“I like your getup,” Aunt Edie said, laying aside her book and peering at Jean over both sets of glasses. “Very practical. I’ve never worn a pair of trousers. Do you think it’s too late to start?”
“Not at all,” said Jean. “I think you’d look elegant in trousers.”
“Useful for cycling, I should think.”
“You’re not still roaring around the village on your bicycle?” said Howard, catching the end of this exchange as he returned with two bottles of cider. “I thought you were going to get rid of it after your accident.”
Aunt Edie’s hand strayed to her bandaged nose. “I admit, I was a bit shaken up. But I’ve decided I can’t quite do without it. It’s so useful for going to the library and so forth.”
“Aunt Edie was in a collision with a horse trough,” Howard explained. “It was the trough’s fault, apparently.”
She swatted him with Dashiell Hammett and he laughed.
“I wish my mother was as intrepid as you,” said Jean.
She took a long swig from her bottle and gasped as it tore at her throat. It was strong and fiery and like no cider she had ever tasted.
“My aunt is one of a kind, I’m afraid,” said Howard. “Comparisons are futile.”
“Where are the gorgeous creatures today?” she asked, registering at last the change in personnel.
“Margaret was taken poorly this morning, so Gretchen has stayed behind to look after her. Both send their love.”
“I have some bits and pieces for them. Don’t go home without reminding me. I’ve been having a clear-out.”
“Oh dear,” said Howard, who had evidently been the beneficiary of this largesse before.
“Well, it will all be yours to deal with one day,” said his aunt. “I’m just trying to cull as much as I can now.”
“Oh, you’ll outlive us all, surely.”
“I will not,” she replied tersely. “If you think I’m going to become one of those ancient old crones with a whiskery chin you can think again. I’ve got a loaded pistol in my bedroom. I shan’t tell you where in case you try and get it off me. But I’ll be using it when the time comes.”
“You’ll probably miss and shoot the paperboy or someone,” said Howard mildly.
Jean was finding this exchange quite stimulating. She couldn’t imagine such a conversation arising at home. Her mother shrank from any mention of death with violent superstition, as if to breathe his name was to invite him in. She took another tentative sip from her bottle and shivered.
“Is this last year’s cider?” Howard asked, noticing Jean’s struggles. “It’s stronger than I remember.”
Aunt Edie took the bottle from him and rolled her eyes. “You’ve picked up the apple brandy, you clown. You’ll both be pie-eyed.”
Jean lay back on the blanket and began to giggle. She felt quite light-headed.
It took them two hours to strip the trees of all but the most unreachable apples, which were left for Aunt Edie to gather as they fell. She wasted nothing: the best unblemished fruit was wrapped in newspaper, packed in crates and kept in a cool stone shed for use over the winter. The second best would be given to friends, exchanged with neighbors for potatoes and beans, donated to the village school, made into pie filling and bottled or kept for imminent consumption. The windfalls and damaged apples were sent to the farm for pressing.
Tree climbing was a new and exhilarating experience for Jean. With no brothers or male cousins, she and Dorrie had never been introduced to rowdy outdoor games. They had spent their childhood in a second-floor flat in Gipsy Hill; by the time they moved to the house and garden in Hayes she was already an adult. Aunt Edie’s trees were perfect for a beginner, with a framework of accessible branches radiating like spokes from the trunk to provide steps and handholds.
Jean scrambled up as high as possible, made bold by brandy, until the boughs were too slender to take her weight. From her perch she dropped apples down to Aunt Edie, who was much nimbler than her previous prostration on the lounger had seemed to promise, and adept at catching them in a shawl tied around her waist. Chester, the spaniel, quivered and panted at her side.
Howard, with a basket contraption on his back, tackled the clusters of fruit on the outermost branches using a stepladder and fishing net. The cobnuts, being altogether less fragile, were thrown, shaken or knocked into the long grass, and then gathered into piles with a leaf rake and shoveled into burlap sacks.