Familiar and Haunting

by Philippa Pearce

  Something snagged in Mr. Edwards’s mind, suddenly: there was an unexpected and unwelcome catching of his attention, as though on some country walk a hanging bramble had caught on his sleeve, on his arm. (But he had not gone on any country walk for many years.)

  He glanced sharply to his left again.

  To his left the gentle rise and fall of farmland was perhaps familiar. …

  And that house …

  That farmhouse …

  Instantly Mr. Edward Edwards had looked away from the farmhouse, but he could not prevent himself from remembering. He was driving his car as fast and as well as before, but he remembered. They say that in the moment of drowning, a man may remember the whole of his past life, see it. In the moment of driving past Mortlock’s, Mr. Edward Edwards remembered everything, saw everything in his mind’s eye, from long ago.

  The farmhouse and farmlands had belonged to the Mortlocks for several generations, but in the last generation there had been no children. The heir was young Edward Edwards, from London, whose grandmother happened to have been a Mortlock.

  After the funeral of his last elderly cousin, young Edward stayed on at Mortlock’s to see exactly what his inheritance consisted of—and what further might be made of it. He knew nothing of farming, but already he knew about money and its uses. Already he knew what was what.

  Above all, he was clever enough to know his own ignorance. He certainly did not intend—at least at first—to try farming on his own. He might, however, put in an experienced farm manager—but keep an eye on him, too.

  He suspected that a good deal could be done to improve on Mortlock methods of farming. He understood, for instance, that up-to-date farmers were grubbing up hedges to make larger, more economic fields. That was an obvious increase in efficiency. No land should be wasted; every acre—only he thought modernly in hectares—ought to be utilized. Total efficiency would be his aim—or rather, the aim of his farm manager.

  Meanwhile, he had just a farm foreman, old Bill Hayes.

  Bill Hayes was old only in the dialect of the countryside; in actuality, he was young middle-aged. That local inaccuracy of speech annoyed Edward Edwards. And anyway, although Bill Hayes was not old in age, young Edward suspected him of being old in ideas.

  In the company of his farm foreman, young Edward tramped purposefully over his fields, trying to understand what he saw and to assess its value. Often, of course, he was baffled; then Bill Hayes would do his best to explain. Sometimes young Edward was satisfied. Sometimes, however, he made a suggestion or a criticism, which Bill Hayes would invariably show to be impractical, even foolish.

  Edward Edwards began to dislike old Bill Hayes.

  The only time he was certain of his opinion against the foreman’s was over the Him. This was an area of trees, using up about a third of a hectare of land, in the middle of one of the best fields.

  “What is it?” asked young Edward Edwards, staring across the stub-bled earth to that secretive-looking clump of trees.

  And old Bill had answered, “It’s Hirn.”

  “Just some trees?”

  “Well, there’s water, too, in the middle,” said old Bill. “You could call it a pond.”

  “But what’s the point of it?”

  And old Bill Hayes had repeated, “It’s Hirn.”

  Somehow his careless omission, twice, of the “the” that so obviously should have been there irritated young Edward. Again, there was that stupid suggestion of dialect, old worldness, and the rest. “Well,” he said, “the Him will have to justify its existence if it’s to remain. Otherwise, it goes.”

  “Goes?”

  “The land must be reclaimed for better use.”

  “Better use? For Him?”

  Young Edward thought: the fellow has an echo chamber where his brains should be! Aloud, he said, “If we get rid of the trees and fill in this pond place, then we can cultivate the land with the rest of the field.”

  “I shouldn’t do that, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  Old Bill Hayes did not answer.

  “What’s so special about the Hirn, then?”

  Bill Hayes said, “Well, after all, it is Hirn. …”

  Young Edward could get no further than that. But at least this senseless conversation made plain to him that he must get rid of old Bill Hayes as soon as possible. He needed a thoroughly rational, modem minded farm manager; that was certain. This business of the Hirn was typical of what must have been going on, unchecked, during the Mortlock years.

  Young Edward was pretty certain that the Hirn must be dealt with—and the sooner the better, of course. But he was not impulsive, not foolhardy. He would examine the site carefully for himself—and by himself—before coming to a decision. After all, there might even be valuable timber among those trees. (He was pleased with himself for the thought. Surely, he was already learning.)

  So the next day he set off alone in his car—not at all a car of the make, age, or condition that, in later years, he would care to have been seen driving. He knew the nearest point of access to the Hirn, a side road, along which had been built a line of small houses. Just beyond the last house, on the same side, was a field gate, and by this he parked. Through the gate, in the distance, he could already see the Hirn.

  He climbed the gate and set off across the fields, passing by the side of the back garden of the last small house. A woman was pegging out her washing, and a toddler played about beside the washing basket. The toddler stopped playing to stare, but his mother went on with her work. Yet young Edward felt that she, too, was watching him. No wonder, perhaps. This little colony of houses was remote from most comings and goings.

  A little later, as he was crossing the furrows, he looked back, to mark the gateway where he had left the car and to see whether—yes, the two in the garden were now both openly staring after him. The woman held the child in her arms, and an old man had also come out of the house next door. He stood just on the other side of the hedge from the woman and child, staring in the same direction.

  Edward Edwards reached the Hirn. Even he could see that the woodland had been disgracefully neglected; no one had laid a finger on it for many, many years—perhaps ever, it seemed. The trees grew all anyhow—some strangled by ivy; some age-decayed and falling; some crippled by the fall of others; some young, but stunted and deformed in the struggle upward to the sunlight. The space between the trees was dense with undergrowth.

  It was very still, but no doubt there would be birds and other wild creatures. Young Edward peered about him. He could see no movement at all, but he supposed that beady bird eyes would be watching him.

  He began to push his way through the undergrowth between the trees, to find the water of which Bill Hayes had spoken.

  He came to a small clearing—so it seemed—among the trees: open, green, and almost eerily even. Absolutely flat. He hesitated at the edge of the clearing and then, with a shock, realized that this was the water. Mantled by some overspreading tiny plant life, it had seemed to him to be solid, turfy land. He had almost fallen into the pond, almost walked into it.

  There was no knowing how deep the water was.

  The water was unmoving, except perhaps at its edges, where he thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a slight stirring. Perhaps tadpoles? But was this the season for tadpoles? He tried to remember, but he had never been much of a tadpole boy, even with the few opportunities that London offered. He had always hated that dark wriggliness.

  He decided to complete his examination by walking round the edge of the pond. This turned out to be difficult because of the thickly growing vegetation. At one place a bush leaned in a straggly way over the water; it bore clusters of tiny dark purple berries. He thought that these must be elderberries, and he knew you could eat elderberries. He stretched out a hand to pick some and then thought that perhaps these were not elderberries, perhaps another kind of fruit, perhaps poisonous. He drew his hand back sharply. He felt endangered.

  A
nd then he saw the amazing oak. The trunk must have been at least two meters across at its base, but the tree was quite hollow, with some other younger tree boldly growing up in the middle of it. All the same, the oak was not dead: from its crust of bark, twigs and leaves had spurted. And at some time someone—apparently to keep this shell of a tree from falling apart—had put a steel cable round it.

  “Pointless,” said young Edward to himself. Because of the elderberries—if they had been elderberries—he had felt afraid, and that still angered him. Now the sight of the giant oak, whose collapse was thus futilely delayed, angered him even more.

  He pushed his way out of the little piece of woodland to its far side and the open field beyond. From there the small houses were not visible. The Hirn lay between.

  The shortest way back to the field gate and his car would have been by the path his pushing and trampling had already made through the woodland. But he decided not to reenter the Hirn. He preferred to take the long way round the outside, until he was in view of the houses, the gate, the car.

  When he could see the houses, he could see that the woman and child were still in their garden, also the old man in his. When they saw him coming, they went indoors.

  “I don’t know what they thought they were going to see,” young Edward said to himself resentfully. “Something—oh, very extraordinary, no doubt!”

  He went straight back to the car and then home. His examination of the Hirn had been quick but thorough enough. There had been nothing much to see, and frankly, he did not like the place.

  The next day he tackled old Bill Hayes and told him that the Hirn must be obliterated. He did not use the word, but it was in his mind as he gave the order. After all, he was owner and master.

  Old Bill Hayes looked at him. “But it’s Hirn,” he said.

  “So you mentioned before,” said young Edward, knowing that his sarcasm would be wasted on Bill’s dullness. “All the same, see that what I want is done.”

  Old Bill Hayes made no further objection, but neither did he do anything in the days that followed.

  Then, realizing that his wishes had been ignored, Edward gave the order again.

  Again, nothing happened.

  This time, his blood up, young Edward acted for himself, without Consulting or even informing old Bill Hayes. He made the right inquiries and was able to arrange for an outside firm to do the clearance job. They said it would take several days. They would start by cutting down all the trees. The timber—valueless, of course—and the brushwood would then be cleared. Remaining tree stumps and roots must all be grubbed up; otherwise they would grow again, even more strongly. Finally, the pond would be filled in, and the whole site leveled.

  In only a short time all trace of the Hirn would have disappeared.

  On the first day of the operation young Edward Edwards had a morning appointment with the manager of the local bank where the Mortlocks had always done business. There were financial matters still to be sorted out. But on top of these, the manager annoyed young Edward with unwanted advice. He strongly urged him not to take on the Mortlock farm on his own account, even with a farm manager. It would be more sensible (the manager said) to sell the farm and farmhouse and use the money in some business that he was more likely fully to understand.

  Young Edward was furious.

  His fury lasted into the afternoon, when he decided that he was in just the mood to inspect the destruction of the Him. Besides, he somehow felt that he ought to be there—perhaps as a witness to the execution.

  He drove his car to the same place as before and set off again across the fields. It was easy to see where the gang had been before him, with their heavily loaded vehicles, and he could already see where they had been at work: the treed area of the Hirn was now only about a tenth of its original size. The other nine-tenths had been roughly cleared, leaving freshly cut tree stumps sticking up everywhere like jagged teeth.

  The gang themselves had gone home. He was disappointed—and disapproving—that they had chosen to stop work so early.

  Once, before he reached what was left of the Him, young Edward looked back over the fields to the houses. No one at all in the gardens. No lights yet in any windows, as there would be soon, but he was aware of something, a pallor behind a window glass: a face looking out in his direction. From more than one window he fancied that they watched him.

  He was soon picking his way among the many tree stumps, making for the few trees that were left standing near the pond. The dying oak had been left standing. It survived. He stared at it. Unwillingly, he came to the decision that he wanted to touch it. He went right up to it and laid the flat of his hand against the bark. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how old the tree might be. People said that oaks could live for hundreds of years … hundreds and hundreds of years. …

  He decided that he had seen enough of the Hirn. He turned away from the oak, to get out of this tiny remnant of woodland. Tiny it might be, but it was thick—thicker than he had noticed on his coming. He had to push his way through the undergrowth—perhaps because this was not the way he had come but a new way? Certainly it had been much easier for him to reach the oak than now it was for him to get away from it.

  The end of the afternoon was coming; the light was failing.

  He came to the pond. The water looked almost black now. To his surprise he saw that there were still trees and bushes crowding the banks around it; he had thought, as he came over the fields, that they had been cut down.

  He turned away from the water in the direction—he thought—of the houses and his parked car. He must have made a mistake, however, for he reentered untouched woodland again.

  He was angered at how long it was taking him to get out of this wretched grove of trees.

  He came to the oak again and turned from it abruptly to struggle on through the undergrowth in the direction he supposed to be the right one. The only sound was the sound of his crashing about and his own heavy breathing, and then he thought—or perhaps he imagined?—he was hearing something else. He stopped to listen carefully. …

  (Driving fast along the motorway, Mr. Edwards remembered standing still to listen so carefully, so very carefully. As he drove, his hands tightened on the driving wheel until his knuckles whitened. …)

  Young Edward Edwards listened. …

  It was very quiet. Everywhere round him was now still and very, very quiet. But all the same, he thought there was something—not a sound that began and ended but a sound that was there, as the wood was there. The sound enclosed him, as the wood enclosed him.

  The sound was of someone trying not to laugh—of someone privately amused, quietly and maliciously amused.

  Young Edward made a rush forward and reached the pond again.

  He stood there, and the sound was there with him, all around him. He stared at the blackness of the water until he could feel his eyes beginning to trick him. He watched the water, and the water seemed to watch him. The surface of the blackness seemed to shiver, to shudder; the edges of the water seemed to crinkle. The mantle of black on the surface of the water seemed to be gathering itself up, as a woman’s garments are gathered, before the woman herself rises. …

  (Along the motorway, Mr. Edwards drove fast, trying to think of nothing but the motorway, but he had to remember. …)

  Young Edward ran; he was trying to run; he was trying to escape. The sound was still round him, and round him now, everywhere, trees stood in his way and the undergrowth spread wide to catch him. They all baited him, for someone’s private amusement. He fought to run: a bramble snagged in his sleeve and then tried to drag the coat from his back; an elder branch whipped him across the face; a sly tree root tripped him.

  He tripped. He was falling.

  He knew that he was falling among tall trees and thickets of undergrowth, and that he was lost—forever lost! He gave a long scream, but a blow on the head finished the scream and also finished young Edward Edwards for the time being.

/>   In the houses they heard the long scream that suddenly stopped, and a little party set off hurriedly to find young Mr. Edwards. They had been waiting for something to happen. They were not callous people, only very fearful; otherwise they might have gone earlier.

  They found him lying among the tree stumps of the cleared part of the woodland. He had fallen headfirst onto one of them. Later, in the hospital, he was told that he had been very lucky. He might so easily have split his whole head open on that jagged tree stump. Killed himself.

  And later still, in London (where he had insisted on going, straight from the hospital), he had instructed the bank to arrange for the immediate sale of Mortlock’s, farmhouse and farm, the lot. That had been done, most profitably, and he had never seen the place again—until today, from the motorway.

  As he drove, he ventured another quick glance to his left. The farmhouse was no longer in sight. His spirits lifted. These must still be Mortlock fields, but they would soon be passed, too.

  Then he saw the houses—and recognized them. …

  Then the big field …

  Then, in the middle, green and flourishing, a coppice of trees. …

  He had been warned that unless they were grubbed up by the roots, the tree stumps would sprout and grow even more strongly. Yes, they had grown, and now, as once before, thick woodland hid from sight that mantled water. And he began to think he heard—borne on some unlikely wind—the faintest sound of unkind laughter.

  Mr. Edwards brought his gaze back strictly to the motorway ahead, turned the car radio on to full volume, accelerated well over the speed limit, and so passed beyond further sight of the trees that were Hirn.

  He put view and sound, and remembrance of both, behind him for good. He had made up his mind, for good: he would not drive this way again. There were always other roads and other modes of travel—rail, air. He would never use this motorway again.

  He never did.

  The Yellow Ball