Cold Boy's Wood

by Carol Birch

  ‘S’cuse me, love, is this your shoe?’ Prince Charming.

  My blue espadrille. The other still sitting there. A dog had run off with it.

  Wilf was a chef in a hotel near Euston and worked odd shifts. He had a classic cupid’s bow mouth, which he gave to Lily, and he rode an old Norton motorbike on which we took jaunts out into the countryside whenever we could, taking just any old turning to see where we ended up. He was the most laid-back man I’d ever known. For two years we lived together in a room in a basement in Notting Hill, and if ever there was a time in my life when the living was easy, that was it. I sold shoes on Ken High Street. He baked apple cake, ginger cake, perfect angel cake, read sci-fi and watched football. Sex pretty much stopped after the first year but it took us a while longer to realise that all we were was just good friends. In those days, though, you always had to shack up, that’s how it was. We were never going to stay together. We must always have known, but we just went on as we were because it was so easy and we got along so well, and every now and then we’d still have sex but it really wasn’t lighting up very much. So we decided to split and stay friends, and then I realised my thickening waistline was not only from the apple cake. It was Lily.

  *

  Silent lightning over the tree tops once a long time ago, and me sitting on the bench with my jewellery things. A silver leaf. Things have been a little mad these days. I started back through the trees and – woo! – listen! –

  A kind of sweet singing sighing voice made out of tree tops.

  Lor-na! Lor-na!

  Hello?

  6

  He’d started sketching again. Tried to draw one of the cats but the stupid thing moved off. He drew a cat and a fiddle. Found some old drawing pencils and a rubber in the cats’ room. State of it. Wood. Old pine doors. Plywood boards and planks. He was always intending to build a chicken coop and put it at the end of the garden with a run, the bit where he didn’t grow anything. Might as well. Fresh eggs. But he never got round to it. Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle. The cat looked stupid. Gave him whiskers. A smile. Gave him lynx ears. That was better. And musical notes dancing around in the air about his head. Stupid, he wrote. El Stupido. Then he chucked it all in and went to the pub. Pete Wheeler was there. Eric Munsy, mates once, long time ago. God, what’s this all for? They used to go out together sometimes, him and Madeleine, Eric and Josie. What happened to her? Big tall girl. No idea. Still skinny as a rake, Eric. Long grey hair straggling over his shoulders, face like a wet weekend. And here we all are, some of us, still kicking about. Eric raised his glass in silent greeting from the other end of the bar. The music was loud but you could hardly hear it, something bouncy and techy, not his thing. Lots of young ones in tonight, someone was having a birthday or something and they were on their way somewhere. Lots of shouting.

  Mary behind the bar knew what he wanted and reached automatically for a glass. ‘Wild in here tonight,’ she said, pulling the pint.

  ‘Aye.’

  Mary was in her fifties with long dyed black hair and a trim figure. ‘There’y’go, my love,’ she said, smiling a crooked-jawed smile and putting the pint down on the mat.

  ‘Ta, Mary.’

  He sat at the bar trying not to look like a dirty old man. He always sat at the end if he could, with his back against the wall next to the old dragon banner the schoolkids made out of rags. It had been there for years and was falling to pieces. He drank steadily and quietly, one pint after another. The bright young things talked very loudly. A hearty little roar went up now and then from the darts players way down the other end, and the grey parrot in its cage just sat there looking wise. Pete Wheeler came over. ‘Oy!’ he shouted over the roar. ‘Did you hear about your old ex?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your old ex, Madeleine.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Been talking to the police about that body,’ Pete said. ‘Says she gave some guy a lift around the time it was, you know, when it happened. And he had blood on his face.’

  ‘I didn’t think they knew when it happened,’ Dan said.

  ‘Yeah, well, I dunno. Parrantly she went to the police. Said she remembered something. It was in the paper.’

  Long after his time, he thought. He’d have been away.

  ‘So, what then?’ he said. ‘They find out anything?’

  Pete shrugged. ‘Oy! Sam!’ he called.

  His son with the spiky hair came over with his girlfriend.

  ‘What did they say about that body?’ asked Pete. ‘In the paper?’

  ‘Oh, not much,’ said Sam.

  ‘Too long ago,’ the girl, a thin little thing in a leather jacket, added. Her eyes had spikes at the corners.

  ‘Don’t suppose they’d tell us anyway,’ said Mary, who was reaching under the counter for crisps. ‘Who knows what goes on?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think they’ll bother.’ The boy’s yellow hair glittered under the light like tinsel. ‘Not unless they come up with a missing person.’

  Pete worked for the water board. ‘Really messed the drains up over Copcollar,’ he said, his red face sweaty, downing about half of his pint in one go and swaying gently sideways against his son.

  ‘The world’s full of mysteries,’ the boy said portentously.

  ‘What do they do with them?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Sorry, Dan?’

  ‘With bodies? If they’re not claimed.’

  ‘Like in Lost Property,’ said the girl. ‘If not claimed in X number of days…’

  Pete must have actually been very drunk because he suddenly threw an arm round Dan’s neck and cried, ‘See this guy! Wouldn’t credit it, but this geezer’s been round the world twice over.’

  ‘Have you?’ asked the girl, interested, turning to him.

  ‘Merchant Navy,’ said Dan.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘My uncle was in the Merchant Navy.’

  ‘In the engine room,’ said Dan.

  ‘Really?’ She actually seemed interested.

  ‘Not twice over,’ he said. ‘Not even once. Been to Iceland.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Pete, shaking his shoulder, ‘what you having?’

  More of the same.

  ‘How’s the motor?’ he asked Sam.

  ‘Great,’ the boy replied, scrolling something on his phone.

  Then they all forgot him. Fat Marlon appeared behind the bar and Mary nipped out for a smoke. Dan fancied a smoke too. All these kids, he thought. He’d have liked kids. Well, maybe not. People who had them moaned about them all the time. Marlon knew his stuff and brought him a Scotch, which he refilled twice more, and Dan sat there till he found himself moving. He’d noticed that. You just did things. You didn’t have to think. You were just the man who props up the end of the bar. Your stomach shoves out over your belt. Then you’re outside under the Dragon and Hope sign so you must have got up, your body just did it. You’re in the lane going home. It’s full moon. You’re at the end of the village so you start to sing, just quietly. Funny, you get into this state still. I want a dog, he thought, another dog. Wonder what the cats’d think? Couldn’t really get one that bothered them. Best go to a dog rescue, get an older, sober one. And he sang: ‘Oo-oo-ooh, baby baby – oo-ooh-ooh baby baby, oo-oo-ooh, baby baby…’ like a dog howling at the moon. By the time he got home he was feeling great. Awooooh! ‘Werewolves of London’ – He checked on the bees, even tinkered on an engine for a while, then somehow lost the wrench, couldn’t find it anywhere, so gave up and went in with his head spinning, put on music, got the bottle of Irish from the shelf and banged out some ice.

  He came and stood at his back door, looking out on the still night. My back steps, he thought. Here they are. Mine. My back steps. Always. They don’t belong to anyone else. My back steps. They were wide and round, concentric circles, very old red brick eroding at the edges, dustified. On the bottom one was a wedge-shaped gouge about an inch and a half deep that filled with dirty water when it rained. His mum had mad
e it with a pickaxe one day when she was arguing with his grandma about money.

  They screeched.

  His mum: ‘So? So? So? You can afford it.’

  ‘That’s not the point!’

  And he’d screamed his head off because he was only about two and he and his mum had only just come to live with his gran, and he wasn’t used to it. Later of course it was normal. She was always too high on emotion, his mum, probably mostly her fault. Everything was drama, slobber slobber emotion or bitter anger or Greek tragedy, anything but an even keel. He remembered the first time he realised the shame of her, once when a man outside the shop, when he was waiting while she bought her cigarettes, leaned down in front of him, his big red-nosed face with all the deep pores and the friendly smile, said to him, ‘Listen, son, what’s your age?’

  He thought it was a funny way to say it: what’s your age? He didn’t even know who the man was.

  ‘I’m nine,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a big boy now. You shouldn’t be letting your mother show her affections like she does with you. Know what I mean? Not like when a mother kisses a baby, if you see what I mean. You’re too big for that sort of thing.’

  Then the man had moved away, strolled off across the village green, and he couldn’t remember ever seeing him again. He had a feeling he might have been the man who delivered the minerals to Ollerenshaw’s. Horror. His soul had curled in mortification. His cheeks blazed. It was wrong. Everyone was laughing at him. Looking at him funny. And after that she’d been too big, and so was he, big son of a big mother, lumbering about, graceless. It was the time after his gran had died and it was just him and her, and she’d still seemed like a big girl, still with her long hair. It had been a good time. But no longer. All ruined. There’d been snuggles and cuddles, and she’d hugged him so tight she’d made him cough, but after that he wouldn’t let her. He’d go off into the woods and she’d sulk for days when he got back, and cry quietly to show how horribly he’d upset her. So he’d stay out again and then she’d go mad.

  Googly eyes filling up with tears.

  Oh, poor Mother!

  She was too weak and scared to live out in the world. Couldn’t cope. Hunched up in the bathroom, crying next to the bath. Clutching her knees, peering soulfully at the wall with massive pining eyes.

  He put his hand down to pull her up.

  Fuck you, Mum. I shouldn’t have had to put up with that.

  OK.

  Musico! Get sensible. Make a list. Go into town Friday. Need a few things. He’d never got round to locking that gate. Seemed pointless. Things to do. Things to do, things to do. Make a start on the chicken coop. But instead of doing sensible things he found himself getting sentimental with the cats. Chasing a small tortoiseshell, scooping it up and singing: Oh what a beautiful pussy you are. You are! You are! The cat, which had no name, purred and narrowed its eyes at him, wisely. The line down the centre of its face looked as if someone had done it with a precision tool. It wriggled, squirmed out of his arms and fled.

  He stopped, struck like a statue under the full moon.

  This is no way to carry on.

  It’s a shame, people said. He wasn’t so bad before the drink got to him. It was after he came back from sea. There just didn’t seem to be anything else to do. He remembered his bunk. His face in that little mirror. He must have been younger then but it always seems to have been the same face in the mirror, the same one all these years, till now it didn’t look like him any more, it didn’t look like anyone he knew. It was much fuller and harder and older. He talked to himself and the cats, forced himself on the tortoiseshell again, danced with it. Ridiculous. Sometimes he did ridiculous things like suddenly shout yeeeh-haaah! to the starry sky for no reason.

  The cat scratched his hand, jumped down and ran.

  ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ he said.

  Cold.

  Getting cold.

  Turning to go in, he stubbed his toe on the wrench that had materialised from nowhere in his path. ‘Fuck!’ he yelled as it went spinning, tripped over a straying wheel brace and fell hard across the steps, cracking himself bang in the centre of the forehead against the edge of the top step.

  7

  Oh God, poor fool’s knocked himself out.

  Well, what can you do? Got to do something. Terrible thing to find the poor fucker’s dead and you could have done something. I only came for the music. Had some wine earlier and was feeling nice. Then he comes out and starts making a racket behind his house, shouting and yelling and groaning, then clonk and that awful silence. The music went softly on in the house, I don’t know what it was, but honestly, it was sinister, the way one minute he’s shouting and singing and the next – nothing.

  So of course I had to go and look. I came out of the woods and went into his yard for the first time, and there was plastic tacked over a couple of the back windows, and hundreds of cats all looking at me with wide suspicious eyes. The man was lying face down and half on his side right across the steps, and there was blood on the step and on his forehead; it had run down his face between the eyes, and his eyes were moving about a lot under the lids so he was alive anyway. He was OK. Breathing and everything. Just pissed out of his head. But he looked really uncomfortable, the way the step pressed into his neck and shoved his face sideways, so I thought I should get him a cushion, and went inside. To be honest, I was curious. I felt sorry for the poor old bugger. So I had a little poke around, and it was creepy and depressing. There was a wide staircase with darkness at the top, and on the right as you went in, a massive kitchen that smelt cold and a bit off, with a big wooden table in the middle, deep old white sinks and wooden draining boards. Not much used, I’d say. To the left, from which the music came, the living room, messy and surprisingly cosy with a long sofa and comfy chairs and a TV, and pictures on the walls, the kind of things you saw in junk shops, hunters with dogs, landscapes, boats, nature studies, and a fireplace all laid and ready to light. There were two more rooms, one on either side of the stairs. One was a workshop with tools and wood shavings and cluttered shelves, the other a cat-stinky place filled with old furniture and boxes and a few old doors stacked up against the wall. When I turned on the light there was a scuttling and something dark ran behind a beat-up brown armchair with no seat and scratched arms. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I hope you’re a cat and not a rat.’ Why keep all this stuff? Not many books. Not a reader then. I opened the top drawer of an ugly sideboard. Jumble. A Present From Whitby, a little quaint fisherman’s cottage. A lump of rock. A boat with blue-trimmed sails. A pair of cream-coloured kid gloves, perfect and tiny. A brooch consisting of fine filigree intertwined letters, an O and an A and a C. Letters in a bundle. An old telescope. That was nice. I picked it up but the glass was obscured with filth and the mechanism refused to budge. Photographs half out of an envelope. Old black and white of a young woman standing by a swing, grinning happily. An old man and a woman sitting formally, stiff. A lane. Garden. Beehives. The ones out back, must have been there a long time.

  Enough. The poor man’ll be dead.

  I picked up a cushion from the sofa in the living room, took it out, carefully lifted his head and shoved it under. There. Much better. He sighed and opened his mouth, frowned in his sleep. Someone more of a wreck than me, I thought, ha ha.

  ‘Sleep it off,’ I said, then, following the theory that you can instil a sense of security in someone by whispering into their unconscious, did what I used to do with my kids when they were asleep. I leaned down and whispered by his ear: ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’

  And he said, ‘What?’ in a gormless voice, and I ran away.

  *

  OK, so I saw him through that and then I went back through the midnight wood to my den, and got the Tilley lamp going strong. Out came my book and my pens and pencils and I went on writing in that frantic heedless way that people do when they try to leave a trace, catch the voices all wanting to be heard, the clamour
ing past, make the good old times return. They were lost and things went wrong, but the wood smoothed it all out, smeared the past and present into a singularity, and since I came here there have been moments when everything was clear, as if this green world contained the whole of the ground of being, whatever that means. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, playing on repeat forever at the gates of heaven or hell or wherever you end up, those days, my friend, we thought would never end, oh but end they did. I wrote down Carmody Square, a big squat full of people running from Iran, from the Irish troubles, from whatever was to be left behind, people with not much money; just anyone who couldn’t get a place, and there among them me and Johnny and the girls. I loved living there. This rug on my floor, with its red and brown faded pattern, that’s from Carmody Square. We got a whole top floor of a house next to the shop, overlooking the square, with a view towards Vauxhall Bridge. I learned to make jewellery and work silver and sold them under the flyover at the end of Portobello Road. Johnny stole expensive art books and sold them to second-hand bookshops on and around Charing Cross Road. To live outside the law you must be honest, he always said. Eve and Steve lived downstairs. Steve looked like a pirate. Eve’s hair came thinly down to her waist. On the main road, the pub had lunch-time strippers who ranged from very beautiful to agonisingly fragile. We had a cat called Lemon, she’d sit on Johnny’s shoulder like a parrot and nibble at the glasses he wore for reading. Sometimes the police came round very early in the morning and raided one of the houses across the way, bang bang bang down in the square and the crackle of walkie-talkies. Johnny took the girls out, Lily by the hand, Harry in the pushchair, down to the river to watch the boats, over the bridge, past the Houses of Parliament, back across Westminster Bridge. Then he’d say, You girls, you go off to your room. He was good with kids. Could get them howling with laughter, stuck his arm in a hole in the cliff – It’s got me! It’s got me! – put my wraparound skirt on to do the washing up, all the mad upside-down faces and stupid walks. At night, Harriet snuggled into his side, zzzzzzz, Lily listening, zzzzz, the Bluzbo stories, night after night how they rambled on, like Watership Down only with flies, Bluzbo the plucky bluebottle, evil Zubb his sworn enemy, and a whole fly creation mythology, metaphysics, existential angst, the lot. All in a drowsy room on a summer’s day. You should write a book, I said. I’ll do the illustrations. He’d do a thing with the guitar strings – God knows how he did that, the strange music of buzzing, slow and lazy then speeding up – compulsion towards the Light, oh the tension, round and round, the madness. And the prolonged drama of evil Zubb’s loud death throes, whirling frantically on a windowsill after catching a full face-load of the dreaded Death Mist.