Wildwood

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘In the car, right.’ He made it sound just as wicked. Standing on the churchyard grass with his hands in the pockets of his beautifully cut suit, he was clearly relishing the thought of my lawbreaking. Under his black brows there was a complicit glint in his eyes. ‘So, what sort of woman keeps a knife in her coat pocket? International assassin, perhaps?’ He looked pointedly at the thick black strap in my hand. ‘Rubber fetishist?’

  I could feel the blush warming my face. ‘I’m an arborist,’ I said, folding the clasp knife safely away. I touched the trunk of the young rowan I’d been tending to. ‘This tree’s been staked for so many years that the strap’s cutting into the bark and choking it.’ I poked the rotten base of the tree stake with my foot. If I’d been wearing my steel-capped boots like I did for work I’d have given it a solid kick and knocked the piece of wood away, but in strappy open-toed shoes suitable for an August wedding I had to be a little more cautious. ‘Anyway, by now the tree’s supporting the stake, not the other way round. So I was just cutting it free.’

  ‘I see.’ He was still smiling, which I found disconcerting. Men that good-looking didn’t usually smile at me.

  Not that many men I’d met were quite that handsome, I corrected myself mentally, taking a moment to look at him properly. And usually I was wearing combat trousers, a reflective waistcoat and a safety helmet when I did meet them.

  ‘You’re a tree surgeon.’

  There was a hint of doubt in his tone, which made me bristle. I knew what he was seeing when he looked at me, though he kept his gaze just focused enough on my face to be polite: a tall young woman in a fuchsia-pink summer frock which showed off her tan and clashed just a little with the jacket, betraying a lack of expertise when choosing clothes. A big mouth. A silk flower in my hair that stood in for the wedding hat I’d refused to buy, and a rather amateurish attempt at make-up. It was not my normal look and I was horribly certain that the effect was less than flattering. The dress hid my toned thighs and the jacket hid the muscles of my upper arms – the long flat muscles of a keen swimmer or climber and in my case both – and left me looking simply rangy. ‘I’m a landscape gardener,’ I said, drawing myself up taller, ‘with a specialisation in trees.’ Damn it, I wasn’t going to let this man embarrass me. ‘I work in a National Trust garden in Cumbria.’

  ‘Sounds lovely.’

  ‘I think so.’ He really was unusually handsome; it was something about the eyes, the way those black lashes contrasted with the blue of his irises so that they flashed every time he moved. His hair was dark too, growing thick and a little unruly. It added up to what I thought of as Irish looks. And I was willing to bet a suit like his cost more than my monthly wage. Maybe several times more.

  ‘And even at a wedding you just can’t resist a little tree work?’

  ‘Well, you know.’ I shrugged. The way I see it, looking after trees is more than a job. ‘Obviously the churchwardens here don’t know what to do with them.’

  ‘They knew enough to plant a rowan near the main door.’ He plucked a leaf from a low branch and rolled it negligently. ‘It’s supposed to protect buildings from lightning and fire and witches.’ He smiled. ‘Doesn’t work though, not any more. Alas, the Church must resort to insurance like the rest of us.’

  ‘You know your trees then,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘I know their virtues.’

  It was such a strange phraseology that I was temporarily at a loss. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘they’ve been taking forever with the photos …’ I waved towards the church where the bride and groom were still posing. ‘I had to find something to do before I passed out from boredom.’

  ‘They’ve certainly been taking their time. You’re a friend of the bride?’

  ‘Emma’s my cousin. We grew up together.’ I smiled ruefully, not about to admit that we’d spent most of our childhood fighting. We were really quite fond of each other now that I lived on the other side of the country. ‘You were in Chester’s half of the church, I expect?’

  ‘Yes. I met him through work.’ Not, ‘He’s a friend,’ I noted.

  ‘He seems a nice guy.’

  ‘He does. Your arboricultural work …’ He trailed off with a gesture that conveyed that he was fishing for my name.

  ‘Avril Shearing.’

  ‘Avril … It means “boar fighter”, did you know?’

  ‘Really? I thought it was French for “April.” Friends have sometimes told me I look a bit French; it’s my Mediterranean complexion and the burnt-honey colour of my hair. So far as I knew I wasn’t of Gallic ancestry, though family legend had it that Great-grandmother had been naughty with several visiting GIs during the War, so the exact composition of the Shearing bloodline was an unknown quantity. The women in my family have never been conventional.

  ‘It’s a common misapprehension.’

  ‘Boar fighter?’ I grinned a little. ‘I like that. What language?’

  ‘Old English. Language of the heathen Saxon.’ There was a twist to his smile now.

  ‘Right …’

  ‘You’re fully qualified?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Do you have a business card?’

  This time I laughed out loud. I didn’t move in the sort of circles where people swapped cards. ‘No – what for?’

  ‘Well, in case I need to contact you again.’

  This brought me up short. I stayed smiling, not sure if he was hitting on me. From his expression he could be, easily, but I didn’t quite believe it. Men like him did not go for women like me. ‘Contact me?’

  ‘To deal with my trees.’

  Again I hesitated. ‘Sorry, I’ve got a full-time job. I don’t do contract work.’

  ‘You misunderstand. I’m in the process of buying some property, and it’s quite heavily wooded. I may be looking for someone to manage it for me, on a full-time basis.’

  Several trains of thought ran through my head simultaneously, most of them doubtful, some outright cynical. ‘OK,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘Don’t worry about the card.’ He turned away from me as an usher called ‘Michael!’ from the church porch. ‘I can find you if necessary.’

  ‘Find me?’ I was starting to feel dazed.

  ‘Information is what I deal in. Don’t fret, you’ll be quite easy to get hold of.’ He started back up the slope.

  ‘I’m sorry … You haven’t …’ I stuttered at his retreating figure, and he paused to flash me a coruscating smile of enquiry that simultaneously made me want to grab him and to give him a slap. ‘What’s your name?’ I finished weakly.

  ‘Michael Deverick.’ He said it as if he expected me to know exactly who that was, and strode off without another word.

  Nor, I noted, had he offered me his business card.

  ‘You could have just asked for my phone number,’ I muttered under my breath. But I had the distinct feeling that he was not the sort of man who bothered to ask for anything.

  Taking an ambling route between the gravestones I returned to the wedding party, which was still waiting around for the photographer to finish. Emma seemed tireless as she alternated posing and chivvying others into position, but Chester’s smile was beginning to look forced and most of the guests had broken off into weary little knots of gossip, wondering how long it would be before they’d get a glass of champagne or something to eat. A number of those lucky enough not to be related to the bridal couple had already left to make their way to the reception at the Waters Hotel. I was jumped by Chester’s sister Miranda, who worked in an academic publishing house and had distinguished herself at the hen party by removing the stripper’s jockstrap with her teeth. I liked her a lot.

  ‘Avril! How are you?’

  ‘Hungry.’

  ‘I could kill for a drink,’ Miranda admitted. ‘You know they’re going to do this all over again when we get to the hotel?’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said in quiet despair. ‘I know Emma hasn’t eaten anything in six months, but she should have mercy on the
rest of us. Why has it got to be such a marathon?’

  ‘Weddings always are. That’s why I want to get hitched in the Maldives, on a beach, me in a white bikini and a veil, and all the guests can go swimming while they wait.’

  ‘I’ll get married in a hot-air balloon,’ I said. ‘And we’ll bungee jump after saying our vows. That should cut things nice and short.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Miranda’s smirk grew teasing. ‘And was that Michael Deverick I saw you talking to? Isn’t he gorgeous?’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Oh yes. Chester started off working for him when he first went into the City.’

  ‘He doesn’t look that old.’

  ‘He isn’t old, just talented. He’s made an absolute killing on the stock market – he’s worth a not-very-small fortune. They say he’s got an almost uncanny ability to predict the markets.’

  ‘You mean he’s a crook?’

  ‘Avril!’ She smacked her lips. ‘So what were you two talking about?’

  ‘Trees.’ It was the only thing I was prepared to admit to. In retrospect, I was fairly sure the man had been mocking me.

  ‘Oh come on! Was he checking you out?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not his type, Miranda.’

  ‘But I bet he’s yours! Couldn’t you just eat him up?’

  The phrase brought rather stirring pictures to mind and I couldn’t help giggling. Admittedly I’d already wondered whether his cock was of the same superior quality as the suit it was kept in. ‘Don’t start! Blokes like that aren’t interested in chicks with chainsaws. His type is …’ I looked around for inspiration and found it walking across the grass in teetering heels: no one I knew, but then there were a lot of guests at this wedding. The blonde wore a slashed lime-coloured dress that made the most of her slender frame and her hair was swept up into an elegant twist to display the line of her neck. Her sculpted collarbones were visible and her shoulders were so fine that they came to points. ‘Her: the anorexic one. Two grapefruit on a skeleton.’

  Miranda, curvy and brunette like her brother, sighed in sympathy. ‘She is a very pretty skeleton.’

  ‘Lovely. I expect she lives on white wine and appetite suppressants. That’s the sort that men with money want.’

  As if to prove me right Michael Deverick appeared round the corner of the church, his path converging with the blonde’s, and as he held out his arm she took his elbow and draped herself gratefully over him.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘See? She’s too weak to stand up unaided.’

  ‘Jealous?’ Miranda asked slyly.

  ‘No!’

  Miranda pulled a face. ‘I bloody am.’

  By the end of the evening I was a little the worse for wear. I’d danced for hours and I’d done the rounds of the relatives and eaten at the buffet too, so by the time the bar closed I was still steady on my feet, but perhaps not as wary as I should have been. My first clash with Simon, earlier in the evening, should have been a warning of what was to come.

  Simon was an old boyfriend from back when I lived in the village. In those days he’d been merely the sporting darling of the parish and was the lad to whom I’d eagerly surrendered my virginity in the bowling alley at the back of the pub. Nowadays, big, blond and beefy, he looked exactly like what he was: a county cricketer. We’d parted badly, and he’s always been a bit snide whenever I’ve met him since.

  Simon had cornered me as I was going with Miranda to the toilets. As we turned into the downstairs corridor we found Simon there, lounging against an occasional table with a drink in his hand.

  ‘Avril!’ he said brightly. His face was ruddy from the spirits and his bow tie hung loose around his neck. ‘Nice dress.’

  I stopped. It was a nice dress, now that I’d taken the jacket off. It had spaghetti straps at the shoulder and was made of soft, rather clingy cotton. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘’Scuse,’ Miranda said, making a bolt for the ladies’.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d be in dress,’ he continued. ‘Thought it’d be dungarees or something. For, you know, your gardening.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, some of us are advanced enough to have a change of clothes, Simon. And I even washed my hands after work.’

  He put his hand on my waist. I should have pulled away right then but I’d had enough alcohol to take the edge off my caution. And it wasn’t as if I really disliked Simon after all those years, or as though he were physically unattractive. ‘Nice dress,’ he repeated, looking down my front. ‘But looks as if you’re a little cold.’

  He was referring to the way my nipples were sticking out through the fabric, hard little points of fuchsia pink. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I giggled.

  ‘Remember that time,’ he said, dropping his voice to a murmur, ‘we went out in the snow looking for squirrels?’

  I did, and my body did too, my flesh warming instantly to the memory, which was why I didn’t stop him when he put his hand to my left breast and brushed the nipple very gently with his fingertips. My skin tightened, shivering.

  We’d gone out across his father’s fields from spinney to spinney, looking for squirrels on the pretext that they ate pheasant eggs and chicks. Simon had carried an air rifle. At the time I had no particular grudge against grey squirrels and didn’t match his eagerness for the hunt – they weren’t my pheasants – although ironically nowadays I know the damage they can do stripping tree bark and I’m far less sentimental. I remember the spots of blood bright against the snow under the bare black trees, like the start of a fairy tale: Skin as white as snow … I remember how Simon had laughed at the disgusted faces I’d pulled when he flipped over the little corpses with his toe. I’d got so grumpy that he’d broken off, still laughing, and backed me against a sycamore sapling to kiss me into a better mood. As I melted into compliance he’d slipped out of my embrace and round the back of the tree, drawing my arms out behind me. I didn’t struggle as he lashed my wrists with his leather belt, pinning me to the tree, though I’d laughed and scolded him. When he’d finished trussing me he’d returned to face me and slowly unzipped my coat.

  ‘Simon!’ I’d yelped, but he’d ignored my protests and peeled open my fleece liner and my cardigan and finally, button by button, the blouse beneath to reveal my bra. It was a still day, but it was the middle of winter and there’d been an inch of snow on the ground. ‘Simon, it’s cold!’ I’d protested, wriggling against my bonds but weak with laughter.

  ‘So I see.’ He’d eased my breasts gently from their lacy cups, exposing them to the chill air. My nipples were as hard and cold as bullets, but they’d radiated fire through my body as he pinched them. ‘Bet I can get them colder, though.’

  He’d bent to scoop some snow and I’d realised then how exposed I was. The farm was private land and there shouldn’t have been anybody wandering around, but the spinney provided no cover from prying eyes should anyone have been out checking on the stock. My tits were there for the entire world to see. When Simon rose with a lump of compacted snow in either hand I’d squealed, for fear of the cold and for shame, but there’d been nothing I could do to stop him rubbing each pinky-brown nipple with ice until I was gasping.

  ‘Someone might see!’ I’d moaned, rocking my head back against the trunk, my tits jiggling helplessly. The snow was melting from the heat of my flesh and the ice-water ran down my breasts and ribs.

  ‘Good,’ he’d said brutally. ‘I’d like that. You’re beautiful.’ And so saying he’d wiped his last melting clots of snow down my skin and opened the front of my jeans, kneeling to drag them down over my bum cheeks, knickers and all in one swoop. Then he’d thrust his face into my bush and begun to eat me out in great hot licks. ‘Nothing cold down here!’ was his one comment.

  Standing in that hotel corridor I remembered the sharp bite of the winter on my breasts and the icy slipperiness of the sycamore bark on my buttocks as Simon’s face ground into my crotch, the chill on my naked thighs contrasting with the boiling of my sex, the gusts of his wa
rm breath through my pubes, the way the juices running down the inside of my legs felt hot enough to scald me.

  It’s got smooth, algae-covered bark, has young sycamore. It’s a bugger to climb and leaves you covered in a green stain when you’ve done it. I’d learnt that for the first time that day with Simon, when I went home with a green arse. It was the first thing I learnt about trees.

  The experience also left me with a permanent kink for sex in the open air.

  I was so hypnotised by memory and by the whisper of his fingers over my breast that I wasn’t thinking what I was doing, there in the hotel. Until the moment he pressed up against me.

  ‘God, you’ve got lovely little tits,’ he breathed.

  I could feel his erection through his trousers, butting me. With a sharp intake of breath I thrust his hand off. ‘Stop it, Simon!’

  ‘I heard you split up with wossisname, that surfer bloke.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So come on, Av,’ he said, grabbing my arse.

  I gave him a shove and he sat back hard on the corridor table, skewing the little tablecloth and sending the vase of dried flowers rocking. ‘I always knew you’d turn into a dyke,’ he growled.

  ‘Oh grow up!’ I snapped and flounced off into the ladies’. By the time I came out with Miranda and we headed back to the wedding marquee there was no sign of him.

  Chester’s friends, mostly City types, had long since faded from the scene by the time I headed across the hotel lawn towards Reception and my single room. Only the old country crowd were still resisting every polite attempt by the hotel staff to make them vacate the marquee and let them clean up or, if they’d drifted outside in the warm evening, were now talking and laughing under the stars. There was a group of them hanging out around the fountain. This sat in the centre of the lawn and it wasn’t playing, but it was big enough to be a natural focal point and as I strolled past I could see that several people were sitting on the rim of the lower basin, paddling their feet in the water. Light was provided by submerged lamps and by the moon. From the crowd someone hailed me by name. I turned and saw that it was Simon, dishevelled and clinging to a bottle of champagne.