We drive down the main street in silence. I peer out, looking at the shop fronts, forlorn and grey. The street is deserted, apart from a lone shopper running hastily in the snow, collar up, head down, so different from the cheerful summer facade I prefer to remember in the holidays, when there were so many people on the streets, gaily dressed for the sun. I wonder if I will ever return to Devon.
‘Why do think Mother didn’t come?’ I ask my sister.
‘I am glad she didn’t.’ Min pulls Lionel up to her chest, laying her cheek against his soft face. ‘I never want to see her again.’
Min’s words burn in my memory. What was she going to tell me that day? If only I could talk to her now. Her pale face disappears into the black Cavan night. I shiver, fearful I will never see my sister again. I get back into bed and blow out the candle, press my face into the pillow. I think about Lionel. The poor little dog must be terrified of the bombs. I cannot let myself think about my own sister’s terror, trapped in the London Blitz. I imagine her brave and strong, helping others. And then I think about Mother.
NICHOLAS
Hopper is barking manically. The trees. Nicholas hears June Fanning whisper into his ear. The trees. He struggles out of his sleep and looks blearily around the room. What is that noise?
The windows are open, and moonlight floods into his bedroom. It is a full moon. Nicholas gets out of bed, pulls on a sweater and steps into the silvery light. He looks out the window, but the yard is deserted. Hopper is still barking. Nicholas whistles and the dog comes charging into the room. He pants, looking at his master expectantly. All is silent apart from one sound. Echoing across the empty fields and woods, harsh and violent, it is without a doubt a chainsaw.
Nicholas pulls on a pair of jeans and runs into the kitchen. He shoves his bare feet into his boots, and puts Hopper on the lead. The noise is so loud that the chainsaw user must be on his land. He opens the kitchen door and steps out into the yard. He shivers, although it is not so cold, but he feels a thread of fear down his spine. He walks forward cautiously, pulling Hopper back, wondering if he should have brought the dog.
The yard is still empty, but Nicholas can see movement in the orchard. He approaches the apple trees, slowly realizing with horror that some maniac is amongst them, chopping them down. He can see the metal blade of the chainsaw glinting in the dark, and hear the crash and thud as branches festooned with apples land on the ground.
‘Hey! Hey!’ Nicholas shouts, fury consuming him.
The vandal continues, oblivious to his presence. Nicholas runs back into the house, grabs a torch and a big stick, although it will hardly be much good against a mad chainsaw-wielder. He brings Hopper back out with him. The dog is far from ferocious, but it gives him confidence to have the back-up of his hound.
‘You there!’ Nicholas shouts, aware that he sounds very English. ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’
He is at the gate to the orchard now, and he can see the destruction before him. All of the older trees have been battered and chopped to bits. He pushes through the gate.
‘Stop, I tell you. Stop!’
The figure turns around, and now Nicholas can see who it is. Nicholas hesitates, then takes a step back, for coming towards him – chainsaw raised and still going – is Ray, Geraldine’s husband. He has an insane grin on his face, and his eyes look murderous.
‘I’ve called the Guards. Get off my property.’
But Ray can’t hear him above the noise of the chainsaw. He walks towards Nicholas. Hopper senses his fear and starts barking again. Ray is only a few feet from him. He holds the chainsaw out in front of him between the two of them, and Nicholas thinks of Charlie – whether she will cry when he is found chopped to bits in a pool of blood in his destroyed orchard. Ray turns off the chainsaw and stares at Nicholas. He says nothing, just stares him down.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Nicholas blusters, relieved that the man is not completely psycho. ‘I’ve called the Guards. You’d better not touch another thing.’
Ray laughs at him. ‘Go ahead, call the Guards, or my mate Pete, because I know them. He’s a great believer in family values, be very interested in the fact you’ve been sleeping with my wife!’ Ray spits.
‘No, no, you don’t understand, we’re just friends.’
Ray doesn’t believe him for an instant. ‘Oh, I have to make Nick some apple muffins today . . . Nick is a great teacher – I just love going over to his house . . .’ He imitates Geraldine, mincing around the orchard swinging the chainsaw to and fro. ‘Nick is such a great cook . . . I love eating his baked apples . . . and his apple crumble . . . and his cock!’
Ray’s voice drops an octave and he eyeballs Nicholas menacingly.
‘So you fuck up my marriage, and I’m going to fuck up something on you, even if it is a crappy old orchard. No more apples for you and my wife.’
Ray starts up the chainsaw again and glowers at Nicholas. He can’t stop Ray, it’s impossible. Nicholas begins to retreat and Ray laughs at him, splicing through the aged bark of his beautiful apple trees.
Nicholas runs back into the house, bolts the door and calls the Guards. He waits, sitting with his back to the kitchen door, the lights off and Hopper between his legs, both of them shaking with shock and fear as they listen to the chainsaw growling relentlessly through the night. By the time one lone Guard eventually arrives, the orchard is butchered and Ray has driven off into the rising sun.
‘Do you want to press charges?’
The Guard, Ray’s mate Pete, squints at him.
‘Well . . .’
‘I should warn you, in a small homeland like this, word spreads fast. Ray Mulraney’s actions might be seen by some as the result of provocation. You could lose your piano pupils, Mr Healy.’
Nicholas looks at the Guard incredulously. He actually believes that Geraldine’s crazy husband is justified in destroying those beautiful trees. What kind of place does he live in? Nicholas feels confused and exhausted.
‘I don’t know, I’ll ring you tomorrow but you know he was very threatening.’
After the Guard is gone, Nicholas goes back out to the orchard. The sun is still rising, and there is a gentle mist lifting off the land, birds are waking. Nicholas looks at the massacred trees.
‘Oh God!’ He puts his head in his hands. He imagines he can hear the confusion of the birds. Where are our trees? Where are our trees? Nearly the whole orchard is destroyed, just a handful of trees remaining untouched, as if Ray Mulraney left them there to taunt him. The ground is littered with apples, not quite ripe, small little bullets of blood-red and bright green. Nicholas walks through his raped orchard picking up hacked branches, and touching trunks that have bark ripped from them. It feels like a battleground. He shakes his head. Is this his fault? Was Ray right to attack his property when Nicholas kissed his wife? His logical brain tells him that of course Ray is wrong, but then he thinks about Charlie and what he wanted to do to the man who slept with his wife. There was a moment when he wanted to kill him. At least Ray had kept to the trees.
Eat an apple.
June Fanning speaks to him. He leans down and picks up one of the abandoned apples. He takes a bite out of it. It is sharp, not ready for eating, but he continues to bite into it, and it makes him feel better.
Is it not natural to want to take a bite? The voice in his head says, and he can feel June Fanning’s presence beside him, her sadness and her solace.
Nicholas falls on his knees. ‘I can’t take any more!’ he says to the phantom in his orchard. He imagines June reaching out to him and taking his hand, pulling him up to his feet again. He imagines her words, although are they not in truth his own thoughts?
Nobody owns anyone or anything. You do not possess her, and she does not possess you. He doesn’t possess her and she cannot possess him. Love is like the apple. It is sweet, yet bitter. It can be innocence and temptation. It belongs to nature, and nature we cannot control.
When Nicholas turns a
round to go back to the house, Geraldine is standing there. He doesn’t know how long she has been in the orchard, or whether she saw June Fanning too, but he can see that she has been crying. Her hair is wild and flaming red in the light of the rising summer sun, and she wears a white nightdress over green wellies. She raises her hand to her mouth and points at the orchard in horror.
‘Oh, Nick! Oh, I’m so sorry. I told him we didn’t do anything.’
Nicholas walks towards her and takes her hands in his. ‘Maybe we should?’
Geraldine looks back at him intently. Nicholas bends down and kisses Geraldine, and he can still taste the apple in his mouth. Then he leads her behind the five remaining trees, and beneath them they make love. Broken twigs from the trees dig into his back, and the ground is hard, damp with dawn dew. He is not comfortable, and yet these moments feel intensely pure. They are beyond all flesh, beyond all emotion, just the distilled essence of two lovers. When he comes he cries, and she holds his head in her hands and gently kisses his forehead. Despite the cold ground, the bumpy earth and splinters from the trees beneath their limbs, they lie in each other’s arms beneath the last remaining apple trees until the sun is high in the sky and they are no longer in shade. Then they get up and begin to collect the apples. Geraldine is still in her white nightie and green wellies. It takes them all day and, when they have finished, every vessel in Nicholas’s kitchen is filled with apples.
‘What will I do with them all?’ he asks Geraldine, as they stand side by side looking at the draining board overflowing with apples.
‘We will think of something,’ she says, and holds his hand.
JUNE
Every day I wake with the determination I shan’t go to the Sheriden house. But as the morning progresses I find myself rushing through my chores, thoughts of my Roman Julia filling my head, and it is hard to concentrate on what I am doing. I make a dog’s dinner of the churning, and drop eggs on my way into the house. I forget to feed the chickens, and leave the pigs’ feed boiling away on the range, so at least twice I return to a stinking, blackened mess of burnt cabbage and potatoes. I try to blame my pregnancy for my scattiness, but I know it is something else. I am pulled towards my neighbours’ house, and its sanctity affording me hours of study and peace. How I look forward to seeing Phelim Sheriden opening the door. He appears as a tall golden-haired gentleman, like one of my Roman gods. He is happy to spend time in my company, just talking, and sometimes he will sit with me in the library reading while I work, the two of us comfortable with each other as if we have always known one another. I cannot understand it: how I feel more at home with a man I have known a matter of weeks rather than with my own husband of five years.
I met Robert through my sister Min. She and Charles were having a dinner party. A few of Charles’s work colleagues and wives were invited, and Robert was the only bachelor there. He was the first man I met who seemed more interested in me than in Min, for my sister’s beauty always outshone mine.
It was December 1935. Just over a year since Father was buried and, out of loyalty to him, I decided not to spend Christmas with Mother. Min refused point-blank to talk to her. Mother had recently moved back to England with Giovanni to escape the Fascists and blackshirts of Milan. She appeared devoted to her artist, and did not complain at the drop in her standard of living or at the simplicity of their little terraced house in Maidenhead. She did everything she could to support his career as an artist, organizing small art exhibitions in London and inducing old friends to buy his pictures. Nonetheless her relationship was tarnished. We knew other women judged her. We were her daughters and even we judged her.
Mother had wanted me to spend Christmas Day with her and Giovanni. I couldn’t bear the thought, so as a compromise I went to see her on Christmas Eve. I could not persuade my sister to come with me. I was still angry about Daddy, but Mother refused to mention him. It was as if he no longer existed for her. As always, she was dressed exquisitely, in what she described as an old dress picked up in Italy. The dress was the same colour as her eyes, and it was made of rayon, which Mother said looked like silk, but was a lot cheaper. She had a dark-blue sash tied around her waist, her sleeves billowed out from just above the elbow and the dress fell in wide folds from the waist, giving an impression of soft innocence. Ironically, her clothes were the colours of the Virgin Mary. We stood awkwardly in the hallway as she took my wet hat and coat and insisted on hanging them in front of the fire, so that they would be dry by the time I left. I asked her whether she had visited Father’s grave yet, and she said no, she felt there was no need to now. It stunned me how brutally she spoke about Daddy’s death. I nearly grabbed my coat off the chair and walked out right then, but something stopped me. I can’t say what.
I was shocked at how small the house was, and how few belongings they seemed to have. However, the walls were covered in paintings – Giovanni’s – and thus the overall ambience of her new house was bohemian. I realized, with a lump in my throat, that my mother looked more at home here than she had ever done in our grand old house in Devon.
We stood stiffly as Mother enquired after Min, without asking why she hadn’t come. ‘Is Captain Sanderson treating her well?’ she asked.
And I said yes, told her how he had allowed Min to study art and how much she loved the Slade.
‘That is good. I am glad both my daughters have found their callings.’ She looked at me oddly, her blue eyes steady and unblinking. I could not reply, for I felt as if I were standing in front of a stranger. This was not my mother, surely. This softly spoken creature seemed to have no memory of her former self. The way she used to criticize us, and belittle us, and hit Min. Yet, for all her anger at that time, it was what tied us together, and now I felt an awesome distance between us. She must have felt this too, for there was an awkward silence – strange for a mother and daughter who had not seen each other in over two years.
‘Sit down, June,’ she said indicating a chair at the table, and I plonked myself down, my head hurting with confusion and desperate to leave, although I could not yet.
Mother spread before me a sumptuous tea, serving Italian pastries along with a home-made fruitcake. She made a pot of tea and called Giovanni in from his studio to join us. As soon as he came into the room she changed. Her body seemed to relax and she leaned back in her chair, the features of her face softening, the tone of her voice lighter, more girlish. They touched a lot. Her fingers tipped the back of his hand as he cut the cake, and he reached over and gently pushed her hair off her forehead. He was in good spirits and appeared delighted to see me, as if it was only the day before that he had drawn my picture in Milan. Gradually I began to feel invisible, for it did not matter who was in the room with Mother and Giovanni Calvesi. They could not contain their relationship, and it spilled over everything – the conversation and the food – making me feel as if I was drenched in our mother’s love for another man. It made me feel sick.
I stayed for as short a time as possible, and by four-thirty it was already dark and I was getting up to leave.
‘Do you have to go so soon?’ Mother looked a little disappointed.
‘Yes. Captain Sanderson is picking me up at Paddington.’
Mother and Giovanni exchanged glances.
‘A happy Christmas to you, June,’ he said, embracing me before I had a chance to step back. ‘We will see you again, soon?’
I looked into his smoky brown eyes and could understand why Mother loved him. He was a man who was firmly rooted like a sturdy tree, sure of himself and his love for this woman, unaffected by society or what others thought. He had confidence in the map of his life. As far as he was concerned, my mother was his, and he hers, no matter if they were married to other people. He eschewed moral codes.
‘Of course,’ I replied lightly, turning away and hastily picking up my bag and gloves.
Giovanni left the room, and Mother rose from beside the fire. She was flushed from the warmth of the flames, and her eyes sparkled in th
e gathering dusk.
‘Before you go, June,’ she said, going over to the bureau and opening a drawer, ‘I have something for you, and for Minerva. A little Christmas gift each.’
I coloured, for I had not expected a present from Mother, and I myself had arrived empty-handed. Mother handed me two small packages, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She had wrapped a silver ribbon about each one and tied a bow.
‘Thank you.’ I slipped the packages into my bag.
‘I hope it will make you smile,’ Mother said, turning her back to me and looking into the fire. ‘I chose the colours especially to suit each one of you.’
She sighed, and bent down to poke the fire. I looked at the back of her head, and wondered why it was that Mother could show so much tender affection to her lover and yet not to me.
‘Goodbye, June,’ she said, ‘Merry Christmas.’
And that was how I left her, staring into the embers, her back still to me, as I opened the door and stepped out into the dark afternoon.
On the train back up to London I opened my package, not wanting to wait until Christmas Day. And I did smile when I saw what she had given me – a beautiful pair of evening gloves. They were made of the softest silk, and were silvery grey in colour. I put them on my hands and, pulling back my sleeves, drew them up my arms to the elbows. They were the height of elegance. If only I had occasion to wear them. Often over the next few weeks I would take those gloves out when I was on my own in my lodgings, and parade up and down my bedroom in my nightdress with just the gloves on, pretending I was a beautiful, glamorous and desired young lady. Mother gave Min gloves as well, but they were completely different from mine and more suited for day-wear. They were wine-red, and made of kid. She remembered how red was my sister’s colour. There was a hat Min used to wear with them. It was a red Tyrolean-style hat with a feather, the brim of which swept over the left side of her face, hiding her left eye. It pleased me to see my sister wearing the gloves Mother had given her. At least she did not throw them away.
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