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

her way backwards onto Johnny’s lap with her spoon dripping onto his jeans. Maurice supine in the deckchair, one arm behind his head of close-cropped colourless hair, holding forth vertically in his sing-song Cockney voice about Americanisation and advertising and media collusion, how there was nothing to choose between the two main parties now, Tory and Tory. We told them about the ruins and Maurice said he wouldn’t mind seeing the Long Wights some day. Johnny and Lily had a big row, stupid and pointless as ever, just before he left. She threw his books on the floor. The Society of the Spectacle, its pages bent. Adorno, Deleuze. Weird afternoon: it can’t have happened this way but it’s how I remember it. I was standing near the back door. Johnny set down the spoon, bent down and tickled the back of the tortoise’s neck and its head started to rise. He chuckled. ‘Look at this!’ he said. It was standing perfectly still, its claws splayed out on the grass. The more he tickled, the higher the head rose and the longer grew the neck, longer and thinner, up and up, one inch, two, three, still going up. The creature’s face was outraged. Still Johnny chuckled and tickled. Longer and thinner, longer and thinner, and the face hideous, agonised.

It made me feel sick.

‘Stop! Stop!’ I said. ‘It’s horrible! Stop it!’

But it went on rising till it was level with the lower edge of the table top. Then – and I remember this in slow motion – its mouth opened very wide but no sound came out.

Johnny stopped tickling. Slowly the head went down.

‘Yes,’ said Maurice, ‘amazing creatures, aren’t they?’ His blue eyes, guarded and steady, looking out on the world with vague distaste, crooked-teeth smile. His teeth were disgusting. You could always see the whitish-yellow crud building up between them. It toddled away towards the hedge, slowly, pointlessly, pushing its way through the grass, the pink-tipped daisies and the clover.

‘Are you all right, Mum?’ asked Lily. ‘You look funny.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. I felt hot and had to sit down.

And then the bees came; Maurice yelling, ‘Woah! Woah! Fuck me!’ and ran in shouting, ‘Close the windows! Quick! Close everything! A big swarm of bees!’ And we ran about wildly, closing windows and doors, and stood in the kitchen and watched as the swarm came down, magnificent, coming down over what remained of our strawberry ice cream and our coffee, and over the tortoise still crawling somewhere in the overgrown lawn. I never saw a tornado or a waterspout but I’m sure the swarm had something of that quality. It was wild and dark and deafening and overcame the walls and fixtures of the small garden.

‘Toby!’ screamed Harriet.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘he’ll go in under his shell.’

A thick black cloud whirling madly on the other side of the glass.

‘Can they get in?’ Lily, soft-voiced, materialising at my shoulder.

‘No!’

But none of us were sure.

Johnny stood behind me with his arms round me. You could cuddle for England, I used to say. You should be one of those people that charges money for hugs. We’d be rich. When the swarm cloud lifted and whirled away, the farm where we went for our eggs and milk was once more visible, its red roof above the hedges where bats would soon be flitting, and the tortoise was gone. It was as if the bees had carried it away with them, though none of us could recall seeing it go. Toby the tortoise was never seen again. We looked everywhere for him. Lily and Harriet cried. I had a little cry too. It had been such a nice day, and then it hadn’t.

After a while we gave up and came back in, and Lily flung herself down on the sofa and turned on the TV, and sat there with swollen eyes. A crier from the day she was born. Anger, joy, sadness, whatever, she cried. She produced a bar of chocolate from somewhere and took a big bite.

‘You’ll get fat,’ Maurice said. Johnny picked up her red-yellow-I-am-crap-screaming shiny magazine from the ugly retro coffee table and showed it to Maurice. ‘The girl that taste forgot,’ he said.

‘Fuck off,’ she said, baring her big teeth.

I saw them off.

‘The Wights,’ I said. ‘They’re worth seeing.’

After they’d gone I smoked a joint all to myself as the bats began to swoop and the girls went searching for poor Toby once more, calling his name as if he’d recognise it and think: Oh! Must go home! But soon the dark came down for real and the search had to be abandoned.

I was awake most of the night worrying about that poor tortoise. Those things are supposed to be slow, but he must have shifted. I fell asleep and had a dream that the tree tops outside were moving in a strange slow deliberate way that made me scared, and when I woke up I lay staring at the dark and listening to the small stream that ran by the side of the house, on across the field and off under the road to dissipate who knows where.

*

Fuckers are in my head, arguing –

You’re nothing if not consistent, love.

She hated the way he called her love in just that tone.

And you, in her best bored voice, are such a patronising shit.

I’d never have said a thing like that to my dad in a million years. He’d have walloped the shit out of me.

… these magazines she gets, seven million adverts to every fatuous article.

So?

I’m not being horrible, Lily, I would just love to see you read something decent, for your own sake, not mine.

Maurice butting his big nose in: What are you reading, Lily?

None of your business. I’m not reading all that boring crap if that’s what you mean.

Pet Sematary, Johnny says.

What’s wrong with that?

Read what you want. I’m only trying to help you.

Fuck off.

And Maurice, who’d read everything of literary, philosophical and intellectual importance and probably nothing at