Crooked Daylight

by Helen Slavin

  “We live next door… we’re in Dairy Cottage…”

  So, it was decided that Charlie would source some apples from Two Arches own orchard.

  * * *

  “It’s not too much faff is it? This bespoke beer?” Michael asked. They had been working in the brewhouse, Charlie adjusting her recipe to achieve all that the wedding couple wanted. She’d brewed two options for them, a softer ale and a darker beer. This morning she was writing a novel’s worth of work notes. She had one more barrel up her sleeve, but for this one the malt would have to be kilned perfectly.

  “Mmm?” She was lost in a mental picture of heat and barley. Michael perched himself on the edge of the desk. As he moved to put his hands in his pockets, his elbow nudged at her. He had his green shirt on today and the soft texture of it, rolled up his forearm was distracting. She had just written down the word “green” before she stopped herself. What was her problem with that shirt? It was made of something tactile. Soft. Needlecord.

  “It’s not been too much of a hassle has it? I don’t want to push things…”

  Charlie looked up. There was a bit of barley in his hair, just above his eyebrow. She had clearly been in the little brewhouse too long this morning, the fumes were getting to her, she was losing focus.

  “No hassle. This is the fun part,” she said and forgot that probably a smile would be helpful at about this point. Michael looked at her very intently for a moment and then seemed to get embarrassed at himself and stepped away.

  “Yeah… course… yeah…” He fiddled about with some paperwork, tapped at the keyboard. “I thought we could drive out to Two Arches this afternoon… check out the apples for the cider,” he offered brightly. Charlie considered her brewing To Do list for the day, she wanted to check on the malting floor first and then there was the kilning, the items ticked down and arranged themselves. She was nodding agreement. Business-like, organised.

  “We could head over there about one? Would that suit?”

  * * *

  In the orchard the sunlight dappled through the leaves and the boughs were heavy with fruit not yet harvested.

  “What d’you reckon?” Michael was sniffing the skin of the apple in his hand and Kendra, the farmer’s elder daughter, was slicing into another. Charlie was taking a bite from the Kingham Pink.

  “It’s good.” She already knew which apples they would take. From her current standpoint she could see the marks in the lichen on the bark of each tree which told her what each apple would taste like. The ones they would need were further up the orchard, on the slight slope, they had a slight golden glow to the leaves in the sunlight, almost like a halo. “Put it on the maybe list.”

  Kendra nodded.

  “Good acidity,” she offered, and Charlie agreed.

  “Can we try further up the slope d’you think?” She waved in a general way although her instinct wanted to point to the exact trees like a hunting dog on the scent of prey.

  “Yeah sure. That’s where the oldest trees are, the heritage ones…” Kendra gave them the potted history of the orchard as they walked onwards. Charlie already knew how old they were and when they neared the trees it felt like greeting old friends, Charlie needing to reach out and touch the bark. As she did so she had a sensation rush through her like all the winds and sunlight and rainwater that had ever washed over the tree.

  Her grandmother had not been surprised the first time she had ever talked about this. They had been up in the orchard at Hartfield Hall with Grandma Hettie. Charlie had been about eight, Anna had just turned fourteen and baby Emz who had been about two then. It had been a fractious afternoon and they were rather bored with the visit to Hartfield. Finally, they had had a competition to see who could guess which apples were sweet, which sour. Anna had to taste them, and her predictions were wrong. Charlie was always right. Sweet. Sharp. Dry. Juicy.

  “What speaks to you?” was all her grandmother had asked, matter of fact. Charlie had told her because at eight it did not seem odd. Later, she came to understand that things like that needed to be kept private. Secret. Charlie understood. She smiled to think of the fact that she learned later that they were not supposed to be in the grounds of Hartfield at all, it was private property and they had been trespassing.

  Charlie broke from her thoughts and looked up, Michael was watching her once again, intent. He smiled.

  “You were miles away.” His voice, soft as the breeze. His shirt, the exact green of the orchard, leaf and apple and grass. Charlie’s focus was shifting away from the apples and she snatched it back.

  “Ha. Sorry. Brewing thoughts.” She turned to Kendra “These are the ones.”

  Kendra looked at her.

  “You haven’t tasted them yet…”

  There was a brief moment of confusion and this time Charlie covered her tracks.

  “Oh. Ah. No… I meant these are the ones we should taste.”

  The tasting was a more intense experience than Charlie had bargained for. The apples scent and sharp flavour mixed with the green of Michael’s shirt and she felt a rush, she must just touch that bit of the sleeve where it was rolled up, where the sunlight caught the hairs on his forearm and made them golden like the apple halo.

  “Charlie?” Michael’s voice broke in. Her hand was on his shirt sleeve.

  “Spider,” she said and brushed at his arm.

  “Ugh.” Michael jumped back a little, alarmed and looking for the spider.

  With business concluded they headed back to Michael’s car. Instead of opening the door he opened the boot. Inside was a picnic basket which he lifted it out, the wickerwork creaking slightly with old age.

  “I thought, just for a change, I’d be a good boss… you’ve not had much of a lunch break this week what with the wedding brew and our pop-up at the market yesterday… so I thought today I could make up for that, with this.”

  Charlie looked at the basket and said nothing. It was woven with a green border, the exact shade of Michael’s shirt.

  “Unless you have plans, of course…” He was half putting the basket back into the boot.

  “I have plans to eat all the picnic.” Charlie informed him.

  * * *

  It was a beautiful September afternoon and Charlie and Michael took their feast to the slightly rickety wooden bench beneath an apple tree in the eastern orchard at Two Arches Farm. From here they could see down the valley to Woodcastle. The castle was prominent but nearer were the two arches of the viaduct of the now defunct railway. Michael unpacked various goodies.

  “Everything handmade and gourmet and…” he read the label on the small roundel of cheese, “…erm ‘artisan’.”

  “So not handmade by you then?” Charlie teased.

  “No, by the lovely people in the deli on Long Gate Street.” He offered her a spotted napkin. As they ate their picnic they could see cyclists rolling along the top of the viaduct on the bike path.

  Michael also produced a couple of bottles of beer from their nearest competitor, a new microbrewery that had opened up on the far side of Castlebury near the zoo, which was calling itself Zoo Beer and had a zebra printed onto its labels.

  “Well… what do you think?” They’d both sipped at the first bottle, ‘Monkey Punch’. “I think they sourced their water direct from the canal…” Michael choked a little. Charlie grimaced.

  “I think I’d like to punch the monkey that brewed this. Yuck.”

  “Ditto.” Michael winced. “Want to risk ‘BeerKat’ or should we be heading back?”

  Charlie suddenly wanted to make the picnic last as long as possible, to have these moments on this bench stretch a little further.

  “I’m game if you are…” Charlie shrugged with a smile and Michael reached for the bottle opener. A hiss and a clink of bottles.

  “I propose a toast…” Michael held his bottle neck to hers for a moment.

  “I couldn’t eat any thanks, not after the calzone and the scotch eggs…” Charlie put on her joker face. Mi
chael pulled a mock laughing face back at her.

  “Oh ha. I’m laughing on the inside. Seriously, I’m serious here.” He chinked her bottle, she chinked it back, it became a stupid chinking duel and the beer frothed and spilled. Charlie looked down at the mess.

  “Do you think it will kill the grass?”

  “If it does we’re not drinking any more. Toast, woman.” Michael raised his bottle. “To Drawbridge and our future…” he paused to clear his throat, “…in beer.” The bottles chinked once more and they each took a sip.

  “Do you think there is actual cat in this?” Michael’s face twisted with the sourness.

  “Quite possibly,” Charlie said. As they put the beers aside Michael leaned back, his arm resting accidentally against hers as he lifted his face towards the sunlight and took in a deep breath. She watched him for a moment. He opened his eyes looking skyward.

  “Buzzard,” was all he said. It was an odd moment. The sunlight burnishing him slightly, his face tilted so that it was at a different angle from that which she usually saw.

  “Hmm?”

  He pointed up. She followed. The buzzard was curling into the sky, gliding off a thermal from the ridge. They watched for a few moments before Michael turned to her.

  “Is there anything more beautiful?” He was unblinking as he looked at her, Charlie felt her face heat and still he was looking at her, his eyes soft brown. Honeyed sugar. There was a long moment.

  “So, you don’t hang out in the woods taking pics of naked women then?” Charlie heard the words troop out of her mouth before she could halt them.

  “What?” Michael looked bewildered. “Do what? Where?”

  “There’s a bloke been hanging out in the woods…”

  “Which ones? Yours or Winn’s?”

  Charlie took a moment to think about this. She didn’t think of Havoc Wood as a property that they owned, but Michael was right.

  “Both actually. Did you know we have a coven of witches dancing naked in the woods?” She was mock mysterious, her hands making elaborate twisting witchy gestures as she leaned further, leaning in towards Michael and suddenly there was another moment that might have been a kiss. Shocked. Charlie leaned back at once, felt Michael’s thumb trap between her shoulder and the back of the bench. He pulled his arm free.

  “You mean Roz Woodhill and her pals?” Michael grinned, recovering quickly.

  “Oh my God, does everyone in town know about them?” Charlie said. Then she looked at him with a challenge. “…Have you been up there at a full moon?”

  “There are several full moons when Roz and her pals strip off…” he joked, and Charlie was aware of a pang inside her, a wide blade, rusted and red, grazing its edge against her heart. She laughed hard.

  “But no… I haven’t been up there. Are you selling tickets?” He was laughing too, a faked laugh that echoed hers. What was wrong with them both?

  “Perhaps I should…” Charlie said. What was happening here? It must be the open air? The trees? Something about the orchard? “Charlie” her grandmother’s voice spoke inside her head and there was a blinding white light. Sunlight. Apple light. Honeyed sugar. Is there anything more beautiful?

  And then technology saved them from the exhaustion of their pretend laughter as Michael’s mobile chimed out and broke the moment.

  * * *

  The Wedding wort was boiling, and Charlie was up on the gantry ready with her bucket of hops and Irish moss. She’d been working hard since their return from Two Arches Farm, partly to clear her head of honeyed sugar but also because she’d had an idea about adding kilned apples into the barley for another apple angle. All the elements were speaking to her, the heat, the water, the wort, the hops. Her mother had often said that Charlie was the most scientific of the sisters, that brewing was chemistry.

  “How’s it going?” Michael’s voice barely registered, so engrossed was she in her brew. “Is this a new batch?”

  Charlie looked down from the gantry.

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry… miles away.”

  Michael stood at the foot of the steps as if he didn’t quite dare venture up there. In a vague corner of her mind she understood that all that was required at this moment was a smile but somehow smiling at Michael did not seem important because something else was running towards her mind. She could feel it. What was that?

  “Yes, this is a new batch… had a… bit of inspiration at Two Arches…” It appeared that this choice of phrasing had much the same effect as a smile on Michael Chance and he ventured up the steps to join her on the gantry.

  “Oh? Well good… glad our little works outing was…” He appeared to lose the ability to speak and Charlie did not notice and did not help him out. More important things were in train. She was running her hands through the plant matter, inhaling the scents that were given off. Something was missing, her mind ticked down a list of her planned brew and couldn’t find anything. She was thinking, abstractedly, about temperature and bitterness and in an instant the face of the man in the woods burst into her head shouting, irate. Startled, Charlie stumbled against the gantry, Michael reached for her, his hand grabbing at her shoulder to steady her, the bucket tipping over the edge onto the floor.

  “Hey there… you alright?” He was anxious, made more so by the fact that Charlie did not respond, instead she was staring intently at the mess of hops and moss. To Charlie it appeared to be a map, she could see trees and an old path, somewhere she knew. It couldn’t be. It was just hops. Her mind insisted, and she thought about the configuration of chocolate muffins in the back of Anna’s car. She could see Grandma Hettie at Hartfield “what speaks to you?” She knew, instinctively, that now was the time to listen. The more she looked at the mess of hops the more mappish it became. She could see a route through the trees to a clearing. She felt shaken. She had been working too hard.

  “Charlie?” She turned. Michael had real concern on his face. She moved past him.

  “Yes. Yes. Fine. I’m fine.” She was not fine.

  She cleared up the mess, Michael retrieving the bucket from where it had rolled under the copper. Charlie was wired.

  “I think you should leave it there… you need a break… you’ve been working too hard… I’ve been pushing you…” Michael’s voice was a burble at the edge of the real things.

  “No. I just missed my step… nothing major.” She went to the hopper and dug out fresh handfuls of hops into the bucket.

  “We could… I thought I’d take you for a meal perhaps… celebrate all your hard work?” Charlie only half heard the invitation. The scent of the hops was all wrong, skewed by something that she couldn’t pin. It wasn’t just the fact that it had been all over the floor and swept up, there was something familiar drifting out at her.

  “What do you think?”

  She tipped it into the bin, her mind reaching for an answer. All at once it came and with it the voice of her grandmother out of Michael Chance’s face.

  “Charlie.”

  Lake water. She could smell lake water and trees and it was not a memory, it was a distinct warning sign.

  “No. I’m sorry. There’s somewhere I have to be.”

  Charlie was running now, her feet pounding across the car park as her hand reached for her car keys. She knew that where she needed to be right now was at Havoc Wood.

  18

  The Chapel

  Tonight, the evening shift at the Castle Inn was not very busy. They had catered, in the end, for just eight guests.

  It had started out as if it might be quite busy. There were several couples and two or three family groups in the bar and everyone looked at menus but, one by one, they filtered out after a few drinks. In the end there was just the small family birthday party and the ladies at table 3.

  “There’s a lady at table 3 who wonders if she could have a different cheese in her courgette salad… she doesn’t like goat’s cheese.” Casey was front of house today and the ladies at table 3 were proving a bit of trial.


  “One of the ladies at table 3 wants to know if it’s possible to have another soup of the day.”

  “What?” Anna laughed out loud as she finished plating up some more of her gnocchi à la Romano and another two of the goat’s cheese courgette salads.

  “Hey… I know… I just said I’d ask so that I could get away from them.” Casey looked tired today. Anna laughed again.

  “Any particular soup she’d like? Tin of Tomato? Cup of Minestrone?” But as she said it she was thinking that there was some cauliflower cheese soup from yesterday in the fridge, she had been sort of thinking she might have it for her supper should she manage to grab a break. What did she have in the freezer? There was that rather delicious walnut concoction she’d been experimenting with last week. Her mind was ticking. “In fact… go back out and offer them cauliflower and walnut…” Casey took the orders for the other table and pushed out of the doors into the dining room. As she did so Anna opened the fridge and reached for a pan.

  Anna did not understand why but she made one pan with cream and one without. She smiled to herself as she put parsley in one pan and tarragon in the other. As the soup scented the kitchen, making it savoury and steamy, she was smiling to herself, her mind away in its zone, not thinking, just cooking. When she returned to the real world she might have to thank the fussy ladies at table 3.

  Casey was pinch faced and crabby. “You’d think they’d never heard of a menu… don’t they get it?” The only customers now remaining were the ladies at table 3.“Casey… take your break…” Anna smiled and pushed her friend and colleague out of the back door. “I’ll deal with them. I don’t want to see you until half past.” And Casey did not question it.

  “Ladies… can I take those for you?” Anna had changed out of her cooking apron and into one of the chic black linen pinnies that the waiting staff wore. The ladies at table 3 were quite a crowd and she had the feeling she had seen them together somewhere recently, but the memory wouldn’t surface properly. The one with the red clothing and the white hair seemed to stare very hard at her. Anna thought she might need glasses but wasn’t bothering to wear them and so had to squint at everything. Ha, that might explain the off-piste menu choices; they had all left their reading glasses at home. Anna laughed to herself. Where had she seen them before?