Summer in the Orchard

by Fay Keenan

  ‘You must be happy for her,’ Alex said. ‘I know when Mom met my stepfather, I was about eight, and although I felt jealous at first, that he was taking her away from me, eventually I realised what a good guy he is. We helped each other a lot when Mom passed.’

  Sophie slipped her hand back into Alex’s, both of them united by their expressions of grief. ‘I went through a phase in my teens when I was obsessed with finding out about Dad. I looked at every photo, asked Mum a million questions… I was trying to get my image of him into some kind of shape in my own head, and I got so frustrated that I didn’t actually remember anything about him. Then, one day I came across this bottle of aftershave in my mum’s perfume drawer. It must have been old – the liquid was virtually gone – but when I undid the top and smelt it, suddenly I started crying. It was as if some long dead memory had woken up inside me, some piece of Dad that I didn’t even know I held in my mind.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t tell Mum – I was too worried about upsetting her, but I wonder if she knew anyway. Every time I felt like I needed to be close to him from then on I’d sneak into Mum’s room and smell the aftershave bottle. It helped me through some pretty dark times, knowing I had that little link with him.’

  ‘Mom always wore the same perfume, too. And when she died, I found myself doing the same.’ He shook his head. ‘Grief does things to you; sneaks up when you least expect it. I cried my eyes out when I smelt that scent, knowing she’d never put it on again.’ He swallowed hard, and turned away, focussing his gaze on the horizon.

  Sophie couldn’t say anything; what was there to say, after all?

  ‘I’m guessing that the headstone with the apple blossom engraved on it must be Jack Carter’s, right?’ Alex’s brow had furrowed as he looked over towards the newer section of the graveyard.

  Sophie followed his line of sight to where, a few rows away, was a white headstone, facing in the direction of Carter’s. ‘Yup.’ She nodded. ‘Do you want to take a look, since it’s him we’re remembering at this do tonight?’

  Alex seemed to hesitate again. ‘It’s OK,’ Sophie said hurriedly. ‘I totally understand if not… coming and standing in a graveyard is a bit of a downer before a party, really, isn’t it?’

  Alex smiled. ‘It’s fine, really. Perhaps I should take a look. I’ve heard so much about him, after all.’

  They were about to wander off towards Jack’s grave when Sophie bent back down and plucked one of her father’s pink roses from the vase. ‘Jack loved his roses as much as Gran loves hers,’ she said. When they got to Jack’s headstone, she tucked the rose into the vase next to a fresh sprig of freesias that someone had placed there. As they stood for a few moments in silence, Sophie’s gaze drifted from Jack’s headstone to Alex’s face. He seemed lost in thought, almost as if he was struggling with something. She was torn between wanting to ask him, and feeling as though she should give him the space. Grief, they’d both agreed, was a strange, unpredictable thing.

  After another moment or two, Alex turned back to Sophie. ‘We should probably get going,’ he said quietly, ‘or we’ll be late for the party.’ They headed back down the path to the church gate, both lost in their own thoughts.

  It was only a short walk to the wrought iron gates of the cider farm. Sophie had noticed Alex’s pace slowing as they’d approached, as he’d seen the bunting and the fairy lights, and heard the strains of the jazz band playing where a makeshift dance floor had been set up. As the band launched into a cover of Billie Holliday’s ‘You Could Be So Easy To Love’, he stopped altogether and pulled her into his arms.

  ‘I’m so glad I met you,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve made being here so much nicer. I thought the only thing I was going to fall in love with when I came here was English apples. I never imagined I’d find my own English rose to love as well.’

  Sophie smiled. ‘It seems so crazy… we’ve only known each other a few weeks, but crazy is exactly what I need right now. In the best possible way, of course.’ She drew a little closer to Alex, and pressed her lips to his. ‘I just don’t know why we can’t turn around, go back to my place and forget this evening, though. Do we really have to go and be sociable?’

  Alex stroked Sophie’s cheek with a warm hand. ‘Nothing would make me happier than to walk out of those gates and spend the evening alone with you, but we were invited because you and Jack worked so closely together. Don’t you want to honour his memory tonight?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘He’d have loved this,’ she said softly. ‘He loved a party.’ She glanced at Alex. ‘I think he’d have loved the idea of Adelaide’s, too.’

  Alex tensed in her arms. ‘What is it?’ she asked softly. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ Alex murmured into her hair. ‘No. You really didn’t.’ He pulled her so close that Sophie felt the breath being squeezed out of her. Disquieted, she raised her gaze to meet his eyes.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex replied, a beat too quickly. ‘I’m fine. Honestly. Shall we go see who else is around?’

  Sophie nodded, but still the worry lingered.

  Alex’s heart hammered in his chest as he looked around at the assembled partygoers, all there to celebrate the life of a man he’d never known. He felt as out of place as a cheerleader at a rugby match; an outsider; a fraud. When Sophie had asked him if he was all right at the gates, he should have just taken her hand and run as far away from this place as he could. The courtyard was already full of partygoers, all drinking cider and looking as if they were having a great time. There was, obviously, a lot of drink circulating, and laden tables full of delicious buffet food, much of it prepared by The Cider Kitchen. Dotted around the place were mementoes: blown up pictures of Jack, examples of the apple varieties he’d grown, and quotations from interviews. Some guests were dancing already, and Sophie and Alex drifted towards the makeshift dance floor, feeling themselves caught up in the mellow, jazz-infused mood. As they joined the other revellers, Alex noticed Meredith Carter hovering by the bar, a pint of cider in her hand. She smiled as she noticed him, too.

  ‘This definitely feels a little weird,’ Alex murmured into Sophie’s hair as they began to sway to the music. She was so tall that he could rest his lips on her forehead if she got a little closer.

  ‘Certainly does. Now concentrate,’ she chided as Alex’s left foot collided with hers for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Sorry.’ Alex grinned. ‘I don’t have the benefit of a classical dance education.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Sophie said. She looked up at him, face growing warm as she noticed the desire in his deep brown eyes. ‘And it wasn’t quite like this.’

  ‘I don’t think anything else is quite like this,’ Alex said. ‘I certainly never imagined I’d be dancing in an orchard.’ The uneven ground underfoot was proving rather tricky to move on, but really it didn’t matter too much.

  ‘Are you having a good evening?’ Sophie asked, still concerned about Alex’s earlier mood.

  ‘I am,’ Alex replied, mostly truthfully. ‘Being here with you is all I could have asked for.’

  Satisfied, Sophie slid closer into his embrace. Something still nagged at her mind, but she was prepared to ignore it while they danced.

  A little time later, when guests were starting to slip away, Alex and Sophie decided it was time to leave as well.

  ‘Can I walk you home?’ Alex asked as, hand in hand, they drifted through the cider farm, smiling at people they knew on the way to the gates. Sophie had been genuinely surprised by how many people had been happy to see that she and Alex had arrived together. The village network could be frustrating at times, but the interconnectedness of everyone and everything also felt like an incredible support. She knew that a lot of people were happy to see her happy.

  ‘I’d like that,’ Sophie replied. Sophie knew that Lily wouldn’t have batted an eyelid to see her own granddaughter slipping down the stairs and out of the door in the early hours, but she didn’t want to pu
t Alex in an uncomfortable position. ‘I’ve got some great coffee in,’ she murmured, sliding an arm around Alex’s neck and drawing him to her in a deep, sweet, cider infused kiss.

  ‘Get a room!’ came the call from Laura’s new boyfriend, Sam, as they passed the two of them on the way home.

  ‘We intend to,’ Sophie murmured, breaking the kiss and wrapping an arm around Alex’s waist.

  ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ he asked Sophie. He gestured towards the toilets at the edge of the courtyard. ‘Too much of the good stuff.’

  Sophie smiled. ‘Of course.’ She caught sight of David over by the buffet table. ‘I’ll just go and catch up with the boss.’

  Alex smiled and wandered off. When he was sure Sophie was preoccupied, he abruptly changed direction and headed over to the museum building. There had been some discussion about whether or not to open it for the memorial party, but in the end it had been decided to let people in to see the results of Anna’s research in the family archives. Alex slipped in, unobserved, and tried to breathe. The whole place was both memorial and testament to the Carter family’s legacy. Huge photographs of the key players and key places of the Carter family’s heritage stood sentinel around the glass and wood building, with carefully curated artefacts in glass cases lining the back wall of the museum. Notebooks, tankards, even the first ledgers of sale for Samuel Carter’s fledgling business were on display for all the world to see. Photographs of Jack, the proud father of two such similar but wildly different sons, who now had both followed him into the family business, were everywhere. At the sight of so much that screamed family, Alex felt the panic, guilt and fear rising within him. What business had he to be here, in the midst of all this?

  Reluctantly, he was drawn back to the last days of his mother’s life; when she had finally told him her version of her truth. She’d been frail, close to death, knowing that time was not on her side. Fighting to remain until the very end, she’d told him about his father. ‘He never knew about you, Alex. You mustn’t bear a grudge against him for that; I never… I never told him.’

  ‘Why, Mom? Why didn’t you tell him?’

  Addie had closed her eyes for a long while, and Alex had almost been convinced that she’d gone, that the light was starting to die, when she’d looked at him again. ‘He had enough at home to think about. We both knew… we both knew that what we had was special, but it couldn’t last. I made the choice to raise you alone. But you need to know, now, who he was, so you can make your own decisions.’

  ‘Who he was?’

  Addie had sighed. ‘I’m sorry Alex. I’m going to leave you soon, so it’s right you should know. He died last year. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t find the right way to do it. But I think it’s right that you know now. So you can make your own decisions about what to do with that information, if anything. His name was Jack. Jack Carter.’ She’d reached out and squeezed his hand with one of her own, the veins prominent on the back if it. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Nothing to forgive,’ Alex had said softly. The questions would come later; the onslaught of whys, wherefores and speculative becauses. For then, his mother had been all that had mattered. ‘Try to get some rest.’ He’d leaned over and kissed her on the forehead before telling her he loved her; it was the last thing she’d heard as she’d slipped into unconsciousness. Back in the present, Alex could almost hear the last breaths Addie drew, before the life finally left her. Surrounded by the relics of another family, he had never felt so alone.

  ‘You’re my father,’ he breathed as his eyes alighted on yet another picture of Jack from the early 1980s. The word felt simultaneously alien, yet absolutely right. Irresistibly drawn to the portrait, he reached out a hand and traced Jack’s features with a shaking fingertip. ‘I wish I’d known you.’ Frozen there, trying to keep under control the surge of emotion that he’d known this evening would evoke, he could hear the revellers still enjoying the fruits of Jack and his family’s labours, paying tribute to the man himself tonight. They seemed so far away from him here, alone, still carrying his secret but so desperate to share it. But even now, standing in this place, on this site, he hesitated. What good would come of revealing things now? Too much time had passed for it to do any good, and how could he look Sophie in the eye after all these weeks? Perhaps it was just better to finish his internship and go home; close the book and walk away from this library of memories that he had no part in. He didn’t want redress, and he didn’t feel the Carter family owed him anything. Over the past few weeks, being here at the heart of Jack’s empire had allowed him time and space to discover the man that his biological father was; surely that was enough? Perhaps he could lay the ghosts to rest now, and leave no one the wiser about whose son he really was? Taking one last look around the museum, his gaze lingering on Jack’s photograph, he made the decision.

  So preoccupied with his own thoughts, Alex didn’t notice the slight shifting of the shadows in one of the recesses of the museum as Mark Simpson slipped out of the museum door, a look of shocked triumph on his face.

  29

  Maybe it was the warm summer air, or the fact that this was a commemoration for her grandfather, but Meredith Carter was definitely feeling better. As she sipped her glass of cider and looked out at the assembled partygoers, she smiled as she saw her father and Anna, on a rare night out without the smaller children, looking happy and relaxed. They never strayed far from one another and Meredith felt so happy that they were still so very much in love. This evening was intended to be a celebration of her grandfather’s life, and all the people who’d been most important to him were here, along with well wishers and other friends.

  Solar powered fairy lights had been strung between the rows of trees in the Royal Orchard and were shining brightly now that darkness had fallen. Meredith had to admit it was looking spectacular now it had been tidied up by the tree surgeons. The apples in the rest of the orchards were about three quarters grown and would be harvested soon, now that the Eloise harvest was out of the way. Under the trees was a Bristol based jazz and blues band, and people were enjoying the barbecue and hog roast, as well as getting stuck into the cider. The ground was so dry that there had been no need to worry about a marquee or a dance floor, and Meredith knew that, as with so many events that the cider farm had held in the past, it wouldn’t take long before everyone was dancing.

  As she scanned the crowd, hoping to see Rosie or Izzy so that she could mooch over and talk to them, her gaze fell on a much smarter looking Joe Flanagan, who was drinking a pint of cider and chatting to his father, Patrick. Out of his usual green polo shirt and jeans combination, his charcoal grey jacket and white shirt over a darker, more fitted pair of jeans were understated but stylish. Hair that had a tendency to unruliness was carefully brushed back from his face, revealing a clear forehead unblemished by the spots that had dogged him a few years back. Meredith found herself looking at him in a different light from the way she remembered him. His air of self-assurance was decidedly attractive, too, and so different from the blushing sixteen year old he’d once been.

  As if aware of her scrutiny, Joe turned slightly away from his father, and smiled when he caught sight of her. Murmuring something to Patrick, he ambled over to where she was standing, slightly away from the crowds starting to sway in front of the jazz band.

  ‘Hey,’ he said as he drew closer. ‘You all right?’

  Meredith, surprised that the smile she gave in return came so easily to her, nodded. Feeling suddenly nervous, she took a gulp of her sparkling cider.

  ‘Nice dress, by the way,’ Joe continued. ‘Matches the apples.’ He blushed. ‘Sorry. That was a really crap line, wasn’t it?’

  Meredith’s smile turned into a laugh. ‘I’ve heard better.’ She quite liked the fact that Joe still wasn’t quite as confident as he thought he was.

  ‘Can I, er, get you another drink?’ Joe asked hastily, noticing her nearly empty glass.

  ‘Actually, I’m fine,’ Meredith replied,
but, seeing Joe’s look of disappointment, hastily added, ‘but I’d really like you to just stick around for a bit, if that’s OK? I mean, if you don’t have anyone else to, er, meet, here.’

  ‘Friends not coming?’ Joe said archly, taking another sip of his own drink. ‘Feeling a bit left out?’

  ‘No,’ Meredith snapped back. ‘I just don’t really feel like talking to people I don’t want to talk to tonight.’

  ‘I’m honoured,’ Joe said, his gentle smile softening his words. ‘I suppose being the heir apparent to all this can get a bit annoying at times.’

  ‘Can we stop with the digs about that?’ Meredith said. ‘It’s getting a bit old. Anyway, technically you’re not right; Ellie, or even little Jack, can both have a say in the business now. They might be the ones who run it, one day.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Joe said. ‘Old habits and all that.’

  ‘Let’s just forget all that, please. What’s done is done. I just want to try to enjoy myself tonight. I think Granddad would have liked that.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Fair enough. Your granddad was a good bloke.’ He cleared his throat as the band struck up another Billie Holliday tune. ‘If you don’t want another drink, would you, er, like to dance, then?’

  Meredith smiled again at his sudden reticence. ‘Yes, I would. Thank you.’ Wandering over to the area that was rapidly being taken over as a dance floor, she drew a little bit closer to Joe until, with some nervousness, he slid a hand around her waist. She placed an equally hesitant hand on his shoulder and, as if some greater instinct was taking her over, she slid a little closer to him. Joe was a good few inches over six feet tall, and his arms felt reassuringly comfortable as she breathed in the scent of a lemony aftershave on his jaw.