Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  At the far end of the hall, we stopped. I looked behind, at the doorway that led back outside, the white air framed like a picture. How many times in a life does a person get to feel an instant attraction for someone they have just met, the eyes locking, the sudden and overwhelming conviction that this is someone he or she is meant to know? Three, four times, maybe? For many people, it happens only as they go up the ascending escalator at a railway station or in a department store while someone else goes down the descending escalator on the other side. Some people never get to experience it at all.

  I turned back to you and you looked at me again. That’s all.

  You paused briefly, then said, ‘Have you seen the Chapel in the Crypt?’ Your tone was light, conversational.

  I gave a small shake of the head.

  ‘Would you like to?’

  I was on the edge of a cliff. I know that now.

  ‘Sure,’ I said – conversationally, mimicking your tone. Mirroring, it’s called. We do it all the time.

  You bent your head slightly toward me. ‘Come with me,’ you said. As you turned, you placed one hand on my elbow, the most delicate of touches through my jacket, steering me, while hardly making contact. Even after you took your hand away, I felt the imprint of your fingers there. Together, we mounted the wide stone steps at the far end of the Hall. At the top of them, beneath the stained-glass glory of the Memorial Window, was a security guard, a stout woman with curly hair and glasses. I hung back as you approached her. You stooped to speak to her. I couldn’t hear what you said but it was clear that you were joking with her, knew her quite well.

  As you walked back to me, you held up a key attached to a black plastic rectangle. ‘Remind me to give it back to Martha or I will be in a lot of trouble,’ you said.

  We turned. I followed you down a smaller set of stone steps and through some black iron railings to a heavy wooden door. You opened it with the key. We stepped inside. It closed behind us with a solid thunk. We were at the top of another set of stone steps, quite narrow this time, which lead down a twisting stairwell. You went first. At the bottom of the stairwell was another heavy door.

  *

  The Crypt Chapel is small and ornate, its arches bending over like low-hanging tree branches, its ceiling covered with golden tracery. There are wrought-iron railings in intricate patterns in front of the altar and a decorated baptistery with a font – Members are allowed to baptise their children here, you tell me, or get married. You are not sure about funerals. The walls and floor of the Chapel are tiled, the columns marbled, it seems like a heavily decorated but secret place – perhaps because it is a church underground: hidden worship.

  I walk down the aisle and, as I do, the emptiness of the place dispels any sense of consecration. There are no pews, just rows of stackable chairs. It feels disused. My footsteps echo. The whole point of a church is that anyone can wander in at any time – this is kept locked and opened up for Members only. You follow me down the aisle, slowly, at a distance, the soles of your shoes a soft tread. I hear the contrast with my own sharp heels. Although I have my back to you, you carry on talking to me about the Chapel, how its real name is the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft but everyone calls it the Crypt Chapel. Its walls were plastered over for many centuries but in the fire of 1834, the plaster fell off and the riches of the Chapel’s decoration were revealed, not least the large, carved bosses showing scenes of martyrdom. And there, above us – I still have my back to you but you invite me to look up – one saint roasted, another drowned… St Stephen, St Margaret, you say. You point out the pagan gargoyles. Barbarism, I think, medieval barbarism. I remember the holiday my husband and I once took to northern Spain, where every small town seemed to remember the Inquisition with its own, often graphic, museum of torture. Marble, stonework, elaborate tiles, Latin inscriptions, all that High Church ritual – no, I don’t feel any shred of spiritual contemplation here, just a mild intellectual curiosity and – what is that, I wonder as I spin slowly round on one heel… I realise, as I turn, that I am doing it because there is silence. I am turning because you are not talking any more; there are no more shuffling sounds on the flagstones. I cannot even hear you breathe.

  You have not evaporated. You have not disappeared, or secreted yourself behind a pillar or in the baptistery. You are standing still, and you are looking at me.

  I look back at you and I know, without either of us saying anything, that this is the point where the moment will slide.

  Your shoes, the sound of the soles of your shoes, moves, echoes, approaches me. As you reach me you lift one hand slightly and it is completely natural to lift my hand in return. You take my hand in yours. Your grip claims me. You lead me back down the aisle, to the back of the Chapel. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

  We step behind a screen and there is another heavy wooden door, narrow and very tall this time, in an arch shape.

  ‘Go in first, it’s a bit tight in there,’ you say.

  I open the door – with some effort, it’s very heavy. Behind it is a tiny room with a very high ceiling. Immediately in front of me is a bright blue metal cabinet, like a filing cabinet but with a variety of electrical buttons and lights. Next to it, leaning against the wall is a dirty mop standing on its handle and a set of metal stepladders. To the left, the thick ropes of dozens of rubber-coated electrical supply cables stretch above, disappearing into the ceiling. ‘It used to be a broom cupboard,’ you say as you step in behind me.

  The room is so small, you have to press against me so that we can close the door.

  ‘There,’ you say.

  On the back of the door, there is a small black and white photograph of a woman, and beneath it, a brass plaque. Emily Wilding Davison. I am standing facing the plaque, looking at it with my back to you. You are directly behind me, very close, so close that I feel you even though you are not touching me – what I mean is, I can feel that you are only just not touching me. You bring one hand over my shoulder and point at the plaque. Your breath stirs my hair as you speak.

  ‘She hid here on the night of the census, 1911,’ you say, and without turning I say quickly, ‘Yes I know this story,’ even though I can’t remember the details. It’s a suffragette story; it belongs to me, not you. Emily Wilding Davison threw herself beneath the hooves of the King’s horse during the Epsom Derby. She died so that women like me, who live in this country in the early part of the twenty-first century, could take things for granted; that we vote, we work, expect our husbands to unload the dishwasher. We don’t have to give our husbands everything we own when we marry them. We don’t even have to marry them if we don’t want to. We can sleep with whomever we like – within the limits of our own personal morality of course – just like men do. No one takes us to the village square and stones us any more, or places metal torture devices in our mouths for talking too much, or drowns us in a pond because a man we rejected has accused us of being a witch. We are safe, surely, now, in this time, in this country, we are safe.

  As I turn towards you, your hands go either side of my head, your fingers in my hair, and I lift my hands and place them lightly on your upper arms as you tip my head back gently, closing my eyes.

  We kiss – your mouth soft, full, all the things that mouths should be – and I realise I knew this would happen from the minute I set eyes on you in the corridor outside the committee room, it was just a question of how and when. You step forward and lean against me so that I am pressed against the back of the door. The slow compression of my body by yours: it squeezes the breath from me and I am returned, for the first time since my twenties, to the wild dizziness you feel when a kiss is tender yet so inexorable that you can hardly breathe. I can’t believe I am kissing a total stranger, I think, and know that my disbelief is half the thrill. It won’t be me that breaks it off – I will keep on doing it until you stop, because it’s completely absorbing, this sensation: silent, eyes closed, all my senses concentrated on the grazing of our tongues. I am nothi
ng but mouth.

  Then, after a long while, you do something that will endear you to me when I think about it later. You pause. You stop kissing me, withdraw your face, and as I open my eyes I see you are looking into mine. You still have one hand in my hair, your fingers entwined. The other hand is resting on my waist, and you are smiling. Neither of us speaks but I know what you are doing. You are looking into my face as a way of checking that this is all right. I smile back.

  I still don’t know who was responsible for what happened next. Was it you, me, or both of us at the same time? My hands move down – or did you push them down? – to where the thick leather of your belt is held by its buckle. I try to extract the belt but my fingers tremble and the leather is stiff and unyielding, refusing to budge from its clasp. You have to help me. There is another clumsy moment when you tug at my neckline. I am still wearing my jacket and you haven’t realised that underneath it is not a skirt and blouse but a dress. You stop and remove your glasses, dropping them into your jacket pocket and as you do, I bend and unzip one of my boots and slip it off. Then, bending again, awkwardly because I am still wearing the other boot with its small heel, I slip one leg out of my tights and knickers. When you enter me, the feel of skin against skin is delicate electricity, like the static you get from freshly laundered clothes. The only naked part of us, the only point where my flesh is in contact with yours, is inside me. We say nothing.

  Even now, the memory of this moment has the power to freeze me, mid-task, whatever that task may be, and make me stare into the middle distance, still astonished at how easy, how natural it was, how something that had always seemed so freighted with taboo or convention could happen at the mere slipping of the physical impediments from our bodies. One minute, we are kissing, and that in itself seems extraordinary, the next we are having sex.

  I don’t come. I am too bewildered. I suppose I enjoy it, but enjoy isn’t the right word. What I feel is the same breathless excitement I imagine people feel when they are on fairground rides, where it is possible to take pleasure in the fear because the danger is illusory; however scared you are, you are safe. I go with you. I follow you. I am scared as hell but I feel completely safe. It has never been like this before.

  Afterwards, we stand for a while. You are still pressed against me. I become aware that we are both listening. How many keys are there to the Chapel, I wonder? We are listening for the sound of footsteps on a tiled floor, or voices. It is silent. Simultaneously, we both give a brief exhalation, somewhere between a cough and a snort of amusement. It expels you from me. You stand back, pressing yourself backwards in the tiny space, put one hand in your pocket and recover your glasses, then hand me a cotton handkerchief. You smile at me and I smile back in acknowledgement, put the handkerchief between my legs as you button yourself up.

  You have to leave the tiny room first. I pick up my boot and follow you. I make my way across the Chapel floor, dishevelled and hobbling, my tights and knickers round one ankle, one boot in my hand, a cotton handkerchief jammed between my legs. You fetch one of the chairs for me and sit me down, like a paramedic seating a road crash victim. You step back, regarding me with amusement, your eyebrows raised, and I half-stand, dropping the boot to the floor so that I can use both hands to pull my knickers and tights back up, scrabbling a little because the leg of tights that came off was pulled inside out, and now of course I feel ridiculous and am reminded how in all first encounters, the undressing is heated and enticing but the getting dressed again after is usually an embarrassment. It’s so many years since I’ve had a first encounter, I had completely forgotten this.

  When I have sat back down again, you kneel at my feet, on one knee, and pick up the boot from the floor – I have a flushed and momentary thought that the tights I am wearing that day are not new – then you slip the boot over my foot, zip it up for me, look up at me with a smile, still clutching my calf in both hands and say, ‘It fits!’

  I smile back, place one hand on your cheek. I love the fact that you are taking charge because I am trembling now. You have noticed this and I can see from the smile on your face that you like it. You reach up with one hand and place it on the back of my head and pull my face down towards you for a long kiss. It makes my neck ache after a moment but I like it because you are kissing me as though you still mean it and we both know that is unnecessary now.

  Afterwards, you pull back and say, ‘We’d better get that key back to Martha.’

  I look around for my handbag and realise it must still be in the room – I don’t even remember putting it down. ‘My bag,’ I say, gesturing. You fetch it for me, then stand over me watching as I fumble in it. ‘Wait a minute,’ I say.

  I am looking for my make-up bag. I don’t have a powder compact but the very old eyeshadow in there, which I never use, has a tiny mirror in the lid. I hold it up in front of me, examine my face in minute circles, as if I am looking for a clue as to what sort of person I am. I find my lipstick and apply it lightly, rubbing my lips together. To emerge from the Crypt with lipstick reapplied too heavily would be a bit obvious, I think, and am surprised at this insight. Anyone would think I do this all the time.

  When I stand up, my legs are still shaking. All the while, you have been watching me with that wry expression on your face, as if it amuses you to have so discomfited me, to observe how effortful it is for me to recompose myself into the self that feels able to face the outside world. You check your watch. ‘Time for a quick coffee?’ you ask, but the tone in which you say this suggests to me that you are saying it to be polite. I have the presence of mind – and later I congratulate myself on this – to say, ‘Actually I have a couple of errands to do outside the building and then I’m giving evidence again this afternoon,’ and you pull a face of mock disappointment, but then something buzzes in your pocket and you extract a phone, turn away from me, check the screen, press a few buttons… When you turn back, I can tell that for you this encounter is over. The message you just received has made you think of the next thing to be done.

  As we walk towards the door, our footsteps loud and purposeful now, the sounds of two people exiting, I say, ‘Hold on a second.’ You are slightly ahead of me, and I can see that the back of your jacket is creased. I brush it down sharply with one hand, two deft, swift strokes. You glance over your shoulder as I do this, give a half-smile. ‘Thanks,’ you say, but it is a distracted thanks. You hold the door open as you leave. I walk through it but then step back, to allow you to go up the stairs ahead of me. I need you to emerge into the world first, so I can copy your nonchalance, watch you as you return the key to Martha, then bid you goodbye and turn on my heel. As we climb the stairs, I note that your jacket is still crumpled and think how next time I see a man with a slightly crumpled suit jacket I will be reminded of today and wonder what he has been up to. As it is, the next time I see that same expensive grey suit is in the dock of Courtroom Number Eight at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, EC1.

  2

  The next morning, I am sitting at the kitchen table, reading the free local newspaper that comes through our door once a week, when my husband lumbers in. He is also a slow-starter in the morning; neither of us likes to talk. These are the commonalities that glue a long marriage – it isn’t whether you are each other’s soulmate or intellectual equal: it’s whether you are both happy with no more than an exchange of grunts over breakfast.

  He is already dressed. It’s an early start for him that morning, and I am grateful for that because my head is still full of the Crypt Chapel and the sleepless night that followed and I want to be alone to do a little gentle musing, convince myself how normal I still am. My husband blunders gently to the kettle and makes himself a mug of tea, murmuring, ‘Want a refill?’ I shake my head. He takes his tea upstairs. The floorboards creak on our first floor and I hear him walking around his study, directly above the kitchen. Then I hear him using the electric toothbrush in the bathroom next door to the study. I know that when I go upstairs I will find t
he cup of tea on his desk or by the soap dish on the sink, cooling and untouched. Ten minutes later, he walks down the stairs, comes back into the kitchen, walks over to me, bends his head. I lift mine in return and he gives me an absent, dry-lipped kiss goodbye. He goes out into the hall, comes back in again. ‘Did I give you the car keys?’

  I look at him and say, ‘Brown coat.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, reminded of what he was wearing when he came home the previous day. My husband isn’t as absent-minded as this makes him sound: contrary to popular mythology, scientists are rarely scattered-brained individuals with wild eyes and sticky-up hair. The reason he ambles into the kitchen and asks for his car keys is not because he is incapable of locating them himself; it is to remind me that after many years of marriage, he still loves me. And I tell him where they are in order to remind him that I still love him back.

  One of the nicest things about being self-employed is the silence in the house that follows the echo of the front-door slam.

  *

  I give an unwarranted sigh and take my phone out of my dressing-gown pocket – putting clothes on will be an optional extra this morning. I Google ‘sexual health clinic private’. I have no intention of going to my local clinic, wherever it is, and sitting in a waiting room for two hours with a dozen sobbing teenagers.