Where the Wild Cherries Grow

by Laura Madeleine

  11th November 1918. Armistice Day.

  A group of people stand outside The World’s End. Apart from a horse and cart at the edge of the frame where there would now be a car, it’s barely changed. Union Jacks hang from the windows, are held clenched in fists. A child is sitting on the shoulders of a man, kicking his legs in the air with joy. A plump woman in a fussy blouse is beaming behind a table of food.

  ‘That’s my gran, Annie Durrant. Hillbrand’s great-aunt, I guess.’ Jem points but I’m not listening, because seated in front of her …

  A young woman, her dark eyes looking straight down the lens of the camera, hair pinned back beneath a winter hat. A pale face, soft lips unsmiling, hands folded in her lap.

  ‘Is that …?’

  Jem nods. ‘Yes. That’s her.’

  Emeline Clara Vane. Beautiful, sad, alive.

  February 1919

  The young man sat, rifling through a bag. All around, freight stretched into the darkness. A small space had been left in one corner, just enough for a stove and a wooden seat and table built into the wall.

  I presumed it was intended for the bagman, but the boy didn’t look like he worked for the railway. The flickering light illuminated skin in need of a wash, scarred knuckles, the dark lines of a tattoo at the edge of his rolled-up sleeve.

  Not for the first time I felt a jolt of fear. We had reached an agreement; at least, I hoped we had. He’d taken the ring without further questions, told me to make myself at home. Part of me felt weak with relief, even though I knew the world was not often so forgiving. The miles were rolling past outside, taking me further and further from Paris.

  ‘You look done in,’ the boy said. I tried to smile.

  ‘It has been a long day,’ I told him, my French stiff and formal.

  He bared his teeth in a grin.

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘No thank you.’ It left my mouth automatically. In truth, I had no idea. My body still felt like something that did not belong to me.

  He only snorted, went back to his search through the sack. ‘You’re thinner than a towrope. When was the last time you ate?’

  I stared, taken aback by his informality.

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Everything, from the beginning of Andrew’s dinner party, before even, was a blur. My stomach dropped at the memory. I had taken the morphine recklessly, I realized, and on purpose. What else had been deliberate?

  ‘Well then,’ the boy said over my silence, ‘high time for supper.’

  Before I could ask what he meant, he began to unpack items from the sack, jars and packages of all kinds. I leaned closer. There was a block of chocolate, wrapped in silver paper, a tiny jar of caviar, a tin of coffee, peaches in syrup. Whistling through his teeth, the boy took out a knife and began to hack the top from one of the tins.

  Clumsily, I picked up the caviar. It looked just like the kind we had stolen from the pantry. I hadn’t seen any since before the war.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  The boy looked smug.

  ‘Fell out of a crate.’

  ‘You stole it?’

  ‘I redistributed it,’ he said, taking the jar from my hand and cracking open the wax seal. ‘This much freight, things are bound to go astray. Why waste them?’

  ‘But this belongs to someone,’ I protested.

  ‘Certainly does,’ he said, poking around behind the chimney pipe of the stove and pulling out a whole cured leg of ham. ‘But they, Mam’selle, aren’t here. We are and we’re hungry. Least, I am.’ He seated himself comfortably and started to carve at the meat. ‘Care to dine?’ he asked, around a mouthful.

  Something was waking in me at the sight of that food, those distantly remembered flavours. An unfamiliar feeling: hunger.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured, reaching for a sliver of ham.

  It was one of the strangest meals I had ever taken, scooping up the costly food with my fingertips. After months of tasting nothing, the flavours mingled and sang over each other. Chocolate, rich and dark, filling my mouth with its midnight bitterness. Candied almonds, roasted and sweet. Smoky, savoury meat, coffee like I’d never tasted before: poured strong and thick into a battered tin mug. It wasn’t long before it all became too much and I sat back, stomach groaning.

  The boy ate ravenously, though his body had not an inch of fat to spare. After a while, when it seemed he had eaten his fill, he took out a pouch of tobacco and fell to rolling cigarettes.

  I drowsed, eyes half-closed, lulled by the rocking of the train and the spicy scent of tobacco smoke, like treacle and summer hay. It reminded me of Freddie, of how he used to sneak out to smoke on the terrace of Hallerton. Mother hated the habit. He would hide, leaning against the wall nearest the study, only the red end of the cigarette glowing in the darkness. I would creep out to keep him company and the night air would pull goose-flesh from my skin. I once pestered him until he allowed me to try a drag, and he laughed as I coughed and wheezed at the unfamiliar burning in my lungs.

  That youthful laugh was gone, but the memory was precious. I was reluctant to break it when the boy spoke, to offer me a cigarette.

  ‘Why not?’ I heard myself say. He didn’t hesitate, but finished rolling another, lit it from his own.

  As before, the smoke made my throat burn, my eyes stream and I choked, trying to cover my mouth with my bandaged palm. The boy didn’t laugh as I thought he would, only frowned.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked, when I caught my breath. He was looking at my hands.

  ‘An accident,’ I said. Was that the truth?

  ‘With glass?’

  My surprise must have shown, for he laughed out a mouthful of smoke.

  ‘Got my own specimens,’ he waggled his hand at me. Scars, some pink and shiny, others faded to white, criss-crossed the knuckles.

  ‘How?’ I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

  ‘Had to deal with a stubborn window or two in my time,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t always so prosperous as you see now, Mam’selle.’

  ‘What about the war?’ The cigarette was burning down between my fingers. ‘Were you injured?’

  ‘Never had the pleasure to be.’ The boy took a last drag, flicked the remaining inch into the stove. ‘As a guest of the Bureau of Corrections, my presence at the front wasn’t desired.’

  The boy saw the alarm in my face and smiled, the expression chasing away the shadows and the danger and the dirt.

  ‘Despite what they say, Mam’selle, there’s still some honour amongst thieves.’

  I tried to nod, but the movement sent my head spinning and I caught the edge of the wooden seat. The boy was at my side, steadying me with his lean, scarred hands.

  ‘Easy, easy,’ he murmured, smelling of sweat and coal smoke and tobacco. I did not protest when he helped me to my feet, guided me towards a heap of sacks on the other side of the stove. They were filled with grain, dried beans or corn, and yielded as I sank on to them. From somewhere, the boy produced a blanket. It was rough and scratchy, but warm.

  ‘Why are you helping me?’ I mumbled, sleep already looming.

  I couldn’t see his face in the shadows.

  ‘Knew a lady once,’ he said eventually. ‘She were a mademoiselle too. You remind me of her, a bit.’

  ‘What happened to her,’ my eyes were closing, ‘the lady?’

  When next I looked up the boy had returned to his place by the stove, a silhouette against the ochre glow.

  ‘She married,’ his voice was quiet, ‘one of her own kind. But she weren’t happy. She would’ve run if she could. We would’ve helped her run.’

  ‘Monsieur … I don’t know your name.’

  ‘No “Monsieur”.’ The smiling reply found me before I slept. ‘Just call me Puce.’

  June 1969

  I stare at the photograph for a long time. Eventually, the garden reappears around me, the sound of the bees, the distant noise of a radio from one of the other cottages. F
or an instant, I wish I could imagine myself into the photograph, into that November afternoon so I could step forward, take Emeline’s hand and ask her … what?

  I push my chair back with a sigh.

  ‘You all right?’ Jem asks. ‘You’ve got the strangest look on your face.’

  I want to tell her everything, about why I’m really here, about the diary, but for some reason I can’t. How can I explain the impulse that keeps drawing me towards Hallerton, and Emeline, which insists that if I dig deeper, I’ll find something important? I can’t even make sense of it myself.

  ‘Can I borrow this?’ I ask instead.

  Jem gives me a puzzled look, but slips the photograph from its cardboard corners and hands it over.

  We drive to Hallerton in silence. I almost start to speak a dozen times, but at the last second I can’t find the words. Jem says something about the weather breaking soon. I make a noise in reply, but all I can really think about is getting back to Hallerton.

  ‘Don’t worry about lunch,’ I tell Jem as I slam the car door outside the house. ‘I’ll have to work straight through today. To catch up.’

  She shrugs, though not with her usual ease.

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  I’m searching for the keys when she calls after me.

  ‘Bill, what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell her. ‘Thanks. I’ll see you later.’

  She’s still watching as I close the heavy door behind me. The house is waiting.

  ‘Hello,’ I whisper into the silence.

  In the study, I run my hands along the carved wooden arms of the chair. This is where Emeline sat, on a bleak, February day as she listened to Durrant speak. I do not think you should be here alone, he had told her.

  Not alone, I wish I could reply.

  The mantel above the fireplace is clogged with papers, but I clear a space, take the photograph of Emeline from my bag and set it there. Is she really gone, like Mrs Mallory thinks? Were the days after the dinner party truly her last?

  I unwrap the diary from my spare shirt. As always, it falls open a quarter of the way through, at the point where Emeline’s voice ceases and time takes over, with its own language of yellowing paper and water-stained edges.

  Gently, I turn back to the previous page, to the hastily scribbled pencil lines. I trace the words, trying to grasp the mind behind them.

  What if I lose myself again? What if next time I can’t stop, a step too far on the marsh? Will go. Andrew says better soon, that Hallerton upsets me.

  Did they reach St Augustine’s? Did her uncle send her there, sign away her life because he was afraid of what she might do, this girl who was coming apart through sadness? Did they want to keep her away from gossip, forgotten, out of sight, out of mind?

  Until now, until money’s involved. Now they send me, a stranger, not to find her but to bury her once and for all in an unknown grave, to dismiss her. I won’t do it.

  What about Hillbrand? William Perch, Solicitor, demands. What about the developers, and Mrs Mallory and her brother? It’s their case.

  They aren’t here, I tell him.

  The afternoon passes in a flash as I search through the labyrinth of papers for something, anything, that might help me turn the case on its head, prove that Emeline is still alive. A photograph, a ticket stub, an envelope with a foreign postmark … Didn’t Mrs Mallory say that her father had a letter hidden away somewhere, one that proved Emeline wasn’t dead? If so, it could be here.

  But there’s nothing, only bills and other demands for money. Outside the window, the sky grows darker. My eyes begin to struggle with the endless pages of cramped handwriting and typed print. The headache prowls, threatening to return.

  I should call it a day and head back to The World’s End. I should find Jem and explain everything. The photograph of Emeline urges me to try one more file, just one more, but resolutely I take it up, close it gently into the pages of the diary. There’s always tomorrow.

  Outside the air is greasy with moisture. A breeze has picked up, whipping the treetops into a frenzy, sending dust and dander flying. I’m barely more than halfway across the garden when the rain starts. One splash, two, and the sky opens, hurling down raindrops as big as water balloons.

  I shove the briefcase beneath my suit jacket, but the fabric is drenched in seconds. I duck under a tree but it’s no better there; by the time I get back to Saltedge I might as well have jumped into the sea. As for the briefcase, with its many holes and its precious cargo …

  I hurry back towards the house, through a wall of grey water. The key to the front door is slippery in my fingers. Inside, the sound of the rain is amplified. I can hear it, finding its way through the broken roof, pouring on to floorboards that were once varnished and spread with carpets. Nothing to do but wait. Even as I think it, the rain gets heavier. I daren’t go into the study, wringing wet as I am. There seems only one other place.

  The roof above the room where I found the diary is sound. Was this Emeline’s room? Movement catches my eye as I cross the threshold, but it’s only two of the crows, sheltering from the rain on the window sill.

  Instinctively, I nod at them, but they only look at me with their unfathomable eyes, and shuffle uneasily, croaking in their chests. Slowly, I sink down against one wall. After a while, they decide that my company is preferable to getting their feathers wet, and start to preen their fine, black wings.

  My jacket is done for. I shrug out of it and dry my hands as well as I can on my shirt before taking out the diary. I turn back to the beginning, to follow Emeline’s journey, her last days in this house, before the accident.

  If not for that accident, she might have watched as Hallerton was sold off, might have been married, might still be living now, growing old somewhere in London. If not for that accident, I would never have heard the name Emeline Vane.

  ‘Oh man,’ Jem says when she sees me, sitting hunched and damp on the floor, clutching the diary. She helps me to my feet.

  Outside, it’s dark. I must have been sitting there, thinking, for hours. The rain still falls, but in a slow hush rather than a torrential battering.

  ‘Been looking for you all over,’ she says when we’re in the car, brushing an oilskin hood back off her hair. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’

  She looks unhappy, and I feel a pang of remorse for blundering into her peaceful existence; a city fool with his loyalties twisted.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The rain patters on the roof of the car. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

  ‘I know.’

  As she drives, I tell her everything. About why Hillbrand sent me here, about the people waiting to tear Hallerton down, about Mrs Mallory and Timothy Vane, about Emeline’s diary. When I’ve finished, I have to force myself to turn and look at her.

  Jem’s face is serious. She says nothing, and I wait for her to stop in front of The World’s End and order me out of the car. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t drive past the pub at all, but swings down the road leading to her cottage. Only when she’s turned off the engine does she let out a small sigh.

  ‘Dicky called,’ she says, ‘that’s why I came looking for you. He said something about signing a deal, that Timothy Vane is conscious again. He needs you back in London. Tomorrow.’

  I force myself to meet her eyes in the gloom.

  ‘Jem, I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Come in, for a start.’ Her frown is gone. ‘No use sitting here. You’ll catch a cold.’

  Inside, the cottage feels damp. Jem potters about, turning on lights and hanging up her dripping raincoat. From a narrow, twisting set of stairs she throws down a towel and a bundle of clothes. I retreat to a dark corner to dry myself off. It isn’t cold, but Jem lights a fire in the huge grate, I suspect more for comfort than for warmth. The clothes she’s given me are ancient and patched; a pair of men’s corduroy trousers hacked off into shorts, a huge old Aran jumper. It smells fusty, but the minute I pull it over my he
ad, I feel better.

  ‘Suits you,’ she tells me from the grate, as she stacks up kindling.

  ‘Whose is it?’ It seems the easier question to ask.

  ‘My grandpa’s, I think. Certainly not Dad’s. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in fisherman’s gear.’

  She sits back on her heels, watching the growing flames. It’s a good fire, licking bright and fast at the wood. Wish I knew how to do it properly.

  ‘We’ve always had a gas one at home.’

  Jem doesn’t reply, only rearranges a log.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she says at last, still staring at the grate. ‘About the diary?’

  I start to say ‘I don’t know’, but stop myself mid-way. I do know.

  ‘I was worried you’d hate me.’ I force the words out. ‘For being here, for it being my job to prove that Emeline was mad, or dead or preferably both.’

  ‘I asked about the diary, Bill, not your job. I more or less guessed what you were doing here.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t look so surprised. Dicky wouldn’t be chasing around one of Grandpa’s old cases unless it was important; unless there was money involved. So,’ she says, ‘the diary?’

  She is staring at me, expecting an answer, deserving one.

  How do I put it into words that don’t sound deluded? The feeling that these last few days have changed me somehow; that Hallerton and the marshes and homegrown strawberries might mean more to me than business expenses or promotions or new suits.

  Jem laughs at my bewildered expression and climbs to her feet, padding over to the sink. She returns with a bottle, full of something dark and purple and gleaming.

  ‘Sloe gin,’ she says, pouring some into a chipped glass. ‘Made it last year. You look like you could use a drink.’

  I manage a smile, swamped by gratitude for this woman, so unlike any other friend I’ve had. The liquid in the glass is sweet and sticky and tastes of ripe fruit, splitting in the sun.

  ‘What will you tell Dicky,’ she asks between sips, ‘when you get back to London?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It’s the truth. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go back. I … I like it here.’