Harvest

by Celia Brayfield

  People made a lot of fuss about trips but they didn’t understand. If you were sensible you could control things. When the paranoias started the thing to do was hook your mind on to something beautiful, get some positive input. Then all those feelings of wonder and oneness would come back, and the nasties wouldn’t be able to take hold. So now all she had to do was take care of herself that way and sit it through. Already the illusions were fading in and out; it was nearly over.

  Restless energy made her ready to run. She decided to go back to the old trees. Ever since meeting her mother and staying in that forest trees had seemed protective. Stephen would be able to find her there; he could find her anywhere. They had this heavy psychic connection, he always knew where she was.

  There were still a lot of people about, which was good. If she really needed help there’d be someone to ask. Bunch of creeps though they were. Looking at her in that patronizing way, sliming her with their eyes. All her life she had been surrounded by people in mindless awe of Daddy, people who even worshipped him, intelligent people absolutely zapped who said shit like, ‘You must be so proud of your father,’ or ‘You’re so lucky, your father’s such a wonderful man.’ Then Jane had got started on her thing and it had been the same with her, everyone at school being stupid, saying, ‘Can I come home with you – I bet you get really good meals at home.’

  They never asked any questions, they just bought the family photograph. Michael Knight, media czar, at home with his wife Jane and their children, Imogen, Emma, Sam and their new baby, Xanthe. Everybody smiling, everybody happy. What is wrong with this picture?

  She was slowly drifting over the grass, avoiding the young trees, a graceful figure with a fixed, lazy smile and tentative, barefoot steps who drew the eyes of the caterers’men as they searched for the missing child. Creeps. To avoid their interest she feigned nonchalance and veered deep into the wood.

  Her tree was waiting for her, the big oak with a split trunk and the flattened root that was almost like a seat. It was large enough to hide her from the creeps. She really wanted to hide herself. Everything was shadowy now; the early evening light was too weak to shine through the leaves. Close by was the little spring, the tiny trickling noises of water were distinct to her enhanced hearing.

  In this condition, emotion was like the weather down in Texas, pretty extreme but at least you could see it coming. Next was going to be some sort of pain. The sorrow clouds were gathering rapidly, bowling towards her faster and faster. Oh fuck, this thing wasn’t dying down, she was in for another round.

  She tried to focus on the leaves but her mind obstinately refused to obey. Visions welled up from her memory. She saw her mother’s face, very lined and pale-skinned like her own, but delicate. Very lovely, she was, a comforting angel. The dry, fine lines criss-crossing her cheeks were like cobwebs. There was that tiny trace of an accent when she spoke. She was slim in a stringy way, in her arms and legs you could see all her muscles. Her clothes looked as if they had been washed a lot and she spoke quietly all the time as if her feelings were all washed out as well.

  The house was cluttered with objects, pottery, driftwood, seashells, old plates, little paintings, stones, everything worn or damaged. Her mother’s house was like a celebration of damage.

  A huge wave of sadness broke over her. All those years alone, all those years when her mother’s face was still fresh and silky and she never saw it, never touched it. The pain was like a single vibration holding her entire being. Surely she was going to die of it, her soul shatter like glass. It was unbearable, she would never survive. She could hear screaming, a sound from her own throat joining all the anguish of the world in a great howl.

  The tumultuous grief retreated as violently as it had come, leaving a bitter melancholy in which fragments of their conversation echoed. ‘I had to do what your father said, he had everything on his side.’ ‘Not having you with me was like having my arms torn off.’ ‘Of course, when I wasn’t married any more there was a question about my citizenship. For a while I thought I would be forced to go back to Sweden.’ ‘I want you to know I think of you every single day of my life. All day, sometimes.’ ‘I wish I had known how you looked. He never sent me a photograph, I did ask. You are a beautiful girl, Imogen.’

  Thank God, the sadness was going, dwindling down to sentimental poignancy, a breath of regret, blowing away. She was cool again, at least for a moment. The light was going fast now, it was hard to find anything to focus on. Stephen would be along soon, not to worry, and in the white shirt she would be easy to see.

  Her eyes roamed over the floor of the wood, looking for an object to hold her attention. No flowers. Close to her feet was a maidenhair fern, uncurling a new, vivid, leathery leaf. Concentrating, absorbing its spiral beauty, she grew irritated by a form behind it, something angular and artificial which seemed to cut across the helix of life.

  It was a kitchen knife.

  Scrambling forward from her seat in the tree roots, she retrieved it and held it by its point, swinging it like a pendulum in front of her eyes. The blade was dull but its edge was keen, a thread of silver in the dim light. Really, she was much less sick now than even six months ago. Here was this, exquisitely sharp knife – and obviously belonging to Jane – and she had no compulsion at all to cut herself with it. If she had, it would do a beautiful job, it probably was as sharp as a razor. But she had no desire even to try the blade. She really was in control now.

  The gathering twilight was becoming spooky. It was full of noise, dry noises, crackling and crunching, sweeping branches, brushing leaves. And she was alone. No Stephen. Probably still blundering about looking for her. Or maybe Daddy had stopped him. How they hated each other. Stephen was the one person who had never bought the picture, so Michael hated him.

  She’d seen him for years, fixing his laser killer stare on Stephen. All the smiley smarmy stuff he did, all his chat and bonhomie and handshaking, all that high-toned talk about the ethics of broadcasting, it was a disguise, a cloak of illusion. All the time he was sucking the life from everyone around him. A vampire; dead himself, feeding on the essence of living people. She was almost dead now, he’d had so much from her, but he was coming now to finish her, empty her veins. He knew where she was hiding. The tree was no longer safe. A growing terror sent her off at random, with the intention of getting back to the house, to Stephen.

  She was walking faster and faster. Her feet hurt. It was only paranoia, no one was after her, least of all Daddy. Come on, when had he ever been concerned enough to come and actually, find her? Be cool. Keep moving, keep the terrors handled.

  As she picked her way between the trees, the leaves loud under her feet, the fear refused to die down. In her hand, the knife was a significant burden. Idly, she bent down and swiped at a plantain stem, slicing off the flower head. The way it fell cleanly to the ground was very satisfying. A little drop of the fear was released.

  On her knees, she cut some more stems, enthralled at the miraculous way the knife toppled each small, dark inflorescence. It was a poetic weapon, a samurai sword in miniature. It had been put in her path to protect her.

  ‘Imogen. Imogen. Imogen.’ That was somebody calling her name. Something was clawing at her shoulders. She dared not look round. She dared not stop cutting. Was it Stephen? Please God it was Stephen, he’d make everything OK. She was terrified now, resisting the pulling hand. He was going to kill her. Knives everywhere so he could kill her. Please God it wasn’t Stephen, what might she do to him?

  Michael turned off his flashlight and let his eyes grow accustomed to the gathering darkness. ‘That’s great news,’ he said to Grace’s husband. ‘Great news.’

  ‘She was in their bathroom, playing by herself. No harm done.’

  ‘Good, good. Excellent.’ He turned and called out to the handful of catering staff who were scattered across the meadow. ‘It’s all right, everybody, she’s fine, she’s been found.’

  The two men looked at each other, awkward wi
th unspoken antagonism. Nick was quite ashamed of his opinion that Michael was a smooth, hypocritical asshole. The source of his hostility was not quite clear to him, and so he felt it was unreasonable and, given that the man was his host, ungracious. Michael was once more feeling that his importance was being diminished, and that this man was something to do with it.

  ‘I’ll – um – get back,’ Nick said at last.

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you, thanks again. I’ll be right up in a minute.’ Michael reached out and squeezed Nick’s arm briefly, then turned away again, feeling embarrassed.

  Above the oak trees one bright star was already shining. The mystery of the wood beckoned him. The ability to surrender to nature was something he knew he lacked, one of the many paths to repose and contemplation which he had hesitated to follow for fear of finding himself along the way. Work was justified, and everything that supported it, but he saw that other people gave their energy to distractions, arts or football or the leisurely expression of love, and felt he must be judged incomplete unless he did the same. So periodically he would attempt such behaviour, and now he stood and listened attentively to the night noises on his own land, and felt stupid because he had no notion of what or where the creatures were who churred and chirruped in concert all around him.

  The spectral figures of the staff were gravitating towards the truck. One by one they climbed aboard and the vehicle ground slowly up towards the car park. Out of the corner of one eye, Michael caught a movement on the far side of him, and turned towards it. One person was left, he saw a white shirt. The etiolated proportions of the body were quite unmistakable.

  ‘Imogen,’ he called out. ‘Imogen? Where are you going? Come back, they’ve found Xanthe.’ She seemed to be alarmed at his voice, and stumbled away. He thought she was probably drunk. The notion flashed into his mind that the railway track might also have attracted her. After the episode at Christmas, Jane had suggested to him, in her annoyingly soft way, that it might be sensible to put a fence along the cutting, for the safety of all the children. He had the builder’s quotation for the work in his office.

  She was floundering away from him, the white shirt flashing between the trees as she gained the depth of the wood. He followed; the ground was treacherous with briars and undergrowth. When he reached a clearing where a few pine trees grew the light was stronger, but in walking forward confidently he tripped over an unseen root and half-felt, putting his hands down to save himself.

  With a wry smile to himself, he admitted that this was not his lucky day. He had met failure at every turn since his arrival in France, and the sense of chaos was building steadily. The need to recoup the disaster of the party was chewing at his mind. The fact that he could taker no action until the morning, that he was marooned here in his wife’s world, was an added frustration.

  After the roasting heat of the day, the air was cool and full of scents, the pleasant smells of crushed plants and the rich aroma breathed out by the earth itself. There was a primitive excitement in walking among the trees in the almost-dark, hearing twigs crunch under his feet, having to feel the way as much as see it. For a few minutes his imagination took flight, suggesting how, among these dim, deceptive vistas of leaves and branches, simple people came to believe in wood-gods, Pan and Herne the Hunter, attended by dancing fauns and dryads.

  ‘Imogen!’ He could see her quite clearly now, on the ground about fifty feet ahead of him, cowering against a tree trunk. A few more steps and his shoe was almost sucked from his foot in a patch of mud, an accident which grounded his mind in annoyance. ‘Imogen, do come on. Come back with me.’

  She crawled away around the base of the tree, and he halted, wondering why she was behaving so strangely. It was Imogen’s way to attack, he was accustomed to it. Now she was acting as if she was terrified. The dark, perhaps? She had always been hyper-sensitive. Had he been unwise to talk graphically about her mother’s breakdown? Since that wretched boy had taken her over there, she had started making sarcastic references to her bad blood. Was she staging some copycat scene now?

  Warily, at a distance, he followed her towards the railway cutting. The pine trees mingled with the oaks meant that there was more light at this edge of the wood. She got down on the ground again and seemed to be absorbed in looking at the plants.

  Approaching as quietly as he could, he saw that she was cutting the tops off grasses with a kitchen knife. Better the plants than her own arm, but a knife was a knife.

  ‘Imogen,’ he said gently.

  She was talking to herself. ‘I want you to know,’ was all he could hear. ‘I want you to know.’ Another stem decapitated. Her feet were bare and muddy.

  ‘Imogen. Imogen.’

  He took hold of her free arm and tried to pull her to her feet. ‘Stop this, Imogen. Stop it.’ She was limp but resistant, pulling towards the ground, still whispering fearfully to herself. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Give me the knife. Don’t be afraid.’

  ‘No!’ All of a sudden her long limbs were infused with strength and she bounded upright, snarling incomprehensibly. He had forgotten how tall she was, how difficult to restrain. Her arms were whipping wildly around his head.

  ‘Give me the knife,’ he repeated, grabbing at the blade as it flashed briefly into his field of vision. ‘Give it to me. Come on now.’

  ‘No, no!’ She tore her arm out of his grasp. Her teeth were shining white in the darkness. She was trying to hit him. He felt her hit him at the back of his neck. She struggled away from him, pushing him from her. For an instant he stood still. Imogen was standing about three feet away, looking at him in absolute terror, her eyes staring. He wanted to go to her and reassure her, but when he moved the ground rushed up towards him. Then it was dark.

  8. Harvest Supper

  ‘I never felt so loved.’ Jane and Grace were sitting at the kitchen table now, face to face across the oak plank which gleamed with the grease of ten thousand dinners and the polishing of a hundred hands. Xanthe was sleeping soundly in bed, and the rest of the household was dispersed. Grace had pinned up her hair, feeling that it hampered her, this long exchange was a conference, not a conversation. There was work to be done here. ‘All that sensitivity, that intelligence, all poured into loving me. Knowing me. I couldn’t believe anyone would ever know me so deeply and love me so much.’

  ‘Yes. But …’ With one finger, Jane was tracing the edge of her table, needing a task to settle her restless mind. ‘He doesn’t, does he? He doesn’t love. Any of us. He can’t.’ Could she make the final confession? She looked up, reading compassion on Grace’s open face. To her surprise, she was coldly angry that this woman too had been betrayed. ‘I feel terrible for you,’ she said.

  ‘But that’s wrong – I feel terrible for you, for what I did to you. That’s how it should be …’

  ‘You never wanted to take him away from me, did you? I know you didn’t, you aren’t like that. You didn’t want him for yourself.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. There was a sort of beauty in the hopelessness of it But I was doing you wrong, Jane.’

  ‘No, that’s not how I feel about it. I know whatever happened between you was his initiative, his persistence, his creation.’ She stopped short, seeing that the pride in Grace had been goaded by her words. That’s what saved her in the end, she had enough pride to run away. That’s what I need. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to talk like this. So many years I’ve been alone with it …’ Jane sighed, for her loneliness and her children, and for the pity of her weakness. ‘Love is giving yourself, isn’t it? It’s self-sacrifice. He can’t do that. Michael’s god is himself. So he acts it out, love – and we, all of us, all his women, give ourselves, but he can’t do it. And – I think that’s why he goes on and on, eating up one woman after another. I’ve asked him, of course, a hundred times. Why can’t you just screw around like other husbands? Serial monogamy’s quite normal nowadays, so why can’t you leave me, marry the next one. I’m sorry, that was unkind.
’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Why do you have to keep me here, married alive? Then he says he loves me, that there isn’t anyone else. And if he gets angry he says I don’t have to stay, which of course I don’t, but…’

  She stopped, hearing sudden footsteps in the hall outside. The door did not open. ‘Who’s there?’ Jane demanded, alarmed to think that they might have been overheard.

  There was no answer, so she opened the door. In the hallway Imogen was sitting on the floor, her long thin legs buckled as if she had collapsed there. ‘Help me?’ Her voice was almost a whisper.

  ‘She’s covered in mud. She’s been outside.’ Grace left the table, intending to help, but the girl managed to get to her feet and come into the kitchen, bowing her head as she went through the doorway.

  ‘What’s the matter? Imi, what is it?’

  ‘I have taken this thing.’ Standing against the wall, Imogen was making a supreme effort to be coherent. ‘And it’s turned really bad on me, Jane. Really bad. Evil. It is coming and going, but it’s really bad. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know I’ve spoiled everything for you…’

  ‘Hush, that’s not so. Not at all.’ Jane felt helpless. ‘But I don’t know what to do.’

  Imogen’s jeans were blotched with mud. Her white shirt was covered with pieces of twig and leaf. There was a grass stain on one arm and some round, dark spots on the embroidered shirt front.

  ‘Have you cut yourself?’ Jane asked her.

  ‘Have I cut myself?’ She looked puzzled. ‘No. I left the knife behind. I did really well, you’d have been proud of me. I was having this great paranoid thing about Daddy, but I just – left it.’