The Apple Orchard

One afternoon last autumn, my sister Billie and I went to pick apples in the orchard at the back of Nana’s house. Nana’s apple orchard is an established acre-worth of big thick-trunked trees all in rows that sprout leafy greenery and shiny apples. In spring the tight buds pop into open flowers, and these flowers become budding fruits that Nana needs help to pick, because there are so many. And that was what Billie and I were doing in the orchard that afternoon last autumn: picking apples. Little ones, littler than usual. But so smooth that when I rubbed them with the sleeve of my shirt, I could see my reflection in them. And when I showed Billie her distorted reflection in an apple, she laughed her little high-pitched laugh and smiled up at me with rosy cheeks. Nana had given us two brown wicker baskets which we were to fill up and take back to the kitchen and empty into a big barrel there. Our baskets were almost one-third full when Billie asked me, ‘May, why isn’t Nana helping us this time? She always does.’ 

She had all the other years. But that was when Grandad was still alive, and when Nana wasn’t sick. Mum says Nana’s only sick because she misses Grandad and she wants to join him in the clouds. But I think that’s silly. Why would you want to die?

I explained to Billie in the gentle grown-up voice my mum used to tell us Grandad was sick the autumn before last, ‘Billie, Nana can’t help us because she’s not feeling very well today.’ 

Grown-ups are very good at explaining things. I’m thirteen, so I’ll be a grown-up soon. I have to try and make myself sound like one so that when I do become one, it’s not a shock to me or anyone else. 

Last autumn when I was only twelve, and Billie was only four, Grandad got sick and he couldn’t help us pick the apples like normal. But Nana still helped. With a quarter of our team missing it had still taken the usual amount of time, because Grandad used to find lots of ways to get out of the work. He would tell jokes that me and Billie and Nana had already heard fifty times, but we would all laugh like it was the first. And he would sit on the bottom rung of one of the old wooden ladders that was leant up against a big apple tree, and watch Nana do all the work, and he would say to me and Billie, ‘She’s a beauty, that one, isn’t she?’ And me and Billie would nod and smile, because she is. 

Nana has soft white curly hair like lamb’s wool, and a smile that makes her eyes into half-moons. She’s a bit fat, but it’s only from all the apple pies and other good stuff she makes, and she’s better to hug that way anyway. If I painted her, I would paint her with a gold ring around her head like they do in paintings of Jesus and Mary. Grandad’s right, she is a beauty. Grandad was a beauty too. He was tall and looked like Father Christmas with his white beard and white hair, and his red cheeks and fat tummy. He used to tell Billie that he was Father Christmas and she believed him. 

But Grandad got oesophagus cancer and had to stay in a room at the aged care home where the nurses fed him strawberry jelly, and he hated it. Each time we visited him Nana would be sitting there in the plastic chair in the corner of the little room. Sometimes she would sneak in some real food. Her famous apple pies, or Grandad’s favourite roast lamb. At Grandad’s funeral, I watched Nana the whole time because she is better to look at than a casket. I only saw her cry one tear. Grown-ups are good at not crying. 

When I told Billie about Nana being sick, she started crying. Five-year-olds cry a lot, but thirteen-year-old almost-grown-ups do not because it is not grown-up, so I didn’t cry even though I wanted to. Billie hid her face from me by looking down into her apple basket.

‘Stop crying, Bil. You’ll make the apples all wet with your tears.’

‘But—I don’t want Nana to die too! Getting the apples takes so long without her!’

‘Stop it. Crying is for babies. We’ve got days of picking left, so we shouldn’t waste any time being sad over things we can’t change. Back to it!’ I was surprised at how grown-up I sounded. 

Billie sniffed and looked up at me funny. ‘Ok.’

And we returned to picking the apples. You have to twist them a bit to snap them off properly. The ones towards the outside of the tree are sweeter, and the ones closer to the trunk are sourer because they’re less ripe. Sometimes you have to climb up the ladder to get the high ones. 

I was halfway up the ladder when I started thinking about Nana. She was lying under her quilt in the back room of the big cold empty house. We were out in the sun, barefoot in the long grass that mixed with the trees’ apple-smell to make The Autumn Smell. Nana was in her pink and blue quilt on one side of the bed, the other side empty. Grandad was up in the clouds waiting for her, at the same time buried under the big oak tree on the hill beyond the orchard. Billie and I were under the shade of the apple trees with their dark wizened bark and sunlight echoing through their leaves. Nana was sleeping in the air-conditioned back room, too tired to help us. Grandad was a skeleton and an angel. Billie and I were young and not-grown-up and full of energy and life with our skeletons still contained inside us. I imagined dying. I imagined being old. And I realised I wasn’t so sure I ever wanted to be a grown-up.

By then our baskets were full. ‘Bil, time to take these back to the house.’

We carried the baskets to the house. Billie still had red eyes and I think she was still crying. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t—not if Nana might see me. When we were inside, I poured the apples into the barrel while Billie stood by and watched. I listened to them hid the barrel’s wooden bottom. Thud, thud, thud for the first few. Then a clamour of thuds. Billie put her hands over her ears. And I’d had an idea.

I dropped the basket on the floor and grabbed Billie’s hand and rushed her out the door, through the orchard, under the trees, past the chicken coop, past the big barn. ‘Where are we going?’ Billie asked, dragging along behind me. She had to pump her legs at double speed to keep up with my jog. ‘You’ll see,’ I said. 

We got to the big hill. I could see the grand oak upon it, all stately and regal and orange, stretching and twisting itself out into the sunlight, growing slower than a snail. Up the hill we ran. The final stretch. We were huffing and puffing when we came over the crest of the hill, so we stopped for a break, hands on knees and heads down. Billie looked up before I did. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s Nana.’ I looked. Nana was kneeling in the grass under the big oak, talking to the headstone before her that was the only part of Grandad we could still visit. ‘Nana!’ I called out. ‘You should be inside in bed!’ We ran over to her. I saw that she was crying.

‘Oh! Hello girls. I didn’t think I’d see you here.’ She smiled the smile that made her eyes into half-moons. ‘I was just talking to Grandad. I’ll be joining him one day, maybe even soon. So I was just letting him know.’ 

I finally let myself cry. Two fat saltwater drops fell onto Grandad’s bit of grass. Billie saw me crying, so she started crying too. 

‘Don’t cry, girls!’ Said Nana. ‘Everyone has to die, you know. And you two have got all the time in the world for living. Come here, let me tell you a story. A story about the apples.’

We sat down in the grass and it made my legs all itchy, but I didn’t care because I was crying. 

‘A long time ago, when Grandad and I first bought this house, we planted an apple orchard. We knew that one day the apple trees would be big and fruitful, and we could share their bounty with our family, and our neighbours and friends. But when we first planted the trees, they were small saplings. Some of them were weak. Their leaves began to fade and curl up. Grandad and I didn’t know what to do, because we didn’t know very much about gardening and didn’t know anyone who could teach us. The only thing we could think of was to pray, so one cold morning while the dew was still on the grass, we went into the orchard and we prayed that the apple trees would survive. 

‘That same day, a stranger pulled up the driveway. His name was Gus, and he was driving past when he saw the sick apple trees, so he thought he’d come in and make sure we were taking the right care of them. We weren’t, of course. He offered to show us how. And he visited each week to check on them. And that was how mine and Grandad’s prayer was answered.’

Billie and I had stopped crying. It was a good story.

‘So every year after that, Grandad and I would take proper care of the trees, and the apples were always big and sweet. And eventually our dream came true that we’d share them with our family and friends and neighbours. We would always give some to Gus, too. But girls, I think the reason the apples were small this harvest was because Grandad wasn’t here to help.’ 

She was right. The apples this year were small. Still shiny, still sweet, but small. And maybe it was because Grandad was under the big oak rather than in the orchard. 

‘The apples need more people to take care of them. Not just me. I’m going to show you how to tend the orchard, so that when I’m gone you’ll know what to do.’ 

***

Nana showed us how to mulch the trees, and how to prune them, and how to know when the apples are really ripe, and how to store them in barrels underneath the house where the cold preserves them. She spent so much time outside with us that the colour came back to her cheeks, and we started to think she might get better after all. But she didn’t. I cried a lot at her funeral. I learnt that even grown-ups cry. 

This autumn has been different. Nana’s house isn’t even Nana’s house anymore. There’s a second headstone under the big oak tree on the hill. We don’t get to eat Nana’s apple pies or even Grandad’s favourite roast lamb anymore, and there’s no half-moon smile to meet us when we bring the brimming apple baskets inside. But the apple orchard hasn’t changed. And neither has our memory.