The Silver Bough (18 page)

“I thought we’d eat out in the garden—with all the sunshine we’ve been having, and the Aga belching out heat as usual, it’s awfully warm in here. Do you mind?”

Kathleen grinned. “Mind? I love eating outside—I didn’t get much chance this summer. Seems like whenever the sun was shining, I had to work. Besides, I’m looking forward to seeing your gardens.”

“Shall I show you around the house first? Then we can take our drinks into the garden.” She couldn’t help warming to her guest’s enthusiastic appreciation; it was unexpectedly flattering to have her hard work so admired. It was in the nature of rewarding her with a special treat that she took her, finally, to the apple room.

“Now, this is something different,” she said, pausing with her hand on the door handle. “It’s kind of old-fashioned, and it’s not ideal—but this is where I store my fruit.”

She opened the door. Wooden shelves lined the walls of the cool, unfurnished room. Even this early in the year, with only a few of the shelves filled with recently picked apples, the unmistakable smell perfumed the air. She thought it must be the ghost of last year’s crop, for although she kept the window open to prevent the buildup of gases, the odor intensified as the apples matured, and a trace remained behind, perhaps trapped in the porous wood of the shelves, even after the fruit was all gone.

“An apple store,” said Kathleen, gazing at the yellow Oslins and the bright red Lord Roseberys all set out in neat rows in their cozy nests of shredded paper. “Was this here when you bought the house?”

“Oh, no. This was their dining room. Well—when they used it. The house was empty when I bought it. No, I thought about a purpose-built apple store outside—but it seemed like tempting fate, to go to all that trouble before my trees started cropping, and now—well, this works well enough. It’s not like I’m a big commercial venture.”

“But you do sell them?”

“I’ve taken a stall at the local farmers’ markets, and—you know the shop Green Jean’s? She agreed to take a few baskets after I swore upon my honor they were organically grown. I’m not trying to make a living out of it, I just don’t want them going to waste.”

“How
do
you make your living? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t do anything. I don’t have to; I was left pretty well-off. Investments and such.” She stepped back and let her guest out of the room before closing the door and leading the way back to the kitchen, feeling grateful that Kathleen made no comment about her “luck” at being so well-off.

It was as she poured out two glasses of wine in the kitchen that the next, inevitable personal question came. “What made you decide to settle in Appleton? Is there a family connection?”

She handed her guest a glass of wine. “Shall we go outside and wander around for a few minutes? Then I’ll put the soup on to reheat while I do a few last minute things to the main course.”

“Sure.”

It would be easy enough to redirect the conversation as they toured the grounds, she knew, but the unanswered question would hang there and take on a more dangerous weight, the longer she left it unanswered. She could give the sort of sound-bite answer she’d given to others who’d casually wondered how an American had ended up in such a back-of-beyond part of Scotland, but friendship—even the lightest, most superficial kind of friendship—surely deserved better. So she took a deep breath, and a steadying gulp of wine, and began.

“I first set eyes on Appleton on my honeymoon. We spent it sailing around Britain because Sam loved to sail, and Britain was where he’d learned.”

They paused on the patio, and Nell set her glass down on the mosaic-tiled top of the table and gazed at a lavender bush, a different scene before her mind’s eye.

“The sun was low in the sky when we came into Appleton harbor; it made the golden dome on top of the library
blaze
. It was the most astonishing-looking place: the palm trees growing along the wide harbor-front Esplanade, and what looked like a huge, exotic temple plonked down in between some pastel-colored fishermen’s cottages, and a lot of elegant Victorian villas looking down their noses from the hillsides. To top it all, a pod of dolphins were leaping about, chasing along in front of the boat, welcoming us in…It was absolutely magical. We felt we’d sailed into another world, a kind of private paradise. And, I don’t know why, but after that night we suddenly had this full-blown, shared fantasy of the life we were going to lead after Sam retired. We’d buy a big old house on one of the hills overlooking the town and the sea. It had to have plenty of land, because we’d grow our own fruit and vegetables, and Sam would go fishing in a nearby trout stream, and whenever we felt a bit restless, we’d hop aboard our boat and sail away to somewhere else.”

Kathleen smiled encouragingly. “Sounds like a beautiful dream.”

“Yes.” She took a cautious sip of wine, just to wet her mouth, while she waited for the inevitable question.

“Your husband…?”

“He died.”

A pained gasp, then, “Oh, I’m so sorry! Was it…was he…”

“It was an accident. He drowned. A sailing accident. I was there; I couldn’t save him.” She met her eyes for the briefest instant before deliberately turning away, picking up her wineglass to make it perfectly clear she did not wish to be hugged or touched at all.

“How awful. Oh, Nell, how awful for you. I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, it was awful. I’m not really sure why I came back here, except…we hadn’t really been together all that long, and after he died—well, I was just trying, rather hopelessly, to hang on to him, so I set off on a kind of pilgrimage, visiting places from his past. I’d just been to visit his old school when I noticed Appleton on a map and decided to come here. I saw a picture of Orchard House in the estate agent’s window, and on a whim I went in and asked to view the property. And when I saw the place, well…” She gestured with both hands, to encompass both house and garden. “I saw something I could
do
, a place to fix up. I needed a new home, so…I bought it.”

“You’ve done a wonderful job,” said Kathleen warmly. “I mean, of course I don’t know what it was like when you found it, but…it’s great.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, relieved to have cleared the first hurdle. She guessed Kathleen would be sensitive enough not to bring up the subject of Sam unbidden. “Now, before I have to go inside and get cooking, would you like to see my orchard?”

They left their drinks on the table and set off. Kathleen gave a soft cry of delight as they approached the door in the wall. “A walled garden! You’ve got a walled garden! No wonder you bought Orchard House.”

Nell laughed softly. “Another fan of
The Secret Garden
?”

“Of course. All the best people are!”

The sun was very low in the sky now, and although it was still daylight in the meadow, inside the orchard dusk had gathered beneath the branches and in the cool embrace of the shadowed wall.

“Kind of dark in here,” said Kathleen, her voice gone thin and uncertain.

Nell felt no anxiety. Day or night, she felt more at home surrounded by her trees than anywhere else on earth. “It’s all right. Take my hand. Your eyes will adjust in a minute.”

“What’s that humming, a machine?”

“No, the bees. Wild bees; they live in the wall, and pollinate the blossom.”

“They won’t sting us?”

“They won’t sting us.”

“I can see now.” Kathleen took back her hand. “The trees are smaller than I’d thought.” She took a few steps forward. “Are they espaliered?”

“Some of them—those against the wall.”

“How many are there?”

“Twenty-four trees, ten different varieties—plus one.”

Kathleen looked around. “What do you mean?”

“I can name the ten varieties I bought, but one is a mystery tree. It fruited for the first time—” She turned toward the tree as she spoke, and what she saw dried the words in her mouth. She narrowed her eyes and stared uncomprehending at a change that had come about in the last few hours. Something new lay clustered along a single branch, something pale white and almost luminous in the gathering darkness.

“Is that the tree with the blossom? Isn’t it too late for blossom? I mean, the other trees have apples…”

Although the voice jarred against her ear, she was grateful to it as to a lifeline back to sanity. What she saw was real; she wasn’t hallucinating. She managed to speak, and heard herself sounding perfectly calm. “It happens sometimes. Unseasonable weather can trigger a second blossoming.”

“Huh. I never heard of that. Fruit and blossom on the same branch…it reminds me of something; I can’t think what. It looks like magic.”

It
was
magic, Nell thought, stunned. Still unable to believe her eyes, she went nearer to make sure what she thought she was seeing was not an optical illusion of some kind, caused, perhaps, by a late ray of sun reflected off the glossy leaves, or a horde of migrating moths who’d chanced to choose this particular branch to settle on. But when she was close enough to smell the heavy scent, which had attracted one or two sleepy bees already, and see the almost purplish flush around the edges of the creamy petals, she had to accept that this was no illusion. As she raised one hand to touch the flowering branch—the very branch that bore the solitary yellow apple—she remembered seeing Ronan touch it hours before, when there had been not the slightest trace of the blossom which now grew so thickly out of season.

 

From
Mythology of the Celts
by F. X. Robinson
(Hale, 1902)

 

A
VALON
, the idyllic “Island of Apples” where King Arthur was taken after receiving his fatal wound, is that same Land of Youth, always located on an island on the western horizon, to which Celtic heroes were summoned to dwell in eternity. Bran, as we have seen already, was beckoned by a beautiful woman bearing an apple-branch silver-white with blossom to Emain, described as an island in the west where apple trees are perpetually in flower and fruit at the same time.

The connection between apples and immortality is of course very ancient, and found throughout Europe. In Scandinavian legend, the gods owed their eternal youth to a diet of magic apples, guarded by Idun, the goddess of Spring and renewal. The Greeks, too, had their magical apples of the Hesperides—those Western Isles again. From Ireland comes the tale of how Cu Roi hid his soul in an apple, that he might not be slain in battle, only to be destroyed when Cu Chulain split the fruit with his mighty sword.

For a suggestion of why this should be, we have only to look at the language of symbolism and its reflection in the natural world. When an apple is halved crosswise, each half reveals the image of a five-pointed star. This, of course, is one of the most ancient and universally recognized emblems of immortality; a sacred sign, like the apple itself, of the Great Goddess and her supernatural realm.

T
HE CHILDREN
—J
ADE
especially—were in a bad mood on Sunday morning, because they were missing their weekly cartoon fix. Although at first they assumed a fault in their rather elderly television set, they soon discovered that nobody in Appleton could receive television or radio signals.

“I don’t get it,” said the older boy, Callum. “If it was the earthquake, how come the Johnstones can’t get Sky TV? Theirs was out yesterday.”

“Jennifer Connor said the same thing to me,” said Shona. “That’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve lost reception before—remember that big storm last January?—but it never affected people with satellite dishes.”

Graeme always had an opinion, even on things he admitted knowing nothing about, like modern technology. “You know, I was reading about earthquakes,” he said. “And they produce an electromagnetic pulse. That’s something that would disrupt
all
transmissions. Remember that disaster movie we saw last year, what was it called?”

Ashley felt sure that a small earth tremor couldn’t do anything of the kind, but she didn’t bother trying to argue the point. She’d already discovered that Graeme was a slippery debater, impossible to pin down. No sooner had you pointed out a flaw in his argument than he was arguing something else…or something that sounded the same, but turned out to be completely different. It was like the theory he’d developed about Appleton’s origins. Based on the fact that the Apple was not represented on a couple of early maps and some ambiguous remarks made by early medieval travelers, he’d concluded that this substantial chunk of land had originated somewhere else. According to him, it had been a floating island until some cataclysmic event, taking place roughly around 1655, had pushed it hard against the west coast of Scotland, where it had remained to this day. She was prepared to believe it—why not?—until he started calling on old myths and legends as further proof, and she understood that he wasn’t talking about an ordinary chunk of earth that had been grafted onto another in an unusual, yet possible, geological way, but something far more mystical. He seemed to imply that the place now known as Appleton had once been part of a different, supernatural world, and she reckoned that was like somebody in Texas arguing that Galveston Island had been part of Heaven until it fell out of the sky circa 1490. When she objected, he changed his line, shifting from myth to history to psychology to religion and even taking in quantum physics and some obscure, abstruse mathematical theories with hardly a pause for breath. She didn’t know if she was too literal-minded or too slow-witted to follow the connections he made, but she soon gave up trying.