The Apple-Tree Throne Read online

  If I fell asleep beneath this tree I think I should die happy. It is better than dying a doddering old paste-beard with all of my greedy relatives looking upon me, or a young man in a valley of death, surrounded on all sides by the enemy. At least here, I would have had a moment’s peace, and the voices within my head would be silent for a moment — no. They have begun again.

  That paper, that yellow paper. I can say nothing.

  I leave the novel in the grass — if someone wants it, it is theirs, they will get better use of it — and walk to Swindmore Street, and the Clarks’ modest home.

  I force myself to eat at least half of what’s on my plate, though I constantly feel on the verge of vomiting, and afterwards there is a magnificent cake, and stewed plums, and both sherry and brandy. Victoria is resplendent in blue cotton, a practical gown sewn with strawberries and forget-me-nots, her thick dark-brown hair pinned into a bun, streaked with a deep bronze just the colour of her skin. I recall the days when I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever known, though she’d always told me that, being so young, we would meet thousands more girls in our lives, and amongst those there would be many more beautiful than her. But it never happened.

  “You look like you’ve been reducing, Ben,” she says, placing more cake onto my plate. “Here, have some cream with that. Surely the Wickersleys have not got you on such mean rations?”

  “Oh, no… we eat together most nights.”

  “I have him on many of the ones they do not, and I assure you that he is being adequately fed,” Clark breaks in. “He must be love-sick. Eh? Is that it, my lad?”

  “Must be.”

  “Well, you’ll be well set-up for glint, anyway,” he says, studying his nails innocently. “If you ever run short, you can just sell all the extra letters in her name… I say, are you all right? Vic, knock him on the back, there’s a lass.”

  “I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed in a week,” I gasp, reaching for my sherry.

  “Fortunately, I take no payment for this service,” he says loftily. “You must simply name your first-born after me.”

  “Leave off, Billy,” Vic laughs. “Look at him, he’s turning green. It’s a bit soon to speak of children. But things are going well, I suppose?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Vic nods. “She does love the things that shine.”

  “I declare myself insulted,” Clark cries. “What am I then, meat for cats? The meanest Grobber in the land?”

  “William! Don’t say ‘Grobber.’ It is not concomitant with our station in life,” she scolds him, and we laugh most heartily at that, for it’s quite true that the moneyed classes hate the term and still call themselves Britons, as in days of old before the Republic. We pride ourselves on being modern and so in casual speech reveal our precise monthly income.

  “Can’t believe you’re back and the first thing you do is find a bit o’ jam,” Clark says, lacing his hands behind his head.

  “Oh, is she then? I thought perhaps she were harder stuff,” I say, thoughtfully. “More bitter. Bit o’ marmalade, perhaps.”

  “Still spreads, dunnit.”

  “William!”

  I’m still chuckling as we finish our cake and sherry, and Clark disappears to the cellar for a fresh jar of cherry-jam for the final bread-and-butter pudding. Their phonograph hums away to itself in the corner, needle up, like a purring cat; Vic crosses to it and puts on a fresh record, Vivaldi. It feels warm, and safe, and outside is dry and cold, and leaves whirl past the window, and something is expanding in my chest and working its way up to my throat. For a moment I panic, as if I have been captured from behind by an enemy soldier and cannot even raise my arms to free myself. My shoulders begin to shake. I cannot throw it off, whatever is upon me. Nothing will come between us.

  A bowl of apples appears in front of me, shining, red and yellow each on one side. All I can think of is Wickersley’s initials on the apple-tree, how high he had climbed to get there, how there was no date — he might have done it a day before we were shipped off, and I would not have known. Three years we have all been away from the houses and people and streets we loved, and we have returned to find all changed, and not one thing the same, except what we were forced to leave behind. My throat closes entirely, and with my last breath I emit one barking sob. The kitchen begins to go gray.

  “Ben.” Vic gently knocks her knuckles on my back as if desiring entrance, the way Clark always does, and in the same place. “Oh, my dear one. What is it?”

  I am being haunted, it is a battle not of wits or grit but simply a war of attrition, both of us struggling to exist in the same space which we believe we deserve, no different from Gundisalvus’ Land, I cannot shake the idea that I either should have died then or cannot justify living now, I stole holy water this morning, do you hear me, I am a thief of more things than I ever thought I could steal in life, I remember the dust, the smell of the dust, I wake screaming with it in my nose, my leg hurts constantly, it collapses at strange moments, and there is nothing within me, I am the hollow shell of soldier, man, friend, lover, and I cannot tell whether I have gone mad or not, and no one else can tell me either.

  “I am very tired, Vic,” I manage, and lower my head into my arms so she cannot see the tears.

  “Oh, Ben.” She strokes my hair until Clark returns, and then both their hands descend upon my shoulders while they confer. It is reasonably nice under here— it smells of cinnamon and nutmeg, and the lemon wax of the table. It is also warm, and there is Vivaldi.

  “Come on, my lad,” Clark says, and pulls me up; I blink at the gas-lights, and wipe my face quickly. “Spend the night here. Nah, go on — it’ll be like when we were nippers. Remember that? We’ll have eggs and side-belly in the morning, and sugar flapjacks - “

  “Now hold fire, you. I’m not making all that!” Vic protests.

  Clark keeps talking, smoothly, as he guides me towards the spare bed-room. “I’ll be cooking, of course, can’t expect me lady-love to soil her dainty hands, and of course my cookin’s always so much more interesting than hers…”

  “I’ll get the charcoal-tablets,” Vic calls.

  “And the push-broom to get all the sugar out my moustache,” he calls back, and shakes a coverlet over the sofa. “Sleep, eat. While you’re here, ‘pon my word, you’ll want for nothing.”

  “Thanks, Clarkie.” I look up at him, trying to say something else — apology, perhaps, or a gibbered explanation that would be half lies. His face tells me he is not interested in either.

  “Sleep, my lad,” he says, and shuts the door behind him.

  ***

  Where were you last night?

  “None of your business, evil spirit.”

  What are you doing?

  “Trying to send you to your well-deserved eternal rest.”

  It’s not working.

  I ignore him, and continue dabbing my borrowed paintbrush along the windowsill, then work my way around the room, anointing the corners and edges of things. It is unscientific, I will admit, but due to my inability to get into the house and steal a perfume aerosoliser to mist the entire chamber, I must pick and choose. If this does not work, I am prepared to remove the battery from my radio-viz — well, his, I suppose — and attempt to hook up some wires to the window-frame, electrifying it against his entry.

  “Would it not be better,” I ask, not looking at the window as I return to the writing-desk, “to rest? Than to be here, unsleeping, unseen, forever?”

  It is like life.

  “It is not like life. You were famous, loved, the pride of the army and your family. How many took credit for you as their prodigy? How many articles were written, how many portraits taken? And now this. This is not like life, Wickersley.”

  I did not have enough of it, I…

  His voice wavers, and I look up to see him sliding through the window, struggling somewhat, stretching like taffy. I flinch back in the writi
ng-chair, banging it against the desk. Behind me, something breaks and falls. I stand quickly, and get a wall to my back, for what little good it will do. The contaminated holy water was of no use at all; walls, doors, glass, are as air to him. But Wickersley stops, confused.

  I will not harm you, Braddock. But you must go. You cannot take the life that was supposed to be mine.

  “I am not. This is mine, Wickersley. It is none of my fault if you cannot tell the difference.”

  You live in my room, you sleep in my bed, you attend church with my family, you seduce them from me— all of them, mother, father, Clifford, Rosalyn. You are stealing my life.

  “Stop saying that!”

  Why are you doing this? Why? What could possibly possess you to do this?

  His face is contorted with pain, though the wound in his throat is almost gone — it never could have healed in life, not if he lived to be a hundred years old, but in death, it has become a thick gray band about his colourless throat. He is still beautiful, and still not quite here. The wallpaper pattern is crisp and bright through the vacancy of his body. “They do not see me as you, Theo. I promise. Can you not see that they still love you, they still think of you? No one could replace you.”

  Yet still you try! What are you doing here if not for trying?

  “I…they insisted.”

  That is an excuse, not a reason.

  My fists clench, as if a solid left hook to the chin would have any effect on a ghost. My hands still itch to hurt him. “You were given your chance here, and I am sorry that it seemed it ended too soon. But you received precisely what you were allotted. Even you must admit that. You cannot be angry with me for that. I did not measure it out.”

  He falls silent, and painstakingly settles upon the bed, sinking down a few inches before he manages to pull himself back up. I wonder if he will ever discover a way to remove the blood from his uniform. I am not angry with you for that, he says. I am angry with you for telling the world that you were no-one without me. You were someone Braddock. You still are.

  And I have no reply to that, and I stare at him till he slowly vanishes.

  If he is still here in some way, I cannot tell; and so I straighten up the room, and look at the laudanum bottle, and once again decide not to take any. If Mrs. Wickersley comes in here, she will be insulted at the full bottle, which will seem a rejection of her thoughtful gift. But I am having sufficient difficulty with reality as it is. A poppy-trance might send me fleeing into the arms of madness.

  The hopter model has been knocked from the windowsill; I pick it up and put it on the desk. And now I see what broke: a decorative panel on the side of the hutch has come loose, spilling a scanty handful of papers and a brown paper packet.

  “Wickersley?” I say into the empty air, feeling a fool. “May I examine these?”

  Silence.

  “Wickersley?”

  I should not look.

  The handful of letters are from Miss Meyers, dating to the winter before the draft — I remember it well, for it been unusually cold and bright, every day the sun rising in a clear sky to reveal that it had silently snowed the night before, more snow than I had ever seen in my life. The white plumes from the steam-trams hung in the air like paint and could be seen for miles around. Our town became a post-card for a few months, all white and blue and silver, and many of us went skating on the river, which we had never seen frozen over. I shivered in poor-houses and sheds, and ate scraps from fish-shops, and prayed for spring.

  But she writes brightly of other things: a new gown, what their gardener intends to plant in the spring, whether he and Wicky will attend her aunt’s New Year’s party, how handsome he looks in his new uniform, demanding suggestions for the name of a new kitten, how very irritating it is that he must spend so much time in training. Her hand is rapid, heavy, and bold, much like his, but oriented the other way — he was a sinistral. I should not, of course, feel jealous of the similarity. After a certain age, one’s graphology is as impossible to change as one’s phrenology. Proof that they belonged together, I suppose.

  Another small packet of papers seems to be Wickersley’s own writing — adolescent poetry, recollections, and a thin bound book that might be diary entries. Nothing has been dated. I set it aside and tip the contents of the brown paper packet into my palm — two silver roundels of similar size, one a pocket-watch and one a locket, both absent their chains.

  The pocket-watch can surely contain nothing compromising. I open it gingerly, mindful of its long period of dis-use — its hinge badly needs greasing — and try to read the worn-down inscription. Cotidie damnatur qui semper timet. I don’t know it from anything they shouted at us to keep our spirits up in training or on the battlefield, though there were always a few upper-brass who loved their Latin. I puzzle over it for a moment only — damnatur is clear enough, but I can’t reckon the rest.

  I put it back into the paper packet and look at the silver locket. I am not sure what I will do with myself if the photos within are of Wickersley and Miss Meyers, but I cannot understand why. That is a dark path to go down, and I am not strong enough to walk it this night.

  And yet, it was Wickersley far in the front whenever we charged — bullets whizzing about him as if he were protected by an invisible shield, his voice leading the way and tossing them aside. And the mercenaries stopped to stare for fatal moments, and that gave us the advantage. He rushed into the dark, into the swamp, half off cliffs sometimes. He never looked before he leaped; moreover, he never even peeked. A fool who got almost all of us killed. Not some…special, precious creature that the army had been lucky to find.

  I open the locket reluctantly and hold it up to the light. The left side is an oval tintype of Wickersley, and the right is blank. There is no inscription. I am relieved, and then angry at myself for being relieved. This was no battlefield rush — only opening a piece of jewelry. What a coward I am! I want to hurl the thing across the room but carefully replace it with the pocket-watch and put the packet away. Then I open the diary.

  ***

  Tell me of our enemy. Does he languish still in the dungeons of the Gauls? Has he yet been brought to justice?

  “No. The trial of Captain Eleutherios is being delayed due to jurisdictional issues. He claims but cannot prove Greek citizenship - “

  Of course not. He made up that name. Eleutherios indeed, he’s about as Greek as a Chelsea bun.

  “Well, quite. At any rate, Greece also denies that he was even resident there, or of the off-shore waters; and both Espagña and Neo-Gall wish to try him, rather than the Federation as an over-all body, but they cannot agree on a legal structure for a trial. There is even talk of convening some kind of World-Court of non-Federation members, taking it out of Europe and Americanada’s hands entirely.”

  What a mess.

  “Yes, sir. It will be some time before his fate is determined. Months, perhaps years. He is being heavily guarded in the event of escape, in the meantime.”

  I wouldn’t worry, myself. He commands no loyalty without coin, and no one will assist him. His great army was only of account when it had something to gain; it was a greedy and unsatiated darkness. He is a man quite alone in the world now.

  “I suppose so.”

  After a long silence, he says, Do they visit me in the church-yard, Braddock? Clean the leaves from my grave?

  “Of course they do, sir.”

  No, but do not lie to me. I can see it in your face.

  I close my eyes, feeling a moment’s pressure as he wafts closer in his anxiety. “The truth is I do not know. Perhaps they do. They have not yet invited me. I suppose they want to keep visits to family.”

  Yes. That could be it.

  “They haven’t told me what the ‘E’ in your name stands for.”

  They shan’t, either.

  “It’s not on the headstone, either. Oh, is it one of those family secrets? It’s something horrible, isn’t it?”


  No!

  “Envelope? Elephant? Emetic?”

  I shall die before I tell you!

  “Well, then.”

  I keep my eyes shut as he drifts past, his voice receding through the wall. He has taken pity on me tonight; it’s almost as if we are friends again. Goodnight, Braddock. Don’t let the ghost-bugs bite.

  “Goodnight, sir. Same to you.”

  ***

  Those are the good nights. On others, he continues to howl and rattle the glass, and disarray not merely my chamber but the entire guest-house. Alastair, worn down by the terror, has quit, to Mrs. Wickersley’s towering but genteel rage — it seems his family has been in their service for some time, and any defection is seen as treason. Mrs. Boyle, who is made of sterner stuff, cleans up the mess without a word and continues to keep food in the pantry and the fire going. I subsist on meals out with Clark, and infrequently purchased fried fish from the shop in the tram terminal, paying the extra few pence for middles as I never did in my youth. Vic has cakes and pies delivered, which Miss Meyers often remarks upon. She steals the accompanying notes when I am not looking, seeking evidence of an infidelity that could not possibly exist. Most of them say things like Eat by Tuesday or Watch for pips!, which is taken to be secret code.

  They are all aware, I think, that often I cannot sleep even with the shutters closed and rubber bungs in my ears, and I spend all night at The King’s Sword, the old pub where Clarkie and I used to be barrel-boys and much later, used to drink and play at billiards and cards. This is a safe if disreputable place, whose name the irascible and ancient owner Mr. Coombs refused to change after abolition. I believe his exact words at the time were to the effect that the pub’s name had not changed since 1423, and by God, he would not let it be changed now. They tried to arrest him a few times and gave up. All that was long before my time, of course.