The Ripping Tree by Nikki Gemmell

Author:Nikki Gemmell [Gemmell, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT FATHERS DO

A scene of strop and shout. Mr Craw is dragging Mouse to the verandah by the ear and the boy is protesting – ‘No, Papa, no’ – as is his mother, begging her husband to stop. Her tightly bound hair is shockingly loose, as if her whole world is unravelling here – ‘Callum, please’ – yet he’s ignoring her and the sense of order that holds his house together is flexing, creaking, fracturing like the Finbar against rocks and all hell is breaking loose.

‘He’s a boy, woman, a boy. How many times do I have to tell you? He needs to grow up. Boys with long hair, girls with trousers, I won’t have it. He’s a freak. You’re all freaks. Flea. Scissors.’

The little boy yowls in pain. And it’s a child and it’s deeply unfair. ‘No,’ Mouse whimpers, and cries in bewilderment. ‘Poss! Help me!’

Mrs Craw catches my eye before her husband does and beckons me to disappear, to get far away from this for my own sake. And in that moment, staring at the monstrous spitting bull of a man snipping and snapping and flinging hair before us all, I realise in a flutter of a shiver that I too am vulnerable here, prey to this man’s anger, his heavy hand, his impotence. My questions have turned him into someone else and it feels like nothing will stop him right now, and I have contributed to it.

Mouse sees me and cries out.

Mr Craw turns. ‘Well, well. Here she is. The girl who began it all.’ He slices off another tendril of his boy’s golden hair and his mother clutches her head and wails as if it were her own locks being butchered, and she can’t bear it.

‘Stop! Please!’ I stride forward without thinking. I have to do this.

‘Go away, girl.’ The man is holding the scissors in one hand and his son in the other and speaking as if he doesn’t quite trust himself or what he might do next.

I tell him to let Mouse go, the boy is good and has done nothing wrong, he doesn’t deserve this.

‘Flea,’ he barks then turns to the son and cuts another lock and flings the hair like a pale whip across the lawn as Flea comes up swiftly and quietly and with an iron firmness forces me away with no talk and I cannot break his grip and I know the bruises will be blossoming on my arms yet I do not cry out, I do not.

Flea tells me to stay in my room. As he leaves I ask him if he knows where my knife is, but he just throws his hands in the air as if he has no idea and to leave him right out of this. So. Not on my side at all.

As the tide of the day ebbs into darkness Mrs Craw brings a light supper on a tray and the woman’s hair is still loose and her face is reddened but she will not talk, she’s a closed book.

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