The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods

by Emily Barr

  ‘What about the cat?’

  ‘The cat belonged to the neighbour, Mrs Bourne, but it used to come and visit us in our tree when we were small. It was a Siamese, very beautiful and particular.’

  ‘She was called Gizmo.’

  ‘Yes. Gizmo. Vick– Venus, you loved Gizmo. You’d take her up into your bedroom and talk to her and cuddle her and take comfort from her. I’d hear you talking to her through the wall. I was so jealous. I hated myself, and I hated that cat.’

  ‘Oh, man,’ said Odin. ‘I’m not sure I want to hear it.’

  ‘Go on, Matt,’ said Vicky.

  ‘I overheard my mum and Mrs Bourne talking. Mum didn’t even know I was in the house, but the fact was I’d crept in and was looking for her purse. They were talking about Vicky and how she was doing, and how awful it was for all of them, having to cope with me and what a nightmarish person I’d become. And Mrs Bourne said, “Vicky’s welcome to look after Gizmo all she likes. She’s a gorgeous cat. Worth the money!” And my mum said something like, “How much did you pay for her anyway?” and Mrs Bourne said, “Five hundred pounds, and it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.”’

  ‘And all you heard was five hundred pounds, right?’ said Odin.

  ‘Yes. Next opportunity I got, I took that cat and sold her to my dealer. I told him she was worth five hundred. I bartered her for heroin. No idea what happened to her after that.’

  ‘And was that the worst thing you did?’

  This was it. I stared into the flames.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t the worst thing I did.’

  No one said anything for a long time. They were all waiting. I knew that they would sit here in silence waiting for me to speak indefinitely. Nothing else would happen until I told this part of my story.

  I closed my eyes and forced the words out.

  ‘The worst thing I did …’ I said. I paused, opened my eyes and looked back at the fire. ‘… was when my dealer said I could have free smack for a week if I let his friend have sex with my sister.’ I stopped, but no one spoke so I continued. ‘I thought I could make her do it for me. But I knew she wouldn’t if I just asked, so I tricked her. I made her think she was going with me to an NA meeting. Narcotics Anonymous. And the dealer and his mate met us on the corner.’ I stopped again. Carried on again. ‘They grabbed her. She fought them off. I didn’t help. I didn’t help her or them. I just stood there. She kicked them in the balls and got a passer-by to call the police. We all ran away. She didn’t speak to me again until today.’

  I had said it. The birds and insects, I noticed, made a huge noise, but the people said nothing. The fire crackled. Insects screamed.

  ‘You tried to prostitute your own sister for heroin?’ said Hella eventually.

  ‘I did. Yes.’

  ‘Hence, ladies and gentlemen, why we are here,’ Vicky said. ‘I told my mum. She, to give her her dues, stepped up. She said she had had enough of him and that he was never going to do that again to me or to any other human being, and that she was going to keep him in the basement until he was different. She said she wasn’t going to tell our dad what Matthew had done, because it would destroy him and he was almost destroyed already. And she kept her word. She tricked Matthew into the basement by saying her purse was there, and she locked him in.

  ‘I couldn’t stay for long after that. I packed a bag and took all my savings, which was the money I’d earned from my job in the ice-cream shop, hidden away where you couldn’t find it, Matt, and I told my parents I was off forever. I wanted to set up a world in which women weren’t seen as property to be traded between men and used as currency. I had absolutely had it. I would have killed you if I’d stayed.

  ‘Our parents begged me not to go. I thought you’d die in the basement, and I left. I didn’t go back. Perhaps I never will. Maybe I should have stayed in touch with them, but I couldn’t. I’m glad Mum did it. She’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘He needs to leave.’ It was Diana, speaking quietly but with total certainty. ‘I don’t care if he’s sorry. He needs to go. There is no place for this person in our world.’

  Vishnu leaned forward and put another piece of wood on to the fire.

  ‘What did you plan to do, coming here?’ he said, sitting back and looking me in the eye.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I wanted to get here. That’s all. I’m sorry, Vicky. I don’t know how to live with myself really. I wanted to say sorry to Vicky.’

  She shuffled over and sat down in front of me. She took my hands. I looked around, suddenly realizing that the baby wasn’t there, but then saw that Kali was holding it.

  ‘Thank you, Matthew,’ she said. She breathed deeply a few times. ‘I forgive you,’ she said. ‘I truly forgive you because you came here to make amends. I believe you are sorry. In this world we have no addiction. No crime. No violence. No war. No misogyny. We have none of that. This is our world away from all the bad things. You spurred me on to make it real. I forgive you.’

  I looked into her eyes and I could see that she really did forgive me. I clung on to that. It would stay with me forever. I watched my sister turn and reach out for her baby. Kali gave it to her, then Vicky held it out to me.

  ‘I think it’s time for you to meet your niece,’ she said. ‘This is Artemis, but we all seem to call her Arty.’

  I reached out and took the baby as gently as I could. I looked into her eyes, and she looked back at me with a gaze older than her tiny age.

  ‘Hello, Arty,’ I said.

  She stared back at me, right into my soul.

  27

  Vishnu was alive. He had been alive all along. Of course he had, because that was how life worked. To be alive, you had to have been alive for all your life.

  Arty didn’t want to know exactly what had happened. Not yet. She just wanted to be as close to him as she could possibly be, and she wanted to look at him, and she wanted to grab hold of his arm and feel his warmth.

  She had been an orphan and now she was not.

  ‘Arty,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Such a shock. I should have written or something. But I just wanted to come and find you. I don’t know how to do these computer things yet. They weren’t around before. Not in the same way.’

  She made an effort. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She bit her lip to stop it trembling. She focused on the here and now.

  ‘But how?’ she said.

  A moment ago she hadn’t wanted to know, and now she did.

  ‘Oh, Arty.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You and Zeus went. I know that now. If I’d had the tiniest of ideas then. Finding you were alive, that you were on the internet as the girl who came out of the woods and that everyone knew you, was as astonishing to me as this is to you. When you left I must have been completely out of it.

  ‘I don’t know how long it was afterwards, but it can’t have been that long because I didn’t die of dehydration, I woke up. I realized I had been ill and now I was getting better. I was pleased for a fraction of a second but then I looked around for you and you weren’t there. I looked for Venus. And she was.

  ‘It was the worst thing. You know, Arty, I can’t talk about it, but I could see that only half of us were there. You, Zeus, Odin, Diana, Hercules. You had gone. But I had a half-memory that Odin was taking the bodies to the forest and burying them, so I thought that had happened. I could see that I was the only one.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I waited, but no one came. I walked around and looked, but no one was there. I walked into the woods. You walked out of them, and I walked in. I wasn’t thinking, darling. I don’t even know what I did. I knew I had to get away from the clearing. I gathered some food and water and I set off. Away from any place where I might meet anyone. Because it was my land, you know? I don’t think you ever did know that because we weren’t about that kind of thing, but that forest belonged to me. I had inherited it years before. I wandered off, slept in the woods. I knew how to survive, and s
o I did. I lived in the forest, gradually healing – physically at least – until I was strong enough for the world. A few months, I guess. It’s hard to piece it all together.

  ‘I didn’t want to see people when all the people I cared about were gone. The last thing I wanted to do was to walk to Lonavala, go to Pune, Mumbai, whatever. I lived by myself. I was mad with grief. I kept waiting to wake up, but it was real, and so my universe shrank. There was just me, getting water from a stream, eating the forest food, staying alive because I didn’t even have the energy to bother to die. I got better and I got worse, and better and worse. I’d lost everything.’

  They looked into each other’s eyes. Arty wanted to say something but she couldn’t, and so she just rubbed his arm and told him with her eyes to carry on.

  ‘Time passed. You know. The same time was passing for you, my Arty. I didn’t know where I was, but I started to work it out, to get a sense of myself in conjunction with the rest of the world. You never knew, but I have family living a couple of hills away, and once I started to think I could see another human again and that that might be a good thing I walked to their place and gave them the fright of their lives.’

  ‘I bet you did.’ Lucy was rapt. ‘They thought you were dead.’ Arty had forgotten Lucy was there.

  ‘They knew I was living there all along as a hermit. They didn’t know anything else about it until everything happened. So, yes, they’d very much thought I was dead. And then I got up to speed on it all, but they kept talking about a forest girl and I had no idea what they were saying until I realized – I realized that my daughter was alive. And not only was she alive, but she was also the bravest person in the world.’

  Arty pulled her chair even closer to his.

  He took her face in his hands and stared at her. ‘And here you are,’ he said. ‘Living in Venus’s old house. Going to the library. Studying economics. Oh my God. Just. Oh. My. God.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, and she leaned into him and never, ever wanted to be anywhere else.

  January

  I longed to stay there. Vicky and I had imagined this world, and she had, through her formidable willpower, and spurred on by the fact that her twin went wholeheartedly to the dark side, made it happen. We used to sit in that tree and pretend we lived in a forest, in a treehouse, with monkeys. In our world the person in charge was Vicky. I always felt safer knowing that she made the rules.

  Now that world was real, and not only was Vicky in charge but she had a baby, and she had a boyfriend who actually deserved her, and she had made it from nothing.

  They found me a place to sleep that night, in the shack with books and games, and in the morning I cradled my niece and sat by the fire and waited for someone to ask me to leave.

  The baby looked at me, and I looked at her. We just stared at each other for ages. I wanted to look after her forever, but more than that I wanted to stay away from her. I fucked up everything I did. I had destroyed my parents and my sister, and I needed to stay away.

  I had my bear with me. It was a talisman that went with me everywhere. I took it out of my bag and held it out to Arty.

  ‘This is for you,’ I told her. ‘It’s a protective bear. It will always look after you. And I do love you loads and I always will.’ She smiled at it.

  No one spoke to me apart from Vishnu, who was handsome and warm. I was glad he was Vicky’s boyfriend. I stared at the contours of his face, knowing that he could have been a model or something. He made me feel intensely mundane.

  He called me over to him while he chopped some vegetables, and I shifted over to where he was, being careful of his daughter (I presumed) in a way I had never cared for anything before.

  ‘Thanks for talking to Venus last night,’ he said. ‘I don’t think she’d told anyone except me that story before. It must have taken a lot to say it. To strangers, in a strange place.’

  ‘It did,’ I said. ‘But I’ll never stop feeling shit. You know what, Vishnu. I don’t think I can live with myself. It’s a considered position. As soon as you stop, sober up and realize the horror, well, the fucking horror, it swamps you.’

  He smiled. ‘Your sister doesn’t let us swear round here, man.’

  ‘Sorry. Well, everything I just said apart from the swear then.’

  ‘That’s OK. Hey – you should stay here with us. Though – well, we do grow weed. It grows well. We sell it. It’s how we fund our life. So capitalism isn’t so far distant after all. And, you know, drugs.’

  ‘That’s OK. I never cared for that anyway. I mean, don’t worry about me running off with it or anything.’

  ‘We don’t touch it ourselves. It’s strictly forbidden. It’s just our currency. An economic decision. The best money we can get from a crop.’

  ‘Do you drink?’

  ‘Once a year we get a crate of Kingfisher and a few bars of chocolate, and we indulge ourselves. To celebrate the birthday of our community. That’s it. When you take out all the extraneous stuff you find you live right here in nature. It’s hard to describe the transcendence of it, but it’s something we all need for our different reasons.’

  ‘Why did Tania stop needing it?’

  ‘Persephone? She just did. Her family was pulling her away. That’s OK.’ He smiled. ‘Or it was, until you turned up.’

  I sat in silence, rocking the baby. I didn’t think I had ever held a baby before and I very much wanted to treasure her. I knew that handing her to me had been Vicky’s way of letting me know I was forgiven. I had done my best to sell my sister. She would have been perfectly sensible not to trust me with her child.

  I desperately wanted to stay but I knew I couldn’t. I told myself that I wouldn’t even if they asked me to, because I could never trust myself around the most precious people in the world: Vicky and baby Artemis. However, I hoped they would ask me. I hoped they’d persuade me.

  When Arty started to fuss and root around for some milk I called for Vicky, though I remembered to call her Venus. She appeared at once, dropping down from a tree and landing lightly.

  ‘Thanks, Matt. Hello, babykins! Hello, chikoo! Hello, my darling. Are you a thirsty girl? Are you hungry? I’d say you are.’

  As she fed the baby, she said, ‘You know I’d like it if you stayed. Vishnu would be fine with it too. But the rest of them wouldn’t. We can hold a formal meeting and put it to a vote if you like, but we won’t win. I can tell you that now. And it’s not something I’d overrule them on. The balance of personalities is too important. I can’t disturb it.’

  I looked at my sister, the one who ruled her own world and did it properly.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I would stay. I’d do anything. But I’m going to go. Thank you, Vicky. Can I tell Mum and Dad about Arty?’

  I watched her thinking about it.

  ‘No,’ she said in the end. ‘They’d send the police. You know they would, and it would be the end of everything. I’m sorry, but I’m not risking it. This is my life now. We might come out one day and if we do I’ll go to see them, but for now – no.’

  I nodded. ‘I promise I’ll never tell them,’ I said, and I never did.

  28

  Much later in the evening, when they were all sitting round the table with an Indian takeaway (unprecedented in this house, as far as Arty could tell), Vishnu said, choosing his words carefully, ‘Could I ask about … Matthew?’

  ‘Matthew?’ Grandma said. ‘Did Victoria talk about him?’

  ‘She did,’ said Vishnu. ‘She did, yes. She spoke about him often.’ He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.

  ‘Well,’ Grandad said, ‘Matthew is Victoria’s twin brother. We had a terrible time with him. I suppose none of us ever got over it. That’s the evil of drugs. It breaks your heart.’ Grandad had never seemed like someone who said things like this until recently.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vishnu. ‘Is he …?’

  Arty could see what he was asking. ‘He’s still alive and he doesn’t tak
e drugs any more,’ she said. ‘He’s living in Uganda, working in a refugee camp. He’s going to come back and visit us, but he only calls once in a blue moon.’

  Vishnu smiled. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s extremely good. That he’s well, I mean. Not that he doesn’t call.’

  ‘He visited you,’ Grandma said. ‘Didn’t he?’

  Vishnu nodded. ‘I didn’t know whether to say. He told you then?’

  ‘No,’ said Grandma. ‘Artemis and I have pieced it together.’

  ‘It was the bear,’ said Arty, and she put it on the table.

  ‘Oh, the bear!’ Vishnu picked it up. ‘Hello, library bear! Yes, he gave this to you, Arty. When you were a baby.’

  ‘He gave it to me when I was a baby?’

  ‘He did. He came to us once when you were maybe six months old. Persephone had told him where we were. Some of the community were horrified. But, yes, he just turned up. He spent a night. He was utterly besotted with his niece. He apologized to Venus very sincerely. Then he left. That was his last official visit.’

  Arty was so tired. She wanted to go to bed, because she thought that tonight at last she might be able to sleep properly. Before she went, though, she had to ask her father one more question.

  ‘Vishnu,’ she said. ‘Did you see her body? Did you definitely see her with your own eyes? Venus?’

  He pulled her close. ‘I did, my chikoo. I’m sorry. I did. I closed her eyes. I covered her over. I did see her. She was ill, and then she died.’

  Arty cuddled in close to him and then she cried all the tears in the world. She cried for her mother and her brother and sister and all the rest of her family. She cried with relief because she was not alone any more. Snot ran out of her nose and on to Vishnu’s clothes. Grandma put a tissue in her hand but she couldn’t say thank you. Vishnu held her, and then she felt, from his breathing, that he was crying too.