Wake Wood

by K. A. John

  ‘No.’ She silently mouthed the word.

  ‘If we stay here we’ll both go mad,’ he prophesied.

  She shook her head. He knew she didn’t want to think about leaving the house, much less listen to the plans he’d made. But he persevered.

  ‘I applied for a job, helping a disabled veterinary in a small country town, Wake Wood. I went there today for an interview and had a good look round. It’s a pretty place,’ he elaborated. ‘Surrounded by woods and fields. It’ll be a different kind of work from what I’ve been doing here. A challenge, treating more farm animals than pampered pets. There’s a pharmacy in the town. It’s been closed for a while because they had no one qualified to take it over. We could take a lease on the shop. Buy it, even. You could work again …’

  ‘I can’t leave this house. I can’t, so please don’t ask me to.’ It was the longest sentence she’d spoken since Alice’s death.

  ‘I’ve been offered the job and I’ve already given my word that I’ll take it,’ he said flatly.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ Her eyes were dark, bruised with misery.

  ‘We’re leaving, Louise. Together. I start in a month.’

  ‘How could you …?’ She started crying. Silent tears that brought the realisation that he could feel something besides the pain of Alice’s loss after all.

  ‘I had no choice, Louise. This house and its memories are killing both of us.’

  ‘But this house … your surgery …’

  ‘I talked to an estate agent when I came back this afternoon,’ he cut in impatiently. ‘He’s had an enquiry from a veterinary looking to set up here. If we sell this house and my surgery we’ll raise enough to buy a cottage I saw in Wake Wood and the freehold of the pharmacy. Prices are lower there than here. You’ll love the cottage, Louise. It’s everything we dreamed of when we were in university. It’s old, big enough to be called rambling, with ten rooms, nooks, crannies, and the original fireplaces. It has a huge garden, outbuildings, and it’s surrounded by trees—’

  ‘No.’ She was vehement.

  ‘Louise.’ He continued to hold her head.

  ‘No.’ Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper.

  ‘If we don’t move out of here we’ll both go crazy.’

  ‘Alice—’

  ‘Alice will always be in our hearts and our memories,’ he broke in. ‘Nothing can change that.’

  ‘We’ll know no one in this town.’

  ‘It’s called Wake Wood,’ he reminded her. ‘And that’s the attraction of the place. We’ll make new friends. You’ll like Arthur, my new partner. He introduced me to some of the locals. They’re kind, helpful without being intrusive. Slightly reserved, the way most country people are.’ Patrick wished he could believe that a move would dispel the numbing emptiness that had become their lives. But whether the move would culminate in success or failure was immaterial. He’d made the decision because he could no longer allow the past to outweigh the present and destroy what was left of their marriage.

  Louise’s voice was filled with pain and anguish. ‘You really want us to move?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To live in this Wake Wood,’ she echoed despondently.

  ‘Yes,’ he affirmed, feigning a resolution he couldn’t feel. ‘Yes, Louise, I do. And it’s time we started packing.’

  Less than four weeks later they were ready to drive away from the house they had lived in all their married life. Patrick had spent most of his time during the preceding week nagging the estate agent and solicitor to expedite the sale of their property and the purchase of the cottage and pharmacy in Wake Wood.

  Men from the removal firm had carried out the bulk of their furniture that morning and it was on its way to Wake Wood in a van. The back of Patrick’s estate car was piled high with personal possessions neither he nor Louise could bear to entrust to strangers.

  Patrick had been ready to leave for over an hour, but Louise was still busy. Careful to keep her back turned to him, she was stowing black bags behind the front seats of the car. Her body language told him that she resented him watching her.

  He stepped into the hall and looked around. Stripped of his and Louise’s possessions – and Alice’s – the house appeared bleak and forlorn. He found it difficult to believe that they’d ever been happy within its walls … until he remembered Alice. He pictured her running down the stairs, calling out to him, laughing as she raced into the kitchen to thrust open the fridge door …

  The vision was so real, so powerful; he backed out of the front door, slammed it shut and posted the keys through the letter box. He’d already given their other two sets to the estate agent.

  Louise was sitting waiting for him in the passenger seat of the estate. He climbed into the driver’s seat before turning the ignition and glancing across at her. She was staring directly ahead at the windscreen, sunk into the silent indifference that was now normal for her. He knew that despite his insistence that they start again without any mementoes of Alice, she’d smuggled most of Alice’s possessions into the bags she’d loaded in the car.

  She may have kept them, but he was determined not to give her an opportunity to unpack them. They would remain in the sacks. And one day – soon – he would carry the bags away where Louise would never find them again. Somewhere far from the new cottage and their new lives.

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  Louise nodded a reply.

  A nod was better than nothing. He set off and concentrated on the road, trying not to think about anything in particular. Once or twice he was tempted to comment on the scenery but, anticipating Louise’s lack of response, he kept his thoughts to himself.

  Three hours later he negotiated a bend just beyond a narrow bridge. A large sign loomed on his right.

  WELCOME TO WAKE WOOD.

  He glanced instinctively in the rear-view mirror, forgetting that the car was packed so high the back window was blocked.

  ‘The town centre’s just ahead of us.’

  If Louise heard him she gave no sign of it.

  He slowed the car’s speed. The field behind the sign sloped upwards to a thicket of close-growing dark woods. In the centre below the line of the trees, the one concession Wake Wood had made to modernity dominated the scenery: a wind farm with its massive turbines. The blades turned slowly and noisily, their din and appearance perversely at odds with what should have been a tranquil scene.

  ‘Not much electricity being generated there,’ he observed. He continued straight and entered the main street of the town.

  The pharmacy was halfway down the commercial centre on the right-hand side. Its windows and door were boarded up and, judging from the water stains on the wood, had been for some time. He stopped the estate momentarily outside the building. The ‘A’ in the word PHARMACY over the door had come adrift and hung at a precarious angle.

  Louise studied the building through the car window.

  ‘It will need some work inside as well as out. Arthur – my new partner – gave me the name of a firm of shopfitters who come highly recommended. I’ve made an appointment for us to meet them here tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow? I need time …’

  ‘And you’ll have it,’ he assured her. ‘It will take them at least a month to complete the refit. It will take us a couple of weeks to set up accounts with the suppliers and get stock delivered.’

  Another nod.

  He’d made progress. There had been times during the past month when Patrick had begun to wonder if he would ever get Louise to Wake Wood. Perhaps she’d be more enthusiastic once she actually met the fitters.

  He checked the wing mirrors. The street yawned behind the car as empty as it was before them. Rain was falling, a light drizzle that had coated the windscreen with a fine mist. He pulled out again, driving past deserted pavements devoid of human or even animal life. The few shops that weren’t boarded up displayed ‘CLOSED’ signs in their windows. No blinds or curtains twitched.

  The o
nly movement was the wings of the crows flocking around a television aerial. He loved animals but he’d never liked crows, regarding them as ugly, ragged birds. Scavengers of the worst kind.

  ‘A murder of crows.’

  ‘What?’ He slowed the car and looked at Louise in amazement, wondering if he’d heard her correctly.

  ‘A murder of crows,’ she repeated. ‘You know the old sayings. A storytelling of rooks, an unkindness of ravens, a tiding of magpies … A murder of crows.’

  ‘If I ever knew them, I’d forgotten.’ He was beset by a feeling of foreboding, but when he tried to quantify it, he couldn’t. It had to be down to the ugly black birds, grey dismal weather and Louise’s depression – nothing more. After all, what horrors could their future hold compared with those of their past?

  Anxious to get Louise to their cottage, he drove on.

  Their new home was in a beautiful spot, isolated but within easy driving distance of the town. The outside had been painted green; the garden was natural, laid to grass and surrounded by trees, the only sign of cultivation the recently mown lawns. Louise had seen it just once but she’d expressed no opinion on the place one way or the other.

  Patrick had told her he’d bought it before he’d actually signed the papers to make it theirs. A small white lie. When she hadn’t objected to the purported purchase he’d gone ahead and closed the deal. Like the shop, he hoped she’d develop enthusiasm once they moved in.

  He handed Louise the keys to the house, left the car and went to inspect the garage and outbuildings he’d earmarked to convert into his surgery. When he looked back Louise had unlocked the front door. She was standing on the step, peering inside.

  Their new beginning?

  He turned back to the garage. Was it too much to wish for peace – of sorts – after the tragic loss of their only child?

  Happiness was out of the question. A desire for peace was all he and Louise had left, and he clung to it with all the hope he could muster.

  Four

  LOUISE STOOD IN front of the pharmacy window, staring at the rain streaking down the glass. It was relentless, the street as grey, dismal and deserted as when she and Patrick had driven into Wake Wood for the first time. They had been living in the town for nine bleak, sterile months and every day had dragged for her, interminable and never-ending.

  She glanced around the shop: neat, clean, well stocked, the perfect small-town pharmacy. The locals had complimented them, commenting that she and Patrick had accomplished miracles in a short time. But the locals were wrong. She hadn’t achieved anything; nor had she wanted to. It had been, and was still, a struggle to get out of bed in the mornings; to dress, to eat, to make any movement no matter how small, even to shower. If there’d been any miracles they were the result of Patrick’s efforts, not hers. And he hadn’t performed the only miracle she wanted.

  She knew what he would say if she voiced her thoughts: ‘No matter what the topic of conversation, Louise, you always return to Alice. As if I could forget our daughter any more than you can.’

  Never a direct reproach, but she saw hints, whether or not Patrick intended them, that she wasn’t making the effort needed to adapt to their new life – that she preferred to live in the past, which she had to admit was true. As if she somehow blamed him for Alice’s death, because if he’d been a baker or an engineer instead of a veterinary there wouldn’t have been a sick, vicious dog in their yard.

  She thrust her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat, turned and surveyed what Patrick had made her domain. The shopfitters had done a good professional job of clearing out the old-fashioned dark wood counters, flooring and shelving and installing bright, new pale beech and chrome fittings.

  Patrick was determined to immerse himself in the life of Wake Wood. By asking around, he’d found cleaners for the pharmacy and their cottage and thrown himself into the veterinary practice he’d joined as a junior partner. But she couldn’t help feeling that her husband was role-playing. Acting in a production that would soon end, although she couldn’t have said how it would finish or even why it should. And when it did, they could return to …

  What? Not their old house and old life, because another vet had moved into the house that had been theirs and set up practice in what had been Patrick’s surgery. Normality? This was their new normality, or so Patrick continually told her. Their life from now on would be lived out in Wake Wood. But if that was the case, why did she feel as though she were merely marking time, waiting for something momentous to happen? Something huge, life-changing.

  She crossed her arms tightly across her chest and hugged her secret close. Patrick was unaware of the black bags she’d secreted away from his prying eyes behind the door in the spare bedroom. He thought the room was empty, and at first glance it looked that way, although it held everything she’d brought from Alice’s room at home.

  Home.

  That one word conjured so many images from the past – the only place Louise wanted to live. Alice kneeling on a chair, painting pictures on the kitchen table. Alice, her back turned to the hearth, reading a book by firelight in their living room. Alice hitting tennis balls against the side of the house. Alice running ahead of Louise as she walked her home from school, so that she could call into Patrick’s surgery and see the animals he was doctoring. Alice curled in her bed last thing at night, listening to a story Louise was telling her.

  Soon – very soon – she’d recreate Alice’s bedroom in their Wake Wood house. She didn’t know why she’d waited so long. Yes … she did. Fear of Patrick’s disapproval. But once it was done, the only difference would be in the actual walls. Alice’s room would become her sanctuary here, just as it had been her refuge and sanctuary before they’d moved.

  She continued to stare at the raindrop-streaked window.

  Why did it appear that some drops were massing and moving upwards, not downwards?

  She heard the bell and the sound of the door opening and closing behind her, followed by footsteps, but she didn’t turn her head. She simply couldn’t summon the energy required to communicate with a customer. It was easier to remain where she was, dwelling in the past, concentrating on recalling every tiny detail of Alice’s room and how she would duplicate it in the cottage.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Louise finally turned to an elderly woman wearing a brown wool cloche hat that clashed with her khaki mac. She was holding out a box of self-tanning lotion. Louise avoided eye contact but extended her hand to take the box.

  The woman spoke with a local accent. ‘Is this hypo-allergenic?’

  It was a commonplace enquiry that sparked an uncontrollable reaction. Louise dropped the box, tried and failed to stop tears starting into her eyes and rushed to the door. ‘Sorry. I …’

  Abandoning the woman and the shop, she hurried down the street, sensing rather than seeing the faces peering out of the few open businesses as she passed. Curious, unsympathetic faces. The faces of people she still considered strangers after long, weary months in the town.

  The room – Alice’s room. She had to recreate it. She needed it, needed something to hold on to. Patrick was cruel. He should never have forced her to leave their old house. She’d been close to Alice within its walls because Alice had lived there, and a part of her had remained. Alice wasn’t in Wake Wood because she’d never even visited the place.

  Why couldn’t Patrick see that mothers and daughters needed one another – and desperately? Death couldn’t alter that. She needed Alice and Alice still needed her. Now they were separated more than ever.

  The rain had lightened to a drizzle. The farmhouse and outbuildings glistened pewter beyond the sea of muck and mud, criss-crossed by tractor tracks, that covered the farmyard. Patrick was standing in a pen at the far end of the open yard, preparing a cow for a Caesarean. He dipped a wide brush into a bucket of antiseptic and proceeded to scrub the animal’s flank.

  Arthur, the senior partner of the veterinary practice Patrick had joined, dro
ve into the farmyard, parked his car to the left of the gate in front of a neat stack of black plastic-covered hay bales and turned off the ignition. He picked up his trilby and walking stick from the passenger seat, jammed the hat on to his head and stepped gingerly outside. He limped across the yard, avoiding soiling his shoes in the piles of mucky water that had collected in depressions in the concrete. He wasn’t dressed for a farmyard or work, and wasn’t carrying overalls or an instrument case.

  The two farm workers, brothers, Ben and Tommy, who’d been watching Patrick minister to the cow from the far end of the pen, turned and waved to the visitor.

  ‘Look lively, Patrick. The senior partner’s coming to check you out,’ Tommy warned, tongue in cheek. ‘He’s late, considering how long you’ve been doing the job for him. But then, better late than never.’

  ‘He’s here to show you how it’s done, Patrick,’ Ben teased.

  Arthur shouted, ‘Hello there,’ as he headed for the pen.

  ‘And how are you doing today, Arthur?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Fine, just fine, thank you, Tommy.’ Arthur opened the gate to the pen, slipped inside, shut it and joined the two brothers at the back.

  Patrick paused to wipe rain from his forehead with his forearm. ‘Afternoon, boss.’ He finished scrubbing the cow, picked up the syringe he’d loaded earlier and plunged it into the centre of the area of hide he’d sterilised.

  The cow was already heavily anaesthetised, docile and placid. Patrick exchanged the syringe for a scalpel and slowly and carefully began to draw a fine line down the cow’s side at right angles from its backbone. The black hide split, revealing layers of white fat separated by a swelling of bright red blood.