The Taste of Apple Seeds (13 page)

I fetched my green bag with my purse, left the house, and cycled off. There was a huge DIY store on the way into the village. Without locking up my bike I went in and grabbed a large tin of paint. Two would have been better, but on my bike I couldn’t manage more than one. I wasn’t even sure how I was going to get that one back home. I also picked up a roller and a bottle of turpentine, and went to the till. The cashier, who may have been my age, gave me a hard stare and the corners of her mouth turned downward. It wasn’t until I tried fastening the tin of paint to the pannier rack and the hem of my dress got caught in the chain that I understood why the cashier had looked at me in that way. I was still wearing the golden dress and the sight of the ripped hem—now with added black oil stains—failed to improve my self-confidence or lift my mood.

I shoved the roller and turpentine in my bag, hung it over my shoulder, gathered up the dress and stuffed it into the leg holes of my knickers to make it shorter. When I climbed onto the man’s bike and pushed off, the heavy paint pot came within a millimeter of sliding off the pannier rack. I was just able to steady it, but as I did this I swerved dangerously, almost crashing into an innocent customer on his way into the DIY store. He shouted something after me that sounded like “Bloody junkie!” The man probably thought I spent the whole day sitting cross-legged in the garage with my friends, sniffing at one ten-liter tin of white paint after another. Shocked, I felt behind me, pressed the tin down firmly on the pannier rack, and cycled away one-handed and sweating profusely.

Just before getting home I turned into Max’s road; I wanted to ask him whether there were still any of my grandfather’s papers in the basement of the office. In truth, I just wanted to see him: my nighttime deliberations had produced no results. The strap of my bag was cutting into my neck painfully. The bag itself was being bounced from one knee to the other as I cycled, while the dress was gradually coming out of my knickers and hanging down in the chain again. But there was nothing I could do about that, as one hand had to hold on to the paint pot and the other the handlebars. All this was irrelevant, however, when a small black fly flew into my eye just before I got to Max’s house. My eyes began watering profusely and I couldn’t see a thing. A car was just parked there on the right—was that allowed? Probably yes, but anyway I smashed into it, let go of the paint and the handlebars; the bike overturned, the paint tin hit the road, and before I could cry for help, my bag with the heavy bottle of turpentine smacked me in the face, silencing me. At least it hadn’t knocked me off my feet—I was already crumpled on the ground. Meanwhile, the impact had forced open the lid of the paint tin and emptied its contents across the road; paint was oozing into my hair and my left ear. Getting up was impossible, for somehow my feet as well as my bag had got caught up in the bicycle, not to mention my—once-upon-a-time golden—dress. I didn’t plan on lying there for long; I just wanted to pull myself together, then rearrange my limbs and wheel the bike the short distance home. Then I heard footsteps in my right ear; not in my left one, which was by now full of white paint.

“Iris? Iris, is that you?” asked a voice somewhere above me. It was Max. I had the feeling I wasn’t exactly showing my best side at the moment, and was just about to launch into a long-winded explanation when I started sobbing instead. Fortunately, this flushed the little black fly from my eye and meant I could stop blinking like an idiot.

While I lost myself in this and other thoughts, Max untangled my dress from the bicycle and unhooked my bag strap from the handlebars. He freed my feet from the frame and took the bag off my face. He leaned the bike against the hedge by his house and crouched on the road next to me. But if I had expected that Max would then take me in his strong arms and carry me off into the sunset I was very much mistaken. Perhaps he didn’t want to get his smart blue shirt smeared with white paint. I gingerly picked myself up; it wasn’t too difficult now that the bike had been lifted away.

“Can you walk? What hurts?”

Everything hurt, but I could walk. He took my elbow and guided me into his garden, having first thrown the empty paint pot in the dustbin.

“Sit down, Iris.”

“But I—”

“No buts. This time,” he added with a crooked smile. But I could see from his eyes that my expression worried him.

“Max, please let me use your bathroom and get this stuff off before it sets on my skin forever.”

These words, which I said without sobbing or blinking like an idiot, seemed to reassure him. He said, “Okay, wait. I’ll come with you.”

“What for?”

“For God’s sake, Iris, stop making such a fuss.”

I sat down on the closed toilet seat and let him do it. He wiped around my ear and cheek so tenderly and gently that I couldn’t help crying again. When Max saw this he apologized for having hurt me. Which only made me sob more. He put down the sponge, kneeled beside me on the bathroom tiles, and took me in his arms. That was the end of his smart blue shirt.

For a while I continued sniveling into his collar, but only because it smelled so good and felt so comfortable as well, and then he examined the grazes on my hands and knees. There were none on my face: I had been saved by my bag. Surprisingly, even the bottle of turpentine was still intact. Then he went out, and I got into the shower and washed the rest of the white paint out of my hair with a blue shampoo for men.

When I came back out to the terrace in a blue dressing gown—the golden dress was no longer recognizable as such—he was lounging in a deck chair reading the paper. A large number of documents were piled up beside him. Of course, today was a normal working day; how could I have assumed that he would be at home?

“Why aren’t you at the office?” I asked him.

He laughed. “You should be glad I’m not. Sometimes I take stuff home with me.” He put the newspaper down and gave me a critical look. “The paint’s gone, but your face still isn’t the right color.”

I started rubbing my cheeks.

Max shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. You look pale.”

“That’s your dressing gown. It’s not my color.”

“Maybe, yes. Perhaps you’d like to change back into that thing you had on when you arrived?”

I raised my hands. “Okay, okay, you win. I give up. Satisfied? May I sit down now?”

Max stood up and helped me into his deck chair. This was kind of him, once again, and I felt ashamed of my grumpiness toward him. I couldn’t even explain it to myself and I started sobbing again.

Max said hastily, “No, Iris, it’s all right, honestly. I’m sorry.”

“No,
I’m
the one who’s sorry. You’re so kind, and I’m, and I’m . . .” I wiped my nose with the sleeve of his dressing gown. “. . . and I’m wiping my nose on your dressing gown! That’s awful!”

Max laughed and said it really
was
awful and that I should stop doing it and instead take a sip of the water he had put on the table for me.

So I did as I was told and also ate two chocolate biscuits and an apple. Max asked, “What were you going to do with the paint?”

“Well, paint.”

“I see.”

He looked at me, and I giggled. But then I remembered the writing on the chicken shed and became serious. “Did you know that someone’s sprayed the word ‘Nazi’ on the chicken shed in our garden? In red paint.”

Max looked up at the sky. “No, I didn’t.”

“So now I want to paint the chicken shed.”

“The entire chicken shed? With one tin of paint?”

“No. But if I’d put two or three more tins on the pannier rack there wouldn’t have been room for much else, would there, hmm?”

“Look, Iris, why didn’t you just ask me whether you could borrow my car, or whether I could get the stuff for you?”

“Look, Max, how was I supposed to know you were hanging around here rather than in the office?” And then I added, “Anyway, I was on my way to see you.” I gave him a hard stare and hoped that he wouldn’t notice that I was knotting myself up in strange contradictions.

Max wrinkled his brow and I kept on talking rapidly. “I wanted to know what papers you might still have in the office relating to my grandfather. Did a Nazi write that, or is someone trying to accuse us of being Nazis?”

“I’ll have a look. We’ve still got some cardboard boxes in the basement belonging to the old man. But if there’d been anything incriminating in them I doubt he’d have stored them with us.”

“That’s true. So I must have just been coming to see you.”

Max looked at me quizzically. “Are you making fun of me, or are you flirting?”

“I’m not making fun of you. You rescued me, and I used your blue shampoo for men and blew my nose on your dressing gown. I’m very much indebted to you.”

“You’re flirting with me, then,” Max said thoughtfully. “Excellent.”

He nodded.

Chapter VIII

ALTHOUGH IT WAS ONLY A
short distance to my house I didn’t want to walk it in Max’s blue dressing gown. So I got into his car and Max put the bike in the boot, although only half of it fitted in. He didn’t let me out at the bottom of the drive but opened the wide gate and took me as far as the green gate that led to the yard. He retrieved my bicycle from the boot and inspected it.

“Doesn’t seem to be any damage. You’re lucky.”

I nodded.

Max scrutinized me as closely as he had the bicycle. “You ought to get some rest.”

I nodded again, thanked him, and walked through the garden to the front door, trying to look dignified and poised in spite of the huge dressing gown. I must have succeeded, because when I reached the corner of the house and turned to Max, I could see him watching me with his arms folded. I couldn’t read his expression but I tried to persuade myself that it was full of wonder.

By now it must have been the afternoon. I slipped off my sandals at the bottom of the staircase and hauled myself up, groaning a duet with the banisters. Everything was still hurting. The shock. I threw myself on the bed and fell asleep instantaneously.

Something rang, twice, three times; I wasn’t yet properly awake before it had stopped. I struggled my way out from dreams and bedcovers, and suddenly heard the staircase cracking and creaking. I started and the first thing I saw was Max’s shock of brown hair through the banisters, followed by his shoulders. When the whole of him had arrived upstairs he found me at the door to Inga’s room.

“Iris? Please don’t be alarmed.”

I was not in the least alarmed; in fact I was very pleased to see him. Even though it was a mess up here and I still had his dressing gown on.

I smiled and said, “Is this a ploy of yours, sneaking up on women when they’re lying about defenselessly somewhere?”

“You didn’t hear me ring. I just wanted to check on you—it’s six o’clock. And when no one answered I was worried that you might be feeling ill. So I just came in—the front door wasn’t locked. And I’ve also brought some paint, a brush, and a roller. It’s all downstairs.”

I realized that I was feeling fine. My hands were still stinging a bit, my knees, too, but the exhaustion had passed and my head was clear. “I’m fine. Really good, in fact. How lovely that you’re here. Right, now get out: as you say it’s six o’clock and I’ve worn nothing sensible all day.”

Max cast a long, thoughtful look at his dressing gown. “You haven’t got anything on underneath, have you. Is that a ploy of
yours
?”

“Hey, out I said!”

“Because if it is a ploy, then I have to tell you it’s working.”

“Look away, Wimp.”

“Okay, I’m going. But I do feel that it’s only my right to look at my own dressing gown. After all, I’d like to make sure you’re not wiping your nose on it.”

“Out!”

Max ducked instinctively when I threw a cushion at him. Although he was already halfway out the door he turned slowly to me, picked up the cushion, fluffed it, and leaned against the doorjamb. He just stood there, the cushion under his arm, saying nothing. In seconds I had goose bumps all over my body.

Max shook his head, tossed the cushion on the floor, and left the room. I shrugged off the dressing gown only when I heard him going down the stairs. Quite right, too.

I put on fresh underwear and was then faced with a problem. The black clothes from the funeral were too smart and warm; my second-choice black things were dusty and stiff with dried sweat. There was nothing for it but to root around in the old wardrobes. Harriet’s pink-and-orange smock dress would have to suffice. Harriet’s and Inga’s clothes fitted me better than my mother’s did. Hers were too tight.

When I came downstairs I thought Max had vanished. But I found him outside. He was sitting on the front steps, his elbows on his thighs and his chin in his hands. Three tins of white paint were standing on the next step.

I sat beside him. “Hi there.”

Without taking his head from his hands he turned and looked at me through the crook of his arm. His expression was somber but his voice sounded warm when he said, “Hi there.”

I really wanted to lean my head on his shoulder, but didn’t.

His body tensed. “Shall we go and paint your chicken shed, then?”

“What? Now?”

“Why not? It’ll be light till late tonight. And it won’t matter when the sun goes down because I’m sure your dress will glow in the dark, too. It’s actually painful to look at it in daylight.”

“Loud, you mean?”

“Oh yes, that’s it: loud.”

I gave him a shove. He sprang up and fetched my green bag from inside. His eagerness was beginning to grate on my nerves. What was also beginning to grate was his avoidance of close physical contact. Coward. Or did he have a girlfriend? She must be a lawyer. She was probably at Cambridge in the middle of an MBA or MML, or even a KMA for all I cared. Spoke all European languages fluently, had doe eyes and a body that looked fantastic in tiny, sexily cut suits. I felt ridiculous in my fluorescent hippie smock and would have loved to send Max home. But now he was here with three tins of paint, waiting patiently for me to take the roller out of my bag. What about me? I had just napped for nigh on two and a half hours and wouldn’t be able to get to sleep again before midnight anyway. Why not go and paint the chicken shed?