She thought of herself at sixteen, poring over those exercise books, maths problems squished as nonsensically as dead ants on the page. Pointless, all of it. Shell had snuck down the shop to buy something to take her mind off things, and there met a lanky streak of piss with a bicycle, leaning against a wall with a roll-up sticking out of his yap. The youngster seemed to think he knew absolutely everything, and although there was the odd sideways look, he showed no real interest in Shell, which intrigued her all the more.
Because she wasn’t beautiful. She knew that and was fine with it. Beautiful girls were never taken seriously. They weren’t grounded. They rarely developed wit or clever tricks. And in any case who needs looks when you’ve sex appeal? Shell was clear-eyed: she knew her face was too plump, like an over-filled water balloon, still blokes wanted her. That made it all right.
She had worn the boy down until he offered her the ride she’d hoped for from the start. Astride the saddle with her legs splayed, her groin clenched the leather, her fingernails sunk deep into Arthur Newman’s cardigan as he stood on the pedals and clattered them down the rec. It had beaten revision. Shell smoked her first cigarette that day and put her tongue so far down Arthur’s throat that he had to pull away and splutter. When she was young Shell was as shy as Lawrence in many respects, but sex or the promise of it always drew her out into the open. Nothing else was important then, not school, family or the prospect of what she’d one day do. All there was, was living and music and boys, in particular that ambivalent lad who’d promised to call on her the first chance he got, whom, as it turned out, she wouldn’t speak to again for another six years. Waking up with the world to look forward to, that was Shell Newman’s girlhood, and was anything better than being young when you felt as past it as she did?
The wind was beginning to snap as Shell approached Litten Hill. She made her way up the slope, an inhospitable bluff with no grass to speak of, more an abundance of scruff and fern. She pushed through the lengthening sward, ignoring the underwood’s snags, following a path taken recently, she assumed, by her hairless husband and son.
She’d never been one for exercise but walked a lot and was naturally hardy, so made good time. She emerged from the scrub and found herself on the summit. Below her the broken woods spread until they reached the borders of the town. A bird glided low, casting no shadow so deeply was the dying light imprisoned by the clouds.
Voices. Shell pursued them, catching her denims on a bramble. Crouching to untangle herself, she spotted the twin domes belonging to her husband and son, who at times felt more like kith to her than they did kin.
They were bent over a sapling whose red leaves emerged from the bin bag in which its roots had been wrapped. Shell was out of their line of sight, yet close enough to hear their voices carried by the wind.
“You might as well start digging,” Arthur said.
“Here?” said Lawrence.
“Course bloody there.”
Lawrence knelt gingerly on the ground, which made Shell smile. “Dirty earth,” he said, prising a clump of field out and holding it above his head. Shell could see him prodding the muddy roots, the soil presumably showering onto his trousers, because Arthur was saying “Watch them pants or your mam’ll go spare. You know what she’s like at the mo—”
He stopped himself.
Shell’s smile faded.
“Just be careful, will you.”
“Whatever you say.” Lawrence stabbed the trowel into the ground. Winter was over but the North didn’t seem to have registered it yet. The stubborn breeze blew. Shell would have abolished the wind if she could.
She buttoned her jacket at the collar. Arthur, smoking a roll-up, wore an anorak; Lawrence, digging away, was dressed in a parka. Each sported a newly shaven head, warped skulls accentuating open-car-door ears. They must be freezing, Shell thought.
When the hole was big enough Arthur dragged the sapling to it. The sheltered sun had dropped rapidly in the sky and the streetlamps in town and the boxy farmhouses scattered about the hills had begun to emit a bleak, spectral glow.
“Nice leaves them, Dad.”
“Soon as I saw it, I knew it were ours.”
“Where’d you get it?”
Arthur readied the sapling, missing its bin liner floating off in Shell’s direction. Shell stuck a foot out and trapped it, picked it up and stuffed it in her pocket.
Her husband used the trowel to cut around the perimeter of the pot, then began to prise the sapling free with its stem, careful to protect the root ball. He sometimes showed a similar tenderness to Lawrence, and could be careful when he wanted to be. It was one of the first things Shell had ever liked about him.
“Never mind that,” he said.
Removing the sapling had caused some damage to the pot so Arthur tore away the broken section and chucked it, the shape frisbeeing past Shell and jamming in the ground. The root ball began to crumble in his hands.
“Shit.”
“It weren’t?”
“Pipe down. This needs to be in ground by time she gets here.”
“You better not have nicked it, Dad.”
“You what?”
“Nowt.”
“Go see if she’s bloody coming.”
Lawrence trotted down the scarp. While he was gone, Shell saw Arthur drop the sapling into the hole and heft the earth in. There was no sunset. There was only the space between the daylight and the darkness.
Lawrence returned. “She’s not here.”
“Aye, well when she is, make sure you put on a show of it. It’s for all of us is this. Wish I had a bloody camera.”
Bastard would need far more than a camera.
Arthur firmed the sapling in with his boot heel while Lawrence stood a yard or two away, clicking his fingers. Shell knew her husband sometimes found it difficult to look at their son; that thinking too deeply about fatherhood sometimes made Arthur feel like he was going to fall over. She could see it in the way he stamped at the maple’s base now, so decided to put him out of his misery.
“What’s big surprise then?” she said, marching over.
The pair started.
“How long you been there for?” Arthur said.
“Just arrived.”
“Right on schedule.”
“Well, you did say tea time.”
Lawrence pointed at the sapling, a reedy juvenile that bent midway and sent its branches into parts. “He’s got us this,” he said.
Arthur reached for Shell’s hand. “A family tree.”
“Right.”
“Maple.”
“For us do you mean?”
“Course us. We’ll watch it grow. When we need somewhere to think, we’ll come here. It’ll watch over us, Shell. Symbolic, like.”
Shell took her hand back.
Arthur said, “Lawrence and me planted it.”
“I can see that.”
“So what do you reckon?”
“Reckon it’s a nice idea.”
“And?”
“An’ what?”
“Well don’t you want to give it a once over?”
“I am doing, Arthur. It’s a tree.”
“Oh, but it’s more than that, love. It’s—”
“So where’d you get it?” Shell said. This was such a pathetic plan. A try-hard thing to do.
“Bought it.”
“Where from?”
“Threndle House,” said Lawrence, quietly.
“Eh? No,” insisted Arthur.
“Did you?” Shell said. “Because if you did—”
“I didn’t, love—”
“Cause if you did, Arthur…” Shell’s guts bunched. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t have.
“Look, I thought it’d be summat,” said Arthur. “Cause we need summat.”