Read it Live
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Leaning against the raised stone basin of the garden fountain, Jeremy bit on the ruby red apple with a tremendous crunch.
“Those apples are real jewels!” the old gardener drawled, smacking his fat grey lips. He feebly bent over and pulled out a tangled weed. “My great grandfather planted the seeds of that orchard you know.”
“Mmhm,” Jeremy replied, juice trickling down his chin. “Maybe I should do a story on them. Belsele ‘jewel’ apples, an age old fruity phenomena!”
Old Frans raised a bushy eyebrow and gave the boy a wry smile.
Jeremy sighed, tossing the half eaten apple aside.
“Better pick that right up, son. You’re wasting good food,” the gardener said.
“It’ll decompose, Old Frans!” Jeremy grumbled, rubbing his round nose which was decidedly cherry red in chilly weather. “Besides, I’ve got bigger things to worry about. The newspaper will fire me if I don’t come up with a story by next Tuesday.”
The old gardener squeezed the boy’s bony shoulder in a fatherly fashion.
After a few more minutes of sulking, Jeremy kicked the stone basin in anger. “Doesn’t anything happen in this godforsaken town?” he devastatingly cried out to Old Frans.
“A story will come to you, boy. You just have to stop looking for it.”

Jeremy decided to take Old Frans’ advice and his irritability melted away like runny ice-cream. He crept out of Lebbeke castle’s grounds through a path through the orchard, in fear of encountering the grouchy master of the castle, Mr. Du Bois. Jeremy walked along the quiet main street, suddenly craving for a plate of waffles, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and loaded with sweet cream and bananas. Giving into temptation, he stepped into ‘Bistro Novo’, feeling a surge of hope and happiness as a warm, freshly baked scent enveloped him.

When the boy left, Old Frans put down his hoe and watched him sprint away in his dark green fleece jacket, his curly crop of ginger hair bouncing along with his large, flappy ears.
The gardener found himself suddenly sighing. He had grown quite attached to the vivacious boy during the last two years. He had come to understand him and feel for him. His occasional mood swings and pessimistic remarks came as no surprise to him now.

Jeremy was a middle class boy, from a single parent family in east London. With a degree in journalism and high hopes, he had come to try his professional luck in Belsele, a remote, sleepy village situated in the Belgian province of East Flanders.

Old Frans looked at his blistered old hands; his eyes glazed with memories of his late wife, Maertge. He remembered soaking his sore hands in her homemade lotion of cucumber pulp and honey. He remembered the exact squelchy feeling. He remembered her light blue, wide set eyes. Her long brown hair; flowing like sheets of rich caramel. He was beginning to remember her clearer than ever before.

Jeremy came back next Sunday for his weekly ritual of apples and a chat with the old gardener.
“Any luck?” Old Frans asked, handing him an apple, freshly picked from the orchard.
“Nope,” Jeremy muttered, his mild brown eyes downcast.
“Why do you work on Sundays, Old Frans? I never really asked you that,” he suddenly asked.
The gardener shrugged.
“Got nothing else to do.”
“It’s Mr Du Bois isn’t it? So he’s really the tyrant the whole town says he is!”
“Course not. Don’t believe everything you hear Jem,” Old Frans contradicted him.

The gardener looked up at Lebbeke castle, its dark towers blending into the icy sky and grimaced. The castle was a square, stone building with two towers and a pear shaped roof. The outer wall was covered with sprawling, green ivy.

It was built by the notary De Blieck in the neo-classical style in the year 1883. The powerful brewery family Du Bois had bought the castle a few years later, remodeled it and added parts to it.
Generations of Old Frans’ family had been working at the castle. By now, Old Frans knew every inch of the gardens by heart. His pulse rhymed with the life inside blade of grass, each hedge, each rose. Jeremy dissolved into moody silence and Old Frans looked fondly at the green grass stretching onwards till the tall brooding trees of the orchard, alive with red.

The gardens had cleverly arranged walls, hedges and trees, giving an elegant and serene look. Looking from the top lawn, the view was framed by banks of trees on both sides and by the two towers. Passing down the steps on the right, one came to a second lawn and then a long herbaceous border protected by a very fine yew hedge. Below, the path turned down a slope to the right, overlooking a lawn edged in the shape of a harp with a sun-dial in the centre. And to the left was the Rose Garden, laid out with red and yellow magnificent roses. Looking down from the Rose Garden, was a little cottage covered with blooming wisteria where Old Frans humbly lived.

The gardener pursed his grey lips and walked back to a particularly stubborn patch of yellow grass by the fountain and began to dig ferociously. He was planning to work the soil and remove weed debris. Jeremy continued to stare moodily at the castle. Inside he could hear little Griet Du Bois screech like a banshee.
“Children like that need a good smack on the…Eh! What’s this?”
The gardeners spade had stuck something hard.
Jeremy looked into the hole, yawning.
Clawing away the rocks, Old Frans put his wide hands inside the hole and pulled out a
…doll!
Jeremy stared. It was a very dirty but extravagant looking doll. It had a porcelain face and hands, glass eyes and a leather body stuffed with sawdust.
“Hmm, looks pretty old from the way the material’s worn out,” Old Frans concluded, fingering the lilac silk of the doll’s dress.
“Pretty old,” Jeremy repeated quietly.
“And her hair’s real human hair!” Old Frans murmured. “In the olden times, doll makers used to buy hair from poor women. Looks Victorian to me.”
Jeremy was gripped onto the gardener’s every word.
“Probably belonged to De Blieck family…or maybe the Princess Arabella who stayed at the castle for a month as a guest. Seen her portrait in the south hall. Maybe…”
Jeremy snatched the ancient doll from Old Frans and held it in his quivering hands. He was envisioning sensational headlines; his eyes becoming starry.
‘Princess Arabella’s priceless doll found buried’
‘Ancient doll discovered by local reporter’
‘Buried treasure found in Belsele’
He could already feel the warmth of fame. His name splattered all over the newspapers, spoken with admiration on the newschannels…
“Where you lost son?” Old Frans asked.
“Old Frans, this doll might be worth millions!” Jeremy shook his head, as if trying to get rid of clogged up water in his ears after a swim.
“This is bigger than any article! This is HUGE! I have to contact my boss. I have to contact the news channels. I know Sheena from ‘Fasttrack’ news. And she’s due in Brussels for an art conference today. I remember she told me last night. I should call her though. Yeah! This is my opportunity; my ticket to fame. Cant afford to waste another minute!”
Jeremy rattled on, wisps of his curly hair dangling in front of his eyes. He brushed them away impatiently. And he started running out of the castle grounds, abandoning the safe path through the orchard, running across the green grass, his ears already ringing with the sound of fame.

In about an hour, a noisy little crowd had gathered on the grounds, sneaking in through the discreet path through the apple orchard. The Deutsche Banner (the newspaper for which Jeremy worked) had been informed and had sent its official photographer. The photographer was a short, paunchy man with purple, horn-rimmed glasses. He was dancing around on everyone’s toes, clicking away with his camera. Sheena has arrived and was setting up the equipment, chirpily telling Jeremy how the art conference had gotten postponed.

Mr. Du Bois got wind of the melodrama occurring in his gardens and stuck his egg shaped head out through the window.
“You’re on public property, you hooligans! Old Frans, get them out of the grounds immediately!”
His menacing brown eyes flashed as he stroked his luxuriant black moustaches.

There was a hearty chorus of grumbling and profanities from the crowd and they walked grudgingly closer to the apple orchard.
“The orchard isn’t private property now is it, Mr D?” a young waiter at ‘Bistro Novo’ yelled back. The crowd snickered appreciatively.

Old Frans stood a little far off from the crowd, and watched, his lopsided grey lips forming an amused smile.

Mrs. Du Bois then came running out after hearing the fabulous news; her flabby face flushed with excitement (and a bit too much of wine) .
“And in our grounds!” she sighed, fluffing her golden bleached hair and edged closer to the video camera.

“Nearly two hundred years old!” a man with a yellow thatch of hair said in a matter of fact tone to his mousy faced wife.
“Oohh!”
“Ahh!”
“I hear that a museum at Brussels is paying 500, 000 euros for it!”
“And who gets the money I’d like to know?” A peppery haired man with a high bridged nose and square shoulders demanded. “Old Frans or those nasty brewers?”
“Just think of it, our little town in the papers!”
“We should have a parade to celebrate!”
Fervor was rising, the camera was clicking and rumors were soaring sky high.

And then, from the castle marched little Griet Du Bois, dressed in a peach frock with a satin sash. Her fleshy face was pink and her pale gooseberry eyes sharply took into account the whole scenario.
She pushed the crowd away with her chubby hands, hands that had tortured several puppies and pinched various babies traveling peacefully in prams-hands. Hands that had pulled many unsuspecting little girls’ hair and that had snatched pastries and sweets away from hungry little boys. Getting to the front of the bustling crowd, she put her hands to her waist and cried,
“So you’ve found my silly old doll!”