Into the Trees

by Robert Williams

  ‘We’ve spoken about this, Thomas. Life has to continue. Fearing them is letting them win. And it’s a bad environment for the children.’

  ‘I don’t know how to feel any differently,’ Thomas said.

  ‘You need to try.’ Ann tried to speak more kindly. ‘Have you thought about seeing someone? We could make you an appointment with Dr Barbour.’

  Thomas had thought about seeing the calm woman with the steady hands and low voice, but he’d quickly realised there was no point. He was a rational, intelligent man, and after days and nights of concentrated thinking, every path of thought led to one conclusion: he was trapped. Talking couldn’t change that, no matter who you talked to. His first instinct had been that they needed to move house. Immediately. The house was where it had happened, where the men had found them, they should run for the hills. But he soon realised that the men weren’t interested in the house, they were only interested in him and wherever they went he was the target. They’d found him all the way out here; they could find him anywhere. As long as he worked with large amounts of money he would be at risk, his family would be at risk. As for the job, he needed the salary and wasn’t qualified to do anything else; he’d never had a proper job in his life outside the bank.

  Trapped.

  He looked directly at his wife to tell her all this and saw that her cheeks were red and there was a thin line of sweat below her hairline. He looked at the still record on the turntable and realised. She’d been dancing! Fucking dancing! Thomas strode out of the room, slamming the door with such force the plaster around the frame cracked and spread like a struck eggshell.

  Nine

  Thomas’s new temper was a shock to Ann. He’d arrived in her life all those years ago so cautiously, so gradually, and his calm presence had been a balm to her ever since. Conner Ryan had roared up to Ann on an orange and black motorbike, shook her to her core, shattered her and then sped off back to the other side of town. With Thomas there had been no revving engine, no outrageous beautiful looks, but he was handsome, gentle and good, and his timing was perfect.

  In the weeks and months since her split from Conner Ann had been distant from her old set of friends. She couldn’t stand their excitement, their eagerness to talk about how she’d been tragically wronged, and she spent more time working in the library at lunch, leaving for home as soon as her last class finished. And the less time she spent with them, the more she realised she didn’t like them much anyway. Juliette, in particular, was spiteful and hard, and because the rest of the girls deferred to her it was easier to walk away from the lot of them. She received some grief. They had expected her to become part of their group again, they had been prepared to welcome her back after her desertion, but when Ann made it clear she wasn’t interested in being welcomed back the bitching started. Ann didn’t care; she was still concentrating on standing up without falling over, walking in the right direction. Most days she felt like a sandcastle facing the ocean. She didn’t have the energy to contend with the spite of old friends.

  It was a lonely summer. Ann spent her days working in a clothes shop, folding pastel-coloured jumpers, selling hideously patterned blouses to the over-fifties of Maltham.

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t go for anything like this, would you love?’ a woman might say, as she bagged contrastingly garish and meek selections. ‘You would want something much more trendy, a young girl like you.’ She would smile and shake her head, listen to them tell her about the wedding they were going to, the anniversary meal that was coming up, the cruise they’d anticipated for years. It was dull work but she enjoyed it. She was surprised how quickly the ladies took her into their confidence, how easily they shared, how funny they could be. Some customers spoke more to her over the course of buying new tights than her own mother did in a week. But she was keen to get back to her A levels, to lose her brain in work again. It was the first week of the autumn term when she first met Rebecca Norton, a new girl in her Classics set who’d only appeared that September. One night they confirmed their friendship with a visit to the cinema in Pulton. The film ran longer than expected and they came out into the dark night to find they’d missed the last bus home.

  ‘I’ll ring my dad,’ Ann said, but Rebecca told her she would phone her brother. ‘He’s just passed his test, he’s desperate for an excuse to drive,’ she said.

  Thomas arrived half an hour later, carefully negotiating the narrow streets of the town centre, indicating to an empty road that he was pulling in as soon as he spotted his sister up ahead. Rebecca and Ann chatted in the car but there was no conversation with Thomas. He was hunched forward in his seat, his hands firmly gripping the wheel in the ten-to-two position, his eyes flicking from the road in front to the mirror above him and quickly back to the road. When they reached Maltham Ann said goodbye to Rebecca and thanked the back of Thomas’s head. ‘Any time,’ he said, his shoulders visibly relaxed now he’d stopped driving for a moment. Ann waved as she walked off and the car pulled slowly away – she hadn’t even seen his face.

  Ann and Rebecca went to see a film most weeks and when they stepped out of the foyer into the street Thomas would be waiting for them, flashing the lights of his dad’s car.

  ‘I told you,’ Rebecca said, ‘any excuse for a drive.’

  Whenever Ann visited Rebecca it wouldn’t be long before Thomas appeared, brushing his hair flat with a hand, hanging around the doorway of whatever room they happened to be in. ‘Go away Thomas, leave us in peace,’ Rebecca would say, raising her eyebrows to Ann and shaking her head.

  But it was Rebecca who moved things along eventually. ‘I think my brother has something he’d like to ask you, but he’d rather know the answer before he asks the question,’ she said, one day after a class. ‘He’s quite careful like that.’

  Carefulness appealed to Ann. In fact, Thomas appealed to Ann. The feelings had come as a surprise to her. She’d turned up at Rebecca’s house one evening, where they were going to write their essays together. Ann greeted Rebecca’s parents and then they settled down to work in the kitchen. After half an hour of being undisturbed Ann looked up from her work and said, ‘Is Thomas not in tonight?’

  ‘He’s gone to work on a campsite in France for six weeks,’ Rebecca told her.

  ‘Thomas has?’ Ann asked.

  ‘I know! We couldn’t believe it. He was homesick when he went camping with the Cubs for the weekend. And his French is non-existent.’

  Ann laughed with Rebecca but it felt like clouds had settled in her chest and the clouds stayed for six weeks.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Ann asked her friend the afternoon of the first date.

  ‘Mind. Why would I mind?’ Rebecca said. ‘Although the thought of anyone going on a date with my brother baffles me.’

  Ann didn’t know why, but the things she liked about Thomas were the same things that drove Rebecca mad. ‘He just appears! And then you turn to say something to him and he’s already gone. He should have a bell on him. Like a cat.’

  Ann admired this quiet and stealth. Most sixth-form boys wrestled with each other in the common room, chased each other out of the buildings and into the pubs, were always shouting across the street, bundling into cars and speeding off somewhere, arriving with a squeal of brakes and slamming doors. And Conner had been unable to make a quiet entrance or exit. His motorbike could be heard from streets away and then, when he arrived, he would be the centre of the room as soon as he entered it, the room would feel empty when he left. Sometimes, with Conner, it felt like you were in the only place in the world you should be. Sometimes it was too much. But Thomas, Thomas stood at the side of the room, he stayed close to the door, and you would wonder if he even knew himself that he was in the room. Ann welcomed the calm, the moderation of Thomas. And she quickly found out that he wasn’t shy. At the end of their first date Thomas took hold of Ann’s hand, pulled her to a stop and kissed her in the middle of the street. His determination, his directness, had taken Ann by surprise
and her pulse was still racing when he dropped her off at home ten minutes later. That night as she settled herself in bed, she had to concede – it wasn’t quite as thrilling as being kissed by Conner in the starlight, underneath her parents’ bedroom window, but it wasn’t far off. And she was older now; she was experienced, she understood the risks and dangers involved. Quieter love was still love.

  Neither Thomas nor Rebecca knew anything about Conner. They’d arrived in town weeks after it had ended and Ann saw no point in telling them about it. But Maltham was a small town, Conner was always out, and a meeting was inevitable. It happened in the Swan and Royal. Ann and Thomas were both slightly drunk, holding hands across the table when a figure appeared above them. Thomas tried to pull his hand away, but seeing who was stood over them, Ann held on firmly.

  ‘Hello,’ Conner said.

  ‘Hello,’ Ann replied, hoping her face didn’t flush, hoping Thomas couldn’t feel her pulse rocketing through her thumb. ‘This is Thomas.’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  ‘He is.’

  Conner looked Thomas over. ‘He seems nice,’ he said, slyly, and walked out of the pub.

  ‘Who was that?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘A guy I used to work with,’ Ann said. ‘An idiot.’

  Thomas looked at the door Conner had disappeared through and said, ‘Just work?’

  ‘We went out, for a bit,’ Ann said.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Thomas shook his head.

  Ann knew what he meant; Conner looked as good as ever.

  ‘Were you serious?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘No, no. Just a few dates.’

  It didn’t feel like a lie or deceit to Ann. Dismissing the relationship was the only way she could feel any control over it. And she still barely had any control anyway. For the rest of the night she felt like it was the second after the start of a race, that she should be jostling and tearing forward, but here she was with Thomas and there was nowhere to run to.

  She’d kept the details of her relationship with Conner, and the fallout, from Thomas deliberately, but she hadn’t set out to convince him that she was a virgin, and by the time she understood Thomas believed that to be the case, it was too late.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he’d asked. ‘Does it hurt?’ he’d whispered as they moved together for the first time. And it was Thomas’s first time and he was so happy – particularly after their second attempt when he showed more control and Ann had dug her nails into his back and pulled him into her as deep as he would go, holding him there and not allowing him to move, even when he was desperate to move. Afterwards they’d rolled away from each other and Thomas had laughed like a school boy. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said wrapping his arms around her, ‘bloody hell!’ and laughed until Ann was infected by his laughter too. But then he’d fallen quiet and in the afternoon light of her drawn-curtained bedroom told her he loved her. Ann looked into his kind, hopeful face and was sure and said, ‘I love you too.’

  How could she tell him after that? Should she tell him that she and Conner had done it in the cellar of the pub? On the golf course? Against the back wall of the house whilst her parents slept upstairs? Should she tell him that she hadn’t thought it was possible to feel the way she did, and then it was over and it was like having a block of flats collapse on top of her, but when the dust had cleared she was somehow still alive? It was better that he knew nothing about the whole mess of it.

  Ann still felt guilt. Even now, years into their marriage, after two children, she would feel a surge of panic when she remembered Thomas thought she’d been a virgin when they met.

  One night in bed, shortly after the move to Abbeystead, when they were sleeping together again, Thomas said to her, ‘Do you ever wish you’d been with other men? Don’t you worry that you’ve missed out? That other men might have been more adventurous? More exciting?’

  Ann propped herself up on her elbow, looked at Thomas and said, ‘I sometimes wonder if other men would have been bigger.’

  Thomas’s face was wiped clean of any expression, and then he saw Ann’s smile and began to laugh.

  ‘But what about you?’ Ann asked, keen to move the conversation on. ‘Don’t you wish you’d had more sex with different women? Maybe I’m terrible. Maybe you could have been having much more fun with a different woman all these years.’

  Thomas looked at the ceiling. ‘I can’t deny that, once or twice, over the years, I’ve noticed another woman.’ He rolled on his side and put his arm around Ann and pulled her to him, resting his forehead against hers and quietening his voice. ‘But I wouldn’t swap a single second with you for a night with any of them.’

  He held Ann’s gaze and it took her a second to realise that he was taking his turn at joking, and she punched his arm as he laughed.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said, in mock defence, ‘not a single second,’ and then they kissed each other good night and settled down to sleep. Ann turned on her side, relieved that the discussion was done, hopeful that the subject wouldn’t crop up again for years.

  It had been a happy marriage. Thomas treated her well, he was a kind, caring man, and, unlike her dad, he helped around the house and with the children. And sex with Thomas had been good enough. Not all-consuming, not always intense, but she had no complaints. Ann had occasionally thought of the sex with Conner, the urgent lustfulness of it, but over time it became something she couldn’t properly remember any more, like a childhood holiday, or the face of her best friend who moved from her street when she was seven. Ann remembered the memory, but the details, the heat of it, were lost to her. And she wasn’t a seventeen-year-old girl any more; sex against a wall or in the back of a car wasn’t necessary. She had her own room, her own house; sex was no longer illicit. And maybe that was the difference. Sex as an infatuated teenager, in stolen moments, with an older boy from the other side of town, would never be the same as sex with her husband in their bedroom.

  Not that there had been any sex recently. In the days after the robbery Thomas only touched her when he inspected her eye. He would pull her to the light, hold her head in his hands and peer at the bruised mess.

  ‘I’m alright,’ she told him, more than once. ‘It bloody hurt, but I’m alright. Hundreds of people get punched, or worse, much worse, Thomas.’

  ‘I know,’ he would reply. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  But she suspected that he did think about it, that he thought about little else. There had been small changes in him over the years, particularly after they moved to Abbeystead. He’d always been a careful man, a neat man, but since the move to the forest he’d become . . . fussier, was the word. She could tell that he didn’t like it when the children’s toys were trailing throughout the house or when Harriet was painting at the kitchen table with paint-splattered newspaper spread out and sticky hands threatening. He would ask her if she’d finished as soon as she paused, dying to clear everything away, wash everything up. And he’d become intolerant of noise. The television or radio always had to be at a volume he didn’t find intrusive. When they first got together they’d gone all over; they would travel across the country to see a band they both loved, but after the move it was hard enough to get Thomas to visit town. ‘I’m there every day,’ he would say. Which wasn’t quite true, Ann thought. He was in the bank every day, which wasn’t the same. The longer they spent in Bleasdale, the more its boundaries seemed to become Thomas’s boundaries. ‘Fancy a drink in Keasden?’ he would say, clapping his hands together, as if a drink in the village pub was just the tonic they needed. None of that had concerned Ann too much, she accepted that people changed, and his goodness hadn’t deserted him, but after the robbery the changes were manifest. He was curt with the children and dismissive with her. Since the night the men came he closed down, cut her off, went inside himself and brooded. If only he could see that it was a horrible, terrible night, but that it was over, Ann thought. But somehow he’d got it into his head that it was the start of a war, that men were plann
ing another invasion, driving out to the trees, pulling on masks. Sometimes she wanted to shake him.

  Ten

  Keith set off later than he’d intended, the hangover was a bad one, and it was after four when he climbed into the car, still feeling unwell and jumpy. As he passed the cement works, heading for the bypass, he realised that he was leaving Etherton for the first time in a long time, the first time since the night of the robbery. He wondered if he should have been more adventurous with his cash. Many people who came into money, the first thought they had was of a foreign holiday, he knew. But for Keith the freedom from work was the holiday, the nights out provided him with the excitement. Still, it was something to consider. He did like the idea of Spain, warm sun and bars by the beach, or maybe even New York with its hustle and excitement, but as much as those places appealed, he couldn’t envisage himself going. A few years ago in Spain he could have taken his shirt off, tanned himself on the beach, but not now, not with his stomach. He knew some men walked proudly, parading their belly without shame, slapping their stomachs contentedly and saying, ‘It’s all paid for,’ but Keith was too vain. And although the thought of New York was exciting, he couldn’t see himself there either. All those tall buildings cut through by wide streets. He would be lost in New York, he was too small, people wouldn’t even notice him. And the women in films in New York always seemed as tall as the buildings they passed; skinny, lengthy women, walking quickly, hard faces and sharp clothes. New York women wouldn’t have considered him even in his younger, thinner days. London made more sense, it was closer and cheaper, but London didn’t mean anything to him. It was the capital of his country but he never thought about the place, he didn’t see it as proper England. He’d been a couple of times for weekend binges with friends and hadn’t liked it at all. He found the people cocky in their urgency, so he walked as quickly as everyone else, even when he was lost, keen to give the illusion that he knew what was what, that he had somewhere to be too. Lots of blacks too, proper blacks. There were pakis in northern towns, had been for years, but you tended not to see them that much, they had their own streets and schools and shops. They moved in and the whites moved out and everyone knew where they lived and you never had to go there. But in London you would be sat next to one on the tube, one would serve you in a shop. Keith didn’t like that. He preferred to know who he was likely to meet before he met them. And if there was money in his pocket, he was happy drinking wherever happened to be nearest. Anyway, he thought, as he drove along the bypass – this was a trip of sorts.