Lily laughed at his expression. ‘I know! So scrummy.’
James could hear Sunny in his head, on one of the days when Lily drove her mad. She’s like one of those baby dolls, Sunny was saying, with the blonde hair and the big blue eyes and the string you pull to make it talk. Mum-ma, all high and feeble, just like a baby. Mum-ma. Scrum-scrum.
‘Help me pick some more,’ said Lily. ‘If I don’t bring a full basket home, I’ll be in so much trouble.’
Helping the farmer’s daughter pick blackberries. It was not the heroic deed James had imagined.
But then Lily hooked her arm in his and grabbed his hand. ‘Come on, James,’ she urged. ‘I need you.’
He felt her warm, sticky fingers, the faint down of hair on her forearm. Through the smoke, he thought he caught a whiff of warm bread, the Blythe kitchen smell. Delicious.
A feeling stirred in James’s gut, a hollow tugging of need. Starvation, he thought. That’s what it was. Breakfast had been hours ago, and he’d run miles since then.
‘Very well,’ said James. ‘But in return, you’ll have to polish my shoes.’
CHAPTER 11
early March
‘It’s true, then?’ Oran came up behind her. ‘You haven’t left?’
April hefted the cardboard apple box that the stall owner had given her. It held mismatched cutlery, three plates, three bowls and three mugs. Kit had left one of everything in his cottage, which meant April could make tea for Edward when he popped round only if she herself had none.
The stall was not in Kingsfield, which, as April had discovered, was posh, pretty and bland. The shops that were not high-priced antique dealers or chi-chi boutiques were chains: WH Smith, Boots, Costa Coffee, Waitrose. There was one old-fashioned-looking sweet shop, but apparently it had only been open two months. It had replaced a genuinely old-fashioned general store that Edward had made sound like Arkwright’s in Open All Hours, the kind where you could still buy wooden clothes pegs, flour scooped from a barrel, and those plastic rain bonnets, favoured by little old ladies, that fold up into a square the size of a postage stamp. April regretted that she had come too late to see it.
Kingsfield was too posh for a thrift shop, so Edward had recommended April try the car boot sale that was held in the first village over the hill. The village pub had a large car park, which every second Sunday, weather permitting, became a patchwork quilt of tat, as sellers honest and conniving laid out their wares on folding tables, to be picked over by buyers, some astute, but most dreaming of Lowestoft milk jugs or Fabergé pins and therefore susceptible to paying pounds for something made last week in China and worth less than five pence.
April had come with only pence, which meant temptation was effectively bound and gagged. So far, she’d spent a pound all up — the seller had thrown in three teaspoons for free. The plates and bowls were plain, cream surfaces slightly crazed. Two of the mugs were painted with purple splodges that may have been violets, the third had a smudgy lithograph of a soaring bird and, in looping script, the maxim that begins, ‘If you love something, set it free …’
The last owner of the mug had set it free, thought April, and almost certainly hoped never to clap eyes on it again. But it would do for her.
‘If I had left,’ she said to Oran, ‘you’d hardly be talking to me, would you?’
April walked off. Oran jogged to catch up. ‘I could be imagining you,’ he said.
‘Could you?’
‘I ate a peyote button once. Saw a giant pink shrew.’
‘Do I look like a giant pink shrew?’ said April.
‘That’s exactly what the shrew said. I had no idea how to answer it.’
Oran did a little twirling leap and danced around her, arms out, in the manner of a court jester. ‘Why have you not left?’ he said.
April stopped short. ‘I meant to. I really, truly did.’
Oran gestured for her to hand him the apple box.
‘Come to the pub and tell me about it?’ he said.
‘I have no money.’
‘Snap,’ said Oran. ‘That’s all right. We can put it on Mr Gill’s tab.’
‘He has a tab?’
‘He will soon. Where’s your car?’
The publican added twenty pounds to the tab for the chair Oran had broken last time he was in.
‘Cracking the head of another heckler?’ said April.
‘Dancing on it. I was sober was the problem. I’m feather-footed when I’m drunk.’
Oran was cleaner today, April saw, but his clothes were even older and more ragged than hers. What must the pair of us look like, she thought. Tattercoats and her gooseherd, that queer, merry little chap with the magic music.
‘Are you teetotal?’ said Oran. ‘An Amish-type abstainer?’
He indicated her soda water, ordered because the publican had been reluctant enough to serve them, and April did not want to aggravate him further by asking for only tap water.
‘It’s barely lunchtime!’
‘You have the air of being half starved also,’ said Oran. ‘Are you depriving yourself for a reason?’
Even if it hadn’t been Oran who’d asked, April would not have answered.
‘You’re hardly Mr Lardy,’ she said instead. ‘You look like someone clothed a broomstick.’
‘I burn energy at a prodigiously high rate. I’m a human hummingbird. I need to ingest constantly to remain above ground.’
As if to demonstrate, Oran downed his beer in one go and threw a beseeching look towards the publican who, to April’s relief, slowly and emphatically shook his head.
‘He’ll miss me when I’m gone,’ said Oran. ‘He’ll hear my song come faint to him on the evening air and he’ll be filled with a terrible longing.’
April had to smile. ‘You’re quite odd, aren’t you?’
‘Everyone is odd,’ said Oran in earnest. ‘But most people choose to incarcerate their daftness in a little locked box, along with their nightmares and ungodly urges. Trouble is, they always leak out, like wisps of poison gas, and infect the mental air. Best to let them fly free, that’s my opinion.’
‘Even if they land you in jail?’
His eyes dulled then came clear again, a raincloud scudding across the sun. ‘There are many worse places to be.’
Then he beamed, as if recalling a long-forgotten idea and being delighted by it.
‘And you’re not meant to be in this place!’ he said. ‘What happened that you haven’t left?’
‘I should have,’ said April. ‘I really should have. I got to the airport in plenty of time, and checked in, and all was fine, but then there was a delay in boarding. Everyone was waiting, waiting, and then an announcement came that there was an engineering fault with the plane—’
‘Those are bad. Plummeting is usually the result.’
‘Well, we didn’t fly. We were bundled onto buses and driven to the local Travelodge and put up for the night. But no one slept because we were all waiting to see if we’d been booked on another flight. We spent the night in anxious clusters, lurking in the lobby, waiting to pounce on any airline person who appeared.’
‘Did they give you food and water?’
‘We hadn’t been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army,’ said April. ‘Yes, they fed us, and they rebooked us all on new flights and bussed us back. But what they didn’t know was that during the night a volcano had erupted in Chile and the giant ash cloud had created a hazard and all flights were cancelled until it cleared.’
‘The plot has thickened like snow on the Andes.’
‘Everyone was very scratchy. There was a lot of shouting and demanding and pushy behaviour, which the airline people duly ignored. We all had to queue up and rebook once again. I was in a queue for two hours, and when I finally got to the rebooking person they couldn’t find my ticket.’
‘Were you not clutching it in your hand?’
‘I was. But that didn’t matter — the computer had lost it. All trace of my booking had disappear
ed, as if it had never existed.’
‘There’s an Orwellian nightmare quality to this story that is most compelling,’ said Oran. ‘First industry, then nature and now technology has conspired against you. What dark force will rise up next?’
‘Humanity,’ said April. ‘The rebooking person said I’d have to sort it out with the travel agent back home. So I paid extortionate sums for ten minutes of internet access only to discover that the travel agent had gone out of business. Leaving no trace, either.’
‘And at that moment,’ said Oran, ‘was the last sputtering flicker of your spirit extinguished? Did you throw your head back and howl?’
‘I don’t cry. But I did rest my head on the table for quite a while.’
‘You don’t cry?’ Oran was shocked. ‘Whyever not?’
April ignored him.
‘Then I got up and trundled my suitcase to catch the train — the slow one, not the express — into Paddington. Then I caught another train to Maidenhead and a third to Kingsfield, and trundled the mile and a half between the station and Edward’s office.’
‘Did he throw his arms around you and chortle in his joy?’
‘He wouldn’t stop laughing,’ said April. ‘Even when I threatened to stab him with his Georg Jensen letter opener.’
‘He was grinning like a cat when he told me you hadn’t left,’ said Oran. ‘Mind you, posh nobs often carry a slappable smirk about their mien. They can’t help it. It’s in the blood.’
‘I can’t slap him,’ said April. ‘He’s been too good to me.’
‘He’s just shouted you a soda water, for one.’
‘And that’s precisely the issue,’ said April. ‘I’m skint. I can stay in the cottage, so at least I have a roof over my head, but I have no money to live on, let alone enough to afford another ticket home until the house sells, which might be months. Edward did offer to advance me the ticket cost, but that would be his money I’d be borrowing and I couldn’t accept it. And the little money left in the estate is earmarked to pay you.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Oran. ‘As you’ve guessed, I am, financially speaking, at least three levels below skint.’
‘However, he did insist that I accept a small advance from the estate money for living expenses.’
Oran shrugged. ‘Easy come, easy go.’
‘But I couldn’t accept that without giving something in return. So I’ve—’
April hesitated, unsure of how Oran would take the next bit.
‘Offered to be my lackey?’ said Oran. ‘My willing stooge in the sprucing up of the big house?’
‘Edward asked you if it was all right?’
‘No, he told me I could like it or lump it. He seemed quite determined that now you’d offered, you would have no reason to back down.’
April did not doubt that for a moment. She’d made the offer because she’d felt embarrassed; felt she did not deserve anyone’s kindness or generosity. Only afterwards did she realise what she’d committed to — days, possibly weeks, in the house. Oran’s presence she knew she could cope with. She would focus on the work at hand and speak to him only when necessary and about things that didn’t matter. The presence of the house was another matter. It would surround her, and she did not know how to guarantee that it would never feel comfortable.
‘I’ve never been the foreman before,’ said Oran. ‘Would you prefer me to bark instructions at you old-style, or write everything up on a whiteboard, as per the new order of health and safety?’
‘How about we discuss it very briefly and then shut up and knuckle down?’ April said. ‘But truly, is this all right with you? I feel I’m taking work that you could be paid for.’
‘Have you seen the size of the place?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Do you know anything about joinery, glazing, plumbing, plastering and the restoration of woodwork?’
‘Nothing,’ said April. ‘I can remove wallpaper, and I can wield a paintbrush. And a broom. If I must.’
‘There you are, then. We’re a team.’
He raised his beer glass and chinked it against hers.
‘It was meant to be.’
Meant to be.
In the cottage kitchen, April unloaded the apple box and considered that phrase. It implied that her situation was predestined, that no matter what plans she had made or how carefully, they were always going to be thwarted by a larger, more powerful force. God. Or that older and more universally believed-in controlling entity: Fate.
It would not be the first time, April thought. Ben’s death had been God or Fate at its cruellest. More than a twist — the total annihilation of her plans and dreams, the eradication of her life’s whole point and purpose. It was a sign that could not be ignored, and April had not done so. She had used it as a guide to rebuild her life, and that decision had seemed to satisfy — there had been no more signs from above, no more corrections. Despite everyone who’d cared about her telling her it was wrong, April had felt sure of her path.
But now, God or Fate was signalling again, letting her know that there was no going back to her previous life, at least not any time soon. Why, April knew there was no point in trying to guess. What she needed to do now was work out how to remake that life here, in an environment that offered exponentially more challenges than the last, so she could stay on her path, stay true to what she believed.
Staying true — that was more important now than ever. Only yesterday, April had found out how worryingly easy it was to stray, and not even be aware that you were doing so.
When establishing her new life, April had taken great care to reset the context — her surroundings and the people in them — to eliminate any sense of personal connection. She had chosen Circle Court because she did not want a place that felt like a home, or neighbours who might become friends. She had chosen to work at the community education centre because her interactions with the staff and students could be brief and never personal. Students came and went, and she need not make any effort to remember them.
Having no connections should have meant April had nothing to regret leaving. That was true enough with her flat. She could not afford to keep it, and it had taken only a brief phone call from Edward’s office to give notice and advise that someone would be in to clear it out. April suspected this last bit might be a lie; even the Salvation Army had standards. But she did not care what happened to her belongings. She owned nothing that mattered to her.
She made her next call to the community education centre, despite sensing through the closed door the disapproval of Irene, who knew that her employer was giving toll calls away for free rather than itemising them by the second on a bill.
April had expected this call to be as straightforward as the first. But they’d told her three students had dropped out of the course because the substitute was nowhere near as good, nowhere near as kind and patient. Was she sure she could not come back?
She had wanted to yell that the only reason she’d seemed kind and patient was because she had not cared enough to get het up. Her students had mistaken indifference for tolerance, detachment for serenity. How could they have done that, when the truth was so obvious? How could they have liked her when she had not even bothered to call them by name? When she’d just pointed and said ‘Yes’?
She did know them, though. The shy young Somali man with the hesitant suffix of a name, Ish. Lada, tall, blonde and Russian, named not after a make of car, but a word that meant soft and sweet. Cody, from China, born Ling Xiu, his new name found on a surfing website. Lalima, from India, whose English was perfect, but who was lonely and wanted to meet people. The others, too. April knew all about them. She had remembered, without even trying.
April had not asked the names of the three dropouts. And, no, she could not suggest another substitute who might be better liked. She’d studied the fluting on Edward’s ugly mahogany mantelpiece before making her last call to Jenny.
Stiff had answered. This had been a surprise
. Stiff did not have a phone in his flat, believing them to be toxic and possibly sentient. The conversation had been tricky because Stiff did not like to hold the receiver too close to his head, but April had eventually extracted the key facts. Jenny was in hospital again. She had stumbled on the footpath outside Circle Court and her hands were of so little use in breaking her fall they may as well have been tied behind her. Jenny’s face had been badly cut and bruised, and her ribs cracked. While X-raying her, the doctors had found a shadow on her lung, and further tests had revealed more darkness around her spine and liver. Stiff had not been able to speak the name of the disease, and April sympathised. Evil entered through the faintest of cracks, if you were foolish enough to let it.
The doctors thought Jenny had less than a month to live. April could not be there for her, could not do anything more than send her best wishes via the medium of Stiff who may or may not have heard her request before he hung up, his tolerance for telephonic exposure at an end.
Connections. April had designed her life to be free of them yet there they were. They’d slipped in, distracting and seductive as the smell of grass clippings through an open window.
April knew about loss. She knew how it clung inside you, claws holding tight to everything vital, feeding on your despair. And that was how it should be. That clutching presence was a reminder of how she had to live. She needed it there, needed it to keep on fattening in the dark. That’s why connections were so dangerous. Anything that countered despair — good food, music, books, making things, growing things, love and friendship — starved that presence, weakened it, and weakened April, too.
April made a cup of tea and sat in Kit’s armchair, in front of the fire. Light it no later than four, Edward had said, or the cottage will refuse to heat up.
She’d been so careful. So how had Jenny, the language students, and even Stiff, God help him, connected without April being aware of how much? Was it because an external God or Fate wasn’t her real enemy after all, and in fact it was some part of her own self, some part buried deep, that was working in secret to betray her? The fancies, the restlessness, the images in her mind — was that her old self fighting to get free again, the way a chrysalis fights to free itself from the tight cocoon? Had that deeper part of her understood that this latest twist of God or Fate was a signal to change course, a message that she had indeed paid her dues, that her sentence, as Edward called it, had been served and she could now go free?
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