The Woodcutter

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Then he relaxed.

  ‘And then I had the most ecstatic sex I had yet experienced.’

  She’d fallen silent. Her features had softened, her body relaxed, and her eyes were focused elsewhere, elsewhen.

  Imogen said coldly, ‘And how was it for him, Lady Chatterley?’

  Kira straightened up and was herself again.

  ‘All right, I suppose. He didn’t say. All he could do when it was over was apologize, as if he’d been the one who set things in motion! Men can be very arrogant, can’t they? He stuttered a lot of stuff about his wife having a child a couple of months earlier, and things still not being right between them, and so on. What it added up to, I suppose, was he hadn’t been getting any sex for some time before the birth and it didn’t look as if he were likely to be getting any in the foreseeable future, and this state of frustration he offered as explanation for his unforgivable effrontery in screwing me. His main concern seemed to be that I might broadcast our encounter!

  ‘Well, as you can imagine, I soon grew tired of this babble. I tidied myself up and said to him that I certainly had no intention of letting anyone know I’d demeaned myself with a woodcutter. And I further added that if ever I got the slightest hint by so much as a word or a look or a nod or a wink that he had mentioned it to anybody else, that would be the day he found himself out of work and out of his tied cottage.’

  Imogen had stopped listening. Her mind was making calculations.

  ‘You say this happened how many months after Wolf’s birth?’

  ‘Who said anything about Wolf?’

  ‘The Haddas only had one child. How long?’

  ‘Two, three months,’ said Kira.

  ‘And I’m almost exactly a year younger than Wolf . . . Christ, Mother, what are you trying to tell me? That you let me marry my half-brother?’

  Interestingly the idea excited as much as it horrified her.

  Lady Kira shrugged.

  ‘Why not? In the old days, unions closer than that were winked at to keep the bloodline pure. Hardly applicable here, of course. To start with, while having no objection to you pleasuring yourself with a woodcutter as I had done, the idea of your actually marrying him struck me as positively obscene. Then you told me you were pregnant, but it wasn’t his. And I thought, why not? It did mean the little bastard would have a name. And Hadda had come back to us with his manners mended and money in his pocket, and he looked to have the kind of ingratiating manner that could lead him to make a lot more. He might do reasonably well for a few years till you grew tired of him and someone better suited came along.’

  Imogen said, ‘But he was my brother!’

  ‘Half-brother. And as you’d made it clear you weren’t going to have any more children, I couldn’t see how your possible relationship might be a problem.’

  Imogen said, ‘I bet it was a problem for poor old Fred though. I bet he put three and nine together and took a good look at me and saw my blonde hair and blue eyes and nothing whatsoever of Ulphingstone in me. No wonder he was so absolutely dead set against the marriage!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kira indifferently. ‘Or perhaps he just had the good sense to see it was an ill match. Anyway, he never said anything.’

  ‘What could he say? Excuse me, Sir Leon, I rogered your wife twenty years ago and it occurs to me that perhaps your beloved daughter is really mine? And I was pregnant!’

  ‘Oh, come on, dear. I think you’re crediting the man with far too delicate a sensibility. He was a woodcutter, for God’s sake!’

  Not since her teens had Imogen felt frustrated enough to want to strike her mother, but the urge welled up in her now.

  She’d controlled it, stood up and made for the door.

  ‘Where are you going, dear?’ called her mother.

  ‘For a drive. Somewhere the air’s a bit fresher.’

  And she’d closed the door behind her with a gentleness more powerful than a slam.

  All this Imogen recounted to Wolf plainly and simply, leaving nothing out, putting nothing in.

  He listened, standing still as a statue, his features set in marble.

  When she finished, he let silence fall like a barrier between them.

  Finally he said quietly, ‘So you and your family destroyed my father just as completely as you destroyed me.’

  With an effort at lightness she said, ‘You don’t look too destroyed to me, Wolf. Look, why don’t we just walk away from this? I’ve got money. My share of the Woodcutter loot that Toby and Johnny squirrelled away. It’s safely stored in a Taiwanese bank. We can live any way you like. Brother and sister. Husband and wife.’

  ‘Wipe the slate clean, you mean?’ he said.

  ‘As clean as you like,’ she said. ‘If you want to spend the rest of your life punishing me, that’s all right too. Or perhaps not the rest. Seven years would seem about right.’

  ‘And is this what you came here to tell me?’ he said incredulously.

  She shook her head vigorously.

  ‘No. Far from it. I had some silly notion of trying to clear things up between us, then I’d walk away, leaving you to the tender mercies of your black beauty. But now, after seeing you, talking to you, I can see how wrong that would be. You don’t want to tie yourself to a psychiatrist, Wolf! She’d be in your mind all the time, ferreting around, trying to set things straight. Me, I’m in your blood, I’m in your genes, I’m in your soul. And you’re in mine. I think I’ve always known it. But I never wanted to admit it. Betraying you like I did, I made excuses to myself, put it all down to reason and necessity. But all I was really doing was trying to prove I was stronger than this dependency I felt. I wanted to prove I was myself. Now I know that I can’t be that self without acknowledging you are part of it too. So what do you say?’

  ‘You let me go to jail for a disgusting crime I was innocent of,’ he cried. ‘You let me take the blame for frauds I knew nothing about. You divorced me and married the bastard who framed me. You helped drive our daughter to distraction and my father to despair. And now you want me to run away with you?’

  ‘Look at yourself, Wolf,’ she commanded with a matching force. ‘Think of the things you’ve done, or left undone. There’s only one hard truth to hold on to in that fantasy world you built. You want me, I want you. We both knew that the first time we came here. We both know it still. Do I have to strip off like that first time and offer myself? I will if you want. Just say the word, Wolf. Just say the word!’

  She looked up at him, imploringly, defiantly.

  He loomed over her, holding the axe over her head as if to ward off her gaze. The polished blade mirrored her face beneath. She ripped the zip on her fleece jacket open, pulled on the buttons of her shirt till it too parted, revealing the soft white swell of her breasts.

  A hundred feet away on the summit path, seeing the movement of the axe, Alva Ozigbo screamed, ‘No!’ but the gusting north-west wind blew the word back down her throat. She dived her hand into her pocket and pulled out her mobile phone. Somehow she had to let them know she was here. And then beyond the two figures who seemed bound together in a kind of all-excluding ecstasy, she saw the man she’d been following. He was on his hands and knees, having just pulled himself up the final few feet of the climb.

  She opened her phone, sought and found Imogen’s number that she’d put in there last month, prayed that its state-of-the-art technology would find a signal up here and that Imogen would have her phone switched on.

  She pressed the speed-dial key.

  Pudovkin pushed himself upright. It had been harder than he’d imagined. It wasn’t at all like the climbing wall. All that space beneath his feet, and somewhere far below he kept imagining he could hear a dog barking angrily, like some hound of hell waiting to seize him if he fell. A couple of times he’d nearly lost his grip and even the coke he’d snorted couldn’t stop him trembling. He’d need to get close to make sure of his shot.

  And then he realized there were two of them. The lawyer�
��s wife was here too. What the hell was that all about? He didn’t want to kill her, but it was hard to see an alternative. At least her presence seemed to be such a distraction that Hadda was totally unaware of his arrival.

  He took a step forward, gun raised.

  Two things happened as he pressed the trigger.

  A telephone rang.

  And Hadda raised his axe.

  The bullet glanced off the blade, making it ring like a bell, then rattled away among the fellside crags.

  Hadda turned his one-eyed gaze on the Russian. Even safely distanced from any possible swing of the axe, and with a loaded pistol in his hand, Pudovkin felt himself paralysed. Only for a moment.

  But in that moment Imogen had raised her phone to her ear and pushed herself upright so that she stood between Hadda and his assassin.

  A shaft of sunshine broke through the lowering cloud as if to highlight a climactic scene.

  She called, ‘Pudo, it’s Pasha. He’d like to speak to you.’

  She advanced unhurriedly, a smile on her face, the phone outstretched.

  Some part of his mind was yelling at him that Nikitin couldn’t possibly know that he was up here on top of this fucking great rock with his fancy woman and her ex-husband.

  Another part was registering that her jacket and shirt were open and she had really great tits.

  And perhaps because of the normalcy of this reaction, yet another part assured him that the guy with the gun was always the guy in control, and he reached out his hand to take the phone.

  He grasped it.

  The woman kept on coming.

  She wrapped herself around him in an embrace as fierce as a lover’s and with an irresistible force drove him backwards.

  Hadda and Alva screamed together in unconscious unison, ‘No!’

  Then they were gone.

  Somewhere in mid air, they lost contact with each other and Imogen was falling alone, first through the bright air, then through the unreverberate blackness, as she had always dreamed.

  Only Sneck was positioned to see the whole of the fall, and he, alone on the slab below, threw back his head and filled the valley with a mournful howl.

  High above, Hadda turned and looked across to Alva in despair. Then he began to spin round, axe held out at arm’s length, faster and faster, finally letting go and sinking to his knees as the axe hurtled so far through the air that it fell a thousand feet before landing in the valley below.

  Epilogue

  Wait and Hope

  ‘Il n’y a ni bonheur ni malheur en ce monde, il y a la comparaison d’un état à un autre, voilà tout. Celui-là seul qui a éprouvé l’extrême infortune est apte à ressentir l’extrême félicité. Il faut avoir voulu mourir pour savoir combien il est bon de vivre.

  ‘Vivez donc et soyez heureux, enfants chéris de mon coeur, et n’oubliez jamais que, jusqu’au jour où Dieu daignera dévoiler l’avenir à l’homme, toute la sagesse humaine sera dans ces deux mots:

  ‘Attendre et espérer!’*

  Alexandre Dumas: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo

  * * *

  *‘There is neither happiness nor misery in the world, only the comparison of one state with another. Only the man who has plumbed the depths of misfortune is capable of scaling the heights of joy. To grasp how good it is to live you must have been driven to long for death.

  ‘Live, then, and be happy, dear children of my heart, and never forget, until the day arrives when God in his mercy unveils the future to man, all of human wisdom lies in these two words:

  ‘Wait and hope!’

  1

  Autumn 2018: nothing changes; the world continues as mixed up as ever, the same mélange of comic and tragic, triumph and disaster, sweet and sour, as in every age since humanity hauled itself upright and put on pants.

  Nine months after the drama on Pillar Rock, Wolf Hadda tasted both the sweet and the sour as he heard the Court of Appeal (Right Hon. Lord Justice Toplady presiding) declare his convictions of 2010 unsafe.

  Outside the Royal Courts of Justice, bathed in the noontide sunshine of an Indian summer, he stood in mountainous silence as Ed Trapp read a short bland statement to the waiting reporters. Then, cocooned by policemen, the two men made their way through the exploding flashbulbs and the strident questions to a waiting limo that pulled away so quickly the pursuing press didn’t have time to register that there was already someone sitting in the darkened passenger compartment.

  Nothing was said as the car sped along the Strand. As it approached Charing Cross, Trapp said, ‘This’ll do me.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m meeting Doll for a spot of lunch.’

  ‘Give her my love,’ said Wolf. ‘And Ed – thank you.’

  The car pulled over, the two men shook hands as Trapp got out, then Wolf settled back in his seat as the journey resumed.

  ‘So all’s well that ends well,’ said John Childs. ‘Justice prevails.’

  ‘Justice!’ exclaimed Hadda. ‘Imogen dead, Arnie Medler dead, the Nutbrowns in jail for a crime they didn’t commit, Estover half-blind and crippled and facing God knows what kind of future, me winning my appeal on new evidence that was just about as dodgy as the old evidence that got me sentenced in the first place – and that’s what you call justice!’

  ‘Exitus acta probat,’ said Childs. ‘The end justifies the means.’

  ‘Does it? You once warned me about acting like God, JC. Maybe you should have listened to yourself.’

  ‘My way is not so mysterious. All I did to steer you to this safe haven was call in a lot of favours, so much so that the favour bin is rather empty now. I do hope you are going to behave yourself in the foreseeable future.’

  Hadda laughed and said, ‘Worried in case I’m tempted to accept one of the tabloid offers for my unexpurgated memoirs?’

  ‘Well, since you were so energetic in making sure all the recovered Woodcutter misappropriations were returned to those who suffered from the crash, the money must be very tempting.’

  ‘Sure! And the Chapel would let me live to enjoy it? I don’t think so. No, I’ve got a job offer I’m thinking about.’

  ‘Your late lamented father’s job, you mean, looking after the Ulphingstone estate? Start as a woodcutter, end as a woodcutter. Neat, but hardly progress.’

  ‘Jesus! I don’t know why I bother to open my mouth when you could speak all my lines for me!’ said Wolf. ‘Yes, Leon is keen to keep me close. I really thought that after what happened, he mightn’t be able to stand the sight of me. Instead it seems to have brought us closer.’

  ‘Without you he has lost everything,’ said Childs. ‘Though I cannot imagine his parting with Lady Kira tore his heartstrings.’

  ‘Maybe not. I got her wrong, I think. Well, slightly wrong. She had a small stroke when she heard about Imo. But of course you know that. So she did care for someone more than herself. I only saw her once before she left for Switzerland. It was a shock. She’d put on thirty years; she looks older than Leon now.’

  ‘Will she come back, do you think? After the clinic has put her together again.’

  ‘Leon says no. She told him she hated the castle, and Cumbria, and England. “In the end the dreadful, drab English always win,” she said, “that is the lesson of European history.”’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that she got something from her stay with us,’ said JC.

  ‘She got Imo. She got Ginny. She’s lost everything.’

  ‘It’s all right to feel sorry for her,’ said Childs gently. ‘Only, don’t let it turn into guilt. Not about her, or anyone. No one got more than they deserved.’

  ‘Even Arnie Medler?’

  ‘That was an accident, Wolf. Truly. These things happen. Think positive. Think of the good that has come out of all this. The Trapps, what friendship they’ve displayed. The estimable Mr McLucky who would never have met the delectable Morag without your intervention. Your good friend Luke Hollins who may yet bring religion to darkest Cumbria. And, of
course, the wonderful Dr Ozigbo. Most relationships end in deceit. Yours began with it, so that bodes nothing but good.’

  ‘What makes you think there’s a relationship?’

  ‘Well, I know for a fact that when she decided to pursue her career in an academic setting, opportunities arose at Warwick University, and Bath, and there was even talk of Cambridge. But she’s opted for Lancaster.’

  ‘That’s because it’s handy for her family,’ Wolf asserted firmly.

  ‘Perhaps. But the M6 goes north as well as south. Talking of motorways, should you really drive back today? You’ve had a trying morning.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ said Wolf. ‘Not when so many favours had gone into ensuring the outcome. No, the sooner I’m out of this rat-run, the better. I’ll be home before dark.’

  ‘If you are sure.’

  They relapsed into a silence that stretched till they pulled into the London Gateway service area at the foot of the M1.

  There, parked in an area marked Staff Only, stood the Defender.

  ‘It’s been cleaned,’ said Hadda accusingly.

  ‘I’m sure by the time you get back to Birkstane it will have lost its shine,’ said Childs. ‘Au revoir, Wolf.’

  He offered his hand. Hadda looked at it for a moment then grinned and leaned forward and kissed Childs on the forehead.

  ‘Let’s make that goodbye, JC,’ he said.

  Childs sat and watched the Land Rover pull out of the service area, and continued to sit, still and silent, long after it had passed from his sight.

  ‘Where now, sir?’ asked his driver finally.

  Childs considered for a moment before replying.

  ‘Give me a moment to make a phone call,’ he said. ‘Then, I think, Phoenicia.’

  2

  It was dusk when the Defender arrived in Mireton.

  Wolf knew he should have taken a break on the long drive home, but a need stronger than reason had made him let the motorway carry him north till the familiar outline of his beloved Cumbrian fells became visible, and then it had seemed silly to stop.