The Quivering Tree by S. T. Haymon Read Free Book Online Page A

the thin mattress, the thought of the books I was brooding like a hen on a clutch of eggs. Would I awaken to find that a new Zane Grey had hatched out during the night, or perhaps a hitherto unknown play by one W. Shakespeare? I realized that, despite everything, I was still happy, the stream still forging ahead strongly.
    Could the dead people in heaven see in the dark? I hoped not, but you never knew. I certainly did not want my father to lose any sleep on my account. He had always said he needed his eight hours. But just in case there was anybody up there hoping for news, I pulled the covers over my head and said out loud: ‘Don’t worry! I’m all right!’
    I wasn’t, you know. All right. Not for long, anyway, though longer than I had thought, waking up, as it seemed to me, no more than five minutes later: until I looked at my clock numbers, shining green in the blackness, and discovered it was ten minutes past eleven.
    Hunger was what had awakened me, together with the certainty that without food, instanter, I should not last out the night. Hunger and a revelation. I had been dreaming, sort of, of Miss Barker and Ludwig and Amadeus and Ivor, and of straining in vain to remember the names, one on each side of the printed music, of ‘The Birth of the Blues’. Though I didn’t manage to recall either, I did remember something else.
    I remembered that inside my music case, along with the great composers, there was a whipped cream walnut, purchased on my way home from my last music lesson and then – difficult as it was to believe – overlooked in all the hoo-ha of moving. Fully awake now, I pictured it in the case as clearly as if I could have reached out and taken it in my hand, its chocolate smell by now tempered with a soupçon of cowhide, but none the worse for that; its taste, conceivably, made even more ambrosial by a week spent sandwiched between ‘Rondo alla Turca’ and ‘An die ferne Geliebte’. Fears of waking up the household, of having to explain to Miss Gosse and, much worse, to Mrs Benyon, faded in comparison with the prospect of biting off the gleaming walnut which crowned that mini-pyramid, of nibbling the swirled chocolate to get at the delicious goo within. Alive with anticipation, I scrambled up the slope that led out of bed, felt for my torch, and gingerly opened the bedroom door.
    The landing light was out which was a relief, the darkness encouraging me to feel myself invisible. And I was lucky. Either the floorboards of Chandos House did not squeak like those of St Giles, or, in years of practice circumventing Maud when about my private business, my feet had acquired a sensitivity to making choices which enabled me to get down to the ground floor with hardly a sound. As I neared the dining-room, a noise from the direction of the kitchen first froze me to the spot with horror before making me, albeit silently, giggle with relief. It was Mrs Benyon, snoring.
    Noiselessly I turned the white china knob on the dining-room door, noiselessly entered and crossed to the piano. Although the out of doors at the back of the house was presumably as dark as the out of doors in front, it did not seem so. My awareness of the french window, of its wide expanse of glass deluded me into the conviction that I could see grass and fruit trees and a gentle sky.
    I opened the music case and tenderly removed the whipped cream walnut, so filled with exultation as to forget completely to take, as I had intended, a quick peep at ‘The Birth of the Blues’ so as to satisfy myself once and for all who in fact had been responsible for that masterpiece of jazz. I had already decided that I would bite off the walnut at once, to fortify me for the return journey, the nut and no more. The rest would have to wait until I regained the haven of my hammock-bed.
    The walnut was so glorious I could have exclaimed aloud, praising God for nuts. And would have, probably, if somebody