by Peter Benson
25
No one is ever satisfied with the weather they get, but the forest took what it got without complaint. When I couldn’t sleep, I went for a walk in it. It was half past four in the morning - as I passed Alice’s room I could hear her snoring.
I stood in the kitchen to put my boots on. The Rayburn had gone out, and I hadn’t washed the dishes. Marjorie had always washed up as soon as a meal was finished.
I met one of the cats in the garden. It came up to me and rubbed against my leg when I stopped to look at where I’d planted the beans. There was nothing there.
The first faint streaks of light were showing on the eastern horizon, but in the forest it was as pitch black as midnight, and solid, like a door.
A strong wind blew through the trees, and though they protected me from the worst of it, the top branches thrashed and beat against each other. The noise was frightening but I wasn’t spooked, and didn’t want to go back to the lodge. I could see the hall light shining through the glass in the front door, but when I climbed a rise in the forest and then took a track that led down towards Bambi’s hollow, I couldn’t see it any more.
I didn’t meet Bambi or anything else. No birds called - without them the trees seemed naked. A song came into my head, a melody. I tried to whistle it but I was dry. I didn’t get any of the words.
Past Bambi’s hollow, I walked through an overgrown area. It was difficult to see the way, but the path wasn’t slippery. I crossed a wider track and climbed to a hedge that bordered the forest where I sat on a fallen trunk and watched the sun rise.
It came slowly, but the light changed quickly. The first birds started to sing as the colours in the forest began to show. The tree trunks were grey, and the outlines of the top branches gradually appeared, and the fields below me swam out of the darkness as if they’d slipped out of a cave, twinkling with frost.
Alice stayed on to sort out Marjorie’s things. I took the cats to Sadie’s. We sat in the kitchen and she poured two beers. Her parents were at market with five calves.
‘I’ll leave them in the laundry room for a couple of days,’ she said, pointing to the cats. They looked straight at me, as if it was my fault.
‘Three days?’
‘They’ll go back to the lodge if I don’t.’ She spoke with authority.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you say so.’
We took our beer upstairs to her bedroom. She had photos of cows on her walls, and some rosettes. There was a dressing table by the window, with her hairbrush on it, and some dried flowers pushed into the corner of the mirror. We got undressed and into bed. Her bed was very narrow. I found a hot water bottle shaped like a bear in it. I lay on my back with my drink on my chest. Sadie lay on her side with her hand on my stomach and the other resting behind my head.
She said, ‘What are you going to do?’
I shrugged.
She kissed my chest. ‘Are you going to stay at the lodge?’
I drank some beer and said, ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I was one of the cats.’
We listened to a cockerel crowing in the yard. From the window I could see the edge of the forest. ‘You could get a job round here’, she said.
A pair of crows flew out of the forest and flapped lazily towards the fields below. ‘I could get a job anywhere’, I said. I looked down at her. She looked away and blinked before closing her eyes and resting her head on my shoulder.
Also available by Peter Benson
Peter Benson’s new novel
OUT IN AUGUST 2012
David Morris lives the quiet life of a book-valuer for a London auction house, travelling every day by omnibus to his office in the Strand. When he is asked to make a trip to rural Somerset to value the library of the recently deceased Lord Buff-Orpington, the sense of trepidation he feels as he heads into the country is confirmed the moment he reaches his destination, the dark and impoverished village of Ashbrittle. These feelings turn to dread when he meets the enigmatic Professor Richard Hunt and catches a glimpse of a screaming woman he keeps prisoner in his house.
Peter Benson’s new novel is a slick gothic tale in the English tradition, a murder mystery, a reflection on the works of the masters of the French Enlightenment and a tour of Edwardian England. More than this, it is a work of atmosphere and unease which creates a world of inhuman anxiety and suspense.
978-1-84688-206-7 • 250 pp. • £14.99
Winner of the Encore Award, a trenchant critique of modern civilization, describing how one family’s tropical heaven becomes hell.
978-1-84688-192-3
144 pp. • £8.99
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, a lyrical portrait of the landscape of the Somerset Levels and a touching evocation of first love.
978-1-84688-191-6
160 pp. • £8.99
A beguiling and poignant novel about the fulfilment of dreams, the affirmation of life and finding love in unexpected places.
978-1-84688-197-8
176 pp. • £8.99
A compelling tale of surfing and coming of age, and an intense examination of a young man’s struggle to establish his identity.
978-1-84688-195-4
192 pp. • £8.99
The gripping tale of a quiet and solitary private detective whose uneventful life world spirals into a circle of chaos and death.
978-1-84688-196-1
192 pp. • £8.99
Weaving in the dramatic events portrayed by the Bayeux Tapestry, an absorbing novel which brings to life a fascinating period of English history.
978-1-84688-194-7
240 pp. • £8.99
