Ferney

by James Long

  He gave a great sigh. ‘Oh, do you know how I looked for you? I went to see every baby for miles. Had to find an excuse to go knocking on their doors, so I bought a great pile of baby clothes, saying I had no use for them any more now you’d gone so I was giving them away. People must have thought I was mad. I went on looking for months, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.’

  ‘Would you have known?’

  ‘Oh yes. I think I would. I always hoped you’d turn up one day – just come walking in – but you didn’t, not until now anyway.’

  Babies, death, water and stones were whirling in Gally’s head.

  ‘I’m not sure I really understand, Ferney. Just go through it slowly for me. What went wrong?’

  ‘I’d only done the business of the water down there for us. You do understand that, don’t you?’ He spoke like a lover begging forgiveness for some current lapse.

  ‘Not completely. At least not up here.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘Not where I can get hold of it.’

  He sighed and started again, speaking slowly, punctuating each sentence with an emphatic chopping movement of both hands.

  ‘Effie Mullard was having her baby, right? It was killing me – growing in her, down there right by the stone. Do you remember? It wasn’t giving us a chance. We had such a good life, you and me, and because of her and that tramp I was getting more and more ill the bigger she got. I knew it was going to be me when it was born, so it was clear enough that I was going to die and there was only one thing to do, you see? I had to get Effie right away from the house before it was born, then maybe it wouldn’t be me. You knew. We talked about it. You knew what I was doing. You didn’t like it but you knew it had to be done. I used the water to do it, I flooded her out.’

  ‘Wait, I don’t know about this. You’re saying that if Effie Mullard had stayed here, you would have died when her baby was born?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I see.’

  He was getting a little agitated, but now he took a moment to draw breath and started again in a calmer voice. ‘The house was empty. She was safely away and I got better and we had a good time again, but then it was all for nothing because you vanished and it seemed to me you’d gone for ever because of what I’d done. Fifty-seven years, Gally, do you have any idea what it’s felt like? But then you came back again. It’s the in-between I don’t know about. What year were you born – 1965?’

  ‘Sixty-three.’

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Bath.’

  He looked surprised, as though that was the wrong answer. ‘Bath? How could that be? Was that where your parents were living?’

  ‘Yes, they’d been there about six months, I think.’

  ‘So where were they before that?’

  ‘London.’

  He shook his head. ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. They used to spend the weekends with my granny.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Avebury.’

  ‘That would be it. That’s where it must have happened, you see? There’s the big stone circle there. It grabbed you. That still leaves thirty-odd years in between to work out. Last time you were here was 1933. You were Jennifer on your birth certificate, Jennifer Moldrum before we married.’

  ‘Ferney, you’re talking all around it. I . . . Jennifer disappeared. You say she must have died. Come on. Tell me what happened in 1933?’

  ‘Someone did you harm.’ He looked at her soberly. ‘Doesn’t matter now, but my guess is someone must have been passing by when you died who was getting near their time. Could have been in a car even, so you were born way off somewhere else. That’s the trouble with cars and all this fast transport.’

  ‘It’s as easy as that?’

  ‘Travel’s always been dangerous for us. It’s worse now.’

  She added it up. ‘So I must have been born again in 1933, and then that person . . . I . . . died in 1963 when I was only thirty?’

  ‘Sounds right.’

  ‘So I could have had children?’

  ‘Children? What’s that got to do with it? You could have. You didn’t have any the time before.’ He sounded casual and saw her frown. ‘You shouldn’t get too bothered about it,’ he went on. ‘There’s always been children. When you count the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren and the rest, we must be related to most everybody that’s lived round these parts. Doesn’t mean that much. You come back and the ones that were your kids are so much older than you are and they don’t know you, so it’s difficult to feel the link. What I’m telling you, this isn’t about children, it’s about you and me.’

  As with so much that he said she felt a vast array of questions open up before her and had to hold firmly on to her train of thought. ‘The stone’s right at the start of all this, isn’t it? Will you tell me about the stone?’

  ‘Not now. We’ll need some time for that, time when we’re not going to be interrupted.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m by myself tomorrow. Mike’s got a faculty meeting.’ It sounded a little like treachery.

  ‘All right. If you’re sure.’

  ‘What did you mean when you said the bones and the stone were the end and the beginning?’ The explanation of the other part of it came to her as she spoke and she shivered. ‘The bones down at the roadworks. Who were they?’

  ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

  ‘They were me, weren’t they? That’s what happened to me in 1933. That’s what you meant, wasn’t it?’

  He looked hard at her and nodded slowly.

  ‘And that’s why I didn’t like it down there. When we first came, I got all panicky in the car.’

  He knew for her sake he should tread very carefully. ‘Could be. There was a man you didn’t like, used to live down there.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ve got to know a bit more.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll try a name on you. Carl Cochrane. Does that mean anything to you?’

  The faintest tingle of unease. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Nothing I can put my finger on.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then that one’s best left for now. All you need to know is he did for you. I’ll tell you the rest very soon. It doesn’t matter any more.’

  Fifty-seven years ago, she thought, and pity seized her. ‘I left you to fend for yourself for all that time?’

  ‘It wasn’t your choice,’ he said, then, seeing her eyes, ‘Dry your tears.’

  ‘It’s so sad to think of it,’ she said, wiping the wetness away with the back of her hand. ‘You being on your own all that time.’ At that moment she felt closer to Ferney than she could ever remember feeling to anyone. Mike belonged to some distant planet where loyalty was not an issue. She put her arms round him and held him to her, surprised both by the fragility of his old shoulders and by the strength of a feeling which was far more disturbing than pity and which paid no heed to his physical age. She let go, shocked.

  ‘We don’t have to go through that again,’ he said. ‘A separation like that. Not ever again if we don’t want to.’

  ‘How?’

  Before he could reply there was a faint squeak of old hinges and down below them they saw the caravan door swing open and Mike’s head peer out. His voice came faintly up the hill: ‘Gally?’

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Oh dear. We’ve hardly got started.’

  ‘Telling other people has never been a very good idea,’ he said urgently. ‘Don’t tell him any more, not until we’ve had more of a chance to talk.’

  ‘It’s so difficult,’ she said, ‘me between the two of you. I can’t just leave him out in the cold.’

  ‘It doesn’t help if you tell people. It’s never helped. What you and me are, that’s been counted a heresy often as not. You won’t remember what they’ve done to heretics.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Christians for a start.’ />
  Mike’s voice came again. ‘Gally?’

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘He’s looking for you. You’d best be off. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, shall I?’

  ‘Yes. Nine o’clock?’

  He nodded. ‘Come and meet me. If we’re going to talk about the start of it, we’d better meet where it began.’

  She waited and he looked at her for a long, expectant moment then gave in.

  ‘Kenny Wilkins’ Castle,’ he said, and saw her shiver. ‘I’ll see you there. You’ll be all right with me.’

  ‘Morning, love,’ she said when Mike, hearing her footsteps, stuck his head out of the caravan door again.

  ‘Not a very romantic start to the day,’ he grumbled. ‘Waking up with only a pillow to hug.’

  She’d suppressed all she’d just heard for his sake. ‘It was a beautiful morning. I thought I’d let you sleep. I was sitting up there in the field so I could tell when you woke up.’

  He’d made a pot of coffee and he poured her one.

  ‘I keep thinking about the old man,’ he said. ‘He probably thinks I’m a complete shit after last night.’

  ‘I’ve already seen him. He was in the lane. He said it was fine.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’ Mike frowned. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘He just happened to be walking along.’

  ‘Pure coincidence?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nettled.

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘I gave your apologies. He accepted them.’

  She hoped he would leave it at that and he did.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Alfred’s Tower rose above the distant trees, marking Gally’s direction as she set off northward along the ridge, a magician’s castle bursting through the smooth green humps of Nutwood in the Rupert books of her childhood. She wondered why the sight of the tower made her want to laugh. There was nothing laughable in what lay between. Her rendezvous was well short of the tower and the contours soon hid it. She half-expected to see Ferney on the road ahead of her – for both of them it was the only route out of the village – but there was no sign of him as she left the houses behind, no sign of him as she reached the start of the trees to the left of the road and still no sign of him when the woodland spread to both sides and the outer banks of Kenny Wilkins’ Castle loomed green across her path between their trunks.

  She stopped and looked at the ancient ramparts, disturbed by the immediate unease she felt. Nothing less than his unequivocal demand would have made her come here. When she was little she’d had recurrent dreams of a wood like this, tricky light slanting down through a black canopy bewildering her eyes as she watched, terrified, for the witch hiding behind the trunks, the witch she thought she’d seen way over there at the edge of her vision, but who would suddenly step shockingly from behind the nearest tree and rush at her. She wondered at herself, recognizing the old fear, and then made the mistake of thinking it must be that dream that had led to her unease. Without conscious thought she got rid of the wood, blotted it crudely out of the picture, handling the old tool clumsily, savagely, through long disuse.

  It was the wrong thing to do.

  In an instant, the scene changed dizzyingly as the sky burst through to dissolve the trees. She stood on a wet track, on a bare hill facing ramparts that were still old but had a palisade of fresh-cut pale stakes around their summit and storm clouds behind them. Men, or rather the threatening sense of men, swarmed through the gateway towards her. Gaping, rooted, horrified, she heard a horn-blast sound behind her and swung round to face this new enemy. She could see nothing. The track led straight back along the top of the ridge. The horn sounded again and asserted for a moment an alien shape, square and yellow, that flickered before her. Again it sounded and this time the shape filled out, bringing back with it the tarmac and tree-trunks, and she stepped out of the way of the slowing van whose driver made a questioning, insulting gesture at her as he passed.

  Drawing a shuddering breath she turned back to confront the fort, and the high trees once again had it under their roots. She walked on, senses alert and bristling, through the gate where she had just seen the timber towers that once rose out of the rounded earth shoulders. The van’s engine note had faded round the downhill bend towards Stourton and in the complete silence under the leaf canopy, Ferney’s voice said,

  ‘Was he hooting at you?’

  He was sitting on the parapet up to her left, perfectly disguised by his brown tweeds in the dappled light, a wood spirit in a Dunn & Co. jacket.

  ‘I’m afraid he was,’ she said. ‘I forgot where I was.’

  ‘You mean “when I was”, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he said. ‘I expect it scared you a bit.’ He lifted an arm and she slipped naturally in against his shoulder and felt better. ‘There was a wooden fence and towers.’

  ‘That’s the first time you’ve done it by yourself, without me pushing it along.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I suppose it was.’

  ‘You’ll get better at it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to. Actually, it wasn’t really the first time. I saw the house in the middle of the night, with the old front door in the right place.’

  ‘You wanted to know about the beginning. Do you still?’

  ‘I think I have to. It’s not really a question of what I want.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ he said. ‘All the things that twist you and pull you, the dreams and the black dogs that stalk you – there’s only one way to get rid of them and that’s to call them out into the daylight and look at them, see where they came from. When you see they come from real things that happened, well, you’ll get the better of them.’

  ‘But my nightmares don’t come from those old times. They come from things that happened this time. I know what they were. I just can’t seem to do anything about them.’

  He considered her for a moment. ‘What did happen this time?’

  ‘I . . . We had a crash, when I was little.’

  ‘Were you hurt?’

  ‘I broke my arm. My mother hit her head. That didn’t matter.’

  ‘What did, then?’

  ‘They got us out, but there was petrol everywhere and my father was trapped in the car. It burned.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  She spoke through tears. ‘I tried to get back to it. I knew I could get him out, but they wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘And now you dream about it?’

  ‘It keeps coming in. It’s a strange dream. It’s not directly about it.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me what it is about.’

  She found she couldn’t name them directly. ‘Boiling and . . . burning.’ That was as near as she could get. The beasts in her head rattled their bars.

  And then he amazed her. ‘The Boilman and the Burnman, is it?’

  ‘You couldn’t know that,’ she said in indignation. ‘How could you?’

  ‘I know it well. Gally, it’s not about what you think it is. It’s something older. I can help you with it.’

  She shivered. ‘Not here.’

  ‘No, not here. This place is bad enough already, isn’t it? And you need to know the whys and the whens of that first, but we will get to it, and soon.’ His calmness touched her. The beasts were stilled.

  She looked sombrely at the trees. ‘I have a feeling that whatever happened here is going to be a pretty scary thing to remember, but I suppose it won’t go away by itself. None of this will go away.’

  ‘Not unless you go away.’

  ‘I don’t think I can.’ She shivered.

  ‘You’ve never liked it here in the camp, but it’s better to face it.’

  ‘Go on. I want to get it over with. Just tell me and I’ll listen.’

  ‘Will you?’ he said, smiling. ‘Well, it might sound funny, but I can’t tell you all that much, not from me at any rate. There’s bits of it that come back, but it’s always been you who remembered it much
better than I did. You knew the place, you see? I’d only just come here, so it sort of didn’t stick the same way. Mostly I can only tell you what you’ve told me.’

  A rook wheeled down through the trees, cawing raucously, and settled on a tree stump across the road.

  ‘There is a limit to what you can remember,’ he said. ‘I read a book the other day about those people who remember everything. They call them idiot savants. Have you heard of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They can memorize whole telephone directories. Some of them can take one look at a building and go away and draw it perfectly, brick for brick, but it gets in the way of their thinking, you see? Makes them mad because there’s no order to it. It’s very easy to go like that. I did it once.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not very interesting. I was born rich. Hasn’t often happened round here. We’re mostly peasants, but I was the son of one of the cuckoo lords and I didn’t have that much to do with my time.’

  ‘Who were the cuckoo lords?’

  ‘The four big landowners back in the 1700s? Doesn’t that ring any bells?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Two earls, Ilchester and Egremont, plus the Bigings and the Hoares. They owned all the land round here then. Turfed a few people out of their nests to get it too. The Hoares were the best of them. I was a Hoare.’

  ‘Where was I, then?’

  ‘Down in the village. Older than me. They barred me from seeing you when they found out. I was kept in the house for two years and I wasn’t really in control that time round. I tried to remember it all, everything, and it did for me. Blew a gasket.’ He made a face. ‘Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you. I was just explaining you can’t remember everything, you shouldn’t even try. You have to be a bit selective. I suppose it’s all in there somewhere, but if you bring too much of it out into the wrong bit of your head it gets in the way, see?’

  ‘The beginning, then.’ She was so tense that her hands had begun to shake and Ferney, feeling it, patted her arm.

  ‘The first time round for both of us, I’m sure. Like I said, it’s your words really, not mine. You hadn’t lived here for that long. You used to say you’d come into the forest with your family from over there beyond Whitesheet after a battle.’ He pointed to the east. ‘Probably six years before, because that’s when the books say the Saxons started moving in, so I suppose you could say you were refugees. Now, this ridge we’re on was all bare then. It stuck up out of the forest. The true forest, Coit Maur, ran off to the north and the west, but there were still thick woods on the other side, too, and the tracks came this way. You used to complain about how hard you’d been made to work, all of you, making the old camp good again, cutting the stakes, clearing away the scrub, knowing the Saxons would come one day.’