The Trees

by Ali Shaw

  Adrien took a deep breath. ‘Mr Thomas,’ he said, almost inaudibly. One of his hands pawed up to his throat, and stayed there in substitution for a collar and tie.

  ‘Mr Thomas,’ he said again. ‘That’s . . . that’s my name.’

  The children’s murmurs subsided for a moment, and Hannah held her breath. Adrien had thirty seconds, at best, to win them over.

  ‘Well,’ he said, then coughed and started again. ‘Well, er . . . I’ve been asked to teach. Um, but, umm . . . teaching is hard when you’re all so many ages and you haven’t got exercise books or reading books or even a board and pen. You’re going to have to suffer with just the sound of my voice. Anyone who doesn’t like that idea is welcome to leave.’

  He gave them ample time, but no one took up his offer.

  ‘Well. I am an English teacher. Who here likes English?’

  Adrien waited. No hands went up, and he gave a brittle nod as if that was just what he’d expected. Then several children raised their arms, and after that the shyer ones began to raise theirs too. ‘Oh,’ said Adrien, and Hannah smiled at how genuinely surprised he sounded.

  More hands went up. ‘Wow,’ said Adrien, ‘that’s . . . that’s good. But I haven’t got any books to show you. I’m just going to have to describe them to you. Could some of you . . . could some of you perhaps tell me what your favourite books are?’

  Again the hands were slow to come, and before the first one went up Adrien wrinkled his nose as if he had been duped by false enthusiasm. Then one by one the fingers rose, some of them straining to outdo the rest.

  When he asked them to speak in turn, their answers ranged through stories of all styles and sizes, and made Hannah feel very badly read. One girl talked about Jacobean poetry like a miniature professor.

  ‘Right,’ said Adrien, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Alright. You like a lot of different things, but I’ll try to think of a book that has something for everyone. How about . . . how about a book that was never really meant to be a book at all? Does anybody know what kind of book that might be?’

  A freckled girl raised her arm. Adrien gestured to her to speak and she licked her lips and then asked in a quiet voice strained by the pushing sea, ‘A play?’

  ‘Yes! Good God, yes! Does anyone know who William Shakespeare was?’

  They all nodded, but Hannah chewed her thumbnail and worried he was going to lose them with something too highbrow.

  ‘Stupid question, I suppose. Would anybody be so good as to tell me about him, all the same?’

  He pointed to a bespectacled boy near the back, who Hannah thought looked like a much younger Adrien.

  ‘He was, um,’ said the boy, ‘the greatest playwright, um, who ever lived. Um. He lived, um, in the Elizabethan times. He wrote Romeo and, um-um-um, Juliet and . . . and . . .’

  ‘Good, good, that’s right,’ swept in Adrien. ‘Romeo and Juliet, perhaps the greatest love story ever told. Who here would like to know more about Romeo and Juliet?’

  Several girls nodded but the boys shook their heads. ‘Alright, alright, how about another of Shakespeare’s greats? Perhaps the greatest. How about a story that’s a love story and a thriller, that’s romance and battles and treachery?’

  They all nodded, and he began to recount the events of Hamlet. Hannah was surprised by how vividly he did it, dwelling on the gory bits and the romantic bits and quoting whole passages in a dramatic voice that she had never known was in him. These rhymed snippets in particular enchanted the children, mesmerised them, and Hannah reckoned that although it might not be Shakespeare’s spell, it was a magic nevertheless, cast by schooling itself. What upheaval and trauma these children must have been through since the trees came, but here in their deckchair classroom they were able to return for a time to their most familiar of activities. More make-believe than education, a game of pupils and teacher, it helped them forget their fears for a short and precious hour.

  When the lesson ended and the children left their seats, chatting to their parents about books, Adrien turned to Hannah and could not stop hopping with enthusiasm. He had already promised the kids another lesson the next day, and at that they had cheered. ‘They bloody cheered!’ he exclaimed. ‘Did you hear that? That wasn’t a sarcastic cheer, was it? Oh bugger, was that a sarcastic cheer? Do they actually want to come back tomorrow?’

  Hannah grinned. ‘Kids like learning. It’s what kids do.’

  ‘How?’ he gasped. ‘How did you do it? I mean . . . at first I could have killed you for arranging this, but it’s precisely the security these children need. This is really something. Really something. Even if they misbehave tomorrow, I shan’t mind. It’ll just mean they feel safe to do so.’ And he threw his arms around her and hugged her tight, rocking her from side to side. Then he remembered himself, and although she was laughing he let go of her and took a step away, patting down his pockets with embarrassment.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Hannah chuckled. ‘Only borrowed some deckchairs and brought them a teacher.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Adrien, still awkward. They hugged again and, although it was a far more timid embrace, they held each other with genuine affection.

  4

  Captain

  The next day and the next, Adrien taught the beach’s children. Hannah didn’t stay for all the lessons, but sometimes looked down the beach and smiled at the deckchairs in formation, and all of their bright-eyed incumbents listening to Mr Thomas. For her own part she paid heed to the sea, and its rhythms felt like a lesson all her own. She was able to picture Zach clearer if she stared into the waves. The salt air never muddled his death with the gunman’s.

  Hiroko and Seb came and went, and sometimes returned out of the forest late at night with scratches on their skin and bits of twig and leaf caught up in their hair. Hannah smiled at this too, for it was the first time in her life that her son had brought back memories of her own youth. She felt closer to him then than she had done in years, even if she hardly ever saw or spoke to him.

  At the end of the fourth afternoon since arriving at the coast, when Seb and Hiroko were away and Hannah was sitting with Adrien on the beachfront with the late sunlight sparkling off the foam atop the waves, Adrien laughed and said to her, ‘Do you know something? Today I almost thought I had the answer.’

  ‘To the crossing?’

  He nodded. ‘But it turned out to be nothing.’

  ‘Tell me anyway,’ said Hannah.

  Adrien only stared out to sea. There was an orange fishing buoy still floating a long way offshore, although now and then it sank beneath the swell.

  ‘Tell me,’ Hannah insisted.

  ‘There’s this girl,’ he said slowly, ‘a little scampish blonde thing at the deckchair classroom, who can’t be more than seven. Nora is her name. An Irish girl, who wants to get home. And anyway . . . I was teaching Homer to the class. Sirens and sharp rocks, you know. Kids love that stuff if you put the adventure into it. We started talking about real boats, specifically all those smashed ones in the harbour. One of the boys said it was good that they were smashed, and that sailors were the bad guys because they never came to help any of us on the beaches. He said if he saw a sailor today he’d sing his boat onto the rocks just like a siren, and that would teach the sailor a lesson.’

  Hannah chuckled. ‘That’s kids.’

  ‘Yeah, well no sooner had that boy said it than little Nora leaned over from next to him and stabbed him with a pencil.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  Now it was Adrien’s turn to chuckle. ‘Only in his arm. Just a sting. But she told him in no uncertain terms that sailors aren’t the bad guys because her daddy is a sailor and he’s the best man in the world.’

  Hannah considered this news for a moment. ‘A sailor might have a better idea how to—’

  ‘Exactly! That’s what I thought. So I went to see him as soon as the class had finished. He’s building a boat.’

  ‘Building one? Are you serious?’

  A
drien smiled ruefully. ‘Yeah. He said he hoped to have it finished by midsummer.’

  Hannah frowned. ‘It’s past midsummer already . . .’

  ‘Midsummer next year.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah. And he said he had a kind of waiting list of people who want to sail with him, when it’s done.’

  Hannah mulled it over, and watched as a slew of big waves again submerged the fishing buoy. ‘It’s a start, though, Adrien. Did he say anything else?’

  ‘What else was there to say? If that’s the best an actual sailor can manage, what hope is there for the rest of us?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought he might be able to offer some advice . . .’

  Adrien only shrugged. The fishing buoy resurfaced, and Hannah could agree that its tiny dab of colour only made the sea look larger. Still, Adrien’s news was the best they had to go on since coming out of the woods, and it warranted a little further investigation.

  The sailor was not there when Hannah arrived at his camp beside the forest’s edge, but she knew the tent adjoining it was his from a long blue tarpaulin weighed down with stones. Beneath it was a shallow mound that she guessed was his boat, and despite Adrien’s forewarnings its size still disappointed her. She supposed there was still a lot of work to be done.

  A few minutes later, the sailor emerged out of the woods with his little girl Nora chattering at his side. Nora noticed Hannah first, coming to a halt and squinting up at her. Then she said something Hannah didn’t hear, and her father looked at Hannah with one eyebrow raised. He was tall, with curly hair softened from black to brown by sunlight, and a short ragged beard that followed his jawline. His jeans were rolled up and he stood barefoot on the stones of the beach, wearing a white vest that exposed the top part of a tattoo covering his back. ‘You’re here about the boat, I assume?’ he asked in a wary Irish accent.

  Hannah nodded. ‘I just wanted to introduce myself.’

  He laughed. ‘And put yourself on my waiting list, is that it?’

  ‘Something like that. I’m Hannah, by the way.’

  ‘Eoin,’ said the sailor, watching her with eyes as keen as a seabird’s. He looked a year or two her elder, too young for all of the lines branching down his cheeks, even though they suited him well, when all of a sudden he smiled. ‘Wait . . . you’re Mr Thomas’s friend!’

  ‘That’s right. Although I think he prefers Adrien.’

  ‘That’s what he told me,’ chuckled Eoin, then looked serious again. ‘Shame I couldn’t do more for him. I appreciate what he’s doing for Nora, and for the rest of the kids here. But he really wanted to get to Ireland.’

  ‘Ireland is where his wife is.’

  ‘And what about you? You’re his . . .’

  ‘Just his friend.’

  ‘Ah.’ Eoin whistled to Nora, and gestured towards the sea. ‘You can run and play now,’ he said to the girl. ‘Daddy’s going to do some talking.’

  Nora rolled her eyes and sped away over the pebbles, charging into the shallows with a whoop. Eoin watched her for a moment with unconcealed admiration, then turned back to Hannah. ‘So . . . you have family in Ireland, too?’

  ‘All I want is to keep moving. That’s enough for me for now.’

  Eoin nodded carefully. ‘You’ve something you want to get away from.’

  ‘No,’ Hannah said quickly.

  For a moment he seemed to study her, then he strode forward and pulled the tarpaulin aside. ‘Here she is! My boat, or what will become her, one of these days.’

  The revealed boat was even more disappointing than Hannah had imagined it would be. Nothing much more than a rowing bench, and the rail that would fit around the top of the hull.

  ‘I took this bit of gunwale from the harbour,’ Eoin said, gesturing to the rail. ‘Everything is cracked and damaged, so this was a lucky find. It’s been a lot of work, tidying things up and getting the rowing bench comfy.’

  Hannah stared at the sparse arrangement of wood before her, and understood why Adrien had been made so dejected by the sight of it. ‘I suppose I just hoped . . .’ she began.

  ‘There was more of it?’ laughed Eoin. ‘There was a way to do it faster? That’s what everybody says. But do you know very much about boat-building?’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t even know a thing about the sea. I admit I was never very interested in it until we came here, out of the woods. Even when I was a girl the sea always seemed so harsh. So . . . inhospitable.’

  ‘And here? I bet you’re sick of trees now, right?’

  Not just the trees, she thought, but it was better not to elaborate. She dreaded to think how Eoin would react if she told him that she’d learned to love the sea’s great emptiness because somewhere in the endless tangles of the forest behind them lay the body of a man she had shot in the head.

  ‘The sea’s inhospitality has grown on me,’ she said, ‘let’s put it that way. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not.’

  Again Eoin raised an eyebrow. ‘You sound like a proper old salt. And you’re right, you know. The sea can be a mean old bitch, but she makes no bones about it. A shark is a shark, my old captain used to say.’

  ‘A shark is a shark. I like that.’

  ‘Most of the things my old captain said were about rugby and liquor, but he got that one right.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘It’s not the same in the woods. Even something like a wolf, it . . . it disguises what it really is. Makes you think it’s beautiful. Even the trees starve each other of the light. I’ve always called myself a person who loves nature, but I suppose what I’ve thought of as nature has always been trees, mammals, flowers . . . so much life you can distract yourself from the death.’

  Eoin was watching her with a curious expression, but Hannah was in full flow now and her fists were clenched. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the sea might be the truer face of nature. It’s where everything came from, after all. The sea never hides what it can do to you, how deep it goes or how far. And every shell on the beach is a reminder . . . is like a bit of bone from something the sea has already killed. The sea is more honest than the woods.’

  Eoin laughed. Hannah blushed and looked away at the water, which hissed and withdrew foaming, then cupped a wave out of itself and lapsed it onto the sand.

  ‘What a speech,’ Hannah said. ‘That’s what you’re thinking. You’re laughing at me.’

  ‘No.’ Eoin held up his hands. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. I was thinking Amen. It sounds to me like you know the sea very well.’

  He began to walk away from her, down the slope of the beach towards the water’s edge. She followed him, and the pebbles gave way to a spread of dark sand. There Eoin slipped off his shoes and padded into the shallows.

  ‘Everything you just said is true,’ he said, watching the waves coming in, ‘and when you know people who have drowned, or not come back to port after a storm, you feel it all the more cruelly. It took me a long time to learn to actually love the sea. Back when I was a boy, becoming a sailor seemed to me the only way out of the village where I grew up. But I was very seasick to begin with. I’m glad, now. My first captain would only apprentice those who had no sea legs. He said that all there was to learn about life could be learned by hanging your head overboard and throwing up into ocean water.’

  Hannah crouched down and took off her shoes and socks. Then she stepped into the shallows alongside Eoin. ‘Was this the same captain who said the thing about the shark?’

  ‘No,’ grinned Eoin. ‘A different one. We’re all gasbags, us sailors.’

  ‘So did you?’ she asked, already feeling comfortable enough in Eoin’s company to do so teasingly. ‘When you hung your head overboard, did you learn all there was to know about life?’

  He laughed. ‘Sailors are also prone to exaggeration. But I learned one or two things.’

  The water was cold and restless at Hannah’s ankles. That didn’t seem to put off Nora, who was kicking it up into white explosions nea
rby.

  ‘Why do you really want to cross this water, Hannah?’

  ‘I told you. I just want to keep moving.’

  ‘Because you’ve got a secret.’

  She stared resolutely at the horizon. ‘I never said that.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve seen something. A lot of people have. Something horrible that you can’t bear to talk about.’

  She thought of the gunman pressed awkwardly against the wall. The way, when the bullet had entered, his body had jerked as if at the end of a leash.

  ‘Or you’ve seen something stranger. People say that the paths have tricked them, or even that there are little figures walking in the woods.’

  Hannah thought about the two bull kirins, battling on the slopes above Zach’s lodge. They reminded her of what had followed, and she didn’t much want to talk about those either. ‘Adrien’s your man for little figures,’ she said, trying to deflect Eoin’s interest. ‘He’s seen some of them. Whisperers, he calls them, but . . .’ She stopped herself. ‘Actually, he might be embarrassed that I’ve told you.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Eoin. ‘I believe him.’

  ‘Have you seen them, too?’

  ‘Hang on a minute . . . Nora, everything alright?’

  Nora had stopped splashing and was standing within earshot, listening to their talk.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ she said at once, and immediately scampered away, bending to collect shells from out of the sand.

  Eoin lowered his voice. ‘I try not to spook her with this kind of talk, but I’ve seen other things, in my time.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘It was years ago, now. Sailors have been seeing strange sights ever since they first put out to sea. People have thrown themselves overboard and drowned for weird sights, swimming in the water. Deserts are the same. You know, making mirages and dust devils when people are surrounded by sand. And I once met a pilot who saw a flock of yellow lights in the sky. People called him crazy, said he was daydreaming about UFOs, but you could see the fear and the certainty in his eyes. He didn’t want that to have happened to him. So why shouldn’t there be strange sights in the forest? It’s when we stay indoors that we stop believing in things.’