The Apple-Tree Throne
Page 9
Breakfast is porridge with Vic’s damson jelly, and the note on the lid in her sure, elegant hand: See us when you run low. Love, V. I didn’t deserve her as a friend when we were children at play, and I do not deserve her now, or Clarkie either. I asked him yesterday “Why do we always give nicknames that are longer than their true names?” and he said, “Drink your tea, you great radish.” They deserve each other. And no one deserves me. I wonder about marriage, about being chosen for someone, someone being chosen for me; and waking up every morning and being chosen again and again and again, till the day we died.
Horrible thoughts on a gray and dreary morning. We are due for a storm; my leg knows, and is shouting it in the strongest possible terms. But I do not feel like weeping or screaming any more, only sleeping. It’s somewhat of a relief, though I feel like a ship becalmed at sea, its sails slack against a still, cream-coloured sky. Every day it seems to take hours of effort to dress and groom myself, let alone keep myself fed. I cannot imagine working now — cannot imagine anything other than the barest necessities of being, this endless dreary treadmill of waking, eating, shaving, sleeping. I sleep more than anything simply because I cannot think of how else to fill the hours. It is a small, temporary relief.
After a week or so in the new place, I venture out under drizzle, a thin and dispiriting sleet more like cold wax than water, and I enter St. Thomas’ graveyard with my burden of roses. I had been obliged to visit every flower-shop and greengrocer in town to find a wreath of appropriate heft and majesty, and it goes soggy in the rain as I heave it onto the tombstone, and stand gasping, rubbing my leg. The roses are thick and velvety, their pink and white a blessing to the eye against the pale granite. Two straggling blue ribbons drip streams of water from the base of the wreath, carrying it away from the beaten-down petals. I could not, quite, take the unwatched ways behind Lindow House and steal whatever of those dark red roses remained from their family greenhouse; it was their great secret, and their great pride, and no one else, it seems, ever grew roses like them in this place. I only found weaker, flimsier reds, like the anæmic blood of the wounded.
I prepared a speech this morning — stating that I hope he is happy now, here in this quiet place; that I regret our last fight, and did not mean what I said; that he was a good leader, and a good friend, and I was not able to communicate that sufficiently before he was killed in the final massacre. Rest, noble spirit, the speech ends. It’s no masterpiece but it is the closest I will ever get to bringing the past towards us instead of away.
Instead I stare at the grave and the stone in silence till they feel like they are burned into my eyes, and the cold rain has gone through my great-coat and my jacket and my shirt and my linens, and my boots are filled with water, and then I salute the empty air and go home. Maybe I will return sometime and give the speech properly. Today I cannot.
Three tram transfers, then half an hour on foot up the slippery hills; it takes most of the diminishing afternoon to return to my new home, and I am soaked and shivering. A change of clothes is not much help, and I curl up around the fire and chafe my clammy skin, watching steam rise. I am terribly lonely but cannot impose myself on the Clarks any more; I am sure they must be sick of me, whatever their protests to the contrary. And they are not the only ones; I have received no word, Clark swears, from the Wickersleys, or Miss Meyers. Well, perhaps he is trying to spare me the truth. Or perhaps they really have forgotten about me.
I stare into the fire and wonder what I will do now.
Braddock?
“Oh, hallo,” I say absently; and then I remember where I am now, and how long it has been, and it is like an electric-shock. I cautiously get out of the chair.
Wickersley floats outside the window, his body a sieve to the rain, smiling uncertainly.
“I thought you had gone to your eternal rest in Paradise,” I say, and find my eyes filling with tears.
I have. Or at any rate, I think that I have a place where I may rest in eternity. Only do not, my friend, send me away again.
“Why bother? You’ll just come back.”
Endlessly. Till time itself runs out, and the sun is cold, and the earth has ceased to spin.
“Why, anyone would think we were in love.”
Fiddlesticks. I cannot imagine why they would say such a thing.
And we are both laughing now, and I open the window; he glides in like a hawk, his fingers touching my cheek as he floats by, a breath of warm air, and he sits upon the second easy-chair before the fire, his face shining.
What are we weeping for, Ben? We have no reason to weep.
“No, of course not.” I wipe my face with my sleeve, and close the window on the cold and the rain. “Cup of tea?”
THE END
Author’s Note
This work is based on ‘The Ghost of Genova Heights,’ by Stars, from their album ‘In Our Bedroom After the War.’ The very first time I heard it, many years ago, I thought of what a tremendous story was being told in such a brief piece of media, and it was inevitable that I began to think of setting something in the world of the song — another England, another place, another time. Obviously for copyright reasons, no lyrics have been quoted in this work; but it’s a great song. Go buy the album. And thank you, Stars, for being my guiding light, my inspiration, my muse, my laudanum, my warm blanket on a cold night.