Tree of Hands Read Free Page A

involved in the theft rendered her gift, so some psychiatrist had said, more valuable in her own eyes. Since then the manifestations of her condition had been many and various: sporadic violence, divorcement from reality, inconsequential ‘mad’ acts . . .
    James turned over, sat up and gave an angry yell, rubbing his eyes with his fists. His cries turned to coughing with a rattle in his chest. Benet picked him up and held him against her shoulder. His chest was a sounding box that made almost musical notes. An idea which had been taking shape of asking people round for drinks – a way of passing the evening and quite a good way now Mopsa was behaving so rationally – no longer seemed feasible. James had a bad cold and would need her attention all evening.
    The house felt very warm. She was glad she had had thecentral heating system overhauled before she moved in. Mopsa, unpacking her case, her bedroom door open, looked the epitome of a sensible, rather ordinary, housewife. No doubt it was a part she was acting, had perhaps been acting for years. Roles of various kinds had been common with her in the past, all of them seemingly having coalesced into this form. Or was this the real Mopsa, emerging at last from shed layers of psychotic personae?
    Now it was even as if her true name, the mundane Margaret, would have suited her better than that which evoked connotations of wildness and witchcraft, ancient familiars, ducking stools, eye of newt and toe of frog. It was not from
Macbeth
though but
The Winter’s Tale
that she had named herself when playing the part of Mopsa in a school production at the age of fifteen. Familiar with it as a mother’s name, as others might be with a Mary or Elizabeth, Benet nevertheless suddenly saw it as fantastic, incongruous, something that should have been disposed of at the same time as that fleece of blond hair. Mopsa’s face, a thin and pointed face, always witchlike, though in Benet’s childhood that of a young and beautiful witch, had undergone some blurring of the features that was perhaps part of an ageing process. The jawline was no longer hard and sweeping, the lips were less set. The dowdy haircut made her look very slightly pathetic but possibly no more so than any woman of her age who had no particular purpose in life and was not very well or much loved or needed.
    Benet was surprised to find her down in the kitchen making tea for herself. Mopsa generally expected to be waited on wherever she was. Once James was better, Benet thought, they would all go out together. He was almost old enough to be taken to places of interest, to begin anyway. Lunch somewhere nice after Mopsa had been for her hospital appointment and then if the weather were as good as it had been that day, they might go to Hampton Court. Little children became ill and well so quickly, she had already learned that. It wasn’t going to be easy gettingthrough this evening. In a day or two she might come to find hiring a television set essential.
    â€˜When is his bedtime?’ Mopsa said.
    â€˜About six-thirty usually but it obviously isn’t going to be tonight.’
    â€˜You spoil him.’
    Benet made no answer to that and Mopsa began to talk of the complexities of getting to the hospital where the first tests were to be carried out. It was such a long way and the underground system had ‘all changed’ since she had lived in London. She studied a tube map and a street guide. Benet said of course she would take her by car, and if James wasn’t well enough to come, she would find someone to sit with him.
    When she had been living in her flat in Tufnell Park, a baby-sitter had sometimes been arranged but that was from the block of flats next door where teenage girls abounded, all wanting to earn. Here it was different. She knew no one. She didn’t even have friends with small children except Chloe who was currently away on holiday.
    Mopsa, never lacking in