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Chapter 11

The phone rang just as Doubler was sitting down to lunch. He had still not got used to the silence round the table, which was so much louder than any conversations he’d ever had in there. Midge’s insistence that his lifestyle was unhealthy had unsettled him, and the vicious hilltop wind that rattled at the windows and occasionally shrieked as it tried to find a way inside only served to exaggerate the stillness in the kitchen.

Doubler had propped himself up on his left elbow, his hand supporting his chin while poking at his potatoes with his fork, pushing them round the plate with a disinterest that was quickly turning into dissatisfaction. He wondered, as he chased a potato from one side of the plate to the another, whether he would ever enjoy eating again. Mrs Millwood might have been consuming an inferior lunch all these years, but she had been consuming an inferior lunch with him and that small distinction was now having a disproportionately large impact on the flavour of his own food. He added this new slight to the growing reasons to be disgruntled by Mrs Millwood’s absence and he was so deep in this thought, crafting a list of complaints in his head, that he was shocked by the shrill ringing from the telephone.

He had just begun a quavering ‘Hello’ when that perfectly familiar voice cut through his mumbled greeting. ‘So, Mr Doubler, you know how you always sneer at my apple choice?’

‘I do?’ he asked, trying to force some indignation into his voice to compete with the warmth that was spreading from deep within him.

‘My apples. You sneer. Don’t tell me you don’t.’ Mrs Millwood paused, hearing a smile. ‘My Granny Smiths?’

‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be my first choice of apple, it’s true. Nor my second. Nor my third, for that matter. I doubt it would make it into my top ten. I doubt I could name a hundred apples, but if I could, I don’t suppose the Granny Smith would make it there either.’ Doubler luxuriated in the conversation, his mind casting itself out across the orchards of England. ‘Cox’s, the russets – all the russets – and, oh, I am partial to an in-season Bramley—’

Mrs Millwood cut him short, breathless with irritation. ‘I didn’t ask you for your favourite apples, did I? I didn’t ask for a lecture. I just want to hear you openly admit that you find my choice of apple inferior.’

‘I suppose you have a motive for this call, do you? There must be some very sick patients on that ward of yours and I don’t suppose they want to hear you being confrontational for no good reason.’ Doubler wondered, even as he spoke, whether he’d ever felt such intense joy.

‘The thing is, Mr Doubler, I learnt something today. Quite by chance. It turns out, entirely unbeknown to me and without this knowledge ever having influenced my apple choice, Granny Smith herself was a bit of a trailblazer. She reminds me very much of your John Clarke.’ Mrs Millwood must have sensed an imminent interruption because she pressed on urgently. ‘Now, I know you think he’s special, but let’s be honest, his father was a potato breeder before him, so it already ran in his genes, so to speak. But Granny Smith set sail for Australia back in the 1830s! She was a true pioneer. And to think how tough that voyage must have been in those days – I can only imagine what the boat would have been full of. Sickness and convicts, I suppose. But Maria Ann Smith – that was her name – Maria Ann Smith made the journey regardless and started an orchard way down there in New South Wales. Can you imagine such courage? She discovered her apple quite by accident. A chance cultivar from a seedling, would you believe it? I was shocked to my core when I learnt this. To my core!’

Doubler considered this information carefully. While the old lady might well fit the description of a true pioneer, he wasn’t sure that he liked the fact that her entrepreneurship was being presented to him as somewhat superior to Mr Clarke’s genetic predisposition to breed potatoes. He digested this brand-new information before forming his response.

‘Ah, Mrs Millwood, I can see what you’re getting at. You are proposing that your Granny Smith is an equal to my Mr Clarke. Is that it? Because I don’t think that the chance discovery of a seedling bears comparison with years and years of painstaking potato breeding. A chance cultivar from a seedling sounds to me like a bit of an accident. Anyone can have an accident, Mrs Millwood.’

Mrs Millwood was clearly prepared for this response. ‘Aha! But the chance wasn’t the thing. The observation and the subsequent perseverance were the thing. She discovered her apple and then found it to have some excellent and unique properties.’ Mrs Millwood was now talking really quite loudly, and quickly, as if competing with both background noise and other demands on her attention. Mr Doubler smiled at the image of the patient dismissing doctors and nurses with a wave of her hand. ‘Her apple could be stored for a very long time, you see, which made it suitable for shipping around the world or for keeping through the winter.’

‘That is interesting. But being a perishable good can be a blessing, too, Mrs M. One of the more interesting things about the potato, Mrs M, is that it doesn’t travel well. It doesn’t last! And why is that good, do you suppose?’

Mrs Millwood sighed loudly for dramatic effect. ‘I have absolutely no idea, but I suspect you’re about to tell me.’

‘It means the potato can’t be traded as an international commodity! Meat you can freeze and trade, other grains like rice will keep for ever, but the potato likes to be in the ground or in your stomach and it doesn’t hang around in between.’

‘And that’s a good thing because . . . ?’

‘That’s a good thing because as soon as a commodity is traded on the international market, it becomes a political pawn. Prices go artificially high; growers are squeezed out; quotas are imposed; sanctions are declared. It’s not possible with the potato, so we all just get on with it and each country grows their own. It means that in times of hardship and economic turmoil, the potato remains affordable. You can trust a potato.’

‘And you’re saying you can’t trust a Granny Smith?’

‘No. I’m just saying that longevity isn’t always a bonus.’

‘If you’re an apple, it’s a bonus. A couple of world wars were fought and won with the help of the Granny Smith, I don’t doubt. Imagine – no fruit, no veg for weeks on end and then somebody allows you to sink your teeth into a sweet, crisp, juicy Granny Smith apple as fresh as the day it was picked. You’d think your ship had come in.’

‘A persuasive argument, I’ll grant you that, but it still sounds a bit like luck rather than judgement.’

‘Luck? You call that luck? A woman sets sail for the other end of the planet, plants an orchard by hand, has the presence of mind to observe the cross-cultivation of a common old crab apple and a domestic apple, and then nurtures it to establish a new variety. You call that luck?’ Mrs Millwood turned from the phone to cough weakly, the first sign that she was in any way diminished by her hospital stay. Her coughing sounded distant and muffled, and there were other sounds, too – the noises, perhaps, of Mrs Millwood pouring herself a glass of water. Doubler listened, finding pleasure in the intimacy of the moment. When she returned to the phone, her voice was restored to its usual vigour.

‘She was both a scientist and a pioneer. You know, you can’t breed the Granny Smith apple today? If you try to, it reverts back to its components, a sour old crab apple or an undistinguished domestic apple. If you want a Granny Smith, you have to go right back to the original rootstock. Every single Granny Smith consumed today comes from that one chance seedling.’

‘Well, goodness, I suppose that was an achievement, wasn’t it? I wonder how many Granny Smiths are consumed these days?’

‘A huge number. More, perhaps, than the Maris Piper, do you think?’

‘Well, it would be a close-run battle, I suppose. Goodness, between them, my Mr Clarke and your Mrs Smith certainly knew how to leave a legacy.’

‘My point is, Mr Doubler, I’d like you to be a bit more respectful of her, and her apple.’

‘More respectful?’

‘Yes. I mean, the way you talk about your Mr Clarke, you’d think he was the only unsung hero in the world. Think about the obstacles Mrs Smith faced! She was a woman travelling to foreign shores in the 1800s! And Mr Clarke might not have had much of an education, but that’s only interesting to you because you assume all men should get an education. A woman in the 1800s couldn’t assume to get any education whatsoever, quite frankly. All they were supposed to do was look pretty and breed.’ Mrs Millwood paused briefly to breathe, before rushing on. ‘And it seems that my Mrs Smith was good at breeding children and