Amanda frowned. “I don’t believe there was a boy.”
“Aye, there was. A long time ago. An’ he vanished. They all thought he ran away, but we know he’s here. Don’t we, Morag?”
Morag nodded.
“We’ll show you.”
Amanda glanced back; saw the pathway winding towards the house. Thought of going home on her own, without her new friends, and everyone asking why. She nodded.
There was a man standing by the lochan. He stood by a small green hut, a wooden creel at his feet. He twisted a length of blue rope in his hands, around and around.
The lochan was a small lake, still and grey and edged with rhododendrons that weren’t in flower. A wide, even pathway circled it. “It’s pretty,” Amanda said.
Kitty snorted. “Come on.” She led the way to another path, narrow and dark, leading up the hill into more woodland.
The man watched them go. His face was heavily lined and he had a white beard like Santa Claus. He smiled at Amanda and she smiled back.
“Don’t look at him,” Kitty hissed. “He’s mad, he is. Everyone knows it.”
She stomped up the path, leaving peaty footprints. Soon they were stepping over branches, and mounds and grooves cut into the earth by run-off from the hills.
“Look,” said Kitty.
Amanda looked about. There were just trees with silver trunks, scarred here and there with black patches.
“Ye can see his face.” Kitty pointed.
There was a shape in the trunk of a tree, a growth sticking out. “It’s nothing,” Amanda said. “Just a bole.”
“Oh, is it now? Just a be-owl,” said Kitty.
“A bowl, a bowl,” Morag echoed.
But Amanda saw that it wasn’t a bole, at all. It was a face; the face of a young boy with closed eyes, the mouth slightly open, his two front teeth missing. His skin was smooth apart from deep grooves that ran through the bark like scratches.
“He was kilt here, tha’s wha’ I think. An’ they never found him.”
Amanda frowned. She reached out to touch the face. It wasn’t carved. It was growing in the wood, a living thing, damp and lightly greened with moss.
“Don’t touch it!”
Amanda turned and saw Kitty’s face, her eyes wide open.
“Ye mustn’t touch it. It’s bad luck.”
It was too late. Amanda’s fingers rested, lightly, on the bark.
“That’s bad luck, now.” Kitty marched off, back the way they had come, Morag trailing at her heels.
After a moment, Amanda followed.
Kitty and Morag had told her to meet them in the woods. Amanda glanced out of the window, seeing the empty lane, a formless grey sky.
“We’re your friends,” Kitty said. “We’ll play by the lochan. Above the lochan.” And Amanda saw the way she and Morag glanced at each other.
What if she went, and they didn’t meet her after all? What if they went, and she didn’t? She sighed. Soon there would be school, and the girls would catch the bus together, share the journey every day. If she didn’t go to the woods – but no. It had to be them who didn’t show, if anyone. And maybe they would be there; maybe they really meant to be friends.
Amanda’s footsteps were loud on the pavement. She paused at the bridge, looking down into the white froth, listened to it crashing on the stones. She sniffed. Grandma was right; the air was clean here. It didn’t smell of anything at all.
She went in under the trees, kicking fallen leaves that stuck to her boots in wet clumps. The woods were damp, droplets of water clinging to strands of moss and lichen. She glanced down. There was a groove in the ground where water trickled through a carpet of pine needles. Something moved.
Amanda started, and then saw the velvet body of a vole, its tender nose twitching. She imagined the voices in her ears: “Are you scairt?” “Ye scairt?”
She shook her head and went on.
The man by the lochan had his back to Amanda. He was clad in a light blue shirt, bending over a fishing rod that was set out over the lake. She stepped quietly, her boots scraping just slightly on the path, and began to climb up the hillside. She glanced back and could see his legs, ending in brown boots, the feet now pointing towards her.
She slipped and put out her hand. It plunged into leaves and pine needles and came away black. She looked towards the lochan once more. Now she couldn’t see the man at all.
She went on, watching for the special tree. She wondered if the boy would still be there, looking out at nothing. Whether his eyes would still be closed. She swallowed.
“Kitty? Morag?” she called out, but her voice was a whisper. “Kitty?”
The wind soughed in the branches. Behind her, a branch snapped.
Amanda whirled about, seeing only silver bark, the black shadows of branches. And then something else, through the trees: something that looked like a pale blue shirt. It was there, and then it was gone. She drew in her breath, turned back, and saw the boy. His eyes were closed. They were two smooth, blank ovals.
“Kitty?” she breathed.
“Kitty?” the call came back. It wasn’t a girl’s voice. It wasn’t a child’s voice. Amanda’s stomach constricted. There was nothing but trees, all around.
“Kitty?” It was a man’s voice.
Amanda walked quickly onward, up the hill. The path became more irregular and she found herself picking her way between green mounds. She slipped, felt her ankle turning, but caught herself. It was all right. Her ankle smarted, but nothing more. She looked back into the wood and saw the man. He was below her on the slope. He held a blue rope in his hands. He was turning and turning it, over and over. He looked back at her. He didn’t smile.
Amanda started to run as best she could. “Kitty!” she called. “Morag!”
She slipped and almost fell, recovered, ran on. She ducked under branches that snagged her hair and clothes. She pulled free, not crying out as hair was yanked from her head. The hill grew steeper; she hardly seemed to be running at all. She glanced back. She couldn’t see the man.
Amanda stopped, her breath catching. Warm, stinging tears came to her eyes. Was he there? Was he waiting for her to go back down? She looked about. The trees were all the same. She could edge around him, maybe, try to get back to the lochan.
She looked left, then right. There was something through the trees. Not the man, though, not a pale blue shirt; something red. As Amanda watched, it moved.
She let out a little cry, a sound that started way back in her throat.
The thing moved towards her and resolved itself into a boy. He wore a red jumper. He was about her height. The boy jerked his head, indicating that she should follow. Amanda glanced back once more over her shoulder, and then she did.
The boy led her over the hillside. Amanda listened for anyone following but heard only the wind, her own breath, and twigs crackling under her feet. She pushed branches aside and crawled under a fallen tree, bits of wood clinging to her hair and clothes. She could hear the man again, his deep, quick breathing, the heavy tread of his boots. The boy stopped and turned to her, put his finger to his lips. Then he pointed, two sharp stabs.
Amanda went up to him. His jumper was muddied and torn, his hair so long she couldn’t see his eyes. He nodded down the slope and she saw what he meant. There was a narrow gully. It was damp, and covered with pine needles, but the way down was clear.
The boy gestured again and then he smiled. His two front teeth were missing. He wore a short twist of blue rope about his neck.
He left her, heading back towards the man. Amanda didn’t wait any longer. She lowered herself into the gully and half climbed, half slid down towards the lochan, pine needles muffling the sound of her steps.
Grandma’s knee was hard and bony. Amanda shifted on it and leaned back. Her grandma stroked her head, making “shhh” noises. Her hand was shaking. Amanda’s granddad was at the door, seeing the policemen out, talking with them in a low voice.
Grandma began
to pick bits of bark and leaf from Amanda’s hair. She had not told them about the boy. She could still see his face, though, the grin as he disappeared into the trees.
They found a man, the policeman had said. Lying against a tree. Heart attack, most likely. Had a piece of rope in his hands. He glanced at Amanda as he said this. A piece of blue rope. There was something in his eyes Amanda didn’t like. She wanted him to go away. Now she heard the door close.
She slipped her thumb into her mouth and began to suck it, the way she used to, back when she was really small.
“Wha’, the new girl? Aye, she’s our friend.”
Kitty stood at the bus stop. Morag was next to her, her hair pulled into thin plaits. Two other children waited there, a boy and a girl with the same pale yellow hair.
“Here she is.”
They all watched Amanda’s approach. When she looked at them, they looked away.
“So you’re from England?” It was the new girl who spoke. Amanda nodded.
Kitty leaned in and whispered, “We’re to say sorry. We forgot. About playing. Tha’s all.”
“So wha’ happened?” said the new girl, and the questions began, pouring out one after the next.
Amanda told them. But all the time, she thought of the boy: a boy in a red jumper, lacking two front teeth, and about her height. But she never spoke of him at all.
Amanda walked once more up the hillside, away from the lochan. Her grandma hadn’t liked her going, but Amanda said it would do her good. A new start, she told her. Some fresh air. And the unspoken thought hung between them that the man who had followed her was dead.
Her trainers gripped the slope. The earth was soft and silent under her feet; Amanda could hear only the constant sighing of wind in the trees. She found she liked it. The cold air made her ears tingle.
I’m not scared, she thought; but it came out scairt. It was funny how that happened. Earlier she had asked Kitty to lend her a pen, but it came out “Could ye—”, and she paused, hearing the strange sound. Kitty had smiled, but Amanda had only been able to think of her mother’s face: sudden and clear and stricken.
She found the tree easily enough. The shape of a face stuck out of it, but something had changed. Amanda went up close and saw that the grain had split, the cracks widening, changing the shape. It wasn’t a face any longer. It was just a bole.
She sat for a while, looking out over the lochan and further, seeing mountains and lochs and sky, stretching on and on. Scairt, she thought. Scairt. No, she wasn’t scairt. She whispered it anyway, trying out the sound. Maybe her mother would have liked it, hearing her say it like that. It might have made her laugh. Scairt.
After a while she stood and began to make her way back down the hillside. She was going to Kitty’s later. Morag was going to teach her Scottish dancing.
Amanda looked back only once before the tree slipped out of sight. And she saw that the boy wasn’t entirely gone, after all: she could still see the gap of a partly open mouth, the space where his two front teeth should have been. Deep cracks ran down either side of his lips and on, down the trunk. It’s only a bole, she thought. Only the grain. That’s all. But for just a moment, it had looked as though the boy was smiling.
Seeing Nancy
Nina Allan
I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever . . .
“Ae Fond Kiss”, Robert Burns
I liked the house as soon as I saw it: a narrow 1930s villa at the end of a long cul-de-sac with allotments on one side and a former Methodist chapel on the other. The chapel had fallen out of use in the eighties. It stood derelict for a while, then someone had bought it and converted it into a music studio. From the outside it still looked like a church and I liked that, too.
The house had pointed gables, and was painted yellow.
“It’s perfect, isn’t it?” Roy said. “Don’t you just love it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I love it.” Our offer was accepted the same day. By the time contracts were actually exchanged, though, Roy was back in Helmand, and I had to organize the removals myself. I didn’t mind. Roy had no patience for things like that. It was something we had joked about in the early days; the ATO with a short fuse, the trained perfectionist who was fine with roadside bombs but who would lose his rag completely if the van with our stuff in it got held up in traffic.
I knew his rages were just a safety valve and in the beginning I found no problem in tolerating them. I even felt a kind of pride that I was the only person who could calm him down. In time that changed. I came to feel that I had been tricked somehow, that the man I married was not the man I ended up living with, although I knew myself that this wasn’t entirely fair. The problems had been there all along, and I had chosen to close my eyes to them. I had tricked myself.
He was granted an extended leave after his second tour but if anything his flare-ups were worse. I knew he had seen someone killed, a soldier from his own unit, but he never told me any details of what happened and I knew better by then than to ask.
He seemed to have lost all interest in the house. He moved through its rooms like a ghost, not commenting on the changes I had made, never expressing an opinion one way or the other. Sometimes I would find him in the upstairs room we had planned to set aside as his photography studio, sitting cross-legged on the bare boards and sorting through a cardboard folder of snapshots. The photos were of men on the base, young recruits mainly, soldiers ten years younger than him or even more.
They fooled around for the camera, snatching each other’s berets and making rude gestures.
“Is one of these the lad who died?” I once tried asking. Roy stared up at me, blankly at first and then with an expression of such rage I thought he was about to hit me.
Go on, do it, I thought. Then I can leave. I was lonelier by then than I had ever been. I was single for some years before meeting Roy and had grown accustomed to living alone. But sharing a house with a man who had become a stranger to me was something different and awful because I was forced to keep up a pretence that there was nothing wrong.
Worst of all was the fact that I had no one to talk to. There were friends of mine, people who had warned me against marrying Roy in the first place and who would have been only too happy to meet for coffee and a round of sympathetic bitching, but the thought of such disloyalty sickened me. I knew deep down that those friends who disparaged Roy were less interested in helping me than in being proved right. I would probably have felt the same in their position.
The only person I wanted to talk to was Roy, the Roy I had met and married and whom I now missed terribly. Sometimes in the pale grey hours around dawn I found it easy to imagine that the old Roy was still out there somewhere, longing for me as I longed for him. The man in the bed beside me was someone else. I wondered if he dreamed of hurting me, or of simply packing his things and walking away.
I told myself he would come out of it eventually and when he did we would talk and everything would get back to normal. But in the meantime it was like being in prison. Later that made me think of Allison Rand, and the bars across the windows in the hospital canteen.
I tried to concentrate on the new book, but could not get started. It was not just the problems with Roy. The move had disrupted my routine, and what I was now faced with was a kind of mental blankness. I had lost touch with myself, with the things that interested me. The sense of dislocation was profoundly unsettling. I suppose it was a kind of writer’s block, something I had never suffered from before. I took to sitting on a wooden bench up on the allotments, staring across at the yellow walls of my own house and trying to make up a story about the people who lived there.
I liked the allotments, and quickly came to recognize the people who tended them. They were creased and faded, characters from pre-war novels, figures in the landscape of a sepia postcard. There was a Polish woman in a
red kerchief, a pair of elderly Oxford spinsters, a man with a Jack Russell terrier, rake-thin and with two fingers missing from his right hand. I used to think about him a lot, wondering if he had been injured in World War II and if talking to him might help Roy.
I dreamed up various schemes for bringing them together but knew I would not dare try any of them. It was all too easy to imagine things going wrong; Roy’s rage and contempt for me afterwards if it turned out, after all, that the man had lost his fingers in an accident at work.
As well as the Polish woman and the Oxford spinsters I often saw a young girl in a grey skirt and a baggy green cardigan – shapeless, too-big clothes, hand-me-downs no doubt from an elder sister. She stood out on the allotments because she was so much younger than the other people who went there. She had a curious way of walking, heel-to-toe along the narrow pathways, as if she were on a tightrope. Sometimes she picked up stones and put them in her pockets. She was always by herself. The other allotment regulars appeared to ignore her.
She was eight years old perhaps, ten at the most. She seemed young to be there all alone. She should have been in school, though I supposed lots of children truanted. I wondered if she had problems at home.
One day she came and sat beside me. She sidled up, squinting at me from the corner of her eye then plumping herself down on the bench, squarely and decisively, as if carrying out a dare she had made with herself.
She drew her legs up beneath her, and began tapping together two stones I had watched her grub up from the soil of the Polish woman’s allotment. It was only then that I noticed how pretty she was. It was not just the snub nose and freckles, the youthful glow that haunts all children, even the plainest. There was a life in her, an animated curiosity that seemed to light her features from within.
She banged her stones, skewbald flints, and darted her eyes to where mine had been looking, up towards the first floor of my house.
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) Page 18