The Tree of Heaven | Page 6

want to go to it.
He had no idea why he didn't want to go except that he didn't.
"What'?" said Frances. "Not when Nicky and Dorothy are going?"
He shook his head. He was mournful and serious.
"And there's going to be a Magic Lantern"--
"I know."
"And a Funny Man"--
"I know."
"And a Big White Cake with sugar icing and Rosalind's name on it in
pink letters, and eight candles--"
"I know, Mummy." Michael's under lip began to shake.
"I thought it was only little baby boys that were silly and shy."
Michael was not prepared to contest the statement. He saw it was the
sort of thing that in the circumstances she was bound to say. All the
same his under lip would have gone on shaking if he hadn't stopped it.
"I thought you were a big boy," said Frances.
"So I was, yesterday. To-day isn't yesterday, Mummy."

"If John--John was asked to a beautiful party he wouldn't be afraid to
go."
As soon as Michael's under lip had stopped shaking his eyelids began.
You couldn't stop your eyelids.
"It's not afraid, exactly," he said.
"What is it, then?"
"It's sort--sort of forgetting things."
"What things?"
"I don't know, Mummy. I think--it's pieces of me that I want to
remember. At a party I can't feel all of myself at once--like I do now."
She loved his strange thoughts as she loved his strange beauty, his
reddish yellow hair, his light hazel eyes that were not hers and not
Anthony's.
"What will you do, sweetheart, all afternoon, without Nicky and
Dorothy and Mary-Nanna?"
"I don't want Nicky and Dorothy and Mary-Nanna. I want Myself. I
want to play with Myself."
She thought: "Why shouldn't he? What right have I to say these things
to him and make him cry, and send him to stupid parties that he doesn't
want to go to? After all, he's only a little boy."
She thought of Michael, who was seven, as if he were younger than
Nicholas, who was only five.
* * * * *
Nicky was different. You could never tell what Michael would take it
into his head to think. You could never tell what Nicky would take it
into his head to do. There was no guile in Michael. But sometimes

there was guile in Nicky. Frances was always on the look out for
Nicky's guile.
So when Michael remarked that Grannie and the Aunties would be
there immediately and Nicky said, "Mummy, I think my ear is going to
ache," her answer was--"You won't have to stay more than a minute,
darling."
For Nicky lived in perpetual fear that his Auntie Louie might kiss at
him.
Dorothy saw her mother's profound misapprehension and she hastened
to put it right.
"It isn't Auntie Louie, Mummy. His ear is really aching."
And still Frances went on smiling. She knew, and Nicky knew that, if a
little boy could establish the fact of earache, he was absolved from all
social and family obligations for as long as his affliction lasted. He
wouldn't have to stand still and pretend he liked it while he was being
kissed at.
Frances kept her mouth shut when she smiled, as if she were trying not
to. It was her upper lip that got the better of her. The fine, thin edges of
it quivered and twitched and curled. You would have said the very
down was sensitive to her thought's secret and iniquitous play. Her
smile mocked other people's solemnities, her husband's solemnity, and
the solemnity (no doubt inherited) of her son Michael; it mocked the
demureness and the gravity of her face.
She had brought her face close to Nicky's; and it was as if her mouth
had eyes in it to see if there were guile in him.
"Are you a little humbug?" she said.
Nicky loved his mother's face. It never got excited or did silly things
like other people's faces. It never got red and shiny like Auntie Louie's
face, or hot and rough like Auntie Emmeline's, or wet and mizzly like

Auntie Edie's. The softness and whiteness and dryness of his mother's
face were delightful to Nicky. So was her hair. It was cold, with a
funny sort of coldness that made your fingers tingle when you touched
it; and it smelt like the taste of Brazil nuts.
Frances saw the likeness of her smile quiver on Nicky's upper lip. It
broke and became Nicky's smile that bared his little teeth and curled up
the corners of his blue eyes. (His blue eyes and black brown hair were
Anthony's.) It wasn't reasonable to suppose that Nicky had earache
when he could smile like that.
"I'm afraid," she said, "you're a little humbug. Run to the terrace and
see if