The Silver Bough Page 7

“Where are you from?”

  “Oh…” She made a meaningless gesture, caught off guard by the abrupt change in subject, and uneasy with it. “I’ve lived a lot of places. I was born in Massachusetts.” She edged away from the desk, anticipating more intrusive questions.

  “Do you like biographies?”

  She stopped. “Yes.”

  “We have a very good one of Charlotte Brontë.”

  “Is that the one by Lyndall Gordon?”

  “Yes. Did you read her on Virginia Woolf?” As Nell nodded, they exchanged the book-lover’s complicit glance, and Kathleen said, lowering her voice slightly, “Her new book about Mary Wollstonecraft is wonderful. It’s checked out at the moment, but I could put it aside for you if you like.”

  “Thanks.” Nell smiled uncertainly. “Well…I’d better find myself something to read now.”

  It had been only a brief, casual exchange of views. For all she knew, it was the sort of conversation the librarian had half a dozen times every day, but for her it had been rare and oddly seductive. When she brought her books to the desk to be stamped out, the librarian was again moved to comment, and they wound up discussing the comparative merits of works by Paul Auster, Alice Hoffman, and Russell Hoban.

  “It seems we have similar tastes,” said Kathleen, and her friendly, pretty face glowed with pleasure. “And it sounds like you read a lot—more than I have time for.”

  Nell shrugged. “I have to have something for when it’s too dark or too wet to work in the garden. I can’t stand much television.”

  “I’ve been thinking about starting a book group. They’re so popular everywhere these days; it’s strange there isn’t one in Appleton.” The librarian leaned across the counter, her eyes fixed eagerly on Nell’s. “Would you be interested?”

  “No.” The word came out more vehemently than she’d intended. “No, I don’t like clubs; that’s not my kind of thing.” The librarian’s bright, hopeful expression collapsed, and Nell felt as if she’d kicked a dog for wagging its tail.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that; I’m sure it’s a good idea—I’m just not good in groups, that’s all. I’m not good in any kind of company—well, I’ve just made that obvious, haven’t I?” She struggled to make amends, trying to smile. “I’ve lived alone too long. I didn’t mean to be rude, I’ve just forgotten how to talk to people.”

  “You weren’t rude! And as for forgetting how to talk to people—it was the way you were talking to me about books that made me think you’d be perfect in a book group.”

  Nell imagined turning and walking out without another word—but she couldn’t do it. Although she bought books nearly every time she went for a break to the city, there were no bookstores in Appleton; she needed this library. And, anyway, it was never her intention to hurt anyone. While she hesitated, still struggling with the problem, someone came up to the counter with a stack of books to be checked out. She moved aside, but the librarian let her assistant deal with them and did not release Nell from her gaze. “Won’t you think about it?”

  “I’m better talking one-on-one than with groups.” As she spoke, she wondered if she shouldn’t just agree and make her escape. She could always find excuses later for not attending.

  “Me, too, actually,” said Kathleen, with another disconcertingly warm smile. “Do you want to meet up for lunch sometime? We close between one and two for lunch. How about today?”

  Her eyes went to the golden sunlight streaming through the window behind Kathleen. “Not today; not with this sunshine. After the weather we’ve had, I can’t wait to get back in the garden.”

  “Oh, of course. Well, maybe another time? When it’s raining? I’m here the same hours every day except Monday and Sunday.”

  “Actually, I don’t really do lunch. It puts such a big hole in the day.”

  That should have been the end of it. Two flat refusals were generally enough to kill any hopes. She hadn’t even apologized or left an obvious opening for her to try again; Kathleen could only retire, more or less defeated, which was what she’d wanted.

  So Nell didn’t understand what made her say, “Why don’t you come to my house for dinner? Tomorrow evening?” She spoke so casually that no one could have guessed what a big thing it was; the first time she’d ever invited anyone to Orchard House.

  Kathleen’s face lit up. “I’d love to! What time?”

  “Six o’clock? It won’t be anything fancy; probably more or less vegetarian.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  They gazed at each other for a moment, both smiling shyly. Nell felt nervous and hopeful and confused by what she’d just done. She became aware that people were jostling behind her; looking around, she saw that a small queue had formed: mothers and children and pensioners struggling with their piles of books and waiting for her to get out of the way.

  “I’ll take those over here,” said Kathleen, moving to help her overworked assistant. She cast a final, bright-eyed look at Nell. “See you Sunday!”

  In a daze, Nell left the library. She hoped she wasn’t going to regret the invitation. It would be harder, in a small town, to avoid someone once the first overtures had been made if you didn’t want to be friends. She thought of Sam, who’d never understood what he called her “shyness” but which others recognized, more accurately, as a carefully maintained aloofness; he’d always thought it the most natural thing in the world to have and keep friends. As she put her library books into the car, as she got out her shopping bags and walked down to the shops, she felt, for the first time in years, the warmth of her husband’s approval, as if it were his sorely missed presence at her side.

  From The Living Magic of Scotland

  by Daphne Holdstock

  (Mythril Press, 1979)

  ALTHOUGH scholars have argued over whether or not the apple tree was represented in the Ogham tree-alphabet discussed earlier, there is no doubt about the veneration with which the apple was regarded by the ancient peoples of Scotland. Even the slightest acquaintance with folklore and fairy tale will bring a dozen references to mind. Apples were the fruit of life and immortality; the earthly paradise was “Avalon” (apple-land), and a branch bearing silver leaves, crystal blossom, and ripe red fruit was the magical passport which admitted mortals into the Other-World.

  This all sounds lovely, and yet the living traces of the long-ago apple-tree cult we can see in the Scotland of today bear a curiously sinister import. The game of “dooking for apples” played at Hallowe’en is believed by many to be the survival of an ancient Druidic rite, and it also suggests a connection with the water ordeal once used for testing witches, who drowned if they were innocent, but were burnt to death if they managed to survive their ducking.

  Old fertility rituals and festivals have long been associated with English apple orchards, but I know of only one such recorded in Scotland. The orchards of Appleton, on the west coast of Argyll, no longer exist, but the last Appleton Apple Fair was held in 1950, so I was able, on my visit to Appleton, to talk to many who remembered it.

  From my reading about the Fair I’d been led to suppose it was a Victorian invention that would prove, on closer inspection, to contain nothing authentically Scottish. After all, the town’s very name is English, and the orchards were planted by incomers in the seventeenth century. Yet a visit to Appleton changed my mind, especially when I ventured into the surrounding hills, and particularly into the high valley they call the “reul.” There is real magic there; deep mysteries of earth and stone and plant and water.

  Even if the Apple Fair was invented to attract tourists, however artificial its beginnings, it could not remain cut off but would soon have been pulled into the service of the local magic. Some aspects are recognizable from other Scottish traditions: that it was supposed to be a dark-haired stranger who crowned the Apple Queen reminds me of the preferred “first-footer” on Hogmanay. My mother always used to say that the first person to step across the threshold of the house on New
Year’s Day should be a tall, dark-haired man. If the first caller chanced to be fair-haired, bad luck could be averted by tossing a lump of coal in ahead of him, but if it was a woman, we’d have bad luck all year.

  “After the last Apple Fair, we never had any luck in the town,” one elderly woman told me. “It was her fault, the Apple Queen. If she’d married her man, everything would have gone on as it always had. But she went away. They both did—only not together as they were meant to. And ever since, nothing’s gone right with the town.”

  ASHLEY SLEPT THROUGH it all: earthquake, landslide, sunrise, voices outside, the pounding on her door. She woke at last when she felt someone prodding at her shoulder to the accompaniment of a soft, childish voice repeating, “It’s time to get up. Time to get up, Cousin Ashley.”

  She rolled over. Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she saw a little girl, brown hair pulled into tight pigtails, staring solemnly at her, and she smiled, feeling the sides of her mouth crack with the effort. “Good morning, Jade,” she said, and heard the croak in her voice. “What time is it?”

  “It’s gone ten!”

  “In the morning?”

  “Of course in the morning! Can’t you see the sun?”

  She looked. Even though the curtains were drawn, sunlight rippled like water on the rough white plaster of the ceiling. She sat up, stretching her arms above her head as she yawned. “Mmm. Well, I am on vacation, you know. If I was at home I might sleep till noon.”

  “But it’s such a beautiful day, it’s a sin, that’s what my granny would say, a sin to waste the best part of the day by sleeping. My granny used to live here, you know,” Jade confided, leaning against the bed.

  “Here”—it was all coming back to her now—was a tiny, two-room cottage located a short distance behind the house where Jade and her family lived, and which Ashley had been told she was to treat as her own home for as long as she liked.

  “I didn’t know your granny lived here. I thought your folks just rented it out.”

  “Yes, it’s a holiday house now, since Granny died. Passed,” Jade corrected herself. “My granny passed last year.”

  The phrase made her envision an old lady in a long nightgown hovering in the sky above the house like an elderly angel. “So did mine.”

  Jade’s brow knitted. “But did we have the same granny?”

  “Oh, no. My grandmother was…” she paused to work it out. “She would have been your granny’s sister-in-law. I think.” More details of the night before came back to her—arriving in the rain, the friendly chaos of the Walkers’ house, the noisy family dinner, how remote everything had seemed through waves of tiredness, until Shona had taken her, beneath an umbrella, across the path behind their house to this one, Graeme following behind with her luggage. “Our kids get up awfully early,” he’d said. “You’ll get more rest over here.”

  Shona had shown her where everything was, how to work the shower and the electric heaters, and told her that she’d made sure there were a few basic food supplies in the kitchen. “But come over for breakfast with us in the morning if you like, or anytime you need anything. Back door’s always open.”

  Remembering, she fixed the little girl with a look. “How did you get in? I locked the door.”

  “I know where Granny kept a spare key. It was still there.”

  “You shouldn’t let yourself into somebody else’s house.”

  Jade was unimpressed. “It’s our house. It belongs to the Walkers, and I’m a Walker.”

  “I know, but when somebody else is staying here—when your parents rent it out to someone, you don’t let yourself in then, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, then.”

  “But you’re family.”

  Ashley laughed. She liked having been accepted, even absorbed, so quickly into this friendly Scottish clan, but it looked like there might be a few drawbacks. “Even family members deserve some privacy!”

  Jade stared as if this concept made no sense. Ashley put out her hand, palm flat and facing up. “Give me the key.”

  The small mouth set mutinously.

  “Or I can tell your mom, and you can give it to her.”

  Jade sighed and handed over a small, tarnished key.

  “Thank you.”

  “Aren’t you ever getting up? I had breakfast ages ago, but Mum’s got some rolls in the oven, and she says you can have whatever you want.”

  “Go and tell her thank you, and I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  “But I don’t want you to. I’d rather get dressed by myself. Remember what I said about privacy? Run along, now.” She tried to sound friendly but stern, someone not to be argued with, and it seemed to work.

  Jade sighed heavily and moved away from the bed at last, head and shoulders drooping like a cartoon indicating rejection as she left the room. When she heard the door to the outside shut, Ashley got up. She showered, dressed, and applied a minimum of makeup. Her hair would just have to dry naturally because she couldn’t find a hair dryer anywhere; she hadn’t brought her own because she’d been warned that electrical goods needed a transformer to work on British current, and it had seemed too complicated. She regretted it now, faced with the prospect of living with frizzy hair, but maybe Shona could lend her one.

  She stepped outside into bright sunshine. For a moment the light was dazzling, and then the view took her breath away.

  It had been dark on her arrival, and although she’d been aware of being driven up a sloping incline, she hadn’t guessed that her cousin’s house—an unimposing modern bungalow—would command such a magnificent vista. She looked out at the gentle curve of the harbor, the sapphire glitter of the water, the quaintness of the small fishing boats and sailboats resting at anchor. The town of Appleton was contained within the natural boundaries created by the sea and the steep curve of the farther hills. It looked like a doll’s town by comparison with the immense modern sprawls of the cities she was used to—Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles. It was like nowhere she’d ever been, and she was utterly charmed by it.

  She took in a deep breath of the cool, fresh air, tangy with the smell of the sea and something faintly chemical she thought might be coal, and strode down the path to the back door of the bigger house. When she knocked, there was a volley of high, excited barks and several voices called out at once, scolding the dog and inviting her in.

  The kitchen was only slightly less crowded than it had been the night before with the two boys missing. The dog, a Jack Russell terrier called Tia, rushed forward to give her a welcoming wag and sniff before retiring to her basket by the stove.

  “Good morning,” said Shona. “I hope you slept well?”

  “Yes, thanks,” she murmured, once again made shy by the unexpectedly powerful surge of affectionate recognition she felt for someone she’d only just met. As soon as she’d set eyes on Shona she’d known her. It wasn’t only that in the shape of her face and her eyes she bore a striking resemblance to pictures of Phemie as a young woman; when she smiled, and the hidden dimple flashed below the left side of her mouth, she reminded Ashley of her father.

  “Coffee or tea?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Milk? Juice? There’s orange or apple.”

  “Orange juice would be nice, thanks.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Jade. She’d been curled on her father’s lap, and scrambled to her feet. Ashley noticed that Graeme was dressed in his postman’s uniform, complete with cap.

  “Are you through with your round already?”

  “Nothing to deliver,” he said, reaching to take off his cap. “I was just telling my girls the news. We’re cut off. Appleton’s been cut off by road.”

  She saw a giant hand equipped with a small, sharp pruning knife, lopping off a skinny, apple-bearing bough. “What do you mean?”

  “There was an earthquake—”

  “Maybe you felt it in the night?” said Shona. “Tia c
ertainly did—she got into bed with us!”

  “Not a big one, just a tremor, down on the sea bottom, but add that to all the rain we’ve been having, and there was a landslide, a big one. The road’s completely blocked.”

  She remembered that final hairpin bend on the bus journey, the high, jagged rocks with the split in them, water spilling down the side. “But there must be another…?”

  “Nope. Only one way in and out of this town, apart from the sea road. I think that’s what the Vikings called it. In the old days it was more usual to travel by sea than land around here, and I reckon that’s what we’ll have to do again.”

  “Surely it won’t take them long to clear the road,” said Shona.

  “Oh, no? You haven’t seen it. There’s a boulder the size of a house blocking the way. I don’t even want to think about what it’s done to the road beneath. It won’t be easy or quick to repair. Just moving the blockage is going to take weeks with heavy equipment. An awful spot to try to maneuver in, on a slope and that tight bend…dynamite could even make it worse, bring down more of the hillside.” He shook his head. “I reckon we’ll have to find alternatives to road travel for two or three months, minimum. They’ll be flying in the mail, come Monday—or at least by Tuesday.”

  “So there’s an airport.”

  He grinned. “There’s an old airfield, used during the war, which has clearance for use by small private planes. Maybe some bright spark will set up a regular service between here and the mainland. Next stop, Appleton International Airport!”

  “Dream on,” said Shona. “Nobody outside will care; they weren’t that bothered to come here when the road was open! The dozen or so folks who could afford airfare out at this end won’t make it economically viable.”

  “It’s lucky you came on the bus yesterday, Ashley,” said Jade, setting a small, very full glass of orange juice carefully down on the table in front of her.

  “Lucky?” said Shona, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t know if she’ll think it’s so lucky if she can’t get away.”