Into the Trees

by Robert Williams

  The lesson Raymond had learnt was the fewer words the better. He decided not to speak unless it was impossible not to, and this seemed to work the majority of the time, most people seemed happy with it. He realised that people liked to talk, liked to be heard, so it was a good arrangement, he was one less competitor. But it didn’t work with the family at number 13 who took a morbid fascination in Raymond and his quiet and awkwardness. The man cried out, ‘Raymond mate!’ whenever he saw him, showing him pictures of women in his newspaper, laughing when Raymond looked away. ‘But you would though, wouldn’t you? You’d have to, wouldn’t you, given the chance?’ he’d say, following Raymond down the street, staring at his paper. ‘I’d break it in two.’

  Keith was a nuisance but the daughters posed the real threat. One morning the knocking was so explosive, so insistent, that Raymond almost ran to the front door. He pulled the door open onto the two girls from number 13. They were smiling up at him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the chubbier one asked.

  Raymond shook his head. ‘I’m not doing anything,’ he said.

  ‘You had to have been doing something,’ the other one said. ‘Even if you were just sitting down, that was doing something.’

  ‘So what were you doing before you answered the door?’ The first one again.

  Raymond didn’t know what to say, and the girl cupped her hand to her sister’s ear and whispered. The sister swung her head away sharply and let out a huge squeal that filled the street and the sky. She stared at Raymond with a look of disgust. ‘Oh God, you weren’t, were you?’ she asked, in pretend disbelief.

  ‘We can hear you, you know. Through the wall,’ the first one said, and started to grunt in a low voice, rubbing her knees as she did. The second one squealed again, grabbed her sister by the shoulder and they ran off down the street together, shouting terrible words about Raymond. Raymond closed the door and leant back into it. What he had been doing was lying on his bed, staring at the wall to his left. It was as close to doing nothing as he could get. They were right about the walls though; you could hear everything. He heard their TV, their rows and fights, the sex. He could even hear them in the bathroom. They were so loud, so much of the time, and so close, it felt like they were living with Raymond. Sometimes he worried that the whole family was about to burst through the thin wall and crash on top of him.

  Raymond was stood in the kitchen the evening after the girls had knocked, gazing out at the back of the terraced houses that faced him, thinking about nothing, when the two girls jumped up from below his window, pummelled the glass and laughed at his shock. They clambered on his bin to escape, heaving themselves over the wall and into their own yard. They weren’t remotely quick about it, but Raymond just stood and watched them go. What would he do if he caught them? He began to find litter on his doormat, his bin tipped over in the backyard almost every day. He knew not to answer the front door any more, but it didn’t stop them knocking. And once they discovered his phone number a whole new world of fun opened up for them. But unlike the door, Raymond couldn’t ignore the phone. And eventually, one morning in April, the call came and there were no screeching girls on the other end of the line, just the beautifully blunt farmer asking when he could get there. Raymond was in the caravan later that afternoon, his house locked up, abandoned. Let them do their worst. Sheila tapped on his door that evening. Raymond stood bent-backed in the small doorway as she explained that Chapman needed hospital treatment and they would require Raymond full-time for a while. ‘Will that be alright?’ she asked anxiously, her eyes darting around Raymond’s large face. Raymond said that it was, and he hoped Chapman recovered well. He closed the caravan door quietly and his eyes filled quickly. He wiped the tears away but they returned in a second, and when his big shoulders started to shake he abandoned any resistance, lay down on the bed and wept. A week later Sheila drove Chapman away and Raymond carried out all his duties and Chapman’s too. The work was wonderful. Exhausting. The list that Chapman had left could never be completed; even if he never came back it would go on and on. But Raymond didn’t mind. Keep me going, he thought. Out here in Abbeystead, give me all the work you have.

  Eleven

  Keith Sullivan was a man who expected more from life. How he’d ended up broke, in a town like Etherton, with a wife he didn’t love and two angry flatfooted teenage daughters, who seemed to despise him, was a daily shock. His first disappointment had been his stature. He was a short man, short verging on little. With encouragement from his mother he had expected to be much taller than his finished height. ‘Your dad was a minnow until he was sixteen, then he shot up, there was no stopping him,’ she told him many times, as he languished behind the other boys in his class, only coming up to the shoulders of the average-heighted lads. But sixteen came and went and brought no growth spurt for Keith, no aching legs and gangling unsteady limbs to control. He was still pushing himself up on his toes in photographs, looking for shoes that made him taller without showing a heel (even the hint of a heel drew mocking comments and focused attention on his shortness, he quickly found). It wasn’t right – in Keith’s head he didn’t feel small and inconsequential; he felt like a man to be taken seriously, someone to be admired and envied. But then he would be queuing in a shop, staring at the shoulder blades of the woman in front of him, his nose almost tickled by the bottom of her ponytail. Or he would be pushing to get to a bar, stuck behind oversized men, their wide shoulders and heavy elbows barring his way. ‘Sorry pal,’ a large man might say, on noticing Keith, standing to one side, as if he was letting a cripple through. Keith finally gave up hope of any growth spurt at the age of twenty-one, and his mother finally learnt to be quiet about the late-flourishing height of his dead dad. She also learnt that Keith didn’t like the saying ‘Good things come in small packages’, realising, eventually, that his broody silences and evil glares often coincided with her cheerful making of that point.

  That he was only one good gene away from perfection frustrated Keith, gnawed away at him. He was a good-looking man. His hair was thick and dark and rested over a handsome face, and he dressed well – he had an eye for a good suit, a nice coat, a pair of quality shoes. He was particular about his clothes, particular about how they fitted. He couldn’t bear for anything he owned to be too big, believing it drew attention to his diminutive status, so he took time to source clothes that fitted his frame perfectly. Or when that wasn’t possible, which often it wasn’t, his mother would cut and sew and adjust until he was happy. He would stand in front of the mirror before he went out and see the ideal man staring back at him. Handsome, well groomed, confident. But as soon as he stepped out of the door it would be confirmed that despite his good looks and good clothes, he was a foot too short for the world in front of him.

  Keith disliked tall men and tall women equally. Big men made him feel daft; they made him queasy about himself. The dismissive glance of tall women pierced him for years. He could see that he was disregarded in the second it took to look him over. After years of knock-backs from taller women, and one occasion where the woman laughed when she realised Keith was, in fact, being serious with his offer, Keith reciprocated and ruled out tall women without a thought. Fuck them, he decided. Fuck them and their lanky legs and spindly arms, it would be like fucking a knitting needle anyway. He heard his mother’s voice telling him, ‘Good things come in small packages,’ and, at least where it came to women, he began to accept it as truth.

  The first thing Keith did on entering a room was to scan the horizon for heights before choosing where to place himself. He made a beeline for small men and women, and on the rare occasion he found a man shorter than himself he would stand next to him, to check that he was indeed the taller man, and a warm feeling would course through his body, making him feel like he’d drunk a good whisky by a warm fire on a cold night. The shorter man would find he had an ever so slightly taller shadow for the night.

  Keith believed his shortness held him back. He knew that his life w
ould have been different if he was only a few inches taller. He’d even read an article in the newspaper once, saying as much – tall men made more money and were more successful with women. Keith had often suspected that to be the case, but how cruel for someone to do the research and then print it out in black and white for the world to see. The report might have been cruel, but it was true – Keith had never had a good job, never kept one that long, and never earned much money. And the women he fell for never fell for him. Eventually, at twenty-eight, he married Rose Carpenter, who despite being only the same height as Keith and happy not to wear heels on a night out, was a disappointment to him. Rose had no money either and they settled down to a life of borderline poverty together. Eventually, after the bad jobs and daily frustrations took their toll, Keith couldn’t contain the anger that sweated in his blood any more. He became the man who walked out of the pub with a smile for everyone he’d met that night and a bully at home, seeking revenge for the dismal failures he’d been forced to endure. Rose’s small body absorbed these tantrums and rages over several years until she fought back one night, pulling a kitchen knife from a drawer. She pressed the point into Keith’s neck until it began to pierce the skin and threaten an artery. Keith begged forgiveness, promising new behaviour. Killed by a wife he didn’t particularly care for would be one humiliation too many.

  It was inevitable, Keith felt, when he turned to crime. But he wasn’t a very good criminal, his luck failed him quickly, and there were spells in prison. After his last stint inside Rose had agreed to take him back as long as he could find and keep a job. Keith had nowhere else to go in the world other than back to Rose, and reluctantly agreed to knuckle down. It was a friend of Rose’s who managed to get him the position at Etherton Cement Works. His past was acknowledged by his new boss, who had seen trouble and escaped bad times himself, and it was agreed that if he could last six months turning up every day, doing the work with no cause for concern, the job would be his permanently. Keith surrendered to the offer. He found that the pay wasn’t too bad, the work dirty and tiring but bearable. The family moved to Etherton and rented the small house on Granville Road. The house with a silent lumbering giant of a man next door. Keith couldn’t believe it when he saw the size of the man clumsying down the street, the final pisstake – the tallest man in town living next door to the shortest. But Keith had made a deal with Rose to try this time, to get through the six months, go permanent, maybe get a bit more money. And then, when he had a steady stream of employment under his belt, he would have a look to see what else there was, see if he could find something more appealing than Etherton Cement Works. Maybe then he could move to a bigger house with a smaller neighbour.

  Twelve

  Thomas and Ann were fast asleep the night the petrol tank exploded outside the house. It was a hot night in a long series of hot nights and the bedroom window was wide open. The noise tore into the room and burst open above the bed. Thomas was wrenched awake and on his feet, peering through the window in seconds. He could see flames in the road. His heart pushed to escape the boundaries of his chest and his hands shook.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Ann asked, following her husband to the window. But Thomas was already walking towards the bedroom door, adrenaline his motor.

  ‘I don’t think you should go outside, Thomas,’ Ann said sharply.

  ‘Somebody might be hurt,’ he replied, his unsteady foot already on the first stair.

  Thomas had seen flames from the bedroom window, and now he was on the road he could see clearly, a hundred yards away, the car, awash with fire, flames kicking and hissing, grabbing at the sky. Thomas ran forward, wondering why a car was burning here, knowing that if someone was inside there would be nothing he could do. He tried to prepare himself for a horrifying sight, came as close as the heat would allow and stared through the flames. He couldn’t see anyone in there. He checked the back seats. He was sure there was nobody in there. He stepped back from the car, his face roaring hot, and looked around for someone connected to the fire, to the car. The lane was empty. Thomas turned to the car again, his brain searching itself for answers. He was thinking how it didn’t make any sense when a large man burst out from the forest behind him shouting, ‘Trees! Trees!’

  Thomas nearly ran, but then he followed the direction of the man’s jabbing finger and understanding shook him. The man was pointing at the top of the flames, at how close they were to the lower branches of the forest’s dry trees.

  ‘Fire engine!’ the man shouted, just as Thomas turned to charge back to the house. As he ran he noticed how close the trees were to his home. Ann was right, they did surround the house, some branches almost touched the roof.

  Thomas phoned the Fire Brigade and when he returned to the front door Ann called down the stairs. He looked up to see her standing with the children on the landing. ‘It’s a car. I can’t see that anyone’s hurt,’ he said. ‘But stay inside.’ He didn’t mention the high flames and the dry trees. Thomas stepped out of the front door to find the man there.

  ‘Buckets?’ the man said. ‘Water?’

  Thomas swore at his uselessness and ran back to the kitchen. He filled two buckets as quickly as he could and handed one to the man. Thomas walked awkwardly, moving as fast as he could without water lapping onto the road, but the big man shot away, carrying the full bucket as if it was an empty basket. They came as close as possible to the car and flung their water into the flames. The fire ate the water and the men pulled back from the heat.

  ‘No point,’ the man said and Thomas nodded his agreement. They could both see that the flames weren’t quite as high any more anyway, that perhaps the danger had subsided.

  They stood, holding their empty buckets, staring at the flaming car, and then Thomas held out his hand and said, ‘Thomas Norton.’

  The man looked at the hand, shook it, and said, ‘Raymond Farren.’

  In the light at the front of the house Thomas had seen the man more clearly and recognised him; he sometimes passed him on the lane, herding cattle to and from fields.

  ‘You farm round here, don’t you?’ asked Thomas.

  Raymond pointed in the direction and said, ‘Nell Lane.’

  They stood back and watched the car burn on.

  Big wide lights eventually appeared on the road. The fire engine manoeuvred forward slowly, carefully, creeping its way through the dark, only just able to fit on the road. No siren marked its arrival, not even flashing lights. It pulled to a stop and the firemen clambered out, nobody in a rush at all, it seemed to Thomas.

  ‘Teenagers,’ a fireman told Thomas as his colleagues worked. ‘Steal a car from one of the towns, race it to the middle of nowhere, destroy it by driving like an idiot, burn it up to leave no trace. Get a lift back home by a mate. We probably passed them on the way out here.’

  ‘They come all the way out here?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘They’ve started to,’ the fireman said. ‘They can drive like idiots out here, no police around to stop them.’

  Thomas shook his head and walked back to the house. He found Raymond sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, Ann making more drinks for the firemen, Daniel and Harriet buzzing around it all.

  Thomas sat down with Raymond.

  ‘The fireman said they steal a car and race it all the way out here . . .’ he said, shaking his head.

  The next day the corpse of the car was pulled onto the back of a truck and driven away. On his way back from work Thomas slowed as he passed the spot the car had burned. There were patches of glass in the road, oil stains on the tarmac, a chunk of melted bumper by the trees. He walked through the front door and shouted, ‘Have you seen that? Out on the road? The mess?’

  Ann was upstairs in their bedroom. She couldn’t quite hear.

  ‘They took the car away this morning,’ she called back.

  ‘But the state they’ve left it in,’ Thomas shouted from the kitchen, his head under the sink, hunting out a bucket, a dust pan and scrubbing brush
, any cleaning material he could find. He went through the side door into the garage for his tall wooden brush. Harriet followed him and asked, ‘What are you doing, Daddy?’

  ‘I’m tidying the road up after last night, Harriet. I’m doing the job that should have been done by the men who collected the car.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ Harriet said, grabbing the bucket from him and skipping along behind her annoyed dad. But after ten minutes of road scrubbing she became bored and left Thomas to it. The stains on the tarmac were tricky, Thomas conceded, but he wanted them gone. He didn’t want to have to drive past such a mess every day, reminding him of the criminals who had visited, reminding him of the terror he’d felt, woken by an explosion. After twenty minutes on his hands and knees he’d scrubbed away most of the stains, but some dark patches remained, no matter how hard he worked. It would have to do for now, he decided; he needed a more powerful cleaning agent. He would ask at a local garage – they might be able to tell him what worked best on oil and petrol stains. Thomas glanced up and saw Ann outside the house, looking down the road to him. Still on his knees he waved a scrubbing brush at her. She paused for a moment before waving back and disappearing into the house.

  Thirteen

  Ann had fallen in love a year before she met Thomas. She was sixteen, it was summer, and she felt stifled. She spent long hours in her bedroom listening to albums she’d listened to hundreds of times, attempting to read novels she thought she should read, but nothing connected, none of it cut through the fug surrounding her. Her friends were moping around their own houses too, and every few days they would meet in one house and mope together. Everyone complained about being bored, but it wasn’t just boredom Ann felt, it was lifelessness. She felt stunted. She was sixteen, the world should finally have been opening up to her, but instead she felt trapped in a sealed pod with just enough air to keep her alive. Everything in her life was muffled – her quiet parents, the stuffy house, even her friends had begun to bore and frustrate her. But unlike her friends, who were prepared to wait out the long summer in dull houses until A levels began, Ann was impatient; she wanted something to happen now. One afternoon, with her mum upstairs taking her afternoon nap, she spent a silent hour staring at the ugly ornaments on the mantelpiece in the dining room and decided to act. She walked straight into the town and began asking for jobs. The Black Horse was the first pub she tried and the first place to offer her any work.