Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  For a moment, I see my uncertainty mirrored in your face, then you step towards me and say in a mock-conspiratorial voice, ‘Come with me…’

  We walk down Kennington Road together, then take a left turn. On the other side of a road is a park with, oddly, a small paddock and a young woman riding a horse, just five minutes from the roar of Vauxhall Station. A sign pinned on the fence, amidst some tall nettles, says, Do Not Feed The Horses They Bite. I stop and point at it.

  ‘I’ve got something better than that,’ you say. ‘Look.’

  On our side of the road, there is the entrance to a city farm, and just beyond it, an animal enclosure with hay and sawdust and – sitting with its back to us, gazing around disdainfully, a white llama. Beyond the llama, a couple of unimpressed turkeys strut and peck and a goat is wrenching hay out of a stall.

  ‘Vauxhall has llamas.’ I say, ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘I think it’s just the one llama.’

  ‘I didn’t even know there was a farm here.’

  ‘I’m full of surprises,’ you say, pleased, as if it’s your farm, your animals.

  We walk down the street a little further, turn a corner, and before us are two narrow roads forking away and a short terrace of Victorian houses squeezed between them, shaped like a wedge of cheese – the rooms at the apex of the triangle must be tiny. We walk past it to the far end and you stop and extract a key. I look at you – I had assumed we were going to sit in the park or a café. There are three doorbells in the entranceway. The masonry has peeling paintwork. Someone has hung a duvet cover as a makeshift curtain in the window of the ground-floor flat.

  You push the door open and a slew of envelopes and advertising leaflets crests behind it. As I step in behind you, you bend to pick up the post and sift through it before tossing it on a small shelf behind the door. I watch you do all this partly because I still can’t quite believe it’s you, but also because it seems quite natural that it is. The hallway is painted the same colour of all hallways in all Victorian houses in London that have been chopped into rental flats: Landlord Magnolia, Guy used to call it. It reminds me of the flat Guy and I had when we were first married, the one with the couple upstairs, where I raised my children when they were tiny and Guy and I struggled to write our PhDs, and still, sometimes, in my roomy suburban house with its garden and two apple trees spaced wide enough apart for us to sling a hammock between them in the summer, I have to catch myself and remind myself that I don’t live somewhere like here any more.

  You go ahead of me up the stairs, and I follow. It is like being a couple.

  The flat is on the first floor, and before you open the door, you stop and check the cheap ply doorframe, which has some scratches on it, as if you are making sure of something. I am guessing this flat is somehow connected with your work, that you are familiar with it but don’t normally have access to it – but I’m only guessing. We step inside, into a tiny square hall. You stand and listen for a minute. It is completely quiet. Then you walk into the sitting room and I follow; a low two-seater sofa, a drop-leaf table against the wall, net curtains through which the street below is mistily visible. I take a few paces inside and look around; cheapness, emptiness, anonymity. I want to stay here for the rest of my life.

  I turn back to you and you are standing a few feet away, watching me. Your gaze is soft, apologetic. ‘It’s the best I could do…’ you say quietly.

  I lift both arms, then let them fall back. ‘I worked it out some time ago, what you do…’

  You look at me.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say, ‘I know you’re not allowed to talk about it, that’s why I haven’t asked.’ I look around the sitting room. ‘I suppose this is what you call a safe house.’

  You come to me. You stand in front of me and, very gently, part my coat and push it from my shoulders. I let my arms drop to allow the coat to fall and you take it and toss it on to the sofa. Then you face me again and, still very gently, you run your hands down my upper arms, starting at my shoulders, ending at the elbows, stroking both arms at the same time, the lightest, softest of touches through my cotton shirt.

  ‘It’s safe enough,’ you say. ‘We’re here now, you’re safe with me.’

  And I do what I have been wanting to do for twelve long weeks. I dissolve into you.

  *

  Later, we lie next to each other on the small double bed in the bedroom. It’s at the back of the house, with the same net curtains over the window and a view of the backs of other houses; windows and gutters and pipes. Even though the bed is nearer to being one-and-a-half than a double, it fills the room. On one side, there is a small bedside cabinet made of wooden laminate. On the other, the wardrobe has slatted sliding doors – it wouldn’t be possible to have one with doors that opened outwards. The wood-chip wallpaper is painted Landlord Magnolia like the hallway. There is a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a single strand of cobweb hanging down from it.

  The daylight in the room is light grey, harsh. We are lying in a tangle, semi-dressed, a duvet with no cover in a crumpled heap at our feet – we were too hot beneath it. We have had sex, and then talked – you have told me about watching me through the café window that day, the day our affair began with an exchange of phone numbers, even though we had already had sex by then. I work out that that café was almost directly opposite Apple Tree Yard, but we could never have known what we would do there a few weeks later and where it would lead. After a while, our talk becomes desultory and you fall asleep. I lie there, wrapped round you with my eyes open. One of my arms is trapped beneath you and it starts to tingle, go dead.

  After a few minutes, I raise my head slightly and see that you are awake, after all, and looking at me, and I have the feeling you have been looking at me for some time. I shift my trapped arm, settle into a different position a few inches further away, where we can stare at each other. You lift a hand and clear the hair away from my face. A reflexive vanity on my part makes me wince at how brutal the daylight is in this room, the white and grey light through the net curtains. I smile but you do not smile back. Your look is solemn.

  ‘You know what we are going to have to do, don’t you?’ you say.

  I return your look.

  Then you say, without flourish or rhetoric. ‘We’re going to have to warn Craddock off.’

  ‘How?’ I ask.

  You pull me into you, against your chest. ‘Leave it to me.’

  After a while, you fall asleep again, breathing deeply into my hair. We will talk when you wake but I’m in no hurry for that to happen: I need the loo, in fact, but I don’t want to break this moment, I want to stretch it and stretch it, in the small grey room, stretch it until it is as thin as the net curtains over the window, or the strand of cobweb hanging from the bare light bulb above us.

  *

  When we are dressed and drinking instant coffee – black, because there is no milk in the flat – on the sagging sofa in the sitting room, you tell me your plan. We will do it together, you say. If there is any comeback, then our story is, I confided in you because you had told me you worked in security at the Houses of Parliament, because I needed advice and didn’t want to talk to anyone close to me. Kevin the cop will confirm that story if we need him to. You will find out Craddock’s address. (‘How will you do that?’ I ask and you give me an amused look. ‘That bit really isn’t difficult.’) I will pick you up at the nearest Tube station wherever that may be, this weekend, and drive you to Craddock’s house. You will go in and speak to him. I will stay in the car.

  You see the doubt in my face as I look at you over the cheap, cracked mug; you misinterpret it. You assume I am thinking that this won’t be enough to solve the problem when in fact what I am doubtful about is the prospect of driving to wherever it is Craddock lives, the thought of going near him, even with you. Fear, I think, a particular sort of female fear: is it fair to expect you to understand that? You have your own fears, of course – but I know that what I am feeling now is v
ery specific, the gut revulsion of being near to someone who has been inside me when I didn’t want him to be. Once someone has done that, it is very hard to get them out.

  You don’t understand this, I know. You think my doubt is that Craddock won’t be frightened enough by us turning up at his door.

  ‘I could phone him, anonymously, but I’m not sure that would do it. Or I could just get someone else to sort him out,’ you say. ‘I know some dodgy people, wouldn’t be hard.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Or we go back to the police, back to Kevin. Report him. We can add harassment as well now. At the very least his bail conditions would include not contacting you.’

  I shake my head even more ferociously, thinking about Adam and Carrie and Guy and my career – in that order. It comes to me how much I want you to confront him, how much I will enjoy imagining the fear and uncertainty on his face, faced with you. That bastard will wet himself, I think then, and it is a small, mean thought that has nothing to do with justice.

  ‘You know,’ you say, a little carefully, ‘you could come in with me.’ When my eyes widen, you put down your coffee cup and lean towards me. ‘You’re going to bump into this man professionally, sooner or later, you won’t be able to avoid it. Don’t you want to look him in the face while I frighten the living daylights out of him?’

  ‘No…’ I say, shaking my head, ‘no, I don’t.’ How different the rest of our lives would have been if I had said yes.

  ‘Well then,’ you move across the sofa towards me. You take my mug from my hands and put it down on the carpet. You put your mouth on mine. I taste the burnt taste of coffee as our tongues mingle briefly. You kiss my forehead, hold my head in your hands. ‘It’s settled. This weekend. And after I’ve finished, he will never come near you again.’

  *

  At the weekend, the hot October we have been promised arrives. We wake up on Saturday morning, open the curtains, and there it is. Guy and I have coffee in the sun on the brick patio at the back of the house, me in shorts, vest, sunglasses, him with his shirt off, smiling at each other occasionally over the newspaper and letting each other know when we’ve finished each section – the picture of middle-aged bliss. When we go inside, the light has filled our house with dust. I am calm and relaxed with Guy that morning, deliberately so, for all I can think about is what you and I are planning to do.

  I dress carefully, when the time comes. I’ve told Guy I’m going to take some old clothes to the recycling unit, and they are bagged up in the boot of the car. I am wearing a cotton skirt, knee-length, with a splashy pattern in purples and blues, along with a short-sleeved white T-shirt and a denim jacket. I am bare-legged, in flat pumps. It is a Saturday outfit. You have not seen me dressed like this before. I take it as a good sign that I have a shred of vanity left; I am recovering, I think. It is because I am doing something, rather than being a passive recipient of what has happened to me. I am nervous, slightly febrile even, but happier than I have been in weeks.

  When I get into the car, late afternoon, Guy comes to the front step to wave me off. I give him a cheery smile.

  *

  You are already waiting outside South Harrow Tube by the time I get there, and you are dressed casually too: loose jogging bottoms and a tight grey T-shirt, trainers and sunglasses, a hooded jacket over one arm and large Nike sports bag in the other hand. This is you, I think, you in a casual but purposeful mode, relaxed but determined. You stand with your shoulders back, looking around. I feel a twist of desire.

  ‘You’re late,’ you say, as you open the passenger door to my car.

  ‘Five minutes,’ I reply.

  *

  It is only a few minutes’ drive, as it turns out, round a few corners, through a suburb that people generally have aspirations to leave; low-rise rows of pound shops and off-licences, the occasional empty-looking café. You are completely silent, apart from telling me which way to drive, and I feel a little deflated. I guess you are concentrating on what you have to do, what you are going to say but I was under the impression this was something we were doing together. After a few minutes you say, ‘Right turn here,’ at the beginning of a dead-end road. ‘Drive to the end, turn around, park back there.’ You indicate a space. I execute a clumsy three-point turn, park where you tell me to.

  I was hoping we would sit and talk in the car for a bit, but you bend to pick up your sports bag. ‘Maybe he won’t be in.’ I say.

  ‘He’s in,’ you reply. ‘Wait here,’ you add, as if there is a chance I will do anything else. I turn to you, hoping for a brief kiss, but you are already getting out of the car. I watch in the rear-view mirror as you walk back down towards the end of the dead end. Halfway down there is a small grocery store and then a low block of cheap square houses. You stop by a black door. You step up close to it and I see you lean into the doorway – are you ringing a bell, or letting yourself in by other means? I can’t see. The door opens and you disappear inside. I peer through the windscreen at the iron post just ahead of where I am parked to check the parking restrictions – I’m OK after 1 p.m. on a Saturday. I don’t want to draw attention to my car by being illegally parked. I look up and down the street for CCTV cameras but can’t see any. It occurs to me that I am excited – I am beginning to understand the adrenaline of what you do.

  *

  You are gone for so long, dear God, why didn’t I guess that something was wrong? Why didn’t I do something? Much would be made of this in court later, as you know – the way I just sat in the car, waiting. Why did I make no attempt to call you on your phone? The prosecution will ask me. Why did I not get out of the car and bang on the door I had watched you enter? What did I think was going on? I knew full well what was going on, the prosecution will say. That’s why I sat tight. That’s why I waited.

  I waited because you told me to wait.

  I don’t know how long I wait. I turn on the radio. The news headlines come and go – there is a programme on Radio 4 about freedom of speech in South East Asia. After a while, I pip the button and listen to music, first classical, then I try and get some jazz but it’s all adverts. I turn it off. I text Guy that I’m stuck in traffic. The sun fades and the sky becomes duller blue, then blue-grey, then just grey, and the orange lamp-posts come on at the end of the street even though it is still a long time till dusk. I watch the people going past, a woman with two children, one in a buggy; two teenage boys. At one point, a very elderly woman in a sea-green sari turns into the street and makes her way slowly past my car. She is tiny, child-size, her skin very dark and her wrinkles deep, but I notice as she passes the car that she is smiling to herself, despite her knotted hands and slow, arthritic gait, as if she is lost in some distant but infinitely pleasurable memory.

  Then, eventually, I see you. I haven’t been watching the door the whole time but I happen to be looking in the rear-view mirror because the man from the grocery store is bringing in the brown plastic boxes that are stacked outside, and I am watching him, intrigued by how many he can carry in one go – he stacks them higher than his head. I am wondering if it doesn’t damage the produce, doing it that way. You emerge from the black door, closing it behind you gently. You glance down the street, then in the opposite direction, run a hand through your hair and glance both ways again. You are wearing the jacket over your T-shirt now, still carrying the sports bag. You walk swiftly but calmly over to the car, open the passenger door and get in. You pull the door behind you and, as you pull your seatbelt over your chest, you say one word.

  ‘Drive.’

  *

  As we approach the Tube station, you say, ‘Go round the corner, park round there.’ I drive round the corner and park in a side street. You sit for a minute, then look up and down the street. After a moment or two, I can stand it no longer and I say, ‘What happened?’

  You do not answer. You sit staring straight ahead, and there is that look on your face again, the one I have seen before, the one that tells me you are far away from me,
lost in whatever thought process is uppermost in your mind – I’m here, I want to say. I need you to tell me what has happened.

  Still staring straight ahead, you reach out a hand and place it on my knee, gripping it firmly – it does not feel affectionate or reassuring.

  ‘I need you to remember,’ you say, still staring straight ahead, ‘what we discussed before… we met at the House of Commons, friends, that’s all, OK?’

  I had no choice but to trust you, did I, my love?

  You look at me at last. ‘Give me the phone.’

  I look back at you, then reach and lift my handbag from where it sits on a back seat. I unzip the inner compartment and hand the phone over. You take it, bend and slip it into the canvas bag at your feet, and then you return your hand to my knee.

  ‘How will I contact you?’ I say it weakly, for I now know enough to know that I can’t know any more.

  ‘You can’t, not for a while.’

  I draw breath.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ you say, but I’m not sure you are talking to me. ‘Just go straight home, be normal, OK? Remember what I’ve said, if anyone asks.’

  That’s the point at which I notice that you are wearing different jogging bottoms – very similar to the others, still navy but the white stripe along the seam isn’t there any more. I look down, and see that you are also wearing different trainers.

  You turn and plant that brief kiss on my lips, draw back, kiss me again, say that one savage phrase, ‘Remember, OK?’ then get out of the car, and I watch as you stride off down the pavement without looking back, glancing from side to side, your head down slightly, your shoulders a little hunched, as if to ward off the gathering dusk.