed by the corsets. A grown up, mutual laugh in the room. But also because I’m very organised and enjoy having things in order, so I think my skills match what’s needed for this role.

I see, yes, thank you. And what experience do you have of customer service?

My most recent job was in an independent bookshop. And, of course, I worked as an adviser at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau for many years.

It looks as if you were at the bookshop - McClusky’s - for five months. And after that, there seems to be a bit of a gap?

Yes. What did they want of her? To account for all the spaces in her life. Spaces filled up with the letter.

I...

Expectant faces.

I took some time out. I had an idea for a business but... it didn’t quite take off.

Sounds interesting. What was that, then?

Oh, just some design work, you know. Nothing that would interfere now.

So you want to get into design?

Only as a hobby. Though I do have an eye for detail.

Well, in that case, what do you think of our museum? It would be good to get a designer’s take on it.

On and on, ping pong, back and forth. To her surprise Fran found she kept trying, kept thinking, kept answering, kept coming up with something just when the well seemed dry. And then she was finally at the end of it and there was smiling and hand-shaking and assurances of contact after the weekend and she was out in the street in the blustery wind with the leaves being flung around like splashes from a bohemian artist’s brush. And there was relief and sadness and the loneliness of not being known and restlessness and a scrap of hope.

vi.

How did it go, love?

How did love go? As though it might be a ditty that one could sing. I’ll go first, then you copy me. It’s a simple thing to follow. Unless you mean go, of course, as in leave. How did love leave? But there were two straightforward eyes looking at her straightforwardly.

Um, yes. All right, I think. They’ll let me know by Monday.

A quiet look at each other. Alec filled his mouth with air, moulding his cheeks out like two pale plums. Is that all I’m getting?

Sorry. I guess I’m tired. They seemed like nice people, I wouldn’t mind working there. There’s a new stag’s head in the reception area.

Nodding. Okay, good. It’s good for you. I mean, it will be good for you. If you get it. Good for you to get out a bit, you know?

I know. Blank looking at each other. I’m going for a lie down.

Upstairs the curtain flapped rhythmically against the window sill. Fran listened to the combination of the breeze and the brushing sound, linen on wood. If God were the breeze, she was the curtain and Alec was the wood. God was moving, he was moving her, and she was moving and bumping into Alec. But Alec couldn’t move. It wasn’t fair of her. He literally couldn’t move at all.

vii.

Will left the museum at 5.32pm. He sped lightly down Braebank Court and onto Union Street, hardly aware of the change from the sedentary rural street to the main street, leading him straight into the hub of Kilburgh. Lumbering buses and weary cars jostled along, occasionally shot through by a mischievous moped, and the pavements became busy with cans and weeds, and freckled with spit.

It all passed Will by. It was about a 37 minute fast walk to Wainwright's, the secondhand record shop that was his fixed destination. A 6.09pm he entered the dusty store, anxiously eyeing out for Audrey.

Donald looked back at him from behind the counter. A’right, matey?

Will nodded briefly and lowered his head over the racks. Donald again. Wired up, balding Donald with the fake designer glasses who’d done everything, apparently, although for all that he did seem to spend an awful lot of time in a shop. Had Audrey stopped doing the Thursday shift? It was the only 21 minutes in the week when he might possibly see her, yet this was the second week in a row she hadn’t been there for what he thought of as their date.

She evidently did not think of it as their date. She was probably oblivious to his breathing in and out other than when he used the said breath to initiate stilted conversations about Muddy Waters and Tim Buckley week on week. Perhaps she changed her shift to evade these conversations. Perhaps simply to evade him, having to look at him in his lanky discomfiture, stuttering through another retro and pre-fabricated request. Do you have a live recording of Sweet Jane? Have you got Martha by Tom Waits? There was just an outside chance she was bored numb by the routine and had made changes accordingly. Other people did that. When they weren’t happy with something. Other people changed things about.

Donald nodded approvingly at the CD proffered to him at the till. Nice, very nice. I actually saw Neil Young in concert once...; then, jerking his head back, ...in Ca-Li-Fornia, USA! At the Santa Cruz. It was immense, man. Lovely bit of white noise.

Is, uh, is Audrey all right? It’s just I haven’t seen...

What? Yes, sure. I mean, God, what am I saying? No. She’s got... What do you call it?

Will looked as directly as he could through Donald’s fake designer frames.

Appendix... appendicitis! Having it out, anyway. It burst or something. Could have popped it, apparently! Then I’d have had to start recruiting, yikes!

Will smiled weakly and paused before leaving.

Could I... Could you tell her I was asking after her, please?

Sure. Sure thing, matey. Em... What’s yer name again?

viii.

Standing at the kitchen window, Fran winced as the juice of the apple found the eczema cracks in her hands. Funny how she had stopped trying to get rid of the eczema, how she just bore it as it bore into her, excavating her skin for no other purpose, apparently, than malice. But getting into the apple, letting her teeth burrow into its hard freshness and encountering its joyous clanging tones on her tongue, here was one of life’s simple consolations. Desolation, consolation, eczema and apple, over and over, each seeming to need the other to validate it.

Across the street there was a leather-faced woman shaking a dense blanket out over her balcony. Impossibly large clouds of dust emerged from the brown folds, surely more than a simple blanket could contain. Distracted, Fran paused in her munching and watched. The woman’s brow was brittle as she shook and shook, shoulders and arms moving heavily in what looked from this distance like a determined ire. At a guess Fran supposed someone thoughtless had used this woman’s beloved rug as a dust sheet during some building work. She could just imagine the woman coming home after a long day in a school kitchen, for example, her earlier highly mounted hair now collapsing helplessly around a sweat marked face, her clothes smelling of chip fat. And coming in to find her son had covered her favourite blanket in rubble. And swallowing hard because there was no point in speaking but at least opening the window and shaking, shaking, shaking off the ignorance and disrespect of the boy for whom she had poured out her life and who was as considerate to her feelings as a hyena.

The woman went inside. Fran turned on the tap absently and rinsed her nipping skin.

ix.

Dear Frances,

It’s taken years to do this and I don’t know where to start. But I’m getting old and if I wait any longer it’ll be too late, so here goes. There’s no easy way to say this. Life is cruel and I am no doubt a cruel man without hope of reform. That’s why they have kept me in here and there is no getting out. Yes, I was violent - though never to you. I wasn’t the kind of dad you deserved but enough with the pity party. I am just writing to say I did care about you, in my way. And I’d like you to remember the good bits, if you can. I have regrets, you know -

Dad

x.

He never liked this part. Alec felt the vulnerability of handing his car key over to the mechanic, avoiding the man’s watery eyes.

I’ll give you a call tomorrow.

Right. Alec rubbed the back of his neck briefly and then set off. The squash would distract and re-calibrate him, anyway. He would surely beat Jeff to smithereens as usual, which admittedly gave him a boost, albeit making the game a little dissatisfying. One glance back to see the mechanic lifting a mug of tea and slurping. Remind self this chap has done it before and it was fine. But the car is a precious little number to me, in its way.

At the court Jeff was waiting with an apologetic expression, ridiculous really, as it was Alec who was late. But the apology was no doubt for what was to come. Sure enough his game was a write-off, and Alec wondered again why he bothered. But at least it was a bit of exercise and his opponent seemed to appreciate the weekly humiliation.

Drink? and, Just a quick one, - the usual exchange.

Then pointless chit chat about horsepower and racket grips and football and nothing. Alec didn’t know why he spent time with Jeff, whose conversation was stilted and meandering and lacking reaching any particular conclusion. Even so, his vacuous company soothed Alec and made him feel purposeful by comparison, even a little powerful. It was better to be in the leisure centre bar, his large hand clutching a pint of Guinness and his mouth opening and closing to criticise some manager for failing to lick his team into shape. It was better than something, anyway. Jeff paused and rumbled on, paused and rumbled, his fair eyebrows rising and falling in tune with the tone of his voice, and Alec was lulled. Another round was ordered, and the time unwound until it was just too uncomfortable to delay going home any longer.

Is that you off, then? Jeff asked, eyebrows raised.

Gotta get back to Fran.

Oh, yeah, Fran. How’s she doing?

Yeah, good. She had an interview to work at the museum. So you never know.

Okay. Good luck to her, then.

Outside the sky was clear navy, shot through with orange streetlight. Alec hesitated over the direction of the bus stop, not being used to any other mode of transport than his dark blue four-by-four. On presenting a fiver, the bus driver gave him a withering look. Feeling not unlike a naughty schoolboy, he lowered his generous frame into a small, stained seat. When he reached his stop he found himself mysteriously staying on the bus, his body unwilling to heave itself out. Then, giving himself a mental jab, he got off at the next stop and walked back the distance the bus had brought him away from his reluctant destination.

xi.

The Ardenshield was a small and spacious white temple in a leafy suburb of Kilburgh. She carried her collections protectively, cooing over her anthropological artefacts from Europe and Asia, bearing carefully her quietly impressive array of stuffed mammals and birds, reptiles and insects; sharing cautiously her early photography with the younger visitors. Muriel ended her working day by processing with some solemnity around each exhibit, by turns pouting and nodding. She carried a clipboard and wrote comments in a minute, meticulous hand. These would be translated to various emails before she left the building, and be expected to be acted upon hastily and thoroughly by her employees the next morning. Nothing was irrelevant; from the dust particles noticed on the glass cases housing an ancient silver ewer to a certain lack of order in the toy chimpanzee key-rings in the gift shop, everything was of equal import when it came to maintaining a standard of excellence.

Muriel paused as she reached 19th Century France and allowed herself a grim smile, remembering the day a now ex-employee had brought a homeless man into the exhibit and allowed him to sit on Madame Récamier’s chaise longue. It would never be the same again to her, that chaise longue. She could still see the girl venturing forward to the silk damask weave, a cappuccino in one paw while her other bustled with museum pamphlets. Later the girl would explain to her that the man had absolutely been meant to linger around the museum gardens and that he wasn’t very drunk really and that it was wonderful how a humble museum could bridge the class divide and that there was no harm done to the precious chair, although at least she did admit to a certain acridity in the air around his person.

Muriel set the alarm and walked with weighty purpose through the quietly lit car park. A day had passed and there had been no such misadventures. That was something, at least.

xii.

Frances! Frances! Jesus, Frances, come quick!

Fran, aged 10. Fran not recognising the jagged voice at first.

Frances, hurry!

She is dropping her camera on the slabs. The shutter cracks open and the spool flips out. She crouches down because you can’t let light get to a spool.

Frances!

She snaps the shutter closed and runs to the jagged voice. It is her father’s voice but not her father’s voice. It is a fractured voice lost out at sea, hanging on to a broken off mast, surrounded by flotsam. Fran’s mum’s legs and arms lie akimbo on the blue and white bathroom tiles. Fran’s mum’s blood leaks over the tiles and into the fish patterns on the foot towel.

Call an ambulance! cracks the splintered voice. Now!

Fran is running, running to the lounge whilst the hallway extends longer and longer like a tentacle stretching out to coil its prey. She is grabbing at the round stainless steel door handle and banging her knee on the door and running. She is sucking air into her body and finally reaching the cream-coloured telephone and lifting the receiver and sticking her finger into the 9 hole three times. She is saying her address and saying it again and her own voice is like a higher echo of the broken one out on the water.

She is kneeling beside her motionless mother and wanting to lift her head and put the fish towel under it because the floor is so hard and maybe it hurts. But she is scared to touch her mother’s head because of the dark red liquid seeping under her on the tiles. And she is trying to unremember the same red liquid smear on the mirrored bathroom cabinet.

xiii.

Will stirred in the dim bedroom and heard his own breath jut noisily from his mouth. He stretched out lithely under the stale duvet, his body crookedly diagonal across the mattress. And then quite suddenly he opened his eyes in surprise as The Plan ignited again behind them. It was clear and clean and waiting for his attention. This was Sunday and the day he would kick-start his life.

Joggers on and throw that served as a curtain pulled back, he frowned in the hazy grey light now sneaking into the spartan room. From under the bed he withdrew a collection of beaten shoe-boxes, some a little furry with dust and all brimming with CDs. He inwardly blessed his Uncle Jack for going digital and bestowing these treasures upon him. He could always download anything he wanted off the web but there was something about the physical copies, these reams of albums loved first by his uncle, later by himself. One by one he began wiping them on the carpet and laying them flat so that each image looked up at him, announcing itself in some bewilderment. A white backdrop with a yellow banana central. A rainbow prism emerging from a triangle. A skinny woman, stark in black and white, with a jacket slung over her shoulder. Occasionally he would grab one and