‘Oh, I see.’ I tried to sound interested. It seemed quite silly to me, but I was touched that Oonagh thought I might like to play this little game with her.
‘And you say this as you’re doing it.’
She paused, lifting her face up to the moonlight, and I was struck by how pretty she actually was. When I saw her every day, with her hair scraped back, bending over the stove, doing something rather gory such as skinning a rabbit, she looked quite ordinary, but now her natural features appeared much softer than in daylight, and her thick hair fell in glossy waves down her shoulders.
‘Food of the fairies, guardian of love, sweet apple, most sacred fruit, barer of the silver bough, and spinner of the music that lulls, under the full moon’s gaze and her maternal care, show to me my true heart’s companion.’ She threw the peel over her shoulder briskly. We turned quickly and bent down, peering at the ground in the dark.
‘I can’t really see it, Oonagh.’
‘Oh, can you not? Look.’ She pointed at it with her finger. ‘Don’t you think that is a P?’
I stared for a while. As my eyes grew accustomed to the shadows, I could see the peel lying in a straight line, with the top curled over to meet itself in the middle. ‘I suppose it could be,’ I said uncertainly.
Oonagh seemed thrilled. ‘Sure it is, as sure as the baby Jesus himself. It’s a P.’
I smiled to myself, thinking of the boy called Patrick of whom she speaks all the time.
Then she turned to me and, fishing into her pocket, pulled out another apple. ‘Will you not try it?’ She smiled sweetly as she crunched into her peeled apple.
I stood up, shaking my head. ‘Why would I want to do the apple spell, Oonagh? I already have a husband.’
‘Please . . . I’ll know then if it works, if you get an R.’
‘I can’t imagine how an apple peel can fall in the shape of an R, Oonagh.’ I drew my shawl up about my shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s go back in and have a cup of tea.’
‘It will only take a moment,’ she begged, pushing the apple into my hand and passing the knife over.
I sighed. ‘Oh, all right, but I think this is just a load of old rubbish.’
She nodded, her eyes gleaming excitedly as she watched me peel the apple. I was surprised by her enthusiasm for this sort of thing. She was no longer the sensible, practical Oonagh of my daylight hours.
‘Don’t forget the spell,’ she encouraged.
‘You’ll have to say it with me, I can’t remember it.’
However, when I started speaking, the words flowed instinctively off my tongue as if I had always known them.
‘Food of the fairies, guardian of love, sweet apple, most sacred fruit, barer of the silver bough, and spinner of the music that lulls, under the full moon’s gaze and her maternal care, show to me my true heart’s companion. There,’ I said as the peel fell to the ground and we both crouched down.
‘Where is it?’ Oonagh searched the cracked mud with her fingertips.
‘I don’t know.’ I peered down at the dirty yard and fingered the ground. ‘Oh, here it is . . . it’s a—’ I suddenly felt a wave of dread, for how could I have been so stupid as to let myself play this game.
Oonagh finished my sentence. ‘P,’ she said quietly.
‘No, that’s yours. That was your peel from before.’
Oonagh wobbled on her haunches, stared down at the ground and shook her head. ‘How strange,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Yes, I don’t know where mine fell. It’s just gone.’
I clicked my fingers and stood up. ‘Come on, at least we found out what you wanted to know.’
I leaned over and squeezed her hand and she looked at me with wide eyes, as if surprised I would touch her.
‘Let’s go in, Oonagh. It’s cold.’
She got up as well, picking up the P apple peel and scanning the yard once more.
I went towards the door. I could hear more music, and I was longing for a hot brew, but Oonagh hung back. I paused on the threshold and felt her hand touch the back of my shoulder. I turned around. ‘What is it?’
She held her peel like a tiny adder in her fingers, and looked at me curiously. ‘Have you met Claudette Sheriden yet?’
‘No, she is too sick to see me.’
She nodded solemnly. ‘I heard she was sick with the cancer. Mammy told me she was once very beautiful, like Claudette Colbert, you know, like in It Happened One Night. She had a very modern look, and she used to frighten Father O’Regan with it.’
I didn’t know what to say back, so I said nothing, and we stood in an unusually awkward silence. I sensed Oonagh wanted to tell me something and I felt irritated as if she, and all her family, knew something I didn’t know.
‘What is it, Oonagh?’ I asked impatiently.
She looked away from me, fingering her apple peel and then lifting it to her nose and smelling it. ‘Father O’Regan says she is the biggest sinner in the whole parish.’
She looked back at me, and her eyes locked on mine, and I could see she knew more, but all of a sudden I was afraid, and whatever she was going to tell me I didn’t want to know. I turned around and lifted up the latch, hastily going into the room where the light was, and there was so much noise that she could no longer speak to me.
This chilly afternoon I scurry to the Sheriden house to read classical literature. I run through the orchard. There are no more apples. I have scouted the ground, but all the late windfalls are gone. The orchard looks bare, and bereaved. I wonder should I tidy it a little, cut back some of the brambles, so that the trees can be admired in the spring. But I feel no enthusiasm to do this. The place is forlorn. This is how it needs to be. Besides, I am in a hurry. I run through the woods. I have long since abandoned skirts and stockings, and arrive breathless on Phelim Sheriden’s doorstep wearing a pair of slacks. He opens the door and we say nothing to each other. He takes my hand and brings me into the study. We look at each other and we smile. I am a child in a sweet shop. He knows this and understands my desire for learning more than Robert ever did.
I leaf through Virgil and Horace, pick out pieces of Tacitus and Seneca, and devour Ovid’s Art of Love. I prefer this world of the classical pagans to Oonagh’s sprites and spells, and her mystic brand of Catholicism. I crave logic, not superstition, and Ovid’s reasoning intrigues me. This poet believed love was not something that just happened to two people. There was nothing predestined to it. Love is a craft, which had to be learned, and mastered. It is an art, like any other, like music, dance and painting.
My desire for the past overwhelms my fear of encountering Claudette. I no longer want to meet her. Each day Phelim greets me, I pray he will say what he has said the day before, that she is too unwell to see me and sends her apologies. He leaves me to my work, while he goes upstairs to paint. But I like to imagine the thread of creativity that links us, running from the study out into the draughty hall, up the empty staircase and down the echoing landing, up again, and up once more, to the tiny garret attic, where he listens to music and paints. We always meet for luncheon, and although the food is often far from splendid (one day we dined on boiled potatoes and lumps of cheese, much to Phelim’s embarrassment), I do not care what we eat for it is the conversation that fills me. Sometimes I even forget there is another person living in the house. Last week I nearly jumped out of my skin when I collided with Father O’Regan on the staircase. He looked as shocked as I, finding me in the Sheriden house.
‘Mrs Fanning,’ he said, nodding coldly, and staring at me with his glassy grey eyes like a seagull’s.
‘Good afternoon, Father.’
‘I did not know you were a friend of Mrs Sheriden – so kind to call on her when she is this weak.’
I nodded, wondering what the priest was doing in the house of the ‘biggest sinner’ in the parish.
He coughed, and picked up his skirts. ‘Well, I must be on my way, there is another needy member of the flock I must administer to.’
I mentioned meeting Father O’Regan to Phelim later on, when we were having tea, and he roared with laughter.
‘I’d say you gave old Reggie a fright. He must have been wondering what on earth you were doing creeping around the house.’
‘But you don’t go to Mass, do you?’
‘No, well, I don’t. But Claudette did. She is too sick to go now, so Reggie comes here to give her the sacrament. I think, at this stage, her faith gives her something to focus on, rather than worrying.’ He sighed, looking suddenly sad.
‘Any word on Danielle?’
He shook his head, and bowed down over his plate, saying nothing.
‘I am sure you will hear something soon, I am sure it will be all right,’ I said as optimistically as I could.
‘And you?’ He looked up. ‘Have you heard from Robert?’
‘No,’ I tried to sound chirpy, adding, ‘I am due a letter from him soon.’
We carry on like this, keeping each other company. For that is all we are doing. There is no harm in kindness, is there not? He is a lonely husband, whose wife is slowly dying in front of him, and I am a lonely wife, whose husband is away at war. We are each other’s solace.
And then one day everything changes. I am in the dark woods on my way to the Sheriden house and daydreaming about ancient Rome, and the island of Ponza. I imagine the crashing Mediterranean ocean, the sparkling light and the black rocks. I can see the cliffs of the island like scoops of white clay, everything exposed and brutal, unlike the safe hollow of my Cavan trees. I am lost in my reverie, but as I pick my way across the marshy ground I begin to hear an unfamiliar noise. I stop, on the rim of a tiny bog, and I can hear it distinctly, a sweet singing. Immediately I remember Oonagh’s warnings about the Watershree, one of the most deceiving fairies, who with her innocent songs lures unsuspecting travellers into bogs, only to drown them and devour their souls.
I stamp my feet, and speak to myself. ‘Don’t be so completely ridiculous, June Fanning.’
But I have never met anyone else in these woods, apart from the time I saw Claudette Sheriden, and now she is bedridden. I wonder idly why Phelim never comes here.
I start to walk again. This time more quickly, and yet as carefully as I can over the soggy ground, scanning it for particularly boggy parts. It is not my imagination. I can hear the voice, quite distinctly, and it is getting louder.
I whisper a little prayer for protection and hold onto Robert’s locket as if it is a holy amulet. The weak winter sun breaks through the branches. Up ahead I can see a figure, walking towards me.
‘Be careful,’ Oonagh had warned me. ‘The Watershree can appear as a very beautiful woman, or how you would imagine a fairy to look: small, delicate, with gossamer wings.’
The woman who approaches me certainly has the quality of a fairy about her. She is tiny, with the frame of young girl, so that I am not sure of her age until she comes closer and I can see her face. It is Claudette Sheriden.
I am shocked to see her in plain daylight. She has become a fictional person over the past few weeks, never well enough to see me, always in her bed. How is it that she is here, walking towards me, in the woods between our homes?
She moves very slowly and is wrapped up in a long black cape. Her face is oval, pale and pointed. She looks incredibly sick. Her cheekbones are pronounced, and there is so little flesh to her cheeks that her eyes and mouth look large in her face. It is her eyes that transfix me. They are immense, like the painted eyes on the wings of butterflies. Despite her obvious frailty, there is an intensity to her gaze and I recognize in her expression the look of someone who is not too far from death. The overall effect is one of astonishing beauty.
She reaches me and holds out her hand. It is tiny, and white, the veins raised, the skin slightly yellow. ‘You must be June,’ she says slowly, taking a breath between each word.
‘Yes.’ I shake her hand. I am unable to think of anything else to say.
‘Phelim has told me much about you.’
I nod, wondering in what way he has explained my visits.
She takes a breath. ‘I wonder whether you would be so kind as to help me?’
‘Of course.’
‘It is my husband, he is so very protective, and he wants me to stay indoors. But . . .’ She pauses, and coughs, taking a handkerchief out of her pocket and bringing it up to her mouth. ‘Mais les arbres . . .’ she whispers.
‘Pardon.’ I lean forward, and she catches my arm and loops hers in mine.
‘Would you mind if we went back this way a little? I need to see the sky, and the trees.’ She sighs. ‘I need to hear the birds outside once in a while.’
‘Of course,’ I reply politely, confused by the Frenchwoman’s request. It is obvious Phelim does not know his sick wife is wandering about in the woods. Should I try to persuade her to go home? But I sense this woman is on a mission. She is pitifully thin, but that does not stop her determined step back through the woods towards my house.
‘Will you, ma chérie, take me to the Fannings’ lovely orchard?’ Her heavily lidded eyes plead with me.
‘It’s not quite so lovely now,’ I say, but I know in my heart that Claudette doesn’t mind how the apple trees look. Now I understand that she wishes to visit James D., and why it is she can’t be with Phelim.
We walk in silence, but just as we reach the gate to the orchard, she turns to me and grips my gloved hands. ‘You are the same age as my daughter Danielle,’ she says softly. ‘I am so very happy for Robert. He has found you, at last.’
We pass through the gate, and I try to steer her through the undergrowth without tripping on tangled roots and briars. We circle the orchard, but just by the plum trees Claudette lets go of my hand and begins to walk around them.
‘These were James D.’s trees,’ she says, touching them gently as if they were the man himself. She turns to me, her thin face one of pain, haunting and ethereal. ‘And the apple trees, some of them were Robert’s father’s, and some were Robert’s, of course.’
I feel as if a very cold hand has suddenly been placed over my heart.
‘I believe all of the orchard was a gift from Robert’s father to his mother?’
Claudette sweeps her hands over to the other side of the orchard. ‘Yes, of course, that side of the orchard, but can you not see that these trees are younger?’
I look about me. I had noticed that the trees here were a different type of apple when I picked them, but it is not until now that I can see they are not quite as wizened as the other trees, their bark is smoother, their posture more erect.
‘I lived here for a year,’ Claudette says, her eyes misty with tears. ‘James D. planted me plums. He proposed to me under this very tree.’ She sighs. ‘But then he had to go back to war, and I was left here all on my own.’
She begins to cough again and, taking out her handkerchief, she sits down suddenly under the plum tree. I cannot imagine how I could have heard her singing in the woods, just a short time ago, for now she can hardly speak.
‘I think it might be damp . . .’ I begin to say, coming towards her, but she shoos me away.
‘I think I am a little past caring if I catch a cold.’
She laughs suddenly, and her face is illuminated, and I can see that she once had filmstar looks, big dreamy eyes and creamy white skin, just like Claudette Colbert, as Oonagh described.
‘The Fannings looked after me. Robert is a good man.’
‘Yes, I know.’ I am annoyed that she should feel she has to tell me this.
Claudette sweeps her hand in front of her, as if she is introducing the orchard to me. ‘All of these sweet little pippins were planted for me. This orchard is mine.’
And when she says these words I feel as if she has stabbed me. Her words wound me deep down in my soul.
Claudette bends over, coughing, and this time it is as if she cannot stop.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask, walking towards her, although all I really want to do is run aw
ay.
She looks up at me, and bright red blood gushes out of her nostrils. Her expression is one of a small child the first time it has a nosebleed, terrified and helpless. Despite everything, I go over to her and, pulling out the end of my blouse, I rip it off and staunch the flow.
We sit under James D.’s plum trees, and I wonder: does the love of this man still exist here, planted firmly like roots in the earth? Will he come to meet Claudette, this woman who is so plainly dying minute by minute, and bring her with him? I have never even seen a picture of James D. and yet I can feel him around me. It is a change in the air. It is a sensation hard to describe. We sit quite still and when I hear the sweet singing once again I recognize the voice immediately. Of course it is not Claudette, for it was my sister all along. Claudette and I are sitting in the ether, which floats between this world and the next, and what I long for most is my sister’s voice, and this is what it brings me.
I pray it is not Min’s swansong. I put my arms around Claudette, the wife of the man whom I desire, and wonder whether my husband still loves her. To plant a whole orchard of apple trees tells me that once he most surely did.
NICHOLAS
The summer is nearly over. Nicholas sits on the doorstep of his house and looks at the destroyed orchard. Now that he has cleared up the broken branches and the fallen apples, the place looks bereft, a few skeleton trees left standing, all the leaves on the ground before they are due to fall, as if they have been dropped by the shock of their bearers’ desecration. Some of the trees were so old it breaks his heart to see the massacre. Even if he were to begin replanting today, it would take generations to recreate the orchard. And then there is the chaos of the house behind him. He has made a mess of the roof and, when it rains, water comes into the attic in three places. He needs professional help, but he can’t afford it. He knows he should get down to work. There is so much to do – tiling, dry-lining, decorating – but he feels completely overwhelmed. Fixing up a house is something most men are well capable of, but all Nicholas wants to do is play the piano. The past week his head has been invaded by music. When he comes to play the piano, his notes find their own way out, and for the first time in his life he is composing music. He even digs out his guitar and tries adding lyrics to the melody. It is slow work, but it makes him happy, and he hasn’t been happy in such a long time.
The Adulteress Page 24
