Chapter 18 The Nowhere Apple Farm
Once upon a time, at the turn of one century into another, Nowhere was an orchard.
Sweet mountain apples grew there, ripe on the branch.
Hundreds of trees basked in the sun and drank the rain.
In mid spring the blossom was a thick carpet of white across the valley floor and the scent filled the air for miles around.
Even on the lower trails people swore that they caught faint traces of that sweetness when the wind was right.
Nowhere Apples was owned by the Dunnings, a married couple who had been settled there some eleven years.
They had built a farmhouse at the end of the valley; men from Ault and Fraser and Boulder dug the foundations and raised it.
Thomas Dunning worked alongside them most days, sharing the sweat and the toil, and making sure there was beer at the end of the day.
In time, they raised a flourishing orchard.
Jane Dunning had young eyes and smiled as if she meant it.
When she came down to Ault for paraffin or sugar she asked after people’s children and remembered their names.
Her husband Thomas was rarely seen in the low towns, but he had a kind way about him, it was agreed.
And he was a generous soul – if there was something you needed storing for example, which you did not quite care to keep at home – certain deliveries, items which had somehow escaped the eye of the authorities – why, Thomas stored it in the cellar, and you collected it when all was well.
The farm flourished, Nowhere apples became a delicacy and Nowhere cider was famed for its crisp flavour.
The farm made work for men and women in the region.
Jane joined a luncheon knitting group which took place in Ault each week on a Wednesday, riding her pretty warmblood bay mare down the mountain and leaving by mid-afternoon to make it back home by dark.
In due course Jane became one of the heads of the knitting group.
Jane and another of the founders, Angela, took a particular liking to one another.
So though they lived up on the mountainside, the Dunnings quickly came to be felt to be part of Ault.
Jane’s health was not good and she often had bouts of illness lasting some months when she did not come down from Nowhere.
But in the end she always reappeared, smiling and calm and ready with her knitting needles.
One day at knitting circle, when Jane asked eagerly, as she always did, after the families and relatives and children of the other women, her friend Angela raised her brows.
‘Why, Jane,’ Angela said gently, ‘you are so attentive to the families of others. I am sure that you look forward to having a family of your own.’
Jane smiled and tipped her head, with the light in her eyes that all women know.
‘No!’ Angela kept her voice low.
‘I’m sure it’s a girl,’ Jane said. ‘I’m going to call her after my sister.’ She rested her hand for a fleeting moment on the place.
Angela slapped Jane’s arm lightly then threw back her head and laughed. The other women looked at the pair with interest, wondering what was under discussion.
Jane quailed noticeably under the many eyes. Her face drained abruptly of colour. ‘I should not have told,’ she breathed into Angela’s ear. ‘Please, please do not repeat it.’
‘I would not dream of repeating it,’ said Angela, puzzled by her friend’s distress.
‘Only,’ said Jane, ‘I have lost so many, you see. I have become superstitious about it all. I can’t bear to tempt fate once more.’
Angela took Jane’s hand in hers. ‘I have forgotten it already.’
Jane sent word down the mountain by her husband soon after that she could not attend knitting group. She was once more struck down by illness. There was much tutting and sympathy and it reminded the ladies that they should each have a glass of wine to preserve their own health.
Angela waited for word, good or bad. Nothing came which was an answer in itself.
In the spring Jane was there again at the pre-knitting luncheon, pale and wan. Angela looked at her, and Jane bit her lip and shook her head and Angela bit hers too and that was all that needed saying on that matter.
‘Let us lower ourselves to crochet, for once,’ Angela said brightly. ‘We deserve a respite.’
But there was something subtly wrong about Jane’s body – it sat and moved and stayed still in all the wrong ways. Angela knew this well, the rhythm of fear.
‘Your crochet is very elegant, Jane.’ Angela laid her hand on Jane’s for a brief moment.
After that Angela watched her friend closely. She saw that Jane knew some of the same terrible truths about the world that she herself did. She would never ask Jane about it, of course. Everything depended on not remembering [those things hands in the dark].
Occasionally members of the knitting circle brought gifts to the lunch – delicious preserves or candies or a set of intricately embroidered handkerchiefs.
After that day it always seemed to come about, by consensus, that Jane should be the one who took home the preserve or had first pick at the candy.
One Wednesday Jane was not at the lunch – but she had not sent word.
The group waited the poached chicken for twenty minutes, but she did not appear.
Nor did she arrive afterwards to knit. She had always sent word in advance when she would be absent, always, the ladies said to one another, but life is life. So they went on with their work.
The next Wednesday Jane did not come again, nor was there any communication from her. There were some pursed lips but everyone knitted and talked as usual and no one made a business of it, because mountain people hate a business.
On the third Wednesday, the women assembled and ate their cold beef. All of them glanced, at intervals, at the empty place where Jane should be.
Usually after lunch had finished and the table was cleared they picked up their knitting and began the real talk. But today everyone lingered, meeting each other’s eyes. No one took out their knitting and there was a burdened silence in the air.
At length Angela cleared her throat. ‘Is there any word from Jane? No one has seen her?’
There was a chorus of ‘no’s’ and a flurry of shaken heads.
‘And Mr Dunning?’
‘He has not been in town these three weeks,’ said Juniper Nailey. ‘He buys tobacco from my Andrew at the store each Wednesday without fail. But he has not come the past three.’
‘And no one has seen or heard from the Dunnings in all that time?’ Angela kept her voice level.
Again, the company shook their heads.
‘Very well,’ said Angela. ‘I am sorry to say it, but I fear that we must involve the men.’
Around the circle, the women nodded. They gathered their gloves and hats and knitting bags and filed out of the front door. They dispersed through Ault, fetching husbands and brothers and sons from the mill and the convenience store and the sheriff’s office and the bank.
Ben was splitting logs behind their house. Crack, went the axe, opening the wood’s white flesh to the air. Crack. He stopped and smiled when he saw Angela.
‘They need our help up at Nowhere,’ Angela said to her husband.
He looked at her for a moment. ‘All right.’
A mounted expedition of twelve set out. Angela rode her old grey cob to the square, where the search party had assembled.
‘Are you—?’ asked her husband.
‘Yes, I am coming with you,’ she replied.
Angela leant forward, patting her horse on the neck. ‘Quick as you can, Storytime,’ she whispered in his flickering ear. Storytime turned and gently bit the folds of her riding habit.
They went up the mountain, pushing the horses hard.
The party pulled up as the approach to Nowhere loomed ahead. The cliff walls looked high and menacing, and the narrow way was cast in shadow. It seemed like a vice, meant to close on them. The horses curveted and ducked their heads, sensing unease.
‘Tsk,’ said Angela. ‘No time for all that.’ She nudged Storytime into a canter and rode into the crevasse.
The valley was quiet in the low light, and Angela rode the track fast through the apple trees, Storytime’s hooves throwing up clouds of dust. She looked to either side, hoping for signs of life. A pair of pigeons burst from a treetop but there were no people.
When the farmhouse came into view, Angela pulled Storytime to a halt. He blew and huffed, expressing his disapproval of all this rush. Angela hitched him to the post. She could hear the hooves of the others approaching but she did not want to wait.
She knew, deep down, what she would find. The message was on the air already. Sweet sick rot, decay. When she opened the door to the farmhouse it rolled out in a wave. But it was unthinkable that Angela should not go in – she owed that much to her friend.
Angela spent two or three minutes inside that place, then came out hand to her mouth. The men had arrived and were dismounting. She stood on the step, shaking like a reed. Her husband came to her and placed an arm around her waist.
‘What?’ he asked briefly.
‘I don’t know how to say it.’ She stared ahead then turned her face upwards to him. Her eyes were wide, wider than human eyes should stretch, showing rims of white around the iris. ‘They did have children, Ben,’ she whispered. ‘There are five children in there, with her.’
Jane Dunning had tried to protect them from the knife but it had not been possible. She took all the blows that she could. After he ended his family Thomas Dunning put the knife in his own throat. It was still lodged there.