The Silver Bough (31 page)

D
URING HIS DINNER
break on Tuesday, Mario headed as usual down to the harbor. But this time he walked with his head up, looking around the crowded streets as he went, searching the faces. He was looking for the tall, curly-haired American girl who’d come into the chip shop that afternoon.

Third time lucky,
he told himself hopefully.

He’d messed up the first time they met, for sure, and he’d been kicking himself ever since for his unbelievably stupid behavior. Some sort of residual loyalty to Anna had made him resist the attraction he’d felt for the girl who’d asked him to join her for a drink on Sunday night, but minutes after walking away from her he’d realized how pointless that was. Anna didn’t want his loyalty or anything else he had to offer. She’d cut him off. He was free.

It had taken him a long time to perceive this freedom as a
good
thing, but he was in a different place now. Something had been knocked loose by the earth tremor, not just the hillside that blocked the road, but inside Mario himself, shifting a whole load of mud and rock in his chest away from his heart and lungs so that he could finally breathe again and feel something other than pain.

Then, when she’d smiled at him this afternoon—and
what
a smile!—he knew she’d decided to forgive him for his clumsy retreat on Sunday. Given half a chance, he’d take it, but Uncle Tony was such a hard-ass, and he’d chosen just that moment to order him back to the kitchen to chip more potatoes.

For once he was glad this was such a small town. And thanks to the landslide, he could be sure the girl was still around. They were bound to run into one another again.

But although the streets were unusually full of people out enjoying the mild evening, he saw no one he recognized. When he reached the harbor, he found it busier than ever. Strangely, considering that the landslide was generally reckoned to have cut Appleton off from the world, the last few days had transformed the sheltered harbor from a chilly, forgotten backwater into a vibrant, bustling place that reminded him, at least a little bit, of Palermo. There were major differences, of course, but the waterfront had come to life, busier now than it had been even at the height of summer. Small craft thronged the water, dozens of battered, rather grubby working boats bobbing alongside the pleasure craft—sailing yachts and small motorboats—which were the more usual visitors to Appleton harbor. And the people—there must have been ten times as many people in and on the harbor than there’d been on the last bank holiday weekend. He wondered who they all were.

Some, clearly, were here for commercial reasons. Having scented an opportunity, they’d sailed down the coast, or motored across the water from their homes around Glasgow or Ayr to put up advertisements on the pier for “water taxis,” ferry services, and small boat charters.

But the purposes of other visitors were more mysterious. These were the oddly assorted newcomers who posted no signs, did not tout for custom or even come ashore. Whoever they might be, wherever they had come from, they were certainly not ordinary tourists. They stayed put on their vessels and gave no clue as to why they’d come, or when they might leave. They communicated with each other in a babble of different tongues, and their boats, maneuvering around each other in the increasingly restricted space of the harbor basin, occasionally drew close enough to exchange passengers. He saw women and children, too, clambering from one boat to another, and even animals. There were dogs and cats on board some of the boats; and he’d heard the cackle of hens and, he was almost certain, the bleating of a goat. The whole effect was of a floating campground or fair. Mario felt they were all just waiting for something to begin, and he wondered why he hadn’t heard any gossip in the town about a forthcoming event so important it had drawn so many people from different countries.

He smelled food cooking: olive oil, onions, garlic, peppers; his mouth watered. He’d eaten fried fish and potatoes as usual, the bland stodge that filled his stomach but left him unsatisfied, yearning for the more varied herbs and spices of home. And he smelled the objects of his longing rising on the salty sea breeze, in the smoke from cooking fires and galley stoves on several of the small foreign boats.

He paused a moment and stared into the harbor, trying to pick out an identifiable flag, or maybe a boat marked with an Italian name, Palermo or Syracusa…But the flags were all as strange to him as the names, many of them in languages he could not even guess at. As he looked, he noticed a little rowing boat with two people in it approaching one of the yachts at anchor. As they approached, a man appeared on the deck of the larger boat. He was comically piratical in appearance in an open-throated, long-sleeved white shirt and with a red bandanna tied around his head. The man rowing the boat hailed him, and he leaned down and said something Mario could not hear. Holding up one finger, he went below.

Mario’s footsteps slowed and he stopped for a second time to watch. Red-bandanna popped up again, holding a plain white carrier bag that seemed, from the way he held it, to be heavy. He leaned over the side and lowered it into the waiting arms of the man in the rowboat.

The other person in the rowboat stood up, and Mario saw it was a woman, and a very shapely one, with a shaved head. The piratical character dropped a rope ladder over the side of his boat; the woman grasped hold of it, scrambled up and aboard, and went belowdecks.

Drugs,
thought Mario.
Drugs and prostitution.
He began to walk again, faster than before, although he was careful not to break into a run. He didn’t want to do anything to draw attention to himself; he didn’t want those figures to suspect there’d been a witness to their transaction. He walked with his head down, steadily, like a man with a mission, although his only aim was to get away.

His path followed the shoreline, but once past the old quay it was away from the docks, so the water was empty and quiet. He noticed there was no one fishing from the breakwater this evening, and the swings and slides in the little park on the front green were deserted except for two dogs circling each other warily. Time to turn back, he thought, but first he wanted to look at the sea without the distraction of all those people on it. He veered off the path and jumped down to the pebbles and mud on the shore. He stood for a moment, breathing in the brackish, tidal smell, his eyes drawn across the water to the other side of town. Although it was so close, he’d never been there. It had its own name—”the Ob” they called it—but he didn’t suppose it would be any different, really, from the parts of Appleton he knew.

His thoughts went back to the scene he’d witnessed, and he wondered about the shaven-headed woman. Had it been her choice to go onto that boat, or was she a victim? What was happening to her now belowdecks? His gaze floated unseeing on the water as possibilities suggested themselves. He imagined her mouth forming a helpless “O,” her eyes wide, then closed, her breasts as smooth and naked as her head…

Something moving in the water snagged his attention, and his gaze focused. What was that, a head? A person in the water? Swimming here, so near the garbage and oil that polluted the harbor, when there were plenty of clean, secluded bays not far away? Why? Unless…

He imagined the woman he had seen, now stripped naked, wriggling through a porthole, diving off the side of the boat, and swimming away to escape.

His hands clenched into fists at his side and he stepped forward, staring harder at the dark speck in the blue-green water. It grew larger, coming toward him, until he could see that it was a head, with a face, and it was a woman, but not the one he had seen on the boat, because this one had long glossy hair. She saw him, and lifted her hand to wave.

Uncertainly, he waved back. She beckoned more vigorously. Her shoulders were bare, no straps visible, and when she gestured again he caught a flash of bare breast. He swallowed hard. There was no doubt about it. She was not only waving, she was signing to him to join her. But why? He didn’t know her; who did she think he was?

He saw her lips move:
Viene
.

He staggered back, startled. No, surely that was wishful thinking! No way did she speak Italian.

Viene. Come to me.

He didn’t know if he’d heard it or only imagined it, combining her unmistakable gestures with the sexy, appealing look on her face, the speaking pout of her lips, but he couldn’t be mistaken about what she wanted.

Come here, you. Don’t be shy. I want you.

He felt the splash and looked down, surprised to see his feet in the water. He stepped back onto dry land, torn between his desire to swim right out to that very sexy woman and practical concerns about his clothes. He didn’t want to ruin his only good pair of shoes. Besides, they were heavy, and would slow him down. He bent and tugged at the laces, swearing softly at his own clumsiness.

Caro…

Her sweet voice caressed his ears. This time, he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He looked up and saw how much closer she’d come to the shore. She smiled, her dark eyes sparkling. Her shoulders were completely out of the water, and she wasn’t wearing anything on top. He saw her breasts plainly now; saw how the waves lapped at her nipples.

To hell with his shoes.

He plunged ahead just as a warning shout came from behind and a stone whizzed past his ear.

There was a splash—that was the stone—and the woman folded forward and dropped, vanishing beneath the water.

He yelled and would have gone after her except that somebody had hold of him and wouldn’t let him go. He struggled, trying to pull away, shouting curses, but even though his captor was shorter than he, he was a strong, wiry, and determined man. After a few moments Mario gave up the fight, although he kept staring out to sea, searching for her at the same time as he struggled to regain his English.

“Where is she? What happened—you, did you throw that rock? You hit her! She could drown! We have to find her—save her!”

“She can’t drown.”

“What?”

“Son, she was after drowning
you
. Now, come out of there, come on, and we’ll talk.”

The woman had vanished. If she was dead, her body should have floated to the surface; if she’d managed to swim away, he thought there would have been some sign of her. He’d seen what might have been a large fish just disturbing the surface of the water before streaking out for the open sea, but nothing of the woman. He allowed the man who had driven her away to put an arm around his shoulders and lead him back to dry land. He’d gone hardly deeper than his ankles.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Mario.”

“From the chip shop, right? You’re Tony’s nephew from Sicily?”

He nodded dully. The man was familiar to him by sight, a regular customer, the postman.

“Well, let me tell you, Mario, that was no woman calling to you—that was a mermaid. If she’d got her hands on you, you’d be dead. It’s happened before in these parts, according to stories. Fairy stories, people say, and until this week I wouldn’t have put much stock in them, either. But something’s changed—
everything’s
changed—we’ve been cut off from the world we thought we knew, and who knows what might happen next?”

He patted Mario on the back. “Lucky I saw you. No harm done. Next time you’ll know to be more careful.”

 

From
Recollections of Alexander (McNeill) Wall
(unpublished; no date)

 

F
OLK
-
KNOWLEDGE
is acquired in infancy, from old nurse beside the fire, or in the playground. As I was born half a world away from my natural home, naturally I grew up ignorant of local custom and belief. I learned the particular folklore of the Apple when I was already in middle age, hearing it filtered through my daughter, who had a story to go along with every picture she drew or painted: these grassy mounds were entrances to underground homes where the “old people” lived; here was a cave into which a young man had entered and never returned; this was the tree where a magic apple grew…I thought it all amusing nonsense, never for a moment tempted to believe it true, and Emmeline’s fascination with fairy tales I thought a harmless, childish fancy she would soon outgrow.

But my daughter never did outgrow it. Instead, as she matured, so did her passion. She longed for imagined fairy realms as other girls her age longed for a husband. I don’t know why it should be that she was so disappointed by our world, for I did my best to make her happy as she was growing up, and gave her everything she asked. But it was never enough. She yearned for a mysterious lover who would whisk her away from humankind, to a magical otherworld where anything could happen. And one night her dearest wish was granted. Her dearest, childish,
impossible
wish.

I believed at first that she’d been abducted, or perhaps gone away quite willingly with a handsome gypsy or a plausible chancer from the city who thought to save himself the necessity of honest labour by marrying into money, and I was quite prepared to pay him off or do whatever else was necessary to ensure Emmeline’s happiness. But as the weeks and then months passed with no word from my daughter or her seducer, and no results from the private investigator, no sightings of her from anyone in Scotland, I found that fragments of the old tales I’d learned at second-hand were lodged like painful shards of glass beneath my skin: stories of fairy abductions, non-human bridegrooms, journeys made by the living into “the undiscover’d country from whose bourn / no traveller returns.”

I don’t suppose that the good folk of Appleton are any more credulous or superstitious than folk anywhere else in these isles, but certainly there are some superstitions unique to these parts. It has long been an item of faith among the locals that when their ancestors settled in these parts they made a sort of pact with the
genius loci
to grow apple trees; and that as long as these trees thrived, those who tended them would be rewarded with good fortune. This is the belief played out in the annual ritual of the Apple Queen who shares a symbolic apple with the “stranger” who has chosen her as his bride. According to the popular superstition, these two are thenceforth rewarded with their “hearts’ desire” and their personal happiness is reflected in the continuing good fortune shared by the whole community.

For most people, throughout all of human history, I have no doubt, the heart’s desire is a simple one: to prosper, staying well and free from hunger, to be loved, to live to see their children grow up and prosper…bearing this in mind, and the fact that Appleton has been a singularly lucky and prosperous community, it is hard to argue against the widespread belief that some sort of magic must be at work. I myself have always suspected selective memory is at work, for even in Appleton some folk go hungry, many die before their time, and not everyone’s luck is good.

But there is more to this belief in a “magic apple.” Very occasionally—once in a generation, it is said, and yet it must be rare that one would live long enough to see it happen more than once in a reasonable life-span—a single golden apple will appear on one tree, shining strangely among the reds and greens. And as in all the old legends, this golden apple is endowed with special powers. The red apple chosen and consumed by the annual Queen is well enough for all
ordinary
wishes, it seems, granting health and fertility and so on. But the golden apple had the power to grant any wish, even those called impossible.

The apple my daughter picked in 1916 and shared with her stranger was golden.

During the long weeks and months that I waited without result to hear some word of Emmeline, I spent many hours in the library—“my” library, as I thought of it still. I read everything Uncle Lachlan had collected on the subject of magic, superstition, fairy tales, and folklore, and I sent away to Edinburgh for other works, both published and unpublished, which treated of such subjects as the second sight, the old religions, and the fairy faith. Much of what I found was sheer rubbish, but here and there gleamed a useful nugget, which I committed to memory, and gradually I formulated a plan.

The local folk would not help me, so I recruited some builders from Glasgow to help me with my project, and took them up to the Reul, under the pretence that the land there belonged to me and that I planned to clear and build upon it. One of these builders was Irish, and as soon as he set eyes on the hummocks and cairns which Emmeline had been pleased to call “the fairy houses,” he began to cross himself and begged me not to disturb the ground. I ignored his protests and continued loudly to discuss plans for clearing away the brambles and levelling the ground, and got the other two men to agree to help, work to begin the following week, unless, I added in a clear and carrying voice, “my daughter be returned to me, safe and unharmed, in three days’ time, in which case this ground shall be left undisturbed.”

There was a terrible storm that night: thunder and lightning, torrents of rain and furious gusts of wind that kept everyone indoors, cowering in fear of the power of the elements. Rather than exhausting itself, it went on well into the next day, finally dying away at about four o’clock in the afternoon. I went out for a walk immediately the rain stopped, restless after my incarceration, and as I went past the library, I saw a huddled figure crouching on the front steps.

It was my daughter, Emmeline, but this was not the joyous reunion I had longed for. She spat in my face and cursed me for forcing her return, and wept bitterly. I thought she would forgive me soon enough, but my heart and hopes sank when I saw what she carried nestled in the crook of her arm. It was a tiny, newborn baby.