… in the orchard when she becomes aware of him: a shadow, standing at the front gate, looking up at the house. He cannot see her because she is screened from view by a plum tree in full spring blossom. She had been intent on catching the dark diagonal of the ladder leaning against its trunk and the way light danced about it through the branches, white, pink, black, green, ochre, purple, running the spectrum on a single tree.
It’s hot. She wears the solar topee her grandfather wore back when he was sorting out the Punjab, but sweat trickles down her forehead nonetheless. She stands to straighten her back, wipes her face with a handkerchief smelling strongly of turps. Performs her midday affirmation: feet apart, toes clenched, inhale. Left hand above head, look up. Exhale. I fill my body with Life, Love and Power. Inhale. Exhale. And as she straightens, there is one of those moments.
They fall upon her without warning. Moments of suspended stillness. There is a faint buzzing, a click in her head, and everything stops. She is small. She is nothing. She cannot move, cannot think or name anything, but she is aware, acutely aware, of everything around her. The sky arcs overhead, an unnamed expanse of intense colour. Every sound resolves to a single chord, amplified. A warbler singing its scales, the rattle of a tram over on Stanmore Road, staccato of duck quack, rippling of river water, buzz of bumble bees, slip of worms in dark earth, it all rings in her ears. And with sound comes smell: river silt and dog shit and damp spring earth.
She stands transfixed before the plum tree.
It’s a seedling tree, one she planted years ago and now fully grown. Its fruit, to be truthful, was bland, though borne in great quantity. It made good sauce and jars of jelly of a rich deep pink that always reminded her of the Queen of Sheba in the print in the hallway: that satin gown she wore to pay a visit to Solomon. The plum tree occupied a prime site, sheltered from the easterly and in full sunlight, and every year, her mother said they should cut it down and replace it with something more useful: a greengage perhaps, or a nice Victoria plum. But every year at this month, the plum tree played its trump card: a full head of blossom so delicate, so perfect, that its survival was guaranteed for another season.
Sybil stands before it, a tiny sentient thing, not thinking about her painting, nor planning lunch, though only a minute ago she had been ravenously hungry.
1 pint of potassium broth, 1 small salad of carrot, beetroot, parsley, dressed with olive oil from the chemist’s and a squeeze of lemon juice. A single cubic inch of tasty cheese.
Her mother poked doubtfully at such food. ‘Is this what we’re having?’ she said. ‘Eat it. It’s good for you,’ said Sybil, who was attempting to live radiantly in accordance with the laws of nature. ‘If I were a sheep …’ said her mother and doused her plate in plum sauce. (Plum sauce was not alkaline. Nor was plum jam. They contained sugar and other substances that could have no role in impregnating the blood with vital energy.)
But now Sybil stands before the tree in its purest form. It is alive with bumble bees, writhing ecstatically in every blossom, and at this moment her skin is transparent. It has dissolved and her inner self is reaching out from beyond the confines of her body to rise weightless above the garden, above the streets of the city. She is weightless and yet she is firmly anchored in her big working boots, she is putting down roots into the soil, she is at one with the plum tree, putting down her long white roots, her fingers sprouting leaf, like the woman in the statue touched by the god.
That is when she sees him. A dark shadow, peering up at the house. What’s he doing? He has something in his hands. A camera. He’s taking a photograph of the house. He has a bag on his back. A prospective lodger perhaps? In which case he will be disappointed as their rooms are fully occupied. Less happily, perhaps, a thief? Conducting some kind of reconnaissance? He seems tall and solidly built. Nothing for it, thinks Sybil, shaking herself free of the moment, her ears still ringing slightly. She steps out from behind the tree.
‘Hello,’ she calls. ‘Can I help you?’
‘G’day, Syb,’ says the man. And now she is able to look more closely she sees that he is in uniform: army khaki, army kitbag on his back. And then he smiles and she knows him.
‘Leonard!’ she says to this man who left the house years before, younger and wearing a bulkier, earlier version of this same uniform, driven out, the lucky one, along with his mother. Mrs McTurk had scurried down the front path swinging a bag at the mad woman who was running after them, screaming, ‘Shoo! Shoo! Out of my house!’
But here he is after all this time: Leonard.
‘We’re all set to go,’ he said. ‘Got an afternoon’s leave so thought I’d come over and see the old place. Didn’t know if you’d be around.’
‘We’re still here,’ says Sybil. ‘Just Mother and me.’.
‘Oh,’ said Leonard. ‘Might be best if I don’t hang about.’
‘Mother’s at the pictures,’ says Sybil. ‘And I’m not fourteen. Haven’t you noticed? Come on. I’ve made fruit cake. Do you still like fruit cake?”
‘Too right,’ says Leonard. So she opens the gate and he steps into the garden. Though he draws the line at entering the house. ‘Don’t think that’d be good idea, Syb,’ he says. Instead he spreads his army coat on the overgrown grass while Sybil, her heart weirdly singing, runs up the path to the kitchen, fills the teapot, begins slicing cake, then gives up and puts the whole thing on a plate. She’ll find a paper bag and wrap whatever is left over for him to take on the train. She sets the tray with two of the best cups and the teapot in its cosy that is a little wooden cottage with rows of scarlet hollyhocks and carries it out to the orchard carefully, carefully. One misstep and the whole afternoon could fracture, could break in pieces. Things could break so easily.
Leonard is standing by the easel.
‘Did you do this?’ he says as she sets down the tray. Carefully, carefully.
‘Yes,’ she says, concentrating on pouring. Ordinarily she would have whisked her work away, concealed it somewhere beyond scrutiny. Her paintings were not for people to look at, to stand back saying thoughtfully, ‘Interesting.’ They were stacked in the attic and belonged only to her. But Leonard is simply standing there quietly before her painting. He is seeing it. She remembers this quality he had, of being quiet. The way he stood aside while her family argued or fussed. He stands in front of her work and says, ‘How do you do that, Syb? Make it look so beautiful? Like a real tree? Do you mind if I take a photo?’ And he makes her stand by her painting with the plum tree in the background while he peers down into the viewfinder on a little Box Brownie, making sure he has it right before he presses the shutter.
And then they sit side by side on his coat with one of the dogs, eating a two-egg sultana cake while she tells him how she makes a tree look real and he tells her about working on the railway line up north and the freezing works, too, for a spell, in Hastings, and how he signed up. Had wanted to have a go at them ever since Spain. ‘And what about you, Syb? What have you been up to?’
Sybil feels shy. ‘Oh, you know …’ she says. ‘I paint. I do the garden. I look after Mother. She doesn’t look after herself very well.’
‘I thought you’d be married,’ says Leonard. He’s looking at her hands, wrinkled gardener’s hands, paint-spattered. ‘Thought you’d be out in the country. With six kids and dogs and horses and all that.’
‘No,’ says Sybil. ‘Not me.’
‘Thought some bloke would have snapped you up,’ says Leonard.
A little breeze ripples through the orchard, releasing a shower of petals from the plum tree overhead. One catches in her hair. ‘Snapped you up long ago,’ says Leonard. And he reaches out his hand and takes the petal in his fingers.
Then there is another moment, her second in less than an hour. Perfect stillness. Just his face, his brown eyes close to hers, his hand stroking her face as if she were the most beautiful creature in the world and not a dumpy little woman in rough woollen trousers and a gardening shirt.
And he’s saying, ‘I wanted to come and see you before I left. I wanted to see if you would …