The Storyteller's Daughter Read online

  “I’m surprised you have any time for chatting with slugs,” says Mark, snidely, “aren’t you too busy talking to apple trees?”

  I think the wine may also be going to Mark’s head. Until now he has managed to bite his tongue, contenting himself with quiet sniggers and scornful glances. He made no comment when the gardener suggested that envy can be cured with a mixture of lavender and lemon balm, or that native Indian chants encourage rain, or that spitting on a cabbage patch can rid it of ladybirds. But he has no patience with people who spout mumbo-jumbo.

  “You can talk to trees, Ewan?” asks my mother, slouching on the table, leaning close to him. “How fascinating.”

  “It’s not fascinating, it’s crazy!” Mark protests.

  “That depends on how you see it,” says the gardener.

  “I see it from the point of view of a sane person,” laughs Mark, leaning back in his chair.

  “I’d like to talk to trees,” muses my mother, dreamily.

  “You should,” the gardener tells her, “they like it. It helps them grow.”

  “No, Mother, you shouldn’t,” I say, angry at the suggestion. The last thing she needs is encouragement to act strangely.

  “But Darling, if they like it and it helps them grow – ”

  “There is absolutely no scientific reason why trees should grow better just because you’re nice to them,” says Mark, interrupting.

  “Actually,” says the gardener, scratching at his stubble with jagged, grubby fingernails, “there’s been quite a few studies showing that plants respond to human emotion. Cleve Baxter’s report – ‘Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life’ – is probably one of the most famous. You should read it. He tested his plants on a polygraph machine and found that they react to thoughts and threats. And over a thousand different species of plant have been shown to be sensitive to human touch. Darwin started the ball rolling by suggesting that plants possess a central nervous system, based on his observations of the Dionaea Muscipula. That’s the Venus flytrap, by the way.”

  Mark and I stare at him, speechless.

  “I might sometimes have my head in the clouds,” he says, looking straight at me, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my feet on the ground.”

  I feel my face flush and look down at my plate. Mark, clearly annoyed at being shown up by the gardener’s knowledge, takes a swig of wine.

  “Isn’t it fascinating?” says my mother sweetly, entirely unaware that anything is amiss. “Would you like some fruit salad, Ewan?”

  “No thanks,” he says standing up and patting his stomach, “if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a bit of work to finish in the garden before it gets too late.”

  “Oh, no, you’ve worked so hard all day!”

  “Please,” he says raising his hands in protest, “I don’t like to leave jobs half done. I’ll let myself out the back gate when I’m finished. Thanks a lot for dinner. It was fantastic.”

  By the back door he pulls his muddy boots on and thanks my mother again, before heading back out into the garden.

  “Well, wasn’t that lovely!” she beams.

  Mark and I sit in glum silence, like the losing team at a sports match.

  My mother finally senses the tension and her smile fades. “Well, perhaps I’ll go and lie down for while… ” she says awkwardly, disappearing out of the room.

  I start to gather up the plates and run a sink full of water. Mark sits silently at the table, sipping his wine and nursing his bruised pride, before suddenly announcing: “I’ve never heard of this Baxter experiment, have you? I’ll look into it. Probably not a scientifically conclusive study. I’ll contact John Stokes at the university, he’ll know. Who is Baxter anyway? Not a name I’ve heard of… ”

  I am barely listening. Instead, I am watching the gardener through the open kitchen window, digging in the dirt, pulling up weeds and chucking them in a pile on the grass. The sun is just starting to go down, giving a golden-glow to the sun-kissed skin of his sinewy forearms. I see him pick up a frog from among the bean poles, hold it in the palm of his hand and begin talking to it. He points at the garden gate, as if giving the frog directions, then sets the little creature gently down on the grass. It hops away and the gardener resumes digging, trusting that the frog will find its own way out of the garden.

  “Meg?”

  I suddenly realise I haven’t been listening to a word Mark has been saying, and that soapsuds are about to spill over the rim of the sink. I quickly turn the taps off.

  “Sorry?”

  “He’s clearly a complete lunatic, isn’t he? That gardener bloke?”

  Gazing out into the garden again, I just catch a glimpse of the little green frog as it hops out thorough the open garden gate as directed.

  “Oh, yes,” I agree, dutifully, “of course he is.”

  Chapter 6

  ‘What keeps the clouds up?’ I asked you one day.

  ‘The sky, silly,’ you told me.

  We were lying on our backs in our local park, side by side, finding patterns in the clouds. I remember pointing at one that looked just like a rabbit, although you insisted it was a birthday cake and that the rabbit’s ears were candles. Everything always looked like food to you.

  ‘Then what keeps the sky up?’ I asked.

  You were quiet for a moment. ‘Air,’ you said, eventually, ‘like a soufflé.’

  ‘A soufflé?’

  ‘Yes, a soufflé. Place your hand in front of your mouth and breathe on it, like this.’

  You breathed into the cupped palm of your hand and I copied you.

  ‘You feel how warm your breath is? Well, with all the people in the world breathing at once that makes a lot of warm air. And you know how warm air makes a soufflé rise?’

  I nod, solemnly, pretending to know.

  ‘Well, all the warm air from people breathing makes the sky rise in the same way.’

  I was young, too young to question you. You could have told me the sky was held up with safety pins and I would have believed you. I believed everything you told me.

  ‘What would happen if everyone stopped breathing?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think that would happen, Sweetheart.’

  ‘But what if it did? What if just for a second we all stopped breathing at once? Would the sky fall down?’

  ‘I suppose it might.’

  ‘Then what would happen? Would we all get squashed? Would I get squashed like that ladybird when I dropped my book on it by mistake?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t let you get squashed. I’d gather you up in my arms and run to the edge of the earth, and then I’d jump off the earth and out of the way of the falling sky.’

  ‘Would we make it in time?’

  ‘Of course. The sky would fall very slowly, like a soufflé when you stick your fork in it and all the air goes out. Plus, I’m a very fast runner.’

  ‘You’re not that fast,’ I said, ‘I’m faster than you. And anyway, what if you weren’t there with me? What would happen to me then?’

  You rolled over onto your side to face me, and tickled my chin with a daisy.

  ‘I’ll always be there with you, silly,’ you said.

  And as always, I believed you.

  “The thing that attracted me to condensed matter physics,” Mark is telling my mother, “is that it’s about the stuff that surrounds us every day. It’s not about dealing with the very tiny, like particle theory, or the very large, like astrophysics or cosmology, but about all the stuff that comes in between. The good old, everyday, run-of-the-mill stuff.”

  “Well, that sounds fascinating,” my mother smiles half-heartedly, tracing the rim of her coffee cup. “Ah, good morning Darling!”

  She looks relieved to see me as I join them at the kitchen table.

  “Mark’s just been telling me all about quantum conductivity and super mechanics.”

  “Quantum mechanics and superconductivity,” he corrects her.

  She laughs, nervously. “Silly
me! I’m not very good at all this science stuff, am I Meggie? I never understand when Meg’s telling me about human gnomes.”

  “Human genomes, Mother, not human gnomes.”

  “I take it Meg didn’t get her scientific mind from you then, Mrs May?” Mark asks my mother. He says it with a charming smile, but I know he finds her lack of scientific knowledge frustrating. ‘How can people not be interested in the world around them?’ he is always asking me, indignant. He cannot comprehend anyone who cannot grasp the complexities of physics as easily as he can.

  “Oh goodness no, she didn’t get it from me,” says my mother, absent-mindedly adding sugar to her coffee, “science was her father’s thing.”

  I stop pouring orange juice and hold the carton in midair, suspended over my glass.

  “My father liked science?” I ask, astonished at this revelation. “You said he was a chef.”

  My mother starts spreading butter onto her croissant with such ferocity that half of it breaks off and flies across the table, landing on Mark’s lap.

  “There is a scientific element to being a chef you know, Darling,” she says, hurriedly. “Weighing things. Mixing them together. Ovens. Ovens are scientific, aren’t they? All those metal bits and electricity and stuff. Who would like some toast? Coffee? I’ll make a fresh pot.”

  She stands up quickly, taking the coffee pot with her. Mark places the piece of croissant back on her plate and raises his eyebrows at me, enquiringly. I have told Mark very little about my father, other than the fact that he is a deceased pastry chef. I have failed to tell him that this is practically all I know. Mark’s family are so perfect that I’m sure he would find my ignorance about my own father shocking and confusing. He would tell me to demand details, access to family connections – where, when, who, why. It’s your right, he would tell me. But he doesn’t understand how hard it can be, making sense of my world. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to come up against one brick wall after the other, to live in the murky grey somewhere between black and white.

  “Well, wherever she gets her brains from, Meg will certainly be a great scientist,” says Mark, stroking the back of my head affectionately.

  He smiles proudly at me, and I feel my heart flutter, just like it always does when I win his approval. I have sat in on a couple of the lectures Mark has given at the university, discussing the findings of his research, and I have seen how the female students gaze at him, as if he is the source of all knowledge, the oracle. I have seen the way their hands shoot up when he asks a question, desperate for his attention, dying to impress him with their intelligence. But I am the one he has chosen. I am the one whose mind has impressed him, and continues to do so day after day. This is the ultimate commendation. With Mark I know I am smart enough, bright enough, good enough. There is no way any girlfriend of Mark Daly – soon to be Dr Mark Daly – could ever be considered laughable.

  “She’ll be wonderful at whatever she does,” agrees my mother, pouring hot water into the coffee pot, “she has so many skills. She used to love writing and painting, you know. And craft work and acting – ”

  “I was dreadful at all those things!” I scoff, knowing Mark has very little time for the arts. “I was terrible at anything that involved any sort of creativity at all.”

  “Only once you stopped trying. When you were very little you used to adore dressing up and playing at make believe. Don’t you remember?” She sits down at the table again, smiling at the memories that are flooding back to her. “You used to dress up in green tights and my frilly red blouse and pretend you were a rose. You looked so pretty!”

  I frown at her, a warning to be quiet. I don’t want Mark thinking I was some sort of idiot child, the sort who have imaginary friends and believe the bogeyman lives under their bed.

  “I must have looked ridiculous,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t have encouraged me.”

  “One Christmas, you knocked on every door in our block of flats dressed as Santa Claus and told all our neighbours that you’d come from Bethlehem to find the baby Jesus.”

  “I was obviously confused. You shouldn’t have let me wander around on my own like that talking such rubbish.”

  “I didn’t even notice you’d gone until old Mr Ginsberg brought you back by the hand. Oh, poor Mr Ginsberg! One day you startled the life out of him by dressing up in my big, brown woolly jumper and growling at him as he stepped out of the lift. Apparently he thought you were a bear, although I’m not sure why he thought a bear would be wandering around on the fourth floor!”

  Suddenly I can’t help myself. I clamp my hand over my mouth and let out a loud snort as I try and suppress my giggles.

  “Oh, you do remember, don’t you?” laughs my mother, grabbing my arm.

  I nod and cover my face with my hands as tears of laughter spring to my eyes. I have vague memories of that itchy brown jumper pulled up over my head, and Mr Ginsberg’s look of terror as I pounced at him. I peek through my fingers at Mark who isn’t laughing at all.

  “You could have given the poor man a heart attack,” he says, seriously.

  I bite my lip hard. “It was very silly, I was only little though. And it was funny.”

  “It wouldn’t have been funny if the poor man had dropped down dead. Over two hundred and thirty thousand British people die of heart attacks every year,” he informs me.

  I compose myself and nod seriously. “You’re right. It wouldn’t have been funny at all if I’d killed him.”

  My mother stops laughing and takes a sip of her coffee. Mark takes a bite of his croissant and chews slowly, while I fold my napkin into little squares.

  “Anyway,” says my mother, “you suddenly lost interest in anything creative. Just like that. One day you came home from school, put all your toys in a box and declared it was time to grow up.” She shakes her head and smiles wistfully. “You must have been all of eight-years-old. I really don’t know what happened.”

  I gaze into my coffee, suddenly feeling rather sad. Eight-years-old sounds so young to want to grow up, to want to put aside the magic of childhood.

  “Waste of time, the arts,” declares Mark.

  I see my mother’s lips tighten. She loves art, music, theatre, poetry. She says they ‘take her out of herself’ whatever that is supposed to mean.

  “Oh, I don’t think they’re a waste of time,” she says, with a polite smile.

  “No artist is ever going to find a cure for cancer, and no actor is ever going to discover the secrets of the universe. Meg, on the other hand, is going to be able to make a real difference to the world.”

  “She already does,” says my mother, sharply. Mark looks up at her, surprised by the edge to her voice. She smiles quickly.

  “Of course she does,” he agrees, “I understand her end of term paper caused quite a debate in the faculty, and if you can get people thinking, you’re half way there. She’s a very intelligent girl.” He squeezes my knee and I smile lovingly at him.

  “And a funny, compassionate and sweet girl, too,” adds my mother.

  Mark nods distractedly as he picks at the crumbs on his plate. My mother watches him closely, waiting for his agreement. I want to intervene, to change the subject and stop them discussing me like I’m not here, but instead I find myself also waiting for Mark’s reply. What does he think of me? I mean, apart from finding me smart and intelligent and intellectually challenging? What does he actually think of me? Bizarrely, I realise he has never said, and, even more bizarrely, I realise I have never wondered.

  “Oh yes, she’s lovely,” he says, realising it’s his cue to speak. He takes a napkin and wipes his mouth. I watch him, waiting, wanting more, but when he leans back in his chair, sighs and pats his stomach I realise he’s finished.

  My mother reaches across the table and rubs my hand, smiling indulgently. “She always was a sweet girl. When she was little she was so sweet I used to dip her toes in my tea. It saved me a fortune on sugar. I used to lend her out to the neighbours. ‘
Don’t bother buying sugar,’ I used to tell them, ‘my daughter’s the sweetest thing around and she doesn’t rot your teeth.’”

  “Mother,” I scold, sharply pulling my hand away from hers.

  “The neighbours would knock on our door at all hours of the day with cups of tea or coffee, and they’d say ‘Can we get some sweetener?’, and I’d dip one of Meg’s tiny fingers or toes into their cup – ”

  “Mother!”

  I can feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment. It’s bad enough that Mark knows my mother is insane without him having to witness her rantings first hand.

  “Then one day I noticed that Meg’s middle toes were starting to wither away. Have you ever noticed, Mark, how Meg’s middle toes are a little too short? It was all that dipping them in hot drinks that was the problem. Well, when I realised what was happening I had to stop – ”

  “Mother!” I snap, angrily. “Mark doesn’t want to hear any of your ridiculous stories. Stop embarrassing yourself!”

  My mother stares at me, silent and abashed. I am so ashamed. Whatever must Mark think of us? Why must she do this? Why must she make us look like such fools?

  Slowly she stands up, her cheeks flushed, her hands fumbling to gather up her cup and her plate.

  “I must go and get on with things,” she says, quietly, “you don’t want your silly mother sitting here rambling on all day.” She gives an embarrassed chuckle and goes to leave, but just before she gets to the door she turns to me, “I just thought Mark might like to know something more about you.”

  “He already knows everything about me that matters,” I say, annoyed.

  She gives a little smile and I wonder why, when she is the one who talks such nonsense, I am the one who feels like a liar.

  Once she has gone, Mark shakes his head in disbelief. “Blimey, what a story!” he laughs. “I’m relieved to hear you take after your father, because your mother is crazy!”

  I feel hurt. How am I meant to respond to that? She might be a little strange, but she is still my mother. I look at Mark shaking his head in dismay, his gorgeous pearly white smile conveying his amusement. He is so intelligent, so confident, so everything I would like to be.