(A sample chapter from novella, The Juniper Tree.)
© 2007 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
6
I knew I had done something, something awful. I knew that since I was born.
RAYN WAS WAITING for them when they reached White Quill. The white dog warned her and she stood in the sidelight by the front door and watched the long black car glide up to a halt in the drive.
She watched the faces of the man and his ugly child. They didn’t get out right away. The man sat with his hands on the wheel. For awhile the little boy didn’t look at his father. At last he turned to the man, but the man was just staring straight ahead, not talking or moving. He didn’t look mad or sorry, but something had made a rift between those two.
Finally the boy opened his door and went around the house into the woods.
Rayn smiled to herself and walked out to the car.
She opened the door and whispered to Bjorn. She knew the boy could see them through the trees and this gave the moment an extra piquancy of delight.
‘Bjorn! Bjorn!’
Bjorn didn’t answer. She let her wrist trace in the air in front of his face, and his nose wrinkled, smelling her scent, and he looked into her face. There was a lost look in his eyes. He looked like he was younger even than the boy. He whispered back,
‘Rayn…’
She took his beard and kissed him on the mouth. She did it so as to make sure the boy could see her tongue twisting in his father’s mouth like a coiling snake.
‘Don’t talk now, you know you never have to talk with me.’
She slid inside the car and straddled his lap and squirmed around. She did it all quite expertly even though the man’s rolling eyes and lolling tongue disgusted her as it always had.
In the middle of it her head twisted all around on her neck and her eyes caught the little boy crouched behind a tree watching them. Her eyes glared red at him and he ran. He ran through the trees all the way to the cliff and the Juniper Tree.
The child’s pet lamb butted him and he clutched and hugged him. Rayn tried to draw Bjorn’s eyes away but he saw, and she felt his body wilting and she hated him for that weakness.
‘I was mean to Falco,’ said Bjorn.
‘He hates me,’ Rayn said in a little-girl voice, the one she used when she was strongest.
‘Rayn! Falco doesn’t hate you.’
‘He does. He hates me. But it’s all right. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I ought to make it up to him.’
‘He’s got to learn sometime. My Father always lied to me. Mr Money Bags. Do you like this?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Good. Close your eyes then, and let the little sir grow big his own way.’
She leaned in over him and blinded him with her breasts. From the corner of her eye she watched the boy get up and lean into the Juniper Tree and look out at the waves. ‘That’s right,’ she said softly, ‘be that way.’
‘What was that, dear?’
‘Never mind,’ she answered. She stopped any more of his questions with her mouth and tongue.
AFTER AWHILE they were done in the car. When she got out, Rayn had to pull down and smooth out her dress. She helped Dad with his pants. They went around the stone path and in through the glass doors. Dad called to him, but Falco buried his face in the grass and Giorgio’s side until they were in the kitchen.
Rayn struck a match and lit a hurricane lamp. Bjorn stood behind her in the doorway.
‘Power failure?’
‘Well now, I hope not, Mr Hansen.’
She set the lamp down. The orange light fell across the table spread with breads and wine and delicacies.
‘What’s this?’
‘Just a little something for your appetites.’
‘But the children—’
‘I gave Greta her supper hours ago, and packed her off to bed. This is just for us.’
Bjorn lifted Rayn up and laid her across the counter. She stretched and sighed and he went on kissing her. He kissed her throat and down to where her blouse was buttoned. He kissed her wrists and fingers. He kissed her ankles and up to her knees and up higher until he was nosing her skirt over her hips.
Through the window, out in the dark and the rain she could see the boy sitting beside the grave-marker, spying on her as always. The pet lamb huddled against him. But Rayn lay back and closed her eyes and felt the rich man’s mouth on her, and she guided his head silently until she was at last released from tension and care and the sweet, heavy bliss flowed sluggish through her. At least she let him believe that it did.
Later on she heard him go out into the great-room carrying the hurricane lamp and his case. He went to a closet in the back. On the closet floor was where the safe was.
Rayn arose and slipped into the hall. She took a glass of wine and draped his raincoat across her nakedness. She watched him take some papers in a red binder out of his case. He opened the binder and thumbed through the pages. She stepped out into view casually.
He shut the binder and stuffed it into the safe.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked.
‘Come and warm me, Mr Money Bags.’
He crossed to her. Across the room the old ship’s clock struck eight bells, and the dial read midnight.
‘Do you know what day it is?’
‘What day is it, Mr Money Bags?’
‘Your birthday.’
‘Just now?’
‘Um-huh.’
Rayn slid down in his arms.
‘And did Mr Money Bags make lots and lots of money for me today?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Good, I bought three bras today. And a thong teddy. Very bad. Very expensive.’
‘Maybe we should have a sort of budget now. You know, just in case the economy gets worse.’
‘Well now, I’m sure Mr Money Bags needn’t worry over that.’
‘We should start budgeting household expenses – groceries, that sort of thing. You know, Rayn, I have to talk to you about something. It’s about—’
‘What?’
He didn’t answer right away. When he did his voice was changed. ‘Would you like your present now?’
She nodded like a little girl. He led her to the closet. He opened the safe and took out a small wrapped box. Rayn opened it.
‘Bjorn – no! It’s too much.’
She took out of the box a necklace of diamonds strung on a web. He clasped the necklace behind her neck and guided her to the mirror and she let the raincoat hang open and looked at her reflection.
‘Bjorn, now I have everything I ever wanted. If only my Mommie were alive.’
OUT IN THE YARD Falco turned away from the window and went back under the Juniper Tree. The rain started again. He looked down over the cliff.
Far below the waves smashed the rocks.
He blinked against the rain. He wasn’t crying. Not really.
That night was a strange one. It was in the wind and the rain. Most of all it was in the boughs of the Juniper Tree. Falco felt it. He walked around the house in the rain all night long. He felt like he was locked out and he’d never get back in. The thought excited him but it frightened him too. The strange rain fell like little tears changing everything it touched. Even the white dog looked like he felt it.
INSIDE THE HOUSE Tang-Tang lumbered down to the closet door.
Rayn wrapped herself in the man’s raincoat. He was asleep on the floor. She saw Tang-Tang at the half-open safe.
She went to the safe and started closing it when something caught her eye.
She took out the red binder with the papers assigning Tall Pines to the ugly little boy Falco.
Rayn replaced the binder and closed the safe, softly.
She looked down on her husband asleep on the floor.
Her face was cold and wet.
Upstairs in her crib Greta woke up crying. She must have felt it too.
Rayn took the lamp upstairs with her. She left Bjorn lying on the floor in the dark.
She put the lamp down and held Greta.
‘Mama, Mama!’
‘I’m here, little goose, tell Mama all about it. Was it a belly-ache? Was it a dinosaur?’
‘It was a bird in the Juniper Tree.’
‘Hush now, there’s no cause to fear, the bird wasn’t real.’
She stroked Greta’s hair and kissed her. She rocked her in her arms.
‘I’ll look after you, Greta. I’ll take care of my little goose. Does he think he can rob you, and give everything to that freak because he’s a boy and you’re a girl?’
She began to sing a little lullaby, making up the words as she went along.
‘Mr Money Bags sat on a wall,
Mr Money Bags had a great fall,
and all the King’s horses,
and all the King’s men,
couldn’t put Money Bags together again.’
