dunes in our flip-flops, sliding back one step for every two we took on the shifting sand; he held out his hand to me and pulled me up after him. His hands were brown and strong with neat-trimmed nails as thick as horn. He always wore a watch with one of those expanding metal bands (I worried that it must catch in the curling black hairs on his arm), and a wedding ring, which men didn’t often do in those days. Mum stood below with her hair escaping from her headscarf, whipping across her face in the wind, calling out to us to be careful, that the dunes were treacherous, we could be buried alive. And Gerry and I laughed together.
When I was in trouble, however, he sat opposite me in the lounge, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his forehead wrinkled: I felt the whole force of his personality bent upon me – thwarted, concentrated, blinkered. (— You’ll find nothing’s handed to you on a plate, he said. — It’s no good thinking you can stay wrapped up in your own little world. Do you have any idea how hard your mother has to work, to earn the money to buy you food and clothes?) In a reasonable voice he communicated his warnings about the meanness at the heart of things, which he understood and I, in my childishness, was refusing to acknowledge.
No doubt he really thought it was his duty, in my father’s place, to teach me to adapt to the way things were. The trouble was, I hardly knew him. I didn’t exactly argue with him. I sometimes said, ‘I didn’t mean to’ in a flippant voice, or denied things it was obvious I had done. If he asked me why I’d done them I said I didn’t know. I put my hands under my thighs on the chair, swung my legs and looked off into the corners of the room; my expression was a slippery mask clamped on my face. All my effort was used to keep my mouth curved upward in a grimacing smile, which I knew was my best weapon because it made Gerry squeeze his fists and raise his voice.
Then Mum would appear from the kitchen. — That’s enough, she would say, tactfully as if she was saying it to me. — Go up to your room, Stella.
Tugging me backward and forward between them, she and Gerry expressed the tension in their new life together. He wanted his new wife to himself; he hadn’t reckoned on finding me his rival for her attentions. Mum, with her quick scepticism, must have seen how he deceived himself, dissimulating his resentment, pretending to be impartial. She must have remonstrated with him over how relentlessly he came in pursuit of me, though it was part of their code that she would never openly take my side against him. (And although I was wounded by his taking her away from me, I also dreaded catching sight of any rift between them.)
Let’s be clear – our fight was mutual. I was set against Gerry just as he was against me. Only I was a child, so he had power over me. That’s all tyranny is: it’s not in a personality, it’s in a set of circumstances. It’s being trapped with your enemy in a limited space – a country, or a family – where the balance of power between you is unequal, and the weaker one has no recourse.
Because the tree cult began in the shapeless days of summer, there was no drudging sanity of school at first to counteract its power. I came up with the idea of kissing the stumps and leaving offerings among the roots or pressed into the cracks – salt, currants, sherbet. We smeared the resin on our foreheads. (— You’re filthy, my mother said when she got home. — Go and wash your face.) The three stumps in our gardens grew distinctive personalities and we named them (Iskarion, Vedar, Mori). They were jealous, capricious, closely informed about our daily lives. More awesome and less easy to propitiate were the nameless stumps we had no access to, in other gardens. Madeleine used to dab the resin on her tongue and then groan and double up, clutching her stomach, making a great fuss over how it had poisoned her. It was her
When I was in trouble, however, he sat opposite me in the lounge, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his forehead wrinkled: I felt the whole force of his personality bent upon me – thwarted, concentrated, blinkered. (— You’ll find nothing’s handed to you on a plate, he said. — It’s no good thinking you can stay wrapped up in your own little world. Do you have any idea how hard your mother has to work, to earn the money to buy you food and clothes?) In a reasonable voice he communicated his warnings about the meanness at the heart of things, which he understood and I, in my childishness, was refusing to acknowledge.
No doubt he really thought it was his duty, in my father’s place, to teach me to adapt to the way things were. The trouble was, I hardly knew him. I didn’t exactly argue with him. I sometimes said, ‘I didn’t mean to’ in a flippant voice, or denied things it was obvious I had done. If he asked me why I’d done them I said I didn’t know. I put my hands under my thighs on the chair, swung my legs and looked off into the corners of the room; my expression was a slippery mask clamped on my face. All my effort was used to keep my mouth curved upward in a grimacing smile, which I knew was my best weapon because it made Gerry squeeze his fists and raise his voice.
Then Mum would appear from the kitchen. — That’s enough, she would say, tactfully as if she was saying it to me. — Go up to your room, Stella.
Tugging me backward and forward between them, she and Gerry expressed the tension in their new life together. He wanted his new wife to himself; he hadn’t reckoned on finding me his rival for her attentions. Mum, with her quick scepticism, must have seen how he deceived himself, dissimulating his resentment, pretending to be impartial. She must have remonstrated with him over how relentlessly he came in pursuit of me, though it was part of their code that she would never openly take my side against him. (And although I was wounded by his taking her away from me, I also dreaded catching sight of any rift between them.)
Let’s be clear – our fight was mutual. I was set against Gerry just as he was against me. Only I was a child, so he had power over me. That’s all tyranny is: it’s not in a personality, it’s in a set of circumstances. It’s being trapped with your enemy in a limited space – a country, or a family – where the balance of power between you is unequal, and the weaker one has no recourse.
Because the tree cult began in the shapeless days of summer, there was no drudging sanity of school at first to counteract its power. I came up with the idea of kissing the stumps and leaving offerings among the roots or pressed into the cracks – salt, currants, sherbet. We smeared the resin on our foreheads. (— You’re filthy, my mother said when she got home. — Go and wash your face.) The three stumps in our gardens grew distinctive personalities and we named them (Iskarion, Vedar, Mori). They were jealous, capricious, closely informed about our daily lives. More awesome and less easy to propitiate were the nameless stumps we had no access to, in other gardens. Madeleine used to dab the resin on her tongue and then groan and double up, clutching her stomach, making a great fuss over how it had poisoned her. It was her
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