Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

‘Yes,’ he said to it, squidging the teabag against the side of the mug, ‘yes, it is, I know.’

He took his tea and a bottle, a stick of wood and a knife, and went and sat on the back step. It was better out here than in there. He stretched, rubbed his forehead and blinked, assessing his body for pain. There were a few problems, aches, peculiar sensations, crap sight, but it could have been a lot worse. He started whittling. Look at that sky! The universe vibrated, the constellations ramped across the sky. He drew in his breath as if something was rushing at him, looked down, and there in his memory, so clear, was his mum sitting on the blue painted chair in the garden, the one that now stood on the top landing with a bucket on it for catching the drips when it rained. She’d been in one of her weepy dreadsome moods and he’d made her go outside, saying look, it’s a nice day, the primroses are out, look, you’ll feel much better if you get a bit of fresh air. You go out and I’ll put these sheets in the washing machine and get you a cup of tea. Here. I’ll put this chair here. He’d brought her out a sandwich and a cup of tea, and a bit later when he got back in, looked out of the kitchen window and saw her holding the sandwich half-way to her mouth, head turned slightly towards the house. He thought she was probably crying, he just knew she was, and there was not a thing he could do about it. It made him want to cry, not that he ever did. Ever. And she was looking at him with this look, this look of wistful reproach and loving sadness. How did she always manage to make him feel so mushed up and bad? That jacket he hated. She spent all her money on it one Christmas, bloody awful it was and he had to pretend to like it, used to wear it down to the bus stop then take it off, try to carry it without letting it be seen, impossible. What she want to go and get a thing like that for? Just showed how much she really knew about him, didn’t it? Buying him a jacket like that and thinking he’d wear it. Didn’t know him at all if she could even think he’d wear it. And she was so pleased. Her face when she gave it to him. He still cringed to think of it.

Still, shitty as everything turned out, there’d been good things.

He wished she’d stop. Just be normal.

Jesus, though, what if it was? Her on the stairs. Stop thinking about all this. Drink.

Couldn’t handle that.

Oh that’s unbearable! To live forever. Nah, she wouldn’t hang around. Couldn’t wait to get away, could she? Why would she want to come back? But the sound on the stairs kept replaying in his mind and his heart was tight. The terror of eternity came down and sharpened his mind. All those times you feared death and found comfort in the fact that it had not yet arrived, it still would one day. Tick. Tock. Stop any time. It happens. The next second.

Just fuck off. Whoever – whatever – you are. Leave me alone. I’ll live till I die.

He drank. He’d just sit out here at the back rather than going back into that haunted house. But maybe she’d come out behind him and take him by surprise. What would he do? Really, what would he do if here he was sitting on the step and suddenly there was just this touch, this cold touch, just there on his shoulder? What would he actually do?

‘What more do you want?’ he said out loud. ‘I’m sorry. I really am.’

Was it really all his fault? What didn’t he understand?

No life of her own but no need to take mine. So he’d got out in spite of all her wiles, taken the high road by Tring and Lily-hoo, gone to sea and sailed away, and one day the news had come that she’d got the tow rope out of the shed and strung herself up from the top of the garden gate, the one round the side by the beehives. She’d been there three days before the postman found her. After all, she hardly ever went into the village and no one ever called round. He’d had to come back and sort everything out, then he’d gone back to sea for another year or so and the house had been rented out to holiday people.

The dark quivered. Time for ghosts to walk, handless Jenny by the Dogwood Beck, her husband cut off her hands for being lazy. The woods, one great black mass, shifted and swelled.

Christ! Stop! Send yourself insane.

Go to bed. OK, you can leave the light on on the landing.

22

Then suddenly, days of heat that filtered their somnolence down to me under veil upon veil of brightening leaves. And I caught a cold, which I hate, particularly in glorious weather. The best thing to do was stay in my nest and sleep and drink hot water. If it gets worse, I thought, flu-ish, I’ll go to the old cat man and get some pills. He’ll have some. Or he’ll get me some from the village. He will. He likes to look after things. He doesn’t think he does, but he does. Lying here with all of my blankets wrapped round me, protected from the heat under the cool green, my sore eyes couldn’t read, so I just closed them and drifted away.

There’s a sound and the mind runs and strangeness is imminent. I can feel it and there’s nothing to be done but let it run its course like weather till it gives way to normality again somewhere down the line. Listen to