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

‘Oh no no,’ he said. ‘Not then.’

We sat in silence for a while and I wondered about who’d lived here, and why he was on his own.

‘Must be nice,’ I said.

He looked at me but said nothing.

‘The honey. Your own honey. Must be nice.’

He stumped out his cigarette and lit another. His eyes narrowed.

‘So when did all the cats come?’

A long pause, then, ‘It was empty for a time,’ he said.

‘The house,’ he said.

‘They colonised.’

After that he said nothing and smoked meditatively.

‘This woman,’ I said, ‘who is she?’

He raised his eyes and sighed as if I was a real nuisance. ‘She’s just this woman, you know – just this woman who likes to help with things – you know – just like you know – like if she thinks someone needs help—’

‘I don’t need help,’ I said.

He shrugged and said, ‘You say what you want.’

‘What does she know?’ I said. ‘I don’t want someone coming telling me I can’t live there. I’m not doing any harm, it’s ridiculous.’

I might as well not have been there. Reasonably enough, he wanted me gone.

‘Fucking busybodies!’ I drained the mug. ‘Can’t leave anyone alone.’ Next thing I know there’s stupid tears running out of my eyes.

‘Fucking hell,’ he whispered, got the whisky bottle from the shelf and plonked it down in front of me. I grabbed it and poured some into the coffee dregs.

‘Bloody ridiculous!’ I wiped my face with my hands, downed the whisky and poured some more. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I just don’t care any more.’

He filled up the kettle, his back to me. ‘Is it so terrible to you,’ he said, ‘that somebody might actually be wanting to help?’

‘I just don’t want it. I just don’t want her coming round.’ And for good measure, like a child: ‘I hate her.’

‘Good for you,’ he said unpleasantly, plugging in the kettle before sitting down, pouring himself a big drink and knocking it back fast. ‘You don’t know the woman,’ he said. ‘How can you hate her?’

So I felt ashamed and hated him instead.

‘Can I have some more?’ I said.

‘No.’ I heard people in the woods, very far away, high voices. So vague they could have been birds, or a distant machine. I got lost for a while in following them in their eerie fluctuations till it seemed they were threads mingling and dispersing, an auditory manifestation of flocking starlings. He was talking all the time but I wasn’t taking anything in.

He was saying something:

‘So what’s your story?’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘Everyone’s got one.’

‘OK then, what’s yours?’

He hesitated then said, ‘None of your business,’ with an embarrassed sneer.

‘Did you always live on your own like this? Or was there, you know, like were you ever married or anything? Have you got children?’

‘No!’ As if the idea was ridiculous, and he turned his face away and looked at the far wall. The kettle boiled and turned itself off but he ignored it.

‘So did you grow up here?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I did.’

‘With your mum and dad?’

‘No. Just my mother. And my grandmother.’

‘I have two daughters,’ I said, and he nodded as if he already knew.

Something hit the floor in the room above. He jumped like a nervous dog. There was one peculiar silent moment as we both looked at the ceiling.

‘Cats,’ he said.

We sat listening. There was something tight and strained about the air, that subtle change I well knew. I knew because of that dreadful tingle and the urge to run outside that something was upstairs, but I faced it down and stayed put, and there we both were, frozen.

There was a bang on the landing, one loud dark thud.

‘Christ’s sake!’ he said, leapt up and dashed upstairs with a look of outrage on his face. I ran outside and stood in the yard looking at the house. No way was I going back in there. I’d get back in the woods quick. I expected a face in one of the windows above but there was nothing. Then he appeared at the back door. He stood for a minute then came out and walked towards me. ‘Nothing there,’ he said.

‘Cats,’ I said.

‘Yeah, cats.’

Like me, he turned to face the house and we stood looking for a while at the blank windows and the open door.

‘I heard someone on the stairs,’ he said.

‘Just now?’

‘Couple of weeks ago.’

‘Someone,’ I said.

He shrugged and walked back inside, and after a moment I followed. The feeling was still there in the house but far less so. He was in the kitchen. ‘I’m going now,’ I said from the doorway. He was rinsing a mug at the sink, looking out of the window.

‘Yesterday, upon the stair,’ I said, ‘I met a man who wasn’t there.’

‘Shut up,’ he said.

‘He wasn’t there again today, I really wish he’d go away. It’s a poem,’ I said.

‘Is it now.’

‘Who do you think it was?’ I asked.

‘Probably my mother,’ he said, casually tossing a grimy dishcloth onto the draining board. A chill went through me. Other people’s ghosts are so much scarier than mine. I went out into the hall and looked around, at the dirty yellow walls and the open doors, up the wide stairs with the dusty handsome bannister. When I looked back he was leaning in the kitchen doorway watching me.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘she’s here too, is she?’

He scowled and turned away, as if he’d wanted me not to believe him and resented me for making it seem more real.

‘You’re a grumpy old sod, aren’t you?’ I said.

He ignored this and went back into the kitchen.

‘What’s your name?’ I said, following.

‘Dan,’ he replied. ‘I know yours.’

That got me. ‘How?’

His back was to me.

‘How?’

‘Never mind.’

That was childish.

‘I didn’t tell you, did I?’

‘You must have done.’

He sounded guilty.

‘You’ve been in my purse,’ I said.

‘You come in my house,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a right to know who you are.’

‘I come in your house! You made me come in your house!’

The monolithic stupidity of the back of his head, his round shoulders, his stolid silence.

‘Tell