‘Beat you!’ the woman corrected. ‘You can play some more after your teas.’ She began unwrapping a cloth containing sandwiches and passed them to the girl, who took one and handed them along the line. Eddie grabbed his and began to eat greedily.
‘Who’s that foreign girl?’ Eddie asked, nodding in Aisha’s direction. He stared at Aisha and carried on eating.
‘Eddie, don’t be so rude. Offer one to her. After all, she’s gone to the bother of coming in and making the place nice.’
‘But she’s sleeping in my bed,’ the little boy complained.
‘Don’t you be so selfish Edwin Lowie. You’ve had good use of it. She needs it now! Don’t you worry, my love, you’re not on your own. We’re here to look out for you. I’m Peggy. The woman smiled at Aisha and handed her a sandwich. ‘Hungry?’ Aisha nodded and began to eat.
‘What’s your name then?’ the girl asked.
‘Aisha.’
‘I’m Maisy.’ The girl smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll not mind if you sit with me!’
‘Aisha,’ the mother repeated. ‘Unusual one that. Never heard of it before have you, Albert? Pretty enough sounding though, isn’t it?’
At the sound of Conker’s growl, Aisha woke from her dream with a start. The dog was pacing up and down, sniffing along the benches. Aisha stroked her head and hunkered down further inside her sleeping bag. Conker jumped on to the bed and Aisha shifted over holding the dog close until both of their heartbeats returned to normal.
‘Did you see those people too?’ Aisha asked. As if in reply, Conker buried her head in Aisha’s jumper sleeve and whined.
The light was breaking through the evergreen branches that Aisha had placed over the entrance way. She’d heard the cries of foxes the night before and held her hands over her ears to block out the piercing noise that sounded like a woman screaming. She’d become worried that a fox would stroll in as she slept.
Aisha unzipped her sleeping bag, got up and pushed the branches aside. They had served their purpose, keeping out not only the foxes but a swirling mist that now crept freely into the shelter. Aisha peered at the score tally between Eddie and Albert again. It’s as simple as this, I read the writing on this wall, and then started picturing the people behind the names. I made those people up. Conker could have been disturbed by anything – maybe a rat or a mouse scurrying across the floor. That’s all. Nothing here’s changed – so why did it feel as if that family really had been inside the shelter looking after her, keeping her company as she slept?
Aisha shivered with cold and her stomach rumbled. She threw on her coat and trainers and climbed up the steps sending her line-up of conkers that she’d used to count the days she’d been here flying into the fog. The mist curled around her head enveloping her in a heavy shroud. Conker sniffed at the entrance and whined. Aisha scanned the trunk of the tall pine tree that had begun to drop its pointed cones. No sign of the little blue-backed birds today and none of their cheerful song either.
‘Come on, Conker. It’s only fog.’ Aisha attempted to coax the dog further outside, but the animal refused to move from the entrance as she peered out at the mist-shrunken world. Above Aisha’s head dark branches protruded like crooked limbs. It seemed to have come out of nowhere, this damp mist that tasted slightly metallic, like the polluted fumes of the city. Aisha started to clamber up on top of the air-raid shelter to get to the stream, but she couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her. Conker nuzzled against her side as she eased herself back into the entrance. The dog’s head appeared to be floating on a cloud as it tilted its face this way and that. Aisha went back inside the shelter and brought out some matches. She gathered some leaves and twigs and attempted to light a fire just outside, but the damp had seeped into everything and time after time the flames spluttered out.
‘Conker! We’ll eat in here today,’ Aisha called out to the dog, but Conker hovered in the entrance and whined. Had the dog also felt the presence of the wartime family?
Eventually, painfully slowly, Aisha managed to coax the dog back inside the shelter. She sat down and felt faint with hunger. She opened a can of custard and began to pour it into her mouth. She placed some on a shiny leaf for Conker, but the dog sniffed around, rejected it and lay down. It was a gloomy grey light inside and the damp had penetrated every surface. Aisha climbed back into her sleeping bag and Conker lay down next to her. It felt as if it was dusk, not dawn. Aisha longed to be back in school chatting with Muna, or lying in her bedroom at Liliana’s. It’s just your imagination getting the better of you, she told herself, as memories of her dream bombarded her, along with Elder’s words: ‘You can share these with the others.’
Don’t start letting your imagination take over, Aisha warned herself. You’re in a wood, there’s a homeless woman, there are no ‘others’ and there is nothing wrong with these apples.
Aisha picked one up, bit a large chunk out of it and turned to Conker.
‘Now what are we going to do all day, me and you?’
Conker nuzzled at her side as she lay back down on the bed. Aisha’s stomach lurched and she felt as if she might be sick. She closed her eyes and listened for what she had come to think of as the woodland orchestra, but the birds were quiet today. Once, in the distance, she thought she heard someone calling out, and Conker pricked her ears and sat up. But the mist had managed to muffle everything, creating an eerie silence that Aisha now felt trapped inside.
Mrs Kalsi and Elder were crammed into the back room of the shop, surrounded by stacks of stock. In the corner there was a sink. In front of it was a chair on which Elder sat as Mrs Kalsi smeared henna mix over her wet hair. She finished by wrapping a plastic bag over the old woman’s head.
‘Bag lady!’ Elder laughed loudly at her own joke, and Mrs Kalsi patted her on the shoulders and smiled. It was always like this when Elder turned up. Her visits were erratic. For a period she would appear every week, and then with no rhyme or reason they would not see her again for a month or so. Because she never knew exactly when Elder would be back, Mrs Kalsi always wanted to make the most of it and do as much as possible for her. So, as she waited for the henna to take hold, she soaked Elder’s hands, massaged them with Elder’s homemade balm, and cut her horn-like nails, all the while chatting as she worked. Elder was in a talkative mood today.
‘Locked me into my own wood. “Come to the shelter, come to the shelter,” they say. “It’s nice and warm, we’ll give you food and a bed and safety, treat your skin. You’re getting too thin, old Elder.” Full of advice, very nice, but Elder knows they just want to lock you in. Concrete walls are no good for a Gypsy soul . . . Can’t cage me in their shelter so now they’re trying to lock me out of my wood, or into it. Lights out, curfew, what a cheek!’
‘It’s not the way you’re thinking, Elder. The police lady told me they’ve closed the wood for Halloween and fireworks. Only so no young ones go making mischief,’ Mrs Kalsi explained as she washed the henna from Elder’s hair. ‘You haven’t seen any children in the wood, have you? The ones I showed you – those pictures in the window? They’re still missing, you know?’
Elder shook her head. ‘How much is that doggy in the window? The one with the waggly tail . . .’ She sang as Mrs Kalsi combed and searched through every strand of her hair.
‘Anyway, if the gate to the wood is locked, how did you get out?’ Mrs Kalsi asked.
‘Elder’s no fool! By the Gypsy gate. Found a hole in the fence big enough for little Elder to squeeze through. Had to strip a few layers off. Shrink myself.’
‘I was thinking you are looking thin when you walked from that mist,’ Mrs Kalsi said as she parted Elder’s long straggly hair, examined the comb and grimaced at the bug that crawled over her thumbnail. She clicked it and sighed with satisfaction.
‘True! There’s not much of me left under all my rags!’ Elder agreed.
‘Sure you don’t want to take a bath now, put on new clothes?’
Elder shook her head. ‘I go down to the
stream. Best water, fresh water, shocks the heart, keeps it going, stops it slowing.’
Mrs Kalsi nodded, walked over to a cupboard, took out a clean white towel and handed it to Elder. ‘Promise me to come back next week so I can comb it through once more?’
‘A promise is a promise is a promise!’ Elder nodded sniffing the clean towel as if it smelt of the most delicious perfume, then she hugged it into her stomach and tilted her head backwards into the sink.
After she had rinsed Elder’s hair out, Mrs Kalsi picked up a plastic bowl and filled it with warm water, then added a few drops of liquid antiseptic. The storeroom began to smell like a hospital. She took one of Elder’s feet and placed it in the bowl, then the other. Elder leaned her head back and winced in pain but she kept them soaking in the water. Mrs Kalsi gently ran her hands over Elder’s cut, cracked soles and the old woman’s features began to relax.
‘Temperature OK? Not too hot?’ Mrs Kalsi asked.
‘I’m in heaven, just in heaven!’ Elder sang without opening her eyes.
Mrs Kalsi smiled, walked through to the front of the shop and returned with a pair of socks.
‘Wool for this cold weather!’ she said as she carefully dried between each flaking toe and eased the socks on to Elder’s feet. ‘I bought Wellington boots too. Dry feet must make you feel little better, nah?’
Elder nodded gravely. ‘Wet and cold creep into your soul.’ At the thought of it, she shivered, only relaxing again when she felt the heat of the hairdryer on her scalp.
Drying Elder’s hair was always Mrs Kalsi’s favourite part. Afterwards Elder seemed to spring to life again. Mrs Kalsi had discovered that if she played old-fashioned music like Vera Lynn and Frank Sinatra, then Elder would sing along and sometimes even twirl slowly around the shop, as she was doing now with her clean, dry, bright-red hair and new green wellies.
‘How’s baby Crystal?’ Mrs Kalsi asked as Elder sang along to ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when—’
Elder stopped dead in her tracks and scowled. ‘Wouldn’t leave a real baby in the wood on her own. What do you think of me?’
Mrs Kalsi had become used to these mood switches so she followed Elder’s cue and changed the subject. ‘Cup of tea and samosa?’ she asked, and led Elder by the arm through to the front of the shop. In all the years that Elder had been coming to her, she had never managed to find out the old woman’s story.
‘Oh-hoh!’ Mr Kalsi clapped his hands at the sight of the coiffed Elder. ‘She’s looking like L’Oreal girl from TV advertisement!’
Elder laughed at the compliment and flicked her wild Pre-Raphaelite hair over her shoulder and for a brief moment you could trace in this proud gesture what she might have looked like when she was young.
‘Not going to eat?’ Mr Kalsi nodded towards the samosa.
‘Appetite like my little sparrows!’ she admitted.
On her way out, she paused and peered up at the noticeboard.
‘You’ll tell me if you see these children, won’t you, Elder?’ Mrs Kalsi reminded her.
Elder stared at the posters for a moment and slowly nodded. She was still nodding her head as she walked further up the road, opened the overstuffed metal drawer of the Oxfam clothes bank and pulled out some random bags. She sorted through them, stuffed a few items of clothing into her own bag and disappeared into the heavy mist of the road.
Then there was a screech of brakes and a man’s voice shouting, ‘Watch where you’re going, you silly old cow!’
Mr Kalsi hurried out of the shop and stood with his wife peering into the mist. They both sighed with relief when they heard Elder’s chanting start up again.
‘What does Elder know? Too slow. Elder hasn’t seen any children, only Crystal. Silly old cow, grown too thin, lock her in, lock her in.’
Back on the other side of the road Elder bent down, eased a broken railing aside and crawled through on her hands and knees.
‘Crawling to standing, standing to crawling, up-up, Elder.’ She wobbled as she attempted to uncurl her creaking spine and stumbled awkwardly on to her feet. She seemed to be struggling to get her balance as she walked. ‘One, two, one, two, come on. Elder, soldier on.’
Zak stood up a little too quickly, making his head reel and his stomach lurch with hunger. He grabbed his rucksack, pulled the drawstring tight and hoisted it on to his back, then stepped out of the den into the mist. Above the low-branch doorway was pinned an enormous wreath made of hundreds of red leaves sparkling with golden handwriting. The very outside layer bore a leaf with the name ‘Zak’ carefully written in metallic gold ink. He reached out and touched the letters and something inside him settled. That’s my name. ‘Zak,’ he whispered. Now he looked closely, he could see that every leaf had a name written on it. It was as if Elder was marking people out, collecting them. The golden writing was freshest on the outside of the wreath, on the leaves that looked like they had most recently been pinned there. Some of the names he vaguely recognized. ‘Aisha.’ He whispered the name and a vision of a girl standing in a shaft of sunlight appeared in his mind. Zak followed the swirling leaf layers into the centre of the wreath, where the golden names were burnished and fading. Out of the hundreds of leaves, the name Edwin sprang out at him. But why? What were wreaths for anyway? To put on your door at Christmas . . . and for funerals. Zak’s spine tingled.
‘Elder takes the storm away. Never fear, Elder’s here!’
At the sound of her approach, Zak stepped out into the fog and found himself sprinting away from the direction of her voice. Trees loomed out at him like giants. Several times a branch caught him and he stumbled and fell before clambering up again. He paused and hunted in his rucksack for a torch. Had he packed one? Or had he imagined that too? As he ran on he felt as if he might have been here before, following someone through the wood, tumbling over branches and tree stumps. Now he froze as he spotted a man ahead of him in a khaki uniform wading through a deep trench, turning from time to time to call to Zak.
‘It’s me – Edwin! Don’t be afraid. Stay with me now . . .’ The young man beckoned to Zak as if he was part of his battalion and it was his responsibility to rally him on. ‘Edwin.’ Zak whispered the name – that too was one of the names Elder had written on her leaf wreath.
Zak careered head first over a low fence and face-planted in a tangle of brambles, the thorns piercing his skin. Struggling to his feet, he tugged his clothes free, stamping on the sharp clingers till he made his way to a small clearing where he collapsed exhausted. He opened the bag and rummaged for something to eat, found a banana and ate it ravenously. After a few moments his head settled. He closed his eyes and the image of a woman with a gaunt face, short brown hair and pale blue eyes filled his mind. She lay her hand on his head and stroked his hair and the word ‘Mum’ emerged involuntarily from his lips.
‘Come home, Zak. Come home safe,’ she whispered over and over again as he pulled his sleeping bag from his rucksack and climbed inside. The wood grew deathly still as if the birds and the animals could sense danger approaching and had gone to ground. There was a low, angry rumble of thunder and then the sky darkened, heaved and released the full force of a torrential rainstorm. Within seconds everything was soaked through. The scent of the earth, parched for so long, rose up to Zak’s nostrils. Zak’s chest strained and he began to cough, and the cough turned into a hoarse bark that made his chest burn.
‘Come on old boy, don’t give up now. Not far to go,’ the soldier encouraged, pulling him up. Edwin unzipped the sodden sleeping bag, thrust it back into Zak’s rucksack and began to scramble his way through the undergrowth. He felt in his pocket for a map that he thought he’d placed there but found nothing. What use would, a map be anyway, if I have no idea who I am, where I am, or what I’m looking for? His memory was returning in confusing snippets that were hard to piece together, and even then he wasn’t sure if what he was beginning to remember was real or belonged to a dream. When he’d packed, had there been a
wallet and something wrapped in a towel . . . ? And a photograph. A black-and-white one, he could see it now, of a father and son. But who were those people in the photo? His own dad and him? The rain dripped off his hair as this bizarre collection of – what were they? – memories, dreams or hallucinations began to surface . . . Zak looked ahead at the soldier – Edwin, who was beckoning him forward again. What do you want from me? Why do I have to follow you? Zak longed to ask him but stayed silent.
‘Keep moving. We’ll get through this, if we stick together,’ the soldier encouraged him.
Zak felt as if he was about to step off the edge of the world. He winced in pain. What has that woman done to my head?
‘What’s the matter with you, my friend?’ Aisha asked Conker as the dog trembled by her side.
Conker nudged Aisha back, raised her head and sniffed the air. Aisha felt a blast of cold sweep in. Overhead the sky growled and a roll of thunder echoed through the wood then out of nowhere the rain began to fall making a deafening din as it drummed on the roof of the shelter.
Aisha closed her eyes and tried to think of happy, secure memories, of her abo carrying her on his shoulders when she was a little girl, of drinking hot chocolate with Liliana and of singing with Muna and her other friends. Aisha hummed quietly at first and then her voice grew in force as she sang the lullaby that her Aunt Lalu had always sung to her when she’d felt troubled. Conker lifted her head and listened intently. When Aisha stopped singing, Conker nudged her again, as if to urge her on. There was comfort in hearing her own voice reach above the din of the rain. As she sang she stroked Conker’s back and eventually the dog fell silent and both of them drifted in and out of sleep.
Aisha sat on Lalu’s lap as she sang her favourite lullaby. Lalu’s voice was deep and gravelly with a break in it.
‘Now you sing it to me, baby,’ Lalu was saying.
Aisha’s soft voice soared with the words and Lalu clasped her hands together. ‘You can sing just like my dear sister Amina. Shame I didn’t inherit your hoyo’s voice, but what a gift she has granted you.’
Red Leaves Page 12