Lost Summer

by Stuart Harrison

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As the sound of Adam’s car faded, Angela turned out the porch light and went back inside. She turned off the lights and went down the passage towards the study. The lamp was on, casting a dim yellow light through the partially open door. David was sitting at his desk, a bottle of whisky and a glass in front of him. She started to go past, but then changed her mind. Too often lately she had left him to his thoughts and his drinking. Every time she tried to talk to him it turned into a fight. She supposed that she was hoping he would snap out of whatever it was that was eating away at him, but she saw now that by allowing things to go on like this she was destroying their marriage as surely as he was. She pushed open the door.

  ‘Adam’s gone.’

  David’s face was half hidden in shadow. ‘You shouldn’t have invited him here.’

  ‘Why? What was I supposed to do? Just say, “Nice to see you again after all these years, perhaps we’ll run into each other again some time”? He’s an old friend.’

  ‘He was a bit more than that for you wasn’t he?’

  She stared at him, amazed by what she thought she heard in his voice. ‘David, are you jealous?’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘For God’s sake I only met him again this afternoon.’ She watched him reach for the whisky bottle to refill his glass. ‘And don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

  His paused and met her eye, then dropped his hand. Suddenly he looked vulnerable. Fatigue was etched into his features and uncertainty filled his eyes. There was something in his expression that was almost … she searched for the right word … almost a plea, and it touched her though she didn’t understand it. She went over and crouching down took one of his hands between her own.

  ‘What is it, David? What’s happened to us?’ He shook his head. Was it defeat? A denial, or simply an expression that he didn’t know any more than she did? ‘You’re not really jealous of Adam are you?’

  ‘I saw the way he looked at you.’

  ‘What?’ she said, with genuine surprise.

  ‘And you. You looked different tonight,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what it was at first. Even before he got here you were running around, checking everything, I don’t know.’

  ‘I just wanted everything to be right.’

  ‘You were worried, Angela. Admit it. You were worried about what he would see.’ He gestured to the whisky bottle. ‘Would I drink too much, what would I say?’

  She couldn’t deny it and didn’t try. ‘I thought this might be a chance to forget everything for a while, just for a few hours. He’s just an old friend, David. Somebody we haven’t seen for a long time.’

  ‘Come on, you can’t believe that, Angela. We can’t just pretend none of it happened. For Christ’s sake did you see the way he limped? I did that to him.’

  ‘It was an accident. He never blamed you for that.’

  ‘But what about what happened afterwards, while he was laid up in a fucking hospital bed? Do you think he’s forgotten?’

  ‘Nothing happened between us.’

  ‘It didn’t have to. He saw what was going on. He knew what we were thinking.’

  ‘We couldn’t help the way we felt.’

  ‘Maybe not. But if it was all so innocent why did we both feel so bad about it? Why did I stop going to see him?’

  He was right. She remembered how guilty she had felt sitting on the bus with David after they had been to the hospital. Nothing had happened, nothing had even been said for a long time, but she’d felt guilty nonetheless. She had known, they had both known long before the accident that they were attracted to each other. Neither of them had expected it. It had just been there, that inexplicable something, a chemical chain reaction that neither of them had any control over. At first, though she had found herself thinking about David all the time, she’d tried hard to suppress her feelings. She’d been confused because she’d had feelings for Adam too. Once she had believed she loved him, and knew he’d felt the same way about her. But had they really been in love? They were young, but then she’d been young when she’d fallen in love with David too. Perhaps if there hadn’t always been the knowledge that Adam would one day leave things might have been different. Though perhaps that wasn’t really the issue. Maybe it was just that they were different people with different ideas and plans and ultimately his leaving was a reflection of that. She had never really known. The accident had prevented their relationship from running its natural course.

  ‘It was a long time ago, David,’ she said. ‘And Adam has nothing to do with what’s been happening to us.’

  ‘Until now maybe.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing, forget it.’

  ‘Forget it?’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we talked? Sometimes I feel we’re not the same people that we were. That you’re not the same. You don’t even sleep in our bed any more.’

  ‘You know how things have been, Angela. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that!’ she said angrily. ‘Don’t tell me this is all about the sawmill.’ She waved a hand at the half-empty whisky bottle. ‘This! The drinking, never talking, the way you sit in here all the bloody time, brooding. Dammit David, this is about us. Us!’

  ‘It isn’t just the sawmill.’

  ‘Then what? What is it?’

  ‘It’s everything. Those protesters could still make Forest Havens pull out.’

  ‘No,’ she said, suddenly knowing there was more to this than he was trying to have her believe. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’ She saw immediately that she was right. Some expression flashed in his eyes. What was it? Whatever it was it vanished, and he became guarded.

  ‘There’s nothing else.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I know how much the business means to you and I’ve tried to be understanding. I knew you were worried when the estate was first put up for sale, and afterwards when you didn’t know if Forest Havens would get planning permission. But they did, and soon the protesters will be evicted and I don’t understand why you’re like this.’ She gestured to the whisky in his hand. ‘Every night you lock yourself away in here. You shut me out, you shut out your own daughter, and you drink yourself into a stupor. So what is it, David? What is it really? And don’t tell me you’re afraid the deal will fall through because I don’t believe that any more!’

  She thought she had finally got through to him. For a moment he seemed on the verge of something, and then the moment passed and a veil slid down over his eyes. He turned away from her.

  Angrily she went from the room, slamming the door behind her in frustration.

  Upstairs in their bedroom her anger ebbed and left her feeling only empty and alone. An hour later he hadn’t come to bed, and she knew that he wouldn’t. She lay in the darkness, fighting back tears of frustration and helplessness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  For the second day in a row Adam was the only guest at breakfast. A waitress was clearing another table and as there was no sign of the Rover in the car park he assumed the two couples from Birmingham had made an early start.

  After breakfast he drove out to the northern edge of Castleton Wood. He left his car on the verge at the edge of the road and followed the track that led through the trees. The day was sunny but cool enough to remind him that it was October. The oaks and the beech trees had lost many of their leaves, and what remained reflected the sunlight in a blaze of yellow. Coloured signs printed on laminated paper were nailed to trees along the edge of the track. SAVE OUR WOODLAND. EVERY TREE WE CUT DOWN IS ANOTHER GASP FOR OUR PLANET. Occasionally there were flashes of ironic humour. CUT DOWN A TREE, WE NEED MORE JUNK MAIL. Other signs asked for donations of food, clothing or money.

  The track passed by a small clearing where a young woman watched as he approached. He raised a hand and called out a greeting. ‘I’m looking for the protest camp.’

  She pointed along the t
rack. ‘If you keep going you’ll come to the communal area.’

  Her hair was long and matted, and when she smiled she revealed heavily stained teeth. Some logs had been arranged around an open fire for use as seats, and a blue tarpaulin slung over some low branches formed the basis of a crude tent.

  ‘Have you been here long?’ he asked.

  ‘About six months.’

  He couldn’t imagine living this way for that length of time. He asked about her camp, and why she was there.

  ‘They want to cut down the trees,’ she told him.

  As they talked he thought she seemed friendly enough, though her smile was a bit vacant, and the answers she gave him to his questions were simple to the point of bordering on the naïve. A sign had been nailed to a tree, a kind of New Age exhortation to protect mother earth, nourish her, life is a cycle, a rhythm to become attuned to, and so on. The girl gazed at him. Her clothes looked handmade. She reminded him of the kind of pictures of medieval peasants found in school history books.

  He thanked her and moved on, passing other camps back in the trees, often with shelters made of plastic sheeting or tarpaulins. There were also a few tree houses here and there, sometimes connected with rope walkways. Some looked sturdier than others, and when he went to take a closer look at one he was confronted with a notice fixed to the tree warning trespassers away, which he found mildly ironic. He encountered a few other people like the girl he’d talked to, but most of the camps were empty.

  The track led eventually to a fairly large clearing where thirty or so people, mostly young, sat or stood around several pit fires. Over one a large pot of rice was cooking and another was filled with some kind of greenish stew. A half-dozen beaten-up vans and cars were parked on the grass, and some washing lines had been strung between the trees. A dog started barking, an ugly grey terrier tied by a rope lashed to a tree. A bizarre-looking figure wearing a battered top hat and dishevelled morning coat teamed with tartan trousers patted the dog until it quietened. He went back to his place among a group sitting around a smouldering fire and watched Adam approach with an expression of mild enquiry.

  ‘Morning,’ Adam said. ‘Nice day.’

  ‘Good morning,’ the young man replied, his accent surprisingly public school. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties and had begun rolling a joint. The others around him passed around some cans of lager. Some had dreadlocks, others shaven heads, and most had pierced various parts of themselves. All of them wore an unconventional assortment of clothing. Unlike the girl Adam had spoken to earlier, these people looked less like throwbacks from another century and more like refugees from the punk era of the seventies and eighties, except that they weren’t old enough. Though there was nothing untoward in their manner, their appearance was vaguely threatening

  A young girl asked if he’d like a cup of tea, which struck him as incongruous. ‘No thanks. I’d like to talk to you if I could, though.’

  ‘Have a pew,’ the one wearing the top hat said. ‘I’m Peter. What can we do for you?’

  They shook hands. ‘Adam Turner. I’m a journalist.’

  ‘Right. Make sure you get my surname right then. Fallow.’ He spelt it out. ‘Which paper do you work for?’

  ‘I don’t. I’m freelance.’

  Fallow looked disappointed. ‘Well, you’re a bit early anyway.’

  ‘Early?’

  ‘Aren’t you here for the eviction?’

  ‘Not exactly. When is it going to happen?’

  ‘Aha, the question on everybody’s lips. If only we knew the answer.’ He grinned and lit up his joint. The sweet smell of cannabis laced the air. After he’d taken a couple of good tokes he passed it on, and accepted his turn for a swig of lager.

  ‘You don’t seem too worried by the prospect of getting kicked out,’ Adam said.

  ‘That’s because it’s our chance to let people see the fascist state at work. They’ll probably come at night hoping to get us all out before anyone sees what’s going on, but it won’t work. We’ll be ready.’ He tapped his nose, hinting at secrets.

  ‘You mean you’ll resist.’

  ‘Not in the way you mean. We’ve got friends on the inside, they’ll tell us when it’s about to happen and we’ll have the press here waiting. Lights! Cameras! Action!’ Gleefully he gestured to the surrounding woods. ‘They’ll have to drag us out. But first they’ll have to get us down from the trees and dig us out of our underground burrows. It’ll be on the nine o’clock news.’

  ‘Publicity for the cause,’ Adam guessed.

  ‘In a word, precisely.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit late for all this? I assume the council have already approved the Forest Havens plans.’

  ‘True, but companies like Forest Havens hate bad publicity. They want everyone to think they’re nature-friendly. Have you seen their brochures? Lots of happy smiling families enjoying their holidays in the countryside. Pictures of bike trails through leafy woods and rolling fields, foxes playing in a meadow and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound too bad,’ Adam said.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t. Of course they never show the acres of trees they cut down, all the habitat they destroy to create their artificial natural wonderland with its man-made lakes and rustic kiosks selling ice cream and hamburgers. The last thing they want is this place all over the nine o’clock news as we’re dragged out by our heels.’

  ‘So, the more media, the better as far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘Exactly. If you want to know when it’s all happening leave us your number and we’ll send you an invitation.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ A frightening-looking youth with rings through his eyebrows and a shaved head offered him a toke of the joint, which he declined. ‘Actually, I’m interested in the three boys who were killed near here in a car accident a month or so ago. They were part of this protest weren’t they? Did you know them?’

  ‘Hmm, a little. I know Jane better.’

  ‘Jane Hanson?’

  ‘Yes. The others came up with her, but I didn’t have much to do with them. There were more of us here then and people tend to split into their own groups. Anyway they left when all the others did.’

  ‘All the others?’

  ‘About a hundred of them, mostly students. They all decamped after some of the local heroes turned up here one night. I think they’d decided not to wait for the official eviction.’

  ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘The usual. They surprised us one night and started pulling camps apart and beating people up.’

  ‘The usual? You mean this had happened before?’

  ‘Not here, but I’ve seen the same kind of thing at other places. Sometimes it’s just local thugs with nothing better to do, out for a bit of fun. Sometimes it’s people trying scare us off.’

  ‘And which was this?’

  Fallow looked grim. ‘These weren’t just troublemakers, they meant business. They were organized and most of them had clubs. It was the students who got the worst of it. We get a lot of them coming to these things in the summer. They bring their tents and treat it like a scout jamboree. A jolly lark. Anyway, like I said, after that most of them left.’

  ‘You reported what happened to the police I take it?’

  ‘The next day. They came and took statements.’

  ‘Was anybody arrested?’

  Fallow looked sceptical. ‘The local plod came to see us a few days later. He made noises about the descriptions being vague and so on.’

  ‘You don’t think the police took what happened seriously?’

  ‘Let’s just say that we find the constabulary generally think we ought to regard a few bruises and bloody noses as a natural hazard.’

  Maybe what Fallow said was true, but as he had said himself, this had sounded more sinister than just some local troublemakers, Adam thought. Now he understood how the boys with Ben had come by their injuries. ‘So, this was before the accident?
How long before?’

  ‘A few days,’ Fallow said.

  ‘And afterwards, Jane Hanson left as well?’

  ‘No, she’d already gone by then,’ a voice piped up.

  ‘This is Ellie,’ Fallow said, gesturing to a girl sitting nearby. ‘She knows Jane as well as anyone.’

  She was perhaps eighteen or nineteen. One of her ears was pierced by at least a dozen rings, and she wore another through her nose. Her hair had been shaved to a uniform quarter-inch length and was dyed bright red.

  She smiled. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi. So, when exactly did Jane leave?’

  ‘A few days before the camp was attacked. Ben and the other two stayed on. Poor Ben. He was nice.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘A little. He was too nice for Jane. I don’t mean that in a horrible way, but he wasn’t strong enough, you know? Jane needs somebody who can stand up to her. Ben was besotted with her. He’d have done anything for her. I think that was partly why she decided to finish it. She asked me to keep an eye on him, before she went. I didn’t do a very good job did I?’

  ‘Where did Ben and the others go after they left here?’

  Ellie looked at Fallow who shrugged. ‘No idea. We never saw them again.’

  ‘But they definitely didn’t come back here?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Adam wondered where they had been for the next few days until the accident happened. Why hadn’t they gone home? ‘What about Jane? She went back to London?’

  ‘I think so. I know she was supposed to be starting a job down there,’ Ellie said.

  ‘Deserted us,’ Fallow cut in cheerfully. ‘I always knew she would in the end. She’s probably got some corporate job in the City, sold out to the fascists.’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Ellie said. ‘They never saw eye to eye those two. Jane doesn’t think this kind of protest works any more. She was always saying we have to play them at their own game.’

  ‘She thinks our image works against us,’ Fallow added, and looking around Adam thought she had a point.

  Ellie grinned and dug Fallow in the ribs. ‘She just had different ideas that’s all.’