Darkest Part of the Woods (9 page)

"Trees."

She did: sunlit rows of them dripping like an army of the drowned, and more blurred ranks behind them-trees of the kind Sam had fallen from. For an instant the grey formless depths of the woods appeared to quiver as though considering what shape to adopt "That's all,"

she said She wouldn't have been surprised to hear disappointment in his voice, but it was quite neutral as he said only "Sylvia."

Sylvia leaned towards the gap under the sash. The smell of leaves acrawl with fog surged into the room, and Heather glimpsed a secretive movement the width of the forest She couldn't help holding her breath until Sylvia spoke. "I don't know yet."

"That's the way. You will," Lennox said, and pushed himself to his feet by dragging the sash down. "I think that's enough for one day. I'll walk out with you," he said, and smiled rather wistfully at the doubts Heather was unable to conceal. "Only to your car."

Dr Lowe met them at the foot of the stairs. "How was the visit?"

"I think we've made a good start," Lennox said.

"I'd say so," said Sylvia, and Heather felt bound to produce a murmur of agreement.

"And where are we bound now?" the doctor said with heavy casualness.

"Me, back where I was." Lennox stood away from the car as the sisters climbed in.

"Come again soon," he told them, "for a check on progress."

He paced the car as it coasted along the drive, then made for his chair. Heather glanced towards him as she reached the gateway, and almost neglected to brake.

As she regained control before the vehicle could lurch onto the bypass, the woods seemed to gather their dank depths and inch towards her. She forced herself to concentrate on the headlong traffic, and almost managed to put her last sight of the hospital grounds out of her mind. Lennox and the others were sitting in a circle, just as they'd stood in the centre of the forest. The memory seemed no more real than an old dream, and she could neither grasp it nor rid herself of it. She couldn't be sure, nor could she deny, that the circle of seats on the lawn was exactly the size of the ring of bricks deep in the woods.

10

A View of the Future

A peal of bells roused Sam. Though the church was behind him in Goodmanswood, the wind that the trees across the common were exerting themselves to snatch made the bells sound as though they were deep in the forest, misshapen too and clogged with moss. He knew he was hearing a tape so worn it had ceased to bear much resemblance to bells, but he was disconcerted to realise he didn't know how long he had been seated at his desk.

He ought to be on the move soon. A glance at his fat black wristwatch showed him that his father was already a few minutes late. He wouldn't be loitering at the desk, where the computer screen displayed a faint reflection of his face with little of a mouth and less for eyes, if he hadn't risen earlier than he ordinarily did on his days off work. He'd felt a need to look out of the window, not that there was much to be certain he was seeing. It didn't help him remember why the knees of his trousers had been stained with mud the last time he'd come home from the woods.

The glassy light of a sky laced with fast thin whitish clouds showed treetops flaking like dead skin in the wind. The sun was caught in a dance of branches that seemed constantly about to sway in unison. The far edge of the common was crowded with shadows bent on clawing the ground into the woods. Of course it was the wind and not the shadows that kept urging the grass towards them in waves, but he couldn't shake off the notion that there were more elongated spindly shadows than trees bordering the forest to cast them. He hadn't been able to locate the source of the impression when the doorbell rang.

Once he heard his father's voice he made himself leave the window. Sylvia had let his father in. Though he would have combed it before leaving the car, his black irredeemably wavy hair was tousled by the wind, and so was the pale blue silk scarf that adorned his throat within the collar of his dark blue shirt. He glanced up the stairs, and his comfortably overfed face sent Sam a wink.

"Morning, old chap. I'm just meeting your delightful guest."

"She's my aunt."

"Sylvia." Sam's father appeared to recoil as he stepped back for a more comprehensive look. "I don't know if you'll remember me," he said. "I'm Terry Harvey, your nephew's old man."

"Heather told me we were expecting you."

"I hope that didn't sound too ominous."

"Just as neutral as could be."

If his father and Sylvia were flirting, Sam couldn't help feeling uneasy, but then her presence in the house had that effect on him. He limped downstairs as his father said "How does it feel to come back to a village when you've seen so much of the world?"

"Everything that's part of me is here."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest... That's to say, I know this is your home."

"Maybe you should check with Heather."

"You know he doesn't need to, Sylvie," Sam's mother called from the kitchen.

"Apologies if I assumed too much," Sam's father nonetheless said. "I thought I'd grown out of that habit."

Sam took another step down, only for his father to break the awkward silence. "I was really just saying how much of life you must have seen before you decided to come home."

"Some of us didn't feel we had the choice," Sam's mother said as though she didn't care if she was heard.

"Is that maybe a shade unreasonable? I wasn't thinking about you."

"Hardly the first time."

"I was thinking of this young fellow," he said, and to Sylvia "I keep telling him he ought to find out how much more there is to life than here and the town up the road. So where are we heading today, Sam?"

"Can we go into town for lunch?"

"That gets my vote, only another time you might want to come down to me. Stay chez Harvey any Saturday night by all means. Fridays too if you like."

"Not London, Brichester. I promised Andy I'd check the shop if I was round that way."

"If we're really only going up the road, anyone else who wants feeding is welcome to join us."

"No, you go and be uninhibited," Sam's mother said, he couldn't tell how slyly.

"This is the boys' day."

His father's glossy black Rover had refrained from invading the personal space of the Civic and the Volkswagen on the paving in front of the house. A swarm of contorted parchment-coloured leaves came scuttling along the road, and one shaped like a reptile's claw swooped towards Sam as he shut himself in the Rover. The car was gliding out of Woodland Close when his father said "So was I making as much of your aunt as everyone seemed to believe?"

"I didn't."

"That's because you aren't a woman. How's the girlfriend situation?"

"Nobody just now."

"Well, remember if there's anything you want to consult me about I'm as close as your phone." As Sam assured himself that wasn't meant to treat him like a client, his father said "And what are you making of Sylvia?"

"I'm trying to get used to having her around."

"Lucky you, or is it?"

"It's strange with someone else in the house."

"I wish it weren't," his father said, and cleared his throat of a hint of wistfulness.

"Anyway, we aren't talking about me."

"I wish we were."

"We did explain the situation to you at the time, me and your mother."

"You can use longer words now."

"It was simply when the firm moved out of Brichester it was either tag along with them or start again with people I didn't particularly like and at less of a salary into the bargain. I know you understood why your mother felt she had to stay. I thought you understood me too."

"I didn't say I didn't."

"It made sense for you to stay with her when Margo could help look after you, and we tried to make sure you saw enough of me. That doesn't stop me feeling guilty, all the same."

"Why would you want to feel that?"

"I don't want it at all," Sam's father retorted, only to admit "Perhaps I do if I'm honest.

Perhaps I don't need to. We'll have to see how you grow up."

That sounded like a threat to engineer the process. Apparently concluding he'd said enough for the moment, he inserted a compact disc of Beethoven symphonies into the player as the car left Goodmanswood behind. The music had barely announced itself with a flurry of notes when he turned it lower than the wind.

"Sorry I was late, by the way. I nearly did a silly on the bypass."

Sam wasn't merely watching but feeling the woods crowd towards him. He was less than fully aware of being expected to ask "What was that?"

"Tried to dodge something that wasn't there."

"What?" Sam demanded.

"It must have been the shadow of a tree or a lot of them. I thought it was someone running in front of the car at first, as if anyone could stretch across the whole road."

"How could just a shadow make you late?"

"Because I braked before I tried to take avoiding action. I nearly had a pair of trucks up my nether regions, and after that I needed a few minutes in a lay-by to recuperate."

"I still don't get it," Sam said uneasily. "It couldn't have been a shadow when the sun isn't behind the woods yet."

"There are trees on this side of the road as well, old fellow. As a matter of fact I think it was here," Sam's father said, nodding at the trees that staked out the grounds of the Arbour.

Sam tried and failed to see how any of those trees could have cast a shadow across the bypass, even when the sun was lower. He felt as though the depths of the forest or something they concealed were effortlessly pacing the car. He couldn't think for the Beethoven, which kept repeating itself louder like someone shouting at a deaf person or a foreigner while the treetops seemed to describe shapes more sinuous and patterns more complex than any music.

He couldn't grasp how long it took the car to pass the woods. He saw them shrink in the mirror as the motorway glittered with traffic ahead, but he felt as if they were dwindling only to reveal more of themselves, to increase themselves somehow. They remained a hovering restless many-limbed presence in his mind and at his back as the motorway reeled Brichester towards him. He was indifferent to the sight of the university towering over streets of repetitive houses until his father said "You'll need to tell me where we're meant to go, old chap."

That was Worlds Unlimited, which Sam realised now had been the first destination he could think of. "Past the, right," he said. "I don't mean right, I mean right, straight on. Right now, right here." He felt as if he was playing a video game on the monitor that was the windscreen, and clumsily too. "Along, right, no, just along. Here."

He could see without leaving his seat that the new shop window was intact, but he hobbled to check the door was locked. Beyond the window the display of books seemed to consist of little more than lumps of paper. "I can't say I'm surprised you don't want to hang round in a seedy district like this," his father remarked as Sam returned to the car.

Sam saw a page of last night's newspaper dodging from doorway to doorway like a messenger outdistanced by its message while two beer bottles clashed in the gutter. "Onward then, is it?" his father said.

"May as well."

"Where do you suggest?"

"The pub."

"I like a mystery as much as the next man, but I wouldn't mind knowing which."

"Go back. We have to go back."

They had indeed already passed the Scholars' Rest, which might have been the only one Sam could bring to mind. Beneath a jauntily sagging slate roof the squat sandstone building faced the university campus, where isolated saplings were practising moves. Each window of the pub held a swelling like a great blind eye. Once across the thick doorstep worn convex by centuries of feet and through the small stout door, Sam was reminded that the dim low-timbered interior was lined with old books. He let his father buy him a pint of Witch's Brew, the strongest ale, and downed a quarter of it, then another. Having observed this with a mixture of admiration and amusement, his father said "Are we eating here as well?"

"There's

food."

"I did spot that. Let's see what's tempting," his father said, opening an unnecessarily giant menu that bore a cartoon of a mortarboard. "Lecturer's Lasagne. Student's Salad.

Graduate's Grill. Professor's Prawns. Coed's Chilli.

Bursar's Burger. Vice-Chancellor's Veggies. Sophomore's Steak..."

"Lasagne sounds all right."

"Does it?" his father said as though he'd failed to make the humour sufficiently obvious.

"Lasagne it is, then," he told the gowned barman, "and a Porter's Platter for me."

Sam had halved the remainder of his pint by the time the barman finished typing the order on a till that chirped like a bird. "Another before we sit down?" his father suggested.

"Do you want me to get it?"

"No, I want you to get around it." He gave Sam's immediately empty tankard only the briefest of frowns. "Everything's on me," he said.

Sam carried his second pint to a desk laid with sunlight that couldn't penetrate the empty inkwell. Whenever traffic or pedestrians passed outside, their distorted movements in the bloated windows made him feel as if he were viewing the street through someone else's eyes, too many of them. He tried peering at the contents of the shelves around him-children's novels older than himself, fifties self-help books, outdated histories, forgotten best-sellers-but the act of trying to distinguish ill-lit books seemed inexplicably ominous. "Looking for something special?" his father said.

"No."

"I'm sure you are even if it isn't here. You won't be angry if I admit I don't think it's that shop of yours."

"Maybe I don't either."

"Then shall we give your future a look?"

Sam's brain felt full of enough alcohol for any uninvited advice to float on.

"If

you

want."

"I was rather hoping you might."

The arrival of lunch-a less than full but steaming dish of lasagne, and a platter laden with the bread and cheese and pickles ploughmen, not porters, were alleged to favour-was by no means the only reason why Sam failed to see ahead.