The Hiding Places

by Catherine Robertson

  ‘Tell me what they are and I’ll be able to offer an opinion,’ said Edward.

  ‘There are two things I’d like to do before they take possession. First: I’d like to plant an apple tree in the garden.’ She saw Sunny’s eyes turn towards her. ‘Where your tree used to be.’

  ‘November is a good month for planting apples,’ said Sunny. ‘As long as you pick a hardy specimen.’

  ‘I want to see if I can find a similar kind. One that gives yellow fruit.’

  ‘Plenty of heritage nurseries, these days,’ said Oran. ‘Seems the further away the past, the more we hanker after it.’

  ‘And the second thing?’ said Edward.

  April took a deep breath. The idea had only just come to her and she could not tell if it was foolish or impertinent, or both. The potential for Sunny to react badly seemed high. But there was no evading a straight answer now.

  ‘I’d like to hold Sunny’s birthday party there. We could put a big marquee on the lawn, hire those tall patio heaters, and put some Portaloos around the back. No power will be a complete pain for the caterers, but we could always hire some generators …’

  All three of them were staring at her, Oran with a slice of cake paused halfway to his mouth.

  ‘Begob,’ he said. ‘That’s genius. Can we afford it?’

  He directed that question at Edward.

  ‘I don’t think we need to worry about money,’ Edward replied. ‘The Day children have all agreed to share the cost. Pro-rata, of course, as their personal incomes vary widely. I had left it to Deborah to find a location, as she is closest. Of course, given her own income, which appears to be bottomless, there was always the risk she’d choose somewhere a little too rich for the others’ blood. So my guess is that this location will win universal approval as both appropriate and affordable. And if Deborah is unhappy with the heating, she can always wear her mink.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Oran clapped his hands. ‘It’s a plan!’

  ‘Not yet …’ April cautioned.

  Sunny’s silence had not escaped her. The older woman was sitting quite still, no expression on her face to give any clue to what she was thinking.

  April put her hand on Sunny’s arm.

  ‘If you hate the idea, we won’t do it. Deborah will find another place.’

  ‘I don’t hate it.’ Sunny’s voice sounded flat and faraway. ‘Yet I can’t help but recall that my first visit to Empyrean was for a birthday party. And — well …’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Edward. ‘You fear there might be some symbolic parallel? Your first visit — and your last?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Oran. ‘You’ll live to be a hundred. You’ll get that telegram from Her Majesty sure as eggs. She’ll most certainly live to be a hundred.’

  ‘You can’t know that,’ said Sunny.

  ‘Neither can you, you doomsaying old wench!’

  A twitch of Sunny’s mouth became a low chuckle, became a full-throated laugh. Then, suddenly, she was crying, fumbling for her napkin. Edward’s jacket was hung neatly on the back of his chair, and from an inside pocket, he pulled a crisp white handkerchief and offered it to her without comment.

  Sunny dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.

  ‘What a stupid old woman I am.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Oran. ‘Well, though, to be fair, you are quite old.’

  ‘Hush.’ April smacked him lightly on the arm. ‘Stop your mouth with more cake.’

  ‘Oh, my friends, my dears, my beautiful, funny young things, I am so very grateful for you,’ said Sunny. ‘If it weren’t for you, I might feel compelled to live with one of my own children and you know how cranky that would make me. Even the illusion of free will is better than none.’

  ‘Like the illusion of a free press,’ said Edward. ‘Which reminds me.’ He raised an eyebrow at April and Oran. ‘I gather you two had a bit of drama the other night.’

  He fetched a newspaper from where he’d placed it on the sideboard, and after folding it neatly lengthways, like certain businessmen do on trains, began to turn the pages methodically, in search of some article.

  April caught Oran’s panicked, questioning stare and shook her head, once, firmly. Oran had, after much embarrassed prevarication, asked her not to breathe a word of what had happened. He did not want Sunny to worry, and he did not want Edward to decide to take matters further and pursue his wife and her cohorts for trespass. The hounds of Hell would be preferable to having Edward Gill on your tail, was Oran’s belief.

  April had promised to say nothing and her nod was to reassure him that she had been true to her word. What Edward had seen in the newspaper, she could not, and did not want to, guess at.

  ‘Ah. Here it is.’

  Edward began to read.

  ‘Escaped Convicts Recaptured,’ he said. ‘At ten p.m. on 30 October, two inmates of HM Prison Wykeham Hill managed to escape by — blah, blah, home-made weapons — and fled into the woodland area that stretches behind Kingsfield. The police dog unit were — that should be ‘was’, a unit is singular — called out and tracked the men for two hours before capturing them in a clearing where they had attempted to hide behind a hollow oak tree. The two men were serving sentences for aggravated sexual assault and were considered highly dangerous. A spokesperson for the prison today said — and we end on the usual platitudes to cover up incompetency.’

  Edward lowered the paper.

  ‘Were you two aware of any of this?’

  April shook her head. ‘Not a bit of it. Slept like a log.’

  ‘Log-like also,’ said Oran, when Edward turned to him.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ said Edward. ‘It could have been a sticky situation if they’d decided to flee in your direction, armed with their home-made knives.’

  Or in Jack’s direction, was April’s immediate thought. He would have been able to hide from the police, but what if those two men had happened upon him by chance — what would he have done, and without Gabe there to protect him? It suddenly occurred to April that Jack had most likely been with Gabe all along, watching in the wings as the dog drove the intruders away. Gabe did not know Oran, so how had the dog known that Oran needed protecting — unless he’d been told? She wished her friend a silent thank you and hoped that, wherever he was, he knew how grateful she was. And how much she cared.

  ‘There was an escaped criminal in the woods after all,’ said Sunny, thoughtfully.

  ‘This was two criminals,’ said Edward. ‘And, besides, that was eighty years ago. Don’t force me to have you committed.’

  ‘I saw him again, you know,’ said Sunny, as if Edward hadn’t spoken. ‘On the day I left Empyrean.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man in the woods. I’d ordered a taxicab to take me to the station, and as we motored down the driveway there he was, running through the trees alongside. I assume the driver was concentrating on the road, as he made no comment. I watched him run, sure-footed as a deer, and quite as fast as the cab itself. And then he was gone, into the trees. The last thing I saw was a flash of white, the back of his shirt, I imagine, like the scut of a vanishing rabbit.’

  Sunny touched her fingers briefly to her mouth. ‘You know, I had the strongest feeling that he was running just for me, to encourage me, to assure me that all would be well. I never saw him again, and I wish I had. I wish I’d been able to ask him whether I’d been right.’

  ‘He’ll be long dead now,’ said Edward. ‘You were nineteen then and he must have been in his thirties, given that he was an adult when he saved Billy Curry eleven years earlier from the man trap. If he’s out there now, he’s aged well over a hundred.’

  ‘A Japanese woman lived to a hundred and fourteen,’ said Oran.

  ‘A hundred and fifteen,’ Edward corrected.

  ‘There you go,’ said Oran. ‘But then again, she wasn’t living in the wild, gnawing on shoots and acorns.’

  ‘Will you help me look for apple trees?’ April asked him. ‘And I might need help d
igging the ground, now that there’s been a frost.’

  ‘I’m always here for you, you know that,’ Oran replied. ‘Except when I wasn’t, of course, but those were special circumstances. All other times, I’m as constant as the seasons, though admittedly a lot perkier in the warmer months.’

  He took her hand and kissed it in gallant fashion.

  ‘Ask and you shall receive,’ he said. ‘And all manner of things will be well.’

  CHAPTER 45

  late November

  ‘Here?’ said Oran.

  ‘I think so,’ said April. ‘Can you see that slight mound? I’m fairly certain that’s where the tree was.’

  ‘If the remains of the stump and roots are still in the ground, it might be difficult to dig. That said—’ Oran brandished the shovel ‘—no point in conceding defeat until you must.’

  April watched him place his boot on the shovel and break the turf with the blade. In her hands was the apple sapling, its rootball wrapped in moistened newspaper. They’d been unable to find the Yellow Ingestrie and had settled instead for its descendant, a Glebe Gold. The fruit would not be yellow, more of a green-gold with russet patches, but they were happy. The Glebe Gold had been registered in 1945, the orchardist had told them. Fitting, Oran had said. The end of a war, the birth of a tree. Life runs on like a river.

  ‘I’ve hit something,’ said Oran. ‘Root or rock, I can’t tell. I’ll dig around it.’

  Then he said ‘Glory be’, and squatted to brush away dirt with his gloved hand.

  ‘Rock?’ said April, as he lifted it from the ground.

  ‘No, and not scissors, either.’

  It was, she saw, a bundle about the size of a toaster, wrapped in oilskin or some other kind of heavy waterproof cloth and bound tight with an old leather belt.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘Buried treasure.’

  ‘Shall we open it?’

  ‘You do it.’

  Oran pulled off his gloves — knobbly knitted creations the colour of nine-day-old pease pudding — and with some difficulty undid the rusted fastening of the belt. The cloth, stiffened also by age, stayed put and Oran had to peel it back like a blackened banana to reveal the contents.

  It was a box, a tea caddy or jewellery box, April guessed, made of reddish brown wood with an inlaid edging of thin black.

  ‘Treasure indeed.’ Oran tried the lid. ‘But very much locked.’

  ‘Try “Open Sesame?”’

  ‘“Open with a jimmy” will work better, I think.’

  Oran shoved a hand in his jacket and pulled out a pocketknife. April saw him stick the point under the lid, saw the two little holes in the lock and jumped as if it were she who’d been jabbed by knifepoint.

  ‘Wait!’

  Oran watched, curious, as April lifted the chain from around her neck.

  ‘Here.’ She handed it to him. ‘Try these.’

  ‘Begob,’ he said, with a grin. ‘Wouldn’t that be a turn-up if they fit? Like Cinderella’s slipper.’

  ‘They must fit,’ said April. ‘James sent them to Sunny with the map. He must have buried this box. How could they not be the right keys?’

  ‘Soon find out,’ said Oran, and he slotted in one key and turned it. They both heard a small click.

  ‘So far, so good.’

  He inserted the other, a turn, a click. Oran met April’s eye, a gleam in his own, and held out the box to her. ‘Do you want to do the honours?’

  April stepped forward and raised the lid.

  ‘The long lost Orloff diamond?’ he said. ‘A lock of Lord Lucan’s hair?’

  ‘A letter.’

  April drew it out. The thick paper, folded once, looked like it had been ripped out of a sketchbook. Linen dust fell onto her fingers as she opened it up.

  ‘Still legible?’ said Oran.

  ‘Just …’

  April’s eyes were tracking along the faint-inked lines. Oran tucked the box under his arm and moved around so he could read, too. When they’d finished, they were both silent, taking it in.

  ‘Well, that’s a smack in the gob,’ said Oran, finally, his voice flat. ‘A bastardly thing to do any way you look at it.’ He frowned at the letter. ‘I’m not sure I want him as a potential grandfather now.’

  ‘Don’t judge him too harshly,’ said April. ‘As it turned out, it was barely a lie: Lily was pregnant, and Rowan might well have been the father. If the stars had aligned differently and Rowan had lived, it might have all ended well.’

  ‘But it was a lie,’ said Oran. ‘An outright, manipulative lie for his own selfish ends entirely. And with it, he destroyed the lives of people he professed to care about, and those toxic ripples have gone all the way down the line, to my mother and then to me. I know Sunny loved him, but really, he was a bad egg!’

  When she’d first met Oran, April recalled, he’d seemed incapable of anger. Now, she’d seen it twice — directed at his wife and now at James. Perhaps all that had been needed for him to express it was a newfound belief that his own feelings were important. It would be interesting to see what else that belief enabled him to do. But right now, he needed comfort.

  April placed her hand lightly on his arm.

  ‘If it hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have had a life with your Granddad George,’ she said. ‘So good did come of it.’

  Oran’s eyes, his mother’s eyes, had darkened, their amber streaks flattened into a uniform hard brown. As he looked at April, they cleared and softened, and he began to smile. Almost the old Oran but not quite, thought April. He’d never lose that ability to bounce back, but from now on, he would not so easily let himself be crushed.

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘That is a very great blessing indeed.’

  Then he frowned again at the letter in April’s hand.

  ‘Should we show this to Sunny?’ he said. ‘It was written for her, after all.’

  April hesitated. ‘She’s loved James for eighty-five years. Should we not let her keep on loving him?’

  By way of reply, Oran snatched the letter from her, ripped it into tiny pieces and dropped it down into the hole half-prepared for the apple tree.

  ‘We’ll keep the box,’ he said, ‘but we’ll dig this back into the earth where it can join all those other dark secrets that lie buried.’

  Oran handed her the box and pulled on his gloves again. He picked up the spade to resume digging, but just as the blade bit into the ground he paused and leaned on the handle, face pensive.

  ‘An idea,’ he said. ‘That apple on the map — it had two meanings then, don’t you think? Sweet and golden Lily. And a symbol of temptation, an instrument of sin. And what about the lamb — an innocent to the slaughter, do you think?’

  ‘Could be,’ said April.

  ‘The sacred and the sinister contained in two miniature scratchings of pen and ink?’

  April laughed. ‘Steady on.’

  Suddenly, a realisation struck her, and it was her turn to frown.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘if James was indeed your grandfather, then you are the rightful heir to Empyrean, not me.’

  Oran’s eyes met hers and for a long moment they stared at each other.

  Then he grinned at her and flexed his fingers. ‘We have a tree to plant,’ he said. ‘Stand back, woman, and let me work.’

  He began to sing. The tune was familiar to April, but it was the first time she’d heard the words.

  ‘Would I were a little burnish’d apple,’ Oran sang, ‘for you to pluck me, gliding by so cold …’

  The apple sapling went into the ground and the song came to its close.

  Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing

  A happy daisy in the garden path

  That so your silver foot might press me going

  Might press me going even unto death.

  ‘Do you actually enjoy those depressing songs?’

  ‘It’s a humanitarian necessity to have a creative outlet for the darker emotions,’ said
Oran. ‘Otherwise, we’d all be simmering stews of pent-up hate, fear and jealousy. It’s like a volcano. A little jet of boiling steam now and then prevents us all from being blown to kingdom come.’

  He patted down the earth around the sapling and stood up.

  ‘Grow well, young tree,’ he said. ‘We’re expecting great things from you. Or, at the very least, the odd apple.’

  April had brought a bucket of water, filled at the cottage since the tap by the greenhouse refused now even to be turned. She tipped the water slowly around the apple until every drop was gone.

  ‘Time for tea?’ said Oran.

  ‘Of course,’ said April.

  As they walked back through the garden, April sensed that Oran had something on his mind.

  ‘Spit it out,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to pry, or reopen any just-healed wound. But why did you ask me to help you plant the apple? Why not ask your green-fingered Adonis?’

  April considered telling him everything. How, after that last night with Jack, the night he’d come to the cottage, she’d gone every morning to the garden and sat and waited, and then walked for an hour or two in the woods, listening out for the snap of a twig that might be caused by a man or his dog. How she’d returned to the hollow tree and tried to find her way again to his campsite, but had been pushed back by an impenetrable tangle of brambles and scrub. How she’d looked, too, for the swimming hole and the old shed but how her normally excellent sense of direction had failed her, and she’d ended up, every time, popping back out of the woods onto the fields, footpaths and bridleways. The meadow was there, and the cornfield, but there was no corn now, only ploughed earth and no wildflowers, the remaining grass brown and beaten down by rain. She considered telling Oran how she’d cried and cried in a way she had not done for over five years, and how she’d decided to stop because she could hear Jack’s voice telling her that her time was past for giving in to regret. Let it go, she’d heard him say. Let me go. Be happy.

  ‘He had some place else to be,’ was all she said.

  Oran put his arm around her shoulder, gave her a quick hug.