Woodhill Wood

by David Harris Wilson

  Just as Spike left the path Mr Gunn came striding into view, his walking stick beating out its regular pace.

  "Spike. C'mon, boy," he called.

  Spike came bounding back out of the bushes as if nothing had happened and started trotting along just behind the swinging stick. Mr Gunn had his tweed cap pulled down over his brow, so he didn't see Gurde waiting on the path until he was only a few feet away. The old man stopped and pushed his cap back off his face. They exchanged nods.

  "You again?" he said after a pause.

  "Aye. Mornin'."

  "Bit early for you, isn't it?"

  "Is it?" Gurde replied.

  "Aye," he whistled. A bird in the tree above called back. "There's nobody about this time in the mornin'. That's how we always come at this time, eh Spike?"

  The dog sat down to lick his front paw. He didn't seem to be listening.

  "Aye. Bit early for you. Where you goin' anyhow?"

  "Just up there a bit," Gurde said, pointing up in the general direction of the cliff.

  "Back to your bashin'. What you doin' up there?"

  "Sculpting."

  "Wi' your hands?"

  "No."

  "Where's your chisel, then?"

  "Oh. I've left it up there."

  "Aye."

  They both stood watching Spike licking himself.

  "Do you think he's cut himself?" Gurde said.

  "No. He just likes lickin'."

  "You going up to your log today?"

  "Aye. I always sit on my log."

  "Yes. I know."

  "Is that right? How do you know?"

  "You told me."

  "Did I?"

  Gurde nodded. Mr Gunn scratched the back of his head with his thumb and frowned.

  "Well. I'd better be goin'. Come on Spike."

  "Is it all right if I walk with you?"

  "Aye. Why not. It's a free country."

  He set off at his fast pace. Gurde jogged up alongside and they walked the few hundred yards to the log in silence. Mr Gunn lowered himself down into his place and leant forward on to his stick.

  "What's yer name, son?"

  "Matt."

  "Well, son. You'd better sit down."

  Gurde sat down beside him and showed him the silver nugget, eager to get an opinion.

  "Last time I was here you said you knew things." Gurde said.

  "Did I?"

  "Yes. Do you know what this is?" Gurde offered the lump to the old man.

  "Aye."

  "Do you? What is it?"

  "A piece of silver."

  "Yes?"

  "Aye," Mr Gunn sighed. He took the nugget and held it between his narrow fingers. "Aye. It's definitely a good piece of silver. Best in the world under your feet here."

  "I found it."

  "Oh aye."

  "I found it down the mines just a few minutes ago."

  "You went down the mines? By yoursel’?"

  "Yes. Just over the burn back there. Do you think it's old?"

  He stared at it for a while.

  "Might be."

  "It's strange. It was right down inside. In the water."

  "Oh aye."

  "Don't you think that's strange?"

  "Well, there's stranger things happen." He passed the nugget back. "Ugly wee thing."

  "I like it."

  "Aye."

  Gurde turned it around. "I wonder who could have left it down there."

  Spike came trotting up and began sniffing around between Mr Gunn's feet.

  "I used to go down the mines," he said.

  "Counting otters?"

  "No. Otters down the mine?" He gave me a puzzled look. "No. There's still plenty silver down there. Untouched veins. Paid for them big houses."

  "Did you dig for silver?"

  "No. When I was young I used to go down."

  "Why?"

  "Why did ye go down?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well then."

  He leaned forward on his stick. "Folk say there's strange things down there now."

  "I heard something down there just now. It scared the hell out of me."

  "Aye."

  "I didn't see it. It sounded like it was scratching the roof."

  "That big, eh?" The old man smiled to himself.

  "I didn't mean.."

  "No. That'll be bats. Just bats."

  Spike pricked up his ears.

  "Oh." Gurde said.

  "Aye. Eh Spike? Bats!" Spike scuttled a few steps backward. "Bats!" The dog barked and started hopping around again, trying to see in which direction his master was looking. "Over there. Bats." Gunn laughed out loud at his dog's confusion. Spike looked a little annoyed at being teased and wandered off with his nose to the ground to explore elsewhere.

  "Mr Gunn?"

  "Aye, son."

  "Have you retired?"

  He smiled broadly. "Aye. A good few year ago."

  "What do you do now, then?"

  "Sit on ma log."

  "Apart from that."

  "Think, son. Think."

  "What do you think about?"

  "Things."

  "What things?"

  "You'll see."

  "See what?"

  "You'll see what things are worth thinkin' about. What's with all the questions? What are you after?"

  "Nothing. I just wondered."

  "Well, son. You keep your wonderin' to yourself. It's the best place for it."

  Gurde picked up one of the dull yellow leaves from the forest floor and began stripping it like a moth’s wing, wishing he hadn't tried so hard to make conversation. Mr Gunn dug deep into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small tin which he opened to reveal a few strands of tobacco and a green packet of cigarette papers. Gurde glanced away for a second to look for the dog. Mr Gunn struck a match into a cupped hand and Gurde was surprised to see the thin cigarette already rolled and hanging off his lower lip. He drew hard on the end. It glowed bright and a shot of thick white smoke drifted out over the path. The tin was closed with one hand and slipped back into the depths of his pockets.

  "Aye. Well, son. I'd better be movin' on. Seen where the dog is?"

  "No."

  "I'll just finish this," he said and sucked another burst of life into his cigarette.

  "Mr Gunn?"

  "Aye."

  "Have you heard about those murders?"

  "Aye. I read the papers."

  "It's.. it's bad isn't it?"

  "Aye. The things folks'll do to get in the papers."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Them things he does. With the hands and all that. That's just for the papers."

  "You think so?"

  "Oh aye."

  "He's not mad then?"

  "Oh aye. Mad'n all. Off his heed. Nobody in their right mind would do all that, would they?"

  "No. I suppose not."

  "I knew a bloke like that."

  "Yeah?"

  "In the war."

  "Yeah?"

  "Oh aye. Nutter. Forget his name. He used to cut 'em up wi' his knife." The cigarette hand bobbed up and down. "Huge thing it was. Not the dead ones mind. Not worth botherin' wi'. Just if they were alive, like. Wounded. Eh? Aye. I seen him gut one from neck to belly. Poor wee bastard never made a sound. Got in the neck, he was. Young lad. Couldn't speak. Lyin' there in the mud waitin' to go and we just showed up doing a sweep, we used to call it. The look on his face when he saw that knife gettin' pulled. He couldn't believe it was happenin'. Aye. Some of the lads tried to pull the bloke off but he was that strong he just kept on. Just kept on. There was blood all over the lot of them."

  "Why?"

  "In the war. Aye. It does that to some folk. Changes."

  "What happened?"

  "Happened? Nothin' happened. I don't know. Don't mess wi' the likes of him. Just leave 'em. That's what happens. Nutter. Quiet as a mouse and then sees one and off he goes."

  Gurde stared at the ground and tried to imagine it.
>
  "You'll be too young for all that? How old are you then, son?"

  "Fourteen."

  "Fourteen. At school? Aye."

  Gunn dropped the blackened end of his cigarette into the leaves and crushed it into the earth.

  "Why would that man want to get in the papers?" Gurde asked.

  "You'd better ask him that. Must have been planning it for a long time, warning for someone. Nutter. Anyhow, I'd best be goin'. Where's that bloody dog got to?"

  "That way somewhere."

  "Well, son. You're all right. Not many kids these days got time for old folk. Too easy, that's what it is. I'd better be goin' and find that dog before he gets himself into mischief. No rain today. Aye, a good day. Or tomorrow. No rain tomorrow. I'll be up here tomorrow. Up here on my own wee log." He gave it a friendly pat and levered himself upright using his stick. Gurde saw the pain shoot through him and he drew in a sharp breath. "You'll be gettin' back to your bashin'. What are you doin' up there anyway?"

  "Nothing really."

  "It's a loud nothin' then. Cheerio, son."

  "Bye."

  Gurde didn't feel comfortable sitting on the log alone. He felt he was trespassing. He stood up to watch the old man pound on up the path through the trees, calling for Spike between strides. Gurde glanced at his watch. Half the morning already over and the scaffolding pole hadn't moved an inch. He swung the rucksack on to his shoulder and walked off in the opposite direction.

  Gurde found the pole under the third bush he tried, dragged it back out into the open and set off across the face of the hill, determined to finish the rest of the haul before going back to the house. The thick covering of leaves on the ground made the going easier and quieter than before and Gurde made good progress through the trees. He had time to think.

  The changes at home were not his fault. They were not his fault. It was the mother, sitting alone with her books, hiding herself away, scribbling her notes for hour upon silent hour and making the father sleep at the office. She was cracking up. A whole week had gone by without her uttering a single word. Only Ben seemed to be able to get a reaction out of her and even then only brief instructions about what he should do in the evenings after school. She always stroked his hair afterwards though, but then he was the one she liked.

  "You're just like your father." All she gave Gurde were hesitant glances on the stairs or in the kitchen, always looking away slightly, as if seeing him brought a momentary pain to her chest.

  The only words that flowed from her were the telephone updates to her friends, muffled behind the study door, struggling to finish her conversation in the half hour before the father came back to send her scuttling away. The talk was no doubt full of drama and advice as they agreed that she had done the right thing, that it wasn't her fault.

  Gurde had reached the last tree on the side of the Woodhill. The Silver Burn tumbled down towards the mines and then on down to the empty fields.

  He dragged the pole out into the long grass and turned to look up the windswept slope. There was only one path to follow through the gorse bushes to get above the level of the cliff. Now the hard work would start. He hauled the rusty metal up through the narrow gaps and turns, trying to keep a footing. He could only hope that he didn't meet anybody. He would have problems trying to explain what he was doing without getting embarrassed.

  The mud on the path was almost dry where the sunshine had reached it but in the shadows between the bushes there were long dark patches. The pole snagged on the first gorse bush Gurde tried to pull it through, and he had to climb down to untangle the clamp from the spiny fingers, tearing away parts of the bush with a series of sharp tugs.

  Once the pole was free the other bushes seemed to sense that he wasn't going to allow them to get in the way and they let the pole pass with only occasional complaint. His thoughts wandered off again.

  What was the mother was doing? She would probably have finished scrubbing the floors and have laid her stepping stones of newspaper over the wet surface. His head filled with her quiet crying face as she tried to work through the blur.

  The father was the same, leaning over his thick books for most of the night before pulling out his sleeping bag and making enough space amongst the papers to sleep on the floor.

  If the father wasn't working he was standing alone in the kitchen, staring at the same invisible point in the darkness, swigging on his half-empty glass, dreaming of escape. What had Matt Duff done to make them suffer like that? Gurde tried to remember hearing the father laugh at something the mother had said; surely it must have happened once. Gurde trawled back, recalling scenes from holidays and relaxed evenings, but he could only remember the father laughing at his own jokes, and even that was a long time ago.

  "Quiet, your father's working on his book." Gurde must have heard that command a thousand times. Now the book was finished but the father didn't seem any happier. Gurde had never dared open the drawer in the desk where the manuscript lay, untouched by any hands but the father's, laboriously typed with two of his fingers. It would probably lie hidden in that drawer forever, or until it was discovered and published and he would be famous. Gurde didn't even know what the book was about.

  Gurde had to pause for breath as the wheezing had started. He placed the pole into a position where it couldn't roll away and sat down. In his pocket he found the brown bottle, prised off the plastic lid and slammed two pink pills into his mouth.

  He decided he should wait for the pills to take effect before pushing on up the hill, so he fished into the rucksack and pulled out the roll of newspapers. He flipped open the Sun and looked at the dark photograph of the scene behind St Thomas' school where the body had been found. The paper went on to describe in detail just how the boy had been killed and, although Gurde already knew the details from the News of the World from the Sunday before, reading it again still made him feel uncomfortable.

  The people interviewed kept on asking the question that only Mr Gunn had seemed able to answer. Why? Was all the ritual just a way of getting himself into the papers? If it was, he must have read those same pages with satisfaction, perhaps even surprise, at how successful he had been.

  Gurde turned to the front page and stared at the little photograph of the smiling boy with his striped tie. Kenneth Morris had been fourteen, the same age as Matt Duff. Now he was dead and, according to the paper, he had died screaming, cut to pieces in the dark. It seemed impossible that anyone could do such things just to see their name in print. The paper said that the two boys had nothing in common except innocence, but they had one more thing in common and it still puzzled Gurde. One had been to each of the Kent schools that the father had attended: Michael Thomson to Green Valley Primary and Kenneth Morris to St Thomas'. It was a strange coincidence, especially since the father had moved house in between, but there was no point in thinking about it. Gurde wondered if the father had noticed. The father probably didn't even know it was going on. The real world was passing the father by.

  After fifteen minutes the pills started to work. Gurde stuffed the newspapers back into the rucksack and stood up. He was more than halfway now. Another few minutes climbing and he would be above the height of the cliff, then he could turn back into the trees for the final walk to the cliff top.

  He picked up the pole by the rusty clamp on the end and set off again, hauling it behind him in short, sharp bursts. He was soon sweating again and breathing heavily, but the pills kept the wheezing down to an occasional whine deep in his chest.

  With every tug he cursed the stupidity of letting the Wizard get the better of him, forcing him to waste so much more time dragging the pole back into position. He had a feeling that it was meant to happen that way. Just levering the Skull off its mounting would have been too easy. Now he knew that he would really savour the moment when he beat the Wizard down and watched him explode.

  He reached the point where the path divided. The right fork headed back across the Woodhill through the trees and rose high above that
wonderful cliff. After the fork the going was a lot easier. Gurde strode along the leaf-covered path, the pole sliding quietly behind him, leaving a continuous scratch in the mud.

  After another quarter of a mile he saw the tree that marked the point where the path ran directly above the Wizard's Skull. The tree still had scrapes from when Gurde had last dragged the pole up from the town. Then it had been raining and he had found it difficult to climb down the slope without losing control, but in the bright sunshine everything seemed simple.

  He left the path and quickly wound down the slope, throwing a free arm around each tree in turn to slow the descent. The pole found a way through behind him, slipping between the trunks that had tried so hard to block his progress the first time. There was a meaning in the ease with which the pole passed through the trees. Gurde saw that the hill was helping him, and that the pole would not fall again without taking the Skull with it.

  He reached the top of the cliff with such ease that he stood and stared, wondering why he had thought the last section would be such hard work. He checked the hammer and chisel were where he had hidden them, then slid the pole into the bushes beside them where it could wait until it was needed. Once everything was arranged, he crept to the edge of the cliff itself and laid on his chest in the sun, peering over the top of the Skull at the trees below. He made sure that enough of his body stayed on the grass.

  Gurde rested his chin on his elbows and hummed quietly until he remembered the thermos flask full of soup. He sat above the Wizard's bald head and drank all the hot liquid, cup after cup. Then he gave the Skull a pat and moved on. The next time he touched it would be the last.

  Gurde was about to turn the light off when the brother came creeping into the bedroom. Ben had been sent upstairs several hours before. His Spiderman pyjamas were falling off his shoulders.

  "Matty?" Ben said.

  "What do you want? It's late."

  Ben sat on the edge of the bed, huffed and put his hands on his knees.