by Laura Beatty
Imagine that, if you could grow feathers; if you could ball yourself out like the birds and shake the rain off. She would love feathers. What do you want for Christmas, Anne? I want feathers, mainly. Please. Any particular colour? Anne removed her face from her shirt and looked up at the falling rain, at the trees above her, layer after layer of leaves, like feathers themselves, finding their own space against the sky. Accepting the rain. Coping, weren’t they? Quiet, each leaf itself but the same as the others. Yellow was the colour of the sun, if only. Blue was the colour the sky should be. Red was the colour of the Parcel Force van. Red was the last thing she wanted. She didn’t want red, she wanted green. Green feathers all over like an ash tree, and she could move around the woods invisible then. Invisible, warm and dry. Curl up in a ball and sleep like a bird, her face in the softness of her own feathers.
♦
But you don’t die of wet. You can get wringing, river-soaked and you survive. That was the first thing Anne learnt. The second was how not to be seen, even without the feathers. She had learnt that if you turn your back and look purposeful people don’t stare, or at least you don’t see them staring, and if you walk away they can’t ask questions. It was her instinct to hide, even if no one was looking for her. She already knew how to sit still and be quiet. She learnt to go out more at night than in the day. She got canny, like an animal; she had to. But she didn’t steal. She emphasised that to herself. She didn’t steal, she borrowed. It wasn’t stealing if you took from your dad. How was that stealing?
The night after she got wet, her fourth night in the woods, Anne went back up the hill in the moonlight. She was big and strong striding up the hill. She felt herself rise out of the feathered woods like a giant. She’d survived. Back in the small house the walls pressed up against her. The ceiling sat on her head like a hat. There was washing out on the drying rack, over the chairs, all over the kitchen. It smelt of pizza and onions. Your regular detergent – New Pizza and Onions. Mrs Tarbot says she will never go back. Anne remembered advertisements. She had loved the advertisements, a world where every problem had a solution that you could buy, simple as that. On the table there was Leanne’s dummy, a bottle of tomato ketchup. There was butter and crumbs on the newspaper and on Connor’s schoolwork. Anne took some bread and some cheese. She took a pot of jam. Cereal, that was something she hadn’t had for a long time; Loops or Wheetos? She poured herself a mixing bowl of both. She put the telly on mute.
Lovely telly, all the colours and the separate world of it. The people who brushed their teeth under waterfalls using electric toothbrushes, who drove shiny cars up and down stairs and smiled their shiny smiles; they’d never sat under a tree and had it rain inside their clothes. They knew about hospitals and murder and doing sex and they opened their eyes and their mouths in great big silent screams and carried guns and betrayed their husbands all inside a box even smaller than her house. Anne ate her cereal and watched the telly. She went to the toilet and took a roll of paper with her for the woods. She stood on the bottom step of the stairs and listened to her family breathing in the dark. Maybe she’d go up and get Leanne, she thought. But then she thought she’d wait – maybe when she’d built a shelter. Then she’d get her and they’d live happily in the wood, and when Leanne cried, she’d comfort her, like she could have done the only time they’d stayed out before, if she’d had a light to see what was the matter.
Then Anne left it tidy and went out to the shed. She took the best saw, a mallet, a hand axe. She filled her pockets with nails and staples. She took a garden fork and some vegetable seeds, cabbages, onions, carrots, broccoli, everything she could lay her hands on. String. She went back into the house and rootled in the drawers for matches, a kitchen knife, a spoon. She took her brother’s sleeping bag, the travelling rug, a saucepan, a cup, a plate. Then she piled everything into the wheelbarrow and went back down the hill. Survival changes your character.
Only now, huddling and hurrying, glancing back at the home that hadn’t been one, did she realise she was leaving. In the moon-splashed road the light was so bright, the shadows so strong, that she looked over her shoulder constantly. Was she afraid of being seen? Or was it that she wanted someone to see her, to shout at her from the window, Oi! Anne what are you doing with that barrow you get back here this minute. But there was no one at the window. Only the ghost of her old self, leaning sad on the sill, the great big shoulders crammed into the frame waiting for one day.
Anne’s feelings came and went like the weather. Long ago she had learnt that they were of no consequence, so although she was crying when she left with her haul she took no notice. She pushed as well as the shudderings of her body allowed and waited for them to pass. Down the hill in the moonlight with the small explosions, the pops and gutturals of sorrow like an engine for the barrow. It was as if her body was voiding itself of something, childhood perhaps, belonging; she couldn’t have told you which.
The wood was the wrong way round with light, a world in photographic negative. Down the wide rides the moon watched her go, the barrow heavier now the ground was uneven. She had to lift it over roots or rock it back and forth. She had to mind where brambles snatched at the precious load, where ruts or sudden dips made the sleeping bag slide off, or the barrow tip. She should have stopped to rest, taken her time, but she hurried as though there was someone behind her, as if she could feel their breath on her neck, their hand hovering at her shoulder to snatch her back. Who on earth? she asked herself as she pushed on. Who’d follow you, are you daft or something? She struggled forwards, pushing, rocking, lifting the jumble of her future – who would have thought a life could weigh so much? – heading for the deepest part, where the paths didn’t go, down ways that were impassable even without a barrow bellied with possessions. Across her shoulders and up her neck there was a coat hanger of pain.
The trees bent over her, craned their tops down, whispered, what’s she got what’s she got, but she kept her head down. She didn’t stop until the moon showed her a pollard ash the same shape as herself with a small stream at its feet. Then she put down the barrow. You have to have water for survival. Thanks, moon.
At the foot of the ash Anne took out the sleeping bag, squeezed herself into it and sat against the trunk. When the pain in her shoulders was less and she began to feel sleepy she slumped sideways, her cheek on one of the ash tree’s mossed feet, her body a question mark for all the questions her temperament hadn’t fitted her to frame; the whys, the hows, the how much longers that she never thought herself important enough to ask. She slept.
Growing Roots
The trees in the wood did nothing, or nothing that you could see anyway. In the morning the sun got up and lit their leaves and the breeze, if there was one that is, ruffled and shook them, and the little animals burrowed around them or scurried over them. Then the dark came up and swallowed them.
We are rooted, say the trees. Rocking, lifting, shifting, fluttering. Tangling their tops above Anne’s head. Always moving, going nowhere.
Wood is a circle, that’s all. Standing, springing, dropping, shedding, a constant flux of up and down, and in and out, and wider and wider. And birds, like leaves, that rise and fall, arriving in wide ellipses, from elsewhere, to clothe the branches and leave again.
We have some secrets, say the trees. Worn lightly. Shed, if you like, each autumn, from twigs that are stiff with forgetting. The secret of transformation, for example, turning by multiplication the sealed scales of the bud into fistfuls of leaves, or the soft green necks of spring shoots into building materials.
We produce tassel or blossom, like that, when you least expect.
Bending in a sudden breeze. Pigeons clapping up out of them, for no reason you could see, or jackdaws spiralling down, to sit and argue in the branches.
We keep ourselves to ourselves, they say. Whispering water, creased with a slow current, should you look. We filter light. Our heads billow like smoke though we try not to think of fire.
Bu
t they never lay down, Anne thought, or got up, or moved around. They just were, and that was what Anne thought she’d do too, just be. For the moment.
♦
On still days, thin and far away she heard snatches of conversation, if there were walkers or joggers on the paths. Anyway I’ve told her, she heard. And, They’ve no idea how to manage. And, Have you thought about changing? We had a super time. It isn’t what I wanted. Do you find he responds…She never saw them because of the leaves. She just let the words fall into her mind and rest there. Sometimes days would go by between phrases. She didn’t think about them at all. She didn’t try to guess or understand.
When she was really hungry she ate the food she’d brought with her. You don’t need to eat much if you sit still all day and she had no will to do more than that yet. She felt drained by her decision, barely able to lift her hand from lap to mouth, barely able even to chew or swallow. Nor did she sleep properly. She dozed irrespective of day or night, her thoughts flicking about her head like bats, her eyes glazed or shut, often she could hardly tell which. Once or twice she squeezed out of her bag and staggered a little way off, to empty herself. Then she climbed back in and continued sitting, a nylon chrysalis, waiting for something to change.
She didn’t want to go home again. Was anyone looking for her? She didn’t know. You couldn’t lose Anne, her father would have said. She blocked out the sun she did. She’d kick a man senseless. She was big enough to look after herself.
No, her parents wouldn’t bother looking. The telly would have been on. There was always a noise in the house. There wasn’t the space or the quiet to brood. It would have been a relief, to be honest, what with six others to worry about and Anne being a bit of a freak.
Anne leant her head against the ash tree. That’s how it would have been. She knew.
♦
When her food ran out Anne went through the bins in the woodland car park. People throw a lot away. The end of a bag of lamb-and-mint crisps, half a chicken tikka sandwich, apple cores, blobs of spat-out chewing gum that you could resuscitate if you were patient. She ate what she found, tasting it first to see whether it was palatable. As she got hungrier she got more adventurous. She watched the birds, tried the berries and bits that they ate. She saw a wren low down in the dappled dark of the understorey, tail right up. Wrens are such small birds. It had a white worm draped from its beak, the same length both sides as the wren itself. And the worm was waving to and fro, still wondering blind where it was. Imagine finding something to eat that was the same size as you. But Anne didn’t want to eat worms thank you.
She took from the fields that lapped the wood, the beans that were cattle fodder, the kale, the turnips and potatoes. If she was hungry, she rubbed the earth off with her sleeve and ate it there and then. If she could wait, she took it back to her place, washed it in the stream and baked it in her fire. You pushed it wet into the ashes. It took a long time. You had to find something to do while you waited or you went mad tweaking it out with a stick, one arm over your face against the heat and smoke. You baked long before the potato.
On the far edge of the wood was a field of cows. She must have passed them a hundred times before she twigged. She stood by the stile amazed. That was so obvious. Babies survived on milk. They didn’t need anything else at all. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? No one was around. Just the song-filled hedgerows and the long summer grass, still wet, and a whole field of nourishment waiting for her to help herself. Anne was practically singing as she got over the stile.
But it didn’t work like that. At all.
She told herself that she’d been too excited. She’d try again and she’d just walk round the field, casually, and she’d talk to the cows to get them used to her. She’d be really calm. She’d take her time. But every time it was the same. The mad look – and cows can look mad. The kicking out. The see-saw bucking run, udders swinging wild, and all the other cows careering round the field in sympathy.
Once Anne was so angry she ran after them, hitting out at whichever cow was nearest, her mug in her hand as she ran. I only want some milk. You stupid cow. Bitch. Sod.
Crying and crying afterwards, among the pats, with the cows eyeing her from the far corner.
The day the milk did come, she was so worn down, it took her by surprise. Spraying out almost rude, and the cow curving her head round, licking her nostril with her tongue on one side and going back to eating as if nothing was happening. And Anne put her head against the giving flank and wept her gratitude and relief. Thank you, cow. Thank you. I’m sorry I called you names.
Milk, as it turned out, wasn’t enough. Anne wasn’t a baby so food was still a problem. She tried everything. She wrapped her hands in dock leaves bound with cocksfoot because it was the strongest grass, and gathered nettles, thistles, and boiled them up and ate the whole thing including the water they were cooked in. She took eggs irrespective of size. And she could kill. She’d had brothers, after all, so she knew how it was done. She made snares like Michael’s out of her dad’s wire and she thought she’d catch birds, rabbits, hedgehogs. She watched them so she’d get to know their habits. Like the milking, it took a long time. You think animals are simple but they’re inexplicable, especially when you’re hungry. She watched rabbit after rabbit nibble, hop, nibble. Go on, she’d say, go in it. And the rabbit would nibble, there’s a person over there, hop, look up, oh a snare, no thank you, nibble, hop. How did they know? How did they know what a snare looked like? And Anne would unfold her legs, stiff with waiting and go back, a hole in her tummy big enough for a burrow, and gnaw at another uncooked beet.
And birds were even cleverer.
She lay in the ditch watching the rabbits and smelling stew. She had cramps from nettles and beets and uncooked potatoes. Her breath was fetid. Her belly was tight and balled with wind. How could emptiness have such solidity? Please, she said to the rabbits, please. On the way back, empty-handed again, she saw the fox, gleaming with health, digging for worms. He glanced at her, ears pricked and went back to his digging. So she wasn’t a threat obviously. Nothing scary about stupid old Anne. She can’t even catch a rabbit. Well, you’re stupid, she said to the fox, digging for worms when you could have rabbit. You’ve got the teeth. You know how to do it.
It was the rain that drummed some sense into her. In the early dawn it woke her, wedged as usual into the sleeping bag. She’d given no proper thought to her shelter. It was just thrown together, a shoddy lean-to against the straight bole of an ash that she crashed in at night, like a burrow. The rain was streaking straight through it. She couldn’t believe it at first, how angry it made her. What? Again? All her possessions getting wet. The precious sleeping bag. She hit the ground at her side until her fist hurt. Clumsy tart, she shouted at the rain. Bitch. Stupid sod. It shocked her, maybe she was turning into Suzie after all. Now you’re really wild, she told herself. Now you’re out of control.
It wasn’t just the wet that she was angry with, it was her own stupidity, the lack of foresight. She was a practical person but she thought for the first time that she couldn’t cope. She’d never make it. She hadn’t even thought about rain. What about snow? What about wind and sleet and winter? She’d spent all this time hunting and she’d caught nothing. What had she been doing, when she should have been so busy?
She was groaning with wind when she got up sodden, her hair plastered to her face. One or two walkers, well waterproofed, looked up in surprise, as she lumbered past them, lowing to herself. She must have looked something else. Get to the bank, she was saying under her breath. Get to the bank and find Dad. It didn’t matter to Anne who saw her now, or what they thought. She was past caring pretty much.
All the ditches were talking with water. She jumped and lurched the quickest way. Even so, she got to the bank late. She just saw the flash of him, slicked with wet, as he reached the corner, his brakes squeaking and the water sheeting up either side. You’re going to have an accident Dad, one of these days, if you�
��re not careful. I’ll bet no one checks your brakes now.
She watched the empty corner for a while, the rain still dropping, dropping, dropping. Well, Dad’s gone to work. So I might as well, she thought, turning slowly back into the wood.
Method. You had to have that. You had to have method to survive. You couldn’t just expect rabbits to fall into your lap. You couldn’t expect to stay dry and well without proper shelter, and what about the water, what if the stream dried up for instance? What about that? Anne asked herself. You didn’t think about that, did you? And she was in a mad rush now, to make up for lost time, to build, to make everything right and tight against the weather, to provide for thinner times, to get the hunting sorted out. Michael managed and he was useless. She couldn’t get back to her camp fast enough.
Through the rainy morning, with her dad’s saw, Anne coppiced herself a clearing round the ash shelter. Hazel mainly, and anything with a trunk too thick for the saw she left for later, to chip away at with the axe. She cut as close to the ground as she could, pulling the cut stems free of the canopy and laying them in piles as she went. She couldn’t believe how quick you could let the sky in, working faster and faster and saving looking up so as to be surprised when she’d finished. Then standing, face upturned, watching the rain fall through a hole in the wood.