Shortcuts

by Grant Stone

  They were an unimpressive collection, a handful of rough trees no more than fifty feet wide. They sat nearly exactly in the middle of the farm, the last remnant of a wilder time, before roads, before farms. The trees had been shaped by decades of wind, bent over as if they were trying, and failing, to support a great weight. Though the stand was thin and Rachel could see the paddock continued to either side, the trees were close enough together that she could not see anything but darkness between their trunks.

  ‘And this,’ Katherine said, tapping the side of the building, ‘is my studio.’

  It was tiny and looked like it belonged on a building site. There was nothing about its plain white walls to indicate that this was where Katherine St. John had recorded her first album in nearly thirty years.

  Katherine shook off her boots and climbed the steps to the front door and Rachel followed.

  The room was dark, apart from the red and green lights of the moderately sized mixing desk that sat in front of a glass partition halfway across the room. On the other side of the glass a mic stand was set up. Several synths were arrayed in a semicircle and an old Rickenbacker guitar leaned up against the wall. There was a large window on the far wall, but a blind was pulled down over it, so the only light was a dim glow around the edges.

  Rachel had never bothered too much with the technical details of how albums were made. But she had been in enough recording studios over the years to recognise that this was very well organised. The console was new and had to be worth at least eighty thousand pounds. An expensive iMac was mounted in the corner.

  ‘It took a lot longer to set up than I'd hoped. Then I had to learn how to drive the whole thing. But it was important to me that I do it all myself.’

  ‘So there was nobody else here when you were recording?’ Rachel couldn't see how that was possible. Surely Katherine would need at least one engineer, even for a console as small as this. Someone would need to run the board while she was in the other room.

  ‘Nobody else. Just me and my muse. Otherwise I might have finished sooner.’ She shook her head. ‘No. Wouldn't have worked. My muse likes to be alone with me. He gets jealous if there are too many people about.’

  Rachel looked at the Rickenbacker leaning up against the wall. One of the defining characteristics of St. John's debut album was how spare it had been – mainly just her voice and piano. The later albums had a larger sound, but that had all been studio musicians. Had she taught herself to play the guitar in addition to learning how to drive the desk and all the software?

  ‘So,’ Katherine St. John said, ‘do you want to hear it?’

  KATHERINE BROUGHT UP the first track on the monitors.

  There was the sound of muffled footsteps so clear Rachel felt the urge to look around. The sound of a piano lid being opened, then a few notes, low down on the keyboard.

  St. John's voice rose out of the mix, starting low and rising to a high C. Her singing voice was, perhaps, a little more ragged than it had been, but had lost none of its power. If anything, the more weathered tone gave her voice a stamp of authority that her first album had lacked.

  He moves through the wood

  Dragging the darkness like a shroud

  He is the last.

  There were more instruments in the mix, but so low down it took Rachel several seconds to place them. Strings and the faintest lilt of a penny whistle that filled her heart with an ache she couldn't place. It was barely there, but Rachel was sure she could hear a choir, singing the same two words over and over.

  (Don't go)

  (Don't go)

  Katherine ran her fingers across the console, although she did not appear to be adjusting the mix at all. Rachel closed her eyes. It was possible she was the first person in the world apart from St. John to hear this. The song rose and fell, washing over her.

  The dizziness returned, so quickly she opened her eyes and fell heavily into a chair. Katherine shot her a concerned glance but Rachel gave her a thumbs-up.

  The song continued to build. Rachel hadn't been paying too much attention to the words. St. John's lyrics had always been cryptic, as if they'd been designed to be pored over by generations of teenagers.

  Rachel noticed the light was stronger in the studio. The blind on the window had rolled up. The window framed the trees perfectly. Something was there, in the shadows beneath the branches. There was the shape of a man, leaning against the trunk of a tree, looking directly at her. The light changed, and the shape that might be a man bled, swam, like a thumb rubbing over wet ink.

  Another wave of dizziness struck her. Rachel closed her eyes and sucked in fresh air. When it had passed, she looked again at the old wood.

  Nothing there but trees and shadows.

  It took her some time to realise the song had finished and Katherine was speaking to her.

  ‘—feeling any better?’

  ‘I'm fine,’ Rachel said, ‘just the jet lag, I guess.’

  ‘Why don't we continue this tomorrow?’

  Rachel nodded, her head heavy.

  As they return to the house across the paddock, Rachel turned back once. Nobody was standing beneath the hunched trees. She could see through them to the paddock beyond.

  But she could still see the man in her imagination. Tall and thin. No shirt. Tan trousers. And a wide, tooth-filled smile that might not have been a smile at all.

  EVEN IN THE AGE OF digital downloads and piracy, Katherine St. John's first album was a solid seller. A perennial, like Dark Side of the Moon or Rumours, each new generation discovering it and claiming it for their own. But apart from the recording studio at the other end of the paddock, Rachel couldn't see any evidence of St. John's royalties.

  Katherine had chatted the whole way back, then insisted on cooking dinner herself. As if Rachel and Katherine were friends who hadn't seen each other for years, finally catching up. Katherine didn't speak about the new album and Rachel didn't ask, so tired she was barely able to keep her place in the conversation. She'd feel much better after a good night's sleep.

  The guest bedroom was on the second floor and decorated just as garishly as the kitchen. It had to be nearly nine, but the sun hadn't completely set. Light leaked through the thick red curtains and made her eyeballs ache.

  ‘I'm right next door,’ Katherine said, ‘If you need anything during the night.’

  Rachel's thanks were more yawn than word. She lay down, still dressed, and was asleep before Katherine closed the door.

  SHE OPENED HER EYES in the darkness, no idea of the time, but suddenly wide awake. She fumbled for the phone and pressed it on. The screen was blindingly bright in the darkness. Simon would be awake now.

  ‘So how does it sound?’

  Rachel opened her mouth to speak. Closed it. Tried again. ‘I've only heard the one track so far, but excellent. Her best work, no question.’ She bit her tongue so she wouldn't say anything more. The room was vibrating slightly. She hoped it was just the jet lag.

  ‘—rest of the interview?’

  Rachel opened her eyes again, sat down heavily on the bed. Tried to figure out what she'd missed.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, hoping that was noncommittal enough.

  ‘Good. Good. Get some sleep. You sound terrible.’

  Rachel walked over to the window and peeked through the curtains. She could barely see the milking shed or the recording studio in the darkness. But the tops of the trees behind the studio were clear, as if picked out by a shaft of moonlight. The illumination did not extend to the space between the trees, which remained resolutely dark.

  The window was open just a crack. Refreshingly cold air ran over the tops of her fingers. She shouldn't have called Simon. Now she was awake she'd have a hell of a time getting back to sleep.

  There was a scream from the trees.

  Rachel gasped. She waited, heart pounding, but the sound didn’t come again. Possum, she remembered, after a while. Simon had mentioned them. Nasty little bastards. Sound like a kid getting
murdered.

  As she expected, it was a very long time before she fell asleep.

  RACHEL LIFTED THE KD-2 and checked the cassette again. There was still a decent amount of tape on the spools. She had another couple stashed in the pockets of the oilskin Katherine had given her before they set out. It would be scorching later, she said, but it was always surprisingly cold first thing in the morning.

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘It was time.’

  ‘You disappeared after your last album. It was as if you'd dropped off the face of the earth.’ Rachel regretted the words as soon as they had left her mouth, thinking of the faces of St. John's parents on the front page of The Sunday Mirror, but Katherine did not react.

  ‘Money has never been important to me. Nor has fame. The music, though—’

  Katherine St. John stopped walking and squinted into the sun along the fence line. The air was full of the sound of cicadas in the trees.

  ‘My mother always used to tell me there was no point opening my mouth if I didn't have anything to say. And perhaps, for a long time, I didn't.’

  ‘And now you do?’

  ‘Did. This will be my last album.’

  Katherine strolled off along the fence line, leaving Rachel standing, stunned.

  ‘You can't mean that, surely,’ she said, after she had caught up. ‘If the rest of the songs are anything like the one you played me, this is going to be the best work of your career.’

  Katherine had picked up a long stick from the grass. She swung it side to side as she walked, knocking the flowers off the clover. ‘Thank you. I do hope people like it.’

  ‘So what then? If you're retiring, what's next for you?’

  Katherine shrugged. ‘Just this. The farm. I could happily spend the rest of my days walking the land here. There's just something about it. It feels like home, more than anywhere else ever has. Does that make sense?’

  Rachel thought about the number of years she'd spent on buses and planes, in expensive hotel rooms and seedy motels, tracking down the next story, following the latest rock god. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘perfect sense.’

  RACHEL COLLAPSED INTO the big couch against the wall of the recording studio. It was still early morning but the sun was already beating on her like a mallet. She had no idea how she would cope by midday.

  Katherine called up another track on the console. The sound of cicadas came through the studio monitors mounted on the wall. Then St. John's voice, breathy, barely singing.

  So cool

  Beneath your boughs

  Inside the heart of the wood

  Instruments emerged slowly. Rachel heard a harpsichord being plucked somewhere to the left, while a choir sang to the right:

  Don't go

  Don't go

  echoing the song she'd heard yesterday.

  Rachel looked out at the studio, frowning. Katherine had said she recorded and engineered this alone, so where had she recorded the choir? Katherine's voice and the harpsichord were clear but the choir was so quiet she could barely hear it. Perhaps it wasn't there at all, just some acoustic trick.

  Rachel closed her eyes and fell into the song. She could feel loam under her feet, the mighty, silent presence of trees. There was a snare drum in there somewhere. Rachel could see an army marching. The soldiers wore deep blue-black tunics and sabres on their hips, decorated with gold braid. At the head of the column marched a drummer boy, no more than ten, a serious expression on his face as he set the pace for the men marching behind him. The boy wore something that might have been a tunic once, but was now little more than a vest. Loose threads dangled where the arms had been torn off. It hung loose on his small frame. There were dark smudges along both his cheeks, soot perhaps, or blood.

  A buzzing started in Rachel's head. It felt like the room was rolling, as if she were about to fall beneath the floor. She opened her eyes, but the light did not immediately return. When it did, it was with a sticky slowness that clawed at her face. Katherine had already half risen from her chair at the console. Rachel waved her off.

  ‘Oh, god. I'm so sorry. I'm not coming across as very professional, am I?’

  ‘It's fine. Maybe it's still the jet lag.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘Perhaps.’ She closed her eyes for a second. Jerked them open again.

  ‘Perhaps we should get out again. In the fresh air.’ Katherine looked across the studio to the window. ‘There's something I'd like to show you.’

  STEAM WAS RISING OFF the grass, making a knee-high haze across the paddock.

  The fresh air helped a little. The buzzing in Rachel's head had died away, although her worry about what it could be did not. Rachel had spent large parts of her career flying between London and New York, Los Angeles, Sydney. This was nothing at all like jet lag.

  Katherine St. John walked several paces in front of Rachel, wearing a wide straw hat she had grabbed from the hook on the back of the studio door, in the direction of the macrocarpa trees. There was an easy confidence in her walk, as if she were far younger than sixty. Rachel had a sudden flash of the eleven-year-old St. John walking in just this way towards another forest.

  She only had a couple more days before the flight back to London. Simon would be waiting for her at Heathrow, USB stick in hand. She needed to get the bulk of the interview done today. She switched on the KD-2 still hanging over her shoulder.

  The fence line stopped abruptly before the trees. The last fencepost tilted to one side, as if whoever had put them in had suddenly found something more important to do.

  Something was balanced on the post. Rachel's stomach began to lurch as she realised what it was.

  Katherine clicked her tongue. ‘Ach. Little monkey.’ She picked up a stick from the ground and began poking at the little bundle of brown and red.

  ‘Fresh,’ she said. ‘This morning, or last night perhaps. Birds haven't been at it yet.’

  The possum's head moved from side to side as Katherine poked it. It had been slit from neck to groin, then left broken-backed on the top of the post.

  ‘There was something like this near the gate when I came in,’ Rachel said. ‘A rabbit, I think.’

  ‘Really?’ Katherine frowned. ‘I've never seen one on that side of the property before.’ She hooked the stick deep into the possum's guts and deftly flicked it into the trees. Nothing was left on the fence post but a brown smear, drying in the sun.

  Rachel's mouth was dry. ‘This happens a lot?’

  ‘More often these days. Just pests though: rabbits, possums, the occasional rat. He wouldn't dare touch the cows.’

  ‘Who wouldn't dare touch the cows?’

  Katherine cocked her head, as if trying to decide if Rachel could be trusted.

  ‘Calls himself Slipper. He's a good boy, really. Doesn't mean any harm. I think it's kind of a tribute.’

  ‘There's a boy doing this? Haven't you told his parents?’

  Katherine sighed. ‘It's not quite as simple as that. And he's keeping the vermin population down. Sometimes I wish he'd do it a little more.’

  There was a prickliness to Katherine's voice. Her mouth had contracted to a thin line. She looked nothing at all like the grandmotherly type who had answered the door the day before.

  Rachel forced herself to smile. ‘These kinds of things happen in the country, I guess.’

  Katherine was still moving towards the trees.

  ‘Can we—’ Rachel called, lowering her voice again when Katherine stopped and turned. Rachel held up the recorder ‘I'd like to ask you some more questions and this doesn't do so well when we're moving. Could we go back to the house?’

  Katherine looked at the trees for a few more seconds. Then she smiled. ‘Of course.’

  KATHERINE SIPPED HER tea. The teapot sat between them, a commemoration of a royal wedding that had lost much of its gilding over the years. Princess Di, faded and scratched, stared out from beneath her hair.

  Rachel leaned forward across the table. Her pen and paper lay at her el
bow, ready. She was lost, not really sure where to begin; the walk had cleared her head, but not entirely. Something still buzzed at the back of her mind, like a person seen from the corner of her eye.

  Then Katherine began talking. Rachel clicked record and listened.

  ‘The family changed, after Bedgebury. My father the most. Did you know the police suspected he'd murdered me?’

  Rachel nodded.

  ‘They both fell apart. Fell away from each other too. Not enough to actually separate of course. The swinging sixties took a long time to reach Surrey. My father didn't move out, but something else came in to live with us. I could feel its weight every time we sat down to dinner. The silence.

  ‘I forgot the forest. Much as I could, though a deliberate forgetting is really no forgetting at all. But after a while I couldn't remember what had happened to cause the rift between my parents. Except in dreams. My mother would hear me, singing in my sleep. In the beginning she would shake me awake, but when she did I'd scream, loud enough to wake half the street. After a while, if she heard it she'd just close my bedroom door.’

  ‘When you were first found, you said you'd been with the dancing man.’

  ‘I was eleven. I explained as best I could, but every time I tried, I could see them getting agitated. My parents, the police. It was easier to say I couldn't remember. After a while it almost became true. But it never really went away.’

  Rachel hesitated. She hadn't expected to talk about this at all. They were a long way from the music.

  ‘What never went away?’

  ‘The memory of him.’ Katherine stared at Rachel over the rim of her teacup. ‘The dancing man is as good a name as any, I suppose, if you need one, although he never did. He just was.’