Rough Cider (6 page)

We’d gathered round an ancient wagon heaped with fallen apples of many colors, used to make the “windfall cheese” that would produce the first cider. The men sat on the shafts, the girls on upturned baskets, eating the bread and cheese with slices of onion that they’d brought in rush baskets and red handkerchiefs. Shafts of sunlight probed through the leaves overhead.

After we’d eaten, the girls showed the GIs how to tell your true love with an apple skin, peeling it in one piece and throwing it over your head to see if it fell in the shape of a letter. Harry’s fell conveniently into an 5, and Sally kissed him amid shrieks of excitement, but Duke refused to try the experiment. They persuaded him instead to throw an apple high in the air, without telling him the purpose of the game. Several girls rushed to catch it, leaping like rugby players, but no one caught it cleanly. It bounced loose, across the grass, straight to Barbara, who hadn’t joined in. She picked it up.

Someone handed her a knife. With everyone crowding round, she cut it cleanly in half and showed us two pips. The girls chorused, “Tinker, tailor,” and I realized that this was a version of the fortune-telling game my mother had once taught me to play with plum stones. A boy was supposed to discover what job he would have in adult life; a girl would find out what her true love would be.

She took one of the halves and bisected it. There were no pips showing. She cut the opposite half. Someone (I think it was Sally) shouted triumphantly, “Soldier!”—but the word froze on her lips because the knife had cut clean through the pip. Apparently it was a bad omen. Barbara threw aside the pieces of apple and said, “Silly nonsense, anyway.”

After lunch I didn’t see much of Barbara. She was collecting farther up the orchard, with her brother Bernard, I believe. I heard one of the girls say, “It don’t seem worth crying over,” and the other gave a shrug and moved on.

Towards four, Mrs. Lockwood brought out tea and cakes and we assembled along the dry-stone wall where the sun was warmest. Sally was sitting in the jeep with Harry. Duke leaned against a tree, whittling at a piece of dead wood he’d found. I couldn’t see Barbara, but each time a break was called, some of the girls would leave us to use the farmhouse toilet.

She still wasn’t back when Mr. Lockwood gave the word to start again. I noticed Mrs. Lockwood look anxiously about her before she picked up the tray and returned to the house. A short while later she was back to speak to her husband. He handed his ash pole to Harry to take a turn and marched off into the thick of the orchard.

I sensed trouble for Barbara. Soon a figure appeared from the direction Mr. Lockwood had taken. It was the man Cliff, whose interest in Barbara I’d noticed earlier. He marched briskly towards us, ignoring some mild taunts about skiving. Without a word to anyone he continued straight to the wall where the bikes were lined up, collected his, and cycled away up the lane.

Then I saw Barbara coming from the same direction, closely followed by her father. Her hair was hanging loose, and she was carrying the scarf she’d used as a fastening. As she came closer I saw that she was crying. She broke into a run. Ignoring everyone, including her mother, who stepped towards her asking, “Barbara, my love, what is it?” she ran through the gate towards the house.

Mr. Lockwood spoke briefly to his wife, and they followed Barbara.

At this point you’ll be wanting to know precisely what had happened. I can tell you that Alice broke into my narrative and asked if it was a sexual attack.

I reminded her that I was just a child. If there was gossip, as I’m sure there must have been, they didn’t let me in on it. All I know for certain is that Cliff Morton didn’t appear again for the apple picking, and nobody would mention the incident in my presence in the house. I saw marks on Barbara’s throat that I now know to be love bites, and I heard her mother’s low voice through the wall, questioning her by the hour in her bedroom that night, but the words were inaudible.

Alice wasn’t satisfied. She didn’t seem able to accept that at nine years old I was clueless about sex. She kept insisting that I must have heard something, if not from the family, then from the village girls. If I did, it didn’t make sense to me at the time, and I haven’t retained it. I’ve told you the facts I remember.

Alice folded her arms and said, “I don’t believe this!”

“All right,” I told her evenly. “I’ll save my breath.”

*SIX*

S
he blinked rapidly two or three times, and her mouth trembled as if she were about to cry. She said huskily, “For pity’s sake, Theo, don’t clam up on me now.”

I told her, “Leave it, then. I can tell you what I remember and that’s all.”

“But you must have thought about it since.”

“Often.”

“In that case…”

“My thoughts won’t help you. Let’s stay with my memories. Christ, we’ll be here all night if we get into speculation.”

Alice lowered her head and drew her arms tightly across her chest. “I’ve got to live with this tragedy for the rest of my life.”

The self-pity didn’t move me. I said sharply, “I was part of it. How do you think I feel, forced to go over it again?”

“Sorry.” She straightened up and moved her hand across the table in a placating gesture. “I won’t interrupt again, Theo. I promise.”

I took up the story.

The stacks in the orchard multiplied during that last week of September 1943, and diffused sweet-sharp aromas through the crisp air. I joined the pickers at every opportunity, reluctantly fitting school and sleep into the intervals. While I was working, the homesickness hardly troubled me at all.

One evening after tea the GIs unexpectedly drove in to spend a few more hours with us. I was elated, especially as Duke had brought some chewing gum for me to hand round at school. The Yanks generally were known for their generosity to children, but to me it was more personal. Duke understood how I felt as an outsider. In between gathering the apples he asked me how I was treated there. I told him they were no different, really, from the kids I knew in London, except for the way they talked. He chuckled at some of the names I’d heard for ailments that kept them off school, like hoppy cough, brown kitties, and information. One boy had spent a week in horse piddle. Duke said he was collecting local words and sayings, and he asked me to listen out for more, not just at school but round the farm. No doubt he saw a small, lonely boy in need of distraction, although I know his interest in the dialect was genuine.

I’ve a suspicion that Mr. Lockwood overheard some of this, because as the light faded, he came out with a beauty, which I hope I remember right: “Well, ‘tis dimmit near as dammit. Us be to home, I say.”

Walking back with Duke and Mr. Lockwood, I heard Duke ask after Barbara, who hadn’t put in an appearance that evening. Mr. Lockwood gave a sniff and said, “Seen too many apples, I reckon.”

“But she’s okay, sir?”

“Right as rain.”

Duke cleared his throat and said, “Some of the guys at the base are putting on a show for Columbus Day a week Saturday. Amateur talent, mostly, but not bad, not bad at all. Harry and I figured maybe Barbara and her friend Sally…”

Mr. Lockwood said as if the connection were obvious, “Can ‘ee get hold of a gun?”

Duke frowned. “I guess I could, sir.”

“Can ‘ee use ‘un?”

“Sure.”

“Come over betimes. Shoot some of they pigeons for supper, talk some sense into my maid Barbara.”

So a shooting party was got up the following Sunday. Four men with three weapons between them. Mr. Lockwood and his son, Bernard, had shotguns, while Duke and Harry shared a service-issue automatic pistol, a Colt .45. No questions were asked about where it came from. Acquiring it was easy, I imagine, compared with smuggling a jeep out of the base, and that seemed to raise no problems.

Being so young, I wasn’t invited. I recall sitting in the farmhouse kitchen hearing shots from the woods and feeling sorry for the pigeons; needlessly, as it turned out. The shooting party shot nothing, and we supped on bacon and eggs. But the evening wasn’t wasted for Duke, because Barbara agreed to attend the Columbus Day show if her friend Sally went too.

The day also ended happily for me. Duke promised to come back and show me how the Colt .45 worked. I might even be allowed to try a few shots myself. He was leaving the pistol in the drawer of the hallstand where the shotguns were kept, because there’d be another shooting party before long.

In bed that night I credited myself with bringing Duke and Barbara together. Two of the kindest people in the world; perfectly matched by me. They’d never have met if I hadn’t brought Duke to the farm. I still reflect on it sometimes. The difference is that these days it doesn’t send me into a deep, smug sleep. It has me racked with guilt.

On the night of the show Barbara brought me back a Hershey bar from the base. It was after midnight when she tiptoed past the open door of my room. I called out to her. She came in and sat on my bed and described every turn in the show, from a black jazz man to a man who took off Hitler. And she’d had the surprise of her life when Duke had gone up on the stage. He hadn’t been on the program. He was just called up there to fill in with a song when there was some backstage hitch. There’d been a great cheer from the GIs as he went forward. They’d handed him a guitar and he’d sat on the edge of the stage in front of the curtains and sung three or four songs. He’d got a really fine voice and a great sense of rhythm and he’d written all the songs himself. The audience had loved it. And Barbara had felt fit to burst with pride when he’d taken his applause and come back to his place beside her in the audience.

She told me she’d be meeting Duke again. There was more to him than she’d thought at first, quite apart from his musical talent. Beautiful manners and a quiet, roguish sense of humor. Withal, he was shy, which she’d never have expected a Yank to be.

After that I looked forward to his calling often at the farm, but Barbara preferred to meet him secretly. Possibly she didn’t want her parents to know how often she was seeing him, because there was a lot of local gossip about GIs behaving badly with girls. She used to say she was meeting Sally. I think Duke would meet her down the lane and drive her into Glastonbury or Shepton Mallet for a drink. She was always home before eleven. And I always left the door of my room ajar, in case she wanted to come in and talk.

Once, when I was cleaning my shoes outside the kitchen door, Mrs. Lockwood came out and talked to me about Barbara. There’d been some friction in the family since the incident in the orchard with Cliff Morton. I think they blamed Barbara at least in part for what had happened. Mrs. Lock-wood asked me if any of the village children had mentioned seeing Barbara going out with Americans. I was truthfully able to say they hadn’t. The kids at school didn’t ever speak about Barbara. Then Mrs. Lockwood asked me flatly if Barbara was seeing Duke.

It put me on the spot. I’d been brought up to tell the truth. Most times, anyway. Kids were fair game but not grownups. Lying to grown-ups was out. Yet I felt a pull of loyalty. Barbara was a grown-up, too, and I liked her best of all the Lockwoods. I didn’t want to break a confidence. So I refused to answer.

To no effect. Mrs. Lockwood learned exactly what she wanted to know from my silence. And when I refused to confirm it, she bent me over the mangle and larruped my backside with a slipper for dumb insolence. She was a resolute woman.

It was the only time anyone struck me during my stay in Somerset. I’m not going to make the obvious comment that I was more surprised than hurt, because the truth is that I was surprised
and
hurt. That slipper really stung. Until that time I’d equated Mrs. Lockwood’s temper with her voice. She’d tolerated me in her kitchen, fed me well, washed my clothes, and sent me to school on time. She hadn’t given me affection, which Barbara supplied, but neither had she been hostile. Looking back, she was obviously under strain. She resented being stuck with an evacuee and felt worried over Barbara, and it all came out as she wielded the slipper.

I’m grasping for a memory now. It’s elusive, and I can’t be certain whether some of it was wish fulfillment after my punishment. That same night I’m lying facedown in bed and the pillow is damp. I’m practically asleep when I feel the soft movement of hair against my neck.

It’s Barbara.

I keep still, not wanting her to know I’ve been crying. Her face rests lightly against mine and remains there for some seconds. Then she kisses my cheek. The touch of her lips stirs me in a way quite new to me. She strokes my forehead, whispering that she’s come to thank me for what I went through for her. She says I’m her little champion. She knows how much it hurt because she and her brother, Bernard, used to get it the same way when there was trouble, over the mangle, with the slipper, just like me. But they always deserved it and I didn’t, and she feels ashamed of what her mother did. She promises me it won’t happen again—not because of her, anyway. Before she goes, she kisses me a second time. That’s all I’ve retained. I don’t think I made it up. I can hear her clearly saying, “My little champion.” Don’t mock it. We were all children once.

In November the cider pressing got under way. The first frosts had nipped the applies lying heaped in the orchard, and we loaded them into trailers to be moved to the cider house. When I say
we,
I mean Mr. Lockwood, Bernard, and three farmhands, assisted between times by me and the GIs, who were eager to see the process. That’s what they said, anyway. If they’d come to see the girls, they were in for a disappointment, for this was men’s work.

Boys’ work too. I was honored with a special duty. The old stone cider house was equipped with a loft, and the apples were brought there to be hoisted up in sacks through a door set high in the wall that fronted on the yard. It was my task, working by lantern light in the apple loft, to load the fruit into the wooden feed box of the mill beneath. I was given a wooden shovel, and when the mill was running and the word came up from Mr. Lockwood, I’d start an avalanche through the square opening in the floor, down through the funnel of sacking to the hissing, spitting cider mill. Tremendous. In the intervals I made a slide over the juicy, black mess on the floor.