Tree of Hands Read Free

quiet and read my book.’
    Benet shook her head. The peculiar conditions necessary for writing – some measure of solitude, a contemplative atmosphere, a certain preparation of the mind – she felt unable to explain to anyone not involved in the process, least of all Mopsa. Besides she was in the highly unusual position of someone who had written down some reminiscences and observations – in her case the time in India with Edward – made them into fiction largely for her own amusement and suddenly finds she has produced abestseller. An immediate and enormous bestseller. Now she had to write something else, if not to match
The Marriage Knot
, at least to put up a creditable showing beside it. She was the author of what might prove to be a one-off success faced with the hurdle of the ‘second book’. It didn’t come easily even when she was feeling tranquil and James slept.
    That reminded her, he had been asleep for nearly two hours now. She went upstairs to look at him. He was still sleeping, his face rather flushed and his breathing rough. She could see Edward in his face, especially in the curve of his lips and the modelling of his forehead. One day, when he was grown up, he would have those ‘English gentleman’ looks Edward possessed, flaxen hair, steady blue eyes, strong chin – and perhaps something more than just looks, something more than his father had.
    Waiting for him to wake, she stood by the window and watched the setting sun. The sky would become red only after the sun had gone down. Now it was a dark gold, barred with grey, the waters of the Vale of Peace pond sparkling with points of light. A row of Monterey pines on the farther bank stood black and still against the yellow and grey marbling. A good place to live, a fine place for James to grow up in. She had chosen wisely.
    Was there some feature of that view, the row of pines perhaps, the sunset, or simply thinking of childhood and an environment for it, that brought back that awful afternoon with Mopsa? She hadn’t thought of it for years. Now she remembered it very clearly, though it was nineteen or twenty years ago, but did she remember what had really happened? It had been the first manifestation of Mopsa’s madness, her paranoid schizophrenia, that Benet had known. She was eight and the cousin who was with them only three or four. Mopsa had taken them into the dining room of the house they lived in in Colindale and locked the door and bolted it and then phoned Benet’s father at work to say she was going to kill the children and then herself. Or had Mopsa only threatened to remain shut inthere with the children until some demand of hers was met? The true version was something between the two probably. Why, anyway, would a dining-room door have a bolt on it? But Benet could very clearly remember Mopsa taking knives out of a drawer, the little cousin screaming, Mopsa pulling heavy pieces of furniture, a sideboard, some other sort of cabinet, across the french windows. Most of all she remembered the door coming down, splintering first, and her uncle breaking through, then her father. They had brought no outside aid; shame and fear of consequences had no doubt prevented this. No one had been hurt and Mopsa had become quite calm afterwards so that one wouldn’t have guessed anything was wrong with her. Until she had started the compulsive stealing, that had been the next thing. It became impossible to say you wanted anything – anything within reason, that is – without Mopsa stealing it for you. Benet remembered her father admiring a record he had heard in someone’s house, a popular, even hackneyed classical piece, Handel’s
Water Music
most likely. Mopsa had gone to great pains to find that identical recording in a shop, and when she had found it, she stole it, though she could easily have afforded to buy it. She stole to make gifts to those she loved and the element of risk