Roots Before Branches Read online

  Roots

  Before

  Branches

  Abigail Tyrrell

  Published by Roots and Branches Publishing

  Copyright Abigail Green 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  LITHIUM

  W hat is the correct way to start telling a story? To set a scene, dive right in, maybe use dialogue? It’s so frustrating finding some place to start when my mind is filled with memories of him, Ezra. I still remember how his hair moved in the breeze, curls dancing lightly, brushing against those sharp cheekbones of his. His hair was the first thing I noticed. Such a dark mass against delicate white skin, Gothic almost. He adopted a beautiful tan during the summer. It was like his epidermis absorbed the sun and wore it like a beautiful golden cloak, accentuating the freckles dotted over his cheeks. I had never known a man to be so breath taking. Even his less than flattering posture had something beautiful about it. My aunt described him as “ungracefully thin” and had turned up her nose when I suggested that he just didn’t know how to hold himself properly. I saw the word ungraceful as a personal insult even though it wasn’t aimed at me. What he needed to know, was that I thought he was the most graceful being I had ever come across. I would spend afternoons on the south terrace watching him get on with his garden chores and admired how he seemed to acknowledge each plant with respect even when he tore them up out of the earth.

  There were times when I would see him talking to himself, not loudly, under his breath, so only he or the plants he was tending to could hear. I wanted him to whisper to me like that. To have his breath against my ear, to have him so close I could smell him. I had a romantic notion that he would have this unique scent that I wouldn’t be able to describe. In reality he smelt of dirt and sweat. And in the winter he had the added essence of smoke from the bonfires Andre insisted he monitored. I would watch how the clouds of smoke would engulf the air from my bedroom window, and could just picture Ezra standing to the side, feeding the fire with the garden debris. Once, it had started to rain heavily and I was sure that it would crush the flames, but no, Ezra stayed by its side and make sure that it kept burning until it was just a smoking patch of ash in the morning. I admired such determination, there was no way I would have stood out there in a downpour just to keep the flames burning. I would learn that Ezra never gave up on anything, no matter how small it was.

  I had once gone to the laundry room with my own bundle of used clothes and saw his clothes sitting there, unwashed, and when I was sure that no one was looking I brought his shirt up to my face and inhaled deeply. I pulled the material away from my face quickly as I realised just how inappropriate I was being, but his scent was locked in my memory from that moment.

  “What are you doing?” His voice hit me like a bullet and the way I recoiled from his clothing must have seemed so odd to him at the time. We had engaged in little conversation before that, so when I had the courage to turn and look at him I didn’t know what kind of expression was going to greet me.

  “You left them on the floor. My aunt won’t let you use the laundry room if you do that.” I hated how timid my voice sounded in comparison to his, and the amused look he had told me that he knew I was lying.

  “I see,” he said and took the shirt from me, standing so uncomfortably close that I felt intimidated. How was he so tall? I wasn’t short by any means, maybe even considered a good height for someone my age, but then he came along, a tall ungracefully thin giant.

  “I will make sure not to leave them on the floor again.” Why had he played along? To save me feeling embarrassed? I didn’t know if it was an act of kindness or if he was mocking me in some way. Still to this day I’ve never met someone so hard to read.

  Before Ezra started working for us everything seemed a lot more mundane. I had moved to live with my aunt when I had just turned sixteen after being accepted into a rather prestigious art school in France. Aunt Hildie had moved to France when she was just eighteen after falling in love with a French man she had met in London. It all sounded like a perfect love story. They met and they just knew that they were meant to be together. My Father told me that back when she was younger, Hildie was rather beautiful. He told me stories about how the other boys he was friends with all wanted to take his sister on a date but none had succeeded. I could picture her now, brown hair in curls, killer red lipstick and a beautiful ditsy tea dress - boys falling over themselves as they drooled after her. Then there was the scandal that she ran away with a French man and got married in secret. Apparently, my Grandparents were furious and never spoke to her again even when she called them to say that her husband, Gabriel, had passed away at the young age of twenty-five. From what I understand his family gave her the house she lived in now and simply asked her never to contact them again after that. The story saddened me. Clearly both families disapproved of their romance, but for no reason that seemed logical. Aunt Hildie lived alone in her large house and never re-married. I often wondered if she had been lonely before I came to live with her, she didn’t seem to have many friends and only had daily contact with her gardener, Andre. She had told me a couple of times that she had always imagined having a son, which was why she was happy for me to go live with her. I didn’t mind being a stand in for the thing that she once thought she could possess, if anything, it felt good knowing that I could maybe give her a glimpse of what it would be like to have a child. She was great, really. She left my tablet out on the kitchen table with a glass of water every morning. She never forgot.

  Andre had been working for my aunt for about ten years. When I was younger and we used to visit with my Dad and brother, I would follow him around the house and gardens, keenly interested in whatever he was doing. If he thought me a bother, he didn’t show it, always explaining how and why he was doing certain jobs. He seemed old even when I had first met him, so it wasn’t a surprise when he went to my aunt for permission to hire a gardener to help ease the load. She had been against it at first.

  “I should just get rid of you if you’re not fit for the job,”

  she had snapped at Andre and he had turned away from her.

  “You do that, Mrs H,” he said simply and I thought she was going to throw her glass of wine at him. She had back tracked fairly quickly, stuttering something about money and that she would find a way to make it work. Losing Andre was unthinkable. The house wouldn’t be able to function without him, not that she would admit that. Andre started by hiring students who were traveling on their gap years from university. Which seemed to work fine for the summers, the town we lived in was perfect for tourists.

  The lanes in the town were small, the stone buildings either side reached up to the sky lazily, each adorned with ivy and other flora’s that decorated them beautifully. Down these lanes were family run shops, simple things that one might need when in town, and of course there was one small cafe that sat on the edge of the town square – extremely popular with the locals. There was an authentic feeling about the town that travelers seemed to love, I put it down to the fact that it seemed that they had stumbled upon a place that had been hidden, as yet untouched by mainstream tourism. If only they knew just how many tourists actually came through in the summer months. Which is why it was so easy for Andre to find people to work for him. From what I understand my aunt didn’t pay them much, as if working in her grounds was enough payment in itself. But no one stayed longer than the summer, and it was in the winter months that the most work needed doing. I had helped Andre some days but I can’
t say that I enjoyed it. I was never going to work doing something physical, I knew that from a young age, I didn’t have the build for it.

  “You’ve got such skinny arms,” she would tut at me and pinch the skin on my biceps with a scowl. Ezra had looked at me the same way when we first met. Having any one look at me in a judgmental way was a strange thing for me. It would either encourage me to work out, to spend hours working on changing my body, or make me pull at the elastic band I kept around my wrist and ping it back onto my skin. The small jolt of pain that always caught my veins was a punishment for not being better.

  Andre had been so excited when he had found someone who wanted to work with him as a permanent job. He had met Ezra in town when buying cigarettes, those long ones that used to smell like they were stuffed with rotting fruit rather than tobacco. He had been in the shop asking about work and it was fate that Andre had overheard him talking. He even let Ezra stay on his sofa, too thrilled at the prospect of a permanent full time worker to even question why he didn’t have some place to live. I always thought it bizarre. A stranger in town, no job, no home, no friends. It was as if he had simply been created to be our gardener and he had no life before or outside of that role. I was sitting out front when I saw him coming up the driveway on that first day, it was hot and his white shirt was clinging to his sweaty torso before he had even started work. I thought that white was an interesting choice given the work he would be doing but I admired that he came to work looking so pristine. But then came that judgmental look from him when he got to the front of the house. I could tell immediately that he was taking in every inch of my body with his eyes, brown and intense, so full of distaste. I had to look away from him, his gaze far too heavy and too full of impact for me to handle, I decided that we were not going to become friends.

  After seeing him that morning I had gone up to my bedroom and stared at myself for a good twenty minutes. I was his opposite really. Whilst Ezra was beautiful I would describe myself as horrendously average. My hair was dark like his, much like my Father’s but it was thick and always looked untidy no matter how much I tried to style it. I was slim and I always felt that my legs looked slightly too long for my body, which didn’t really bother me usually but when comparing myself to someone like Ezra it did. I did like my eyes though, they were a very light blue and I always enjoyed how they contrasted with my hair and tanned skin. I had only developed the tan since being in France - back in England I was horribly pale and would often get comments that I looked ill. I had started to get stubble when I turned sixteen and even after shaving I never liked how the skin on my cheeks was never as smooth as it had once been. Ezra didn’t seem to have any rough skin, and I really wanted to run my fingers across his cheeks just to see how soft they were. He was older than me though, by a couple of years at least. My interest in him didn’t surprise me at all. I had learned to observe others from a distance and had come to the conclusion that I found men more appealing than women a while ago - but no one had stood out to me like Ezra had done. Maybe it was the unknown, the fact that he was a stranger coming into my private space that intrigued me the most. I knew I wanted to know more about him, but I also knew I was intimidated by him from first glance and that we were never likely to get along. Instead of working out that time I went to the elastic band and gave it five good pulls to smack against my skin and I was relieved that it felt like enough for now.

  “Can I get a glass of water?” It was his third day and he finally spoke to me. His voice had come out of no where, crept up on me while my mind was in my painting and I had jumped so suddenly that my brush flew across the paper.

  “Water?” He hadn’t asked for water before and it did make me wonder if he had gone thirsty for the first few days of his work or if Andre had just forgotten to hydrate him on this particular day.

  “It’s hot,” he said so bluntly and in that low tone that only he could possess. Without saying another word I got up and walked into the house. I picked out the largest glass I could find and ran the tap for a few seconds before filling it up to make sure it was cool. When I returned to the garden he had gone and I felt completely rejected. He surely couldn’t of thought that I would just walk away and ignore him? Of course I was getting the water. I walked around the front of the house to see if he had just got back to work but he wasn’t there and I stood there looking dumbfounded with his glass of perfectly cool water in my hand. I don’t know why I did it but I then started to search the gardens for him. Normally I wouldn’t have cared if someone had left like that, but Ezra doing it particularly bothered me. How dare someone come to my home, look at me in such a judgmental way on first sight, then have the audacity to abandon me when I had done them a favour? I spent a good fifteen minutes wandering around until I gave up. We had a small wooden bench out by the back door so I left the water there in hopes that he might come back and find it. It was still sitting out there untouched the next morning.

  LANGUAGE

  Ezra arrived during a blissful summer. It was the hottest we had since I had been out there and I enjoyed every second of it. I felt at peace for the first time in a long time and my life back in England felt like it was firmly placed in the past for now. I still had nights where I had nightmares, but for once I didn’t let them spill out into my days. College was good. Better than good really. I was thriving and I had an input for all of my creativity. I had found joy in studying people, in finding each little line and blemish on their skin and translating them onto my paper. I enjoyed working with different mediums, discovering what worked best for me and what didn’t. I never thought I would be able to spend my days surrounded by art and wanted to wrap myself in it so tightly it all imprinted on my skin and stayed with me forever. I was incredibly lucky to have been given such an opportunity, to leave home at sixteen and go to such a wonderful college, it was the thing of dreams really. I had become aware of the school when visiting Hildie when I was younger and had decided then that I would go there, it became my aim, something to focus on in the dark times. I think that no one actually expected me to keep that dream, that it was probably just something kids say one week and then forget about the next. But no. Not me. The day I got my acceptance letter was the happiest day of my life and I set off for France.

  On Saturdays Hildie insisted that I didn’t do any art work, and Saturday evenings were spent with her practicing my French. I was horrendous at it, and she knew I had no desire to actually pick up the language either. I longed to go into the town on a Saturday night and mingle with other people my age, maybe even get drunk and stumble home at an ungodly hour. Her rule was though, if I was to stay with her for college, I had to learn the language of the country I was in. In hindsight it seemed fair enough, I had caught myself a few times blindly speaking English to confused shop keepers then feeling frustrated when they didn’t understand me. But why should they? In England if someone came up to me speaking a different language I’m sure it wouldn’t be assumed that I automatically understood them.

  “That’s the problem with you British.” Hildie would scowl. “Always assuming that everyone should adapt for you.” She was right, of course, but I never let her know that I agreed with her. I never reminded her that she was English too - and that she was actually insulting herself with her words. The truth was, I loved the French language, it was poetic and beautiful and I loved how it sounded like delicate music to my ears. I just had a fear of speaking it, about coming across as stupid at not pronouncing the words correctly, or simply getting it wrong completely. My pride was important and I would rather come across aloof than trying and getting it wrong. I knew a few things though, very basic French that was probably taught to children in Primary schools, it got me by though, for the most part. But Ezra spoke French. He was French. Which is why I had a sudden desire to actually pay attention in my French lessons. My aunt didn’t question my sudden eagerness, and I’m glad she didn’t because I couldn’t even explain to myself why I wished to converse with Ezra in his mother t
ongue. Especially as our first conversation had been…less than enlightening. But I devoured the words she taught me with a sudden hunger that I could tell impressed her. I was a little naive to think I could be fluent after one focused lesson, but I suddenly felt like I could write a novel in French. I couldn’t of course, and if I had of attempted to my aunt would have happily pulled it apart. My spelling left a lot to be desired.

  To further my understanding of the language I started to converse with Andre in French when I saw him working. It had surprised him at first, but he went along with it and seemed content in speaking such simple phrases with me. He especially liked correcting my pronunciation, and I think he actually got a kick out of how I said some things because he used to do give me this smirk that meant ‘you sound like a complete idiot’.

  “You should ask Ezra to teach you,” he said to me on an unusually rainy afternoon underneath the canopy to the rear of the house.

  “To teach me French?” I laughed awkwardly and started to pick at a few of the ivy leaves that had wrapped themselves around the wooden plinths holding up the material above us.

  “Arrête.” Andre frowned and slapped my hand away from the leaves and I grinned at him.

  “Sorry.”

  “But, yes, to teach you French. Your aunt isn’t actually very good.”

  “She’s not? But she’s lived here for so long?” I asked and found myself feeling a bit smug at his admission.

  “She thinks she is good. She is not.”

  “Have you told her that?”

  “Once,” he laughed. “She told me to piss off.”

  “Hildie told you to piss off?” I laughed in surprise and Andre nodded.

  “Oh she has said stronger words to me.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I smiled. “She doesn’t say worse things than that.”