He turned away and frowned, realizing that there was no space within the hut where the faces could have been carved. Something else was odd: seen from inside, the hut seemed less ruined than partly built and then overgrown. One side of the hut might almost have been a bush that had grown into the shape of a wall; weren't those its roots in the grass? But he was wasting time.
He'd grasped his stick in order to lay it down when the voice said, "What do you think you're doing?"
At first he didn't realize that it was a voice. He thought it was a crow that had made him start and glance round, or a chainsaw, or even a frog croaking close to his ear, especially since he could see no one. "Where are you?" he demanded.
"You'll find out, I promise you."
Perhaps the speaker thought Threlfall hadn't asked where but who. Was the voice coming from the wall that looked most like a bush? "I'm putting this back," Threlfall said.
"Putting it back now, are you? Too late."
"I didn't take it," Threlfall said, resisting a nervous urge to tell the speaker to show himself. "Some children stole it. I brought it back."
Himself or herself—with such a voice one couldn't tell. "You'll do," it said.
Threlfall felt obscurely threatened. He had a sudden unpleasant notion that someone was about to lift one of the carved faces above the wall, a face with its jaw moving. "Look, I'm leaving this here and I'm going," he said sharply, shivering. He laid the branch down carefully, then he fought his way through the grass between the carvings to the gap in the walls.
Nobody had appeared. Nobody was in sight when he looked back from the bend in the path. It wasn't worth trying to retrace his route through the trees; it wasn't worth the risk—he couldn't locate the trail he'd followed—and in any case the green path would soon join the red and so lead him back to the road. He turned the third bend and found that the green path petered out in undergrowth.
On the map the green had crossed the red twice. He could only go back, staring fiercely at the hut as he passed, doing his best to shake off the impression that a face was watching him from among the crowd of carvings. Perhaps one was, he hadn't time to see. He was glad when a bend intervened.
The deserted path wound on. Was there anyone in the woods beside himself and the unpleasant carver? The creaking that made him glance round must be wind in the trees. He hurried on, searching for a junction to interrupt the endless silent parade of trees, trees beyond counting on either side of him, trees massing away beneath their canopy until they merged into impenetrably secret dimness. There—a marker post in the distance, a reason for him to run—but when he reached it and stood panting he found that it didn't mark a junction, only the path he was on, and it was painted orange.
It must have been red until it was weathered. He was sure there hadn't been an orange path on the map. He must have walked at least a mile from the hut by now; surely he had to be near the road—and yes, he could hear voices ahead, where a dog was sitting patiently beside the path. It took him five minutes of running, giving way frequently to jogging, before he was close enough to be certain of what he was seeing. The dog was a tree stump with a root for a tail.
Then the voices had been wind in the trees. If he let himself, he could imagine that he was still hearing them further down the path, laughing or sobbing. Movement in the trees beside him made him turn sharply, but it was a display of inverted trees in a pond, intermittently illuminated as the clouds parted and closed again. He hurried on, past the sound that wasn't voices. Whatever was making that sound in the murk beneath the trees, he hadn't time to look.
The road couldn't be much further. Wasn't that a car passing in the distance ahead, not a wind? He was walking as fast as he could without running, his feet throbbing from the stony path. It must be the sound of traffic, and there at last was the junction with the yellow path. Nevertheless he hesitated, for the sound had seemed to come from directly ahead, beyond the next bend in the orange path that must once have been red.
He shouldn't turn now. Not only was he sure where the road was, but he could see shadows moving on the path where it curved back into sight for a few yards beyond the bend, shadows of people among the unmov-ing shadows of trees. Thank God that's over, he thought vaguely, and almost called out to the people round the bend—had his mouth open to speak as he rounded the curve and saw that the shadows were of bushes, so grotesquely shaped they looked deliberately sculpted.
They weren't shaped like people. He hadn't time to decide what they were shaped like, even if he wanted to, nor how their shadows could have appeared to be moving. It must have been a trick of the light, but it wasn't important, especially when he looked away from the bushes. A few hundred yards beyond them, the path came to a dead end.
He ran to it, not thinking, and stared into the endless maze of trees, then he took a deep breath and ran back to the yellow path. That had to be the way, though the paths seemed to have nothing to do with the map. He ran, lungs aching, round a curve and then another, between the trees that he could almost believe his run was multiplying, and let out a gasp so fierce it momentarily blinded him—a gasp of relief. There ahead, where a car swept round the dim curve past a filling station, was the road.
Thank God for the filling station too. He could ask his way back to the map and his car: he didn't trust himself to judge which direction to take along the road.
He looked both ways before crossing to the forecourt, though the curve prevented him from seeing very far along the silent road. He could see someone moving beyond the grimy window of the office. For a moment he'd been near to panic as he realized that the pumps were rusty, the filling station obviously disused.
He grasped the shaky handle of the office door, and cursed. The office was bare and deserted. What he'd taken to be someone was a torn poster, in fact several layers of posters, flapping restlessly on the office wall. He caught sight of a telephone on the crippled table that was the only remaining item of furniture, and he was struggling to open the door in case, miraculously, the telephone might still be working, when he saw that it was nothing but a knotted stick. Were they posters on the wall? Now he peered through the dusty glass, the figure looked more like layers of bark, and all at once Threlfall was walking away, round the bend in the road, which led to a few sawn logs and a forester's hard hat. The sawn logs would have been blocking the road if there were a road, but beyond them were pathless trees and growing darkness.
It was still a road, he told himself desperately. It must be a foresters' road: that explained the vehicle he'd seen passing. It had to lead somewhere, it was preferable to the paths, at least it was wider. He ran back past the disused filling station, and there, surely, was a forester, presumably the one who'd left his hat: certainly someone was standing in a thicket by the road and watching Threlfall through the dark green leaves.
Threlfall turned his back and waited for the man to finish relieving himself. Thank God for someone who would know the way out of the woods. He waited until he began to wonder if the man had been watching after all. Perhaps he hadn't seen Threlfall, but then why was he taking so long in there? Either he was breathing heavily or that was wind in the trees.
Threlfall cleared his throat loudly before turning. The man hadn't moved. "Excuse me," Threlfall said: still no response. He walked around the thicket, making as much noise on the pine needles as he could, without being able to catch sight of the man's face. "Excuse me, are you all right?" The unresponsive silence dismayed him so much that it took more effort to step forward than to force his way through the bushes.
Twigs scraped his skin, the touch of dank leaves on his face made him shiver. Twigs hindered him as he gasped and struggled backward out of the thicket, which felt all at once like a trap. He hadn't seen the body of the figure, only its face grinning at him, the eyes bulging like sap. He hadn't time before he recoiled to be sure, and couldn't make himself go back to determine, that the carved face bore a distorted, almost mocking resemblance to his own.
&nbs
p; He ran stumbling along the road, which gave out after a few hundred yards. He peered wildly into the depths of the trees until they seemed to step forward, then he fled back past the figure in the thicket, past the filling station where the figure on the wall was still moving, onto the yellow path. Why him? he thought distractedly, over and over. Why not the schoolboys, the teacher, the coach driver, the hack writers, the publishers, the booksellers, the bookseller who'd given him back the study of English forests with the comment, "I thought this would be different from his other mystical rubbish"? If only Threlfall had that book now, with its maps of walks! But it was in the van, wherever that was.
He had to stay on the yellow path, it was the only one he knew. There must be a junction he'd missed, there must be a route that didn't lead back to the hut and the tortured faces and, presumably, their torturer. The trees or the darkness between them closed in, urging him faster along the path, yet he felt as if he were still in the darkening thicket, not running, not moving at all. He'd mistaken several trees or roots beside the path for marker posts or figures waiting for him when a crumpled piece of paper came scraping toward him around a bend, along the path.
He couldn't have said what made him pick it up: certainly not tidiness—perhaps that it seemed infinitely more human than anything else in the woods. He unfolded it and stared, for the moment past comprehending. It was a map, a tracing of the carved map of the walks. It seemed a vicious joke, since he couldn't locate himself on it in order to find his way. He was preparing dully to throw it away when he rounded the bend and started, seeing where the map had come from. A man was leaning on a stick at the side of the path.
He had a long brown weathered face that hardly moved, a twisted nose, large ears. Threlfall stumbled up to him and handed him the map while he struggled to be able to ask the way, to speak. The man took the paper and displayed it to him, his cracked brown thumb tapping the paper to show where they were, then tracing a route: right here, left, turn back on yourself ... He handed it back to Threlfall, nodding stiffly, having spoken not a word.
Something about his eyes made Threlfall mutter a hasty thanks and hurry away—something about the way the man was supported by the stick. The route seemed more like the solution to a puzzle, and Threlfall wasn't even sure that he remembered it correctly as the dark welled between the trees, the wind snatched at the map until the paper tore, a croaking in the trees behind him began to sound like words as it came closer, first "Give that here" and then, almost at his back, "Look at me." That was the last thing he would do; he couldn't even have looked back at the man with the twisted nose once he'd realized how alike in appearance the stick and the man's weathered skin had been. Here was a junction where he could see no colored markers, and he had no idea which way to go. A wind took him unawares and carried the map away down one path, and a last instinct made him flee along the other, up a slope that seemed to be growing steeper, actually tilting, as he caught sight of the road beyond it, and his van. He almost dropped his keys as he reached the van, almost lost them again as he locked himself in. As he started the engine he thought that something like sticks clambered swiftly onto the road beside the carved map, croaking.
All the same, as soon as he was out of the woods he stopped the van. The bookshops he was supposed to fit in today would have to wait until tomorrow. He unlocked the back of the van and rummaged through the cartons, where eventually he found the book on English forests, published posthumously, he saw now. It said little about the woods he had escaped except that they weren't worth visiting; perhaps the author had felt that to say more might attract the curious. Threlfall closed the cartons and locked the back of the van and slipped the book into his pocket, then he let out the deep breath he'd had to take before turning to the photograph of the author. This was one book he wouldn't see destroyed, that he would always keep. He climbed into the driving seat and drove away, still seeing the photograph he'd already known was there: the long weathered face, the large ears, the twisted nose.
Bedtime Story (1986)
Soon Jimmy grew bored with watching his parents holding tiny saucers and sipping coffee from tinier cups. They looked awkward as grown-ups playing tea-parties. He could tell that they wanted him out of the way while they talked, and so he ventured upstairs, though he wasn't sure his grandmother would want him to. All at once he was breathless, because there was so much he hadn't seen before: an attic full of objects made mysterious by dust, polished banisters that begged to be slid down, a small room halfway up the house, that faced onto the park. Down in the rose garden paths split the lawns into pieces of a giant green jigsaw, over by the lake trees waited in line to be climbed, and suddenly he wished this was his room—but when he turned, there was already someone in the room behind him.
It was only himself in the wardrobe mirror. The dusty sheen of the glass made it stand out from the backing, made it look like a mirror into another room. He stared until his face grew flat and glary, until he felt as papery as his reflection looked, and very aware of being only seven years old. As he crept downstairs his father was saying that once he found another teaching job he was sure they'd get a mortgage, Jimmy's grandmother was saying she had friends who would bring his mother work if she learned how to sew, and Jimmy thought they'd finished wanting him out of the way.
From her look he thought his grandmother was about to tell him off for going upstairs. "Well, James, you're going to live with me for a while. Will you like that?" she said.
He could feel his parents willing him to be polite. "Yes," he said, for it was the first week of the summer holidays and everything felt like an adventure. Even living here did, especially when he found he was having the room with the mirror. It was as though finding himself already in the mirror had made his wish come true. He didn't even mind when that night his mother stayed downstairs while his grandmother tucked him into bed and gave him a wrinkled kiss. He made a face at the mirror, where he could just see himself in the light from the park road. Then she turned in the doorway to look at him, that look which made him feel she knew something about him she wished were not so, and he hid under the sheets.
Next morning he ran into the park as soon as he was dressed. It was like having the biggest front garden in the world. Soon he'd made friends with the children from the flats next door, Emma and Indira, who had to wear trousers under her skirt, and Bruce, who was fat and always sniffing and would blubber gratifyingly if they pinched him when they were bored. The children made up for being put to bed too early by Jimmy's grandmother who had somehow taken over that job, for having to be exactly on time for meals, which were formal as going to church. Then his mother started her job at the nursery, and his father kept having to go for interviews, and Jimmy realized his life had scarcely begun to change.
At first she only fussed over him and told him not to do things, until he felt he couldn't breathe. Once, when he lifted down his father's first examination certificate— the glass gleamed from her polishing it every day—she cried "Don't touch that" so shrilly that he almost dropped it. Worse, now he was forever catching her watching him as if she was trying not to believe what he was.
One day, when a downpour crawling on the windows made even the trees look gray, he went up to the attic. Behind a rusty trunk he found several paintings, one a portrait of his father as a child. Before he knew it she was at the door. "Must you always be into mischief, James?" Yet all he was doing was feeling sad that she must have taken weeks over each painting only to leave them up here in the dust.
That night he lay wondering what she'd thought he would do to her paintings, wondering what she knew. The dusty reflection reminded him of a painting, the dim figure still as paint. It was a painting, and that meant he couldn't move. By the time he managed to struggle out of bed he didn't like the mirror very much.
Downstairs his grandmother was saying, "You must say if you think I'm interfering, but I do feel you might choose his friends more carefully."
Jimmy could tell from his fat
her's voice that he'd had another unsuccessful interview. "Who do you mean?"
"Why, the children from the fiats. The darky and the others."
"They seem reasonable enough kids to me," his mother said.
"I suppose it depends what you're used to. I'm afraid the class of people round here isn't what it was when I was young. I know we aren't supposed to say that kind of thing these days." She sighed and said, "That sort of child could make life difficult for James if they found out what he is."
Jimmy realized he'd been clinging to his bedroom door, for as he crept forward to hear better it slammed behind him. "I'll see what's wrong," his mother said sharply. "You've done enough for one day."
Jimmy hurried back to bed and tried to look as if he hadn't left it. In the dimmer bed, someone else was hiding beneath the sheets. His mother tiptoed into the room. "Are you awake, Jimmy?"
"I heard granny. What did she mean? What am I?"
"Bloody old woman," his mother whispered fiercely. "I was going to have you when we got married, Jimmy, that's all. It doesn't mean a thing except to people like your grandmother."
As she kissed him goodnight he saw her stooping to the dim face in the mirror, and suddenly it seemed more real than he was. Whatever was wrong must be worse than she'd said, for how could that make his grandmother watch him that way? After that night he could never be quite sure of Emma and her friends. He was afraid they might find out what he was before he knew himself.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 90
