The Healing Tree

THE HEALING TREE

By

MARGARET KNIGHT

Published by Sheraton Media at Smashwords

Copyright Margaret Knight 2009

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‘The Healing Tree’ is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. There are references to an actual murder and trial which are based on published accounts in the newspapers of the day. Though there are passing references to actual persons, the characters in this novel are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

Cover illustration by Michael Goodman

Smashwords edition published by

Sheraton Media

Christ Church ,Barbados

sheratonmedia@hotmail.com

ISBN 978-0-9822477-6-1

To Rita

CHAPTER ONE

Dance, ballerina, dance, and do your pirouette in rhythm with your aching heart. Dance, ballerina dance, you mustn't once forget a dancer has to dance the part.

Only this ballerina would never dance again.

On Thursday, December 23rd, 1948, we were all sitting at the breakfast table - my father, mother, sister and I - when the telephone rang, as telephones are wont to do at awkward moments. My father rushed to answer it.

The telephone and the triangular box hanging on the wall, called Rediffusion, were my father's two great sources of joy in life. In fact, throughout Barbados, in all sorts of households, Rediffusion was a great source of joy. From the telephone he could get all the latest gossip - mostly from Mr. Thomas, a delightfully pudgy little man who was Dad's best friend. I always thought that the little man had hailed from Ireland where he had spent his former years as a leprechaun dwelling at the bottom of someone's garden in Galway Bay.

From the Rediffusion box on the wall he got the BBC news and cricket. He didn't give a damn about anything else. If my sister, Alison, and I wanted to prance about to a calypso originating from ZFY Georgetown, or Radio Trinidad, relayed through Rediffusion, he scowled at us and turned the sound off, leaving the wretched box hanging on the wall like some forgotten artifact.

There was a gasp from my father on the phone. Then, Oh, my God. Oh, Lord, how terrible.

My mother looked up from her act of delving a spoon into her cornflakes, and said, What? What has happened? She looked at Alison (older than me by two and a half years) first, and then at me. Why, I don't know. Was she perhaps assuring herself that her two daughters were present and accounted for?

My father put down the phone and took off his eyeglasses. We were all staring at him. He put back on his glasses. He sat down heavily in his chair. We continued to stare at him.

The woman who teaches dancing has been murdered.

My mother gasped. Which one? There were two who taught dancing.

Myra Murray. Or Greenland. Yes, that's it - Mrs. Greenland. Husband is Arthur Greenland.

My mother swallowed her mouthful of cornflakes and continued to stare at my father. In fact, a lot of staring was going on. I stared at Alison and she stared at me, and then at my mother. I stared at my mother. She shook her head and said, No, Lawrence, that can't be. Such people don't get murdered.

Don't be stupid, Betty. What do you mean by 'such people'?

Mum shoved her cornflakes bowl aside. Her appetite had suddenly deserted her. She pushed back her chair and got up from the table. "What I mean, Lawrie, is, well, middle class people. She owns and runs a dancing school. It's not as if she was …" she did not finish the sentence, but made her way over to the telephone.

She married an Englishman, said my father. And we don't know his background, do we? Englishmen come to Barbados with fancy Oxford accents and then when you hear them shout, you can tell they were born within the sound of the Bow Bells.

I coughed and spluttered. It took me back to my school days in England, from which I had only just returned. It reminded me of a lovely girl in Fourth Form who had had the misfortune to be born within the sound of the Bow Bells and it had taken me over a year to discover why the other girls snubbed her.

I had miraculously reached Fifth Form, sat my Cambridge School Certificate, had passed, and that was that. There was something called matriculation, but I didn't make that grade.

My father, who was in Barbados, wrote to my mother in England, and said, Well, Alison has done her Higher Certificate in Sixth Form and got through well, but Virginia - well, Ginny is more interested in climbing trees and riding horses and bicycles than in academics, and at least she's passed the School Certificate, so I think it's time to bring the two of them home.

Home meant Barbados. Home meant a rambling old plantation house called Pudding Hall on the borders of the parishes of St. George and St. Michael. My father had an affinity towards plantation houses, which he was quite happy to rent and inhabit, as long as someone else was managing the plantation. Alison (mostly we called her 'Ally') was born in 1929 at Sunrise Plantation House, which was owned by my father's grandfather, and I was born during a frightful thunderstorm in October, 1931 at Halletts Plantation House, Black Rock, St. Michael - a far more lowly location. My father did not own any of these plantations.

Alison got a job at Barclays Bank, Bridgetown, in the days when Bank clerks worked bloody hard. Banks closed to the public at 3.00 p.m., and from then until whatever ungodly hour of night the staff finished, they were rooted to their desks slogging away updating peoples' accounts and trying to balance books. She worked hard, did old Alison.

Me? My father arranged with his good friend, Dr. Barry Bradleigh, to take me on as an apprentice at a Diagnostic Clinic and Laboratory in Makepeace Road. Until she decides what she wants to do with her life. My father's words.

So there we were, carrying out all the early morning rituals - breakfast, shower, dress, go to work. Except Mum. She stayed at home and organized the cook-cum-housemaid, (they called them servants in those days). Of course this morning had been an exception, because a ballerina lady who taught middle class girls to dance had been murdered.

My father finished his Quaker Oats, had some toast and a soft-boiled egg in a dainty little eggcup with a red rooster on it, and then disappeared into the kitchen to open the back door for the cook to come in. My mother was chatting up her sister on the phone and giving her the horrible news. She sniffled a few times and wiped her eyes. Soft-hearted soul, old Betty.

After everyone had showered and dressed for work and Alison smelled of Lily of the Valley perfume, Dad brought the Austin out of the garage and we all jumped in. He never drove over thirty miles an hour and he tooted the horn as often as he could. Drove me up the wall, that did. From Pudding Hall, he drove down Two Mile Hill and when he passed Ilaro Court, the enormous home of Lady Carter, he tooted twice, as if he thought her head would appear over the wall and she would wave and shout, Hello, Lawrence!

I wished I could drive, so that I could kidnap the old Austin one Sunday and drive it - at sixty miles per hour - from Pudding Hall to St. Lucy and back, without tooting the horn once. Do the poor old thing a world of good.

Dad kept shaking his head and muttering, What a hell of a thing. Hope the police catch the murderer.

Ally got dropped off first, at Barclays Bank in Broad Street, and then Dad drove me to the clinic, where I would go through my daily ritual of testing pee, blood and other weird things. Best of all I liked peering at bacteria through the microscope, and there was a brand new high-powered one in the lab that I spent hours on, until the lab technician chased me off it.

As I walked into the building and passed through the waiting room, I heard Dr. Barry Bradleigh's voice. He was shouting at poor Delia, his assistant. Jesus Christ! The waiting room is full of nuns. Do something about them, Delia.

The waiting room - at least when I passed through it - contained two rather contented-looking nuns, with sweet smiles on their faces.

Barry Bradleigh was a brilliant doctor, if a little eccentric and irrational at times. His bark was far worse than his bite. His diagnostic and remedial methods were often puzzling to his many patients who were more used to the mundane manners and orthodox medical treatments of most doctors in Barbados, but when they found he was curing them of their various illnesses, they sang his praises.

Barry Bradleigh's wife, Irene, like him, was a workaholic. Tall and slim, and always had a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She was totally unpretentious. She was in and out of the lab and up and down like a yo-yo from morning till evening. Her specialty was histology and entomology, and she had her own microscope. She was also something of a botanist and seemed to know everything there was to know about plant life. They were a very loving couple, Barry and Irene.

Jiggs was perched on a bench, peering into the high-powered microscope. Jiggs, whose real name was Rudolph, was the laboratory technician, and he had an infectious laugh that you could hear all over Makepeace Road from the open windows of the lab. You did not need to know what Jiggs was laughing about, you just joined in and laughed too.

Jiggs burst out laughing and his head bobbed up from the microscope at the same time. He clicked his fingers and exclaimed, Yes! I knew you had gonorrhea, you dirty old fart. At the same time he saw me coming through the lab door, and immediately pulled the offending slide out from under the microscope. (Just so's I couldn't go noseying around later, to see who had gonorrhea.)

Hey, Ginny, he said, cheerfully.

Hey yourself, Jiggs. What are you up to?

Jiggs smiled and said, Nothing you need to know about and he sauntered over to his little corner where he kept things he wanted hidden from Janice and me. Janice was the other apprentice lab technician.

Janice was already in the lab, mucking about with blood samples. She turned and greeted me. Hey, Ginny. Heard about the murder?

Before I could answer, Jiggs exploded. Jesus Christ! I had a feeling something bad was going to happen to that woman.

Janice and I gaped at him, and we both said, What?

But Jiggs kept his counsel thereafter. He shook his balding head, gave Janice a big wink, and said, I ain't said nothing.

Jiggs was very fond of Janice and on a number of occasions, I saw him whispering in her ear. Oh, I don't mean that he actually fancied her, because from what I knew of Jan, I don't think she would have encouraged that. But Jiggs confided in Janice - that was obvious.

Just then, Dr. Barry appeared in the lab, singing at the top of his voice, The girl that I marry will have to be as soft and as pink as a nursery. He sang a lot, come to think of it. He neither looked left nor right to say good morning to cat nor dog. Instead he marched over to Jiggs, clapped him on the shoulder and asked, That test. Positive or negative?

Jiggs burst out laughing again. Positive like hell, doc. Dr. Bradleigh did not laugh. He turned, looked in the general direction of where Janice and I were standing, and, as if seeing us for the first time, said, You girls okay? and out he pranced before we could reply.

Irene burst into the lab. Hey, everybody. Heard about poor Myra Greenland?

We all nodded, and hung our heads in some semblance of solemnity, I suppose. A murder was a terrible thing, and Barbados had rather a low record when it came to murders, especially of white people.

Having dispensed with the News of the Day, Irene looked at Janice and me and said, I need some more frogs. Irene needed frogs to do pregnancy tests. Janice and I were the designated frog-catchers. We had to arm ourselves with cages and visit various ponds around the island, wade in, wearing Wellington boots and snatch up frogs from their humdrum resting places - usually under lily pads. Mind you, I don't think the frogs thought their lives were humdrum, and did not just sit there on, or under lily pads wearing an expression of come and get me. They mostly ducked out of the way and with speedy kicks of the back legs, scooted off to less dangerous places.

Janice taught me how to hold a frog. You had to grab it at the back of the neck and hold it facing away from you - unless you wanted to be half blinded by the jet of juice that squirted out from their backsides. Sometimes the little critters puffed up so big that it was difficult to keep a hold on their fat necks.

Janice had a car, lucky gal. An Austin, but a newer one than my father's, and more comfortable. She also drove a good deal faster than my old man. Austins were popular in Barbados. So off we went in her car, heading to - of all places - Government House. Irene had already obtained permission for us to raid the lily pool there.

The Governor's A.D.C. met us and escorted us to the pool. Jolly Englishman, he was. Full of Oh, jolly good show and Right-ho and all that. Janice had raided the pool before, but I hadn't. She introduced us. The A.D.C. rubbed his hands together and said, Oh, jolly good show. One more froggy-catcher, what! The little chappies were very vocal last night. Must rush. You know the routine, Jan. Help yourselves. Cheerio and pip-pip, and off he went to bury himself in the fancy Government House building. I mumbled Tootle-pip to his receding back.

I looked around me. This was the first time I had been to Government House. The parents got invited to Open Evenings and cocktail parties occasionally, but in those days parents were not expected to tote children - rambunctious or not - around with them to Grown Up Do's.

Government House was certainly an impressive building, and the enormous grounds were laid out in lawns, flowering shrubs and trees.

I grabbed gingerly at a medium sized frog, but he scuttled away and hid under a lily pad. Janice manhandled a huge brute that puffed up and squirted a jet of fluid from its bum. She dropped it into the wire cage, then grabbed the one that was hiding from me. She handed it to me, and I felt a bit squeamish and made a face. All in all we robbed Government House lily pool of five frogs. They scrambled over each other in an effort to escape from the cage, but the poor critters were well and truly imprisoned. Needless to say, when Irene had finished her experiments, they were released to go hopping off, looking for a new home.

* * * *

Back at the lab, Irene's head was buried in one microscope, whilst Jiggs's head was buried in another. Jiggs was humming away to himself and Irene was talking to bugs unseen to the human eye.

The lunch bell rang, and we all made a dash to the lunchroom, which was on the ground floor of the Clinic. Upstairs were ten rooms for patients, and a nursery for newly born babies.

There was a long table, which seated about ten persons, including Jiggs, Janice and me. It was presided over by Dr. Barry, and Irene sat next to him on one side, whilst his partner, Dr. Goodland sat on the other. Delia from Reception joined us. The atmosphere was always jolly with Irene and Barry telling jokes - sometimes rude ones.

Today's luncheon was an odd mixture. It was actually our Christmas lunch, with lashings of ham and turkey and all the trimmings, and it should have been an especially jolly occasion, but it was marred by the news of the murder of Myra Greenland. Irene had known her quite well.

Delia piped up, I heard, via the grapevine, that it seems to have been a burglar who did it, but the police are investigating.

Irene raised her glass and said, Ho-hum, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. I don't know what Irene's glass contained, but because it was Christmas, we had all been offered alcoholic drinks. Janice and I, the two youngsters, did not have to work the next day - Christmas Eve, but I stuck to lemonade and so did she.

Irene said, Happy Christmas, everybody.

We all raised our glasses and replied, Happy Christmas.

CHAPTER TWO

The Advocate newspaper of Friday, December 24th, shouted the headlines: Engineer's Wife Stabbed to Death.

Lawrence had made it his business to spread open The Advocate while we were having tea that afternoon, and he began reading out loud - to all who cared to listen:

Thirty-seven year old Mrs. Frances Greenland, wife of A.S.H. Greenland of Burnham, Bishop's Court Hill, was fatally stabbed in the refrigerator room of her residence yesterday morning about 2 o'clock.

Betty interrupted: In the refrigerator room? What would she be doing there are two o'clock in the morning?

Lawrence signed impatiently. For God's sake, Betty, how would we know? Maybe she went to get a drink of water, or milk, or something. It's irrelevant, surely? May I continue now? And without waiting for an answer, he continued reading:

"It is stated that a burglar, making his escape from the house was the person who did the stabbing.

Mrs. Greenland bore two stab wounds on the left side of the neck and Dr. H.L. Massiah, who performed the post mortem examination revealed that death was due to haemorrhage following injuries received and was almost instantaneous".

The phone rang. My father jumped up, flung the newspaper on the table, and went to answer it. When he sat in the chair by the phone, I guessed it was the pudgy little leprechaun. So I grabbed the newspaper and gave my mother and Alison (who looked bored as hell) chapter and verse of what followed of the murder.

It would appear that Mr. Greenland awoke early on the Wednesday morning to find a man in his bedroom tampering with his desk, so he jumped out of bed and chased the man downstairs. The wife came to his assistance and the man tried to escape through the front door, but failed to do so. Then he ran along the passage into the refrigerator room, where he met up Mrs. Greenland, stabbed her and made his escape through an adjoining room.

My mother said, But, wait a minute, I thought Mrs. Greenland was already in the refrigerator room.

Ally and I stared at our mother. Why would you think that? asked Ally.

Well, it says at the beginning of the report that she was in the refrigerator room.

"Oh, come on, Mum, it just says she was stabbed in the refrigerator room; it doesn't say she was already in the refrigerator room, before the stabbing."

My mother shrugged. Well, something doesn't add up to me.

Lawrence returned to the table and wanted to know what the argument was about.

Our brilliant mother here is exerting her legal skills on the Greenland murder, I explained, as I quickly handed the newspaper to my father. From what we could see in the newspaper, it was a pretty long report, so my mother cleared her throat and said, Lawrence, could you précis that thing a bit? She glanced at her watch. Time is getting on.

The old man shot her a nasty look and said, Well, if you all don't want to hear it, then you're free to leave the table. No one moved.

Right. I would appreciate no interruptions, stated Lawrence. Well, it says here that an enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Myra Greenland began yesterday morning before Mr. A.J.H. Hanschell, coroner of District A, and a Jury. Mr. J.H. Wilkinson, who gave evidence said that Myra Frances Greenland was his niece. At 8.30 yesterday morning he saw her dead body at Burton's Funeral Parlour …

The white peoples' funeral parlour, I hissed, under my breath. Unfortunately, my father heard, because I was sitting next to him. He lowered the paper and gave me a fierce look. What did you say?

Um - I said, the right peoples' parlour."

You're a liar, and I've noticed you're developing a disturbing trait, which bears watching. He turned to my mother. Watch her carefully.

A frown appeared on my mother's face, and I could just imagine her thinking to herself, Oh, drat! Now I'll have to watch Ginny, instead of watching a pair of wood doves building their nest in a hanging basket in the verandah.

My father lifted the newspaper once again and continued, all about the Wilkinson bloke identifying the body to one Dr. H.L. Massiah, who performed a post mortem examination. Dr. H.L. Massiah said that about five o'clock yesterday morning he was called to the house of A.S.H. Greenland at Bishop's Court Hill and at the request of the Coroner he saw the body of Mrs. Myra Greenland lying on the floor of the refrigerator room. She was obviously dead and had a mark on the left side of her neck and a few spots of blood on her clothes.

When Dr. H.L. Massiah performed the post mortem examination, he found two stab wounds on the left side of the neck in line from her ear to the middle point of her clavicle. The wounds were about a quarter of an inch in length. He attributed death to haemorrhage and air embolus from the injuries described. The wounds could have been caused by a sharp edged pointed instrument. The Enquiry was adjourned.

My father cast aside the newspaper and looked at everyone as if expecting applause. None was forthcoming. Thereafter, the afternoon procedures continued normally.

Lots of ideas and questions were buzzing around in my head, and one of the first things I remember thinking was the haste with which the lady had been carted off and buried, but, who was I to pass an opinion on such matters? And hadn't my old man just said I was developing some disturbing traits? What disturbing traits? Daring to criticize white people?

Then I thought of the Greenland family and what a ghastly Christmas they had had to suffer, so I daresay they needed to dispose of the body and have it all over and done with as quickly as possible.

* * * *

The family Christmas Dinner was held at Bonnie Braes, the home of two spinster aunts - my mother's sisters. Fanny and Doreen Maxwellton. Aunt Fanny and Aunt Do. Of the wild, fierce clan Maxwellton. It was tucked away in a remote corner of St. Peter parish, and the only 'braes' anywhere in the area were, to my mind, the brays of a donkey belonging to an old geezer who lived in a little chattel house a good quarter of a mile away.

St. Peter parish is, to Barbados, much as Dorset is to England - lush and green, with gentle hills poking up here and there, and the sea on the coast.

Apparently Bonnie Braes had been the family home through generations of Maxwelltons and it scared the living daylights out of me when I was a child. It was haunted, or so all the cousins said, and they made up horrible stories of people walking around with their heads tucked under their arms. I later learned that they had copied that from the ghostly stories of Henry VIII's wives at Hampton Court, England.

They did not have electricity at Bonnie Braes when I was a child, and a dear old soul, named Estelle, who wore a long dress and an apron just as long, used to walk around lighting up all the gas lights hanging from rafters and beams. Estelle by Gaslight, sort of thing.

Aunt Fanny was short and strict and seldom laughed. We were all terrified of her. Aunt Doreen was the opposite - tall and lanky and very sporty. A tennis and netball star. You could easily imagine her throwing the discus. Aunt Fanny quietly played croquet. So there was a tennis lawn for Aunt Doreen and a croquet lawn for Aunt Fanny.

Bonnie Braes was a strangely built house. It was long, and ran from south to north, with all five bedrooms facing the east. (Grandpa and Grandma Maxwellton had eight children). A distinct advantage, actually, because the north east trade winds blow from that direction, so whoever built it had on his thinking cap. At least from that angle. The walls were thick enough to withstand the wildest hurricane.

The large dining room held Aunt Fanny's antique mahogany dining table and all the other accoutrements peculiar to dining rooms. The table seated twenty people, and on this Christmas night it was full to busting with all the aunts, uncles and cousins, and guess what the topic of conversation was - the Greenland murder. What else.

I noticed it hadn't stopped anyone from eating, drinking and being merry. Very merry. I stuffed my guts with turkey, ham, jug-jug and plum pudding, and drank champagne