By the time Edward came calling, she’d worked her way through eight rooms. He was impressed, he said. But he suggested that April hold fire. When Oran was back — yes, he would be; Edward would make sure of it — he and April should tackle the dining room, the entranceway, the master bedroom, and perhaps, seeing as April had already made a start, one bathroom.
Edward’s view was that prospective buyers would not need — or want — to see every room renovated. A few examples to give them a vision of how the house could look would be enough. Those who were willing to continue would want to put their own stamp on the decoration. Why bother doing work that would only be undone by the new owners?
April felt a jolt, as if she’d misjudged her footing on the stairs. When the house was sold, April would have enough money to buy a ticket home.
That had always been the plan, so there was no reason for April to be surprised. But somehow she’d let that end slip from her mind, pushed out by a bustle of new activity: the garden work that Jack had talked her into, her own work on the house, and the regular task of checking on Jenny.
Braving the disapproval of Irene, April used Edward’s phone every day to call the hospital. Jenny had already outlived the doctor’s prognosis of a month and, occasionally, she’d been well enough to talk to April, her voice weak but her usual cheeriness undimmed. April would hang up feeling both sadness and admiration for her friend, who saw only the positives in her situation — the good care she received, the people she hadn’t seen for years who’d visited, the excitement of what new adventure awaited her. Last Friday, April was told that her friend had been moved to the hospice. She rang but Jenny was not able to speak to her. Chances were high that April would not talk to her again before she died.
Another death. Another loss. Of course, April would mourn no one the way she mourned Ben. The first deaths she’d known had been her parents, her father first, then her mother, and she missed them both still, but in way that did not wrench her heart. They dwelled gently in her memory, their flaws acknowledged but forgiven, their virtues smiled upon with gratitude. But then, they’d reached the natural end of their lives, their deaths the result of age-worn arteries and erratic blood supply to the brain. Jenny, too, was of an age where cancer was more inevitable, less of a terrible shock. April would miss her, too, but like her parents’, Jenny’s memory would sit softly. It would not crush her under its weight.
Ben’s memory crushed her because she could have saved him. She could have prevented what happened. His loss must stay with her forever, undiminished, to remind her of what she’d done.
And she must go home, if returning to nothing and nobody could be called going home, because that was the plan she’d made. That was her path and this was only a temporary detour. She would do what was called for here, in the house and in the garden, even though it would be half-measures at best, nothing like a full restoration. But then, this place had come to the end of its natural life, too, hadn’t it? There was no point in fully restoring it. All she was doing now, like a good undertaker, was making it look pleasing in its coffin.
Hard on the heels of that thought came the sound of laughter. The children were playing in her mind again, playing in the house. She shook her head to drive them out.
‘There may not be that much we can do in the garden,’ she continued to an unresponsive Oran. ‘But we’ll see.’
She was echoing Jack’s words. April could not recall now exactly how the subject of reviving the garden had arisen between them, but she remembered with clarity her surprise when Jack had offered to help. ‘Why would you bother to?’ she asked him. ‘Aren’t you busy?’
‘I’ve got more free time in the warmer months,’ he replied. ‘And I like doing my bit to give living things a chance.’ Then he added, ‘I’d like spending time with you, too,’ and April found she had only one reservation left.
‘How much would you like to be paid?’ she said to him. ‘We might not be able to afford you.’
Jack had laughed. ‘I can’t remember the last time I touched money,’ he said. ‘I’ll work because I want to, and when I don’t want to any more, I’ll stop.’
‘Fair enough,’ April said, but inside, she felt anticipation bubble up and could not help a smile of delight.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he warned. ‘Garden’s been neglected so long, the fruits of our labour might be limited.’
The walled garden, in particular, had been let go so long, he told her, that there was little to save. They could cut back and prune, clear beds and reduce the thriving population of large and vigorous weeds, and they could sow vegetables and flower seeds and plant bulbs. But the fruit trees, deprived of new grafts, were dead or barren now, the raspberry canes’ sparse root systems had been starved by the stronger competing roots of larger plants, and the grapevines had long since died from cold in the broken greenhouse. The hardier gooseberries had survived, Jack knew, and there was a passion vine against the brick wall still giving fruit. And raspberries and fruit trees, like vegetables and flowers, he said, could always be planted again.
As for the rest of the garden, the lawn, which Oran had not yet mowed, could be eventually reclaimed. The trees, copper beech, chestnut, magnolia, lime and maple, were mature and attractive. The rhododendrons were really too large now, but their flowers, Jack thought, were still pretty. The yew hedge had grown enormous and blocked light to the house. It could be trimmed, Jack said, by someone with a tall and sturdy ladder. The lilac and wisteria had left the walls and rotting pergolas and spread up hedges and trees. One purple wisteria in a chestnut, he estimated, was at least thirty feet high by now. But the standard roses were dead, the soil ‘rose sick’, and not to be planted in again for at least two years. The shoots of the climbing roses had not been trained downwards for decades and the plants were woody and bare at the base, the flowers now only right at the top, almost beyond sight. This could not be undone; if climbing roses were wanted, they would have to start again. Weeds had engulfed the rock garden, but alpine plants were hardy, so there might be the odd survivor.
‘How long would it take to see progress?’ April asked.
Vegetables and flowers she could have within a few months. Everything else, he said, would take years.
April had been disappointed. She had somehow formed the idea that by the time she left, the garden would be well on the way to being the thriving, bountiful one that existed in The Popular Encyclopaedia of Gardening. The list for May had sounded full of lush promise: Start disbudding wall Peaches … bark-ring vigorous Apples and Pears to induce fruitfulness … mulch Raspberries and Blackcurrants … earth up early Potatoes … lift and divide Primroses … prepare the beds for Antirrhinums, Stocks and other summer flowers. From what Jack was saying, she’d be leaving it barely better than she’d found it.
‘Why didn’t Kit look after the garden?’ She’d been unable to keep from sounding accusatory.
‘When Kit was young, gardeners were servants,’ Jack replied. ‘Whereas a gamekeeper was his own man.’
‘The job was beneath him, in other words.’
‘It was apart from him. It didn’t belong in his world.’
However, it seemed that not all of nature needed their help. The bluebells were out. Even though April knew it couldn’t be true, they’d seemed to materialise as quickly as a rainbow. One minute nothing, then a swathe of colour, a massed fairy procession winding through the trees and holding aloft bright blue will-o’-the-wisp torches.
Her gasp of delight had amused Jack.
‘Why so surprised?’ he asked.
‘Because — it’s like magic.’
‘No magic,’ he said. ‘Just how it is.’
‘Don’t you think they’re beautiful?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘My mother told me bluebells were enchanted by fairies. And if you heard a bluebell ring, it meant you were going to die.’
Jack had put his arm around her shoulders. April, as she always did,
stiffened, and he, as he always did, ignored it. He was an extraordinarily warm person, April had discovered. Literally warm. Heat came off him as off a sun-baked stone.
‘If you ever hear a bluebell ring,’ he said, with a smile, ‘grab my hand and we’ll start running. No fairy enchantment has ever caught me.’
Oran, thought April, must be hearing a whole carillon of bluebells. And by the look of him, an imminent death would be welcome.
April set down the wallpaper scraper. No electricity meant all stripping had to be done by hand. Edward had offered to pay for a diesel generator to power a steamer, but the paper, a pattern of brambles, leaves and berries, was coming off easily enough, and April was grateful to be able to expend her pent-up energy.
She stood over Oran and kicked his boot. He uttered a small, protesting groan but kept his eyes screwed shut.
‘You’re not getting paid to sit there like a lump,’ she said.
‘Have mercy.’ His voice sounded like a rake on a gravel path.
‘I’d be more sympathetic if it weren’t self-inflicted.’
He unglued his eyes and squinted up at her. ‘It was only myself for the first hour or so,’ he said. ‘Then a dark beast took over.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘It most definitely had those, hanging bold from its hairy loins. It had red eyes, too, like burning coals. And the horns of a giant goat.’
‘That would explain the smell.’
‘It’s brilliant for a moment there, being possessed,’ said Oran. ‘You have super-powers. Everything you touch turns to gold. And then the crippling fear comes upon you as you realise he wasn’t joking, and that as the dawn breaks, you’ll be handing him your soul.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ said April.
‘God, yes,’ said Oran. ‘Four sugars, and a spot of milk.’
April poured two mugs-full from the Thermos that Edward had, thankfully, thought to bring along with Oran, and sat down on the floor next him. As he lifted his mug, April studied his left hand. It was grubby and not at all steady, but of more interest to her was the fact it had no ring, and no telltale white band of skin to show that one had been removed.
It wasn’t the ideal time to ask, April decided. She did not want to send him running to the pub again. She wanted even less for Oran to feel he had the right to ask her personal questions in return.
But he’d caught her looking.
‘I don’t wear it there,’ he said. He stuck his free hand down his shirt and pulled up a chain. ‘I keep it here now.’
The ring was silver and carved with what looked like Celtic runes.
‘I found it,’ he said. ‘By the side of a road in Huddersfield.’ He stuffed it back down his shirt. ‘Easy come, easy go, I suppose.’
‘How long were you married?’
‘We’re still married.’
There was an edge to his tone that made April decide to leave the conversation up to him, in whichever direction he chose to take it.
‘Eighteen years,’ he said, more softly. ‘Ten of them truly wonderful.’
Oran was thirty-five at the most now, April guessed. Same age as her. April had been twenty-four when she’d married Ben’s father, and twenty-five when she’d had Ben. That had been considered a young age to marry and have a child. But they had not been children themselves, whereas Oran must have been no more than seventeen. Was that why his marriage had not lasted?
As if he’d read her mind, he said, ‘We were soulmates, and we would have stayed so had it not been for terrible bad luck.’
He held the cup tight in both hands, no doubt finding comfort in its warmth.
‘Have you never prayed to God,’ he said, ‘to let you go back and do just one thing over again? Not fix every mistake, but only the one? It doesn’t seem that much to ask, does it?’
April could not speak. Could not look at him.
It did not matter. Oran had not meant her to answer the question that he obviously, just as she did, asked himself every minute of every day.
‘It’s like the lost horseshoe nail,’ he said, ‘that lost the shoe that lost the horse that lost the rider that lost the battle that lost the kingdom. My horseshoe nail was our bus fare to the next town, where I was to start work on a building site. I lost it on a bet, in a pub, with a man who tricked me into believing he was more drunk than myself. Because we had no bus fare, we had to hitchhike. Because we hitchhiked, we were picked up by a man who lived in the next town and who offered us a room in his house. All we had lined up was my work, so we said yes. In that house were other young people, and those young people had drugs, and those drugs were offered to my Cee-Cee and she said yes. And that yes razed my kingdom to the ground.’
April wanted to say she was sorry but she knew only too well how meaningless the phrase could sound.
‘From that nest of vipers, she went down into the darkness,’ he said, ‘into places that made that house look cheerful. And I followed her, always in the hope that I could save her, but I could not. I was close, once, so close to success that I could touch it, but once more she faded away from me. I still have hope,’ he added. ‘There’s a tiny light that’s always burning. It’s just how I am, I suppose.’
‘I saw her,’ said April, ‘on May Day, on the green.’
‘Yes, she comes to me now. And every time, I ask her to stay. One day, perhaps, she’ll say yes.’
‘She took your money.’
‘What’s mine is hers.’ Oran pressed his hand against his chest, where the ring lay. ‘We are husband and wife.’
April could remain near him no longer. Even when all seemed hopeless, Oran still managed to hang onto love, and April, though she knew she was being unfair, resented him for it.
‘Back to work so promptly?’ said Oran.
‘I’m not being paid to sit around.’
Oran watched her take to the wallpaper again with the metal scraper. He set his cup on the floor, then, using his hands to brace himself, slid upwards against the wall until he was on his feet. Cautiously, he took a step forward, testing to see if he could stand unaided.
‘I’m not sure that up and down motion you’re demonstrating so vigorously there would be advisable in my own case,’ he said. ‘Are there any quiet, semi-stationary kind of jobs that need doing?’
‘Are you any good at trimming hedges?’
Oran leaned on the wall again.
‘Now, that triggers a memory,’ he said. ‘Did you not earlier on say something about a garden helper?’
‘Aeons ago,’ said April. ‘Before you were conscious.’
‘You’ve found someone to help you. See, it’s all coming back. Those brain cells are not so killed as the medical doomsayers would have us believe.’
Despite it all, April had to smile.
‘Who is it then?’ said Oran. ‘Your helper?’
An excellent question.
‘A man I met,’ said April. ‘He knows the house. He was a friend of Kit’s.’
‘Old codger?’
April kept her mouth shut. No harm in that assumption for now.
‘I’m picturing a flat cap,’ said Oran. ‘And a knack for growing outsize onions and mammoth marrows.’
‘Will you trim the hedge?’ said April.
‘Why can’t the voluminous veg grower trim it?’
‘He doesn’t have a tall enough ladder.’
‘And he’s old and codgery. Whereas I am young and fresh.’
‘You look about as fresh as a prehistoric man exhumed from a tar pit.’
‘Which is a vast improvement,’ said Edward, stepping through the doorway, ‘from this morning.’
‘Surely it’s not five o’clock?’ said April.
‘Three,’ said Edward. ‘I suspected Piltdown Man here might not last the full day.’
Oran tugged on a forelock. ‘Master is merciful.’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ said Edward. ‘I have another job for you.’
‘Does it require vigorous
movement?’
‘It requires you to take a box that has been offered to you and say thank you.’
‘Then your wish is my command. What’s in the box?’
Edward was amused. ‘Already mentally negotiating with Big Mal at Cash4U?’
Oran pretended to look hurt. ‘Unlike some,’ he said, ‘I was not born with a mouth full of silver spoons engraved with my family crest. I must take my opportunities where I can find them.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Edward. ‘Though I have to say that the only gift of any value I received at birth was a Bunnykins plate from my great-aunt, which I dropped and broke when I was four. And I wouldn’t get too excited about the box. Its contents originally belonged to the late vicar of Kingsfield, and vicars are generally better rewarded in the afterlife than in this one. Or so they hope, I imagine.’
Oran frowned. ‘It is true that I’m not on top form in this current instant,’ he said, ‘but I’m struggling to find any good reason why I should be about to receive a box that belonged to the late Kingsfield vicar, God rest his soul.’
‘Apparently, the Reverend Brownlow willed it to your grandfather but, due to your grandfather dying almost immediately afterwards, the box was put away in the Reverend’s daughter’s attic, where it has lain for the last twenty-odd years. It was she who called me. She’s clearing out her house in preparation for selling it in order to fund a year in Patagonia, where she intends to go mountain climbing.’
‘Mountain climbing?’ said April. ‘Surely she can’t be all that young?’
‘Seventy this December,’ said Edward. ‘After Patagonia, she plans to end her days climbing what she considers the less demanding slopes of the Alps. I thought of reintroducing her to Sunny, but I fear the universe might implode.’
The Hiding Places Page 19