Read Online The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lisa Tuttle
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quickly pulled them on.
Downstairs the house lay still, quiet and undisturbed. In the storm porch she pushed her feet into the pair of green rubber boots waiting for her beside the back door, and wrapped up in her knee-length Barbour coat. She picked up the largest of the two flashlights, checked that it was working, and let herself out the back door, which she hadn’t locked.
The air was dry and unexpectedly warm. There was a mildness to the night that she associated with the beginning rather than the end of summer, and as she moved away from the house she smelled the gentle, domestic perfume of mint, oregano, and thyme from the edge of the kitchen garden. She made her way slowly across the lawn and into the meadow, treading down the high grass whenever she missed the path in the darkness, and was assailed by a sudden memory from her adolescence of sneaking out of the dorms with two other girls for illicit trysts with town boys. They had been oddly innocent meetings, at least for her. She’d never compared notes with the other girls, but assumed that, like her, they did no more than kiss and cuddle. She’d been just thirteen, and to her “sex” was heavy breathing and woozy feelings and slightly scary-looking athletic encounters between gorgeous movie stars, or else—for an unmarried girl—it was something dangerous that would end in disgrace, illness, or death. Kissing was different; kissing was love and liking, and any chance to practice it and prepare yourself for falling in love was too important to pass up. She remembered how intensely physical, yet emotionally detached, those make-out sessions had been, recalling the taste of cigarettes and spearmint gum on his breath, the feel of his tongue in her mouth. Once he had tasted of beer, which she thought disgusting, and she wouldn’t let him kiss her again that night. He’d accepted her ban meekly, and they’d spent an hour or more just cuddling. He’d stroked her hair and her back and arms, then, for the first time, her breasts. How sweet that night had been.
What on earth had made her think of that?
She stopped short, staring into darkness, overcome by nostalgia for something she had not thought of since…well, hardly at all in her adult life. She couldn’t even recall the boy’s name.
Forcing herself back to the moment, she raised the heavy light. The door into the orchard was directly in front of her, and there was no sign, at least on this side, of any damage to the dark brick wall. She pressed down on the latch and pulled the door open. The smell of growing apples and wet earth welcomed her, and as soon as she stepped inside the warmth of the sheltered orchard she knew it had not been breached.
All the same,
something
had startled her awake, so she paced out the boundaries and swept each wall with the powerful beam in search of any gaps or cracks. They were all whole and undamaged. The trees, too, were as she had left them in yesterday’s light: no injuries, no branches broken, no sudden fall of late-ripening apples. About a third of the trees were bare of fruit, which had ripened in August and the first half of September. The others were midseason or late-ripening varieties and as the rain had set in and continued she had worried that they’d lost the chance to develop their best flavor.
Everything she knew about apples she had learned from books or, in the last five years, from her self-taught, unpaid apprenticeship as a gardener determined to create an orchard at Orchard House.
It had started almost as a whim—although that word was too light for someone who approached life with her seriousness. Self-imposed task, even penance, might be a better term. She didn’t have to work for a living, so she needed something to do, to fill in the time. The idea of buying and restoring an old house had always appealed to her, and Orchard House had fit the bill. It was structurally sound but in crying need of lots of minor repairs and complete
Downstairs the house lay still, quiet and undisturbed. In the storm porch she pushed her feet into the pair of green rubber boots waiting for her beside the back door, and wrapped up in her knee-length Barbour coat. She picked up the largest of the two flashlights, checked that it was working, and let herself out the back door, which she hadn’t locked.
The air was dry and unexpectedly warm. There was a mildness to the night that she associated with the beginning rather than the end of summer, and as she moved away from the house she smelled the gentle, domestic perfume of mint, oregano, and thyme from the edge of the kitchen garden. She made her way slowly across the lawn and into the meadow, treading down the high grass whenever she missed the path in the darkness, and was assailed by a sudden memory from her adolescence of sneaking out of the dorms with two other girls for illicit trysts with town boys. They had been oddly innocent meetings, at least for her. She’d never compared notes with the other girls, but assumed that, like her, they did no more than kiss and cuddle. She’d been just thirteen, and to her “sex” was heavy breathing and woozy feelings and slightly scary-looking athletic encounters between gorgeous movie stars, or else—for an unmarried girl—it was something dangerous that would end in disgrace, illness, or death. Kissing was different; kissing was love and liking, and any chance to practice it and prepare yourself for falling in love was too important to pass up. She remembered how intensely physical, yet emotionally detached, those make-out sessions had been, recalling the taste of cigarettes and spearmint gum on his breath, the feel of his tongue in her mouth. Once he had tasted of beer, which she thought disgusting, and she wouldn’t let him kiss her again that night. He’d accepted her ban meekly, and they’d spent an hour or more just cuddling. He’d stroked her hair and her back and arms, then, for the first time, her breasts. How sweet that night had been.
What on earth had made her think of that?
She stopped short, staring into darkness, overcome by nostalgia for something she had not thought of since…well, hardly at all in her adult life. She couldn’t even recall the boy’s name.
Forcing herself back to the moment, she raised the heavy light. The door into the orchard was directly in front of her, and there was no sign, at least on this side, of any damage to the dark brick wall. She pressed down on the latch and pulled the door open. The smell of growing apples and wet earth welcomed her, and as soon as she stepped inside the warmth of the sheltered orchard she knew it had not been breached.
All the same,
something
had startled her awake, so she paced out the boundaries and swept each wall with the powerful beam in search of any gaps or cracks. They were all whole and undamaged. The trees, too, were as she had left them in yesterday’s light: no injuries, no branches broken, no sudden fall of late-ripening apples. About a third of the trees were bare of fruit, which had ripened in August and the first half of September. The others were midseason or late-ripening varieties and as the rain had set in and continued she had worried that they’d lost the chance to develop their best flavor.
Everything she knew about apples she had learned from books or, in the last five years, from her self-taught, unpaid apprenticeship as a gardener determined to create an orchard at Orchard House.
It had started almost as a whim—although that word was too light for someone who approached life with her seriousness. Self-imposed task, even penance, might be a better term. She didn’t have to work for a living, so she needed something to do, to fill in the time. The idea of buying and restoring an old house had always appealed to her, and Orchard House had fit the bill. It was structurally sound but in crying need of lots of minor repairs and complete
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