Most things, it transpired, Danny could learn, and Danny had not just learnt to cross London at its busiest, he had mastered it. Sometimes he could even believe he had pulled the trigger on the starting gun, and that the mass of humanity was moving forward at his own command. And now, far from being horrified by the swarming herd, he relished the sense of belonging that came from travelling in the same direction at the same time as so many other people. Now and then, the occasional unpracticed ditherer, out of step with the rest of them, might upset his stride by coming to an abrupt halt in front of him but that was rare on the morning commute and he had found a path that he could tread quite reliably to help him execute his journey seamlessly.
Danny loved London. This morning, as he took his place on the tube platform, he quietly contemplated the pure genius of the underground map. He didn’t need to refer to the one somewhere behind him on the tiled wall, he was able to reproduce a near-perfect rendition in his head. Danny had endless admiration for the brilliance it must have taken to reduce the messy meanderings of the tube trains’ literal journeys into this elegant portrayal that in no way attempted to describe the truth below the surface but somehow allowed its millions of users to navigate its many paths by only focusing on Harry Beck’s linear and infamous graphic retelling. The masterpiece had spared Danny from ever contemplating the messy truth that surrounded him and instead he calmly awaited his turn before jostling his way on to a crowded carriage that pretended to take him northwards in an entirely straight line.
As he hurtled towards his office he wished that somebody could apply the same logic to the twists and turns of the countryside and present to him instead a navigable grid. Perhaps that would help reduce the dizziness that he seemed to experience when he reversed the journey and abandoned London’s structures that helped to anchor him safely into place. Sam seemed to have adapted to the countryside so effortlessly but for Danny its mysteries and unexpectedness continued to frighten him.
Danny wondered how long it would take him to learn and then master his new habitat. He was impatient to develop a system, but there were no obvious moorings from which he could begin his education. If only he could be honest with Sam, he could ask for her help, but the idea of betraying his weakness to her filled him with a greater fear still. He briefly imagined opening up to her, talking to her about the night terrors that kept him awake, and his heart immediately began to race and his palms immediately began to itch with the prickle of perspiration.
The tube lurched, once falsely and then truly as it drew in to his station. Danny’s previous thoughts were aborted as the carriage tipped him out on to another busy platform and, joining the current flowing there, he found himself carried along the windy tunnels, rising to the ground level and spilling out finally into the comparatively still London streets. Danny breathed in deeply, appreciating the reassuring familiarity of the myriad smells. It was clear to him that he hadn’t begun to get used to the countryside. This paved ground beneath him, the certainty of the slabs, was where he felt most at home.
Chapter 7
With no firm plan in her mind, other than to escape the pull of her laptop and the possibility of any further visitors, Sam departed the house in a hurry. She turned left out of the gate at the back of her garden and followed a narrow path, darkened by thick holly trees on one side and an oppressively tall wooden fence on the other. She followed the footway for a couple of hundred metres before it abruptly ended, revealing to her blinking eyes a vast field that dipped down to another distant hedge at the very lowest point of this bowl. Here she had a choice, to continue on the path down the hill beneath the cover of the trees or to climb over a stile and track the tree line of the wood to her left. She chose to take this higher path, finding relief in her new horizons and particularly the view the drop of the field afforded her. Restored again, she was immediately intrigued to see how quickly she could immerse herself in real countryside. There was little sign of animal life, but the ground was broken up around the fence she’d crossed and there were a number of fresh-looking cow pats on the grass, so she kept a wary eye out for the field’s occupants. She hugged the top of the field, looking up to admire her surroundings as often as she could but conscious of the uneven surface beneath her, which if it was a path, was a poor one, as it was broken by rabbit holes, fallen timber and ankle height brambles that tumbled from the base of the tall trees like spillage. The woods she walked beside were dark and impenetrable, knotted with a bulwark of dense foliage. Twice Sam disturbed a pheasant which, at her approach, clattered clumsily and shockingly out of the undergrowth, ill-equipped – apparently – to make a dignified escape.
The woodland formed a square and at the far corner she could now choose to follow the footpath across the field to another stile she could see at the far side or take a narrow footpath that led diagonally back through the wood. She looked at her watch. She’d only walked for twenty minutes and she calculated that this path should get her home very directly (by walking the third side of a triangle) but, she reasoned, learning a quick route to use in the morning might be useful, particularly if Danny were ever able to overcome his allergies so she could have a dog, so despite the unwelcoming darkness, she ducked into the trees and followed the path beneath them.
Where the field had been still, the woods were fizzing with activity. Birds rattled above her and squirrels darted around her feet. As she got closer to what must have been the centre of the wood, she looked up at the pine needles high above her and she felt both dizzy and small. The gaps in the trees allowed glimpses of the sky above but never before had the sky looked so beyond her grasp. In London, the sky was something that clung oppressively to the tops of buildings, threatening to drop down to street level and engulf her, but here in the woods she could see the great expanse of nothingness between the highest branches and the clouds and, as she craned her neck back, she could sense the void beyond them.
She stepped over a tree that, unable to find a direct path upwards or thwarted perhaps in an earlier effort, had grown horizontally low to the ground before seizing a better opportunity and reaching up once again towards the light. She stopped to examine it, having never had cause to notice nature’s resourcefulness before. Now it was before her, this audacious determination to be a tree despite the obstacles seemed to Sam the greatest of achievements. She felt overwhelmed by them, by the sheer vitality of these plants that, left unchecked, had grown to become giants all around her and she admired their success, envied it perhaps, knowing instinctively that their will to flourish was far greater than her own.
All around her small saplings had taken root and, despite the fierce competition for both nutrients and light, some were well on their way to future greatness. She looked at one closely, an oak, still wearing its winter colours. She admired its miniaturist excellence, each of its ten leaves shaped exactly as its acorn had intended with the centremost leaf a smaller version of its future self. She wondered if this tiny tree held within it all of its future boughs and each of its future leaves, in the same way she had been born with all of her egg cells in place. The tree wasn’t wasteful though, was it, each intended leaf had the capability to fulfil its whole purpose where she had been born with so many more egg cells than required. A couple of million jostling to be one of the few hundred to mature and all of them, as it turned out, surplus to requirements.
Whilst Sam felt insignificant in this fecund habitat, she liked the truth of her paltry inconsequence. The woods didn’t care about her. They were egoless and allowed her to be still, without the need for prominence. If she remained motionless for long enough these trees would, quite without malice, entwine their branches around her and carry on growing regardless. She wondered if they would hoist her with them as they grew upwards or if they would absorb her into their heartwood instead.
In the city, she always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, battling her way upstairs from the underground with a stampeding scrum descending upon her; crossing a ro
ad against the flow and finding no plausible pathway through the onslaught of pedestrians; looking left to guard against cars only to be mown down by an unseen cyclist swinging around a corner shouting abuse at her whilst she had one foot still on the pavement and the other midstride. Though contradictory, she had felt simultaneously hippopotamian and invisible and she had never dared to pause for fear of being trampled. Consequently, she’d kept moving, despite never being quite sure of where she was going until the sheer tumult of pace had overtaken her, mowing her down impatiently.
The countryside, Sam decided, particularly the woodland, afforded her a better sense of scale. She felt proportionally represented. Here, the wood was teeming with energetic wildlife but her irrelevance felt appropriate, more like an escape than an exile. The trees had taken a hundred years or more of steady, focussed growth and she was of no importance to them. Sam felt emboldened by the thought. She peered into the darkness between the boughs, wondering if she might spy something bigger than the frantic squirrels, something that might account for the feeling of being watched that she’d felt since joining the path. It wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling, but she couldn’t quite ignore Anne’s warning and she felt herself snubbing the fear self-consciously, whistling tunelessly under her breath and swinging her arms with a little more gusto than she might have employed had she not felt this invisible scrutiny.
The woods were much cooler than the field and with more obstacles to impact, the wind appeared to make more of an impression here. Heavy limbs waved above her and smaller branches swayed at eye level, occasionally looming towards her as if they were shaking their fists. Still, she refused to be cowed by the woods and continued at a confident pace, until a movement to her left caught her eye and she stopped to investigate. Ten metres or so away from the path the frayed edge of a blue tarp snapped in the wind. She followed its line, tracing it to the corner of a large, low caravan. The vehicle didn’t look habitable, a mossy excrescence appeared to be reclaiming it, pulling it into the undergrowth and providing a slow, creeping camouflage. Stout trees surrounded the dwelling, providing no obvious entrance or exit.
It was unlikely that anybody could live here still, and yet, troubled by Anne’s warning, the sense she was being observed felt stronger than ever. Sam shuddered, and hurried on, imagining the terrors you’d need to escape to find life in a rotting caravan preferable to a life elsewhere. She thought of the London equivalent, the street dwellers, whose carefully guarded prime sites near the tube station could guarantee a bewildering delivery of food, compassion and contempt. Would this be better?
The path narrowed even more as she followed its lead out of the woods. On either side thick undergrowth reached out to her and she wondered if she might have to turn back. But after only a couple more minutes she found she was able to join the main path back to her home. The unnecessarily tall wooden fence was now to her left as she walked back to Broome Cottage. The woods had felt impenetrable, and their grandeur excused them. But this fence gave the impression of something far more sinister as if only the most shameful of secrets required so much shielding. A small knothole, no bigger than an acorn, presented itself and Sam took the opportunity to put her eye to it.
Behind the fence was a long sweep of immaculate lawn. It was notably green and well presented for the time of year, perfect stripes running the full length of the grass. Generous herbaceous borders, almost the width of Sam’s entire garden, flanked either side of the lawn. Half way up the border a gardener worked. He looked like he belonged to another era, Sam thought, the kind of gardener you’d find in a children’s picture book. He had a wheelbarrow full of dung beside him and he was methodically working it into the soil around the base of the plants. Many of the shrubs were cut back to just a few inches from the earth so Sam was unable to identify the individual components of the overall scheme, but she could imagine the splendours to come in the weeks ahead. The gardener wore thick corduroy trousers, a tweed jacket, and a tweed flat cap. He was curiously old-fashioned and in no hurry, apparently, but it was evident that he knew what he was doing, and he carried himself in a way that suggested he had been doing it for a very long time.
Beyond the garden was a large white house. There were a couple of lights on downstairs but no real sign of activity. The garden had none of the usual trappings of life – no children’s toys or play things, no outdoor seating areas. Just grass and flowerbeds. It was stark but orderly. Sam liked it but much more for its potential than its current state.
The house itself was pleasantly solid. Grand but with no frills of pretension. Sam felt guilty, peering through a hole in a fence at a house, imagining the busy goings on that must justify a building of that size. She wondered who lived there and wondered what sort of people they might be. As the crow flew, they were near neighbours, but Sam couldn’t imagine ever being invited in to such a grandiose house. Perhaps it would be different when the house was in use and she could hear life being lived in full, perhaps then she could imagine being shown around the garden by a delighted and proud homeowner. She imagined herself navigating her way to the corresponding front door and ringing on a doorbell, introducing herself.
The gardener straightened himself up slowly, his face suggesting a silent groan. He was now looking directly towards Sam and even though he couldn’t possibly see her, she backed away from the fence, apologising under her breath for snooping.
She headed home, thinking a little fancifully about the two homes she’d witnessed: the caravan and the mansion. Each one had been silent, barely suggesting any habitation at all, but so different in every other way. That caravan, dripping with mould and moss, scarcely a shelter and that great big house, equally empty but a conspicuous symbol of wealth and success and achievement, nonetheless. Who lived in these two homes, so unlike one another yet equally isolated? Sam wondered.
She entered the gate that led from the footpath into her own modest garden. She looked up at the small house, a flood of warm pride filling her senses. She brushed her hand across the top of a tatty box plant, happy with her house that, whilst perhaps a little bit too big for just the two of them, felt perfectly right.
Chapter 8
With Sam back in the comfortable confines of her own home and Danny luxuriating in the lack of intimacy that London afforded him, life continued in isolation for the woman in the woods.
Diana did indeed live in the woods, and her home at first glance was a hovel, but she was not a witch. She had little patience for the occult, and had even less interest in the comings and goings of her village neighbours, but she did have a past. And it was this life-already-lived that the villagers saw in her eyes and chose to fear. Nobody liked a woman with a past, particularly one that lived in a mildewed caravan in the woods, woods that had hitherto only really had a reputation for bluebells, which was reputation enough, the villagers thought.
Diana lived just a few hundred metres from Broome Cottage as the crows flew, though when the crows rose from her woods they never actually chose to fly in a direct line, rather scatter themselves noisily in every direction before settling close to their starting point, in a clamouring rabble, as if their short and separate journeys immediately demanded urgent discussion.
Diana was an expert in woodland noises and had heard the screech that had so alarmed Danny, recognising it immediately as the shriek of a barn owl. She’d been able to accurately envisage its circuit, knowing how it routinely called out as it quartered the field, but rather than feeling fear she’d lain awake, alert, knowing that within weeks she would hear the accompanying sound of the owlets as they rasped their grating chorus, beseeching the swift return of their mother with more food. Anticipating the young birds’ croaking calls served as a reminder that she had survived yet another winter in her sparse dwelling, and she smiled.
Diana loved those night noises. The winter was a challenge but the spring, now just about upon her, was a treasure trove of recompense. There was a nest high above her, and she expected to soon hear the in
sistent complaint of those barn owl chicks, indignant at their mother’s absence. The sound was unlike anything else in the woods and it was always such a surprise to hear the guttural scratching noise that would in adulthood evolve into the low hoot more associated with owls. Diana knew the ways of the owls. The mother would take off to hunt quite routinely, before returning to mollify her young with small sounds of comfort while bringing them their food.
For some years Diana had lived in close proximity to her family of barn owls. Their territory was the many big fields that fell away from the woods and seeing the female take her circuit before deciding on her hunting ground was one of the great thrills of Diana’s life. She was not superstitious, nor religious, and yet she attached some sort of idolatry to the barn owl. It felt like a guardian angel and a sight of it lifted her spirits, and its absence – sometimes for periods that stretched over many days – gave her a tremulous anxiety that increased her feeling of vulnerability.
Living amongst the birds was to be witness to a fast paced and violent cycle more gripping than any soap opera. She knew all the nests of course, from the barn owls’ to the goshawks’ and the woodpeckers’, wrens’ and thrushes’ in between but she knew better than to have favourites. Wildlife living was not for the emotionally fragile. She had learnt to be pragmatic as she watched the mother’s fierce nurturing come to nothing with the first few outings for a newly fledged chick. It was hard to love all of the birds equally; her loyalties were so torn. She loved to watch the songbirds fledge and rooted for them all, the mistle thrush particularly who, undaunted by wet and wild weather, would continue its fearless song and in gloomy moments could lift Diana’s spirits with a surge of optimism. Watching a juvenile mistle thrush picked off by a sparrowhawk would give her a sharp stab at the injustice but before she had even finished mourning the unsung songs she would be applauding the sparrowhawk’s success which was, by her own reckoning barely one in ten strikes. These hunters favoured speed, agility and surprise over accuracy and would barrel themselves low and fast at their prey, and Diana never tired of watching their stealthy attacks. Meanwhile the misses, which were much more common than the hits, similarly pained Diana because she had come to love those sparrowhawks fiercely. But then, Diana reasoned as she ran through her ornithological hierarchy in her head, when the goshawk took a sparrowhawk she’d quickly be celebrating that triumph, too. The goshawks were dynamos who whipped amongst the trees like gung-ho jet pilots, never choosing a straight route when an obstacle course was available. Perhaps the goshawks were her favourite of all. Diana had seen a goshawk take a sparrowhawk who herself had been in pursuit of a fieldfare. And she’d barely known who to cheer. Thank goodness, she thought, that the thrushes and the tits and the robins and the warblers all had enough sense to produce more young than necessary to keep their numbers stable.
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