though the Range Rover was usual y employed to cart everything back.
That day, the picnic was almost at the point of complete assembly. She and Tessa Townsend were occupying the rugs while the men did the last lugging and puffing. The children were happily amusing themselves. The oak tree was too massive and chal enging for any climbing, but Toby had rigged up a rope swing, with a proper wooden seat, from one of the lowest branches. This was now in operation and the rugs had been placed some distance from the base of the tree, but stil within reach of its ample shade.
It was hardly a talking-point with visitors like the Townsends, but every member of the Robinson family had by now noticed that strange little hole, with the faint discoloration around it, low down in the trunk, and had wondered how it got there. Clare, sitting on the rug with Tessa, noticed it today as the children swung past it. It surely couldn’t have been formed natural y. A fixing point for tethering some mad bul had once been Toby’s theory, a scary idea that had appealed to the children—and he’d done a brief imitation of a mad bul for their benefit.
He and Hugh Townsend were now bringing the last shipment of picnic supplies down the hil . The children—or their Charlie and the Townsends’ pair—were busy with the swing. The oak tree itself was softly rustling every so often in a gentle breeze and there was a cooing of pigeons from the wood.
Then everyone’s attention had turned to Toby, who, with a loud oath, had suddenly tripped and slithered several yards on his backside down the glossy grass of the field above, dropping and scattering the contents of the box he was carrying—which had included two bottles of pink champagne, now rapidly rol ing away from him.
He hadn’t hurt himself, though for a micro-second Clare had thought: Has he broken a leg, an arm, an ankle? Was this whole, marvel ously materialising Sunday not to be, after al ? But, in fact, he’d merely provided entertainment and laughter for al , something he acknowledged, when he regained his feet, by taking a theatrical bow. It was one of those moments of potential disaster rapidly transformed into comedy which are like some extra blessing. Clare had noticed, as her husband fel and slid and his short-sleeved shirt flew up, the plump wobbliness of his paunch above the waist of his shorts and, as his straw hat flew off, the shiny, receding patch in his hair, catching the sunlight. For some reason these things—the flashes of pink, vulnerable skin—
reassured her. Yes, she knew that she loved him. She could not, would not lose him. He was even for her, at that moment, like some big fourth child.
And now, while al the actual children seemed to be in stitches, he was making a show, like some hired clown, of gathering up everything he’d spilt and pointing out that the champagne would now have real y acquired some fizz.
What a sweet fool he was. How had he become a banker?
This was al , she realised, her heart strangely brimming, the perfect moment, the perfect scene. But it was only minutes later that she’d looked up at the broad, sun-fil ed canopy of the oak as if to see in it some approval of her joy (this wonderful oak tree—they owned an oak tree!) and felt that something was very wrong.
What was going on? A picnic was about to begin, that was al . A happy picnic heralded by rounds of laughter and, now, by the loud pop of a champagne cork. Everything was in place, but, as so often, once the thing was ready and though there’d been expressions of impatience, the children were being slow to come and get it. But that hardly mattered. What was happening? Charlie had pointed out to Laura Townsend the hole in the tree, the “mad-bul ” hole—
and Laura had decided to put her finger in it. That was al . It was something Clare had never done herself—she’d felt, for some reason, there might be something in the hole she wouldn’t like to touch. Though what was so awful, right now, about that little, natural, childish act of sticking a finger in a hole?
Yet she’d looked up at the oak tree and at once began to fear it. There was something now about it that, even on a warm July day, made her feel cold. Its leaves, stirring in the breeze, seemed to shiver with her. Its shade, which should have been only delightful on a summer’s day, seemed, momentarily, simply dark.
She hid al this, tried to dismiss it as the picnic proceeded, and, as it turned out, never said a word about it to her husband. Though the truth was that it real y took most of that summer for this “moment” to go away. She was on guard against its repetition. She eyed the tree as if she and it were outfacing each other. She could no longer be sure that there wasn’t something sinister rather than glorious about the way it dominated the view, its crown rearing up above the brow of the field, like the head of some giant with brooding designs on the house. She thought of it lurking at night. Then al this simply receded, to the point where she wondered if she hadn’t real y just imagined it al .
WHEN JACK (with El ie’s advice) sold Jebb farmhouse and Barton Field to the Robinsons, nothing was said about the hole in the tree. Jack had even thought of fil ing it, disguising it, but had known that this was taking things too far. The hole had to stay. To anyone else it was just an insignificant hole in a tree. Nothing had been said, of course, about how Michael had died, though Jack had let it be known, in a sombre way, that his father was “no longer around,” and the Robinsons had expressed their sympathies and taken this to be connected with why Jack had to sel . It inclined Clare at least to a certain pity towards Jack (what a big, slow creature he seemed) and even Toby felt he shouldn’t make too much of a contest over the price, though he also felt this might have been Jack’s motive in mentioning the subject.
If the Robinsons subsequently began to suspect at al that the older Mr. Luxton had committed suicide, it was not because of some understanding of how a cow disease might also reduce the human population (though they’d cut down, themselves, on eating beef) and certainly not because any of their new, seldom encountered neighbours had told them that Michael had shot himself under that tree.
Their neighbours knew better than that. How would it have helped? It certainly wouldn’t have helped poor Jack negotiate his sale. Even the solicitors had kept quiet. It wasn’t exactly their direct business and it wouldn’t have advanced a transaction which had its complications, but which both sides clearly wanted to complete as soon as possible.
If the Robinsons nonetheless had their inklings, they certainly didn’t want to pursue them. They were happy not to know. Those two years and more while the building work went on acted like a curtain, and once they were in real occupation they kept themselves apart. They were not permanent residents anyway. They were effectively surrounded by a dairy consortium, and so rather conveniently ringed off from any real local inhabitants.
They’d bought a centuries-old farmhouse, but they’d altered much of its ancient fabric and they were notably uninquisitive about even its recent history.
When Jack sold Jebb to the Robinsons he got the strong impression that for Toby Robinson at least, Jebb Farm was just an item, like anything else he might have chosen to buy, and perhaps even sel again later. This had at first astonished Jack: that someone might want to buy what the Luxtons had possessed for generations in the same way that they might buy a picture to hang on their wal . It had even, for a while, disinclined him to proceed, but El ie had told him not to be a bloody idiot. Jack suspected that if Toby Robinson had found out that Michael had blown his brains out under that tree, he might simply have used it, without being fundamental y perturbed, as a pretext for getting something off the price. But at the same time he felt that Clare Robinson’s “investment,” in the broadest sense, in Jebb was of a different nature. To her, in some way, it real y mattered—she was the one who real y wanted it. So when the sale looked like going through, he hoped she would never find out about that hole. He hoped no one, at the last minute, would go and tel her.