‘Heaven in a handbag, Eddy!’
‘S-sorry, Grandma Daisy!’ Eddy had no idea what it was he’d done to earn her wrath but he’d learned over time that it was much easier to surrender up front than fight a losing battle. Not only that, but she’d managed to sneak up on him again and his words were more gut instinct than purpose.
‘Just look at that tree.’
Eddy followed Grandma Daisy’s dumbfounded gape to the corner of his room.
‘Is th-there something wr-wrong with it?’ Eddy didn’t like where this was going.
‘Look at it, you stupid boy.’
Eddy looked at it all over again and returned his uneducated stare back up at his grandma. He was lost. There was his tree . . . so what?
‘You’re a waste of space, Eddy, I swear.’ Grandma Daisy stepped over to the side window and placed the palm of her hand on the branch. ‘How in God’s name did it grow so much?’
‘I d-dunno, Grandma D-Daisy. It just did.’
Eddy supposed she was right in a way. He spent every day with his tree but when he thought about it, it had changed a lot over the past two or three weeks. No longer was it an adventurous outgrowth, just testing the environment within the inside world. Now it was developing into a fully fledged tributary in its own right. It was, by all definition, a real branch. Instead of winding its way a few inches past the window ledge, it had now curled to the right and was journeying along his wall, above the length of his bed. All in all, there was a good three feet of it inside the room now and it was healthy growth too. Where there had only been a handful of shiny new leaves breaking the surface like butterflies birthing from a cocoon, there was now easily thirty or forty of them, maybe more.
‘I’ve been so busy cleaning up after you I haven’t even noticed.’ Grandma Daisy tried to give the branch a shake but it gave her no slack whatsoever. ‘Glory be.’
‘It’s a g-g-good tree, Grandma Daisy. It helps m-me spell. T, R, E, E. See.’
‘It’s ruining my house is what it’s doing.’
Please no, Grandma Daisy. Don’t go there.
‘Look what it’s doing,’ she continued. ‘It’s eating into the woodwork here on the window. I can’t afford to get that fixed. I spend all my pittance on you.’
Eddy remained silent as he sat in his desk chair. He wanted so much to defend his tree but anything he said would only wind her up even more. If you gave Grandma Daisy a bone she’d gnaw the thing to bits. So he watched on as she ran her hands along the length of the bough, all the way to the leafy tip, near on half the distance of his bed away. All the while she had such a look of wonder and dismay on her face that Eddy could’ve written the rest of her script in advance.
‘There’s nothing else for it,’ she stated to all concerned. ‘Beth Melling’s husband has a chainsaw. He’s just going to have to come over and chop this thing off. It gives me the creeps.’
Grandpa Nevil planted the tree.
‘Wh-what?’
‘I said, I’m going to get this monstrosity cut off.’
Eddy didn’t tell her he wasn’t talking to her. Even stupid boys weren’t that dumb.
Grandpa Nevil planted the tree almost fifty years ago. When this house was built.
Eddy looked around the room. If he’d been by himself, he would’ve risked a ‘who said that?’ but not with Grandma Daisy present. Besides, his eyes told him what he already knew. There was nobody else. How could there be?
Go on, tell her.
Eddy was still considering all this weirdness when Grandma Daisy put an end to her deliberations and made for the door.
‘Yes,’ she agreed to nobody in particular. ‘I think I’ll give Beth a call right away.’
‘W-wait, Grandma Daisy!’
It was too late, the words were out.
‘What?’ She was standing tall and broad in the door, hands on hips.
‘It’s just that . . . um . . . um . . . ’
‘Well, spit it out. I’ve got better things to do, you know.’
‘I – I . . . um, I have a qu-question.’
I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that, Grandma Daisy.
‘Okay.’
‘I w-was just wondering wh-who p-put the tree, T, R, E, E, there.’
Now it had been Eddy’s turn to sneak up on her. She hadn’t expected that one and it was written all over her face.
‘What made you ask a question like that?’
‘Um . . . I don’t really know, Grandma Daisy.’ At least he was being honest.
‘Good Lord, that takes me back a ways.’ Eddy watched with growing interest as Grandma Daisy’s eyes stayed open but stopped seeing. She was looking inside – that was what Eddy took from it. She was remembering and ‘remembering’ begins with R.
‘Was it Gr-Grandpa, Grandma Daisy?’
Her eyes came back into focus and she gave him the very briefest of looks. It had to be brief because it wasn’t her style to betray her softer emotions. She pursed her lips and if Eddy didn’t know any better he could swear that she swallowed back a whole bunch of stuff that desperately wanted to get out. Last of all she took a great big, deep breath and gave her head an almost imperceptible shake. And that was it. The old Grandma Daisy was back in charge.
‘I think that’s enough of the chit-chat.’ Then she was gone, door closed and busy feet on the stairs.
Eddy didn’t see her at all again that day. She didn’t bring his lunch up and by the time he figured she wasn’t bringing his dinner up either he was absolutely starving. Not that he was going to do anything about it, of course.
On the plus side, his tree, Mr Tree, hadn’t seen so much as a blunt spoon let alone a chainsaw. And long, he hoped, it would last.