Darkest Part of the Woods (28 page)

it was repeating now.

"Dead Souls Place," Sam muttered. "Fay what's her name, I'll remember when I get there or she'll tell me "Minus Books "He was misspeaking the address on purpose so as not to be as boringly repetitive as the voice he was unable to outrun, but he could have blamed everything around him for distracting him Even when he lowered the windscreen visor all the way it failed to blot out the sun, which ached in his eyes as though it was committed to forcing him to retreat Whenever he tried to slow down, yet another lorry gained on him, swerving ahead of him at the last possible moment and blaring its horn as a bonus. He felt he wasn't driving so much as being driven, but to where?

"Dead," he mumbled, "Fay however you spell it, some kind of book," and was pointed at by one of several children in the back of an overtaking Toyota, all of whom then turned to stare at him for talking to himself as he could imagine his grandfather might have. He didn't have to grope in his mind for the details when the address was on his wrist. He gripped the wheel with his right hand and shook his left forearm clear of its sleeve, then raised the arm towards his eyes. The Volkswagen wavered between the lines that marked the motorway lane and was wandering onto the hard shoulder before he clutched at the wheel with both hands. He glanced wildly up from his wrist to reassure himself he wasn't too close to the Toyota as its brake lights throbbed twice to herald the next junction, and then he glared hot-eyed at the ink on his wrist. Sweat had blurred it so much he couldn't distinguish a single letter. A random scattering of twigs, or rather the marks they and moisture might have left on him, would have made as much sense The Toyota veered up the slip road, and the children did their utmost to transform the faces they were presenting to him into objects he wouldn't have cared to meet in the dark. He was just too late to follow them off the motorway in search of a public phone, and could have imagined they were mocking his plight-they and the relentless lowness of the sun, the traffic swelling in the mirror, the utterance that felt embedded in his skull "The calling of the void "It could have been his aunt's voice imitating a child or the reverse He'd lost count of the number of times he had failed to quell the repetition by the time he came in sight of the next junction. At the end of the slip road an intersection showed him the Severn to the west, where it made the horizon look bared. He saw little between it and him except fields, and so he drove left along a road that set about winding to no immediately or even belatedly apparent purpose.

It had to bring him more than grass verges and hedgerows that blocked his view, he did his best to think over the recital in his mind. For the first time in years he wished he'd kept his mobile phone; he didn't think its emissions could have rendered his brain any more useless. When he saw smoke at large in the sky ahead, he declared louder than the voice "It's a pub with a phone in it."

In fact it was a hotel, the Traveller's Haven, a broad two-storey building that had been Tudor or was now, with more black and white about it than any colour.

Three limousines and dozens of cars were parked with some intemperance outside on the gravel, where Sam had to back the Volkswagen into hardly enough of a space. He wormed himself out of the car through the meagre gap its neighbour allowed him, and sprinted limping into the hotel.

Nobody was at the reception desk next to the wide oak staircase, nor was there any sign of a phone in the extensive panelled hall. A " considerable uproar led him to the bar, a lengthy wooden room with an open fire blazing at the far end despite the weather. None of the drinkers appeared to welcome it, least of all a newlywed mopping her forehead with a lilac handkerchief that matched her silk dress. Some! of the flowers sprouting from the expensive lapels of all the male guests appeared to be wilting in the heat. Sam felt out of place in far too many senses as he excused his way past a cluster of lilac brides-1 maids who were adding coins and noise to a fruit machine, and| reached the bar.

The solitary barman, who seemed rather too sizeable for his shirt and tie and red-faced as a consequence, barely glanced at him. Sam peered about, for the moment hearing only the sounds of the bar, but

saw no phone. As soon as the barman spared him another blink, having served several flowered men, Sam said "When you've a second..."

"Why, are you looking for a fight?"

The time Sam had to waste on understanding the joke made him even more nervous than the comment had. "No, I mean a moment."

"I've got one of those now." When Sam didn't instantly respond the barman demanded

"What are you having to drink?"

"I'd better have something," Sam told him and himself. "Just a half. Beer, that is, bitter, and can-"

"Guest?"

"I'm not staying here, no."

The barman stared as if only he was allowed to indulge in jokes, though Sam hadn't been aware of cracking any. Once he'd finished staring, the barman said "Guest pint. Are you having the guest pint?"

"Half of one. I was going to ask where the phone is."

The barman found a half-pint glass, apparently a substantial and unwelcome task, and set about wiping it with a dish-cloth. Having inspected it against the overhead light, he said "So are you?"

"Am

I

what?"

"Asking."

"Yes," Sam said in a voice that felt as though it had to fight its way out of his nerves.

"Where do you keep it, please?"

"Other end."

Sam peered along the bar but saw only a huddle of women emitting hilarity and smoke.

"Shall I go up there?"

"You won't get your drink if you do," the barman warned him, hauling on a pump that bore a temporary sign for an ale called Witch's Tit. "I'm serving this end now."

Sam watched the glass fill with a murky brownish liquid that put him in mind of a pond.

All at once the delay seemed welcome, or would have done if it had helped him think. He paid for the ale and struggled through the crowd while more of a struggle continued in his skull. He sidled around the women at the end of the bar as another grey cloud of laughter sailed up, and planted his glass on a shelf above the phone on the panelled wall. Clamminess that felt mixed with grit was well on the way to covering the whole of him. He couldn't think of his father's number.

He fed himself a mouthful that tasted as murky as it looked, then rubbed his forehead with the lukewarm glass. Even if he couldn't recall the number he could obtain it from Directory Enquiries, the number of the firm his father worked for, which was... whose name was... He didn't realise he'd groaned with frustration close to panic until the nearest woman draped over his shoulders a bare arm as extravagantly perfumed as it was freckled. It felt as though all the heat in the bar had put on flesh. "Not to your taste, sweetheart?" she said.

Sam almost managed not to recoil. "What?" he blurted.

"Thinks you're offering, Amanda," one of her friends said, and the others adopted various expressions while trying not to laugh too much.

"Not me, lover. Your teeny glass."

"It's fine," Sam lied and made a gesture of grabbing the phone. "I'm just..."

"Then we'll let you have your privacy, won't we, girls," Amanda said, supporting herself on Sam until she'd wobbled with some dignity to face them. "Just let us know when you want to be sociable," she told him.

His mother knew where his father worked, he thought, and squeezed his eyes shut while he strove to recall her number at the library. He'd phoned her there more than once, on...

phoned her on... When he opened his eyes to focus his desperate glare he saw the barman ambling towards him. "Excuse me?" he called, and twice as loud "Excuse me?"

"Still not for you, Amanda," one of her friends said.

"Didn't sound too fond of his drink, Phil," another informed the barman.

Phil hadn't finished turning his unfriendly face towards him when Sam said "Have you got a directory?"

"They'll have one at Reception if they're there." With satisfaction no less total for its glumness the barman added "Which they weren't when somebody just went to look."

Sam imagined labouring through the crowd to no end and then back to the phone.

He dialled Directory Enquiries instead, even though calling from the hotel meant he had to pay. "Brichester University," he told a woman up in Scotland, "the library," and was answered by a computerised voice barely shrill enough to be heard above the hubbub of the bar.

He fed more coins into the thin-lipped orifice and dialled. The receiver was beginning to feel flabby with sweat when someone announced "University Library" as though he was determined to render the capitals audible.

"Is, is Heather Price there?" Sam said, covering his other ear.

"Not at present. Can I be of assistance?"

"Where

is

she?"

"May I ask who wants to know?"

"Sam. Her son. Where is she?"

"Hello, Sam. It's Randall. We've met across the counter," Randall said and was silent long enough to suggest he meant to add more than "She's gone for an early lunch."

"Can you get her?"

"She's out of the building, I'm afraid."

"When's she back?"

"Try calling in about an hour."

That sounded longer than a sleepless night would feel to Sam. He was straining to think of some response when Randall said "I've a feeling we got off on the wrong, I was going to say foot except I wouldn't want you to think I was making light of your injury, which I know you've borne with a good deal of fortitude.

Your mother and I are friends, so by all means regard me as one if that appeals."

"Right," Sam said without knowing if it was, and let the receiver clatter onto its stand.

He couldn't wait for his mother to return, but mightn't his father's number or the number of his firm be somewhere at home? Mightn't Sylvia be able to locate one or the other? Sam took hold of the receiver, then gave it up so shakily it rattled like a snake. He couldn't think of his own number. He couldn't even remember the address.

The heat and noise seemed to mass within him as his panic did. He felt like a child, very lost and very small. The one notion to which he was able to cling was that he knew his way home. As he stumbled away from the phone one of Amanda's party told the barman "He didn't care much for your special."

Amanda took a would-be steady step into Sam's path. "Want a bit of advice?" she said, and before he could limp out of her way "Next time you come out you want to wash first."

He didn't know if she was referring to the incomprehensible blur on his wrist or to how much he was sweating, not that the two could be separated. "Right," he said again, feeling as if all the words he'd learned as he grew up were deserting him, and limped and sidled and was scarcely able to restrain himself from fighting his way out of the room stuffed with hot flesh.

The car started at once, but that was no immediate relief. He accelerated dangerously along the rewinding road to the motorway, which was even more fraught with traffic. He had a moment of drymouthed panic at the thought of heading the wrong way on it-of being as incapable of reading the signboard at the intersection as he was of deciphering the sweaty mess on his wrist. He hadn't lost his homing instinct, however. When a gap large enough for him to brave let him join the race, he found the sun was behind him.

Its glare filled most of the mirror, back-lighting his wildly tousled hair above a forehead etched with apprehension. He felt as if his skull was being goaded onward by the lowering sun, aided by the protracted shadow that was dragging the car. He was disconcerted to be reassured by the sight of the forest ahead. It was close to home, he told himself. All it meant was that he could stop straining to remember.

In a very few miles the motorway abandoned him to the bypass.

He might have been shocked to realise how meagre a distance he'd ventured, but he was wondering what explanation he could give his family for having missed the interview. The woods were lying in wait for the sun, which had swung to his left, to fall into their upheld claws. As soon as the first trees blotted out the glare he felt less harassed, almost ready to think.

He imagined how still the depths of the forest must be, and it felt like an offer of help. When he reached the first lay-by he steered the car into it and switched the engine off.

A lorry thundered by, its rear end veering back and forth. It was only far enough ahead to start to quiver with the heat when it was followed by a vehicle big enough to swallow it. Not only their noise distracted Sam: when they and others like them passed the Volkswagen it shook as though the heat was on the point of transforming its substance. He climbed out of the car and loitered by it until the dull din of traffic sent him into the woods.

He couldn't think yet, but he would once he reached stillness. Limping away from the road felt like repeating a step in a dance. The leaning trees uprooted by last year's gale helped ward off the murmur of Goodmanswood. The branches around him were tipped with growth, some of it hinting at the shapes it had in store, which looked less than familiar. Some looked capable of moving without the aid of a wind, but their immobility seemed to guarantee a greater peace deep in the forest, so that he hardly glanced at them or at the overgrown spiky constructions in the treetops. The trees stayed motionless as stalagmites holding up the pallid sky, and yet he felt as though they were about to shift in some indefinable way. He was limping so fast he couldn't judge whether he was hurrying towards the ability to remember or desperate to outrun a threat of remembering too much. He had no sense of how far he'd progressed-he might have been performing his ritual step for a few minutes or an unimaginable length of time-when he glimpsed more than brightness ahead.

It wasn't just sunlight in an open space. It was more solid, and performing a glittering dance. A few fast but reluctant unbalanced paces r took him close enough to identify a swarm of insects. As he saw they were above the mound within the ring of bricks, he became aware of the forest all around him. It felt vaster and darker than the distance he must have walked or the time of day could explain. The insects were darting and swooping around one another, such a multitude of them that they were able to sketch a form as tall as a man before it fell into a crouch on top of the mound. Memories of his last visit to the clearing overwhelmed him, darkening his mind as if they were heaving up earth.