Cold Boy's Wood

by Carol Birch

  ‘Yeah but…’

  ‘It must be awful,’ said Harriet.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Give it another half hour,’ Madeleine said. ‘Then we’ll make a decision.’

  ‘They should never have closed that place,’ said Harriet. ‘Just put them out on the street and in these horrible places. I mean, what do they expect?’

  Madeleine stood up. ‘Can I use your loo, Dan?’

  ‘First door you come to going up,’ he said.

  He’d scrubbed it, knowing they were coming.

  When they were alone, Harriet looked straight at him and said sadly, still faintly smiling, ‘I don’t know what she’s said to you. I don’t know if you realise. My mother’s a funny woman. You can’t believe a word she says.’

  ‘So I imagine,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll say anything. It’s all in her head. She can come across as fairly normal sometimes but scratch the surface...’

  He offered her a cigarette but she shook her head. ‘So she’s scaring children and dog-walkers, is she?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You know,’ she leaned towards him in a confidential manner, ‘she was never a real mother to me.’

  ‘Wasn’t she?’

  ‘No.’ She looked away then said, ‘Oh yes, she was a funny woman, my mother,’ as if she was dead.

  After that they sat in silence, and he thought: they’ll never move. Never get them out of my house. And the rain went on and Madeleine returned and everything was awkward and they said it was getting late and they’d come back tomorrow. Harriet was staying in the Holiday Inn. She was wondering if there was any way she could get expenses from social services for all this but gave up the idea almost at once.

  Anyway, she said, she couldn’t really manage more than one more night. She had to get back to work.

  ‘What do you do?’ asked Madeleine.

  ‘I’m a radiographer,’ she said.

  ‘What about the other sister?’ said Dan, and they both looked at him.

  ‘I didn’t know there was another sister,’ Madeleine said.

  ‘My sister died in a car accident,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Oh, how awful!’ cried Madeleine.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was. It was terrible.’

  They left together but a couple of hours later Madeleine rang and told him all about it, what a sad case it was, the sister had been killed in a car crash and the mother had gone into some kind of weird state after that. Apparently she’d had a couple of peculiar episodes before. ‘She’s schizophrenic, you know. They get paranoid. You can’t trust anything they say. And then the father pissed off, and it was just poor Harriet and her mad mum till she left home and went to live with a friend. Couldn’t wait to get out. I mean, you have to sympathise. Some of the things I’ve seen. People’s lives are just so messed up. Really, you just wouldn’t believe. You wouldn’t believe my files, some of the things I’ve got in my files. I could tell you—’

  ‘Sorry, Madeleine,’ he said. ‘Got to go now.’

  He looked out. The yard was growing muddy from the rain and the tyre tracks had made a mess. With a face of granite, he pulled on his boots once more, got on his yellow waterproof and plodded off. The afternoon was uncomfortably darkening. He didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to do anything. I said I was going in first, that’s what I’m doing, he told himself. As he got deeper in the wood, the sound of rain was like a constant waterfall. He stood still and looked around, rain dripping from his hairy overhanging brow in spite of the shiny yellow hood. You could hear water streaming away into the shiny clay beneath, a great thirst slaking. It was still light enough to see the quivering shine on the ivy.

  He went on towards the big rock, then stood still again. Yes, this was it. And there, if he was not mistaken, was the faintest warming of the gloom in the thickets on the left-hand side. Lamplight.

  So he just called. ‘Hello-o-o-o-o…’ sounding ridiculous to himself.

  A moment.

  ‘Hello-o-o-o-o-o…’

  The rain fell harder.

  There was a rustling in the gloom. The foliage parted and her wan face looked out. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

  The face withdrew, he stooped, shoved his weight through the gap in the leaves, shoved his face on through the gap towards the light, my God, she’d got it all pretty tight, and into this place. It was a little room. She could just about stand up in the middle of it but he felt like a giant. He crawled in and crouched like a troll. It was a tent inside a tarpaulin inside a cave of leaves accessed by a short but twisting tunnel. An old red and brown patterned rug decorated the floor. A Tilley lamp stood in a cracked yellow mixing bowl. The fire risk! he thought.

  ‘Christ, I hope you’re careful with that,’ he said.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  The walls, if you could call them that, were hung with jewellery, long strands of beads and bangles and jangly things, all sparkly in the light from the Tilley. Spilt cards. Not normal ones, Tarot cards. All that shit.

  ‘Your daughter’s here,’ he said.

  Her face changed. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. Then she sighed. ‘You have unleashed chaos,’ she said, then gave a sudden unhinged laugh. ‘My daughter! Which one?’ and he froze, remembering that there was a dead one.

  ‘Harriet hasn’t bothered with me in years,’ she said then. ‘What’s she after?’

  ‘She’s brought your medication.’

  ‘You know, everything just gets too complicated.’ She turned away. ‘Why did you tell? You promised.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He was now, though he didn’t see any other way things could have worked out.

  ‘How did you find Harriet?’

  A long pause. ‘When I looked in your pocket. That night – you know.’

  ‘My pocket? My purse, you mean. You must have gone in my purse.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  A silence.

  ‘Well, that was a shitty thing to do,’ she said, then a bitter laugh. ‘I like that. Don’t go poking around in my house, you said. When you were the one who—’

  ‘Sorry. It seemed necessary.’

  ‘No, you’re not sorry.’ What else was in my pockets, she was thinking. What else does he think he knows? ‘She can’t make me move,’ she said.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m just letting you know. They’ll be here tomorrow.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yes, your daughter and…’

  ‘That woman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A social worker.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh well that’s that then.’ She sat up straight and started fumbling for a cigarette. He lit it for her.

  ‘They never leave you alone, those people,’ she said.

  ‘She’s only trying to help.’

  ‘Of course.’

  This place was much too small to smoke in. It was like being a kid in a den, doing something forbidden. ‘Christ knows the state of your lungs,’ he said.

  ‘Christ knows the state of your liver,’ she replied.

  He smiled. ‘Shouldn’t think yours is too brilliant either.’

  She smiled too, without humour. ‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’re right about your woman whatsername, she’s probably a lovely lovely woman and all that, but I do wonder – it’s not for me, you know – all this caring’ – speaking the word with careful emphasis – ‘I think it’s just to make her feel good.’

  ‘No, but—’

  She laughed. ‘She doesn’t even know me. You know what will happen? They’ll make me go back to that flat. I wish you could see it. It’s OK. There’s a BetFred and a carpet shop and a taxi place. If you go out of the door and start walking, it’s just nothing every way you go. All just nothing. No one really wants to be there. No one loves it. It’s just a place to be, it’s just—’

  She broke off.

  ‘I won’t stick it,
you know. It’s not my place.’

  ‘It’s the winter,’ he said. ‘That’s the real problem. Oh sure, you’re not doing any harm but when winter comes you can’t be living in here. It’s mad. You ever been up around here in the winter? It’s crazy. You’d freeze to death. OK, maybe if this was the South of France or something—’

  ‘You can live in cold temperatures,’ she said, ‘people do. Lots of people do. You’ve just got to be prepared.’

  He snorted. He was smoking too now and a blue haze hung in the air.

  ‘I wish I was clever,’ she said. ‘I was never clever. Then I’d know what to do.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That. That you’re not clever.’

  ‘No one. Me. I don’t know. I don’t think you realise,’ she said. ‘There’ll be forms to fill in.’

  He laughed at the way she said it, as if she’d said there’ll be war and pestilence and famine.

  ‘I can’t do it. All this’ – pointing into the air and swivelling her hand round and round – ‘all this official stuff. All these people. Having to—’

  It was just too awful. She broke off.

  ‘Oh, someone’ll help you with that,’ he said.

  ‘And Harriet. You don’t know what she’s like. She makes me feel about’ – with her free hand indicating something less than tiny – ‘this high. She’s like a steamroller.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. He could understand this. Families.

  ‘What do you know about it? You don’t know a thing about it.’

  ‘OK then.’

  He would have stood up if there’d been room enough.

  ‘Best thing is if you come back now before it gets any darker. Sleep on the sofa like before. You can have a bath if you like. You’ll want to clean up a bit before you see your daughter. They’ll be round in the morning, first thing. Best if you look – you know. Best if you’re there all ready. I don’t want to have to traipse out here again.’

  He didn’t think she’d come, but she got a few things together wordlessly, slung a bag over her shoulder and reached for her torch.

  ‘Lead on,’ she said, and followed his wide back through the wood, the beam of his own torch lighting the tracks ahead. It had stopped raining but everything still sang. She didn’t know why she was going. The idea of seeing Harriet again filled her with a harrowing mixture of wild excitement and terror. Little Harry with her gap tooth. What will I do? What say? She’ll give me that look, as if the whole world is my fault.

  He stopped.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He held up his arm to say hush.

  The beam showed wrinkled bark and rampant ivy, weirdly detailed, nothing moving. Outside the beam everything was black.

  He looked up.

  Under and over the gentle dripping of leaves, there was a sound from above, quite far and seeming to overarch the forest like a lower sky. It was sharp and crisp and had the effect of being inside the ear as well as up there. To Dan it sounded like a big bird passing over, something wild and massive like a great auk or albatross or some other rare and difficult thing that should not be in the air above his wood. To Lorna it was a voice coming through countless layers of gauze, calling and wanting to be heard, incoherent and appealing, as if she was God and the voice some poor lost supplicant on a planet on the far side of several universes. That’s the way things are for me now, she thought. That’s what I hear.

  ‘Going to be clear tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Dan,’ she said, feeling suddenly as if he was a friend, a weird feeling.

  ‘What?’

  It was cold.

  ‘Nothing.’

  After a moment when there was no more sound than the rippling of the forest sucking in water, he walked on and she followed his broad lumbering shadow out of the wood.

  31

  He gave me a couple of blankets and a cup of tea. The fire was still burning.

  His hair had grown free and tufted round his face, giving him a wild, sternly leonine look.

  ‘Have you got a shower?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Just a bath.’

  ‘Oh. I’ll have a bath in the morning. What time are they coming?’

  ‘I don’t know. First thing.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Have I got to get up early?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be OK.’

  Of course, he had no idea.

  ‘So then,’ he said, ‘have you got everything?’

  ‘Yes.’ I started making up my bed on the settee. There was a little wooden dog on the table that wasn’t there before.

  ‘Did you make that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ I said.

  He said nothing.

  ‘You’re a good lad, Dan,’ I said as he trudged up the stairs, but I don’t think he heard me.

  How could I sleep?

  I went a-hunting. I’m good at silence. That room where everything you touch covers another, older thing. Excavation. I turned the light on. The photograph drawers were open and they were all shoved in a heap on top of the sideboard. I grabbed a big handful, took them back to the fireside with me and drank my tea, warming my feet on the fender as I looked at them, all these faded jaded greys, all the dead people smiling from the other side. And him young, a boy. You wouldn’t know him. Same eyes though. Self-conscious. Oh what a shame, where all that goes to.

  Thought I heard a sound upstairs, so I shoved everything under the sofa and went to the door and to look upstairs but it was nothing. Cats. Always cats. The house breathed out age. I like old houses. When I was fourteen we moved from our old house to a stucco semi-detached with a bow window. It had small square rooms and I had grey and yellow striped wallpaper in my bedroom. I had the room at the back and my brother Tommy was at the front. He used to come in in the middle of the night and say he was scared. ‘It’s all right,’ I’d say, but I was scared too. We were never scared in the old house, dark and creaky as it was, but this new one was a strict, nasty house, humourless and mean. I went back to the fire and looked at the pictures some more. Look at him, look at him look at him, a poor boy too, just look. I kept hearing things, nondescript ticks and clicks, rustlings, some as close as the kitchen, as if someone was moving carefully so as not to be heard. It can’t be him, I’d have heard him on the stairs with his heavy feet. The door to the hallway was open and the darkness stood beyond it like a curtain. If I’m going to put these back so he doesn’t find out, I’d better do it now, I thought, now or never. It took all my resolution to get up and steal along to the cats’ room in the dark and return the photographs to the top of the sideboard, foolishly trying to arrange them just as they were before, so he’d never know. Then I skittered back down the hall and got down on the settee under the blanket and stared at the fire that was clucking itself gently into peace for the night.

  I thought about Harriet. Can’t do it. Have to. Just no way of working it all out. Where can I go? The snow, would it be so bad? The woods in winter, the snow thick and heavy on the branches, falling and sifting down, and me there watching, warm with all my blankets wrapped round me, looking out. How could that harm me more than BetFred and a boarded-up hairdresser and dull yellow food containers made out of that peculiar thick brittle plasticky stuff, blown by the perishing wind along the street below? And who am I? Other people live with it, why can’t I? What if that view from the window, BetFred, the grim, the dreary mediocrity – what if you looked at that and saw it like the wild wood, saw the beings there, those awful stupid boring people, as if they were wildlife in a wood? Try to make something of that. Where was the joy in BetFred and ketchup-smeared plastic?

  So I went in the kitchen and got his whisky down off the shelf, and drank two or three and still couldn’t put my mind away and get to sleep, so in the end I got up and went back to my den and saw my old Tarot card
s hiding down there, and picked them up and gave them a good shuffle. Nice old things, a lovely Italian deck, very worn down, with gold on the Major Arcana cards. The people all look like Botticelli angels and maidens at the well. The lion is handsome, the moon sadly and serenely wise. It’s embarrassing, says Johnny’s voice, you and all this crap. It’s pointless. It’s really quite pernicious all that kind of thing. I just find it baffling how anyone can find things like that interesting. He was far far above all that shit. ‘I just like the pictures,’ I said, ‘it’s not as if I run my day on them, you know.’ I never drew a spread and said aha the Devil and the ten of swords, I must not go out today. If he thought that was weird, God knows how he’d have coped with me now. Nothing strange happened to me in all the years I was with him.

  *

  When it was light I went up to the heights, I didn’t know what else to do.

  32

  ‘She’s gone,’ Dan said. ‘She was supposed to be here.’

  It was raining again.

  Harriet heaved a great exasperated sigh. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to show us where she lives.’ She laughed without humour, rolled her eyes and repeated, ‘Lives!’ in a wry tone.

  ‘Harriet’s concerned,’ said Madeleine.

  Harriet looked away, bland-faced.

  He went out to get his boots and Madeleine followed. ‘I mentioned about that body,’ she said. ‘You know, it’s worrying me, Dan. I mentioned about that body and I’m not kidding, she went white.’ She leaned forward and whispered. ‘“My dad,” she said. You should have seen her, “My dad.” Cos he went off about then. It was awful! All sorts of things she was saying. She just kept saying, “What if it was her? What if she did him in? My dad. He just was there and then he wasn’t.” And she was a liar, she said, her mum was a liar. Told her he’d left them. But he wouldn’t do that. He would never do that. That’s what she said. Why would he? But then I thought –’

  She was following him around irritatingly while he got his boots on, went into the kitchen, shooed out a cat.

  ‘– I thought, come on now, let’s get forensic here! And I said, Harriet, how tall was your dad? And she said he was tall. She wasn’t sure but she thought at least five eleven, possibly more.’