The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he muttered.

  ‘Well now, there’s taking responsibility and then there’s just plain feeling sorry for yourself,’ she replied.

  ‘No. You don’t see. It’s my fault.’ He took a deep, burning mouthful of the bitter brew and did the only really brave thing he’d ever done: he told Mami the truth about Annabel.

  When he’d finished, he felt shrunken somehow, and Mami looked taller – a stern, towering figure of coldness with her arms crossed, glaring at him. ‘Aye, and cursing is the least you deserve,’ she spat. ‘Hanging would fit you better.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You should have come to the drabarni. We would have dealt with it. This was women’s business.’

  ‘She was my wife—’

  ‘She had the Sight!’ Mami snapped. ‘She was out of your hands to punish, either by right or power! Easiest way to deal with this’d be to let the law have you. Put a stop to her curse right and proper, maybe.’ She sucked her teeth, thinking. ‘Maybe not. If she was angry and strong enough, might not make any difference. It ain’t just about you, in any event. Them boys don’t deserve losing both parents so quick, and like that. Then your Peter and young Maisie Smith – she don’t deserve to have to carry the burden of being married to the brother of a convicted murderer.’ Not to mention the reputation of Mami herself, who had arranged the union.

  She crossed to the kitchen window and looked out over the bricked yard with its string of grimy laundry and across to the back of the house opposite, whose roof was a burnt ruin. In more peaceful times the yards of back-to-backs like this would be noisy with children playing. ‘No,’ she decided. ‘There’s enough death in this world without thinking yours is going to help any of it. There are older ways of dealing with this.’ She went to the back door, put on her coat, and turned back to him. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You’re taking me for a day out to the Lickeys.’

  * * *

  Annabel’s body was in the same spot, though something had been at it – something that had dragged her left hand out from the covering leaves and gnawed off two of her fingers.

  Mami looked at Annabel, narrowing her eyes and sucking in her breath. ‘She’s powerful angry, and powerful strong. No, I think she won’t be satisfied with your blood any more.’ She shot Harry a dark look. ‘Fetch me a rabbit, big man.’

  It took him a few hours to catch one and return, by which time Mami had uncovered the corpse and done her best to clean it up, brushing out the hair and smoothing down the dress. She accepted the rabbit without a word and, taking a small knife from the front pocket of her apron, skinned, gutted and dismembered it. She arranged its parts around Annabel’s body and used its blood to write – in letters of an alphabet that Harry had never seen – on the bare skin of Annabel’s arms, legs, and face. All the while, she sang in a low voice – a murmuring, atonal hymn in a guttural language, which somehow melded with the whispering of the surrounding trees and stippled Harry’s skin with gooseflesh to hear. It set his mind to wandering in the deep shadows between ancient trunks where there was only the old memory of ice, and if humankind was considered at all, it was as invaders fit only to have their blood spilled to feed hungry roots.

  When Mami had finished, she sat back. ‘Now we wait.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For the lesh. The eldest. The wood-born. Stronger than her.’ She nodded at Annabel. ‘Some say it followed us from the old country, but I think it’s older than countries. I think it was already here too. The smell of that rabbit’s blood will have carried my invitation to it, but it’ll either come or it won’t.’ She shrugged. ‘You better hope that it does.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because the alternative for you is a long drop at the end of a short rope, me duck,’ Mami laughed, but the echoes of it were swallowed by the trees as if they’d never been there, and she stopped quickly.

  When the lesh arrived, it looked so ordinary – so much like just another tramp in a long, ragged coat with wild hair and a beard full of leaves and twigs – that Harry didn’t understand what he was seeing and Mami had to lay a restraining hand on his arm to stop him leaping up and telling the old derelict to bugger off.

  It circled them in the cover of the surrounding trees several times, perhaps suspicious of their intent, before approaching Annabel’s corpse and staring down at it, then at them.

  ‘This?’ it said. Its voice was the creaking of tree trunks in a high wind, the soundless roaring of leaves.

  Mami nodded. ‘If you please.’

  It regarded the corpse again. Bent low and sniffed it. ‘She is angry.’

  ‘She has reason to be.’

  ‘And strong. Very strong.’

  ‘You are stronger.’

  The lesh raised eyes as black and hard as petrified oak to her. If her flattery had touched it in any way, it gave no sign. ‘My price.’

  ‘Is here.’ Mami gestured at Harry, and stepped aside.

  ‘Here!’ Harry protested. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Harry,’ she tutted. ‘Surely you know that the oldest magic of all is that nothing ever comes for free?’

  ‘But…’ he faltered, stumbling backwards, face twisting between shock, rage at the betrayal, and terror of the ragged creature that was reaching for him. Its teeth were jagged shards of wood, and black beetles squirmed in its beard. The stench that came off it was the rot of soil and leaf-mould that had never seen the sun, the kind that brought forth only pale fungus in the ancient abysses between trees ten thousand years old. ‘You old witch!’ Harry snarled.

  The lesh caught him by the wrist with fingers as unyielding as roots and then began to drag him away. Harry screamed and yelled, beating with his other fist at the grip that would not break.

  ‘But you said!’ he pleaded. ‘My boys!’

  ‘Oh they’ll be looked after right enough,’ Mami replied. ‘And a damn sight better than by the man who killed their mother.’

  Harry braced his feet, slipped and fell, but the lesh didn’t break its stride. It simply dragged him bodily through the undergrowth like a doll, kicking and sobbing, and into the shadows between the trees. Mami listened to his screams escalate into shrieks and then stop abruptly.

  When the lesh returned, its fingers were stained and the hair around its mouth was matted and red. Nearby stood the trunk of an ancient oak – leafless and limbless, its writhen wood looking almost fluid in the night. The lesh put its hands to the trunk as if to open a pair of curtains, and pulled the wood back, revealing the black hollow of the tree’s rotten core. Then, without acknowledging Mami’s existence, it stooped and gathered Annabel’s body in its arms, placed her in the hollow and closed the wood over her pale face. Finally it favoured Mami with its recognition. ‘Strong, yes,’ it said. ‘Not as strong as oak.’

  With that, it walked away between the trees and disappeared from sight.

  Mami let out a great, shuddering sigh that was part relief, part exhaustion, and part grief. She went over to the oak where the lesh had trapped Annabel’s angry soul, and laid a hand on the trunk.

  ‘Sorry, m’duck,’ she whispered. ‘If there’d been any other way.’

  12

  THE STAND-OFF

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER TOM WAS SITTING UP more comfortably and taking a little water, and he was transferred to a recovery ward where the doctors continued to monitor his progress, which, they openly admitted, was astonishingly good.

  ‘Your bloodwork is a lot better,’ said the doctor, as Charlotte, Spence and Rachel hovered by the bedside. ‘We should be able to send you home tomorrow, or the day after at the very least.’

  Tom grinned and danced a little bed dance. ‘How soon before I can get back to work?’

  Charlotte shushed him. ‘Don’t you worry about that. We’ve got it all covered.’

  ‘Seriously,’ added the doctor. ‘It takes a lot longer to recover from this sort of thing than you may think. Your system has taken a battering a
nd you’ll still be on some heavy-duty antibiotics for a while. I’d say at least a fortnight of solid home care before you can do anything remotely like heavy lifting.’

  Charlotte leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’ve already got your old room made up.’

  Rachel blinked in surprise. ‘I’m sorry, what?’ She’d zoned out. Her dream of Annabel Clayton had left her exhausted; she’d woken up feeling as if she’d lived through the fictional events that her over-stressed unconscious mind had conjured. ‘Surely he’s coming home with me.’

  Charlotte turned a frown of concerned sympathy towards her. ‘Really, dear? Do you think that’s wise?’ It was what the men who worked for Tom and his dad called her Mother Superior voice, though never to her face. Even though it was Spence’s name on the sides of the vans and on the business stationery, Charlotte was the one who wielded the real power from the back office. Rachel had been on the receiving end of her ruthless pragmatism only once, during the arrangements for the wedding. It wasn’t that Charlotte had overtly controlled things, or been as crude as to ride roughshod over any of the decisions that Rachel and her own mum had made, but everyone knew who was bankrolling the occasion and all it took was for Charlotte to produce that slightly puzzled frown, as if she hadn’t already made up her stainless steel man-trap of a mind about whatever it was, and ask if you really thought that was wise to use that florist or this piece of music. And here it was again, at Tom’s bedside. Do you think that’s wise?

  But this wasn’t a dress or a bouquet; this was her husband.

  ‘Well it’s common sense, really, isn’t it?’ Rachel replied. ‘You’ve got the business to look after, and I’m at home all day.’

  ‘Hello,’ Tom waved. ‘I’m in the room.’

  Charlotte continued to stroke Tom’s hair. ‘Yes, dear, and ordinarily of course you know there’d be no question of him going home with you, but – and sorry to have to mention the elephant in the room – you’re only at home because you’re recovering yourself. Are you sure you’re up to the strain of looking after both of you, ah, on your own?’

  That hesitation. Single-handed, Rachel thought. You were going to say am I capable of looking after us single-handed. Of course she was capable; Charlotte knew that as well as anyone. But Tom was opening his mouth to reply and she knew that he was going to have to choose between his wife and his mother. She couldn’t force that on him.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Rachel said, cutting him off. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. He should go home with you. He shouldn’t have to worry about how I’m coping too.’ She produced an unruffled smile and held up her stump as if in apology, and took childish delight in giving Charlotte the phantom finger.

  ‘Mum,’ said Tom. ‘This is ridiculous. Of course I’m going home with Rachel. What’s she got to do that’s so hard? Watch me sitting on my arse playing Call of Duty for a fortnight?’

  ‘You might have a relapse, dear…’

  ‘Then she can drive me to the hospital. She’s still a better driver than me even with one hand.’ He flashed her a quick wink, and she felt her heart swell with love for him.

  ‘Well then,’ sniffed Charlotte, ‘if that’s what you think is best, though I’m not sure what the doctor thinks about all of this.’ She turned to him, the last resort when her own powers of persuasion weren’t enough: the appeal to authority. But he simply shrugged.

  ‘It’s really nothing to do with me, I’m afraid,’ he said.

  Too true, thought Rachel. Best keep yourself out of the middle of this one if you know what’s good for you.

  ‘Just as long as he takes his antibiotics.’

  Rachel saw then what few people must have seen, the shadow of defeat crossing Charlotte Cooper’s face, though it was quickly smoothed over, and she felt a quick and guilty thrill of bitchiness. ‘Well then,’ said Tom’s mother. ‘That appears to be settled.’ As if she’d been the one to settle it. ‘But you will come around for dinner and let us feed you properly, won’t you?’

  Rachel was magnanimous in victory, and she let Charlotte have her dig at Rachel’s home-making skills. She had intended to order pizza tonight anyway. ‘Of course,’ she said sweetly.

  13

  NAZI SPY

  ELINE LAMBERT STOOD ON THE HEIGHT OF BEACON Hill and watched her city burn, and it filled her with a sick kind of satisfaction.

  In contrast, beside her Nial Van Alst was becoming increasingly agitated, muttering angrily and swearing in Dutch, which he thought she couldn’t understand. He was a tall man, and the long overcoat he wore only added to the impression of height. It was November, and cold, but she didn’t think he was stamping and rubbing his hands just to keep warm. Steam puffed from his mouth like dragon’s smoke.

  ‘Fucking Luftwaffe!’ he spat. ‘Fucking Göring. He couldn’t hit the ground with his fat behind if you cut his legs off. South, you fools!’ he screamed at the bombers suddenly, shaking his fist at the sky where the Heinkels and Junkers were trying to evade the probing fingers of searchlights and the bursts of anti-aircraft fire. ‘South! It’s right there! Right there!’ He stabbed with a finger at where the Austin factory works lay just below them in Longbridge at the foot of the hills. The works were carefully camouflaged by day and all but invisible at night.

  Alarmed by the noise he was making, she tried to shush him. ‘Do you want every soldier on this hill to hear you?’ she hissed. It was possibly foolish to come up here in the first place, so close to the factory’s defensive emplacements, but Van Alst had insisted. He had wanted to revel in the sight of the works being pounded into flaming wreckage.

  Van Alst was an ass of the highest order. He’d been in the Midlands before the war started, as a perfectly legitimate salesman of printing presses, typewriters and sewing machines, which meant that for a very long time he avoided the attention of British intelligence and managed to facilitate quite a few of the Abwehr’s agents and their nasty little games. The Abwehr were military intelligence, and although Van Alst would never have had the guts to put on a uniform himself, he had his uses.

  Eline could tell that despite all the bluster and ranting he was a bit scared of her; and assuming that he had read her file, he was right to be, knowing what kind of violence she had both endured and was willing to inflict.

  * * *

  When the German tanks attacked Huy, Eline and her family were already on the road out of town with their belongings in an old pram: her father, her big brother Michael, and her little brother Carl. Her mother had refused to go, since her grandfather and grandmother were both so old and frail that they couldn’t possibly have coped on the road, but she had made her husband swear to take the children safely to the Belgian coast. Eline, at fourteen, was hardly a child, but obeyed all the same.

  Nobody knew how the Germans got ahead of the refugees so quickly. She learned later that a lot of troops had been parachuted on to secure key bridges and road junctions, and the line of refugees that her family was a part of walked straight into them. The soldiers told them to get off the road to make way for the tanks, and head off across the fields, which would have been straightforward enough except that they also demanded the refugees pay a toll of whatever money and jewellery they possessed. Most obeyed. Those that didn’t were beaten with an almost professional detachment. One young man, seeing his wife in tears at having to give up her wedding ring while the soldiers laughed and made crude jokes, plainly reached the limit of how much humiliation he could tolerate, and pulled out a gun.

  When the machine-gun fire and the screaming started Eline’s family were at a point in the road where high, thorny hedges hemmed them in on both sides, too far away from the gaps where the soldiers had been telling the refugees to leave the road.

  She remembered her father and brothers picking her up bodily and shoving her through the hedge while she cried that she didn’t want to leave them, then screaming at the thorns that ripped at her face and hands, but there was so much screaming that her voice was lost. Screami
ng and machine-gun fire. It didn’t last long.

  She lay in a barley field on the other side and listened to the soldiers laughing as they first looted the bodies, and then dragged them away into the fields on either side to make way for the tanks. Too terrified to move, she lay there for hours tormented by thirst, even when armoured vehicles grumbled past in a seemingly endless line, like giant ants.

  When it was dark she made her way back towards Huy, hiding every time she heard a voice or saw a vehicle. She knew it would be no safer at home, but at least what was left of her family would be together. Then she saw what the advancing tanks had done to her home, to the entire street.

  Things became a little blurry after that.

  When she came back to herself she was in Huy’s Grand Place. It was the catcalls and leers of the soldiers lounging in the open square that brought her to her senses. She couldn’t believe that what they saw was in any way appealing because she must have been in a pitiful state, but there was always that breed of man for whom the more pathetic you were the more they wanted you. She didn’t like to think what they would have done if Madame Saunier hadn’t chosen that moment to come out of La Taverne Meuse to empty the slops bucket down the drain. Madame scolded the soldiers and took Eline in, cleaned her up and gave her a place to stay at La Taverne.

  Eline stayed there for the next two and a half years.

  In that time she found that she quite settled to bar work. Before the war, like all daughters of good, respectable families, she had looked at girls who served in tavernes and cafés as a little too friendly with the male customers than was decent. True, a number of the girls from La Taverne Meuse went with German soldiers, either to get something or because it made them feel safer, or even maybe because they genuinely liked them. Eline found that she had a talent for singing and spent more of her time standing by the creaking old piano making the Germans tearful with love ballads than serving drinks, which suited her fine. She could lose herself in the music and not have to negotiate the wandering hands of men she despised.