‘Looking for anything in particular?’ says the man, eyes still fixed on his newspaper.
‘I’ve got a list,’ I say, going over to him.
He looks at it, then up at me. ‘Where you going?’
‘Spending the summer at my sister’s in Suffolk.’
‘And you’ll need a tent there, will you?’
‘We might do some camping while we’re there. Explore the countryside.’
‘Might you. Nothing firmly planned then?’
‘I’ll see what the prices are.’ I shrug and move away. ‘We’ll need the clothes anyway, got nothing suitable.’
I wander over to the small bookshelf and run my hands idly over the spines. Birdwatching . . . wildlife . . . birdwatching . . . birdwatching for children . . . angling . . . geology. I pick up a secondhand paperback, Foraging, and flip through the pages, stopping to read. I sense him watching me and snap it shut. It puffs up a cloud of dust.
‘When I was younger a lot of people used to do it.’ He smiles and looks at me intently.
The bell ting-tings and a middle-aged man comes in, asking for waterproof trousers in a Large. He buys them and leaves.
The owner watches me for a while as I try out binoculars, then eases himself up off his stool and beckons me to follow, round the L of the shop, through an archway.
In the inner room recess, three mannequins dressed head to toe in waterproofs – a man, a woman, and a child a little older than Cara, her dark hair cut into a bob with a blunt fringe – crouch round a campfire, in attitudes of rigor mortis. The mother, skin a waxy yellow, eyes full and staring, whistle dangling from a lanyard round her neck, clutches the cup from a thermal flask. Three silver sleeping bags – one junior-sized – sit neatly rolled in the pop-up tent behind them. Kendal mint cake and firelighters litter the groundsheet. A square of tinfoil lines the portable grill.
I inspect the tent, shiny green nylon, just big enough for one person, or one person and a child. ‘I’ll take the lot,’ I say, turning to him.
‘Sizes?’ he says, going to his stockroom, and I tell him, giving Cara’s next size up.
He piles the bagged-up clothes and boxed-up boots and gear on the counter, then comes out from behind it with a packet in his open palm.
‘Sterilising tablets, in case you can’t boil your water.’ He shows me and chucks them on the pile.
He pulls things off the shelves and out of drawers. ‘A flask – when you do boil water, put some in a flask. Then you have it even when your fire’s gone out.
‘Medical kit – essential.
‘Thick winter gloves – also good for picking nettles. You can eat nettles, you know. Yes – once you cook them they don’t sting. That’s where your flask of hot water comes in handy.’ His thin mouth stretches over his teeth in a smile. ‘They also make good tea, for when you’ve drunk all the real stuff.’
Has he been questioned before, I wonder, about branded goods on people found (alive?) in the woods, in caves? I’d love to ask him whether they were found alive. I wonder if he ever hears back from anyone. How he knows what works.
‘Do you sell anything else?’ I ask, looking at him directly. He looks away. And then goes to the door of his backroom. I wonder if it’s an invitation to follow.
I make another circuit of the shop. I choose a large waterproof camper bag, maps, torches, penknives, and binoculars. I pick up the Foraging book and Birdwatching for Children.
‘Oh, and I might take these,’ I say carelessly, dropping them onto the counter. Then I hand over the equivalent of three weeks’ pay.
As he packs up my purchases into the camper bag, he passes me a card. ‘Do come back,’ he says. ‘We do mail order too.’ And he smiles again, revealing a false crown.
At home I pack the dried foodstuffs into the camper bag – cheesy biscuits, packets of small cakes, raisins, and chocolate – and all the tins. Candles. Cutlery. Vitamins. Toiletries. Jewellery. Cash. Nothing electronic. A few warm clothes, mostly things for Cara. Wellies in two child sizes. We’ll wear the rest. Dean collects up all his lighters from when he used to smoke, before the pollution got too bad. I used to tease him for being a hoarder. I stuff in a couple of print books for Cara. We eat the birthday cake.
Late at night, in the kitchen, with the washer on, I read about foraging, committing to memory the properties and seasons of fungi, berries, leaves, bulbs, roots, flowers, nuts, and seeds. I make Dean learn about them too, in case we get split up. One day I’ll teach Cara, if we last that long.
I re-draw the maps on paper, using codewords for the names of places and marking in South as North. I make copies for both of us. We’ve got an old compass that belonged to Dean’s granddad. I don’t know how to use it but I’ll figure it out. I know how to use the sun.
It’s hard to leave all of Cara’s baby things, but if we hang onto the past we lose the future. Nothing to keep them for anyway: no chance of having another one now. I don’t want anyone else to have them, so I burn them in a metal waste bin on the balcony, one box at a time, one Sunday afternoon.
I tell our neighbours on both sides and down the walkway that we’ll be gone for the summer. Dean tells his boss that we might not be back.
We’re lucky the weather’s still cool when we leave in June. No-one will comment on our anoraks. We dress as holidaymakers, in light hiking gear, Dean in shorts.
At our local shop I use some more of next month’s tokens for picnic food. Some of it will keep for another day – and the tokens are no good to us now. I tell the shopkeeper we’re away for the summer. He knows us. ‘Sister’s got an allotment!’ I say. And ‘Dean’s got a holiday job!’
The last thing I do is tell the clinic we’ll be on holiday when the check is due – gone for the whole summer. No, we don’t have time to reschedule: we’re leaving today. The receptionist huffs with frustration, especially when I say I don’t know exactly when we’ll be back.
‘She’s hitting all her milestones . . .’ I say.
‘That’s not the point!’ she snaps, and huffs a bit more as she types something. ‘Just call for an appointment as soon as you’re home,’ she says. ‘I’ll make a note to contact you in September, just in case.’
My heart gives a little leap.
I know that if they want to find us they will. I just have to hope that they don’t care enough. We’re nothing valuable to them – at least, they don’t know that we are.
When we get to the forest, we look for an area with good cover, not too far from a stream. We find a small place surrounded by bushes. We can stay here for a while, and maybe come back here too. Some of the bushes are evergreens, so they’ll shield us in the winter. I mark the place on our maps. We use branches and a picnic blanket, and cover them with ferns to build a bivouac. I set out bowls to catch rainwater. We take off our layers of clothes and pack them away, back in the waterproof bag. We make a light camp; we might need to move quickly.
We build our first fire, just for the practice: dry leaves and twigs, one match, one candle, smiling in the glow of it. We eat sardines and madeleines. I read Cara her book and brush her nine teeth. While she sleeps in the tent, I leave the camp and scrape the dirty nappies with leaves, then wash them in the stream. When I get back I curl against her. A fine rain patters on the bivouac, but in our sleeping bags we are warm, and it will only get warmer this summer. We should be hardened enough when October comes round.
In the morning I wash myself, upstream of the nappies. I find some field mushrooms on the banks, and cut them with my penknife: they smell fresh and mouldy, damp with dew or rain. I walk back jubilant, a longer way, so as not to make a path between our camp and the stream. Nettles grow everywhere. I’ll pick some later, to stew with the mushrooms.
As I cross a clearing, a huge auburn fox, the biggest I’ve seen, as big as a pig, pounds past me, a hare in its jaws. Another, younger fox chases it.
I watch them hurtle through the wet trees, flashing tawny and white.
When I return to the camp, Cara is standing outside. She is barefoot. She fixes me with her eyes and takes two tiny steps on the forest floor, then a pause, then one more. I run to her and scoop her up, then show her the mushrooms, which she wants to eat immediately. I wipe them on a cloth, slice them and put them in the pan.
‘Dean, I’m going back for nettles,’ I shout, and I grab my winter gloves.
I wonder about the foxes, and the other things. Will we be their prey, when the weather turns, when the ice sets in?
I wonder about loneliness.
Maybe we’ll find some of the others? There must be others.
May the Bell Be Rung For Harriet
TRACEY S ROSENBERG
I WAS ALWAYS a slight girl, but I had a way with strange children, and so from the age of eight or nine I was sent out into the neighbourhood whenever the nursery maids became capless with frustration over their charges. The clergyman’s youngest son, who curled beneath the dining room table and gnawed on hazelnuts, shuffled over to lay his head on my knee as I sat on the hearthrug and knit him a pair of long woollen socks, without either of us speaking a word. The orphaned niece of the barrister’s third wife, in contrast, tore through the forests like a bewildered fox, and I trailed her until I was rife with scratches.
But any neighbourhood can hold only so many interesting children. The girls who dutifully rocked their dolls, the boys who could not pass a stone without kicking it – they stupefied me to the point where I was prepared to thrust my own hand (or anyone else’s) into the fire, simply for something to do.
Thankfully, just as I was starting to wonder whether the governess’s canary might not be happier if I brought its cage into the kitchen gardens and unhinged the door, I was summoned and told that I was being sent to another household – in another neighbourhood – before sunrise.
‘Her deceased mother was a butterfly.’ I could tell from the curl of the lip that this was considered an unimpressive state of existence. I rather liked the idea, though, of a girl who was daughter to a butterfly; perhaps she had inherited iridescent wings, and spent her time bumping gently against the trim of the upper walls, so that before every mealtime I would have to capture her with a net.
‘She is likely to be sent to relations very soon, but in the meantime you will look after her.’ A glance over my form, as if gauging my substance. ‘Though you are not many years older than she.’
I felt positively ancient when I took my seat in the coach. I imagined that I would spend my whole life in this manner, shuttling between positions, possibly gaining a few inches more in stature (for my parents had been tall people, and my early childhood was spent in constant amazement that I could not reach objects on the table, unless I jumped). The children in my care would soon cease to want me; they would no longer shout my name nor ring the nursery bell to summon me, instead walking away to marriage or boarding schools or lives at sea. Meanwhile, I would travel onwards by coach, finding less and less to cheer me, becoming inured to the most outrageous behaviours. ‘Yes,’ I imagined myself croaking to the governess, ‘little Flora shimmied up one of the Doric columns, clad in the Young Master’s second-best cravat, and devoured three newly hatched swallows, beaks and all. I only wish she were interesting.’
I did not wish to leave the coach. If I were to spend my life shuttling from one deranged child to the next, I deserved more time between them to remain as myself. But a lantern waited for me, held by a man who collected my small bag and grunted as if I were less important than that bag, so I trudged down a road comprised solely of mud, through several doorways each leading to a room colder and worse lit than the last, to find myself in a nursery.
As I removed my cloak, I wondered that my hands had not shrivelled with age.
The man and his lantern were replaced by a woman I instantly recognised as the housemaid who had been assigned to look after the girl, but who desperately wanted to return below stairs. I could barely keep her long enough to tell me the child’s name – Paulina Mary, known as Polly or Missy. (I vowed to refer to her only as the latter, as I had a loathing of children called by the same name as animals.) Another maid brought a bowl of soup, and before I could do more than ask her where I could freshen myself after the journey, and confirm that I was to sleep in the same room as my charge, the two scurried away as if freed from an unbearable bondage.
I settled down before a fire which was not worth stirring. My back ached and the soup contained celeriac, which I detested. I would have to enter a darkened room and feel my way to bed, and my mattress would probably contain things that would nip me as I slept.
I had only forced down a few spoonfuls of soup when a girl appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was delicately shaped, and her nightdress hung in perfect folds. Were it not for her eyes creasing in distaste, I might have thought her a doll which had swelled into perfect little-girl proportions.
She said, in a cold voice, ‘Are you neat, Harriet?’
I glanced at my rumpled dress and its mud-stained hem, and regretted that I was meeting my new charge while looking so ill-used. I might never recover my advantage. ‘I’m afraid not, Missy. I have only just arrived from the coach.’
‘I did not mean this moment. I can see you are not tidy. Will you be able to tie my sash properly, and comb my hair so the line is perfectly straight? The maids care only about their tea. If you cannot make me look the way Papa wishes me to appear, you may leave on the next coach.’
A child less like a butterfly I could not imagine – not even a butterfly stiffened with pins and posed under glass. I glanced with longing at the ceiling. The maids had, at least, kept cobwebs at bay.
‘I am entirely capable of keeping you as your father wishes.’
A flash of distrust appeared on her face. ‘You may prove that tomorrow.’
With scarcely a flick of her nightdress, she departed.
I left the hateful soup to congeal and retrieved my bag, wishing I could sleep in the pools of mud outside. I had a little money, enough to make my way to the cesspool that was London, where I could gain a new situation or find a different sort of drudgery . . . with the knowledge that I had fled a perfectly good position because a waxwork chit implied I might not be sufficiently skilled to keep her hair in place.
I dreamed of butterflies cast from lead. They wafted just below the ceiling. I flailed ineffectually with a net, jumped until my arms ached, and despaired ever to understand how the dark and heavy things flew.
A small voice announced, ‘I need you to dress me now.’
This child was neither angelic, nor dark enough to be beautiful; any attraction was in her poise.
I squinted without stirring. ‘I am sure you are capable of dressing yourself, Missy. If the maid was deficient, you must have made up for her lack of care.’
A small thump greeted my words – the girl stamping her diminutive foot. ‘Papa hired you to take care of me. Dress me now.’
I did not move. I felt rigid with age, or perhaps I too was turning to lead.
‘I need to be downstairs by eight o’clock to pour Papa’s coffee. He cannot . . .’ Her voice cracked. ‘Please, Harriet, he must not be disappointed in me!’
I rose so quickly she jumped back, spreading her arms to balance herself.
After twitching the bedclothes into place, I cast an expert eye over her wardrobe. Of course, she wore full mourning. I easily located a black dress, sash, and hair ribbon. Every piece of clothing she owned seemed to have been set in its place with infinite care.
I spent three full minutes patting her sash into place, though it would wrinkle the moment she took her seat beside her father. When I scraped the comb across her scalp, Missy only screwed her eyes shut as if steeling herself.
As she studied herself in the mirror, I brushed the dry mud off my hem. Breakfast
ing in the servants’ hall would be a nightmare in and of itself, though less of a trial than sitting at the same table as my employer. He had hired me unseen, and would be unlikely to let me go if his daughter was in such need of care, but I still half-wished he would change his mind.
‘You are not so pretty,’ I commented, finding that she continued to gaze at herself, ‘that you must commit your image to memory.’
‘I must be neat,’ she said, and led me out of the room.
With her white face and hands, she seemed to have no substance but the black dress. The corridors were dim, and I heard no voices. It was like being shut up in a tomb, with my only companion a tiny ghost obsessed with her appearance.
I would speak to her father and insist he paid my coach fare to London. If he protested, I would thrust my hand into the fire.
We had not yet reached the staircase, but Missy paused before a door. I waited a moment, listening for chimes from the downstairs clock. ‘Does your father breakfast here, Missy?’
Her hand crept to her heart. ‘How could Mamma die? She was so pretty and good.’
I wondered if she were paying obeisance to the dead as a morning ritual, but when she turned to me, her face showed fear. ‘I have not been inside,’ she whispered. ‘Not since they told me she was gone.’
After a moment of searching my face, she turned the door handle.
The room dazzled with light. I clasped my hands over my eyes. How had the maids, or the doctors, or the grieving widower, allowed the curtains to remain open?
When I finally dared look, I found my little charge sprawled on the floor, blossoming into a butterfly.
Best British Short Stories 2015 Page 10