by Ali Shaw
Hannah remembered the look on Adrien’s face, in the moments after the campfire had put itself out. His eyes had looked just like Eoin had described the pilot’s. ‘I don’t think,’ she said, ‘that Adrien would call what he’s seen a mirage.’
‘Oh no. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling anything a trick of the light. Like I said, I’ve seen things too.’ He nodded towards the beach, where Nora had gathered a handful of shells. ‘I saw her mother once, swimming in the distance. Afterwards, I told myself it was just a dolphin, or driftwood reflecting the sun, but I didn’t believe it. She was so real, when I saw her, that if it weren’t for Nora I’d have jumped in and drowned myself just for the chance to catch up with her.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Eoin. Nora’s mother . . . did she . . . die at sea?’
Eoin bit his lip. ‘Ah-ah,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘In a hospital, where she’d been a long time. Cancer, you know? Some years ago.’
‘Oh. That’s awful. It’s what happened to my dad, but I can’t imagine . . .’
Eoin sighed. ‘You can imagine some of it, then. And I’m sorry to hear about your dad.’ He smiled at her as he pointed back to the pieces of his boat. ‘We’re going to sail that thing to her family’s old house, on the south coast, past Dungarvan. And who knows, Nora’s granny and granda might still be there to help her grow up. That girl needs more than just her daddy around. She needs better role models, for one thing! But that’s why I felt bad for your friend Adrien when I let him down about the boat. I’m grateful to him for taking Nora’s mind off the woods. And, you know, it would be nice to help him find his wife. People should be together, while they still can.’
‘Yes,’ said Hannah, folding her arms and thinking at once about Zach. ‘They should be, if they can.’
‘And what about you? Your family? Your boy is here with you, right? But what about his . . .’
‘I don’t care where his father is. Callum left us and we let ourselves forget him.’
They looked at each other for a moment.
‘It’s hard being the only parent,’ Eoin said.
‘Yeah. It is.’ It was an obvious statement to make, but she was grateful to him all the same, since it came from honest experience, not supposition. At once she looked down at the surf, feeling guilty for finding Eoin attractive. There are no good men and there are no bad, the gunman had said, and she had pulled the trigger and his life had stopped there at her feet.
‘Well, Hannah,’ said Eoin. ‘If you’re not going to tell me your secret, I’m not going to tell you mine.’
‘I . . . don’t have one.’
Eoin laughed, a jovial challenge to come clean, but he had underestimated her secret and his smile was too pleasant to extinguish with the truth of it. ‘If I told you,’ she began, ‘you wouldn’t want to carry on this conversation.’
Still he was smiling. ‘Is that a clue? Then maybe I’ll give you one in return.’ He leaned forward a little, and his bearded face came close to her ear, and she could smell the sea and old sweat on him. ‘If a shipwright,’ he whispered, ‘ever found himself boat-building in a place without boats, and if half of the people living round him all wanted a way to get across the ocean, might he not be wise to make his boat look a lot less finished than it really was?’
‘What are you saying?’ Hannah whispered back, searching his expression for confirmation. ‘You’ve just shown me your boat. It really isn’t finished.’
Eoin stood up straight and stepped away from her. ‘That’s all the clues that you’re getting for now. Come back and see me again soon, Hannah. You’re the first person I’ve met since I washed up here who talks about the sea like she knows what’s in it.’
5
Heart of the Forest
‘Hey! Mr Thomas!’
Adrien had just finished another day of teaching and was heading back towards the tent, when Nora skipped alongside him and tugged at his sleeve.
‘What is it?’ he asked, stifling a yawn. He hadn’t slept well during the night, having dreamed of giant, chairlike trees with beckoning branches. He wasn’t sure he had enough energy to keep up with Nora right now.
‘I’ve got a secret,’ she declared.
‘Good. Better not tell me, then. You have to keep secrets. That’s the whole point of having them.’
Nora folded her arms and her skip turned into a strut. ‘That’s really boring. Especially when this secret is about you.’
‘Me?’
‘To do with you.’
‘Is that so?’
He had heard this kind of thing before, and considered it a good sign now. Playgrounds were rumour mills and children believed all kinds of stories. In his time he had been an ex-spy, a bomb-maker on the run from the cops and, perhaps most disconcerting, a former cardinal. If the kids from the deckchair classroom were making up tall tales, it only served to show how comfortable they were becoming in their makeshift school.
‘So?’ demanded Nora.
‘So what?’
‘Don’t you want to know my secret?’
‘Like I said, if you tell me it won’t be a secret any more.’
She folded her arms. ‘There’s a mad lady living on the beach.’
Adrien frowned. He wasn’t sure what that had to do with him. ‘It’s not nice to call people mad, Nora.’
‘But that’s what she is. All the kids say so.’
‘Kids say a lot of things, believe me.’
Nora looked suddenly infuriated. She kicked at a shell, and it scudded away over the pebbles. ‘This mad lady has seen the same little people you have.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Adrien, suddenly all ears. ‘Hang on . . . what exactly are you talking about?’
‘The ones made out of sticks.’
‘How . . . how on earth do you know about them?’
‘I overheard Hannah telling it to my daddy.’ Nora blushed, but the blush left her as quick as it came. ‘Well? Will you let me take you to her, or won’t you?’
Nora’s mad lady lived in a camper van, at the farthest reach of the bay. It was parked facing the sea, beside the high-tide line where the shingle dropped steep as a kerb. If it drove just a few more yards it would be carried away when the waves came in. The afternoon was dull, and the beach brought only beige to the grey sea and sky. Even the paint on the camper van’s chassis, which must once have been olive or tan, had long since faded out of colour. Its curtains were drawn shut behind closed windows, but beside it stood a young woman with a hoe, the blade of which clattered and jumped when she tugged it through the shingle.
‘Is that her?’ whispered Adrien, giving Nora a nudge.
‘Don’t think so. Everybody says she’s much older.’
‘Hello!’ called Adrien as they approached. ‘Good afternoon!’
The young woman was tall and thin, with dark hair as straight as the tool she was using. She propped the hoe vertically and leaned her weight against it. She looked bone-tired, and watched them with suspicious eyes.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Adrien again, unsure of how else to begin. ‘Um . . . everything alright here?’
The woman shrugged. ‘What does it look like? Things have been better.’
‘Why are you hoeing the beach?’
She tapped the tool against the stones. ‘On a hiding to nothing. I’m trying to clear every last bit of seaweed from this patch. I know it sounds crazy but, since her accident, Mum won’t set foot outside if she sees any.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Nora confidently. ‘Because of your crazy mum.’
The woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Is that so?’
Nora nodded readily. ‘Mr Thomas can help her. And so we’ve come.’
The woman looked from Nora to Adrien. ‘And what are you, Mr Thomas? A doctor? A psychologist?’
‘He’s a teacher,’ said Nora, as if that made him an authority on everything.
Adrien gave as open a smile as he could muster. ‘Just call me Adri
en,’ he said.
The woman looked ready to tell him to leave, then stopped herself. ‘Oh . . . actually, I think I’ve heard about you. That’s a good thing you’re doing for those kids.’ She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, tapping her fingers along the handle of the hoe. ‘I’m Clara. And my crazy mum is better known as Gweneth.’
Adrien smiled. ‘Nora’s just trying to help. She’s a good kid.’
‘And why on earth would you think you can help my mum?’
Adrien had no idea, and if Nora had not told him what she had about the whisperers he would already have apologised and made an exit. Instead he said, ‘I don’t know what good I can be, but I heard that your mum has . . . seen things in the woods.’
‘She has. God knows what, though. It’s all but destroying her.’
‘It . . . must be awful. I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve no idea.’
Adrien stood up straighter. ‘I think I’ve seen something too.’
Clara didn’t look impressed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, which she jangled from its chain. ‘I’ve locked her in. I’ve locked all the windows as well. Mum hardly moves a muscle these days, she only sits there reading her magazines, but . . . twice now she’s made a dash for it. No doubt you’ve heard the stories.’
Adrien shook his head. ‘I’m still quite new here.’
‘Well . . . you wouldn’t think it, from the way Mum is in there, but she’s quick when she wants to be. Both times she burst out of the door and started swimming for the horizon. Didn’t even kick off her shoes or anything. She was never much of a swimmer, and I only just managed to catch her before she went under. Both times she turned blank on me as soon as we were back ashore. She wouldn’t even dry herself down. So, you see, I can’t afford to let her out of my sight. I have to lock her in if I go anywhere.’
‘How long has this been going on for?’ asked Adrien.
‘Three weeks, or something like that. We didn’t live far from here, before the trees came, so we were some of the first to come out of the woods. It hit Mum hard, losing everything, but I found this van whose owners . . . weren’t going to need it any more, and I thought things might slowly look up for us. We were parked over by the treeline when Mum had her accident. I mean, I call it an accident because that’s what it feels like. It feels like something went horribly wrong that day.’
‘And what . . . what happened?’
Clara shrugged. ‘She saw something. She said she’d been seeing things in the woods since the trees came, but I put it down to shock and exhaustion. Like I say, Mum had always been . . . easily overcome by things. Even when I was a girl, she used to have really bad days, and nothing we could do could lift her out of them.’
‘What did she see?’
Clara didn’t look inclined to say. ‘How exactly are you offering to help my mother, again?’
‘He’s seen them too,’ announced Nora. ‘The little people made of sticks.’
Clara seemed caught between suspicion and surprise. Adrien cleared his throat, itched his collar and tried to squash away his embarrassment. ‘And a tree,’ he said. ‘A very big tree that vanishes just as quickly as the other ones came.’
‘If you’ve really seen that,’ said Clara, after mulling it over for a moment, ‘then you’ve survived it better than my mum.’
‘Do you mind if I talk to her?’
She sighed. ‘What harm can it do? Just don’t expect to get anything sensible out of her in return.’
After she had leaned the hoe against the side of the camper van, Clara unlocked the door and stepped inside. Adrien and Nora followed, into a stuffy interior that smelled of recently dried paint. All of the fittings had been redecorated in a sickly magnolia, but the coat was uneven and dribbles and splatters had dried to the linoleum floor.
‘I had to paint everything after Mum’s accident,’ explained Clara, tapping a cupboard. ‘The vinyl on the furniture had a woodgrain effect. She went berserk to see it.’
Adrien tried not to look uneasy, but he wished that Clara had not closed the door behind them. The camper van felt even smaller than it really was, thanks largely to piles of clothes, bedding and salvage stacked in whatever spaces Clara had been able to find. Only the table at the far end remained bare, and at this Gweneth was sitting.
Whereas her daughter was tall and long-haired, Gweneth was a diminutive woman with hair cropped very short. Her lips were drawn and her eyelids as grey and pronounced as puffballs: she looked as if she had neither left that table nor breathed fresh air since the trees came. Likewise she had not looked up at Adrien and Nora since they’d entered, and had barely stirred except to turn the pages of a glossy magazine that lay opened before her. It was a de luxe catalogue of housekeeping and gardening ideas, its corners dog-eared from too much reading.
‘That’s all she does now,’ muttered Clara. ‘Just sits there reading.’
Nora remained by the door but, after a nod of assent from Clara, Adrien took a seat at the table. He cleared his throat but Gweneth paid him no heed, only carried on leafing through her magazine.
‘Um . . . hello, Gweneth. My name is Adrien Thomas. Your daughter tells me that you’ve seen things.’
The woman turned a page and smoothed it flat. Then she traced her fingernails lightly over the photograph. The image showed a bathroom with a free-standing bath and brass taps, and an indoor tree potted in one corner. ‘Water,’ said Gweneth, running her finger up the tree’s trunk. Then she turned to the next page and smoothed it out just as she had the one before.
‘I’ve come here to talk to you,’ said Adrien, ‘about what you saw.’
Gweneth tapped the magazine. The new page showed an immaculate lawn, with a Grecian fountain flowing into a pond.
‘Moles,’ she said. ‘Worms.’
Adrien glanced to Nora, who was shifting her weight from foot to foot, clearly having second thoughts about coming here. ‘Is this what you meant?’ he asked Clara. ‘Is this the kind of thing she always says?’
‘More or less. Apart from on her swimming trips. Then she screams all sorts of craziness.’
‘Roots,’ whispered Gweneth, and turned the page.
Adrien laid his hands flat on the table. ‘I’ve seen them, too.’ He leaned forward. ‘Little figures, walking about or crawling on all fours. I call them whisperers.’
Gweneth pursed her lips and gave a dead whistle.
‘Yes,’ said Adrien. ‘Yes, that’s exactly the noise they make. And . . . and I’ve seen a tree. Their tree, I think.’
Still she didn’t look at him, only turned to the next page of her magazine. It revealed a shampoo advertisement, which Gweneth’s fingers traced as if searching for something. They made their way along the tanned jawline of the model, then down her long neck and throat. ‘Nothing,’ she muttered, and reached to turn the page.
‘How many have you seen?’ asked Adrien. ‘How many whisperers?’
Gweneth’s hand paused with the paper half-lifted. Her cheeks twitched. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. ‘Hundreds,’ she said.
Adrien looked back to the others. Nora had hold of the door handle now, while Clara had folded her arms and pulled back a curtain to glower out at the grey pouring waves.
‘Hundreds,’ repeated Adrien carefully. ‘I . . . I certainly haven’t seen that many.’
‘You have,’ said Gweneth, and smoothed out her page. ‘If you’ve seen their tree.’
Adrien licked his lips. ‘You . . . you mean a big tree, one with branches like this?’ He spread out his arms to indicate a pair of massive boughs, and at that moment a gust of wind rang off the wall of the camper van, then passed beneath it humming. For a second Adrien felt as if he were at last in a boat, but a tin one in danger of capsizing.
‘Look.’ Gweneth tapped one finger against the photo on her newest page. It showed a chair, standing in the drawing room of some luxuriant palace or country estate. Tapestries adorned the walls and chandeliers hung from
the ceiling. Everything was gilded and fine, especially the chair itself. Its legs and arms were finely carved to look like animal paws, and its padded backrest was embroidered with a creamy pattern of thorns and ivy.
‘Yes,’ gulped Adrien. ‘I thought it looked a bit like a chair, too.’
Gweneth stroked the seat’s golden arms. ‘Not a chair,’ she said.
‘Not a chair?’ frowned Adrien, peering closer. There was no doubt the photo showed a chair.
‘A throne.’
At once Adrien felt uneasy. It was a loose wet feeling that slipped into his belly, as if he had swallowed a ball of cold algae. But she was right. That was a far better word for a tree as big as the one he had seen. No mere chair was that immense, that sprawling.
‘It’s where it sits,’ said Gweneth.
‘What . . . it’s where what sits? I didn’t see anything sitting.’
Adrien pictured the tree, the throne tree as she would have it, and found that his unease had kept the memory fresh. He had seen whisperers crawling on it, for sure, but nothing he would describe as seated. Unless . . .
He remembered the branch that had reached out and stretched like the leg of a spider.
‘Don’t go near,’ said Gweneth.
Adrien checked on Nora, who was chewing on a strand of her hair. He tried to keep his voice calm for her sake. ‘And if I did,’ he asked, ‘what would I see?’
For the first time, Adrien felt as if Gweneth was actually addressing him. ‘A test,’ she said, looking him in the eye.
‘That . . . doesn’t sound so bad.’
She raised a hand to her temple, and its fingers were trembling. ‘Don’t look,’ she said, and her eyes glazed and became distant again. ‘Don’t go near! It has a mouth. A hollow. Don’t look in! A worm. A mole. A hawk. A chick. All the mouths. Mouth after mouth.’ She pressed her hand across her eyes, but it jittered out of place. ‘I don’t want to see any more! I . . . I give up, don’t you hear? I give up I give up I give up. Just let me go, and don’t show me any more . . .’
Adrien leaned back, unnerved, then shuffled out from the table and stood up. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said to Clara. ‘I thought I might be able to help. I didn’t mean to make her do this . . .’