The Apple Tart of Hope (4 page)

I went over to Oscar and Stevie and their dad and they all said things wouldn't be the same without me, and Stevie whizzed in circles. He said he was making a force field that would stop me from being able to leave, but his dad told him he was making everyone dizzy.

When you're supposed to feel positive and warm about something that's filling you with a rigid kind of dread, it makes you quiet. It makes you not want to talk to people. It makes you wish you could tell everyone to go away and leave you alone.

My parents had started to beg.

“Please, Meg,” they would say as I flopped on the sofa in a listless stupor that can only happen when you're feeling as sad and uncertain as I was.

“Will you please do your best not to be so sullen and gloomy.”

Gradually they gave up, the way logical people do when begging is not making any difference. Instead they became sullen and gloomy themselves. They began to speak about the trip as if it was going to be an unavoidable ordeal. They'd lost the excitement that they'd started out with. They talked about the travel arrangements in whispers as if they were sharing news of a sudden illness or some massively expensive bill they hadn't been expecting. Soon it was as if some big sword was swinging over their heads.

I felt guilty. I'd infected the house with a crotchety mood. My parents' prospect of their trip of a lifetime had been drained of its happiness and it was my fault.

The whole world felt bar-taut and joyless. And it probably would have stayed like that. That's if it hadn't been for Oscar.

Me and Oscar never used to get bored talking to each other at the windows. When we'd been younger we'd got into the habit of telling each other lots of quite personal things. Our best subjects. Our favorite colors. What we wanted to be when we grew up (me: a train driver, him: a trampoline man). I never asked him what exactly a trampoline man was. I should have, but I never did. There are lots of things I should have asked him.

I couldn't stop thinking about us when we were kids, and remembering us sitting there, crouched and furtive, with our chins on our elbows talking for hours about the important stuff that little kids have to talk about, like whether it was going to snow, or what we were getting for Christmas, or when was the next time we were going to the zoo.

In the beginning, our parents had told us we weren't allowed to hang out of our windows on account of them thinking that hanging out of windows was extremely dangerous. Often they shouted for us to get back inside and say good night and go to bed. But after a while, they gave up worrying about it. It became the thing we always did. We never fell out. They bought us phones when we were eleven, saying “now you can talk to each other whenever you want.” They thought we'd be thrilled, but we weren't. We were horrified. We didn't need phones as long as we lived next door to each other. Oscar kept the same old branch from that cherry tree in his room, refusing to let anyone take it away, and every night, I'd wait for his scratchy whack on my window. It was the best sound ever.

Another thing about Oscar is that he wasn't afraid of anyone. And he always made up his own mind, no matter what other people said. They're two of the best things I remember about him now.

He wasn't just my friend. He was kind of magic. I can't really explain it better than that. He was honest and he was decent and he was always cheerful. And even though his brother, Stevie, had to use a wheelchair, it wasn't a problem the way people usually think it is, because Oscar always made sure that every door was opened and every stairway had a ramp, and every train station had the right access so he could get in. He used to say that if the world was designed properly, the whole population would be flying around the place in wheelchairs. And when he said that, Stevie used to laugh.

Oscar's hobby was saving people. He used to save people all the time, and fix things that were broken and catch people when they were falling. It wasn't a skill that you'd immediately know about or notice. Stevie said that Oscar had a gift and the gift was that he could
smell
things that you wouldn't imagine would smell of anything—things like sadness and desperation. Things like fear and hopelessness.

He never made a big deal about it, but he was quiet and confident—and when you believe in your own abilities, you are much more likely to be always ready to act on them, which Oscar always was. Whenever I asked him about it, he claimed that his were not exceptional or extraordinary abilities in the slightest. Everyone, he said, is able to tell when someone is in need of help, but few people really take the time to listen to their instincts, and that, he said, was the only difference between him and a lot of other people.

It wasn't the only thing about him that was different. Oscar used to make apple tarts. I never thought there was anything remarkable about them until one night, a while before I left.

I think of it still, even when I'm trying not to.

When you live on the coast, you get used to the thousand sounds of the sea—booming one day so that you have to cover your ears, another day smacking on the rocks like the sound of giants clapping. Sometimes crashing, sometimes rippling, other times pattering. The coast is a moody place. Each day is different. Nothing ever stays the same.

It had been a summery midnight in June. The air was warm and muffled, and the sea was quiet, but little chilly strands sneaked up from its surface, weaving in and out of the warmth as they often did around our place, even in the hottest weather.

The moon wobbled with a silver brightness so it looked as if it might be breathing, and Meg Molony sat, extremely spectacular in her window—her lovely face sprinkled with freckles, her hands picking pieces of plaster off the wall, her face peering out into the night.

I'd been busy that evening because I'd had one of my hunches.

“Have you been making apple tarts again?” she asked, frowning and smiling at the same time.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what I've been doing. How did you know?”

She pointed at my hair. I shook my head and the cloud of white flour that floated up made us both laugh.

I tried to explain again about my apple-tart habit. Some people can tell from the way their bones feel that there will be bad weather coming. Some people can tell where water is buried under the ground. My ability was being able to smell things in the air, heavy things full of longing. Those smells were my sign that it was time to get baking.

She said that whenever I told her about the apple-tart thing, I had a way of speaking that made it sound logical and ordinary even though it actually wasn't.

And right then, as I had expected to, I sensed it. I had to straighten up and lean farther out the window and get Meg to stop talking.

“Hang on a moment, Meg,” I'd said and she'd said,

“What, Oscar, what is it?”

I had to get quiet and I took the telescope and looked off beyond our houses toward the pier. I could hear something nobody else could hear, and I saw something nobody else could see.

Meg was trying her best too, listening with me pretty intently while her white curtain flapped droopily around her, like a tired little ghost.

A minute or so had gone by.

“I think someone's there,” I whispered.

Meg's eyes were wide and I could see from the way she was moving that she wanted to be in on the whole thing.

“I smell it, Meg, it's really strong now.”

“I can't smell anything,” she said.

“You probably can if you concentrate a bit more.”

She did concentrate a bit more but it didn't make any difference.

“What does it smell of?” she asked me.

“It smells like someone in need; it's full of despair. Worse than fear—much more destructive. Down on the pier. I've got to go.”

I grabbed a blanket and stuffed it into my backpack. One of my apple tarts was at the ready in a white cardboard box and I had to hold it like a waiter carrying a tray. It's a miracle how it stayed in one piece as I climbed out of the window and clambered down the tree. I'd been practicing my moves, and it had obviously started to pay off.

“Ouch,” I said a few times before landing on the ground. I had to hop around for a bit, rubbing my elbow and still balancing the tart while Meg asked me if I was okay. I told her I was totally fine.

My bike was glinting at the gate.

“A man is there, Meggy. He's at the edge of the sea. Somebody's got to save him before it's too late.”

“A man? On his own? By the edge of the sea, at midnight? How has that got anything to do with you?”

I'm not really sure why, but I never worried whether something was my business or not.

Meg said that it was really great being my best friend. But she also said it was exhausting.

“Are you seriously going to go? Now? At this time of night?”

“Meg, didn't you hear me? Someone's in need of help.”

“How do you know? Maybe he's fine. Is it even slightly possible that whoever he is, he wants to be on his own?”

“Yeah. Possible. But my instincts tell me not.”

“Can I come with you then?”

“You can if you like,” I said, “but keep in mind that time may be running out.”

It turns out I was right. It was a man. Down at the end, gazing into the sparkly blackness right next to the rusty, barnacled ladder that scaled the deep side of the pier.

He seemed very old. A scraggy little dog trotted nervously up and down, looking at the water, then looking back at the man, and then looking at the water again. Stashed by the wall there was a slumped-looking blanket, full of holes, and two sad, crumpled bags huddled together like frightened people. The man was a maze of wrinkles and his hands were dirty. Tears made shiny branchlike patterns on his cheeks.

In the gentlest voice I could find, I asked him what he was doing.

“Oh dear me,” he said. “Would you take my dog, please.” He didn't look at us. He kept staring into the water as if there was something there that he had lost.

“I left Homer safe, away from the sea,” he continued, “and I've written to the RSPCA and he was going to be absolutely fine, but the silly fellow followed me down here and I can't persuade him otherwise.”

The dog sat uncertainly beside the man. The man's voice was flat and kind of distant and unexpectedly posh.

“That dog, goodness, but he's always had an unrivaled ability to sniff, and he's found me here and for the most part, he's a great boy—aren't you, Homer?—but you see . . . just at this minute, I'd much rather be alone.”

I knelt on the knobbly granite. Homer came over to me and took a few good sniffs and he must have concluded that I was okay and that I could be trusted because he rested his chin on my knee for a few seconds before resuming his nervous trotting.

“Will I take the dog?” Meg whispered, and I knew she was doing her best to be helpful.

“No, Meggy, the dog stays,” I whispered back.

And right then, I knew that the things I said to him were going to be important and so I thought for a few moments about exactly what I was going to say and then, as clearly and slowly as I could, I started to talk.

“I know what you might be thinking here on your own, but those thoughts won't last forever,” I said. “You won't always feel like this. This will pass. Homer will be here for you, and the sun will rise and you'll find your reasons again, the ones you think have deserted you. Isn't that right, Meg?” I said, turning to her as hints of a new summer morning started to rustle and stir and birds began to sing.

The man told us his name was Barney. Barney Brittle. He put his head in his hands and spoke in this low, exhausted voice: “Children, you're both very kind, but please take my dog and leave me. I would much rather you went back to your homes, thank you. This does not concern you. I would like to be left in peace.” Nobody moved for what felt like a long time.

I knew it was time. I delved into my bag and pulled out the box made of white card, and I had to lift it quite delicately, because apple tarts are fragile and this one was important. I presented it to Barney.

“Here,” I said, “I made this for you.”

Barney lifted his head and looked at me holding out the box to him.

“How on earth could you have made something for me? You've only just met me.”

His eyes shone suddenly with something brighter and more curious than you might have expected to see right then in the face of that old man.

He took a slice and held it up to his face and he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

“I must admit,” he said, “that does smell rather good.”

“Rather good?” I'd scolded him, putting on a fake offended voice and trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. “Em, I think you'll find that it's a bit better than rather good.”

“Oh will I now?” said Barney, but you could see that he was warming to the apple tart, and to us.