Flower and Tree

 

 

So I’m on my own. That’s OK. When I come home from school, I go straight through to the kitchen. The shop would be a better place to go, but Grandma’s in there and, anyway, she’d notice if things went missing. The kitchen is Grandpa’s place and he’s much less observant. I get a carrier bag from the drawer and I fill it with things. Apples. Bread. Orange juice. A packet of ham. A tin of beans, a tin of peaches, a tin of thick rice and tomato soup. A fork. Matches.

If nobody else is going to help him, that doesn’t mean I can’t.

There are blackberries growing in the hedgerows in the lane. More of the trees are turning autumn-coloured – soft yellows and oranges. It looks as if somebody’s smudged over the world with a paintbrush, dulling and mixing the colours. The banks are covered in the hard stalks of dead cow parsley. The air is fresher, and colder. It smells of leaves and grass and wet earth.

When I go through into the barn, he’s there. He’s awake. He’s moved. Last time he was leaning against the wall, now he’s huddled up in the corner, out of the wind.

“Hello,” I say.

He looks up when I come in. “Molly, isn’t it?” he says. “I wondered if you were coming back.” He holds out his hand and I come and sit beside him.

In the evening light, I can see his legs clearly. They look awful. I can see the stains and tears, all the way down. There’s a strong smell, like something’s rotting, and flies are crawling about on his strange trousers. I look away.

“Do they hurt?” I say.

He yawns and shakes his head again.

“Should I get an ambulance? Someone to help?”

“An ambulance wouldn’t find me,” he says.

We sit there quiet together, watching the dust dancing in the sunlight from the door.

“I’ve brought you some stuff,” I say. “I thought you might— I mean, if you want— You don’t have to have them if you don’t want them.”

I pass the carrier bag over to him. He looks at it, puzzled, and pulls out a tin of peaches. He turns the tin around, sniffs at it. His mouth gives a funny twitch at the picture, then he lays it on the ground.

“It’s pretty,” he says. “Thank you.”

“It’s a tin of peaches!” I say. “Don’t you know what a tin is?”

He looks at me, expectant. I tug at the ring-pull and open the tin for him.

“Look. Peaches.”

He dips a grimy finger into the peach-juice and touches his tongue to it, cautious. I watch him. A look of surprise crosses his face and he laughs out loud.

“It’s sweet!”

“You can eat it. I brought you a fork – look.”

But he doesn’t want the fork. He digs his fingers into the syrup and eats the peach-slices whole, juice running down his chin. I know exactly what Grandma would say about eating with hands as dirty as his, but he seems happy.

He shakes his head when I show him the rest of the food in the bag.

“Enough. It’s enough. Thank you.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” I say, and he shakes his head.

I’m puzzling over this when I notice something else. Something is growing out of the soil beside him. A tree. A baby tree. A sapling.

It’s almost as tall as him. And I’m almost certain it wasn’t there last time.

“Where did that come from?”

He looks up; lifts his hand and touches the branch above his head. It grows – I swear it – stretching out like it wants to wrap itself around his fingers. He draws his hand down and the new branch follows.

And I notice other things. There’s grass growing around his feet that wasn’t there before. And the ivy crawling up the wall – there’s more of it behind him. Was it always like that? Or—

He sees me staring and laughs. He holds out his hands. They’re empty. He blows on them and something begins to grow, out of nothing. A seed. A little green sprout. Leaves. A flower.

A bluebell.

“For you,” he says and gives the flower to me.

I hold the bluebell very carefully in the palm of my hand. I’m afraid it’ll vanish if I move.

He’s watching my face. He seems pleased. He sits back.

“No,” he says. “I don’t need your food.”