The Silver Bough (12 page)

“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?”

Their soup arrived with a basket of bread. Ashley had meant to put her bowl aside and pointedly leave it, since he hadn’t even asked her what she wanted, but the smell of it revived her hunger. She stirred it and blew gently on a spoonful, and said, “OK, so you’re a travelin’ kind of guy—I still don’t get what made you come back
here,
especially if you’re so broke.”

“Something made me. I had to come. I can’t explain it.”

She decided he had to be telling the truth because it was a ridiculous lie. He could have made up a dying grandmother or a delayed inheritance, a stolen wallet or a job interview—anything that might convince her she was doing a good deed. She thought of Shona’s deep affection for Appleton and compared it with her own lukewarm feelings for Houston. That was her home, all right, she’d never known another, and if she was broke or in trouble, that’s where she’d head—but only because she had friends and family there, people who’d known her since she was a baby. Remove them all, and she didn’t think the memory of Houston’s skyscrapers and pine forests, crowded freeways and flat coastal plains baking in the hot sun would draw her back across the miles if she had other alternatives. Maybe Appleton was different when the memory of its hills and harbor, cobbled streets and fine old buildings were planted in your heart.

As if he’d been following her thoughts, or perhaps because he was trying to explain it to himself, he said, hesitantly, “It was different this time, an urge rather than a whim. It was time for me to return. I just knew I had to come back. I’m ready, I think, to—well, to put down roots, at last.” He smiled to himself.

“Well, then, it’s lucky you got here before the landslide.”

“Lucky?” he echoed, his eyebrows rising.

“Well, I mean, it’s lucky you want to stay, because—”

“Because now I can’t leave? Oh, well, I never meant to leave by
that
road, anyway.”

Guessing he was teasing, she concentrated on her soup and didn’t ask what he meant. When they’d finished, the waitress brought them two pieces of apple pie.

“Mmm, this is good,” she said after the first bite. “Really fresh and homemade.”

“Ah, Scotland’s a great place for home baking,” he said, sounding as smug as if he’d invented the tradition. “And Appleton apples are the best.”

“Those apples came from New Zealand, or maybe England,” said the waitress, who was clearing the table behind them. “They surely weren’t local.”

“Really? But why?” He twisted around in his chair to stare at her. “Why not use local apples?”

She stopped and put her hands on her hips, a sarcastic smile playing about her mouth. “Why? Because, my love, there
aren’t
any Appleton apples, unless you’re thinking of the MacDonald orchard over in the White Glen, and those have always gone for cider. I think he tried to branch out into eaters a while back but they didn’t take.”

He gaped at her like a caught fish. “But what about the Wall orchards? They’re not all for cider—and anyway, I heard the cider mill closed down.”

“You heard that, and you didn’t hear what happened to the orchards?”

“What happened?”

“All sold off, dug over, and planted with other crops. None very successful. A lot of that land is conifer forest now; farmer who bought it got a tax break.” She gave him a puzzled frown. “Those apple trees stopped bearing before I was even born. Maybe the climate changed, I don’t know, but apples don’t seem to do so well here now, though the stories say they used to. My neighbor had a couple of Bramleys. The trees were fine and healthy at first, but after a few years the apples were useless, just full of canker and brown rot; nothing to do but burn ’em. He cut the trees down seven or eight years ago and switched to soft fruit.”

“No apples.” He sounded really shocked, which Ashley found mystifying after what the woman had said.

The waitress shrugged. “Well, I suppose some people have them in their gardens…I’ve been told that the lady who bought Orchard House put some apple trees into her walled garden. She’s American, like you,” she added, nodding at Ashley. “Or are you Canadian?”

“American. From Texas.”

“Texas! My son went there last year with his girlfriend. Some kind of music festival. Austin, that’s right, isn’t it? He loved it. Can’t wait to go back.”

Ashley smiled politely but said nothing, wanting to be left alone with her mystery man, and the waitress backed away. “Let me know if you want anything else.”

He resumed eating his piece of apple pie, although it had clearly lost its savor.

“Did you
really
grow up here?”

He looked startled. “Of course. But it was a long time ago. Things have changed more than I imagined.”

“Or else you’ve forgotten a lot.”

“That’s possible.”

She tried again to guess how old he was. He might be as old as twenty-six, and if he’d run away at fifteen his memories of this place might well be vague. Maybe he remembered the cider orchards and confused them with stories his grandfather told about the old days, when Appleton had been famous for its apples.

“Well. Thank you for my lunch.” He wiped the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin and let it flutter down to lie atop his empty plate. “Next time, it’s my treat.”

She went to the cash register to pay. When she turned around she found him waiting for her. “Shall we go for a walk?”

She’d been on the verge of inviting him back to her place, but she agreed to his suggestion, sure their walk would bring them there in the end.

They went out and turned to the right. Immediately next door to the café was the Victoria Hotel, a building that had seen better days and could have done with a fresh coat of paint, at the very least.

“The café used to be part of the hotel; I think it was a resident’s lounge, or maybe it was the public bar. They must have sold it off when times got hard,” he said, gazing at an upstairs window. “There are a lot of hotels in Appleton.”

“I noticed that, when I was walking around before. I was amazed. There must be about ten, although most of them were pretty small.”

“The grandest hotel wasn’t even in the town. It was out at Southport.”

“Where’s that?”

“South side of the apple.”

“Oh, duh!” She grinned and struck herself lightly on the side of the head. “Southport, south. So there’s another town close by?”

“Hardly a town. A village. Not much there but a fabulous beach. There’s a golf course—at least there used to be. Once the motor buses were running, it was an obvious place to build a grand hotel, and it was quite successful until it was hit by a stray bomb in the Second World War.” He stepped back, gazing at the hotel before them. “It’s hard to believe now, but in the old days, at the height of the tourist season everyone in the town with a spare bedroom would hang out a sign offering bed and breakfast. Children were made to sleep out in the garden so their parents could let their beds, especially during Appleton Fair week.”

“When was that?”

“Now. Late September.”

They walked on, past a charity shop and a vacant premises with a
FOR LEASE
sign in the streaked and dusty window. Up ahead, majestically occupying the corner site, was a most impressive building made of dark red stone, with cream-colored pillars and decorative carvings.

“Wow, what’s that?”

“The public library.” His voice was tight with some repressed emotion, and he began to take longer strides so that she had to half run to keep up with him. He was not in a hurry to reach the library but to get away from it, she realized, as he began to cross the street.

“Wait—is it open? Can we go in?” She hurried after him despite her wish to linger and drink in the details of this unexpected architectural glory.

“Not now.”

Once across the street she looked back. Clearly, the library
was
open; she saw people going up the wide steps to the entrance. Equally clearly, her companion couldn’t wait to get away. “Why?” she asked, hurrying to catch up. “What’s wrong?”

“Unhappy memories.” He slowed his pace. “I’m sorry. I was never welcome there. It was my grandfather’s place, built to keep people like me
out
.”

“That’s horrible!” She thought of the welcoming libraries and librarians of her childhood. “But if your granddad was librarian…what do you mean, ‘people like me’?”

“I never knew my father. I didn’t
have
a father, as far as society was concerned.”

She didn’t know what to say. Glancing down at her feet, she saw a tiled mosaic picture set in the middle of the sidewalk. It depicted a mermaid holding a comb in one hand and a looking glass in the other. “What on earth is this doing here?”

“That used to be a cinema.” He gestured at the empty, weed-covered piece of land. “There should be a name, too.” He bent down and raised a clump of moss and grass to reveal the letters picked out in blue, red, and gold tiles:
RIALTO
.

“What does that mean?”

“I dunno. It’s a bridge in Venice…It was the sort of name cinemas had back then. The other one, down on First Street, was the Ritzy.”

They continued to walk along the wide Esplanade along the curve of the shoreline. The houses built on the landward side, well away from the road, became larger and more elegant, fine old Victorian and Edwardian villas, very handsome, most of them, although there were some with more fantastic pretensions. One house had towers, turrets, and crenellations like a miniature castle; another was an oriental-inspired folly, with Chinese dragons on the gateposts and all four corners and a pagoda in the garden. Most had clearly seen better days, were in need of fresh paint and obvious repairs even when the gardens were rigorously maintained.

They came to the last house, standing at the top of a weed-infested drive guarded by a couple of crumbling stone lions. The road branched in two, with one fork continuing to follow the shoreline, curving away out of sight, and the other leading uphill.

“Where does it go?”

“The cemetery’s up there, and beyond that, the old quarry, and the moor. It’s great up there. Down along there…we’d come to Southport eventually.”

She was enjoying being with him, without pressure, and wasn’t tired yet, but walking out of town seemed pointless.

“Let’s go back. I saw lots of interesting buildings this morning—you could tell me what they are.”

“I thought you’d want to see the cemetery.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

He smiled. “Look for your ancestors? Find your roots? Isn’t that why you came?”

Her mouth dropped open a little as she stared at him. “How did you know?”

He laughed teasingly. “I don’t have to be psychic! This is Appleton, not Edinburgh. Why else would a lass from Texas come here…how else would you have heard of it if you didn’t have ancestors born on the apple?”

She began to smile again. “Well, you’re right. But I’d rather leave the cemetery for later. I don’t care about family trees. I’d just like to get to know the place Phemie came from.”

She saw the instant flare of shocked recognition in his eyes. His expression didn’t change, he said nothing to give himself away, but the name had hit him when he wasn’t prepared.

This reaction, so unexpected, startled her. “What? You’ve heard of her?”

He gazed thoughtfully out to sea. “Phemie is a very Scottish name, very old-fashioned. You don’t hear it much nowadays.”