‘All done,’ said Oran. ‘Glory be.’
Oran dropped the shovel, stretched out both arms and, eyes closed, lifted his face to the sun. Despite his red hair, the summer was turning his skin golden brown. His clothes were no cleaner, but the T-shirt he had on today was, for once, free of holes. It was apple green, with the words: The police never think it’s as funny as you do.
April was filled with unexpected affection for her odd but big-hearted workmate. She gave thanks he had his eyes shut, so the moment could pass unobserved.
She tapped him on the arm. ‘Come on, sun worshipper. Too long out here and you’ll be burned to a crisp. Just like the Wicker Man.’
The cottage was not stifling, but Oran suggested it would be nice to let the summer air circulate, so they opened the windows and used a doorstop to keep the front door wide. It was nice, April thought. Occasional scents floated in, of grass and honeysuckle and general greenness. Comforting scents that reminded April of childhood days, lying on the lawn under a tree, reading a book, while her father staked tomatoes and her mother dug in the flowerbeds or drew, often both at once.
April recalled lying on a lawn with Ben’s father not long after they’d first met. They’d been at a summer festival at the botanical gardens. A band had been playing in the rotunda but April had no memory of the music, only of her bare limbs twined with his, their bodies a little too close and hands a little too free for such a public event, though nobody protested. Warm, lazy summer days make people more tolerant of young love, April thought. Days like that make you feel time has stopped and no one will ever age.
‘It should be Pimm’s, I know.’ Oran placed a steaming cup on the table in front of her. ‘But tea is good for you in hot weather.’
‘I think that’s a myth,’ said April.
Oran took the second chair. ‘Not all myths are untrue.’
On the table were the books Edward had lent them. Oran pulled the National Trust guide to him.
‘Look. Two stuffed squirrels boxing each other.’
‘Abominable.’
April picked up The House Beautiful and Useful and found the page on which the author expressed his opinion on the correct way to furnish entranceways.
‘He says we’re to make a clean sweep of antlers, spears, assegais, shields and all other miscellaneous animal relics and weapons of warfare because they can never be properly seen and they make the place crowded and stuffy,’ she said. ‘There you go — no heads, skins or feet. He also says that a small bracket in the hall is useful as a place for police whistles.’
‘Is that how you summoned the peelers back then? These days, the police blow the whistles at you.’
‘Not at me,’ said April. ‘Oh, I like this bit: The latch-key has practically done away with the necessity for the old hall-porter’s chair, in which the faithful servitor used to doze until the return of his master and mistress.’
‘That’s me,’ said Oran. ‘A faithful servitor.’
April saw him touch his hand to his chest, where the ring hung on its chain. He didn’t seem aware he’d made the motion; April assumed that over the years it had become one of those small, instinctive gestures that reassures, like crossing fingers or touching wood.
‘Do you really believe she’ll come back to you?’ April said it gently.
Oran frowned, puzzled, as if the question was one he’d never considered.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I have so much love for her that it will draw her back, I know it will.’
‘What about her love for you?’ April said.
‘I know she loves me,’ he said. ‘I just need to wait for her to remember that.’
April pictured the woman at the May Day fair, hunched over, snatching up the hat filled with money, jeering. Cee-Cee Feares, she thought, cared about one thing only that day and it was not Oran. Chances were high it never would be.
Her doubt must have shown on her face.
‘I truly believe people’s essential natures never change,’ Oran said. ‘I believe that what you were you can be again. The Cee-Cee I knew was beautiful, loving and joyful, and I believe that spirit is in her still, just waiting to be re-awoken.’
‘How long will you wait, though? It seems so sad to think of you being alone for all this time.’
The words were sincere, but April had not thought them through, and the minute they were out she knew she’d blundered. Oran was looking at her with an expression that bordered on pity, and April knew exactly what he was about to say.
‘It’s not the same.’ She pre-empted him. ‘You weren’t responsible for her choice. No, you weren’t,’ she said, as he began to protest. ‘But I was responsible for what happened. It was all my fault, and that’s the difference!’
Oran’s hands were resting on the open book, on the photograph of a dead squirrel in shorts and boxing gloves punching another dead squirrel square in the chest. He was tugging on his fingers, struggling, April could see, with an urge to respond, even though she’d made it clear the subject was closed. He wouldn’t be able to help himself, she guessed. Fair enough, really. It was she who’d opened the door, and now she must deal with what came through it.
‘I know what happened to your son.’ Oran was embarrassed but resolute. ‘I’m afraid I tricked our Mr Gill, made him think you’d already told me.’
April nodded, waited.
‘I don’t see how it could have been your fault.’
‘Were you there?’
‘Of course not, but—’
‘Then you know nothing.’
Oran lowered his eyes, tugged on his fingers again. They were smeared black with soot even though April had insisted he wash before making them tea. He did not seem to notice. Perhaps dirt and stains were invisible to him?
He sat back and ran a hand over his head.
‘I don’t want this to foster bad feeling between us,’ Oran said. ‘So I’ll go against my nature and leave it alone.’
It was what she wanted. But still, April felt a pang of loss that was unexpected in its intensity.
‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you alone, too.’
‘No, no. I don’t mind talking about it. Every time I do, it revives my hope.’
April wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing, but the air was clearer now and she had no wish for a reversal.
‘So — the entranceway,’ said Oran. ‘Now that antlers and assegais have been given the arse, more’s the pity, how about we paint it white and polish up the wood a bit?’
April smiled. ‘I still think a small tray for police whistles would be a classy touch.’
Oran shifted The House Beautiful around so he could read it. ‘Not to mention a suitable cupboard for the butler or footman to contain a small roll of red carpet for pavement use (they knew how to welcome people in those days), the basket wheel-guard (don’t ask, no idea), the carriage umbrella and other oddments.’ Oran grinned, delighted. ‘This book is tremendous. Hark to this: Avoid elaborate pictures. Studies of a couple of ducks, birds in flight, or fishes, the message of which can easily be grasped, will be most suitable.’
He pursed his mouth. ‘What do you suppose is the message to be grasped from ducks and the little fishes?’
‘That they’re ducks and fish?’ said April. ‘Not symbols of something else?’
A memory sparked in her head. ‘Speaking of which …’
April slid the art folio out from underneath the three volumes of The Popular Encyclopaedia of Gardening. She turned to the two stained-glass window drawings right at the end.
‘What do you make of these?’
‘Pretty enough,’ said Oran. ‘If a little tightly wound.’
‘But who do you think they are?’ April pointed to the knights. ‘I think this is Lancelot and Arthur, with Guinevere.’
‘The old love triangle. Never ends well.’
‘Exactly. But then who are these three? Who on earth’s the owl woman?’
‘Blodeuwedd,’ said Ora
n without hesitation. ‘The Welsh hero Lleu made her from flowers because he could never marry a human. Lleu went away and a local lord, Gronw, stole her from him. There followed some shenanigans with attempted murder, a spear and a rock, but in the end, of course, the hero won. Lleu slew Gronw, and to punish Blodeuwedd, he had the magicians Math and Gwydion turn her into an owl.’
He traced his finger over the owl face. ‘I always thought it harsh on poor Blodeuwedd. Lleu left her alone for so long …’
‘How did you become an expert on Welsh myths?’ said April, curious.
‘A book that my mother had been given as a small child. An old copy of The Mabinogion. Number ninety-seven in the Everyman’s Library. Orange cover. I remember that because I read it from cover to cover, many times. It was all I had of her.’
‘You don’t have the book now?’
‘No,’ said Oran. A beat later, he added, ‘I sold it.’
April did not need to ask why. To spare him any further embarrassment, she turned back to the folio, studied the picture of the knights.
‘Oran, look.’ She pointed. ‘Look at the heraldic symbols on their armour.’
‘A resting lamb on one,’ he said, ‘and on the other a snarling dog. I see — the same as the map.’
‘But no less cryptic,’ said April, with a sigh.
‘One man is the lamb, one is the dog …’ Oran looked at her. ‘Could the beehive and the apple be people, too?’
Balancing care and haste, April shut the folio and turned it over, drew out the map from the inside cover.
‘Four images,’ she said. ‘Four people.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Oran, ‘four friends …?’
April felt a tingling, the kind that accompanies mounting excitement, or signals a premonition.
‘James, Rowan, Sunny and Lily, you mean?’ said April. ‘I suppose that would make sense. If we assume from the picture of the knights that the boys are the lamb and the dog, then the girls must be the beehive and the apple. But who is which?’
‘I’m no Hercule Poirot,’ said Oran, ‘but I’d hazard a guess about the beehive. Who do we both know who’d fit the description of Queen Bee?’
April laughed. ‘Always busy, the centre of activity — you could well be right. But what does it mean that Lily is the apple? She represents temptation? Sin? Beauty, like the judgment of Paris? The apple of someone’s eye?’
‘Maybe all those things,’ said Oran. ‘Probably not the daily remedy for a doctor-free life, though.’
He opened the folio again to the back and contemplated the two drawings.
‘Two men, one woman, the eternal love triangle. I think, from what we know, we can eliminate Sunny as the woman. She had one love all her life and that was her husband.’
‘Rowan, James and Lily?’ April frowned. ‘But Sunny’s never said anything to suggest that. And, let’s face it, she doesn’t keep much back.’
‘Perhaps she never knew?’ said Oran.
For a moment, they stared at each other.
‘Bags you ask her,’ said Oran. ‘But when we run away, I promise I’ll be right behind you.’
CHAPTER 24
late June
April, lagging behind Edward and Sunny, stopped to look at an exhibition of cacti. The village show was an early one, Sunny had told her. Traditionally, most shows were held in late July or early August. The timing, according to Sunny, meant that the show’s produce tent, in which the three of them were currently strolling, lacked the classic exhibits of dahlias, chrysanthemums and onions, and featured instead early produce like lettuces and gooseberries, and a floral show made up of pot plants, flower arrangements, cacti and succulents.
The warm, wet weather outside made the air in the big white tent close and muggy. Not quite a hothouse, thought April, but hot enough to extract the scents of flowers and greenery, vegetables and earth, and mix them headily with damp clothes and a whiff of livestock. Each exhibit, floral or edible, was plump and gleaming with health, the result of committed labour and love and knowledge. Even with Jack’s help, it would be ages before Empyrean’s garden produced anything near as good.
Not that a long-term plan was the point, of course. Their job was only to make the garden as presentable as possible. Still, it was nice to see that, despite April’s ignorance, they were making more progress than she’d initially expected was possible.
At one time, she had considered herself a reasonable gardener, but the first few days with Jack had been enough to convince her she’d been a rank amateur. He knew that the fruit trees were at risk from aphids and red spiders, but he would not let her use an insecticide, asking her instead to give them a brisk hosing. Though there was still no water connected up to Empyrean’s dodgy plumbing, it came freely out of an ancient brass tap by the greenhouse, which Jack had pointed out to her. The hose was Kit’s and almost as ancient as the tap but, as with everything of Kit’s, it had been well maintained and did not leak a drop. Jack had asked April to buy more hose, so that he could knife holes in it, connect it to the tap and run it around the garden as a makeshift irrigation system.
Jack also knew which vegetables to plant in the newly prepared raised beds. He rattled off a list and let April choose. Carrots, runner beans, beets, broccoli and leeks were sown from seed. Seedling tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers and sweet corn went in also. Edward noted the amount in his file, gave her the cash, and asked when she’d be appearing on Gardeners’ Question Time. He assumed she was doing all the work on her own. It seemed somehow complicated to put him straight, so April did not bother.
It was a bit late in the year for planting most flowers, but not dahlias, according to Jack. Some considered dahlias old-fashioned, he said, but he thought them beautiful. April asked Edward for more money for dahlia tubers. What next? he said. Gladioli?
They pruned the lilac and excavated the rock garden, finding, as Jack had hoped, some survivors that would now be free to spread. The sweet pea was rampant, so they removed all the side shoots and, Jack insisted, gathered the flowers. He had no room for flowers, so April took them all home to the cottage, where their pink and white festoons now overflowed the edge of an old silvery metal pail, and their delicate fragrance scented the air.
And then there were the gooseberries. Jack had shown her the bushes filled with fruit and said that if she did not take them, the birds would. Cook them up, he’d said, if she did not like their tartness. April had not baked for almost six years, but at the mere suggestion, a sugary, buttery-crisp smell came to her as if she’d opened an oven door. In her kitchen was a bowl full of gooseberries, translucent and stripy, but she was not yet sure whether she would do anything more than eat them as they were. Even then, they seemed like too much of a treat …
The cactus April had stopped in front of was about ten inches high, bulbous as an overgrown marrow and covered in white fur like a rampant mould. ‘Cephalocereus senilis’, read the card, ‘Old man cactus’. It had won first place. April could not begin to imagine what constituted its champion features.
An older couple came and stood beside her. He had on a thin brown raincoat that made him look like a flasher. She had butterscotch-coloured hair and a large bust encased in a strident pink and blue shirtwaister dress.
‘You know Gerald combs his Cephalium,’ said the woman.
‘Well, it is the little things,’ said her companion.
‘The striations were really too indistinct in his partridge-breasted aloe,’ she added. ‘But I won’t begrudge him. His Mammillaria bombycina was superb.’
Edward and Sunny, April saw, were now halfway around the tent, in front of the vegetables. She hurried to catch up.
‘Rodney’s radishes have won first place,’ said Sunny. ‘Another rosette to go in pride of place on the potting shed wall, now that Irene no longer allows him to clutter up the mantelpiece.’
‘One of these days, I suspect Rodney will find himself declared clutter,’ said Edward.
‘Oh, that day occurred year
s back,’ said Sunny. ‘Look, he’s won for his spring onions, too. He’s coveted that prize for years, but had no chance while old Jeremiah Rash was alive. Jeremiah’s spring onions were quite otherworldly in their perfection.’
Jeremiah Rash sounded like the ideal name for the old codger Oran was still convinced was her garden helper, thought April. There’d been more than one moment lately when she’d almost told Oran about Jack, but, as with Edward, any explanation from then on seemed overly complicated. April told herself that she did not want Oran to get worried and go looking for Jack’s hideout, that Jack would resent any uninvited intrusions into his private world. But April knew the more honest truth was that she wanted Jack to remain her secret. She did not want to share him with anyone.
Still, that did not stop her feeling guilty about her deception.
‘Where is Oran?’ April said. ‘I thought he was going to meet us here?’
‘His van was broken into last night,’ said Edward, ‘when he was at the pub. He came back to quite a mess, I gather, though he was rather circumspect about the whole thing.’
‘Did they steal his tools?’
Edward looked surprised. ‘They stole everything he had bar his clothing, which you can understand, looking as it does as though he had found each item beneath an underpass. Oran lives in the van. Did you not know that?’
April felt a churn of dismay, for Oran, for the fact he had not told her and, above all, for the fact she had never thought to ask.
‘I didn’t,’ she admitted. ‘Does he need any help?’
‘I’ve advanced him some money to replace the things he needs most,’ said Edward. ‘But he refused to let either Sunny or I help him clean up. I got the impression he did not want us to see what they’d done.’
‘Do we have any idea who “they” are?’ said April.
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