Oddly, the Apple Tree

“Oddly, the apple tree still has its leaves.  You wouldn’t expect that in December, would you?”  The old woman’s voice carried from her table in the corner of the mainly empty tearoom I’d hurried in to, in order to escape the day’s icy drizzle.

The old woman’s companion - another old woman from the sound of her voice - replied.  “No, that’s true, but it’s always been an odd tree, hasn’t it?  A mean tree, a sour one.  Perhaps it’s just decided it doesn’t want to give up its leaves to winter this year.”

I’m afraid, five years ago, I was of an uncompromisingly young enough age to think all old women looked the same and that what they said would be of no interest to me; but this snatch of conversation on a dreary day caught me.  I put my phone back in its case, conceding to my boredom at the old texts I was hardly aware I was checking, and looked up to observe the speakers.

They both looked in their eighties as far as I could ascertain, bundled up in coats that seemed redundant in the steamy heat of the tearoom.  There was a familial likeness in the set of their brows and the jut of their chins, and although time had twisted and sagged their features, there was still sharp intelligence in their eyes.

Outside the rain teamed on the Bakewell pavements and inside, the condensation ran down the windows, peeling off the menu inexpertly written on curling plastic.  The buildings along the street appeared to be standing together, firm and squat against the December half-light; and glancing over at the women again, I saw they were staring at each other intently.

*

Says A, give me a good large slice,

                                                        Says B, a little bit, but nice

Mary is sitting in the garden under the apple tree.  It’s a beautiful, autumn day.  All golden, rounded heat.  There’s none of the white hot fatigue of summer and even at the age of nine, Mary feels that something ending - like a season - isn’t always a bad thing.  Besides, she’s waiting for an apple.

She’s been waiting for what seems like years.  Ever since she and Winnie noticed the tiny buds on the gnarled, old tree in April. After the bumps of the buds came the wild, pink confetti of the blossom in May and then the development of the smallest of apples.  Winnie had said they were apples for elves, but Mary didn’t believe her.  She knew they would grow.

Her mother has brought a rug out for the girls and they sit back to back, looking through the dense leaves at the apples’ surprising redness. Mary had dreamed about her father last night and she wishes he could come home soon from wherever he is; but in this moment, it’s the apples that have her attention.

And then, one drops.  Close by Mary’s feet, on the blanket – far away enough not to hit her, near enough for her to be able to grab it.  But no, as usual Winnie is quicker.  Pretty, little Winnie, a year older and a year faster.  She scoops up the apple and takes an enormous, crunching bite.

Red juice drips down Winnie’s chin and it makes her look like a clown, Mary thinks.  A mean, greedy clown. Mary feels the absence of the apple in her mouth through the fullness of Winnie’s.  She knows she can have another apple, but it won’t taste nearly as sweet as the first.

*

Says C, cut me a piece of crust, Take it, says D, it’s dry as dust,

                               Says E, I’ll eat it fast, I will, Says F, I vow I’ll have my fill

In the house that was their parents’, before the war took their father and grief took their mother, Winnie is setting up house with Billy Stanton.  They’ve only been married for five days and they’re both still so young, but Winnie knows what she wants from the house now it’s hers.  As she walks from room to room, she’s decorating it in her mind, stripping the heavy wallpaper and replacing it with light, floral prints.  In this future house, there is the sound of children’s footsteps everywhere.

Mary’s with them too of course.  She’s not just married, she’s a shop girl at Boots in Buxton.  They’ve given over the top floor of the house to her. 

“I don’t mind you living with us”, says Winnie.  “In fact, it’ll be lovely.  A ready made aunt for our babies.” At this, Winnie smiles and Mary frowns.

On the top floor that will be her new apartment, Mary is watching Billy Stanton move furniture around. He’s already put the tall boy where it needs to go and he’s now moving her bed frame.  Mary notices how straight his back is when he stands up, how strong his hands.

In last night’s unseasonal gale, the apple tree’s blossom has flown away, like a flock of small, white birds; and this bird blossom has landed on the window sill of her new bedroom.  It’s soft, feathery, and Mary wonders if only she could hear the settled blossom, would it coo?  Like lovebirds do.

Billy has set the fire in the grate of what will be her living room and Mary sits by it on a suitcase,so she can open the string on the wrapping of the house-warming present Winnie has left for her.

It’s a porcelain bell, coloured a duck egg blue.  It’s so delicately perfect and Mary rings it hesitantly as she reads the card Winnie has included: ‘A beautiful bell for my beautiful sister.  Let’s hope it’s the first of many bells ringing in this house’. 

Out of no place she wants to acknowledge, Mary feels her anger rise.  It heats the corners of the room far better than the inadequate fire.  Wedding bells for Winnie, she thinks. The first bell in a spinster’s knick knack collection for me.

*

Says G, give it me good and great, Says H, a little bit I hate,

     Says I, it’s ice I must request, Says J, the juice I love the best

Over the year, the house becomes the one Winnie pictured in her imagination.  It’s demurely feminine, with Billy’s strength bringing structure and stability to its old bones.  By late spring, the apple tree is blossoming almost indecently.  There’s going to be a good crop of fruit this year.  Winnie’s stomach is growing too - ripe and swollen like the ovaries of the tree.

Up in her apartment, Mary has decided she’s the mad woman in the attic. There’s part of her that relishes the idea – it justifies her position in the house.  It makes her mysterious. 

Mary likes the neatness of her rooms and the safe, smallness of her days.  She goes to work, there and back on the bus.  She brings home Boots’ soap that makes her handbag smell nice.  She eats tea always with Winnie and often with Billy.  She watches the straightness of his back and his strong hands when he cuts his meat.

For Mary, it’s her bell collection that’s growing, as she suspected it would.  She’s got enough now to warrant a display case and it stands tall and un-showy in the corner of her living room.  Sometimes at night in bed, she thinks about how silent her bells are, about what little function they have.  But by the morning, she’s not thinking about this anymore.  She takes comfort instead in the lack of dust on the display case.  In how spotless she keeps her kitchenette tea towels.

*

Says K, let’s keep it up above, Says L, the border’s what I love,

Says M, it makes your teeth to chatter, N said, it’s nice, there’s nought the matter

On rainy days, he seems to fill more of the house, or at least up in her apartment, Mary can hear him more.  It’s as though the walls become denser in the rain and less noise can seep out into the open air outside.

When he was a baby, it seemed less irritating.  In truth, Mary found his keening cry to be soothing in a way that poor, tired, at her wits’ end Winnie didn’t seem to.  But now he’s three, it’s his chatter, or crying, or laughing that Mary can’t escape wherever she is in the house.

On this drab, October afternoon, however, she’s agreed to mind him while Winnie and Billy go out together, alone for the first time since he was born.  She doesn’t especially want to look after him, but she feels somewhat obliged when she comes across the unquestioning kindness that both Billy and Winnie show her time after time.

He’s sitting on the floor of her living room, eating slices of apple from an old, enamel plate.  He has a look of serious contemplation on his face as he picks each piece up and slowly puts it in his mouth.  The radio is on in her kitchenette and Mary taps her fingers on her book to Save the Last Dance for Me. When the radio loses its signal, she gets out of her chair to go and twist its dial, smiling at him as she walks past.  She notices he smells of sweet soap and talcum powder.

The odd, racking sound she hears coming from the living room confuses her.  For a minute, she thinks it sounds like the peck peck of a bird and she wonders, momentarily, whether she’s left the window open, knowing at the same time she did not.  The repetitive, peck peck sound is getting fainter and still Mary stands there, looking at the radio dial, thinking I’ll go back in when the song has finished.  Thinking, you can’t always get what you want, or keep it once you’ve got it.

*

O others’ plates with grief surveyed, P for a large piece begged and prayed,

                    Q quarrelled for the topmost slice, R rubbed his hands and said “it’s nice”

The day moon shines incongruous and pale in the afternoon sky. Mary and Winnie are sitting at the dining table where they’ve sat for so many years, looking out of the French windows at the apple tree.

Over time, the tree has become ever more gnarled and blackly brittle looking.  It’s spring so it’s blossoming, but for autumn after autumn now, it no longer fruits.  The blossom merely shifts from pink to white and then transforms vilely into a shabby, brown sludge.  Clagging up the soles of shoes; making old women slip.

The least Mary and Winnie feel they can do is cut a branch of the blossom and put it in one of their mother’s old vases, between them in the middle of the table.  The apple flowers’ heady scent fills the room.

As usual, like long, married couples, they know what each other is going to say.  They’ve rehearsed ad nauseam, are experts in the same, tired conversation.

“It’s a shame there wasn’t a late, spring frost.  That would have helped the apples develop.”

“No, my dear.  I’m sure you’re mistaken.  The frost ensures the apples will never grow.  Why can’t you remember?”

They fall into silence again and Mary wonders what the apple blossom in the vase means to Winnie, but then she remembers her Shakespeare.  It’s rosemary for remembrance.  Not apples.  Winnie is fairly sure what it means to Mary though.  It means a long ago, October day, when the taking away of one thing started the taking away of everything else.

On reflection, Winnie is more than fairly sure about what it means.  She knows, she damn well knows.

*

When I got up to go to the toilet, I passed closer to the two, old women and I noticed a surprising thing about them.  Although they were talking to each other, low and companionably, they both appeared to have tears tracing down their cheeks.  I couldn’t imagine what pain in the world they must be experiencing at their age and I remember feeling somewhat irritated at them.  They were still living and they still had each other. What hurt could they possibly be feeling?

On the way back from the toilet, I noticed an even odder detail. From the view I had of their table, I could see one of the women had the heel of her shoe firmly placed on the top of the other’s foot.  It looked deliberately cruel, but I could only assume I was reading what was mere accident as intent.

After I returned to my own table, I poured myself another cup of tea, noticing that at last, the rain had stopped.

*

 

Subheadings taken from ‘The Apple Pie ABC’, published in 1742.