The Silver Bough

by Lisa Tuttle

  It was so unlike her friend—could there be a problem with her phone? After a moment’s thought, she entered the number for Dara’s next-door neighbor, a sweet gay man who fed her cat and watered her plants when she was away, but got a busy signal in response.

  So that was that. She looked up, out the window, to where she could see a patch of blue sky between the glossy dark leaves of the holly tree. Sunlight shone on the leaves, making them glisten. One thing she’d learned since moving here was that good weather was ignored at your peril. You had to seize the day. She changed her shoes, tied a light cardigan around her waist, and went out for a walk, choosing to turn her back on the glittering sea and instead climb the hill that rose up at the back of the town.

  It was a stiff climb, but rewarding, especially in the fresh, warm air of early evening. From the top she could turn and look down on Appleton, and see the golden dome of her library gleaming in the last, late rays of the sun, and she could also turn her gaze to the moorland and gentle hills that rolled away into the distance. She narrowed her eyes, trying for a glimpse of the sea on the horizon, but, although the sky overhead was still blue and clear, she couldn’t make out the line where it met the sea. The far horizon was blurred and misty, as if hidden by gathering cloud. She pulled her gaze back, to the closer hills. Out there, in lush, hidden valleys, were half a dozen hill farms and a few isolated houses, one of which belonged to Dave Varney—songwriter, music producer, onetime drummer, and long-ago star of her youthful romantic fantasies.

  A quite unnecessary blush heated her face, and even on the empty hillside where no one could see her, she was glad there was a wind to cool her cheeks. She lived through those few minutes’ conversation again. Had her attraction to him been so obvious? She supposed it must have been, since he’d taken his first chance to escape without so much as a friendly wave, but it did seem strange that he’d found her carefully restrained interest so threatening that he had to flee. He must get it all the time, not just from his aging fans, but from younger women with no idea who he was. After all, he was quite an attractive man, even with the ponytail. If he hadn’t learned, after his years in the limelight, to take a little minor adoration in his stride, it was hardly her fault…

  She had to stop obsessing about it. He probably hadn’t given her a second thought; maybe he’d meant no offense by his sudden rush to visit Appleton Museum. She turned away from the distant view and made her way down to the town again.

  When she reached the Hillside Hotel she stopped and gave a considering look to the sign that advertised the bar and restaurant were open to the public. She’d heard that the chef had trained in France, and had worked in good restaurants in London and Edinburgh before coming here; the food was considered the best in town, if also the most expensive. She hesitated, hungry after her walk, and seriously tempted, especially since her choices at home were limited to pasta with cheese or an omelette. Her credit card was in her pocket. If she didn’t treat herself, who would? Gravel crunched underfoot as she stepped between the twin brick pillars topped with plaster lions and made her way up the drive. There were eight cars in the parking lot, one an eye-catching red Porsche.

  The reception area was deserted, with a sign pointing the way to the bar. It was reasonably full, but not crowded. She spoke to the woman serving there. “I was wondering if I could get a table for dinner.”

  “Just yourself?”

  She nodded, slightly apprehensive.

  “Sure, no problem. Do you mind eating here, or did you want the restaurant? Only there’s nobody in the restaurant; everybody staying in the hotel flew out about an hour ago, if you can believe it!”

  She gave her back a sympathetic smile and shrug. “Sure, I can eat here,” she said, although, looking around, she saw no unoccupied tables.

  “There’s more tables through in the back room,” the woman explained, nodding toward an arched doorway to her left. “Today’s specials are on the board, or you can order from the menu.”

  Kathleen had already noticed the blackboard hanging behind the bar, and made up her mind. “I’d like the lamb shanks with parsnips and onion mash, please. And a glass of red wine—what do you have?”

  A few minutes later she made her way, glass in hand, through the archway, and slipped into a seat at an empty table in the far corner. Only then did she pause to look around and take stock of the room. She froze as she saw Dave Varney at the next table.

  He’d seen her, too. “Well, hello, Madame Librarian!” His face lit up; if she could believe her own eyes, he was genuinely delighted to see her.

  She couldn’t speak, temporarily silenced by the difference between the aloof, nervous stranger she’d imagined and the friendly, welcoming reality.

  “I looked for you when I came out of the museum, but I couldn’t find you. It was getting on for closing…I could have kicked myself for—anyway, I figured I’d have to wait till next week to talk to you. And here you are!”

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Lots of things. For starters, the museum.” He rose. “Would you like to join me, or—I’m sorry, you’re waiting for someone?”

  “No. I decided to treat myself to a meal I didn’t have to cook.”

  His face cleared. “Me too! Although, to be perfectly honest, I hardly ever cook for myself except when I’m up here, so it’s a bit of a cheat…but here I am. Now, will you make an old man very happy?”

  She laughed. “Are you about to wheel out your agéd papa?”

  “I was referring to myself, young lady. But we haven’t been introduced. I’m Dave Varney.” He pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.

  She dipped her head shyly. “Kathleen Mullaroy.”

  “I know. I read about you in the local paper—I have a subscription, so I can keep up with the goings-on in the wee Apple when I’m away. If they’d printed your picture, I wouldn’t have left it so long to come back.” He was looking at her with such frank appreciation that she couldn’t believe it.

  Confused, she blurted, “I know who you are, too. I thought I recognized you when you first came in, but it took me a while to get it. Context: I didn’t expect somebody I’d gone to see in concert in L.A. for my twenty-first birthday to walk into Appleton Library.”

  “Outta all the libraries in all the world, I hadda walk into yours,” he intoned Bogartishly.

  “So what did you want to ask me about the museum?”

  He dropped his gaze, moving his wineglass on the table. “There’s a story behind it.”

  “Go on.” She smiled encouragingly.

  “Well. Are you familiar with J. F. Campbell? He was a sort of Scottish version of the Brothers Grimm, who went around the Highlands in Victorian times, collecting Gaelic folktales which he published as Popular Tales of the West Highlands.”

  As he said the title, she saw the four thick old books covered in sturdy, dark blue library bindings on a shelf in the reference room. “I know the books you mean.”

  “My grandfather had a set, and I read them one summer holiday, every word of them except of course for the Gaelic bits, which I used to stare at and puzzle over as if it were a kind of code that I could break.” He grinned rather shyly, shaking his head. “Anyway. Campbell began his introduction, which was his justification for publishing the sort of stories not normally committed to print and which had not previously been considered worthy of attention, with a discussion of fairy eggs. You know about them?”

  She shook her head, intrigued.

  “They’re large, hard seeds”—he held up his cupped hand to indicate the size—“found on Scottish beaches and believed by the common folk to have magical powers, and so preserved and handed down as protection against disease or bad luck. The educated disdained them as trash, but botanists studied them. And when they figured out they must come from the New World, that proved the existence of the Gulf Stream. Campbell’s point was that even though they weren’t magic, there was still some purpose to gathering and study
ing fairy eggs, and the same applied to stories about the fairies.

  “Many years later I was in Edinburgh for the Festival, and the guesthouse where I was staying had stacks of some ancient little magazine extolling the wonders of Scotland—Aye for Scotland or The Tartan or something like that. Well, I’ll read anything—”

  She laughed sympathetically, and he grinned.

  “Yes, there are worse habits. Better than rolling up the pages and smoking them as I’ve known some to do. Anyway, I read this old article about the wonders of this tiny Scottish museum, where the core of the collection had come from the architect’s family—Mr. Wall’s Cabinet of Curiosities, it was called, and among the contents were a unicorn horn, a mermaid’s comb, and…several fairy eggs.” He looked at her expectantly.

  She shook her head. “I never heard of it. I’m sorry. I could ask…”

  He sighed. “I asked the old librarian about it. He knew what I meant; he’s the one who’d modernized the exhibitions, made them more relevant, supposedly. But as for what he did with the cabinet of curiosities, I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. I suppose he sold the lot off and didn’t like to admit it. I’m sure you could get a good price for a unicorn horn on eBay.”

  A teenaged boy with a white apron tied on over his clothes approached the table with a tray. “Lamb shanks?”

  “Me,” they replied in chorus, then looked at each other and laughed while the boy stood blankly scowling.

  “Great minds,” murmured Dave, then, to the boy, “Ladies first. And could you bring us a bottle of the Shiraz?” He turned back to Kathleen, pointing to her glass and raising his eyebrows, and she nodded her agreement, although she felt tipsy enough already with the pleasure of his company.

  When the boy had gone, she said, “I really doubt Mr. Dean sold anything from the museum. Certainly not on his own authority. If it happened, it would have gone through headquarters, after being ratified by a council meeting—at any rate, there’d be a paper trail, and I can find out. Most likely everything he took out of the museum is in the storage room upstairs. There must be a hundred or more boxes up there.”

  “So you think the fairy eggs are still there? Not thrown out as mere trash?”

  “I’m sure. I imagine he was cagey because if he admitted he knew where they were, you’d ask to see them, and he didn’t want to have to dig them out and fetch them down for you.”

  Their young waiter returned with a second plate of lamb shanks. Behind him, the woman bartender came with a bottle of wine and two clean glasses. She poured a small amount into one of the glasses and waited for Dave’s approval before filling them both, then left them with the cheerful injunction to enjoy their meal.

  “He could have just told me the stuff I wanted to see was in storage, so piss off,” said Dave.

  “Maybe he thought you’d be persistent and insist on seeing them.”

  “I can be persistent,” said Dave. “And loyal to a fault—two of my doglike qualities.”

  She had picked up her fork, but she put it down again unused, caught by his words.

  “So…you mean…you’re still determined to see those fairy eggs?”

  “Well, yes. I never really stop being interested, once I start. I might seem like a casual sort of guy, but I feel things deeply.” He frowned, looking faintly anxious. “But I’m not so self-centered that I think it’s all about me…I’m not obsessive in a bad way—at least, I hope not. I mean, I can take no for an answer. If you wanted to tell me to get lost, you could, and I wouldn’t bother you again.”

  She was assailed by conflicting emotions, realizing he wasn’t talking about some old beans.

  “I’m not going to tell you to get lost,” she said at last, a little breathlessly.

  “I hope I never make you change your mind.” He raised his glass, smiling. “Can we drink to that?”

  She picked up her glass and touched it to his.

  “To you not wanting me to get lost,” he said.

  From Pleasures of the Table

  by Percival M. Lingerton

  (Baskerville Press, 1892)

  WHENEVER business or pleasure takes me north of the border, I seize the chance to savour one (or more) of Appleton’s Fairest, as these dappled, cone-shaped beauties are never to be met with in England. The reason is not that they do not travel well, for in fact, properly packed and stored they keep beautifully, and indeed, for maximum enjoyment they should be eaten not only when fresh from the tree, for although they provide a brisk, juicy, sharply piquant treat in late September, by the New Year the stored apples have become sweeter and drier, with a magnificent yet subtle aroma, and a honeyed, almost nut-like flavour, particularly good taken with cheese and a fine Port wine after dinner, and in this state they will last, as they say “til the apples come again,” with no diminution in goodness. I myself have partaken of the Fairest as late as August, when the new crop is still a-ripening on the trees. No, the only reason they do not adorn the tables of discerning connoisseurs in England as well as Scotland is that the Scots love them too well to export their small crop for the pleasure of the “Sassenach,” and keep them a closely guarded treasure.

  Now, why should the Scots have this all their own way? Some years ago, I resolved to grow my own. My garden, after all, is in Kent, a county long renowned for apple-growing, and so, although I was warned that Appleton’s Fairest would not thrive away from its coastal north-westerly situation, I took several cuttings home with me and gave them to my gardener, a man highly skilled in the propagation and care of fruit trees, with instructions to do his best by them. Alas! Every attempt at propagation failed. I have since learned, from a gardener at Blenheim, that a similar experiment was tried there, on a larger scale, in the 1860s, with the same sad result. Where, on two or three trees, the graft appeared successful, and maiden trees resulted, they proved barren and sickly and had, ultimately, to be destroyed.

  Scotsmen have a story for every occasion, and so, naturally, they have one to explain why Appleton’s Fairest should be so stubbornly different from all other apples. I heard this from my ghillie on the Ross-shire estate of the Duke of B——where I joined a hunting party a few years ago. The lad had family connections in Argyll-shire, one of whom was a farm-labourer near Appleton. According to him, it was well-established fact that the settlers who came to found the new town discovered the wild crab-apple tree growing in the sheltered glens, and named the place after them. In my experience, most crab-apples are so hard and bitter as to be hardly worth the picking—the cider made from them is unlikely to be worthy of consideration—but these wild apples, although quite small, were of a most amazing sweetness; having a sort of raspberry taste, and called by the locals flann banrigh (which I understand to mean “red queen”). Among the first settlers was a pair of brothers from a cider-making family in Melrose. They had brought some small trees with them from their home and built a walled orchard to protect them from the worst of the sea-winds, and, as an experiment, tried crossing a wild apple with one of their own—a variety the ghillie believed was called the Scarlet King, although I’ve never heard of it.

  The result, in any event, was Appleton’s Fairest, an apple so delicious that it was reserved for eating, although a few bruised and fallen fruits were thrown into the cider vats on the thrifty Scottish principle, and the resulting batch of cider was so far superior to any they’d produced before that it became a standard inclusion thereafter. Legend had it that the inclusion of just one of the Fairest would raise the quality of the whole vat.

  The Fairest is, as you might well imagine from the details given above, a red apple, although even at its ripest retaining that undertone of yellowish-green that can appear like a sprinkling or dappling of gold; in colouration it bears affinity to the crimson-over-gold hue of the Worcester Pearmain. An American friend of mine compared the Fairest in both shape and colour to a variety from his homeland called the Mother; I would disagree about the shape, for in my experience, the American Mother is fre
quently lop-sided, and sometimes flat-sided, and I have never known a Fairest to be less than symmetrical.

  And so the ghillie confirmed. And yet, said he, legend had it that once in a lifetime one single golden apple would appear among the usual heavy crop of reds. This golden apple could not be treated as part of the common crop. It must be picked at its moment of perfect ripeness, to be shared by two lovers who would thereby be granted their hearts’ desire, and peace and prosperity would reign over the land. If, however, the golden apple was selfishly consumed by any one person—or sold—or, worst of all, left to rot, untasted, then, alas, some terrible fate would befall the whole community.

  It was for this reason that the annual Appleton Fair always featured the crowning of a “Queen,” by tradition a respectably betrothed young woman, who would be given an apple to share with her lover. According to the ghillie, his granny recalled the appearance of one special, golden apple in her girlhood, in the year before our beloved Queen ascended to the throne. She remembered it with all the power that accrues with disappointment, because she was then a bonny lass of sixteen, with her eye on her first sweetheart, and she wished with all her might that a magical apple would bind them together in a happy and prosperous marriage.

  “Once in a lifetime,” according to that young ghillie, yet not since 1836 has it appeared! They are by all accounts a long-lived race, who spring from the soil of Appleton. Shall we ascribe magical properties to the soil, the air, or to the cider they drink by custom instead of good Scotch Whisky?

  AS SHE REACHED the top of her drive after finishing her errands in town on Saturday, Nell looked down and saw the results of the landslide for the first time. She might have seen it earlier if she had been in a mood to notice, but her thoughts did not often turn to the only road out of town. Now, as she put on the handbrake and wound down her window for a better look, she felt a crawling anxiety deep in her stomach. Trapped. And yet, had the road been clear, where would she go? Generally she took a short break in Edinburgh or Glasgow every couple of months, but her last such trip had been only two weeks ago. Tearing her eyes away from a sight that made her senselessly uneasy, she drove around to the side of the house and parked beneath the awning.