Chapter 20
For two weeks, as September gave way to the beginning of autumn, they sat in the garden, losing each other in the high grass, breaking mildewed deckchairs pulled from the summer barn halfway down the lawn towards the pond, choked with weeds.
A rambling custard-yellow rose covered the side of the house, and Jenny deadheaded so many faded blooms and hips that in one or two places the roses began to flower again, small yellow buds that smothered the lean-to.
Hollyhocks fell like falling trees. And everywhere the sound of apples dropping on to the ground, whereupon Edward would shout ‘ Apple! ’ and Tom would leap up, scramble in the wilderness and come back holding aloft the apple in question.
Every morning the sun rose above the horizon, shedding golden September light into every nook and cranny; and every evening rays of ochre flooded the back of the house as the ravens called loudly, and flew back to their eyries with food.
Sometimes rotten apples, sometimes berries, sometimes wiggling, tiny mammals – Tom, squinting, once saw a mouse, its tail clamped in a raven’s vast beak, wiggling in panic before they vanished into the trees.
Tom ate more apples in that fortnight than in his life to date: forever more they were linked for him to that time, when he lost so much but found his father.
In the early evening they would walk out to pick blackberries, which they brought back and cooked or ate fresh with cream, and then Edward lit the fire, as the nights were suddenly cold, and Tom and Jenny played Scrabble, and his father smoked his pipe, and the ravens circled overhead, calling furiously to one another in the tall, dark pine trees behind the house, building their nests, like mythic eyries.
There was a stream at the bottom of the garden where he and his father fished for trout and where they cooked it over a special outside grill, the juices spitting on the coals; and they scattered it with the rosemary that grew in vast throngs along the paths below the green gate.
There was the pheasant that wandered into the garden along the banks of the stream one evening, wild-eyed and waving its luxuriant plumage, and his father killed it with the shotgun, and they had pheasant for supper the following evening and Jenny made bread sauce and Tom remembered things he had forgotten: the winter his father skinned and butchered the frozen sheep; how he drowned rats and broke chickens’ necks, and, once, in front of Tom, stamped on a tawny owl with a broken wing.
How he was brutal, and tough, to survive, because he had to be, and how far it was from Tom’s life now, where he lived on tins mostly, tins of beans and Spam and mulligatawny soup.
The pheasant was delicious, and so was the bread sauce.
He would try to make some of the latter when he was back in London.
He would try to make everything different.
For he knew then that this was a magic time, never to be repeated.
These were calm, idyllic days and nights, marred only by one incident, which Tom didn’t think much of at the time.
He was stronger than before; he slept well; he was tanned, spending most of his time outside with his father clearing the garden, hacking at brambles and briars and lifting up paving slabs to remake paths.
A few days before he and his father were due to leave, they were down at the stream, clearing the irises and heucheras and other plants trying to clog the flow of the water, and removing the rocks and stones, placing them on the bank.
‘I wish I could stay,’ Tom said suddenly. ‘Not go back to London.’ His father grunted. ‘Don’t you think, Dad?’
‘We were going to live here, you know,’ his father said, wiping his brow on his sleeve. He leaned on his spade. ‘Irene was very like her father; she had his spirit. He loved it here: the ancient stones, the history of it, so did she. It was in her bones. She’d have loved to stay.’
‘Why didn’t we, then?’ Tom was filled with a wild certainty that things would have been okay if they’d stayed there. ‘Couldn’t Mother have asked Jenny and Henry to let us?’
Edward shook his head. ‘Not as simple as that, Tom.’ He drove the spade into a hard bank of mossy earth.
‘I wanted to stay on afterwards too, but the family wouldn’t hear of it.
Shut the place up. Too many memories.’ He thrust viciously at the clod of earth, shovelling it away in a shower of black crumbling soil. ‘They couldn’t forgive me.’
‘For what?’
His father stopped. ‘I’d hurt your mother. Very much. It was all in the past, you know. We’d made it up. But Jenny – Jenny and Henry, they wouldn’t forgive.’
‘Why? What did you do?’
His father raised his eyebrows. ‘I was a fool. I made a mistake. But it was just one mistake. I wish –’
‘You think that’s why?’ a sharp, steady voice behind them said. Edward whipped round, Tom too, nearly falling over in the process. His aunt stood in front of them, holding a tray with two teacups and some biscuits. ‘It’s not why, Edward.’
‘Sorry, Jenny,’ his father said. ‘Didn’t mean for you to hear all that.’
‘I know,’ she said with a tight, cold smile. She put the tray down on a tree stump. ‘You can’t possibly understand. Yes, you hurt Irene. Yes, you broke your marriage vows. But you don’t know it all. You – don’t know, Edward, so don’t try to understand.’ Her knuckles, clutching the tray, were white.
‘I’m trying,’ said his father slowly. ‘Jenny – I am.’
‘Raise ravens, and your eyes will be gouged out,’ Jenny said, pointing a finger at him, at the trees behind the house, where the ravens called to one another. ‘You reap what you sow, Edward.’
A songbird was singing in the thicket across the way, on the other side of the stream, flowing like liquid gold. Tom strained to listen to it. He didn’t like this conversation. He turned to his aunt. Her face was very pale. It held the most curious expression: a sort of triumphant anger.
‘Jenny,’ said his father quietly. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all in the past.’
‘It isn’t. It never will be, Edward.’
She turned and walked back up to the house.
That evening, they played Scrabble, which Jenny won, and, when the fire in the large hearth had burned down to soft ash, Tom popped another piece of Fry’s Turkish Delight into his mouth and looked around at his aunt and father.
There had been a slightly strained atmosphere that evening, and he wasn’t sure why.
The last cinder in the hearth gave a small, sharp popping sound.
His father was engrossed in a book, chewing at his pipe.
But his aunt, who was writing something on a lined pad, sat back slightly with a start at the noise.
When she looked up from the letter, Tom caught her eye and saw she was crying, without expression, tears flowing freely down her cheeks.
Before he could react, she had raised one finger to her lips, motioning for him to be silent.
She brushed the tears away, resting her forearms on her knees, head forwards, staring into the fire again, then carried on writing. His father did not notice any of this.
‘You’ve been writing for a while, Jenny,’ Tom said eventually, unable to bear the silence.
She nodded and smiled mechanically. ‘Oh, just some instructions. There’s a girl next door who’s coming in to measure for curtains, and her father’s the farmer, and I wanted to mention about the stream flooding.’
She wrote late into the night, the tip of her tongue protruding between her lips as she scribbled, for, when Tom came down at midnight to get a glass of milk because he could not sleep, she was fast asleep by the fire, the letter, several sheets thick, clutched between her fingers.
The next day Tom was going for a walk, and, when he asked if he could give the letter to the farmer for her, his aunt said she had already delivered it.
On the day they left, Jenny locked the door and put the key under the stone beside it. Tom watched her, shocked.
‘Jenny. Anyone could get in.’
She turned to him, smiled her sweetest smile. ‘That’s the point. Anyone who wants to can come here. Anyone who needs it. They might not have anywhere else to go.’
The grass was taller than ever, the apples weighing the boughs so heavily you felt the branches might crack; the sky was gossamer light, silver and gold, such as comes only in September.
Two fresh, heart-shaped ochre-coloured butterflies, small wings dusted with black freckles, landed on the wild grasses, then darted away, caught in a sharp, cold breeze.
Summer was almost over – they all knew it.
They dropped his father at the station, for he was to journey up to Scotland by train.
Tom sat beside him, trying to quell the anxiety he felt at this new parting, for his father had been distant the past couple of days. Tom thought he knew why. His father did not want to say goodbye again. He understood. But it was different now, and he would make sure he saw that.
‘I wish you’d come back for a day, to London, Dad,’ said Tom, hugging him tightly, trying to keep down the knot of sadness inside.
‘If not now, soon. Christmas! You can come for Christmas – Jenny does this really strange confection of foods; it has to be seen to be believed, Henry starts drinking first thing, as you can imagine …’ He nodded.
‘It’d be quite a relief to have you there, to be honest.’
‘Oh! Gosh,’ said his father, looking at his watch. ‘Sounds about right. Listen! I think that’s my train.’
‘Yes, but, Dad – when will – I’ll see you soon, yes?’
‘Soon,’ said his father, and he gripped his shoulders. ‘Tom. I love you, my boy. More than anything and anyone. But – ah.’
‘Ah what?’ said Tom, smiling.
‘That’s good,’ said Edward, and he dashed his finger across Tom’s cheek.
‘Keep that smile in place, darling boy. Look here – Jenny and I agreed yesterday –’ He turned to Jenny, waiting in the car, looking straight ahead, not at him, face impassive.
‘We had a talk. Probably best if we leave things at least for now, what?’
Tom didn’t understand. ‘What?’
His father was smiling rigidly, his handsome, kind face inches away from his son’s. ‘I came because you were in trouble. I will always come if you’re in trouble. But, old man, why don’t we simply say: all the best, and I’ll see you sometime soon?’
‘What are you talking about, Dad?’ Tom could hear the pleading tone in his voice.
‘I won’t be back here. I won’t come to London.
Yes, here’s my train, old man, buck up.’ He nudged him on the back.
‘Don’t keep Jenny waiting. It’s too hard, that’s all.
You were all mine, dear boy. And they’ve taken you and shown me how deficient I was.
And so – perhaps it’s best that I don’t come.
’ He sounded as if he were just checking a train timetable; Tom stared at him, utterly uncomprehending.
‘Jenny knows best, old man. I promise you that.’
‘No, Dad,’ said Tom. ‘What’s she said to you? Don’t be silly, not again.’ He knew then, understood that the letter Jenny had written was to his father. That she had warned him off again, somehow.
‘Ah!’ Edward turned, as the final screech of the brakes came. ‘I must go. Cheerio, dear boy. Do take care.’
And he leaped up and over the bridge, running, literally running like he couldn’t wait to get away. The train covered everyone and everything in steam and smoke, and, when it cleared, the platform was empty.
Tom watched the snaking carriages swing round the corner of the track. He squared his shoulders, turned and went back to the waiting car. Jenny was happy. She sang most of the way home.