The Kissing Tree

It was her mother’s dying wish that she visit the tree...the tree where she met the young airman. But what would Naomi find?

Naomi saw the tree as she rounded the bend. It was exactly as her mother had described it. Tall and proud, it towered over the grassy hillside. Other trees dotted the Oxfordshire landscape framing the silver of the river as it wound gently through the valley, but she knew this was the one.

Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind. “You can’t miss it, Naomi. It draws your eye like a handsome man in a crowded room. It quite takes your breath away.” She would sigh quietly and smile.

“My heart is still there, you know. It’s where your father and I…” Her voice tailed off.

Naomi knew the story by heart. How her mother would slip away on summer Sunday afternoons to meet the handsome young fighter pilot beneath the ancient tree.

Then the day came when he didn’t return from a mission.

Sunday followed lonely Sunday until the young girl, heavy with child, finally accepted the inevitable.

Naomi brought the hire car to a halt at the bottom of the hill. Well, she was finally here. How had it taken her so long?

Thirty-nine years. Where had the time gone?

She climbed out on to the roadside. The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky. The leaves of the old tree flickered silvery-green as a cool breeze whispered through them.

Naomi looked around. Her mother had left this soft, green world for the unknown wildness of South Africa; packed off to the solitude of her uncle’s farm in the high veldt away from pointing fingers and prattling tongues.

It had been a tough life for a young widow with a small daughter. Not really a widow, but it had been easier to pretend.

A country girl, she took to the harshness of the African veldt and the hardness of those living there.

Working as a bush guide, she learned the trade, saw the future and, when her uncle died, she sold the small farm and gambled all on buying a small local safari business.

Together, mother and daughter built it up beneath the hot African sun.

Naomi was the one who took the fledgling worldwide over the last decade. Not easy in such a male-dominated world, but Naomi had inherited her mother’s determination and steel will.

Pure cussedness, the locals called it, but in admiration.

Tall, raven-haired, with piercing blue eyes, she strode through the dust of the local township. Nobody stood in her way for long.

Now, with her son John, as the seventies slipped into the eighties, the photo-safari company was one of the most successful in Africa.

It had been hard and cost her dearly. The heartbreak of losing her husband, who had never returned from the war in Angola, had scarred her deeply, but had not broken her.

It would be lunchtime at home, Naomi mused as she walked up the gentle slope towards the tree. She pictured the farmhouse set among the foothills, looking out on to the glorious sweep of the South African veldt.

There would be two empty places at the dinner table today. Mother’s and her own.

The harsh wilderness had finally taken its toll. The rains had come with a vengeance this year and, with them, the fever.

When the mist rising from the jungle heralded the return of the sun, her mother had slipped peacefully away, the same gentle smile on her face.

John had been understanding.

“If it was the old girl’s last wish, then you don’t have any choice. But it seems a heck of a way to go just to see an old tree!’

But Naomi hadn’t flown 7,000 miles just to see an old tree. She had come to collect something.

“You’ll find it in a gap above my heart. I left it there, just in case,” her mother had said.

There was another reason she was here, Naomi knew, fighting the tears as she started up the hill.

This was a special place: for her mother, whose courageous determination had carved a home out of the wilderness, her father, for ever the dashing young airman in a young girl’s imagination, and for herself.

She didn’t expect to find anything. The tree would have grown. Curious magpies and squirrels would have found anything long ago.

It was a perfect July day, just as it must have been all those years ago.

Naomi’s mother and father had met here every Sunday through that long hot summer.

“Tenth of July, it was, Naomi,” her mother would repeat.“we would always meet on a Sunday, when we could. Always around three o’ clock.”

So Naomi was here on another July 10…39 years later. It was a Friday, not Sunday, but she had little control over the calendar.

She glanced at her watch. Half past two. In front of her the ancient trunk twisted up into the rustling leaves. Naomi circled slowly, her eyes searching the fissures and cracks.

Suddenly she stopped as her fingers traced the faint outline of a heart cut into the rough bark. The initials were still visible.

D and E.

David and Emily.“i’ve found it, Mother,” she whispered.“i’m here.”

Her finger traced the D.

“Hello, Daddy.”

Tears blurred her vision as she reached up, feeling for the gap where the lowest branch merged with the trunk. She had to stretch up on tiptoe.

Her fingers closed on something soft. Slowly she withdrew her hand, blinking to clear her vision.

Naomi swallowed to ease the lump in her throat and walked out into the sunlight.

She sat down on the grass. She really hadn’t expected to find anything.

How had it survived all this time? She looked at what she had found.

The oil-skin pouch was smaller than she’d expected; cracked and yellowed with age. It was ripped at one end.

Fingers trembling, she peeled back the flap and tipped the contents on to her lap. Some scraps of paper and two faded photographs, copies of those on her mantelpiece at home – the fresh-faced girl gazing out with laughing eyes and the gentle half-smile of the young airman.

It was the only picture she’d ever seen of her father.

The ring wasn’t there, of course. The ring her mother had left, before sailing away to have her child in a far-off land.

But what had she expected? Too many years of inquisitive beaks and scrabbling paws.

Her mother had never worn a wedding ring.

“It’s with your father,” she’d say.

The scraps of paper puzzled Naomi.

Mother hadn’t mentioned any notes, just the photos and the ring.

Carefully she smoothed out the creases. The ends were ripped and perforated. All but one was illegible. The last was just possible to read.

Naomi frowned. It wasn’t paper, but a thin card folded into a small square. It was discoloured by damp but some of the writing was still visible.

Naomi pictured the young man searching his pockets for a scrap of paper to write his message. Had he torn it from the back of a ration book?

She squinted at the words.

…will come again next year usual time. Then have to fly…

The rest was a blur except for the last line.

…the last time. Hope to see you 7/10 next. Love you. Always your David.

This must have been his last message. Her mother must have left it there. But why “next year” and “the last time”? And why hadn’t she mentioned it?

Naomi frowned. Something wasn’t right. It didn’t fit with the story she had heard so often.

She knew they had met in July of that fateful summer before her father had been reported as missing, presumed dead. Her mother had left soon after.

Naomi looked at the note again. Why so specific?

7/10 – the seventh of October. How could her father be so certain of a date when he was flying combat missions? It didn’t make sense.

She scrambled to her feet and walked down to the car, where she searched for a tissue in her handbag.

The stub of her airline landing card fell out on to the seat, landing beside the old note. For a few seconds it didn’t register. Then a strange giddy feeling sent her brain into turmoil.

They were almost identical. It wasn’t a piece torn out of a ration book. The note had been written on the stub of a landing card.

But they didn’t have them in wartime. And that could only mean that her father had been back!

She stared blindly out at the landscape, seeing nothing.

He hadn’t been killed. Captured?

Still alive? Snatches of long-gone conversations tumbled through her head.

“Missing, presumed dead. I couldn’t wait any longer – you were on the way. I had to leave.

“Anyway, I knew he wasn’t ever coming back. I couldn’t wait, not in my condition, could I?”

Naomi gasped as the realisation sunk in. He hadn’t died. He’d been here.

But when? How many times?

That must be why the oilskin pouch had been so easy to find.

She picked up the note again. The date – the seventh of October. But which year? And why the seventh of October? So precise.

“No!” she shouted aloud as the realisation sunk in.“it’s not fair.”

Her father had been alive. She could have known him!

She smoothed out the other pieces of paper. Nothing. Too soaked over the years. Had he been coming for years?

A cold emptiness settled in her stomach. It didn’t matter. She’d missed him.

He was probably long dead now. He’d been the same age as her mother and she’d buried her two weeks ago.

Did she really want to know? Did she really want to chase after shadows?

She looked at the time. Three o’ clock. She switched on the ignition and indicated to pull out, glancing up at the mirror. A taxi was coming slowly down the road. She waited for it to pass but it pulled in to the lay-by behind her.

The rear door opened and slowly a man climbed out. He stood by the car, supporting himself on a walking stick. He was tall, silver-haired, with a lined face. Naomi slipped the car into first gear and started to pull away. The man didn’t move, just stared intently towards her.

It was the eyes that told her. A clear piercing blue, just like her own.

She braked.

“The usual time.”

Hadn’t her mother said they always met at three o’clock?

As the man limped slowly towards Naomi something flashed in her head.

“Americans have a nice way of talking. Except they always say dates back to front.” The date!

It hit her like a physical blow – 7/10 wasn’t October 7. It was July 10. Today.

She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Just past three o’clock.

He had come back all these years. And this was to be the last time.

Gladly she reached for the door handle she now couldn’t see for tears. For more great short stories, get the latest edition of the People’s Friend