He stretched himself contentedly, stiff after his drive, and gazed comfortably around the cheerful, empty living-room. He was hungry, after his journey up from Dover, and the chop seemed rather meagre after foreign fare. But there it was, it wouldn't hurt him to return to plainer food. A sardine on toast followed the chop, and then he looked about him for dessert.
There was a plate of apples on the side-board. He fetched them and put them down in front of him on the dining-room table. Poor-looking things. Small and wizened, dullish brown in colour. He bit into one, but as soon as the taste of it was on his tongue he spat it out. The thing was rotten. He tried another. It was just the same. He looked more closely at the pile of apples. The skins were leathery and rough and hard; you would expect the insides to be sour. On the contrary they were pulpy soft, and the cores were yellow. Filthy tasting things. A stray piece stuck to his tooth and he pulled it out. Stringy, beastly...
He rang the bell, and the woman came through from the kitchen.
"Have we any other dessert? " he said.
"I am afraid not, sir. I remembered how fond you were of apples, and Willis brought in these from the garden. He said they were especially good, and just ripe for eating."
"Well, he's quite wrong. They're uneatable."
"I'm very sorry, sir. I wouldn't have put them through had I known. There's a lot more outside, too. Willis brought in a great basketful."
"All the same sort? "
"Yes, sir. The small brown ones. No other kind, at all."
"Never mind, it can't be helped. I'll look for myself in the morning."
He got up from the table and went through to the living-room. He had a glass of port to take away the taste of the apples, but it seemed to make no difference, not even a biscuit with it. The pulpy rotten tang clung to his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and in the end he was obliged to go up to the bathroom and clean his teeth. The maddening thing was that he could have done with a good clean apple, after that rather indifferent supper: something with a smooth clear skin, the inside not too sweet, a little sharp in flavour. He knew the kind. Good biting texture. You had to pick them, of course, at just the right moment.
He dreamt that night he was back again in Italy, dancing under the tent in the little cobbled square. He woke with the tinkling music in his ear, but he could not recall the face of the peasant girl or remember the feel of her, tripping against his feet. He tried to recapture the memory, lying awake, over his morning tea, but it eluded him.
He got up out of bed and went over to the window, to glance at the weather. Fine enough, with a slight nip in the air.
Then he saw the tree. The sight of it came as a shock, it was so unexpected. Now he realised at once where the apples had come from the night before. The tree was laden, bowed down, under her burden of fruit. They clustered, small and brown, on every branch, diminishing in size as they reached the top, so that those on the high boughs, not grown yet to full size, looked like nuts. They weighed heavy on the tree, and because of this it seemed bent and twisted out of shape, the lower branches nearly sweeping the ground; and on the grass, at the foot of the tree, were more and yet more apples, windfalls, the first-grown, pushed off by their clamouring brothers and sisters. The ground was covered with them, many split open and rotting where the wasps had been. Never in his life had he seen a tree so laden with fruit. It was a miracle that it had not fallen under the weight.
He went out before breakfast—curiosity was too great—and stood beside the tree, staring at it. There was no mistake about it, these were the same apples that had been put in the dining-room last night. Hardly bigger than tangerines, and many of them smaller than that, they grew so close together on the branches that to pick one you would be forced to pick a dozen.
There was something monstrous in the sight, something distasteful; yet it was pitiful too that the months had brought this agony upon the tree, for agony it was, there could be no other word for it. The tree was tortured by fruit, groaning under the weight of it, and the frightful part about it was that not one of the fruit was eatable. Every apple was rotten through and through. He trod them underfoot, the windfalls on the grass, there was no escaping them; and in a moment they were mush and slime, clinging about his heels—he had to clean the mess off with wisps of grass.
It would have been far better if the tree had died, stark and bare, before this ever happened. What use was it to him or anyone, this load of rotting fruit, littering up the place, fouling the ground? And the tree itself humped, as it were, in pain, and yet he could almost swear triumphant, gloating.
Just as in spring, when the mass of fluffy blossom, colourless and sodden, dragged the reluctant eye away from the other trees, so it did now. Impossible to avoid seeing the tree, with its burden of fruit. Every window in the front part of the house looked out upon it. And he knew how it would be. The fruit would cling there until it was picked, staying upon the branches through October and November, and it never would be picked, because nobody could eat it. He could see himself being bothered with the tree throughout the autumn. Whenever he came out on to the terrace there it would be, sagging and loathsome.
It was extraordinary the dislike he had taken to the tree. It was a perpetual reminder of the fact that he... well, he was blessed if he knew what... a perpetual reminder of all the things he most detested, and always had, he could not put a name to them. He decided then and there that Willis should pick the fruit and take it away, sell it, get rid of it, anything, as long as he did not have to eat it, and as long as he was not forced to watch the tree drooping there, day after day, throughout the autumn.
He turned his back upon it and was relieved to see that none of the other trees had so degraded themselves to excess. They carried a fair crop, nothing out of the way, and as he might have known the young tree, to the right of the old one, made a brave little show on its own, with a light load of medium sized, rosy-looking apples, not too dark in colour, but freshly reddened where the sun had ripened them. He would pick one now, and take it in, to eat with breakfast. He made his choice, and the apple fell at the first touch into his hand. It looked so good that he bit into it with appetite. That was it, juicy, sweet-smelling, sharp, the dew upon it still. He did not look back at the old tree. He went indoors, hungry, to breakfast.
It took the gardener nearly a week to strip the tree, and it was plain he did it under protest.
"I don't care what you do with them," said his employer. "You can sell them and keep the money, or you can take them home and feed them to your pigs. I can't stand the sight of them, and that's all there is to it. Find a long ladder, and start on the job right away."
It seemed to him that Willis, from sheer obstinacy, spun out the time. He would watch the man from the windows act as though in slow motion. First the placing of the ladder. Then the laborious climb, and the descent to steady it again. After that the performance of plucking off the fruit, dropping them, one by one, into the basket. Day after day it was the same. Willis was always there on the sloping lawn with his ladder, under the tree, the branches creaking and groaning, and beneath him on the grass baskets, pails, basins, any receptacle that would hold the apples.
At last the job was finished. The ladder was removed, the baskets and pails also, and the tree was stripped bare. He looked out at it, the evening of that day, in satisfaction. No more rotting fruit to offend his eye. Every single apple gone.
Yet the tree, instead of seeming lighter from the loss of its burden, looked, if it were possible, more dejected than ever. The branches still sagged, and the leaves, withering now to the cold autumnal evening, folded upon themselves and shivered. "Is this my reward?" it seemed to say. "After all I've done for you?"
As the light faded, the shadow of the tree cast a blight upon the dank night. Winter would soon come. And the short, dull days.
He had never cared much for the fall of the year. In the old days, when he went up to London every day to the office, it had meant that early start by train,
on a nippy morning. And then, before three o'c1ock in the afternoon, the clerks were turning on the lights, and as often as not there would be fog in the air, murky and dismal, and a slow chugging journey home, daily bread-ers like himself sitting five abreast in a carriage, some of them with colds in their heads. Then the long evening followed, with Midge opposite him before the living-room fire, and he listening, or feigning to listen, to the account of her days and the things that had gone wrong.
If she had not shouldered any actual household disaster, she would pick upon some current event to cast a gloom. "I see fares are going up again, what about your season ticket?", or "This business in South Africa looks nasty, quite a long bit about it on the six o'clock news", or yet again "Three more cases of polio over at the isolation hospital. I don't know, I'm sure, what the medical world thinks it's doing..."
Now, at least, he was spared the role of listener, but the memory of those long evenings was with him still, and when the lights were lit and the curtains were drawn he would be reminded of the click-click of the needles, the aimless chatter, and the "Heigh-ho" of the yawns. He began to drop in, sometimes before supper, sometimes afterwards, at the Green Man, the old public house a quarter of a mile away on the main road. Nobody bothered him there. He would sit in a corner, having said good evening to genial Mrs. Hill, the proprietress, and then, with a cigarette and a whisky and soda, watch the local inhabitants stroll in to have a pint, to throw a dart, to gossip.
In a sense it made a continuation of his summer holiday. It bore resemblance, admittedly slight, to the care-free atmosphere of the cafés and the restaurants; and there was a kind of warmth about the bright smoke-filled bar, crowded with working men who did not bother him, which he found pleasant, comforting. These visits cut into the length of the dark winter evenings, making them more tolerable.
A cold in the head, caught in mid-December, put a stop to this for more than a week. He was obliged to keep to the house. And it was odd, he thought to himself, how much he missed the Green Man, and how sick to death he became of sitting about in the living-room or in the study, with nothing to do but read or listen to the wireless. The cold and the boredom made him morose and irritable, and the enforced inactivity turned his liver sluggish. He needed exercise. Whatever the weather, he decided towards the end of yet another cold grim day, he would go out tomorrow. The sky had been heavy from mid-afternoon and threatened snow, but no matter, he could not stand the house for a further twenty-four hours without a break.
The final edge to his irritation came with the fruit tart at supper. He was in that final stage of a bad cold when the taste is not yet fully returned, appetite is poor, but there is a certain emptiness within that needs ministration of a particular kind. A bird might have done it. Half a partridge, roasted to perfection, followed by a cheese soufflé. As well ask for the moon. The daily woman, not gifted with imagination, produced plaice, of all fish the most tasteless, the most dry. When she had borne the remains of this away—he had left most of it upon his plate—he returned with a tart, and because hunger was far from being satisfied he helped himself to it liberally.
One taste was enough. Choking, spluttering, he spat out the contents of his spoon upon the plate. He got up and rang the bell.
The woman appeared, a query on her face, at the unexpected summons.
"What the devil is this stuff?"
"Jam tart, sir."
"What sort of jam?"
"Apple jam, sir. Made from my own bottling."
He threw down his napkin on the table.
"I guessed as much. You've been using some of those apples that I complained to you about months ago. I told you and Willis quite distinctly that I would not have any of those apples in the house."
The woman's face became tight and drawn.
"You said, sir, not to cook the apples, or to bring them in for dessert. You said nothing about not making jam. I thought they would taste all right as jam. And I made some myself, to try. It was perfectly all right. So I made several bottles of jam from the apples Willis gave me. We always made jam here, madam and myself."
"Well, I'm sorry for your trouble, but I can't eat it. Those apples disagreed with me in the autumn, and whether they are made into jam or whatever you like they will do so again. Take the tart away, and don't let me see it, or the jam, again. I'll have some coffee in the living-room."
He went out of the room, trembling. It was fantastic that such a small incident should make him feel so angry. God! What fools people were. She knew, Willis knew, that he disliked the apples, loathed the taste and the smell of them, but in their cheese-paring way they decided that it would save money if he was given home-made jam, jam made from the apples he particularly detested.
He swallowed down a stiff whisky and lit a cigarette.
In a moment or two she appeared with the coffee. She did not retire immediately on putting down the tray.
"Could I have a word with you, sir?"
"What is it?"
"I think it would be for the best if I gave in my notice."
Now this, on top of the other. What a day, what an evening.
"What reason? Because I can't eat apple-tart?"
"It's not just that, sir. Somehow I feel things are very different from what they were. I have meant to speak several times."
"I don't give much trouble, do I?"
"No, sir. Only in the old days, when madam was alive, I felt my work was appreciated. Now it's as though it didn't matter one way or the other. Nothing's ever said, and although I try to do my best I can't be sure. I think I'd be happier if I went where there was a lady again who took notice of what I did."
"You are the best judge of that, of course. I'm sorry if you haven't liked it here lately."
"You were away so much too, sir, this summer. When madam was alive it was never for more than a fortnight. Everything seems so changed. I don't know where I am, or Willis either."
"So Willis is fed-up too?"
"That's not for me to say, of course. I know he was upset about the apples, but that's some time ago. Perhaps he'll be speaking to you himself."
"Perhaps he will. I had no idea I was causing so much concern to you both. All right, that's quite enough. Good-night."
She went out of the room. He stared moodily about him. Good riddance to them both, if that was how they felt. Things aren't the same. Everything so changed. Damned nonsense. As for Willis being upset about the apples, what infernal impudence. Hadn't he a right to do what he liked with his own tree? To hell with his cold and with the weather. He couldn't stand sitting about in front of the fire thinking about Willis and the cook. He would go down to the Green Man and forget the whole thing.
He put on his overcoat and muffler and his old cap and walked briskly down the road, and in twenty minutes he was sitting in his usual corner in the Green Man, with Mrs. Hill pouring out his whisky and expressing her delight to see him back. One or two of the habituees smiled at him, asked after his health.
"Had a cold, sir? Same everywhere. Everyone's got one."
"That's right."
"Well, it's the time of year, isn't it?"
"Got to expect it. It's when it's on the chest it's nasty."
"No worse than being stuffed up, like, in the head."
"That's right. One's as bad as the other. Nothing to it."
Likeable fellows. Friendly. Not harping at one, not bothering.
"Another whisky, please."
"There you are, sir. Do you good. Keep out the co1d."
Mrs. Hill beamed behind the bar. Large, comfortable old soul. Through a haze of smoke he heard the chatter, the deep laughter, the click of the darts, the jocular roar at a bull's eye.
". . . and if it comes on to snow, I don't know how we shall manage," Mrs. Hill was saying, "them being so late delivering the coal. If we had a load of logs it would help us out, but what do you think they're asking? Two pounds a load. I mean to say..."
He leant forward and his voice sounded far away,
even to himself.
"I'll let you have some logs," he said.
Mrs. Hill turned round. She had not been talking to him.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"I'll let you have some logs," he repeated. "Got an old tree, up at home, needed sawing down for months. Do it for you tomorrow."
He nodded, smiling.
"Oh no, sir. I couldn't think of putting you to the trouble. The coal will turn up, never fear."
"No trouble at all. A pleasure. Like to do it for you, the exercise, you know, do me good. Putting on weight. You count on me."
He got down from his seat and reached, rather carefully, for his coat.
"It's apple-wood," he said. "Do you mind apple-wood? "
"Why no," she answered, "any wood will do. But can you spare it, sir?"
He nodded, mysteriously. It was a bargain, it was a secret.
"I'll bring it down to you in my trailer tomorrow night," he said.
"Careful, sir," she said, "mind the step..."
He walked home, through the cold crisp night, smiling to himself. He did not remember undressing or getting into bed, but when he woke the next morning the first thought that came to his mind was the promise he had made about the tree.
It was not one of Willis's days, he realised with satisfaction. There would be no interfering with his plan. The sky was heavy and snow had fallen in the night. More to come. But as yet nothing to worry about, nothing to hamper him.
He went through to the kitchen garden, after breakfast, to the tool shed. He took down the saw, the wedges and the axe. He might need all of them. He ran his thumb along the edges. They would do. As he shouldered his tools and walked back to the front garden he laughed to himself thinking that he must resemble an executioner of old days, setting forth to behead some wretched victim in the Tower.
The Apple Tree Page 16