John wasn’t there. His coat, boots, and that old satchel he didn’t like anyone to touch, were gone. Could he have run away? Might he never come back? For a moment this thought filled her with joy. She would be free from the awful anxiety of never knowing what he would do next. If she waited until morning to tell her parents that he had run off, that would give him a chance to get far away, perhaps so far no one could ever find him. Wouldn’t that be the best for everyone? She went over to the window and pulled back the heavy tartan drapes. The sight of the loch and its glittery black nothingness filled her with dread. What if he’d gone out in the dark and fallen into the water? She realized then that her love for her brother was separate from herself, something that could not be reasoned with nor controlled, a hungry animal that clawed at her heart. He had to be found. As much as he enraged and hurt her, losing him would cause even greater pain.
After several minutes’ knocking on the door of the Balmoral Suite, Dad, wearing his red dressing gown and pungent with whiskey, answered the door. Marion spluttered out her story in such a confusing mess of severed heads and sawdust that it took several minutes for him to understand exactly what had happened. She waited in the corridor while he got dressed.
When he returned in his tan overcoat and driving gloves, he pinched her cheek and said:
“I’ll find him, Chuckles, you go wait with your mother until I get back.”
Mother was lying in the middle of the four-poster bed, the bottle of medication within easy reach on the nightstand. It looked to contain about half the number of pills that they had retrieved from the restroom floor. Marion lay down on the bed next to her.
“Are you worried about John?” she asked.
Though Mother’s eyes were open, she did not seem to be fully awake. Marion reached out and gently took hold of her hand. The older woman flinched and made a funny squealing noise, like a cat does when you accidentally step on its tail, then shook free of Marion’s grasp. Careful not to touch her again, Marion closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
? ? ?
IT WAS ALMOST morning by the time Dad returned. He and Mr. Galloway had found John on The Maid of the Mist, stowed away with a supply of shortbread and bottled Highland Spring water. It was hardly as romantic as running off to sea since the ferry didn’t go anywhere except back to the small pier. He would have spent the rest of his life sailing around the loch in circles.
John was already in the car when they left the hotel. His face was dark with engine smut from the boat, and his eyes had the wary, hunted look of a captured convict. Marion said nothing as she got into the backseat next to him. As Mother approached the car she looked surprised to see him. Opening the rear door, she bent down to speak to him: “John my love, what are you doing in the back? You know that makes you carsick. Get out and I will sit next to Marion.”
MORNING
Marion woke the following morning with a heavy feeling that at first she couldn’t explain. Then she remembered that John had been cross with her the previous evening about Judith and the sycamore tree and how he had gone to bed without saying good night. She lay in bed for nearly an hour mulling over her brother’s mood; it was unbearable when he got like this, but there was no point in trying to talk to him about it—that always made things worse.
Eventually she forced herself to get out of bed and put on her fleecy blue dressing gown and slippers. While brushing her teeth she noticed one of her molars was nagging a little, and when she spat, there was a tinge of blood in the sink. The possibility of a trip to the dentist filled her with dread.
“Why do things always have to be so ugly and mean?” she wondered, “why can’t they just be smooth and sweet for a while?”
It was nearly a quarter past eleven when she managed to get down to the kitchen for her morning cup of tea. While she was waiting for the kettle to boil she looked out of the window. Around the gray skeleton of the sycamore tree was a promising hint of green.
Holding her cup of tea in her hand, she went out into the garden and walked towards the end of the lawn to look more closely at the tree.
“Those are buds and it’s only February too,” she said to herself. “It can’t be dead after all. Judith was wrong.” She smiled, and all of a sudden the ache in her jaw melted away.
A few feet away from the base of the tree she noticed a dark space on the turf. That was the place where Dad had burnt that box all those years ago. How strange, she thought to herself, that the grass had never grown back.
MARION’S WALK
As March progressed and the dense, dark winter became slowly diluted by the promise of spring, Marion found it a little easier to rise in the mornings. Each day she would go to the window and look at the sycamore and, seeing it unbroken, feel relief, as if it were an ailing relative that had survived the night. Then one morning in April she looked out to see sun shining through the branches and a scattering of daffodils around the roots and was filled with a giddy hopefulness, though she couldn’t say exactly what it was she hoped for.
For breakfast, Marion had charred toast and some leftover spaghetti hoops that she found in the fridge. After she was done eating she filled a hot water bottle from the kettle and then went into the living room and lay down on the sofa. She placed the hot water bottle beneath her sweater so it rested on her tummy. The wobbly heat felt good, like a living creature pressed up against her. She wondered how it would feel to have a baby in her stomach and how strange it was to think that another person could grow inside your body. Marion remained on the sofa for nearly an hour, her mind idling from daydream to daydream.
Her brother once said if the human race in general shared Marion’s disposition, it was unlikely they would have evolved much beyond the level of jellyfish. Marion had never had any kind of job. Of course neither she nor John needed to earn a living, they had “family money,” something that had always surrounded and nourished them, like amniotic fluid. If Marion had been required to support herself, it was difficult to imagine what sort of employment might suit her. She got flustered by the slightest pressure, her memory was poor, and anything to do with money or numbers made her so anxious, she would feel physically sick. Her handwriting was unreadable and her spelling atrocious.
Working in a shop or office was as ambitious for her as becoming an astronaut. She found dealing with people unsettling and she got upset too easily or worried she had offended them for no reason at all. Answering phone calls made her jittery with fear. Dad had always said that she was just too sensitive for the big wide world, and more suited to staying at home, so that was what she had done.
Marion heard the front door open then slam shut. John would be off to the Royal Oak public house. He usually visited once a week to play chess in the lounge bar with the other regulars. She just hoped he didn’t have too many pints of beer, as drink put him in a foul mood.