The Withern Rise Aldous had known in the 1930s and ’40s had been a complete world to him and his sisters and brother. There was the village and the town, but very little beyond as far as they were aware or cared. Even the war hadn’t really encroached. News bulletins about the conflict came out of a box which was switched off when the listeners had heard enough. Almost everything that mattered was just a few steps away, easily within reach – or it came to them. The village barber and a hairdresser from Stone would visit regularly to attend to everyone’s hair. There were deliveries by the baker, the grocer, the butcher, the fishmonger, but most other fare came from the garden itself. The first Mr. Knight grew their potatoes, carrots, cabbages, marrows, parsnips, lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes and radishes (Aldous had never liked radishes); and there were apples and pears, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, while a plum tree wound itself around the garage walls. In addition, they had trees that bore walnuts, hazelnuts, sweet chestnuts, and the crunchy little cobnuts that he loved most of all – and eggs were gathered from the
chicken run. Father and Grandpa used to hunt rabbits on the Coneygeare too (much wilder then, much more expansive, not bordered by houses and flats with a pub on the corner). Aldous would go with them sometimes, excited by the bark of the shotguns; such big guns for such small quarry. And then there was that beautiful white goat of theirs. Flo, they called her, because she produced such quantities of milk.
His childhood at Withern Rise so filled Aldous’s mind these days that he was sometimes hard pressed to separate past from present. He would be strolling around the garden, stop suddenly and close his eyes, smell flowers that were no longer there, hear the squeals of Mimi and Ray scampering nearby, or their laughter as they pushed one another on the swing that hung from the old apple tree. Then – as this morning – the creak of the wheelbarrow, iron wheels on gravel. Opening his eyes, he expected, for a happy second, to find everything as it used to be, as it should be, with him allowed to act like a kid again, run about, climb trees, be as silly and loud as he liked, Maman at an upstairs window, Father chatting to Mr. Knight, the future still waiting its turn.
But no. It was gone. All of it.
The wheelbarrow that crunched by on the path, though the same wheelbarrow, was pushed by today’s Mr. Knight who, uncharacteristically, merely grunted in passing. No Mimi and Ray, no swing, no apple tree, no more childhood.
Aldous blinked hard, then dragged disconsolate feet away, as if from the past, across the bland south garden to the strip of wilderness that ran from the river to the main gate – all that remained of the array of trees and bushes that had once covered this portion of the grounds. Virtually untouched since the Underwood name was returned to the deeds in the early nineteen-sixties, this ribbon of chaos, this untamed link with Withern’s history, was rarely entered, though it would never have occurred to anyone to tidy or clear it, it being all there was of the old south garden. Aldous had loved the south garden as it was back then. So had the others. Riding their trikes and scooters through it, hiding in it, having little picnics together in secret bowers, small worlds away from grown-up regimes and bedtime.
When he heard Naia’s voice raised in a shout, Aldous turned to see her breaking out of the bushes that lined the drive. Mr. Knight, way down in the kitchen garden now, must also have heard her, for he looked up from his work, which currently seemed to be pummeling the earth with the heaviest spade he could find.
‘What’s up?’ Aldous called.
‘There was a man in the drive!’
They started toward one another.
‘What did he want?’
‘He didn’t stop to say. I only wanted to speak to him.’ They met in the middle of the lawn. ‘I’ve seen him before,’ Naia said. ‘Watching the house, taking pictures. And looking through these.’
There was an old pair of binoculars in her hand. Small brass ones.
‘You took them off him?’
‘No, he dropped them as he skedaddled.’
‘I had a pair like that,’ Aldous said.
‘Did you? Well, I suppose they were quite common a few years back. Now I think of it, I’ve seen some myself, somewhere…’
It came to her even as she said it. It was back in February, her first time in this reality, when it was still Alaric’s. There was no one at home and she’d taken the opportunity to look around, found them in the double wardrobe in the master bedroom. She hadn’t seen them since, or given them a thought.
‘May I see?’ Aldous said.
She handed them over. ‘Look.’ He indicated the letters ‘LU’ engraved between the eye-pieces.
‘Maker’s initials?’ Naia said.
‘My Aunt Larissa’s.’
‘Your aunt’s?’
‘These are the glasses she gave me on my eleventh birthday.’
Naia stared, at the binoculars, at him, back at the binoculars. Then she whirled about and raced to the Family Tree. She felt in the message hole and found an envelope which, as before, had her name on it. She did not go back to Aldous, but round the side of the house, to the landing stage, where she sat to read the directions to the reality of Aldous U.
17: 43
Early that morning, before anyone else was up, Gus had gone to the house in the clearing and hung the cat’s remains on the door. He’d left the stripped legs on, and the tail, the charred head with its blank button eyes, and waited in the bushes for the man to come out.
‘He burst into tears!’ he crowed, telling of this. ‘God, it was a scream.’
‘Sounds it,’ Ric muttered.
The ridiculously wide grin switched off. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Something to say, say it, jerkoff.’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘Yeah, well I have,’ said Scarry.
Gus switched the grin back on. ‘What’s that then, Cap?’
Almost from the first he’d called Scarry ‘Cap’, sometimes ‘Captain’, his way of acknowledging his status.
‘You’re getting above yourself,’ Scary said. ‘Shoulda run it by me first.’
‘The cat?’ Gus said. ‘Hanging it up?’
‘Yeah. Hanging it up.’
‘I thought you liked the idea.’
‘Not the point. You check with me before you do stuff. It’s a rule.’
Gus stared at him expressionlessly for a moment, then said, slowly: ‘Yes. Right. Sorry if I was out of order, Cap.’
‘’Kay. Long as that’s straight.’
As Scarry turned away, Gus’s eyes, dark and cold, flicked around the group. They’d seen him put in his place and he didn’t like it. Even Ric found it hard not to shiver at that look.
18: 39/43
Following the first of the typed instructions, Naia went to the willow in the north garden. There she found, in a ragged loop of ivy that twirled the old trunk, the small pouch she’d been told to look for. She was convinced that the man who’d run from her in the drive was Aldous U. Too much of a coincidence that she’d seen him three times now – the first two times in June – so close to the Family Tree, where the envelopes were deposited.
The pouch was nothing special, a piece of ordinary green cloth closed by thin brown cord. The number 43 was embroidered into the material. Without bothering to inspect its contents, she shoved the pouch in a hip pocket of her jeans and went round the trunk to follow the next instruction, which she’d already made up her mind not to follow unconditionally. The note – just a few lines this time – had told her to take a single step forward from there at two pm, not just after eleven in the morning. There were two reasons why she chose not to wait. The first was that she was impatient to see what would happen; the second, that she didn’t like being given orders by someone who lacked the grace to speak to her face to face.
She experienced a fleeting rush of disorientation when she took the step. Believing herself prepared for anything, what she did not expect when her foot came down was to
find herself in a gloomy, eerily quiet forest whose odor reminded her of the mulch pit in a generally-avoided corner of the garden.
She’d barely gotten over the shock when she began wondering what to do next. Deciding that she couldn’t hang around here till two when Aldous U had said he’d be here to introduce himself, it occurred to her that she knew nothing about him other than what she’d seen as he scuttled away from her: a tall, jumpy, red-haired man unlike any Underwood she knew of. How did she know he hadn’t lured her here for purposes he’d been fantasizing about since he first started watching her, whenever that was? She considered stepping back across the point at which she’d come into this place, but hesitated. There’d been nothing in any of his missives to suggest that he was a stalker with dark intentions; and besides, this was such a different reality: could she turn her back on it without even taking a look around?
Knowing the answer to this even as she posed the question, she uttered a tentative ‘Hello…?’ The lack of any kind of response in such profound silence was unsettling. Determined not to be cowed by nothing at all, she looked about her more critically. Winter was still some way off, but all the trees and bushes, every clump and cluster of leaves, appeared far less healthy than they should. So dull, so downcast, so… weary.
She shook herself. Get going. Explore. But which way? There being no signposts she could take her pick and be wrong whichever way she went; but she chose a direction at last and set off. With the bushes between the trees so thick and unruly, the trees themselves so abundant and tightly-grouped, she had to push and sidle and bully her way along. Hoping constantly to see a break ahead, she was frustrated when each shove and plunge revealed only more of the same. She continued in this way for some time until, without being in any way prepared for it, she burst out of the forest and crashed into a waist-high drystone wall. Pausing – because she had to – she saw that beyond the wall was a sizeable clearing, in the center of which stood the strangest, most improbable house she’d ever seen.
The walls of the house were composed of lumps of blue-gray rock, some no bigger than a rugby ball, many the size of a large sack of coal, all jammed together with little if any attempt at uniformity. The roof was a sagging tent of irregular slates tufted with yellow moss, the chimney a careless accretion of stones that ran a perpendicular course from the ground to the roof at one end of the building. Red ivy clambered and delved wherever it pleased across these grossly uneven surfaces, and here and there small weeds sprouted between stones. An old rain barrel, bound by rusty iron bands, stood in a yard bulging with wayward grasses and frail-looking flowers. Half-a-dozen pots contained rather healthier plants, however, one of which, a magnificent turquoise bloom, was so luminous as to seem quite out of place here.
Some way along, there was a crude wooden gate in the wall. Having no doubt that she’d found the home of Aldous U, Naia went to this and lifted the latch. A couple of hens, pecking half-heartedly, scattered as she shoved the gate back. She closed it quietly behind her, not liking to disturb the stillness that carried over from the forest, and started along a dirt path toward a faded blue door overhung with a listless, gray-petalled rambling rose. O
ld tales filled her mind as she proceeded, of wolves in granny caps and shawls waiting for visitors, the porridge and chairs and beds of bears, witches luring children into hovels and ovens. Steady, Nai, she said to herself, you’re losing it.
Drawing near, she saw a large padlock on the door; the kind you see on a garden shed. She wondered why a padlock. Didn’t they have standard door locks here? But a padlock meant that there was no one at home, so there was no point in knocking. She went to the window to the right of the door, which she discovered was made not of glass but of thick transparent acrylic. She thought it must be the quality or age of this material that gave it its yellow cast, but then realized that the yellowness issued from the sky, tainting everything, like a great stain.
Making a cave of her hands, she peered through the window, but it was too dark in there to make much out. Stepping away, her gaze found a small wooden plaque on the other side of the door, half-concealed by the trailing end of the sickly rambling rose. She went to the plaque, uncovered it, and saw the words carved into it. This eccentric, thrown-together excuse for a house was called Withern Rise.
19: 47
Alaric’s curiosity about the willow in the north garden was tempered with anxiety. Unless yesterday was a fluke, the tree could be the route to more than one reality. On the other hand it might lead only to the reality with the Alsatian. The mauled toad might have got off lightly compared to him if those eager jaws were given a second snap at him.
Undecided whether to take a chance or take no chance at all, he had once again gone to the landing stage. He often ended up there when bothered by something or needing to think, even though it was the only part or side of the property that was completely open to public scrutiny. A line of ducks scattered as a small cruiser chugged by, a shirtsleeved man in a cap at the wheel, wife and young daughter lounging in the stern. The woman smiled at Alaric. The child waved. The boat moved on, the tidal ribbons of its wake running for the reeds that crowded the banks.
What to do? Chance it or not?
20: 43
After peering into every window of the house and still making out very little inside, Naia completed her circuit and returned to the gate. Two o’clock was almost three hours away. She couldn’t just stand here till then, waiting for Aldous U to turn up. She entered the forest at the point at which she’d emerged, and set off, attempting to retrace her steps through the undergrowth, straining to pick out indications that she’d passed that way. Such was her concentration that she was unaware of the slight movement of leaves about her as she went, and quite unprepared for the eventual ‘’Ello, darling’ that preceded a rush and flurry and a pair of wiry arms locking about her. Only when she lay upon the ground between trampled bushes did fear kick in. Figures blurred about her in the drear light.
‘Who is she?’
‘I thought we was the only ones.’
‘Tasty, eh, Cap? Do with summa this, couldn’t you?’
‘Feckin’ right I could.’
‘Better tie her down.’
‘Do what?’
‘We don’t want her running off, do we?’
‘No. Right. Ric, tie her hands.’
Behind her, an uncertain voice she was too diverted to recognize: ‘Hey, I don’t know about this...’
‘Yeah, well you wouldn’t, would you? Just do it. Right, Cap?’
‘Yeah. Do it.’
‘There’s nothing to tie her with.’
‘So hold her, hold her!’
The one behind her sat her up and gripped her wrists with both hands, while the two who’d done most of the talking squatted in front of her. One was a heavy-set youth, eighteen, nineteen, not very bright-looking; the other, possibly younger but more confident, very rangy, grinned at her like he’d had his mouth surgically stretched. Three other boys, still children really, stood watching, glancing nervously at one another. The only one she’d not yet seen was the one who held her wrists behind her. In all this she’d made little sound, but she made up for it now, with an angry torrent of indignation as she lashed out with her feet, one of which struck a knee. The youth with the wide grin toppled backwards. The heavier one gave a half-laugh, shifted out of reach, and asked her where she’d come from.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Jus’ showin’ an interest.’
‘Let me go!’
She squirmed furiously, but failed to pull her hands free. The one she’d kicked got up and stooped over her. Leaning, he looked even thinner. Narrow chest and shoulders in a torn black T-shirt, greasy fair hair flopping around his narrow bum-fluff jaw, hooding the small eyes that gazed at her with the amusement of one who knows he has the upper hand, and intends to use it.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded, as steadily as she could.
His laugh sent shivers through
her. ‘One guess.’ She made to kick him again, but he grabbed her ankle, pushed it down hard. She squealed.
‘Don’t break it,’ the heavier boy said. ‘Better in one piece.’
The pressure eased. ‘Are you on your own?’
She scowled. ‘On my own, here? What do you take me for?’
‘Who else then? Other girls?’
‘Men. My brothers. All I have to do is shout.’
‘How many?’
‘Brothers? Four.’
‘Four brothers, all here? What are their names?’
‘Their names?’
‘They do have names, don’t they?’
‘Well naturally they do!’
‘So…?’
Four names trotted off one after the other might have made all the difference, but for once Naia’s imagination deserted her. Of the hundreds of male names she’d heard in her life, of the dozens she was very familiar with, not one came to her in this moment of duress. Gus O’Brien’s unnaturally wide grin returned.
‘Just as I thought.’
He kicked her legs apart and dropped between them; reached for the buckle of her belt. Naia twisted onto one hip, but he forced her back, pressed her down, grabbed the buckle.
The Realities of Aldous U Page 35