The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,15
trees that maybe once were an orchard, two pomegranate trees, a fig tree and a quince tree next to each other, an olive tree on its own and a great big cherry tree.
The fruit game started with the quince tree. The quinces are no good at all to eat, and anyway the tree is sick and all the fruit goes brown and bobbled. The summer when I was three years old some boys from the village picked all the quinces from the tree and threw them at the back of the barn, trying to score goals through the ox-eye. Most of the fruits rotted around the bottom of the barn, only a few got in. Papa found them near his tractor and laughed. Funny game, he said.
In autumn they started on the pomegranates. We don’t pick many to eat or sell; they usually just burst open on the tree. Then the magpies peck at the jewels inside until the fruits fall off and smash. The boys had got better at the fruit game and a lot of the pomegranates went through the hole. The ones that didn’t exploded on the wall, the seeds making a glittery red carpet by the barn. Papa grumbled as he swept up the mess.
The next spring the boys took cherries off the tree, all the ones they could reach. The fruit was too good to waste so they ate the cherries then tried with the stones, either throwing them or spitting. But the stones were no good for that so they started using the unripe apples. It was just after Maman came home from the hospital, which was bad luck for the boys because Papa exploded.
Enough is enough! he shouted at them. I had never heard him shout before, not once.
We eat those apples, he said. They are not toys, and neither is my barn. Go and find something useful to do with your weekends, and if I ever catch you taking my peaches I will really give you something to be sorry for.
The boys never came back, so last year’s pomegranates fell off the trees as usual and there were plenty of cherries on the tree that I could knock off with the mop. But it had been nice to have other children up here even if they weren’t my friends. Sometimes now the fruit looks lonely.
Margot, I say, I have the darkness and it’s cloudy. We can go to Windy Hill. I don’t say it like a question because I am not feeling in a very good mood.
That’s OK, says Margot, and takes my hand.
On Windy Hill there are pine trees and poplar trees, fig trees and oaks. It smells of salt, herbs and animals’ skin and now, in summer, it smells like the earth is cooking. There are gorse bushes with yellow flowers that look like purses and smell like coconut. In between the big boulders there is lavender and rosemary, which you can chew if you are hungry.
Today there is a strong breeze that feels delicious in my hair and I stand for a while letting myself be blown and staring out at the turbines. The ground is hard and stony here and not comfortable to sit on. Even in spring, when the poplar trees throw off swirling balls of fluff that make a soft white carpet on the hill, when you would think it would be nice to sit down on it, the stones come through and leave purple-red bruises on your legs.
Out behind the wing turbines you can usually see the sea if you squint a little bit. If you use your imagination you can even see pink flamingos wading through the étangs on stick-legs, grazing the salty water for their food. If you come here early in the mornings you can see the sunrise, turning everything from grey to rosy.
Nothing is rosy now, though. Not blue either. The sky is low-down swirls of grey and the air is warm and heavy. We can’t stay too long, I say.
We haven’t seen good clouds for ages, says Margot. Let’s see what there is.
So even though these ones are dark and low and not very pretty, I unstick my eyes from the turbines and start to name them.
Elephant, dragonfly, house, I say.
Sausage, robot, knickers, says Margot.
Then she begins on the clouds right above her, tilting her face up so far she nearly falls over backwards.