The Silver Bough

by Lisa Tuttle

“I don’t want to get away. I just got here.” She took a small, cautious sip of the juice, which tasted unpleasantly sharp contrasted with the toothpaste flavor still on her tongue.

  “Let’s hope you go on happy here. What would you like for breakfast? Eggs, bacon, sausage…”

  “Fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, baked beans,” Jade chipped in.

  The thought of a plateful of cooked food was amazingly unappetizing. It always took her stomach a while to wake up. “No thanks, I don’t,” she began, but something in Shona’s look recalled her mother’s ardent belief in the importance of breakfast, and she modified what she’d been about to say. “I don’t want a big meal. I think my body hasn’t adjusted to the time difference yet. Just a piece of toast, or…do I smell fresh bread?”

  Shona gave a gasp, and rushed across to the stove. “I nearly forgot! Whew, they’re all right. Just! When Graeme came in, I forgot I’d put the rolls in. Jade, love, would you fetch the butter, and some jam?”

  Graeme decided he could do with a midmorning snack, and put the kettle on. “Sure you won’t have a cuppa, Ashley? There’s coffee, tea, or some kind of herbal brew Shona likes.”

  “No thanks.” She sat breaking a crispy roll into bits, buttering the pieces, and slowly munching her way through it as she listened. Jade disappeared with a buttered roll in one hand.

  “If it really is going to take months to clear the road, it’s the end of the town,” said Shona flatly.

  “Ach, we’ll manage. It might even do us good,” said Graeme. After spending only a few hours in his company, Ashley could tell he was the sort of natural optimist who would always see the silver lining. “We’ve already got the air ambulance, for emergencies, and if the post’s going to be brought in and out by air, there’s the potential for a few paying passengers every day as well. But a ferry’s the obvious solution, for goods deliveries and for passengers. In fact, it could be the making of this town—put us back on the tourist map good and proper.”

  Shona sighed. “It’s the last nail in the coffin.” She turned to Ashley and explained. “This town has been dying by inches for years; for decades, really. With the road gone, it’s like cutting off the intravenous drip, our last link to life. Without visitors, even as few as they are now, the economy is dead.” She turned back to her husband. “And if we do get a ferry, what’s betting the council decides it’s not worth the expense of repairing the road? Or it takes them five years to plan and fund and build a road that will meet updated safety standards, by which time this will be a ghost town.”

  It was obviously an old disagreement. As they went on rehearsing it, Ashley understood they saw their beloved home differently. To Graeme, Appleton’s strength lay in its uniqueness, its isolation, its old-fashioned indifference to the modern world—this was what had drawn him from the big city to become a small-town postman, father, and local historian. To Shona, who had grown up in the town, seen many schemes and small businesses begin in hope and collapse in failure, watched her friends move away in search of jobs and better opportunities, its size, antiquated attitudes, and isolation—attractive though they might be to some—were the symptoms of a fatal disease.

  Despite her decision to get out of business studies, Ashley couldn’t help responding like the student she’d once been. She remembered a lecture on the drawbacks of a local economy solely reliant upon tourism, and wondered what judgment one particularly dynamic teacher would have made on Appleton’s chances.

  She asked a few questions; Shona seemed grateful for a chance to break out of the accustomed deadlock with her husband to answer.

  “In some ways, the town is exactly the same as it was when I was a wee girl.”

  “Like Brigadoon,” said Graeme. “Frozen in time. So what are you complaining about, lass? If it’s lasted fine for so long—”

  “It’s not been fine at all, and you know it,” she interrupted. “A healthy organism changes and grows. This town’s not changed except to shrivel and age. Every year it gets smaller, and more people move away because there are even fewer reasons to stay. I can remember when there were two cinemas, three bakeries, four hairdressers’, and five butcher shops.”

  “A lot of meat-eaters left town.”

  She ignored this. “I know shopping patterns have changed. People have big freezers, and they’d rather go a long distance and buy in bulk once a month—get exactly what they need at the lowest price—not trawl around the local shops every day and make do with whatever happens to be available. But nothing’s come in to replace the things we’ve lost. Other towns manage; it’s not like this everywhere. And it’s such a lovely place—people who come here fall in love with it.”

  “Or we fall in love with her daughters.” Graeme moved his chair closer and put an arm around his wife.

  She smiled and let her head drop briefly onto his shoulder before going on. “Maybe it’s just the right person hasn’t come yet. We need somebody to come along, love the town for what it is, but also see what it could be and set out to make it happen. It would only take one.”

  “Calling Richard Branson,” Graeme intoned. “Would Mr. Bill Gates please report to Appleton Town Hall? We have a business proposition for you…”

  They invited her to stay for lunch, and Graeme offered to take her around and show her sights, including the landslide.

  “Ach, Graeme, she doesn’t want to see a load of mud and rock!”

  “Everybody else does. Where do you think the boys were off to on their bikes?”

  “I don’t want to take up your time,” Ashley said. “You must have other things to do. Maybe later…but right now, I’ll just go out and have a wander.”

  “You’ll get to know the town better that way,” Shona agreed. “Come back here whenever you want. Don’t stand on ceremony. The wee house is for you to use, but drop in here whenever you want a bit of company, or something to eat.”

  A few minutes later, she was outside in the fresh, bright, foreign air, making her way down the gentle slope to a street of houses. The sweep of shoreline down to her right looked appealing in the sunshine, but she turned left, more curious about the town.

  On her arrival, dusk and heavy rain had veiled the scene, allowing her only vague glimpses of a bleak, sleepy seaside town huddled against harsh, barren hills. It looked very different on a sunny day. The rocky hills still loomed above, but they seemed warm and sheltering now, and the streets were thronged with people in light, bright clothing, strolling and shopping, congregating in clumps and clusters on street corners to talk. The predominant mood was cheerful, even festive, despite a few complaints about disrupted plans caused by the landslide.

  There were more small shops than Shona’s gloomy description had led her to expect, and they all seemed to be doing a roaring trade. She didn’t see anything she could identify as part of a chain; every single business seemed to be independent and locally run. It was a bit like traveling back in time, she thought. Even the ubiquitous McDonald’s and Starbucks had made no inroads here. Instead, fast-food outlets were represented by the Syracusa Fish Bar, the Chat ’n’ Chew, and Bud’s Burgers.

  The main thoroughfares had been planned on wide, straight lines, although they’d been narrowed in practice by a general disregard for road signs and markings, and an amazingly casual attitude toward parking. Behind the main roads she discovered narrow, winding streets, some of them cobbled and barely more than a single lane wide. Here she saw the first signs of decay: two empty shops with boarded-up doors and soaped-over windows, one on either side of Curl Up & Dye, a feverishly busy hair salon. Across the narrow, cobbled lane was an antique shop with a cardboard sign in the window announcing WINTER HOURS: BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

  And for all its bustle, even on Main Street there were gaps. One large vacant property still bore a faded wooden sign identifying it as Tartan Tunes. In the big window was a board offering the shop for sale or lease. A former jeweler’s had closed, and an Indian restaurant, and she saw three other shop fronts that g
ave no hint about what they’d once housed.

  Eventually she tired of wandering and looked for somewhere to have lunch. The word “botulism” sprang alliteratively to mind when she glanced into the grimy little storefront burger bar, so she followed her nose to the Syracusa Fish Bar. It was obviously popular, with a line of customers snaking out the door and along the front of the shop beneath the blue-and-white sign with its image of a happy, cartoon fish leaping out of the waves. She stepped around the line to peer through the front window, and saw no tables inside, just a counter with two men working furiously behind it. One man was elderly, with white hair and tattooed arms; the other was a good-looking, olive-skinned boy with eyelashes to die for. She watched for a moment as the boy wrapped steaming fried fish and fat golden french fries in pale brown paper, and her mouth watered. He looked up and, very briefly, their eyes met through the glass. She smiled. When he did not respond she turned away, watching a couple of teenagers come out of the shop, already eating their take-away fries. It might have been fun with a friend, she thought, to picnic on a grassy spot overlooking the sea, but it made her too sad to think of doing it alone.

  Every table in Chat ’n’ Chew was full, so she headed down to the harbor at last. Past the pier she came to a broad avenue bisected by a strip of green where palm trees grew. They were few and puny by comparison with the ones she remembered in Galveston, but she supposed the very fact of their survival this far north said something about the mildness of the winters. Across the street, on a corner, with big bay windows to fulfill the promise of its name, was the Harbour View Café.

  “Sit anywhere you like,” said the woman engaged in fitting a new roll of paper into the cash register, so she headed for one of the empty tables at the front beside the window, passing a couple of family groups and one man seated by himself, reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. Looking again, she recognized him as the man she’d seen from the bus.

  She felt it like a blow to her chest but managed to keep moving past him, toward her table. By the time she’d seated herself she knew, from the heat in her face, that she must be bright red. Facing the window, she couldn’t see him at all, and if he ever looked up from his newspaper, he’d just see the back of her head. He couldn’t recognize her from that. Had he noticed her passing? Did he remember? Had the look that had passed between them on the road affected him at all?

  “Are you ready to order?”

  She’d been so obsessed by her thoughts about him that she hadn’t even glanced at the laminated menu resting in a stand on the table in front of her. She decided abruptly that she wouldn’t. Phemie had never looked at menus; it had been her custom to ask for whatever she felt like eating, wherever she happened to be, and usually she got what she wanted. Taking the same approach, Ashley asked for a tuna sandwich and a diet cola.

  Left alone again, she stared out the window at the people strolling along the waterfront. There was a family like a picture from an old-fashioned children’s book, balanced in the traditional way: attractive, youngish mother and father, little girl carrying a doll, little boy with a blue-and-white ball tucked under one arm. They stopped to look at the boats, the father pointing something out to the children, then they moved on, passing out of her view. She hadn’t brought anything with her to read, but her sketch pad and pencils were in her day pack, and she got them out. She stared across the curving harbor, at the houses and buildings that lined the other shore, and lifted her eyes to the gentle, undulating line of hills. It was a lovely line. She began to trace it, then shaded in the dips and hollows of the hills, added the outlines of a few houses, and sketched a palm tree in the foreground, for perspective. She began to add a few more details, becoming so absorbed that she hardly noticed when the waitress brought her food to the table. On top of the highest hill was a transmitting tower—presumably for television and radio, although it had so many different attachments and extensions that it might have been a telephone mast as well. She’d ignored it when she’d started sketching in the line of the hills; but she wondered if she should put it in, for truth, or leave it out for beauty’s sake. Would that spikiness add interest or spoil the composition? Her hand hovered above the page.

  “You’re an artist.”

  The low male voice so close to her ear made her jerk; there, in place of the tower, was a jagged pencil slash.

  “Oh, now you’ve spoiled it—I’m sorry!”

  “It’s not spoiled, it’s only pencil, and it’s not anything—I’m not really an artist.” She flipped the cover shut to end the discussion, but he didn’t move away, and she had to look up at him. This was the chance she’d hoped for, but she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Her look seemed to be enough. She saw the pupils of his eyes expand: He liked what he saw. He touched the back of the chair beside her. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  She shrugged.

  She was intensely aware of his nearness as he settled into the chair: the heat of his body, his leg barely an inch away from hers, the faint sigh of his breath. He was staring at the table, not looking at her, and she let her eyes trace his strong profile, drinking in his rather exotic features. The line of his nose and chin made her think of old Mayan sculptures, but there was more delicacy to his bone structure. She wondered if he was half-Indonesian, or Hawaiian, or what. She couldn’t work out if he had any sort of accent.

  “I saw you yesterday,” she said.

  “Oh? Where?”

  “On the road. I was on the bus that passed you.”

  “That was you!” Their eyes met and once again she felt the powerful tug of pure, physical desire. “I remember. I felt like I knew you. Like we’d met before.” He looked puzzled, which made him seem both younger and more ordinary.

  “So did I,” she said eagerly. “But I’m sure I’d remember if we had. This is my first time in Scotland.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe we met in California? I used to go there every year to visit my grandparents. San Diego—but also L.A. Have you been there?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve been just about everywhere.” He sounded vague, distracted, and he looked at the table, not at her.

  “Where are you from? I can’t pin down your accent. You don’t sound American—or Scottish.”

  “I’m not, quite.”

  “So what are you?”

  He turned his head and gave her a wistful, curiously sweet smile. “Desperately hungry, if you want to know the truth. Are you going to eat that?”

  It was her sandwich he’d been staring at, and she thought she could take it that it had been the chief attraction all along; those four neat triangles of toasted bread and tuna mayonnaise meant more to him than anything about her. Chastened, embarrassed, she gave a sharp hoot of laughter. “Go ahead. I don’t want it.”

  He didn’t need to be asked twice. He picked up one segment and devoured it in two bites, then did the same to a second. She sipped her drink and watched him eat, wondering if she looked like a pushover, or if he was really so desperate. When he’d finished the whole sandwich, he polished off the garnish of cucumber, cress, and tomato slices and sighed. It was a sigh more of sadness than satiation.

  “Do you want more?”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “How long since you last ate?”

  “Not so long, really. I had a meal the night before last, but I’ve walked a long way since then.”

  “You walked all the way to Appleton? From where? Why? Not just for fun.” She was trying to figure him out. His clothes were old, but not especially dirty or cheap-looking. He was youngish—she guessed early twenties—and looked fit and healthy. He said he was hungry, but that could be a ploy.

  He didn’t answer. Looking down at the white oval plate where the sandwich had been, he spotted a green comma of cress, pressed his thumb down on it, and raised it to his mouth.

  “I don’t mind buying you lunch,” she said. “I’m just curious—don’t you have enough money?” She turned around to look back at the tabl
e, where he’d abandoned a white china mug and a folded newspaper.

  “The paper was there,” he said. “I ordered a cup of coffee knowing I couldn’t pay for it. I don’t have any money. I came back to Appleton with nothing but the clothes I’m wearing.”

  This wasn’t working out as she would have wished, but it wasn’t a crime to be short of cash.

  “Order what you want; but remember, I’m on a budget. I’m not Miss Richie Rich, OK?”

  “OK.” His eyes flashed into hers again before he turned around to catch the eye of the middle-aged waitress.

  “What sort of soup do you have?” he asked.

  “Chicken and vegetable broth.”

  “Sounds good; two of those.”

  “Anything to drink with that?”

  “A glass of water would be nice. And apple pie for afters; I’ve never been able to resist a piece of sweet apple pie.” He looked intimately into her eyes, and Ashley felt a disturbing curl of jealousy in the pit of her stomach. She knew, by the smile on the waitress’s face and the spring in her step as she departed, that she hadn’t misinterpreted the look, and before she could stop herself she’d snapped, “I bet she’d have given you that cup of coffee on the house.”

  “Oh, I was counting on it,” he said carelessly, and she glared at him, well aware that she had no right to mind, but already enthralled, unable to leave it. She wanted to be special to him, not just an easy touch, a generic pickup.

  “So what made you come here, of all places, if you’re so broke?” she quizzed him sharply. “Wait a minute, you said came back to Appleton. This is your home?”

  “This is where I grew up. I wouldn’t call it my home—I never felt it was that.”

  “But you have family here.”

  He shook his head. “None. My mother died when I was very young. My grandfather raised me, or paid others to do it. After he died, there wasn’t anyone left to care what happened to me. I left as soon as I could.”

  “So why did you come back?”

  He shrugged, gazing out the window at the view she’d so recently been sketching. “It felt like the right time. I’d been out wandering the wide world for so long, always just passing through, always a stranger…I don’t know. I’ve never been settled anywhere; I’ve been used to moving on at the slightest whim, so why not?”