Pollard

by Laura Beatty

  After the coppicing Anne trekked round the dripping wood and emptied the litter bins of plastic bags, which she opened out and tacked edge to edge on the sticks of her lean-to. On top of the bags, she threw the brash, dragging it over untrimmed and hoicking it up and over. By early afternoon the rain had stopped and she’d made herself a green burrow. Warmer than before at least, and waterproof. She ferreted about for food, a mugful of squashed raspberries, a pigeon’s egg that she broke and tipped down her throat raw, a half-gnawed beet, and she watched a squirrel, across the new clearing and straight up the trunk of a sapling, shaking a shower of drops as it crossed into an oak.

  Unable to light a fire with the sodden wood, Anne lay in her burrow and tried to shiver herself warm and dry. She took off her sodden clothes and wrapped herself in the leftover bags and whatever else she had that wasn’t wet. It wasn’t a good night, but at least she’d made a start. And it serves you right, she said, shivering and shivering. It serves you right.

  The day after, the sun came out and that was enough. Anne put on Michael’s fleece and her trainers and went on with the coppicing to warm herself up. She made a washing line and hung up the sleeping bag and the rest of her clothes and at lunchtime, when the sun had done its work, she lit a fire. Then she sat in the fleece, in the sun, by the fire and baked and watched her things steam and admired her shelter. She gave herself the afternoon off and she thought about her next move. Warmth, water and food. That’s what you need for survival. Warmth, water and food. She lazed against the pollard ash. What about winter? she allowed herself to think again. How will that be? From the depths of her comfort, she almost luxuriated in it, like not getting out of bed on a cold morning. How bad will the winter be?

  ♦

  The summer lulled her. In the days that followed, even if, at her own instruction and now that she had come to her senses, Anne was busy, still she was busy slowly. Slow was natural to her but it was underlined by warm days, by the way that the sun patterned the wood, by the birds, whose names or songs she didn’t know, flicking past, catching her eye in the undergrowth. And Anne would stop, now who’s that, and follow for a bit, or lie and watch until she knew them, giving them her own names, Brownie, Black-hat, Whipso Wee. In between, she tried to be dogged and systematic. One at a time, she made what she needed. She never looked beyond the project she had in hand, unless it was backwards. She looked backwards to see how far she’d come. She looked back to encourage herself forward. Good job Anne, she said to herself. Good job.

  Daily, she’d wake in the first light, get up and cross the wood and lie and watch for her father. She liked the swish of the bicycle and the small freedom that the hoop of his back expressed. It set her up. And when he’d gone she’d start back. Off to work then, Dad. Me too.

  At first Anne had filled her cup at the stream wherever it was deep enough. Now she worried constantly that the stream would run dry. She would dam it with wood and stone, she thought, to make a good, clean, shallow pool. Then she’d be safe. She went out looking for stones the right size and shape, down the field edges, where they’d been thrown by the farmers to save the plough, grunting them back to the clearing, sometimes just in her arms, sometimes in the barrow. She always carried more than she could manage but you couldn’t leave them in case of never finding them again. Across her back and shoulders the coat hanger of pain was permanent.

  She piled the stones where she wanted the dam to be, dug round with her dad’s spade, to make a start for the water and to slow it so the building would be easier. The last thing she wanted was for any of the precious stones to dislodge or get swept away. Slow work. Fitting the stones, plugging with wood wrapped in grass, last year’s leaves, clay. Got to be tight like a jigsaw puzzle. Only it was easier than a puzzle. Puzzles made your head whizz. So many pieces all the same. Just pointless. The stones were all different and you could see which ones would fit, turning them slow in the flow of water, balancing, your hands freezing purple, till the edges clicked. Then up again with your back creaking and on to the next.

  It was a sunny day when she finished the dam. The understorey of the wood, the hazels and field maples, the ferns and bramble and the plants she couldn’t name, the dog’s mercury and enchanter’s nightshade, everything spotted and splashed with light. It was beautiful to Anne and the filling pool most beautiful of all, sparkling as it swelled. She took off her shoes and waded in and she couldn’t stop herself from laughing out loud, she was so excited. She walked round and round, puddling the pool out with her bare feet and then, when her feet were too cold to do it any more, she sat on the edge and hugged her knees and watched the water settle.

  From one of the hazels at the back of the clearing, little birds came. Brownie and Black-hat. Hopping, hopping. Cocking their heads. Come on, Anne said to them, help yourselves. I’ve made a pool. And they sipped and hopped and twittered their find. Water for us all. There’s plenty, Anne said, enjoy it.

  The success of the pool was invigorating. She spent long times sitting by it and marvelling. She marvelled at its inverted daytime world, at the ink of its night. She marvelled at the moon’s wobbly face. She marvelled at the leaves and feathers that coasted lazy on its current, circling and catching. When it rained she marvelled at the drops that fattened it for her. Doesn’t matter if it rains now, she would think with pleasure; filling up my pool, isn’t it?

  ♦

  After the pool she started with her plan for a better shelter. She already knew the places where the cut timber was stacked. She went down with the barrow and hauled what she needed by night. She set a wall of stakes at one end of her hovel, facing the sunrise, to keep out the wind that she hated most, the one that came cold from the east. She worked on until she had surrounded the tree and her hovel, not worrying too much about the shape, dragging the stakes from the timber pile as she needed them and, on days when it was soft enough, hitting them into the ground, with her dad’s mallet. While she made the walls she considered the roof. She tried one or two different things. The stakes wouldn’t stay balanced against the trunk of the ash without something to support them so in the end she cut hazel and soaked it in her pool and wove it together to make giant basketwork scales that she fitted overlapping all the way round. She sat at the foot of the pollard with her legs out straight and her work across her lap. Every now and again she looked across at the stockade round the ash, for encouragement, or up at the pool of sky, fringed with trees above her head. All the birds were going to and fro. We’re all busy, she thought.

  When enough scales were done she stole a bale of hay from the field and barrowed it back to the clearing, heart thumping. That was stupid. She could easily have been spotted. She pulled off the orange binder twine and laced the scales to each other at the top and down the edges, careful to keep the weave of the basketwork running down not across to let the rain run off it freely. The hay, she shook out inside for a bed. On top of the basketwork she tacked plastic bags again. Then a layer of bracken and on top of the bracken, stakes, raying out from the centre, tied through to the basketwork again and nailed to the top of the palisade. Then she dismantled the lean-to and hauled it out through the door. Another good job.

  Spending her first night in the hut, with it right and tight and roofed over, was so exhilarating that she stayed awake until morning just to enjoy it. First she lay down in her bag on the hay, but then the position was not quite right. While she lay close to the side wall, her eye was continually drawn by the lightness at the door. She got out, dragged the bag to where she could lie facing the door but still against the wall, got in again. For a while, until the dark was properly up, that was good enough; but then the square of the door became more attractive again. To lie sheltered but able to see out, that would be the real luxury. So, out again and drag the bag to just inside the door and there – that was perfect. Look at that night sky and the tops of the trees just feathering its edges. It was a starlit loop of dark, cut across by bats. Look at those bats. How did you do that? So q
uick, it was like electric. You could feel yourself out there with them, up in the clear, with only moths, Anne supposed, for company – or for eating. And then the owl made her jump, racketing into the clearing. He had his legs out like he was crash-landing, very unsteady. He nearly rolled over in mid-flight. Owls can’t fly at all. They make a right mess of it, wings everywhere, rocking about. Chaos.

  Anne shuffled over onto her back and looked at the slip of sky again. Bats and stars and her shelter. She was bubble-light with elation, floating up, she thought she was, back to the bats, up through the clearing and flipping out through the top and further and further, a dark moon, bowling through the sky towards the humming stars, like she was pulled by a magnet.

  Later, she got up again and went out to see what the hut looked like from the outside at night. She walked right the way round, one hand running round the ridges of the pile wall. The fox had his den. The badger had those great big hills and holes. The squirrels had that mess they threw up any old how in the tops of the trees. The birds were the only real competition. They were the only ones with any craftsmanship. They fitted out the inside as well as the out. They made it nice with feathers and moss, and Anne began thinking of improvements she could make. Keep the feathers off the birds she ate. She could do something with them, and they’d keep her warm.

  In the dawn, finally, she felt her own weight again. She watched the stars, pale now and almost inaudible, the hum of night nearly gone. And in the trees above her, the birds woke up, in their own constellations of sound and sang the sun up, which had the grace to shine, on this first morning, until it was the ground, not the sky, that was spangled and Anne went out with the stars at last and slept until midday.

  ♦

  Anne opened one eye. Her stomach was making an extraordinary noise. That was what had woken her. Roof. That was the first thing she saw. Roof, walls, sun on the leaves. It was pretty good living in the wood once you had a house. There was a finch in the doorway with its head on one side. Aye-aye. Who asked you in? Cocky. She sat up. She had to find some breakfast. The finch flitted off and Anne got out of the bag. Shoes first and off for a wiss, then we’ll see. Coming back she couldn’t help singing – it was so nice to see the hut neat and trim with the tree coming out of the top like a chimney. She sang Suzie’s old songs. If I was a rich girl, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy gi-irl.

  Normally Anne went out, on her way to the bank, and milked one of the cows in the field at the side of the wood. She’d given them all names now, or not all of them, but the ones she liked most, to differentiate them and for politeness’ sake, so she could talk to them properly when she milked them, or sat among them for companionship before the farmer came.

  At the field gate she stopped and looked over. See if it’s too late or not. Ho, ladies. They were used to her now. They just looked up and one or two lowed and swished their tails and went back to the long business of eating and digesting and producing milk. It was different in bright light. Usually she would have got straight over and gone among them with her mug. They had slow, breathy conversations, Anne and the cows, in the dawn, when the cows were just black bulks, lying or standing, grey mist up to their knees, plopping out their pats and chewing already. She liked to run a hand across their fat flanks. Ruby Tuesday, Dusky Plum, Coco Pops. Or she’d squat down in their midst. Why would you ever keep your milk in a fridge she would ask herself, sipping and refilling in a world of swaying udders. They were all body, cows were. Anne liked them for that, for their accepting eyes and their slowness, and their noisy functions. Breathe, gush, munch, breathe, slop – their tongues out, their wet noses in the beaded cobwebs, loops of drool and their feet splaying.

  But she’d never milked as late as midday. The bright field was too exposed. She didn’t dare. What instead? She was reflecting on her options when she noticed a cat skulking along the hedge, after the late fledglings no doubt, or the baby game birds. As she watched a gunshot cracked to her right and the cat buckled and fell. Anne’s hand flew to her mouth. The cows humped up their backs and skittered away in panic. Anne would have gone too, only she was rooted with amazement, looking now at the cat crumpled by the hedge, now down the field to see where the shot had come from. A big man lumbered up the field edge. He didn’t see Anne until he was level with her. He was breathing noisily like the cows and with each out-breath came a stream of barely audible comments and curses. Hmm that’s done it. Hmm shot the hmm bloody bugger. He caught sight of Anne as he passed her.

  Fox, he said loudly, not stopping. Bloody hmm fox.

  Anne climbed the gate and hurried after him.

  You shot a cat. That’s a cat, that is. Can’t you tell the difference?

  They stood over the corpse. It was staring, the yellow convexity at its eye’s centre empty and flat like a leaf. Like a willow leaf, Anne thought.

  That’s a cat, she repeated firmly.

  The man turned it over with his boot, flicked it up into the hedge. That’s a hmm bloody fox that is.

  They looked straight at each other, in amusement more than anything else.

  He was a big man, but he was more like a cow, Anne thought as she faced him and took him in properly. His shirt was stretched over a ball belly. His hair was rough and grew in whorls like the cows’ did, and his eyes were large and liquid and sad and heavily fringed. Just like a cow.

  Could you eat it? Anne asked eventually and with evident regret.

  Could you what?

  Could you eat it? she repeated, nodding towards the cat. I mean after you’d skinned it, obviously. Would it eat alright?

  The man laughed at her. He looked amazed. His stomach moved when he laughed. Bit of butter and bloody sugar and it would slip down a treat.

  She didn’t want to go eating that, he said. What did she want to go eating that for?

  I’m very hungry, Anne said. I’ve built myself a house with a roof and now I’m hungry. I’ve just woken up.

  If she’d just woken up she’d be wanting a bit of bloody breakfast, that’s what she’d want. A bit of breakfast – that was better than a old dead cat.

  Or a fox.

  Or a hmm bloody fox. And he laughed again.

  ♦

  His name was Steve. Slow Steve they called him. He might be slow but he got it done in the end and what was the hurry anyway? Some people were in such a hurry they got to their grave before they’d had time to enjoy themselves. That was what he thought, although his eyes looked inexpressibly sad all the time he was talking, but maybe that was just how they looked. Some animals looked like that, Anne had noticed, doleful, for no particular reason.

  They shook hands. He only lived at the dump. Mother would fix her up some breakfast. Mother made the best bloody breakfast. They left the cat and walked up the field to his truck, parked on the track the other side of the hedge. There was an old dog in the cab that made a commotion when they approached, barking and snarling. Give over that bloody racket, Buster.

  He was losing it a bit, poor old boy. He couldn’t go out with the gun any more. He was blind in one eye and he only had three legs but he was a good dog.

  Anne heaved herself into a crampedness of diesel and grease and old metal. She didn’t know how to fit her knees. She hadn’t been in a car in how long?

  The plastic seats creaked as they bumped in and out of the holes on the track. Buster set up a whine. He didn’t like the old holes, poor old dog. He put one of his three legs on Anne’s thigh and leant on it heavily. His nails needed cutting. The skin on his muzzle was loose at the sides of his mouth so Anne could see his teeth and the milky-looking blind eye, and every time they went over a pothole they bumped shoulders and he dug his foot into her leg. He looked about a hundred. Anne had never seen an animal so old. You didn’t often see animals that old in the wild. He would have been dead by now, Anne thought, normally. You died in the wild when you couldn’t fend for yourself.

  They bumped out onto the main road and
then, on the edge of the town, up another track to the dump.

  No more than 5 DIY waste items per week. No fly-tipping. No tyres. No barbed wire. No aerosols. £50,000 fine for breach of regulations.

  That was a lot of money.

  Bloody right.

  Steve cut the corner quite tight. Buster shot onto Anne’s lap. Hold tight. There was a chain-link fence all round and a series of sheds that – now that Steve had stopped – Anne could see contained tempting piles of unwanted goods. There were teapots, jugs, jars, small domestic items, soft toys, bicycles and lawnmowers, household appliances, Hoovers, hairdryers, TVs, you name it.

  Well, this is us.

  Anne was gobsmacked. Released from the truck, she gawped at the sheds full of possessions. All this stuff. What must their houses be like, if this is what they chuck out?

  A right sight worse. I tell you what. They go off and buy something else, rubbish, and it’s in the dump after a year. I see the same bloody families. Steve hoisted Buster down out of the cab. The dog was nearly the same size as he was for goodness’ sake. They wanted their heads examining. Waste of money it was. Waste of bloody money.

  It looked pretty good to Anne.

  That’s what she needed, some things, now she had a house. A jug like that for instance, that would be nice, or a telly. She could have a telly in case they ever got electric in the wood. You never knew. They might.

  Twenty pee that jug was, if she was interested. Anne’s face fell. Of course, money. How could she have forgotten. She put the jug back quickly, ashamed. She cleared her throat, holding her hands together as though to stop them straying, the temptation being almost too much for her. Just looking at the moment.

  Breakfast.

  Along the back of the yard there was a bungalow with a little bit of garden, where Steve and Mother lived. There were flowers in colours that made Anne’s eyes fizz. Mother loved her flowers. The path to the door was lined with bucket-shaped cement bollards painted gloss green and three game-looking gnomes, chipped and cracked and one of them legless and listing. Who next? Anne wondered, watching Buster’s uneven progress ahead. Towering over the bungalow, as though about to crush it in the next stride, a pylon reared up from behind, wires clicking like knitting needles. It gave you the willies. Anne hunched her shoulders up round her head and scuttled after Steve.