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

it’s not for me, you know – all this caring’ – speaking the word with careful emphasis – ‘I think it’s just to make her feel good.’

‘No, but—’

She laughed. ‘She doesn’t even know me. You know what will happen? They’ll make me go back to that flat. I wish you could see it. It’s OK. There’s a BetFred and a carpet shop and a taxi place. If you go out of the door and start walking, it’s just nothing every way you go. All just nothing. No one really wants to be there. No one loves it. It’s just a place to be, it’s just—’

She broke off.

‘I won’t stick it, you know. It’s not my place.’

‘It’s the winter,’ he said. ‘That’s the real problem. Oh sure, you’re not doing any harm but when winter comes you can’t be living in here. It’s mad. You ever been up around here in the winter? It’s crazy. You’d freeze to death. OK, maybe if this was the South of France or something—’

‘You can live in cold temperatures,’ she said, ‘people do. Lots of people do. You’ve just got to be prepared.’

He snorted. He was smoking too now and a blue haze hung in the air.

‘I wish I was clever,’ she said. ‘I was never clever. Then I’d know what to do.’

‘Who told you that?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘That. That you’re not clever.’

‘No one. Me. I don’t know. I don’t think you realise,’ she said. ‘There’ll be forms to fill in.’

He laughed at the way she said it, as if she’d said there’ll be war and pestilence and famine.

‘I can’t do it. All this’ – pointing into the air and swivelling her hand round and round – ‘all this official stuff. All these people. Having to—’

It was just too awful. She broke off.

‘Oh, someone’ll help you with that,’ he said.

‘And Harriet. You don’t know what she’s like. She makes me feel about’ – with her free hand indicating something less than tiny – ‘this high. She’s like a steamroller.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said. He could understand this. Families.

‘What do you know about it? You don’t know a thing about it.’

‘OK then.’

He would have stood up if there’d been room enough.

‘Best thing is if you come back now before it gets any darker. Sleep on the sofa like before. You can have a bath if you like. You’ll want to clean up a bit before you see your daughter. They’ll be round in the morning, first thing. Best if you look – you know. Best if you’re there all ready. I don’t want to have to traipse out here again.’

He didn’t think she’d come, but she got a few things together wordlessly, slung a bag over her shoulder and reached for her torch.

‘Lead on,’ she said, and followed his wide back through the wood, the beam of his own torch lighting the tracks ahead. It had stopped raining but everything still sang. She didn’t know why she was going. The idea of seeing Harriet again filled her with a harrowing mixture of wild excitement and terror. Little Harry with her gap tooth. What will I do? What say? She’ll give me that look, as if the whole world is my fault.

He stopped.

‘What?’ she said.

He held up his arm to say hush.

The beam showed wrinkled bark and rampant ivy, weirdly detailed, nothing moving. Outside the beam everything was black.

He looked up.

Under and over the gentle dripping of leaves, there was a sound from above, quite far and seeming to overarch the forest like a lower sky. It was sharp and crisp and had the effect of being inside the ear as well as up there. To Dan it sounded like a big bird passing over, something wild and massive like a great auk or albatross or some other rare and difficult thing that should not be in the air above his wood. To Lorna it was a voice coming through countless layers of gauze, calling and wanting to be heard, incoherent and appealing, as if she was God and the voice some poor lost supplicant on a planet on the far side of several universes. That’s the way things are for me now, she thought. That’s what I hear.

‘Going to be clear tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Dan,’ she said, feeling suddenly as if he was a friend, a weird feeling.

‘What?’

It was cold.

‘Nothing.’

After a moment when there was no more sound than the rippling of the forest sucking in water, he walked on and she followed his broad lumbering shadow out of the wood.

31

He gave me a couple of blankets and a cup of tea. The fire was still burning.

His hair had grown free and tufted round his face, giving him a wild, sternly leonine look.

‘Have you got a shower?’ I asked.

‘No. Just a bath.’

‘Oh. I’ll have a bath in the morning. What time are they coming?’

‘I don’t know. First thing.’

‘Jesus Christ. Have I got to get up early?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’

‘Oh, you’ll be OK.’

Of course, he had no idea.

‘So then,’ he said, ‘have you got everything?’

‘Yes.’ I started making up my bed on the settee. There was a little wooden dog on the table that wasn’t there before.

‘Did you make that?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s nice,’ I said.

He said nothing.

‘You’re a good lad, Dan,’ I said as he trudged up the stairs, but I don’t think he heard me.

How could I sleep?

I went a-hunting. I’m good at silence. That room where everything you touch covers another, older thing. Excavation. I turned the light on. The photograph drawers were open and they were all shoved in a heap on top of the sideboard. I grabbed a big handful, took them back to the fireside with me and drank my tea, warming my feet on the fender as I looked at them, all these faded jaded greys, all the dead people smiling from the other side. And him young, a boy. You wouldn’t know him. Same eyes though. Self-conscious. Oh what a shame, where all that