Cold Boy's Wood

by Carol Birch

  The light shows strange walls, complex, striated. Above, a smotheringly close roof of dirty strings that threatens death. Is this what it comes to? This pinpoint of a moment in the middle of eternity, me in this place?

  But you know, one thing I’ve found out. Nothing goes away, not one little thing. Takes a slight thing sometimes to press that button, click on that link and suddenly, hey, there it all is replaying like an old film you saw years ago on the TV when you shouldn’t have been up and watching. And the way it curdled your blood and shrunk your bones then when you were a child, it all comes back.

  42

  He was out by the beehives, late on in the next afternoon, when his phone rang. Jesus Christ, he was going to have to do something about that stupid ring tone. Driving him mad. His back was aching and the late sun streamed down through the tree trunks and fell on a lacy thickness of undergrowth.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Dan, it’s Madeleine. Just thought I’d better update you on the Lorna Gilder situation.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, basically it’s all sorted.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Basically…’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You weren’t in this morning, were you? We knocked on your door.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Banging and ringing for ages, what did they think? That he was suddenly going to materialise after ignoring them for the past twenty minutes? Lying with the pillow on his head. Cats. Still in. The place was beginning to smell, he’d have to do something. Whoever you are you can fuck off. I don’t want to know.

  ‘No, so we thought she might be there but obviously not, so we went into the woods and there she was at her little place just sitting there waiting for us basically. It was really unliveable, you know. Soaking wet. Really horrible old rags that had got wet and not dried properly because you couldn’t, could you? So most of it was so awful we had to leave it behind. She was OK with it. And she was absolutely filthy. I mean, not just a little bit but like, you know, as if she’d fallen in mud and just let it dry on her. We couldn’t leave her like that. I mean. Can you imagine? If it was your mother’ – a slight miss there as the awkward presence of his mother arose between them – ‘but she didn’t seem to mind anyway. Came quiet as a lamb.’

  ‘Her pills are here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Well, she’s got some more now, so it’s OK. Do you want me to pick them up and get them back to a pharmacist for you?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So – where’s she gone then?’

  ‘Same place she was before. Her daughter was on the phone all afternoon to them. It was some sort of semi-sheltered thing, they know her there and she’ll be fine. They’ve been very good. And she knows people there.’

  So that was that.

  Over, thank God.

  ‘Her daughter took her back in the car. Down south. Nice woman but a bit brisk and detached I thought. If that was my mother. Still, she can be awkward, I did see that. Poor woman. And how can you judge, the history they must have between them. I feel quite emotional. I tried to give her my nice little blue case on wheels for her stuff, I would have let her keep it, but she wouldn’t have it, hanging on to this hideous old plastic holdall with a broken zip. All she had in there, from what I could see, was a dirty old rug. It was awful. Couldn’t take it off her though. Think her daughter’s had a lot to put up with. Anyway, we took her back to my house and she got cleaned up and had something to eat and I fixed her up with some clean clothes. I had to chuck her old stuff out, it was past all hope.’

  ‘Gone back to the same place then,’ he said.

  ‘I think so.’

  BetFred. Bus stop.

  ‘I felt sorry for her actually,’ Madeleine said, ‘Lorna, I mean. The way her daughter was bossing her about. Sit there, Mother. Do this, do that. And she was so quiet, as if she’d just given up, just doing what she was told and holding onto this old holdall as if it was a baby.’

  One of those telephone silences.

  ‘OK then,’ he said, ‘thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘I’m sure she must have been relieved though. I mean Lorna. To be going back. She must have been. By far the best thing.’

  ‘Probably,’ he said, and yawned.

  ‘So anyway, I thought I’d just keep you posted.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve got a backlog now. It was actually all quite stressful.’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  She sighed.

  ‘OK then,’ he said. ‘Thanks for helping.’

  ‘Bye then.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He was still worn out from last night’s booze. The bees were getting quiet for winter. It was really coming now, a harsh one. He went in and the house was cold. What was the coal and wood situation? Shitty. Cut wood tomorrow. He lit a fire and fell asleep on his back on the sofa in front of it, woke to heavy rain. Torrential. Christ, that’s hail. He thought about the woman’s little silly house in the woods made of sticks and canvas and plastic sheets, all getting hammered into the forest floor. Tomorrow he’d go there and take a look at it and it would be all broken up and fallen in with some of her jewellery still hanging on it.

  Oh well. Down to the village in the rain, to the pub. Got Marlon to sell him a bottle of Talisker. The telly was on. They were supposed to be making improvements to the place but it just looked more ordinary, more like everywhere else. If they took the old dragon from the wall, that was it. He wouldn’t come in any more.

  He got talking to Pete about people he didn’t know. Pete’s daughter was going on a cruise. The Baltic states.

  ‘You been round that part of the world?’ Pete asked.

  ‘I did once.’

  ‘You’ve been everywhere.’

  ‘No. Furthest I’ve been is Iceland.’

  ‘When you didn’t see the Northern Lights.’

  ‘When I didn’t see the Northern Lights.’

  ‘I never have either.’

  Dan’s back was sore. It was sore every day now. And one of his knees was cranky. Fuck old age. He wondered if he should tell Pete about the woman and all that stuff she’d told him. But then. If he was going to tell anyone, I suppose it should be the police, but then again, like the daughter said, after all, you couldn’t believe a word she said. What do you do? A crime? So, if it really was a crime, what? Murder? But then, what then? What would happen? Arrest. Trial? He didn’t know about the law. She’d go on trial. Obviously. But then again, mental health issues. Yeah but still have to go on trial, no way round that. But then. Prison? No no no, some kind of institution, what do you do with people like that? And anyway what if it’s not true, or true some other way, or her daughter who’s OK now is going to have to go through some horrible trauma knowing what happened, what’s the point of that? But she deserves to know. The truth. What is the truth? Truth.

  ‘So,’ said Pete, ‘yeah, I’d better be off.’

  Dan hadn’t got a clue what he’d been talking about for the last ten minutes. Still, he knew he’d been chucking in the odd word.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘seeya.’

  The TV over the bar showed people in an airport. Stuck. Bad weather. Snow wherever that is. More forecast.

  I don’t know how you work these things out, how the hell, he thought. It’s wrong whichever way you look at it. The thought of her locked up seemed wrong. Oh fuck it, another drink.

  It was snowing when he left an hour later. Delightful. The big flakes falling grey against the dark sky. Pissed. Lovely, going down the old lane with his arms out catching snow. She made his heart hurt, she was such a lost cause, that woman. Nothing to be done. Ah God, the old days, him and the fat boy, Frankie, and Eric Munsy and whatsisname throwing snowballs on the way home from school. One hit Mrs Turley on the back. Mrs Turley taught history. They all ran behind the hedge and killed themselves laughing. Didn’t hurt her. And where were they gone now? Just playing. Getting home he we
nt through the blue snow garden, the flakes swirling and skirling, through the gates to the hives so he could look down beyond the slope and the hedge and see the open sky over the long field. There he scooped up a fair-sized snowball in his bare hands and hurled it way over the hedge. Good one! Play! Play! Play on. Another. There was a sound from the dark under the hedge at the bottom of the slope.

  What was that under the whisper of snow?

  Oh nothing. Mew mew. Cat. Can get in when it wants to.

  His hands were wet and burning.

  ‘Hey, pussy cats!’ he yelled, going in. ‘Come on in now. Gather round.’

  The fire was just about still going. He put on some music. A log on the fire.

  Once there was a ghost on the stairs.

  Nah! It was nothing! Nothing else happened after that, did it?

  He wouldn’t think of it.

  ‘Where are you, you fuckers?’

  They came after a while, slowly, one by one, the big orange one, the matron, the black and white dandy. Who could ever keep track?

  43

  Winter passed.

  The old orange cat died. Usually they went away to die, but this one died in the armchair by the fireplace in its sleep, and he found it dead there one morning. He buried it out back, by the bees, put a stone on top of the spot and found himself looking at it now and then when he was out there seeing to the hives.

  Two or three weeks later a new cat turned up, also orange. It just walked in the back door one morning as he was drinking his tea, came into the living room and sat on the end of the sofa staring at him. Its eyes were orange like its fur, and it reminded him of the old cat except that this one was half grown and thin and skittish.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re a one, aren’t you?’

  After a few days it seemed to be following him around. Once it sniffed his feet as he sat on the back step, but if ever he tried to touch it, it flinched and ran. He began to think perhaps it was an offspring of the old one’s, and started calling it Ginger 2 (though the old one had never actually had a name) then Gin 2, which ended up as Jintoo. He’d come home stupid and drunk and lie on his back on the sofa and shout, ‘Hey Jintoo! Jintoo! Come on, you fucking cat!’

  Sometimes the cat came, sometimes it didn’t.

  When work was slow, sometimes he slept the day away. But always at night he was wide awake and the dark crowded his windows. He found himself listening to nothing, a sudden realisation that he’d been doing it for much too long. He broke eggs into a pan and thought about chickens but then the idea of chickens and cats together, no, couldn’t be, unless, such a lot of hassle. His hair grew longer. He drank from the same old chipped cowboy mug every day. One day, down by the hedge at the bottom of the slope where the bees were, he saw something, a difference, he thought, a re-arrangement of something, and when he went down he saw a stick cross tied up with knotty brown twine, six inches high like something a child would make. A few heads of Michaelmas daisies and dog rose scattered the disturbed earth in which it stood. Peculiar.

  He didn’t want to touch it. Could have been anything. Kids. Still, he didn’t want to touch it. But who’d been mucking around down here? Kids. Leave it. Instead he sat down under the hedge and prodded at the earth, then went and got a trowel and dug and piled and delved until at a depth of about two feet something was revealed, a corner of a rug, red and brown, so rotten and dirty it was impossible to tell if this really was the rug he’d last seen being lugged about by that woman, and when he knew by the way it stuck and snagged when he tried to pull it out that something was wrapped inside, he gave up. Small like a baby gathered into the last swaddling, there with the bees hovering above in the white and purple clover, whatever it was could stay there.

  The cats were taking over the house. That room, the cats’ room, was a disaster. He’d gone in and just grabbed a load of stuff and shoved it all in some big plastic bin bags and taken them to the dump without even looking through anything. Could’ve been anything, but what was all that, anyway, just the past. Now was this only – what existed. He’d put down litter in ridiculous things like old drawers, anything he had, and they were using it, and now he had to go round emptying it all the time or it stank out into the hall and he wasn’t having that. So he cut a hole in the bottom of the door and just kept that door closed all the time so as not to have to think about it all the time. So fucking stiff he was, he groaned when he stood up.

  *

  April showers.

  The April showers, he sang to whichever cat happened to be in the vicinity, may come your way –

  The windows streamed, thick ropes of water. It was like a hissing in his head.

  They bring the flowers that bloom in May –

  They scampered down the hall.

  Oh, fuck off, you miserable sods, no taste.

  So when it starts to thunder don’t run under a tree –

  No, that’s a different song.

  He stood at the open back door and watched the rain. The sound of it was all-obliterating, it ran away in all directions like water flowing underneath the ground. There was a funny light in the sky. Maybe a storm brewing. Electricity. It was lovely. He waited for the first rumble of thunder in the distance. The stones, they say. They draw electricity, thunder and lightning. He felt like a walk, down the lane with his mac on and his hood up, all fresh and nice. All glistening, and the long puddle down the centre of the lane shining silver. He didn’t go too far. The outline of a barn on the skyline was rimmed with black. Smelt the cowshit, and the herbs in the hedges. Oh come on, let’s have a big big storm. He jumped the stile into Gallinger’s field. Round the gate was all trampled mud from the cows, though the field was empty, they were all in the upper field. Squelching through the mud he looked to the skyline and thought of Pepper and Lady and Little Sid, coming with their lurching shoulders across the field to him to eat from his flattened palm, to snort upon his face and blink their patient soulful eyes at him.

  Funny how the memory of three horses could cut right through. God, the quick pain.

  In the end he walked and walked till the darkness came down, and still walked. He went home, sighing, ah God, another night, how long could this go on, and where was it all leading, same as ever, and now he was wet and achy so out with the old companion, the bottle, onwards, music, to the head, by the fire, like to be one of those old geezers you see with a fiddle or something, that must be nice even alone, making music by a fireside. Things aren’t like that nowadays. You wouldn’t really need anything else. The fire burned his eyes. He fell asleep and woke and drank and slept and woke and it was deep in the night, got into that good old state, drinking and sentimental, but close to panic, talking to the rambling cats. Sometimes he wondered whether they were on his territory or he was on theirs.

  ‘C’m’ere, you old fucker,’ he said to Jintoo.

  Poor Jintoo.

  ‘How did your ears get like that so soon,’ he asked, ‘all notched and snaggled? What have you been up to, eh?’

  Stuck music on a random play. Didn’t even know what this was. Jazz. Thought of his old dog, good old Billy, bounding through the wood with a look of joy on his silly face. Tears streamed down. He chased the orange cat down the hall, caught it and scooped it up into a big strong hug next to his chest. It tensed and a low snarl came from its throat.

  ‘What, you fucker?’

  He crooned to it.

  The autumn leaves

  Dancing, the poor thing struggling.

  drift by my window

  Though these were April showers that come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May and the cat lunged out of his arms, he grabbed at it. Next thing he knew it was hanging from the end of his arm, its teeth and front claws fixed in his hand while its mighty hind legs kicked away at him over and over again.

  He roared, shaking his arm, but it clung on tighter, more furious.

  ‘Get off, you cunt! Fucking bastard cunting fucking…’

  Hurt like fuck
.

  With his good hand he grabbed and pulled. Every claw and fang sank deeper till it let go suddenly and flew through the air with a screech, landing on all its feet and streaking away through the open door into the hall. Ungrateful bastard. He grabbed a log from the wood basket and hurled it after. Oh fuck! That hurt. The log hit the edge of the door and fell to the floor. Jesus, look at that. Holes oozing blood. Everything throbbing. He cursed his way into the kitchen to the sink, ran the cold tap and stuck his hand under it. Blood dripped into the sink. Worst of all, though, was the feeling of betrayal in his chest, ridiculously out of proportion to anything that had actually happened. That cat. That cat was my friend. Why? Why? His palm hurt, a sharp whining pain worse than the punctures the cat had made. There was a dark line under the skin. When he touched it it screamed. The tap ran, rain trickled down the black window.

  That’s a splinter. He got a tea towel and wiped his hand, knocked his cowboy mug on the floor as he turned. It smashed, the bits flew everywhere, great jagged bits and hundreds of tiny deadly shards. Blotting away at the blood. Need a needle. God, how he hated that! Poking down under your skin. From that log. He got down on his knee and picked up the main bits of his mug and put them on the draining board. He felt sorry for it lying there shattered. He should wrap them in newspaper or something and put them in the bin in case one of the cats walked on the draining board and cut its paws. They weren’t supposed to, but who knows what they did when he wasn’t there? Why am I thinking about the cats? Bastards. Look at my arm.

  The music schmoozed along beside him, a nice gentle plonking piano and a languorous vocal: but that was long ago and now my consolation is in the stardust of a song.