Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness - Alexandra Fuller [77]
— W. C. FIELDS
Nicola Fuller of Central Africa and the Tree of Forgetfulness
Mum at her fish ponds. Zambia, 2008.
If I had to put a date on the moment Mum began to swim away from us, I would say it was after Richard died, because for years after that she was like someone whose refuge was a remote subaqua world. And how could she have been otherwise? Mum’s brain, already highly strung with a genetic predisposition to “funny moods, depression, mental wobbliness” must certainly have tripped on the tragedy and stress of what she had lost: three children, a war, a farm. To say nothing of what she had lost of herself: the whimsical Kenyan girl, the winklepicker-wearing bride, the hilarious-amount-of-fun young mother.
And although sometimes in the years after the baby’s death, Mum would come to the surface of her subaqua refuge, occasionally for months and months at a time, the threat that she’d recede from us again was always there. Something would set her off—a minor upset (the car breaking down) or a major blow (her mother’s death in 1993)—and she would be back below our reach, sleeping late into the morning, unconcerned about her appearance, listlessly incurious about the world around her.
And then—alarmingly—something altogether different began to happen: as well as sinking into subaqua depths, Mum would now sometimes seem to lose her tether altogether and float sky high. On these occasions she would be riddled with energy: riding her horse with wild indifference as opposed to wild courage; driving at high speeds on rough roads; drinking with no care and less joy. A couple of car wrecks date back to this time: spinning the vehicle elegantly on the apex of its left front headlight; an abrupt sideways flip into a storm drain. “Bloody silly place to put a ditch,” a sympathetic neighbor said, pulling her to safety.
Then in 1998, eighteen years after Richard had come and gone and five years after the death of her mother, Mum had the worst episode of madness ever. Her father had died earlier in the year, peacefully drifting off after his evening allowance of J & B at the age of nearly ninety, beloved of everyone in the nursing home near Perth, Scotland, in which he spent his final days. Mum took his death as well as could be expected and the funeral at Waternish went off without a hitch. “Skye people are very respectful of the dead,” Mum says approvingly. “So we didn’t have to pay the toll to go over the bridge from the mainland. Wasn’t that nice?”
Dad led the procession to the Trumpan Church, followed by the vicar, followed by the hearse, followed by Auntie Glug and Uncle Sandy. Dad, accustomed to covering long distances on rough African roads, kept up a decent pace, weaving expertly around the baleful sheep as if they were potholes. “The vicar was flicking his headlights at us like mad because he wanted us to slow down, but Dad thought it meant we should go faster. I think it’s the only time a hearse has gone whizzing through Skye on two wheels.”
The little funeral procession, slightly breathless from what had felt to most of them like a rally-car race, gathered around the grave next to the ruined church. Uncle Sandy—properly kitted out in kilt, Glengarry bonnet and sporran—began to play “Flowers of the Forest” on his bagpipes. “And suddenly, right in the middle of it, with the bagpipes going and all of us softly weeping, the clouds parted and a brilliant sky opened up overhead. Then a figure appeared just beyond the church wall in a blue anorak. We all saw him.” Mum’s eyes go Clanranald fey. “And we all agreed it was the ghost of dear, shell-shocked Uncle Allan come to welcome my father to the other side. A very Highland greeting I should have said.”
But in spite of the successful funeral and before Mum left Scotland, there were signs that she was about to throw a wobbly. Her eyes went light yellow and she began to counsel anyone who would listen on the best way for the Scots to plot their secession from England. (“You should try UDI, like we had in Rhodesia.”) Finally, she packed pounds and pounds of