The Silent Forest

by Guy Sheppard

  He came to a halt on the narrow path between the quaint, overhanging houses and felt his confusion grow. Monks had once filed through here, carrying their dead to be buried. But it was all right, pursuer and dog must have gone another route.

  Next instant he felt his right shoulder twist and crumple under him like paper. He did not so much as freeze as feel the rest of the world cease to move all about him. Blackberry-coloured fingernails literally ringed his upper arms to lift him clean off his feet.

  He was a bag of bones in two claw-like hands.

  He was immobilised by this human anchor. He blinked hard in the mixture of sun and rain. Did he have a choice? Strong arms curled round him, not so much crushing as cradling, in case he fell. One vigorous shake saw his box of matches tip from his pocket.

  ‘You don’t want to be carrying those around with you any more,’ said Jo. ‘That’s a terrible idea.’

  ‘Let me go, damn you.’

  ‘Not until I know your name.’

  *

  ‘Don’t tell me they’re still talking?’

  John Curtis popped his head round a pillar and peered down the nave; he positively tried not to be seen as he pressed his cheek to bruised, red stonework – evidence of a great fire when the cathedral was consumed by flames hundreds years ago. He was appealing to Canon Bill Jones, the cathedral librarian, whom he had just overtaken on his way to the deanery.

  From where they were standing under the organ, they could observe woman and child deep in conversation on the tiled floor of the choir. Jo had removed her helmet and briefly placed it on the boy’s head. In so doing she revealed her curling, shoulder-length black bob. Being so tender, she looked every bit like family. Like mother and son.

  Bill raised a bushy grey eyebrow. The rest of his head was bald.

  ‘What do you expect? The boy won’t stop effing and blinding. It could still go either way.’

  ‘She might at least have left him where she found him, outside the cathedral close.’

  Bill eyed him somewhat harshly as he hugged a heavy, leather-bound book entitled “Memoir of Abbot Froucester” – its original manuscript was one of the cathedral’s great treasures.

  ‘You told her to deal with it, so that’s what she’s doing.’

  John huffed and puffed and grew redder in the face.

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? Mrs Wheeler is usually so stand-offish and touchy.’

  ‘Isn’t she just. I blame the war. Try asking her to make the tea – she loses her rag something rotten. Hits the roof. Tells me to do it. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Never would have thought it possible, I must admit.’

  He meant the helmet, not the tea. It was the sort of game he had played with his landlady’s sons in London when he had first shown them how to wear gas masks. They’d been about ten, too. Before the bomb struck.

  ‘What do you suppose they’re doing now?’ asked Bill, fidgeting.

  ‘Hard to say. I can’t see that far. How about you?’

  ‘Looks like she’s getting pen and paper out of her bag.’

  ‘Really? What for?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing with that smelly old book you’re carrying?’

  ‘Dean Drew wants it. Hasn’t he told you? He’s writing his new history of the cathedral.’

  ‘God help us all.’

  TWO

  Sam stared admiringly at the red and gold fountain pen in his hand. Called a Waterman Commando, it was clearly American, like that half-eaten chocolate bar that filled his pocket. It certainly bore no resemblance to the crude pen and inkwell he used at school. It was almost too sleek and smooth for his hand to hold.

  He drew his knees together to support his borrowed notebook, then pressed the pen’s gleaming gold nib to its page. It glided like a dream across the paper and there was absolutely no scratching and blotting. He had no choice but to draw something, now that he had been compelled to sit in the choir’s canopied stalls – he felt inspired to do it by the picture carved into the chair-cum-perch of the hinged, dark wooden seat right next to him. It showed two wild pigs eating acorns under an oak tree. He could not take his eyes off the boars’ bristly backs and very sharp tusks that protruded from their greedy mouths.

  The one-eared woman would have him not only show her why he was there but how he was feeling.

  The instant he started, he waited to see in her gaunt, troubled face what he fully expected.

  He expected condescension. What else? But what did it matter? There was little reason to believe she would ever understand. Why should she? He secretly ached to rewind the moment. If he could go back five minutes, he would, because he feared what might happen next.

  But it was too late: he had already freed something from its cage. He was giving it sufficient flesh and bone to make it half real. His picture reawakened the dangerous thing that had to be kept under lock and key. He was already shaking like a leaf and needed to pee – he was feeling sick to the pit of his stomach.

  Very soon he felt sure he’d drawn a good likeness, in black ink. Then he went to tear it to pieces. But Jo leaned sideways from her stall and pinned the drawing to his knee with the ball of her hand. She turned it full circle with a quick twist of her sharp fingernails and dragged it back her way. He watched her strained, pale features for a reaction.

  ‘Go ahead, Miss, have a good laugh. Everyone thinks I’m a bit dippy because I’m so different.’

  Except she was being deadly serious. Wrinkles on her brow turned to deep furrows. Was that a tear he saw in her eye? He literally had no idea.

  ‘I won’t laugh at you, Sam.’

  Clearly she had never thought to see anything quite like it. From him.

  ‘I’ve got to go now, Miss.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Back to the Forest.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you and I talk about this?’

  ‘Not if I can help it. Bye.’

  ‘So what’s changed?’

  But Sam was off like a frightened rabbit. He ran out of the choir past an astonished John Curtis and Bill Jones and sprinted straight down the centre of the nave – he ran the same way he ran out of school midway through a lesson. At the South Porch he glanced behind him. Was he making the biggest mistake of his life, by surrendering to abject panic?

  Might be for all he knew.

  He couldn’t wholly explain it to himself. No one could. They had no idea.

  He didn’t have time to think like that right now.

  Jo went to chase after him. She tore the drawing from her notebook and waved the page urgently in the air. She dodged from one soaring Norman archway to the next in disbelieving horror, but the boy vanished in the mixture of light and shadow, dissolved as if into the stone’s deepest mysteries. She should never have taken her eye off him. Damn it.

  ‘Sam! Come back! It’s all right. No one will hurt you.’

  Her shouts reverberated to the grubby, radiating arches of the vaulted roof high above her. To the heavens. The echo of her voice lasted a full ten seconds in the cathedral’s unique acoustics, but Sam knew it couldn’t be helped – he was already heading for the nearby Gloucester (GWR) railway station until it was time for his mother to pick him up in her car. Where else? For was that not where he’d told her he would be as usual, watching those green express engines with the fancy brass names such as ‘Ivanhoe’, ‘Knight of the Thistle’ or ‘Lady of the Lake’?

  Or he could take the long footbridge that led to the other, LMS railway station where he could see bright red engines as they steamed south to Bristol or north to Birmingham. Except nearly all the overworked, tired-looking locomotives were painted in drab wartime black – their cab windows were plated over so that no German bomber could see the glow of their fires at night and the coaches they hauled were absolutely filthy.

  He had lit the candles to pray for great strength in order to do what he needed to d
o – he’d asked God to be the next Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, but the truth was that he was neither.

  Now someone else knew it, too.

  The ferocious reality.

  He might never have done it, had it not been for that weird, medieval misericord of two pigs in the stall right next to him.

  The resemblance had been uncanny.

  What were the chances of that?

  Fire watcher Jo Wheeler had told him that whenever her baby daughter had been upset she had drawn her a picture to make her smile. Why didn’t he draw her one, to show her how he felt now? That’s why she had sat him down beside her in a ‘mercy seat’ in the choir. She’d looked so sad when she said it that he’d decided to take up the offer. He hadn’t wanted to draw anything. But he had. He’d shocked himself and her. On his piece of paper was his best attempt to draw something as accurately as possible. As a result, he felt laid bare, ugly, exposed.

  He hated her for persuading him do it.

  But she hadn’t laughed.

  That meant a great deal.

  Best of all, she had let him go.

  THREE

  It was a lovely, bright winter’s morning, but she hardly thought so. No matter how much Jo tilted her felt hat forward at a jaunty angle against the wind, its flimsy veil could not stop her eyes filling with tears as she, Bella and John Curtis skidded across wet cobbles in College Street. She really should get herself those new mittens she kept promising herself. That icy blast had to come from the east, so chilly did it leave her inside her one good coat. If only she’d thought to wear her bottle green cardigan made from recycled wool.

  ‘Bella! What did I just tell you? Don’t run off like that, do you hear me?’

  Bella shook her egg-shaped skull and stopped dead outside a menswear shop. It was closed for repairs and its door was locked. She knew the routine. Frost-covered pieces of cardboard and a grubby blanket lay along the shop’s narrow step, while from the untidy bundle issued a snort and a snore. She pawed at the bundle quite roughly – smelt dubious smells. Some things were to be expected, she supposed, when a man spent the night on a frozen pavement in Gloucester’s city centre.

  That’s not to say they had a minute to lose. Not right now. She had a free sausage to collect from the grill room in the Cadena Café in Eastgate Street.

  Jo kicked the sleeper, too.

  ‘Rise and shine, Noah.’

  A mop of black hair was visible on the pillow of damp newspaper.

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘No fish paste today, I’m afraid. You’ll have to make do with a cheese muffin.’

  Noah sat upright and scratched his armpit.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eleven-thirty.’

  ‘Considerate as always, Mrs Wheeler.’

  ‘Can’t stop. I’m late as it is.’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Sorry. What was I thinking? Noah, this is John Curtis. He helps to spot enemy planes with me from the cathedral tower.’

  ‘Delighted, I’m sure.’

  ‘The pleasure is all mine,’ said John, tapping the rim of his grey felt hat before he carefully skirted the pile of belongings at his feet. He was in favour of helping the unfortunate, but this was the first he’d heard about Jo’s so-called friend.

  What was he doing here?

  Was he ill?

  Everyone had their breaking point.

  Noah had somehow reached his?

  Yes. Could be.

  ‘Any Fire Guard of Jo’s is a mate of mine,’ said Noah, biting his muffin. Strictly speaking, it should have been eaten hot but he wasn’t fussy.

  ‘I do keep watch with her on the roof of the cathedral,’ said John hastily, ‘but I’m no Fire Guard. I’m filling in for someone. Really, I’m the new verger.’

  ‘That a fact?’

  Bella wrinkled her nose and licked her sharp teeth. While it was never a dog’s place to comment on its owner’s sexual proclivities, it did seem to her that John had protested a little too loudly when he declared that he and Jo were not exactly comrades-in-arms. As if he only accompanied her to the top of the cathedral out of the goodness of his heart, on account of somebody else’s unfortunate absence!

  ‘How are things with you today?’ asked Jo. ‘Any more trouble?’

  Noah pulled a face. Rubbed his bearded chin.

  ‘You were right, some geezer on the city council wants people like me off the streets by Christmas. Anyone found sleeping rough faces being rounded up by the local police and CMP. You’d think I was a deserter, or something.’

  Jo pressed her finger to her pillar box red lips and looked concerned.

  ‘Never forget you have rights, too. I’ll help you any way I can.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, I have prospects.’

  ‘Prospects?’

  ‘I can’t believe it, either.’

  This was not exactly a boast, but that was the gist of it. He might have just won a lot of money on the horses or something.

  ‘All the more reason to look after your health?’ said Jo.

  ‘As I say, don’t mind me, Mrs Wheeler, I’ve got me a whole new future.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Isn’t it a miracle?’

  ‘Care to explain?’

  ‘I’d rather not. It’s all hush hush.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘How shall I put it? It’s been a while since my luck changed.’

  Bella laid a paw firmly on Noah’s knee. A rough sleeper like him brought back fraught memories of her own time on the streets. Granted, she had been lucky to survive the bomb that killed her first owners, but sitting on a pavement in Bristol in all weathers had left an ache in her bones. You had to live it to feel it. Bare skin was a mass of tiny shivers where her coat refused to grow back in bald patches scorched by fire. It was so embarrassing – she looked like she had the mange.

  She whined impatiently.

  They’d be right back.

  That sausage would be getting cold.

  ‘You still not going to the men’s hostel, then?’ said Jo.

  Noah’s dilated pupils shone a rich jade colour that could be truly disconcerting.

  ‘You know I don’t feel safe in those places.’

  ‘They’re predicting the coldest Christmas for thirty years.’

  ‘At least on the street we can look out for each other. In the hostels you never know who’s going to rob or attack you. You get some right nutters in there.’

  ‘That cough of yours isn’t going away.’

  ‘That’s what you said yesterday.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve had worse.’

  ‘Well, all right then. But if you find you need help in a hurry, you know where to find me.’

  Jo jerked her thumb at the great grey tower that loomed over the rooftops; she pointed to the cathedral’s four spiky pinnacles as if it were home.

  Noah cleared the rattle in his throat.

  ‘Nice of you to stop by.’

  ‘As I said, winter’s come early this year. They’re predicting heavy snow in the next few days.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Bella barked. Well, it was not her decision.

  *

  ‘Who on earth is the smelly vagrant, Jo?’ asked John, as soon as they turned the corner.

  ‘Noah’s Spitfire came down in a dog fight during the London Blitz. At the time there was a problem with the planes’ fuel pipes that iced up and cracked at high altitudes. His fighter stalled and he was forced to bale out. Broke both legs. Lost his nerve. Doctors said he would never walk again. He has proved them wrong, but he can’t sit in a plane’s cockpit anymore and misses flying. For a while now he’s had a bad drink problem, ever since his wife left him on account of his constant nightmares and dark moods. Really he just needs a bit of help and understanding, but some people find beggars lik
e him too intimidating. They don’t consider him to be really destitute and ill. They say he goes home to a nice house to sleep every evening. Actually, he never even asks them for anything, he just sits there.’

  ‘Since when do you give a damn?’

  ‘Because sometimes there’s no going back when you reach a real low.’

  ‘You sound as if you would know.’

  Didn’t she, though.

  But knowing wasn’t good enough.

  Not at present.

  She had to maintain her belief in action because she’d lost virtually everything, too.

  John shook his head and quickened his pace; he clutched his double-breasted tweed overcoat at his throat against the creeping cold.

  ‘Your good deed won’t do him any good. I’m surprised at your naivety.’

  Jo called Bella to heel. A rattily horse-drawn cart, as well as a convoy of US army lorries in the streets made her nervous. But not as nervous as John’s brusque matter-of-factness made her. Nobody knew anything until they had ‘gone under’ both mentally and physically. It wasn’t pretty. Sometimes there was not nearly enough booze in this world to bring you oblivion.

  ‘Who the hell am I to judge, anyway? My own family has cast me off except for the small allowance that my father secretly cables me once a month now that I’m pregnant again. As for my mother, I might as well be dead to her already. Her last tirade went something like this, “You look like a tart in those silk stockings and we all know what you’ve been doing to get them – I’m surprised you’re not chewing that awful gum like the rest of the girls, now you’re a ‘Yankee bag’ just like them – I hope a bomb falls on you – why can’t you show more backbone, you’ve brought disgrace to us all. Your father can’t even show his face at the golf club.” Need I go on?’