The Silver Bough (28 page)

She got up and went to knock on the office door.

“Yes? Oh, hi, Ashley. Find what you were looking for?”

“You said you could make some photocopies? I’d like this picture.”

“Of course.” Kathleen rose and took the heavy volume from her, opening it to the page she’d been marking with her finger. “Wow. Your granny was gorgeous.”

“What do you think about
him
?”

“Mm, yes, tasty.”

“Recognize him?”

Kathleen frowned and peered again at the grainy old print.

“From the picture in the museum,” she prompted. “Remember?”

“Oh, yes, that man Graeme thought had to be a Wall. I see what he meant.”

There was a brisk knock, and then a trim, auburn-haired woman in her forties put her head around the door. She looked surprised. “Sorry, Kathleen, I didn’t realize…”

“That’s all right, Miranda. This is Ashley, she’s Shona Walker’s cousin from America.”

“Nice to meet you, Ashley. I hope you don’t mind if I borrow Kathleen for a few minutes?”

“I’ll be right back,” Kathleen told her. “If you want to wait here?”

“Could I have a drink of water?”

“Of course, help yourself. There are glasses in the cupboard under the sink.”

Alone in the office, she drank a glass of water, then looked around, her gaze homing in on the wooden apple. The smooth curves of it gleamed darkly. Before she really thought about it, she’d crossed the room and picked it up.

It was like the first time; the piece was irresistible, demanding to be held.
You can’t put something like the apple in a museum, locked away in a case; it will be too frustrating to look and not touch; people will always be trying to break in.

She rolled it against her cheek with the palm of her hand and enjoyed the satiny-smooth finish of the wood. Cool at first, it quickly soaked up the warmth of her skin. Her nostrils flared as she picked up a smell that was not wood or polish; something musky and sweet. She put it closer to her nose and sniffed, then drew back and stared in surprise. It smelled like apples!

She cocked her head, puzzled. Did the wood of an apple tree really smell so much like the fruit?

She tossed it up and caught it, did it again when she felt something move, then shook it, holding her breath as she listened. She wasn’t wrong. The carved fruit was hollow, and something rustled, soft as a whisper, inside. Yet she couldn’t see a crack anywhere in the smooth surface unless you counted the incised Greek lettering around the top. She shut her eyes and let her fingers search, creeping over the smooth surface, pressing, prodding, and prying until at last they found the place where the two separate pieces met—a join so fine it was practically invisible. She gave it a quick, almost instinctive twist, as if the movement were one she’d learned long ago, and the apple came apart.

An odor rose: a smell musty, intense, sweet, and rotten that brought a rush of saliva to her mouth, and she shivered. Something—two things, two little shriveled chunks—nestled within the cavity, and she dumped them into her hand. Time had desiccated them so that they were recognizable only by smell, but she had no doubt about it. She was looking at two pieces of a very, very old apple.

She resisted the idiotic urge she felt to taste one of the scraps of fruit, to lay it against her tongue the way she’d rested the smooth wood of its outer shell against her cheek. Instead, she closed the fingers of her left hand around the dried fruit, and dug into her day pack with her right.

Inside the bag was a handkerchief that had been her grandmother’s. It was more than sixty years old, and the once-white cloth had turned the color of vellum and was wonderfully smooth and soft with age. The faded pink initials in one corner—
E. M’F.
—had been embroidered by Phemie’s best friend when she was eight or nine; it had been her birthday present to Phemie. The idea that your best friend might give you only a
handkerchief
for your birthday, and still remain your best friend, had been a source of great fascination for Ashley. It was the thing that made her realize her grandmother had grown up in a completely different world, a time that was now lost. It was like something out of
Little House on the Prairie
. Amused by her granddaughter’s fascination, Phemie had made her a gift of it. “I wouldn’t normally, dear, but it’s perfectly clean. I don’t think I
ever
used it to blow my nose—it was too good for that. I kept it for best, for show.”

Ashley had kept it for remembrance. She extracted the neatly folded square of cloth from her bag, and wrapped the two shriveled pieces of apple in it, holding her breath until the parcel had been made up and stowed safely away in an inside zipped pocket. Then she turned back to the desk and fitted the wooden apple together again. She replaced it where it had been and crossed the room to the sink, where she drew herself a second glass of water. She was just swallowing the last of it—trying to rinse away an imaginary taste—when the door opened and Kathleen came back in.

“Sorry about that—” She stopped and sniffed the air.

“That’s OK,” Ashley said quickly, and tensed with the expectation of being asked about the smell.

But Kathleen didn’t ask.

“Um, so, could you do me that photocopy?”

“Of course.” As she prepared to use the photocopier, which was wedged in between the door and a miniature refrigerator with a coffeemaker perched on top, she went on, “Would you be interested in talking to someone who might remember your grandmother when she was a girl?”

“Yes! Do you know anybody?” She was curious, but skeptical that this newcomer to the town could help. She’d asked Shona, who’d canvassed the old ladies who attended her church and reported back that although a few admitted to vaguely remembering “old Hugh’s sister—that lassie who ran away,” none claimed any closer acquaintance.

“Well…it occurred to me you should talk to Miss McClusky. She was the librarian here for many years, and she’s a local, I mean, a
real
local, one of the few you could call an aboriginal.”

“Aboriginal!” If Kathleen was joking, she just didn’t get it. “Aboriginals come from Australia, don’t they?”

“The word just means original inhabitants,” Kathleen explained, grimacing slightly as she wrestled with the photocopier. “Everyone else I’ve met in this town is an incomer—or their parents were.”

“Shona was born here. So were her parents. And I think my great-grandparents—”

“I’m talking about the way people talk about themselves. Most places, if people grow up in the same place their grandparents were born, they feel pretty rooted. They think this is their land. But on the Apple, two or three generations doesn’t seem to be enough to stop people thinking of themselves as incomers. Ina McClusky is the only one I’ve met who talks about her family having lived here ‘forever.’ Of course, she also talks as if she doesn’t live in Appleton.”

“But she does?”

“Her house is just on the other side of the harbor. A hundred years ago, I’m told, people referred to this side as ‘the town’ and that side as ‘the Ob’—which is the Gaelic word for bay. The Ob never was a separate town, really; it never had a church or a school, but the people who lived there felt they formed a separate community.” She handed over the photocopied page.

“Thanks. So…you think Ina McClusky was friends with Phemie?”

“She was librarian here for years and years, and even though she came from the Ob, she seems to have known absolutely everyone in the town. Sharp as a whip—better memory than mine.”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

“I’ll tell you what—I was planning on going to see her today. She still comes into the library regularly, but she’s getting frail. She doesn’t complain, but I’m sure it’s hard on her—I thought I could help her out with an occasional home delivery of new books. I could take you along; I’m sure she’d love to meet you. She enjoys company. Why don’t you come back here just before five o’clock, and I’ll take you with me?”

“OK. Cool. Thanks.” She shifted her bag onto her shoulder. “See you later, then.”

It wasn’t until she was out of the library and half a block away that it struck her that she’d stolen something from the library. She, who’d never been a thief, never shoplifted like some of her friends, never done anything more reprehensible than swipe a few potato chips off a friend’s plate, or sneak an extra chocolate…

And if that wasn’t really theft, was this? It couldn’t be a crime to take two bits of dried-up apple! If anyone else had found them, wouldn’t they have thrown them away? She didn’t even want them—what on earth had come over her?

She walked on, brooding about that moment of madness.
Something
had made her take them; there must be some reason, buried deep in her brain. She knew she couldn’t take them back, any more than she could throw them away, not unless she could explain what she’d done, not unless she knew what they were
for.

She saw that she’d reached the point where the road branched, the spot where she and the stranger who looked like Ronan Lachlan Wall had parted. Where to now? Up there, he’d said, was the cemetery. She glanced at her watch, saw that she had more than an hour to kill before Kathleen would expect her back at the library, so she turned up the cemetery road.

It was a hike; farther than she’d expected. Gradually the houses fell away; and she was out in the countryside, with nowhere she could sit down and rest, and not even trees to provide shelter from the relentless sun. She was thirsty and tired. Watching a couple of cars go past, she wondered about hitching a lift. After she found her way to the cemetery—assuming she ever did—she would still face a long walk. Maybe she should turn back now? Checking her watch, she saw, to her annoyance, that it had stopped.

But then, as she rounded a bend, she saw the cemetery was just ahead; at least, she assumed those grey stone walls in the embrace of heavy dark evergreens must surround a graveyard. She picked up her pace, thinking she didn’t have much time.

Gravel crunched beneath her feet as she stepped off the main road and through the open gates. The coolness inside, in the tree-shaded walkway, was as welcome as a drink of water. She breathed in deeply and smelled damp earth, vegetation, and a touch of rankness suggestive of cats. She hurried ahead, out of the dim shelter, toward ranks of graves lying like a crowded miniature suburb before her: mostly simple headstones, but there were also a few carved Celtic crosses, some pedestals supporting urns or melancholy angels, and there were a couple of obelisks, which towered like skyscrapers by comparison with the modest scale of everything else.

She paused to read the first few stones she came to:

Erected by
Dugald Murray
in loving memory of
his beloved wife
Margaret MacDonald
who died 21st August 1941
aged 54

In loving memory of
Malcolm MacNeill
Departed
1st November 1945
aged 42
also his wife
Flora Galbraith
died 29 December 1984

She moved on past the newer-looking stones in search of something more interesting. The graveled path wound away ahead and branched off in several directions. Some areas were well tended but plain and bare, while others, perhaps the older ones, were more picturesquely planted with trees and bushes. She left the path to scramble up a small rise, where the gravestones, instead of standing in neat rows, were more of a jumble, leaning in different directions. She spotted one almost hidden by the spiky, glossy foliage of a holly bush. Leaning closer she could make out a very weatherworn shape of a skull and crossed bones, but all the writing on the pale, pitted stone—assuming there had ever been any—was completely worn away.

She straightened up and looked around, realizing that the graveyard was larger than she’d first thought. She caught sight of a walled structure not far away and, curious, headed toward it. As she drew nearer she could see that it lacked a roof; it wasn’t a tomb or mausoleum after all, just an enclosure, probably a family plot, like a private, members-only graveyard within the larger cemetery. As she stepped around a small tree she could see large black metal gates across the opening in the fourth wall secured with a length of chain and a heavy padlock.

She also saw that she was not alone. Standing by the gate and peering through the bars into the enclosure was a man. Although he was turned away from her, she knew him immediately, with an almost painful surge of excitement.

She walked a bit more briskly toward him. “Ronan Wall,” she called loudly, and saw his back stiffen. “Ronan Lachlan Wall.”

He turned, looking defeated and sad, not so young and smug and happy as in the picture taken with his fiancée more than fifty years ago. It should have seemed crazy, but it didn’t. Somehow, suddenly, she just knew he was the man from the picture, not his grandson. He was the very same man her grandmother had fled from more than half a century ago.

When they were aged about twelve or thirteen, Ashley and Freya had developed a sort of fixation on vampires. The fantasy they’d shared, part fear but more desire, stirred again in her memory as she met the stranger’s gaze. She remembered confessing to Freya, who had agreed, that even though it was wrong, and scary, and deadly dangerous, she wasn’t sure she’d put up much of a struggle if she ever met one.