by JH Fletcher
Dark eyes twitching, the nervous child asked about it. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘I think they must have run away from the soldiers.’
‘Are the soldiers coming?’
In Marija’s face Helena recognised the shadow of all that she had seen three days ago, events that her mind had shut off from memory but that remained nonetheless. It would be easy to lie but Helena had told herself that the only way to come to terms with what had happened was to be completely honest, both with the child and herself. ‘I think they are, yes.’
‘Will they do things to us?’
The woman, sprawl-legged, eyes staring, the pool of blood.
‘No, they won’t.’
She would kill them both before permitting that. Except that she had nothing to kill them with, not even a knife.
It was in search of a knife that she turned off the lane onto a track that led towards a farmhouse whose roof she could see within a copse of trees. Good judgement warned against it. The house might contain soldiers or civilians fearful for their lives who might kill them, or worse, but the need for some kind of weapon had become an omen, more pressing even than food or safety. Let me find a knife. Only that. Then we shall survive.
Helena reached the head of the track and looked across the yard at the house waiting for them behind its shutters of sun-scarred wood. The walls, with tufts of grass growing within the cracks, were silent, waiting. On the far side of the yard a low outbuilding, its thatched roof furred with moss, stood quiet.
Even the air was on tiptoe here.
Helena felt her skin contract as she came into the yard. Now the windows of the house were barely an arms-stretch away. The house and the stillness watched. Marija sensed her fear. Her skinny fingers clutched Helena’s hand. Nothing moved.
Helena took a deep breath and walked around the side of the building where there were more shutters, more silence. The shelter of the house offered a sun-pooled warmth. Now, having summoned the courage to come so far, she was looking for more than a knife. If the house were truly empty there might be food, a place to sleep, a refuge.
She paused in mid-stride. What was she thinking? If the soldiers came down the road, the house was the first thing they’d see. They would come, looking for loot; they would break in, they would find them. They would smile the woman sprawl-legged the greasy unshaven triumphant faces leering with broken teeth, with foul breath, with veined and merciless eyes the pool of blood.
‘What are we going to do?’ Marija’s voice barely creased the silence.
‘We are going to break in.’
She prised a large stone from the tumbledown wall that enclosed the yard. She marched to the nearest window, forced back the shutters on their protesting hinges, raised the stone and smashed the glass. Quickly she cleared the jagged shards from the frame and pushed the black hair off her face before lifting first herself and then the child through the opening.
2
‘Be careful not to tread on the glass.’
Helena closed the shutters behind them. The shadows were slashed by horizontal bars of yellow light shining through the slats. About them the house was filled with silence; it might have been, perhaps was, peopled by ghosts.
She looked about her while, at her side, Marija’s feet were nailed to the dusty floorboards.
It was a living room, larger than she had expected, its corners deep in shadow, with several bulky pieces of furniture — table with tasselled cloth, wooden chairs, cupboard whose mirror reflected the pallid light — thrusting heavy shoulders into the space. From the papered walls frowned unsmiling faces: a woman dressed in a fashion long past, a bearded man in an iron-stiff collar. ‘It must be their parlour.’
‘Isn’t anyone here?’
‘I don’t think so.’
The house, and the shadows, watched the intruders. Even the mice were silent. It was easy to imagine monsters, or skeletons.
She told herself crossly not to be ridiculous. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet as she moved to the closed door leading into the rest of the house.
‘Let’s see what else we’ve got.’
Marija hung back. ‘I don’t like it here.’
‘Nonsense!’
Helena spoke with a briskness she did not feel. She threw open the door. Light gushed; at the back of the house, a shutter was ajar. It was a kitchen and had been lived in.
‘You see? No ghosts.’
By her expression Marija was unconvinced but Helena was determined to explore, to show the house who was in charge. She checked the wire-fronted cupboards that lined one wall.
‘See what I’ve found!’
A ham. Saliva filled her mouth. She sniffed the meat cautiously. It was fine. She found a knife — the knife she had been seeking — and hacked off a slice for the child, another for herself. She was already chewing when it occurred to her that the owners of the house might have poisoned it.
Too late now.
Fortified by ham, they explored further, confidence climbing. Off the kitchen, in a small room with a flagged floor, homemade sausages hung from the, rafters. Three bottles contained what proved to be a thin, tart wine. Inside the door, a butt bound in metal hoops held fresh water.
‘Why did they leave all this food behind?’
Whoever they might have been.
‘Perhaps it was too much for them to carry.’
At the top of a narrow stairway, very steep, were two bedrooms. The beds were neatly made; chests of drawers held folded clothes scented with dried flowers.
There were no skeletons or monsters, no open cupboards or scattered clothes. No signs of a hurried departure. Nothing. Cautiously Helena eased the shutters a crack. Dust motes swirled in the sunlight. She looked out at the valley, the track up which they had come, the lane running between poplars. What remained of the poplar leaves shimmered golden in the sunshine. Somewhere a bee was working, otherwise all was still.
There was food here, water, a place to sleep. A refuge.
It was also a trap, if the soldiers came.
They went back down the stairs and into the yard. The outbuilding proved as empty as the house. A feeding trough had wisps of hay clinging to its iron framework, more hay was stacked in a lean-to at the back. A cesspit stank. Otherwise there was nothing, Helena made up her mind.
‘We shall stay here.’
‘How long?’
‘As long as we can.’
Provided no-one came.
3
It was so easy to slip into self-delusion. The burning farmhouse had represented the loss of everything she had believed safe and serene in her life. Even now the loss of parents, home and what had been her life had not properly sunk in. All the things that had happened since had given her no chance to come to terms with it. Perhaps that was why this farmhouse, with its bulky furniture, its unknown faces spying on her from the walls, had seduced her so quickly. Within minutes of their arrival she was convinced that the deserted house had been placed where it was by fate, to ensure the survival not only of herself and the child but of her conviction that everything that had happened to her had been no more than a ripple on the surface of a life that would now resume its peaceful and predestined progress.
The war had passed them by. They ate the food that providence had provided, they drank the water with a little wine in it, they slept without thought or care and, when they awoke, the world was as it had been before they fell asleep. The next day was the same. The unseasonal sunshine warmed them, the air was filled with birdsong, the yellow drifting of poplar leaves the only sign of change. Marija, too, had come to terms with things. The house frightened her no longer. She talked to herself, she played, she fashioned what Helena supposed was a doll out of a twist of grass and some animal hair that she had found in the dung-smelling shed. She, too, had shuttered herself from reality and the past. She took the doll for a walk down the track. She chattered to it amid the birdsong, the drifting leaves. She came back running, eyes staring,
face white.
‘Soldiers!’
Terror came lunging.
‘Quick!’
Helena knew the soldiers would not pass them by. She would have snatched food from the kitchen, had there been time. There was not. Grabbing the child’s hand, she half ran, half dragged her out of the house and across the yard. A moment to consider and reject the shed, then they went through the sagging gate. They raced across the meadow to a hollow at the bottom of a rise that she had discovered the previous afternoon. They flung themselves down in the damp November grass. They stared back at the tranquil house within its setting of meadows and permanence. There was neither movement nor sound, the lull long enough for Helena to start wondering whether the troops had passed by after all, even whether Marija might have been mistaken, when there was a flicker of movement, a sound of Italian voices, and a dozen or so uniformed men came up the track and into the yard. Italian … she felt her spirits lift, then caution returned as she saw them more clearly. They shouldered their way truculently, seeming not to care whether there was anyone to protest their coming or not. No, they were not to be trusted.
The child moved uneasily. ‘Be still!’ Helena spoke through stiffened lips, the words not even a whisper. Marija lay unmoving.
The men split into groups of two or three, questing here and there. This was the moment of greatest danger; if any of them came into the meadow they would be sure to see them. Helena pressed herself down into grass that at this season would scarcely have concealed a beetle. Luckily the men’s attention was focused not on the surrounding fields but the house itself, a focus that became all the more intense as a man with unbuttoned tunic went to the door and, without testing to see whether it was locked or not, raised his boot and kicked flat-footed so that it splintered and flew open.
There was a low growl. The men crowded inside.
Now was their chance; run and they might be over the brow of the rise before the men saw them. Helena was tempted but knew she daren’t risk it. It needed only one man to see them out of a window and they would be lost. Eyes fixed on the house, she prayed that she had made the right decision.
From within the building came a chorus of shouts that grew steadily more raucous. They heard the sound of breaking glass and furniture. It went on for a long time. At last the men spilled out again into the yard, some of them clutching bottles and what remained of the food, and made off down the lane. It was such a relief to see them go, yet Helena remained where she was, fearful that some of the men might still be inside the house or that those who had gone might change their mind and come back. Then she saw the first blue smear of smoke drifting through the still-open doorway, heard the ominous crackle of flame. Caution forgotten, she ran to the building but it was too late. Having vandalised its interior, the men had set the house on fire.
Why?
There could be only one reason: hatred. Hatred of the war, of the army that had defeated them, perhaps of themselves most of all. Such dangerous, angry men. Thank God they had not found them.
Helena stood with her hand about the child’s thin shoulders, watching as the flames flickered first through the doorway, then the windows, finally roaring as the roof collapsed in a welter of sparks. The rising wind brought the heat gusting towards them. They continued to watch until at last the dusk came sifting out of a pale and smoke-smeared sky. Only then did Helena made herself move.
‘Come …’
The house was a glowing shell but the shed was untouched. Would other soldiers come during the night? She did not think so. They fetched hay from the lean-to and spread it, lying down and waiting in a daze of hunger and fatigue for morning. Helena felt unseen creatures burrowing in the hay and had no hope that she would sleep after all that had happened. She did so, all the same, to wake, smarting and itching but rested, with the first light and the sound of steady rain. They had no food, no water but what they could find in puddles. Like dogs they lay full length to quench their thirst, then, bellies rumbling, they moved on.
Helena studied the lane and surrounding fields. There was no sign of the soldiers. All the same, the lane was too dangerous; someone might appear around a bend at any moment. She decided instead to head across the meadows towards the line of woods that lay like a dark shadow in the distance. Get there, she thought, and they would be safe.
They were two-thirds of the way to the trees when they heard it without knowing what it was. A grumble, a roar, a howling cataclysm of sound that swallowed the distance, overtaking them with such speed and unrelenting energy that they barely had time to turn their heads and stare up at the rain-dark sky before it was on them and past them: two or perhaps three aeroplanes had swept overhead and vanished, leaving them stunned with a sensation of movement, of wings and the leather-helmeted heads of men.
They had not even had time to be afraid. That came later, when Helena realised that the planes could have fired at them with the guns she had seen protruding from the cockpits; that they could have been dead without even knowing that death was coming to take them.
4
Into the woodland, then. The leafless trees provided a measure of protection yet Helena discovered that fear was here, too. She remembered childhood stories of outlaws hiding in the forest; why should it be different now, in a world without order or reason?
She stared at the undergrowth that enclosed them, that would so easily swallow their cries. Marija’s hand clutched in her own, she took one tentative step, then another. Beneath its spreading branches, the forest was very dark, with roots that writhed like snakes beneath the leaf-mould, waiting to trip them.
One more step.
It was so easy to imagine the faces of tree people, trolls, men.
‘Which way do we go?’ the child said.
‘Through.’
Deeper into the darkness.
Marija, too, was looking about apprehensively, seeing not the trees but her own formless fears. ‘Are there wolves?’
‘Of course there aren’t wolves.’
Helena spoke crossly, yet who could say? In this wild place there could be wolves; even bears, perhaps. Step by step they pushed deeper into the shadowy wood. With the fear, memory now accompanied her. She did not feel regret or sorrow, the shock of bereavement still too recent for that, but she found herself remembering the days of her life that had brought her to this place.
Voices: can’t you see her she thinks herself too good for the rest of us too proud, while the sniggers ran like knives through the air behind her, too many airs and graces that one oh yes she thinks she’s very smart just because her father owns the farm has money smart clothes go to rome one day my mother says see the pope i shouldn’t wonder while she’s about it too good for us too good, the needle sniggers wounding, all i want is a friend just one friend, weeping, her mother’s voice, yes dear but you must get used to it the fact is they’re right we are too good for them but i don’t want to be i want to be like everyone else …
The remembered words whispered along with the wind that stirred the branches, turning the moss-dark ground yellow and red with the wreckage of the falling leaves. As a child she had run through the leaves that had lifted and swirled and crunched brittle-bright beneath her feet, the sting of autumn crisp and glowing upon her cheeks, the sky brilliant between the friendly trees. There had been a lake where she had been forbidden to go, her mother calling it dangerous. Its bank had been spiked with reeds, green in spring, yellow in summer, in winter charred black by the frost, the water’s surface skinned with brittle ice, do not go you must not go i absolutely forbid it, but going nonetheless, as a child solitary, because it was forbidden; later, as what she considered a mature woman, not alone, although that, too, was forbidden, that above all. Feeling the hot and forbidden warmth rising, the fear, and yes, i cannot and will not but oh how i want but no and no, and earning herself the name of a tease who promised but would not deliver, too good for me that’s what you think isn’t it too good you’ve always thought so i don’t know w
hy i waste my time with you. Seeking companionship and acceptance, no that was not right, there had been more to it than that, the lure of the forbidden, once a woman loses her self-respect she loses everything, the ancient prohibitions stopping her even as she wanted so much …
To be loved. That, above all. She had not wanted to be the precious ornament of her mother’s devising, the landowner’s daughter keeping herself apart, keeping herself …
As, until this moment, she had indeed kept herself, even as she had rejected her mother’s fantasy of a splendid marriage with bells and roses and an estate in the country, a townhouse in Udine or Verona or even Rome.
Even so, she had been brought up to think herself special, the old jibes true enough as far as that went. Certainly it had affected her attitude to Michelangelo and his woman. And where had it got her? To this situation: alone, with a child not her own, lost and wandering in a hostile and unknown place, frightened of trees and air, the creatures of her imaginings. Making her way ever deeper into the wood, Helena understood something that until now had been concealed from her. The country of her birth, the land that had been her home and refuge, was lost to her for ever. All that had given her life form had vanished with the burning farmhouse, the gutted village, the deaths that had snapped every link binding her to her past.
As a child she had thought herself alone. Now, with her bereavement still largely unreal to her, she understood that she had been wrong. Even the isolation that her mother would have preferred to call separateness had existed within a framework that was now lost. In contrast with those days, her sense of being alone in a world without pity had become the only reality.
