Into the Trees

by Robert Williams

  The belly was bad enough but to Keith’s horror it wasn’t only his midriff that was collecting the fat, it was attacking his face too. When he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror he could see the extra flesh had spread to his cheeks and neck. Jowly, was the word. His once handsome face was turning into a pale, paunchy mess.

  Finally, and by far the biggest worry, was the money. As satisfyingly large as the amount had been in the beginning, every day it grew relentlessly smaller. And as the money shrank, his future shrank with it and resentment began to seep back into his heart. Even before he was halfway through the money he was starting to fret. His mood would turn ugly quickly and the girls knew to stay out of his way and Rose became wary again, watching what she said and monitoring Keith’s arms and legs for any sign of a threat. The nights in the pubs banished his worry underneath drink for a few hours, but the mornings brought the hangover hand in hand with the dismal realisation that one day his money would run out.

  Six

  Thomas and Ann met Dr Barbour in a pale green room at the back of the health centre in Maltham. The doctor spoke in a low, controlled voice and poured them water from a jug with a steady hand. They were there to discuss the children, the possible consequences of the night. When they were introduced and settled, Dr Barbour crossed her legs and said, ‘I have an understanding of what happened from our initial conversation, but why don’t we begin by you talking me through it, from the start?’ Thomas wondered whether she was supposed to cross her legs. He remembered a course work had sent him on a couple of years before. Crossed legs conveyed defensiveness and hostility, didn’t they? Or maybe that was just crossed arms, he couldn’t quite remember. By the time he’d considered this Ann had begun to retell the facts of the night. She spoke plainly, without emotion or drama. The more she spoke the more anxious Thomas grew. She wasn’t conveying the true horror of it all. At one point he interrupted and said, ‘They had guns.’

  ‘They said they had guns,’ Ann told the woman. ‘We didn’t actually see them.’

  ‘You could see them,’ Thomas said. ‘You could see the outline.’

  When Ann was coming to the end of her account, without mentioning the violence, he jumped in again. ‘They hit Ann, in front of the children. Right in the face.’ He held his hand over his eye to show where his wife had been attacked.

  Dr Barbour listened carefully throughout, nodding and encouraging Ann to continue with her account, welcoming Thomas’s interruptions when he made them. Thomas was surprised she didn’t make notes.

  When Ann finished Dr Barbour uncrossed her legs and started to speak. Her advice was simple common sense – thinking they would have arrived at themselves, but hearing a professional speaking, in her steady and smooth voice, was soothing and reassuring and Thomas and Ann were happy to listen.

  ‘Talk to your children about what happened,’ she said. ‘Don’t gloss over it, get it out there, something you talk about as a family. Things fester and grow if they are kept in the dark, if they are not spoken about. Talk to them about what the men did, why they did it, and why it was wrong. Tell them that adults don’t always behave as they should, that they sometimes do bad things and have to be punished, just like children. Ask them if they were scared, if they are still scared now.’

  ‘What do we say if they want to know if we were scared?’ Ann asked. A question from his wife that surprised Thomas.

  ‘You tell them the truth. It’s a shock to children to find out that their parents aren’t invincible. It might be a lesson they learn sooner than their school friends, but it won’t hurt them. It’s important to reassure them too. Tell them how rarely something like this happens. How have they been? Tell me how they’ve reacted since it happened.’

  ‘Harriet has wet the bed a few times,’ Ann said, ‘and Daniel has nightmares that have made him frightened to go to sleep.’

  Dr Barbour nodded. ‘These are natural reactions to what has happened,’ she said. ‘You should tell them that, and let them know that there is nothing wrong with how they are feeling. Their bodies are processing stress, that’s all.’

  ‘What do we say if they ask if it will happen again?’ Thomas asked. That was the question he needed the answer to, and not just for the children. He turned down the television so he could listen for any noise and at night, in bed, he strained his ears for the slightest twinge of sound.

  ‘You’ve increased security?’ Dr Barbour asked.

  ‘A camera and an alarm,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Well, point that out to them,’ she said. ‘Tell them the changes that have been made, explain how they make you safer, and statistically it’s very unlikely that something like this will ever happen to you again. You can tell them that as the truth.’

  ‘And we’ve told them not to answer the door,’ Thomas said.

  Dr Barbour smiled at Thomas. ‘I would suggest you urge your children to show caution, but you don’t want them afraid of a knock at the door.’

  ‘But that’s how they got in.’

  ‘Still, how many times have you had a knock at the door in your life and it was someone meaning to cause you harm?’

  ‘I understand that, but all it needs is for it to be that one time.’

  ‘But if you apply that approach logically, that every person you don’t know is a potential threat, you will never leave the house again, never let anyone into your house.’

  Thomas scratched his face. ‘Logic tends to go out of the window after something like this,’ he said.

  ‘It’s natural to feel like that. But my point is that reasoned thinking can help redress the balance, can help you get back to some sort of normality and, eventually, peace. Catastrophes happen very rarely. You get up, live your life and go to bed on the vast majority of days. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life guarding against something that might never materialise.’

  ‘But it’s already materialised.’

  ‘And statistically, it is very unlikely to materialise again.’

  ‘But you hear, don’t you, on the news. Burglars go back to houses they’ve burgled before. They wait until new items are bought on insurance and they clear it out again. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to us? They got away with a hell of a lot of money very easily. Why wouldn’t they try it again? Or another lot? They hear about it and want a go too?’ Thomas had become agitated. His voice was raised, he was sitting forward in his chair.

  ‘It’s natural to have these fears,’ Dr Barbour said. ‘And fear can be a good thing. It means we don’t walk too close to the cliff edge, we don’t drive too fast on a wet road. And already it has made you take action; you’ve increased security. But if you give fear too much rein it goes from being useful to controlling. I understand you are worried about what happened to you and your family happening again, of course you are, but you don’t want it to control your life from now on. You don’t want to live life with the constant belief that something terrible is about to happen.’

  ‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice,’ said Thomas.

  ‘It does, actually. Just rarely. That’s my point.’

  The room fell quiet. Ann allowed the quiet to settle and then spoke.

  ‘Should the children come and see you?’

  ‘I will leave that up to you. I’m happy to see them but you know your children better than anyone. Talk to them and see what you think. Any worries, any concerns, bring them to me. Everyone is different, children too. One child might brush something like this off reasonably easily, whilst another will be hugely affected, sometimes for a long time. Keep an eye on them and keep in touch with me. Believe it or not your children are very lucky. This is a hard thing to happen to a family, but you clearly love your children and want to support them. I can’t always say that about everyone I see.’

  Thomas was surprised to hear the word ‘love’ come from the mouth of the woman, surprised to hear it spoken in such an ugly room. But when you got down to the bare bones of it, when you considered everything,
that was what it came down to. That simple, short, soft word. It didn’t sound anything like it felt to Thomas right then.

  ‘She made a lot of sense,’ Ann said on the drive home.

  Thomas didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure that she had made much sense at all. Words spoken in a safe room were nothing. He wanted a steel wall around the house. He wanted men in watchtowers, with guns.

  Seven

  Raymond lay on the bed in the caravan, staring up at the same cracks and scuffs in the roof he’d stared at for years. He hadn’t seen Thomas for weeks and wasn’t sure if he would ever see him again. It was a new type of sadness that was holding him and Raymond had only just realised that it was probably loneliness. And now, looking back, it surprised him how easily he’d grown accustomed to friendship, how quickly he’d embraced it after years of guarding himself against the world of people. But Tuesday and Thursday nights had given him contact with the world, rescued him from the miserable mutterings of Chapman for a while, stolen him away from his own predictable thoughts and worryings. Raymond had visited Thomas’s house twice again, knocking at the door and standing back in the road both times, but nobody answered the door and Raymond didn’t think he could go to the house and knock for a third time.

  *

  Thomas had been an easy man to talk to but at first Raymond played safe and kept the burden of conversation away from himself by asking Thomas questions. He’d even thought up questions beforehand, in case Thomas ran out of things to say and the focus turned on him. But as the weeks passed and Raymond began to relax in Thomas’s company he found himself talking about the farm and the house in Etherton, his jobs on the sites in the early days and, eventually, his mother. He was shocked when he found himself describing her last months. He told Thomas things he didn’t usually allow himself to think about.

  ‘They would get her into a chair during the day when they could, and she would sit there with her head down, and then suddenly she would scream, “I’m falling! I’m falling!” and you would try and hold her hand and tell her she was alright, she was safe, she wasn’t falling, but it wouldn’t make any difference.’

  Raymond told Thomas about one of the most upsetting incidents, something he’d never told anyone. It happened when his mother was still living at home. He’d left her alone in the morning to go to work, but she’d let herself out of the house, still in her dressing gown, and set off down the street, heading towards town. At the level crossing her walking stick had jammed into the rail line and in her attempts to pull it free she fell over. People tried to help but she was lying on the track, bleeding from her head, still gripping the walking stick, refusing to let go, and a train was due. The police and an ambulance were called, the train was delayed and his mother was taken to hospital. Word got to Raymond and he rushed to be with her. He found her asleep in a small room by herself and sat down on a chair in the corner. Eventually a doctor came in. ‘She’s confused,’ the doctor told Raymond. ‘Don’t be alarmed when she wakes.’ Raymond dozed off himself, waking at clattering in the corridor. When he looked over to his mother he could see she was awake too and staring back at him. It was early evening and in the half-light of the hospital room her eyes looked like black pennies.

  ‘I never liked you,’ she said. ‘Never trust that one, I thought, the second I saw you. Never liked you one bit.’ Her weak voice shook as she spoke and she didn’t take her eyes off him.

  ‘It’s me, Mother,’ he said, ‘Raymond.’

  He stood up, to prove himself, to move closer, to reassure her that she was mistaken, but as soon as he rose from the chair she screamed like the devil was coming for her. A nurse rushed in and shooed Raymond out of the room.

  ‘I see this a lot,’ the nurse said to Raymond, later. ‘When they are as confused as this they often turn on loved ones. It’s the cruellest thing, but you mustn’t let it upset you. It’s not you she’s talking to and it’s not really her any more saying the words.’

  Raymond said he understood and thanked the nurse, but he couldn’t forget the words and the fierce glare of the dark eyes. They’d always been so close, he thought they’d always been so close. Could the illness be dragging the truth out of her the way drink sometimes did with drunks? Raymond didn’t think so, most of the time he didn’t think so, but in his darkest hours he wondered.

  After Raymond finished Thomas was silent for a while and then he stopped walking and said, ‘That must have been awful.’

  Raymond nodded his head. It had been awful. The last few months of her life, every day was awful in some way.

  On a Thursday night, weeks after he’d waved at Thomas in the upstairs window, Raymond found himself stood outside the Tillotsons. The door was open wide and he could hear the chatter from inside and smell the cigarettes and beer. Raymond shifted on his feet and stared at the pub. He couldn’t pretend that he’d been on a walk and just happened to end up at the village – after his tea he’d washed and changed into his good clothes and followed the roads directly to where he was now stood. He hadn’t allowed himself to think too much about what he was doing, letting instinct take over, but when he found himself outside the pub he realised he couldn’t go in. It was impossible. He listened to the noise for a few more seconds and then turned and headed away up the road, back to the covering trees.

  Eight

  Ann spoke to the children. She took them for a walk along the river and asked them questions about the night. Harriet held her hand and called the intruders ‘the bad men’, and said it in a scolding voice, as if they had stolen an apple each. She told Ann she thought the security camera was a good idea.

  ‘Not if they wear masks again. What’s the point in it then?’ Daniel said, and tried to trip his sister up. Daniel spent most of his time looking for stones and sticks to throw into the river, moaning about having to be on the walk. He answered Ann’s questions bluntly, seemingly annoyed at having to talk at all. Ann remembered the nights when he’d come crying to her and Thomas, shaking and shocked from nightmares of the men. He’d snuggled between the two of them and she’d held him until he felt safe enough to sleep again. He’d spent less time in his bedroom, had sat with her in the kitchen, followed her to the lounge, not wanting to be alone. Ann felt a swathe of guilt when she realised she missed scared Daniel. Recently he was back to being surly, irritated by her mere presence. If he was traumatised he was doing a good job of convincing her otherwise. Harriet had stopped wetting the bed and was back to talking about what she’d done at school, who her new best friend was, why she loved Mrs Chatburn, all the things she used to chatter about. Ann had found her checking that the front door was locked a few times and Daniel would appear from his room if Thomas was more than five minutes late, but that behaviour was to be expected, wasn’t it? Just a natural reaction.

  Ann felt conflicted.

  She didn’t want the children to have to talk about the night endlessly; if they were doing well, why drag it up over and over? But she didn’t want to neglect them either. She didn’t want them as angry teens screaming at her about how they were never given the chance to talk, how their uncaring parents had brushed it all under the carpet. She wondered if they spoke to one another about the night. There was a two-year gap between them and they shared no real interests, but Daniel could be surprisingly tender and patient with Harriet at times. Ann could barely bring herself to acknowledge the feeling, but sometimes, yes, she felt jealous of the tenderness he showed his sister. A couple of weeks ago Ann had found them in Daniel’s room, sat on opposite sides of his bed and she’d obviously walked in on something, they were quickly silent and Harriet was hardly ever allowed in Daniel’s room. ‘Everything OK?’ Ann asked, and they both nodded and stayed quiet, chatty Harriet suddenly as tight-lipped as her brother. Ann left them to it. No, that wasn’t true, she closed the door and lingered on the landing, but they carried on their conversation in tiny whispers and Ann couldn’t make out a word. But if they were talking to each other about the night, that was a good sign, w
asn’t it? A sign of a healthy family. Eventually, towards the end of the walk, when the loop was almost complete and the car was in sight, she asked the children if they wanted to talk to someone, a special type of doctor, about what had happened the night the men came. Harriet seemed bewildered by the offer, almost upset. Daniel was reliably dismissive. Ann decided then. Parental instinct. They would scream at her when they were teenagers anyway. She took both of them by their shoulders and pulled them to her, one on either side. Surprisingly Daniel allowed it, and they walked together for a minute before Daniel spotted a pile of sheep droppings and broke away to kick them as hard as he could into the river.

  Thomas was more of a problem. He was a mess. His face had changed, Ann was sure of it. The forehead was lower, the eyes narrower, you could see the stress etched into his scowls, the weight on his brow. He had no patience with the children, couldn’t stand noisy games or shouting. The television had to be turned to a whisper, the radio was snapped off when he walked in the room. They hadn’t made love since it had happened. He came home one day and found an album playing, the volume high, drum machines and keyboards filling the house. He strode over to the stereo and pulled the needle from the vinyl just as Ann walked back into the room.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked her, sounding bewildered.

  ‘Listening to one of my old albums,’ Ann said.

  ‘Why?’

  They stared at each other across the room.

  ‘You have to stop this,’ Ann said. ‘It’s not good for the children, you behaving this way.’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘I’m doing my best.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can carry on like this.’ Thomas gestured towards the stereo.