by Xan Brooks
“Brothers? Sisters?”
He shakes his head impatiently. “Just me, mum and dad.”
“Dad,” echoes the Scarecrow.
“My new dad,” he concedes. “He teaches me football as well.”
Another croak. “Which do you like best? The football or the drawing?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Both.”
When the child turns to leave, the Scarecrow clears his throat. He calls, “You keep on practicing. You’re going to be good.”
The boy accepts this compliment with a complacent shrug; he does not need to be reassured of his talent. He swaggers away across the green. It is not easy to swagger when you’re clutching papers to your chest and the wind has picked up, but his valiant attempt is very nearly convincing. He joins his mother on the step and she pulls the door closed at their backs.
The Scarecrow shivers. Lucy begins to feel guilty about accepting his coat. And yet even here, so close to the moment of their parting, aspects of the man continue to confuse her. Because when at last he decides to stand up from the bench, he appears restored to full strength; warm as fresh toast and positively cheerful again.
“Lucy,” he says, as though surprised by her presence. “I’m such a fool. This village isn’t right. I’ve brought us to the wrong one.”
“I don’t get it. Did you forget where you lived?”
The Scarecrow is laughing. “Apparently. It’s been that long.”
So they drive out of the village and the trees pile up on either side of the lane. She can see dark clots of mistletoe in their bare upper boughs, but she is careful not to gawp at the scenery because she is finding the driving a good deal harder today. The lane is too narrow for Coach’s old lorry. Each time she encounters an incoming motor, she braces herself for the scrape of metal on metal and only relaxes her grip on the wheel when the danger has passed.
Up ahead they find another settlement, more bucolic than the last – and beyond that another, rustic and forlorn. She enquires whether the Scarecrow’s village is this one, or whether it’s that one, but he tells her it’s not and that she should simply keep going.
At length, as though making conversation, he says, “That poor woman at the house didn’t know me at all.”
“Did you recognise her then? The boy’s mum?”
He snorts. “I think she might have been frightened of me.”
The further she drives, the more concerned she becomes. By now they have travelled some distance from the town when he assured her that he lived only about three miles outside. It occurs to her that they must therefore not be driving towards his home but away from it.
“Scarecrow,” she says. “Bram. Where do you think we are going?”
He says, “Christ, I don’t know. This way’s good enough.”
“Yes, all right,” Lucy says. “But where are you sending me now?”
The Scarecrow draws a breath and rearranges himself on the seat. He turns his head to the side so as to watch the trees streaming by. “Didn’t you tell me you wanted to visit the sea?” he says, “Well then, that sounds all right. Why don’t we do that?”
30
In the summer of 1904 he had taken his bike from the shed and cycled ten miles south to Brackenbury Chase. Once there he stashed the machine behind a hedge and proceeded through the woods on foot. He had his tent in a kit bag, along with some water and food. He reckoned that if he rationed wisely, he could last three days out of doors.
The boy knew nothing of Brackenbury Chase beyond what he had heard – and even this was surely wrong because the Chase gave rise to tall tales and rumours. It was said that it extended for mile after mile. That it was a hideout for brigands; that wolves and bears were still at large in its dark interior. He did not believe in the wolves or the bears, but he was at pains to tread quietly in case he alerted a brigand.
While he didn’t make it through to the far side of the Chase, he ventured far enough to believe that it was true that these woods remained largely unnoticed and that whoever came in was, in all likelihood, not wanting to be found. The northern fringe had crawled out to reclaim a series of abandoned stone houses, covering their roofs with damp moss and filling their gardens with nettles. Then a half-mile in, he found kicked-over campfires, wooden palettes and a number of makeshift canvas shelters. The shelters looked as though they might have stood there for some time and conceivably they had been abandoned too. But lying in his tent on the second night, he had heard from a distance the raised lusty voices of uncouth men and had prayed that the voices would not come any closer. Then, for a few shameful hours, he had shed his scepticism and accepted that even the most lurid stories he had heard were true after all: the Chase was a wilderness of bandits and bears. And what would he discover if he pressed on through the woods? A destitute army of cannibals, or some crumbling jungle temple where monkeys swung from the vines? At that stage of his young life, the Chase was the richest, wildest land he had encountered. Wherever she goes in the future, and whatever odd things she experiences there, the girl will find herself measuring them all against Epping Forest. He feels the same way about Brackenbury Chase.
Cribbs Farm sits deserted. The house is boarded and the nameplate has rusted. But it seems that some neighbouring landowner persists in maintaining a stake in these premises, because there are caterpillar tracks in the yard and bales of fresh hay stacked in the iron-roofed barn. It feels like the last outpost of English civilisation, with nothing at its back but the endless, rolling Chase, thick with ivy and nettles, tilting towards winter.
They have lunched at a country pub, the Horse and Harrow, and bought bread and cheese for the onward journey, assuming that the Scarecrow has an onward journey in mind. Lucy rather doubts that he does. They have both come so far only to tumble at the last hurdle with their destination in sight.
The cottage, she thinks. The boy with his sketches. The woman at the gate. “Bram,” she says. But he will not meet her eye.
The Maudslay ticks and creaks as the engine cools. By now Coach will have noted its absence, although the missing lorry may well count for little when set against the loss of everything else. Tomorrow, perhaps, police will stop them on the road. That might be for the best. It would at least provide a resolution.
Until then, here they are – on the edge of the woods at dejected Cribbs Farm. The Scarecrow explains that he camped around here once before when he was not many years younger than she is today, and she replies that she likes it, partly because she has an urge to be kind and partly because it is not entirely untrue. She adds, “It’s certainly peaceful. It makes a nice change from the house.”
“If we’re feeling the cold I can build us a bonfire.”
“Bloody hell, please don’t.” She has had her fill of fires.
“Fair enough, I don’t blame you. We can keep warm in the barn.”
So they climb through the hay and hunker down like livestock. And the Scarecrow is right: the straw provides enough insulation that Lucy’s teeth stop chattering. She winds the topcoat tightly about her torso and legs. If they have to spend the night here she might be passably comfortable. After that she supposes they will return to the world. One thing about civilisation, it keeps people warm.
From this vantage, high up in the barn, they can look out past the farmhouse and the lane at the fallow fields of the west, all of them apparently given over to crows. She recalls that there is an ominous name for a group of crows, like a murder or a slaughter, and she wonders why this is so – what the birds have done in the past to deserve such a name. A murder, a slaughter, a killing of crows. A butchery of starlings. A massacre of hens.
“Do you think there might be rats in this barn?”
“It’s very possible. Every farm in the land has its share of vermin.”
“Ugh,” she says. “Rats.”
“I keep forgetting, you’re a city gi
rl.”
“But I do like the countryside. I like the space and the quiet.”
And yet it transpires that even this far afield they are not completely alone. Shortly before dusk her ears pick up the whine of a motor and she spies a sunlit shape in the sky that cannot be a bird.
“Look,” she exclaims, her senses suddenly stirred. “Look over there. What an incredible thing.”
The aeroplane wanders in the sky – a mile away, maybe more. The Scarecrow judges it to be a two-seater biplane and guesses there must be a small airfield nearby. He says he has half a mind to investigate. Who needs Coach’s old truck when there’s a biplane to hand? They could ambush the pilot and hijack his machine. That way they could complete this curious journey in style.
“Right then, let’s do it. Steal the aeroplane and fly south.”
“I’d love to,” he replies. “More than that, Lucy, I think we must.” And sitting amid the straw of the barn, he explains to the girl exactly how it would be. The luckless pilot caught napping; the plane bouncing away up the runway before he quite realises it’s gone. Lieutenant Bram Connors of 70 Squadron at the controls and Lucy Marsh of north London tucked in right behind. The propellers rotating and the rudders engaged and then one bump, two bumps, and the craft leaves the ground.
“And then that’s it,” she says. “It’s just us and the sky.”
She has always imagined herself being weightless, like a goose feather borne aloft by warm currents but the Scarecrow explains that that is not it at all. The plane is fashioned from plywood and the engine is ferocious and the petrol stink terrific. You feel every straining yard of ascent in the pit of your stomach and through your solar-plexus and the experience, if anything, is all the more exciting for that. They rise up from the fields, turning laboriously, like a pack-mule tackling the hairpin bends of a mountain path, and below she can make out the patchwork of farmland, the thatched roof of a house and the loose silver coil of a river she had not even noticed before. The starboard wing points at Brackenbury Chase, but the woods slide inconsequentially by, after which they ride out over a gentle kingdom of meadows and church towers and rolled cricket lawns. At this lofty altitude the wind is altogether more fierce. It makes the plane pitch and yaw, so that she clutches the chassis and braces her knees. The propellers have blurred to a tranquil haze. They resemble millponds, blissfully unmoved by the tumult all around.
The plane comes streaming across Dorset as the October day crawls off to the west and it is already full dark by the time they find a place to land on the coast. The sea, the sea! The girl catches a glimpse of its sweep during their spiralling descent. She can smell ripe, salty ocean even over the fumes.
Now down they come, with a bang and a bounce. The noise of the engine is such that people run gawping from their homes. Several frenzied children pursue the plane as it taxies. And when she clambers down she discovers that her knees have unhinged and her legs gone to jelly and she might have collapsed had the Scarecrow not grabbed her. He cries, “Lucy, we’re here. The very lip of the world.” And peering over his shoulder she watches the blades of the propeller separate and revolve and finally come to a halt, which means that their journey together is over and that they can now part as friends.
She says, “Do you even think you could do it, though? Pilot an aeroplane with one arm?”
The Scarecrow grins and shakes his head.
She sighs. “It probably wouldn’t do any good if you could. I mean, it wouldn’t make up for all the rest of it, would it?”
“No,” says the Scarecrow. “Not by a long chalk.”
The sun has gone down. The temperature drops. Seeking added shelter, they reorder the bales into a fortification as high as her shoulder. The Scarecrow unbuckles his mask and lays it on one side. From this angle, he might almost pass for unblemished. He could walk out on the road and nobody would notice anything different about him unless they stepped close and looked hard. Something rustles the straw far away in the corner. She hopes it’s the wind. She has a horror of rats.
She draws the book from his pocket so that he can read aloud for a spell. But the light has dwindled so much, he can’t even find the page they were on. This reminds him of a joke. “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
“That’s quite good. Did you make it up?”
“Not me, I’m afraid. It’s an old music-hall thing.” He closes the book and sets about dividing the remains of the bread and cheese.
Beyond the barn’s exposed rear flank, Brackenbury Chase registers as a thick black band. The Scarecrow never did discover how far the woodland extended. Most likely he never ventured more than a mile inside because he grew too scared to continue and was too young, back then, to know that the world contains worse dangers than a few lonely men that have set themselves apart from their neighbours. He says he was told that this particular forest is vast and untracked and that its trails fade away or circle back on themselves and that even the most experienced orienteer can be lost within minutes. But Lucy has her doubts. She wonders if such places exist in England anymore; there can’t be a patch of earth that has not had someone’s boot put upon it. She has heard that the population has dipped but is now rebounding again. Every day that goes by, thousands of fresh babies are born. It’s not the woods that are endless, it’s this arrival of babies. They keep exploding out into the light, squawking and hungry and casting about for a spare spot of ground where they can plant their pink feet.
She remembers what the man at the petrol station had said. She says, “If you come back in ten years there’ll probably be a town over there.”
“You might be right. Come back when you’re grown and tell me how much it has changed.”
She nods.
He says, “Imagine that, Lucy, 1933. Or come back later still and bring your family with you. Come back in 1953. You’ll be a middle-aged woman.”
“Will I?” Would she? The prospect is exhausting. “Why yes,” she says, yawning. “I suppose I will.”
He has propped his elbow on the bale. He is peering out at the black line of trees. Presently he laughs, mostly to himself. He says, “This is the strangest sensation. I feel as if I’ve just woken up. So thanks for that, Lucy. I think it’s been mostly your doing.”
“That’s all right,” she murmurs and a few heartbeats later sleep comes to collect her, and the sleep carries with it a disconcerting dream of Grantwood. She fancies she navigates the stone steps from the Italian sunken garden and picks her way through the corridors until she reaches the drawing room with its blazing orange hearth. At first she believes that the chamber is deserted and yet, on lifting each of the velvet wall hangings in turn, she discovers that each one is concealing an occupant of the house. Behind the folds, against the wall, stand Arthur Elms and Sweetpea Long, Rupert Fortnum-Hyde and Clarissa. Their faces give no sign that they have just been disturbed. They gaze at her and through her. They stand still as waxworks, or those queer plaster gods. “Found you!” she cries. “Monster hunt!” But when she releases her grip the folds drop back into place. The figures are hidden from view once again, if they ever existed at all.
In the half-light of dawn, with the topcoat wrapped around her and the Scarecrow’s mask in her hand, she climbs down from the bales and proceeds out into the yard. Her leg is pulsing and sore, the cut is inflamed, and so she circles the farmhouse several times until she is satisfied that the muscle has loosened. Mist rises from the field and she exhales in a cloud. Her very movement is thunder; her shoes scrape and scuff. But there is nobody else up. Even the crows are at rest.
Heavens, it’s cold. She needs to find better clothes. She tries to remember whether they consumed the last of the bread the evening before and decides that most likely they did after all. She is chilled and hungry. She’s put herself in a right sorry state.
She crosses the field, shoes sq
uelching now, and emerges from the mist on the outer edge of the Chase. Wind plays in the trees’ bony upper boughs. The forest floor thuds to a percussion of dead branches. Fifty yards in she makes herself stop and draw breath. She calls his name again and again. “Bram! Bram! Bram!” If it is true what he heard, this woodland rolls out for mile upon mile.
Back at the yard, the mist is already thinning. But Jesus Christ, it is still so bloody cold. She tugs open the door and the feel of the seat against her calves makes her start and then shudder. On dropping the mask into the glove compartment, she gathers the money to count. They have not spent a great deal; there is a little shy of three pounds remaining. A few miles out she might find a cafe to buy breakfast and maybe a shop that stocks winter clothes.
The engine needs cranking, she truly hopes it will start. Her breath fogs the cab and salt tears blur her eyes. She says, “Well hello, old Maudslay. It’s only you and me now.”
31
Tap, tap, tap.
She doesn’t hear the door at first. Or rather, she hears it quite well but elects to pay the knocking no mind. The frame has a tendency to rattle whenever a vehicle goes by and she is vaguely aware that one has been at large; some unfamiliar-sounding lorry on the front lane by the green. On top of that, the Simons’ dog is in a state of uproar again. The creature has got itself tangled in its chain. Its bark has taken on a distinctly hysterical note.
Tap, tap, tap. This time she hears it – and in the hearing supposes that she was half-right all along. Because whoever is at the door must be related to the lorry. It stands to reason that an unfamiliar vehicle will signal the approach of a stranger; she knows the sounds of the other engines that wander through the village, as reliable as clockwork mice. The curate’s Austin coughs like a consumptive. Oliver Smith’s Ford sings a quavering song of unoiled springs, while John Cooper’s lorry arrives as a festive sack of nuts and bolts; Santa’s iron sledge. You can detect its approach from half a mile away.
