‘So which world are you part of?’ said April. ‘The human world or the natural one?’
‘Does it matter?’ he said.
‘As long as you don’t intend to kill and eat me,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose it does.’
‘Not my first thought about what to do with you, no.’
It had been so many years since a man had flirted with her that April was not even sure whether that remark counted as such. His expression, too, was more amused than anything else. April felt the blush rise nonetheless, and hastily bent her head down to the bag she’d brought. It held lunch for the pair of them, Kit’s water bottle and a pair of battered gardening gloves, which she drew out, a useful distraction.
‘I found these,’ she said. ‘They’re far too big but they’ll do. Kit must have had seriously large hands.’
‘He was a big man, yes.’
‘Did you know Kit well?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But we understood each other.’
‘Did Kit find your place in the woods?’
‘Kit didn’t need to look.’
Jack hefted the shovel to balance it better in his hand.
‘So far this morning,’ he said, ‘all we’ve done is kill one sick rabbit.’
April did not like feeling chided. ‘You have other commitments, do you?’
‘Always,’ he said, with a quick smile. ‘But you asked first, so here I am.’
Gabe ran to catch up as Jack strode away from the cottage, and April followed the pair of them, feeling less put out now than perturbed. She might know where he lived, she might believe him to be a straight-talker and well intentioned towards her — but what she really knew about him and his life was, in fact, nothing at all.
The walled garden, now that she was faced with it, seemed dauntingly overgrown and depressingly dead.
‘Is there really any point in this?’ she said.
‘Can’t always undo what’s been done — or compensate for what hasn’t,’ said Jack. ‘But the beauty of a garden is that you can always start again.’
He gestured around. ‘The foundations are all still here. A few years and it could look just like it used to.’
‘I won’t be here in a few years,’ said April.
‘So you say.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Doesn’t matter what I believe.’
He crouched down to reach into his leather satchel, which he’d left with the stepladder and the few gardening tools April had found in Kit’s shed. The cottage’s small vegetable plot now held weeds as well as shrivelled silverbeet. On the plus side, it also held mint, which had popped up and spread all over the plot like a fragrant green tide.
From his satchel, Jack drew a knife, and handed it to her.
‘Best if you had clippers,’ he said. ‘But Kit being more of a fork and spade man, this will have to do. It’s a good knife. Sharp.’
Its blade was encased in a black leather scabbard. Its handle was black, too, worn and old, but April did not need to touch the blade to know that it was as sharp as he’d said. As she removed it from its sheath, it flashed slim and lithe as a fish in water.
‘What wood do you want me to trim?’ she said.
‘All the dead stuff on the fruit trees, and, if you have time, on that rose over the arch. It’s the wrong time for pruning, but dead wood’s not healthy for any plant, so let’s have at it. Cut any suckers from the base, too, and check for insect damage and any scaly or orangey-brown areas that might mean disease.’
‘How do I know if the wood’s dead?’
‘Should be easy to tell,’ he said. ‘But if you’re in doubt, run the point of the knife down the branch and if you can see a line of green, leave it be.’
‘And if there’s no green anywhere at all?’
‘If it’s dead or too diseased, then we’ll dig it up and burn it. The peaches are probably beyond saving, but look—’ he gestured at an apple tree ‘—leaves and even the last of the blossom. It may not be fruiting, but it’s still very much alive.’
April fingered the point of the scabbard. ‘There was another apple tree here once. A big one, growing on its own in that wilder area over at the back. It died and was cut down. Did you know it?’
‘I know the one you mean,’ he said. ‘Kit was fond of it. He said it died gradually, over years, possibly because of root damage. A pity, he said. It gave beautiful apples.’
‘Children used to play in it, too,’ said April. ‘A long time ago.’
He touched her arm once, gently. ‘Come on. We’ve work to do.’
Over the next two hours, April made her way through the espaliered fruit trees — apples, pears and cherries. The peaches, as Jack had predicted, were dead.
A shame, thought April. There was nothing like biting into a fresh peach, the mildly bitter fuzz giving way to soft, sweet flesh. She had not bought a peach in years, but the memory of the taste filled her mouth so abruptly and convincingly, she could swear she had swallowed juice. A small, startled noise escaped her. Gabe, who had been lying on the brick path, asleep in the sun, lifted his head. Jack, clearing weeds from the raised beds, called out.
‘Did you cut yourself?’
‘No,’ said April. ‘No, I just— I’m fine.’
‘How are the trees looking?’
‘Less woody. But not necessarily more lively.’
Jack came over, inspected a pruned pear.
‘We can graft new wood on next spring,’ he said, ‘and then, with luck, they’ll start fruiting again.’
‘Next spring?’
‘We could do it now, but spring gives the best chance for the graft to take. And old trees like these will probably need to be worked gradually, over two or three years.’
‘Will you do it if I’m not here?’ said April.
‘If you’re not here,’ he replied, ‘it will be someone else’s garden.’
Then he said, ‘It’s almost noon. Do you want to break now, or push on?’
‘Break, if that’s all right? I need to gather my strength to tackle that climbing rose. It looks like it’s been grown by an evil witch.’
‘You could see the flowers instead of the thorns,’ he said. ‘That’s what the bees do.’
The map came again to mind. ‘Was there ever a beehive here?’
‘In this garden?’ he said. ‘I don’t believe so. I think there are hives a few miles away. Or there were. Kit told me once that he was worried the bee numbers were dwindling. He didn’t know whether that was because there were fewer hives, or because the bees were dying out. He hoped it was the former. He said we can’t afford to lose the bees.’
‘Why would the bees be dying?’
‘Chemical sprays. Development of farmland. We take away the flowers or we poison them. But, as Kit pointed out, if we lose the bees, we risk losing all the crops and fruit that depend on them for pollination.’
‘Tipping the balance too far.’ April looked up at him. ‘Would this be a bad moment to let you know the sandwiches are honey?’
He laughed. ‘Bees worked hard to make it. Seems only right to honour their effort.’
They sat on the edge of one of the raised beds. Jack ate the sandwiches she gave him in the same rapid way she’d watched him eat before, as if the food might escape before he’d finished.
‘I don’t usually put anything in my sandwiches,’ she told him. ‘But I thought you might like something more sustaining than butter.’
‘I haven’t eaten bread for ages,’ he said. ‘Last time, I found a bag someone had left by the river. Probably meant to feed the ducks and got distracted.’
He saw her face. ‘All in its wrapper. Perfectly good.’
‘I can give you bread any time. You just need to ask.’
‘Thanks, but I can’t rely on others to feed me.’
April stared down at her sandwich. The honey had come from a roadside stall, and was dark golden, sweet and runny, and possibly the most delicious thing she�
�d eaten in years. She’d not lied when she said she’d bought it for Jack, but she knew that wasn’t the whole truth. For the past few weeks her restlessness had been constant but predictable. The starlings still pecked and swooped, but April had grown better able to tolerate it, helped by the fact she was now busy seven days a week. She suspected that growing tolerance was what had provoked this new strategy from whatever it was that felt fit to plague her. Out of the blue, she’d begun to be assailed by phantom tastes and smells that felt startlingly real, like latent sense memories released. The taste of peach had not been the first.
April had crushed some of Kit’s mint, and the scent had transported her back to a summer lunch: roast lamb, fresh peas, iced water flavoured with mint leaves and sliced cucumber, sun-warmed strawberries that needed no sugar to sweeten them. April had prepared many a lunch like that. Ben would pick the mint — yank it, really — out of the garden, and shell one pod of peas before being tempted out onto the lawn and out of his clothes by his father and the sprinkler. Food had been so important then, April thought, but they’d taken for granted that they would always enjoy it. They’d taken for granted that they’d always enjoy love and family time, too. They could not imagine, back then, that anything would change.
The honey sandwich no longer appealed. April offered it to Jack. He took it, broke it and tossed half to the dog, who snapped it out of the air. April wondered how the pair managed in the dark months of winter when food was scarce. Did they still fend for themselves, or did they share food if the other was going hungry?
‘Why do you choose to live the way you do?’ April said.
He turned, at first surprised, and then amused. ‘Why do you?’
‘My life’s nowhere near as hard as yours!’
‘Isn’t it?’
Really, thought April, he could be so infuriating.
‘Of course it isn’t! I have warmth and shelter, and food within easy reach. I can go to the doctor when I’m sick. I’m free to go wherever I want, I’m not stuck in one place.’
Jack regarded her, thoughtful now, no longer smiling. ‘But I’m happy. My heart is light. I live true to myself, and I don’t waste time with regret. That gives me comfort, and the strength to cope with the harder times. Most times, I don’t feel my life is hard at all. Most times, I feel like I’m blessed.’
April stood up and brushed crumbs from her hands. Took up the knife and the stepladder.
‘I’ll start on the rose now,’ she said.
She went at the twisted brambles brutally, heedlessly. As if the rose sensed it was under attack, a thorny shoot sprang back and struck her cheek. This time, April did not cry out but Jack must have seen, because he hurried over.
‘It’s drawn blood,’ he said, inspecting the cut. ‘But not much.’
And before April could pull away, he cupped her face in his hand and wiped his thumb lightly over her skin.
His fingertips were hot, shockingly so, and April jerked her face out of his grip.
He held up his hand, palm out, to show it was no longer a threat. ‘You don’t like me touching you, do you?’
April’s face burned with residual anger and the lingering sensation of his fingertips. ‘I don’t like anyone touching me.’
He tilted his head in that manner of his. ‘Not always the case, though. I can see that.’
April refused to meet his eye. But lowering them meant all she could see was the gap above his top shirt button, the dark skin with a sweat-sheen from heat and exertion. His chest was moving with his breathing, and April fancied she could hear his heart. All the sounds in the garden came suddenly to the fore, the static hum of insects, the chirp and chatter of birds, the swish as a breeze brushed the top leaves in the circling trees. And the smells, sweet lilac and honeysuckle, bitter geranium, the musky tang of her own sweat. She could not smell him, but she could feel the heat coming off him as it always did, as if he generated it from an internal sun.
‘You see a lot, don’t you?’ she said.
It was a combative move, designed to push him away. But he stayed right where he was.
‘It’s only a matter of looking. I saw you carried a loss when we first met. Now I see how great a loss it must have been and I’m so very sorry for you.’
He held up his hand as if to touch her face again and April drew back. Instead, he traced his finger in the air, along the line of the cut that the rose had made.
‘If you were a tree branch and I ran a knife down you,’ he said, ‘I would see green. I know you’re doing what you believe is right. I see how resolved you are and I admire you for it.’
He reached up and plucked a rose from high on the brambles. It was full-bloomed and silvery pink, and its soft perfume wafted in the air between them.
‘But it’s time now that you came to life again.’
CHAPTER 23
mid-June
Oran’s bonfire smelled pleasantly of yew and fruitwood, and unpleasantly of burning silk. He had decided not to burn the carpet for fear it might prove toxic. Fibres and mould spores, he said, were not ideal for health when released into the environment. The curtains, though, burned quickly and the acrid tang soon faded from the smoke.
‘Yew’s a good firewood,’ Oran said. ‘Burns very slow and hot. Not much to hand these days because the leaves are so poisonous. Stop the heart. I learned that from reading Agatha Christie. It was the poison of choice of tribal chiefs of ancient Briton, who would rather die by their own hand than surrender. I learned that from BBC 4.’
‘Did you?’
‘Don’t ever burn willow, will you? It’s useless. Spruce isn’t much better. Too quick, too many sparks. Horse chestnut’s all right but it spits a lot.’
‘Noted.’
‘Your old codger might want the ash for the garden. Keeps off slugs and snails. Or you could make soap. Soak ash in water and you get lye. Mix it with mutton fat, boil it down and Bob’s your auntie. I learned that from my grandfather.’
‘I’ll stick with Pears.’
The day was windless, and the smoke rose straight up into the blue sky. April wondered if Jack could see it, and was cross with herself for thinking of him yet again. She did not want to think of what he’d said to her. It was the second time he’d said such a thing and she wanted that to be the end of it. But she also wanted to see him, and the knowledge of how much she wanted that was both vexing and confusing. April could not tell exactly what emotions he provoked in her because there seemed a mass of them, all milling around and jostling each other, too many to separately identify. She did not know whether to think of him as friend or foe. If he had joined forces with her unnamed internal assailant then he was most certainly the latter, and she should do all she could to resist him, too. Somehow, that had less appeal than it should.
‘It’s the summer solstice in three days’ time,’ said Oran. ‘Perhaps we should have waited to light the fire? We could have caroused around it, drinking and merrymaking.’
When April did not reply, he said, ‘I leapt over a bonfire once. Police dog caught me anyway.’
Oran gave up and began to sing. Though April knew she was imagining it, the crackle of the fire appeared to fall into a rhythm with the song.
She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her, sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps.
For her heart in his grave is lying—
‘Do you not know one bloody song that’s cheerful!’ said April.
‘If it’s me you’re all a-grouch at, then out with it,’ said Oran. ‘Otherwise, I’d prefer my head to remain unbitten.’
Unusually snappish for Oran, thought April. But fair enough. Her mood was hardly his fault.
‘Sorry. I have things on my mind.’
‘Things you want to share?’
‘Not really.’
The fire was dying down, charcoal now where there had been twigs, branches and leaves, strips of old wallpaper a
nd green-gold shreds of fabric.
‘Not long now before it’s safe to leave,’ said Oran. ‘If you’re up for it, I propose we decamp to your cottage to brew a fresh cup of tea and make a plan for renovating the entranceway. Kitchens and drawing rooms are all very well, but nothing gives the right first impression like an imposing vestibule.’
April had already given thought to how the entranceway could be transformed. Her most elaborate vision was a Tudor extravaganza — timber trusses in the roof and polished flagstone floors, intricately carved dark wood panelling below hand-embroidered tapestries rich with birds, beasts and fruit, suits of armour, broadswords and antlers, with flaming torches or, perhaps more practically, candlelight, making the whole room glow.
None of this she had any intention of revealing to Oran.
‘I thought we’d just paint it white,’ said April. ‘And polish up the wood a bit.’
‘A lamentable lack of vision,’ said Oran. ‘We’ll need a stag’s head and a splayed zebra skin at the very least. An elephant’s foot umbrella stand wouldn’t go amiss, either.’
‘And where will you get those? Victorian Abominations R Us?’
‘The past is another country. It’s impolite to scoff at its mores.’
He picked up the spade he’d used in building the bonfire, and poked it into the smoldering ash. Embers flared, so Oran shovelled on dirt dug out from the surrounding scrubland. The area where he’d lit the fire was beyond the walled garden but not quite at the edge of the woods. Blackened earth between tufts of unkempt grass showed fires had been lit there before, and often. In one corner was a pile of broken up bricks, and next to it a split and rusted oil drum and a clawed skeleton of corroded metal that may once have been an old farming implement. It was a functional place, thought April, not meant to be tidy or pretty, and yet in one corner was a tall stand of purple-belled foxgloves, and buttercups dotted the grass as if a paintbrush laden with bright yellow had scattered droplets all over. There were white and yellow daisies, and pink feathery flowers that April did not recognise. The more she looked, the less scrubby and ugly the land became, and when she looked at it from a certain angle, it could have been a meadow, filled only with waving grasses and wildflowers.
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