"You couldn't have been under long," he tried to reassure himself. "You wouldn't have been able to breathe."
"Unless there was something I could."
He understood she had to come to terms with what she'd undergone, but she seemed almost nostalgic for it. "If you say you didn't mind lying there," he objected, "what made you get up?"
His aunt leaned over the bricks, and the middle of her loose dress swelled. "I didn't want mom worrying where I was."
She sounded so distracted she might have been saying the first thing that entered her head-perhaps less than or not even the truth. Her midriff seemed to haul her closer to the mound before she lurched across the bricks. Sam limped fast to her, thinking she'd tripped, but she had only bent towards the earth.
"Look," she whispered.
Her whisper brought the stillness closer. The light the clearing isolated was so intense that the mound appeared to shine with a blackness deeper than any night sky. Protruding from it was a tattered brownish object Sam took at first to be an elongated autumn leaf. He had to stoop as low as his aunt was crouching to distinguish that the marks on it weren't just wrinkles rilled with soil. They
were letters in a handwriting that looked centuries old. I Nathaniel, they said.
Sam was staring in bewilderment at this and dismissing the possibility that it was a Biblical reference when Sylvia slipped her fingertips under the fragment to pick it up, only to let out a small cry. The scrap had crumbled into pieces so minute no writing was distinguishable on them, and Sam was immediately unsure it hadn't after all been a leaf. His aunt began to straighten up, rubbing brownish flakes off her hand. Then she lowered herself to one knee and dug her fingers into the soil. "There's something else."
Sam wasn't eager to see; the spectacle of her clawing at the mound was unsettling enough. When she desisted he wondered if she'd realised how she must look, until she said
"Sam, fetch a stick."
Though her tone didn't quite suggest she was talking to a pet, he resented the words.
Nevertheless he couldn't refuse her, not in her condition. He must already have noticed a fallen branch at the edge of the clearing, because he limped to it at once. "The champion with his staff," said Sylvia, taking it from him to poke and scrape at the earth. "I was right," she cried.
For a moment he thought she'd uncovered only an area of the foundations-a random stretch of blackened stone. Then she thrust the branch several inches into the earth, and with an effort further still. "Here," she said, half withdrawing the branch to angle it towards him. "See what you feel."
He felt close to fearful. Rather than infect her with that, he stepped onto the mound and grabbed the branch. The exposed slab was broken, he saw; there was a jagged gap about a foot wide and packed with earth, which Sylvia had been probing. He shoved the branch into it, only to encounter at a depth of several inches an obstruction so solid it jarred his arms. He worked the stick free of it and poked deeper, and found another obstacle an equal distance beneath.
Leaning on the branch let him find a third. "You know what's there, don't you?" Sylvia said eagerly.
"Steps."
"How far do you think they go down?"
"I wouldn't know."
"We'll find out, won't we?"
Whatever expression that brought to his face made her giggle loud enough to be echoed somewhere nearby. "Not now. We'll need a flashlight and a spade," she said. "Better cover it now so nobody goes down before us. We don't want them taking away anything that's there."
She watched him extract the branch and use it to spread earth over the broken slab.
Once he'd finished she improved on his work before
treading on the earth to obscure any traces of their presence. The sight and sounds of her trampling on the mound dismayed him so much that he was retreating towards the trees, not that they seemed likely to offer any comfort, when she said "Stay a moment."
"What is it now?" he heard himself blurt, but no echo.
"Just making sure we don't forget." Having propped the branch against the nearest tree, she found a ballpoint in her pocket and wrote on the back of her hand a message she displayed to him: SPADE LIGHT WOODS. "Now even if we forget what it means we'll know what to do," she said, apparently under the impression this would please him. It didn't, and as he turned his back on the mound to escort her through the forest he felt sure he had already forgotten something else about the place. For no reason he could bring to mind, not that he was anxious to, he felt grateful to be unable to remember.
22
Secrets
HEATHER didn't know how long she had been sitting at Sam's window to watch for his and Sylvia's return when she glimpsed movement in the woods. As she leaned across the desk, bruising her elbows on the spaces she'd cleared amid the clutter, she saw the rest of Sylvia surface from behind a tree, followed by Sam.
Trees confused her view, so that the pair appeared to be retreating rather than advancing, drawn back by the woods and a haze that set tree-trunks writhing around them. She had to peer so hard her eyes ached to be certain they were emerging from the woods, though not from the outstretched shadows. Their own shadow hitched itself on four elongated legs across the common, its two heads nodding together, a spectacle Heather found so disagreeably fascinating that she failed to move away from the window until they were halfway to Woodland Close.
She didn't want to be seen waiting for them-preparing to talk to her sister.
When she arrived in the kitchen she was expecting to hear a knock at the gate.
She seemed to wait altogether too long for the rasp of a key in the front-door lock. They must be footsore, she told herself; Sam called "It's us."
"Us three," said Sylvia.
How long had she looked as though her midriff was on its way to consuming her?
Perhaps her voluminous dress emphasised her pregnancy, or Merilee's visit had intensified Heather's sense of her sister, not a reason she cared for. "Coffee for anyone?" she said in an attempt to pretend everything was normal. "Oh, Sam, Andy rang and wants to see you. He wouldn't say why."
"I'll drive over to his, then."
"What did we need to remember?" Sylvia reached to detain him and gazed at smudged writing on the back of her hand. "There it is," she said. "Better write it down somewhere else."
Before Heather could ask what it was, Sylvia made with ungainly haste for her room. "I ought to be home for dinner," said Sam.
"Be careful driving," Heather said automatically. As soon as she heard the Volkswagen chug into the road she called to Sylvia "Were you having that coffee?"
"I was just going to lie down for a while."
"Do you mind if I come and talk?"
"Why would I ever mind?"
Heather thought there might be a reason now. If Sylvia didn't want coffee, she didn't either: her nerves were active enough. She had yet to decide what to say once she'd climbed the stairs. Sylvia was lying on the plump green quilt overlooked by leafy wallpaper, and for an instant Heather imagined her sister prostrate on a grassy bank in a wood. There was no question that her midriff was more prominent, but it would be in that position, Heather told herself. She sat at their father's old desk and turned her back on the trees, which were extending their spidery shadows towards the house as they clutched the sun. "Was it all you hoped," she said,
"your walk?"
Sylvia closed her eyes as her lips considered smiling. "I believe so."
"You feel better for it, then."
"More
complete."
"Sam looked after you, did he?"
Sylvia's hands moved apart on her stomach, and Heather saw writing on the left hand was illegible, leaving the skin to look grubby or bruised. "I wouldn't want to do anything in there without him,' Sylvia said.
"Good for Sam," Heather said with more enthusiasm than she felt. "So what was so important that you wrote it on yourself?"
Sylvia squeezed her eyes tight, and Heather didn't know i
f she was trying to hide from the question or remember. "Just a message," said Sylvia.
"Is it a secret?"
"Maybe till I've followed it up."
"Don't let me stop you coming to terms." When Sylvia's face accepted this without a trace of an expression, Heather took a preparatory breath. "I've got to apologise," she said.
"You shouldn't," said Sylvia, and let her sleepy gaze find her. "You've gone nowhere near upsetting me."
"I don't mean about now."
"Now or for a long while. As a matter of fact I can't remember when you last did. You needn't try so hard not to if it's a strain. Just tell me if having to be my big sister gets to be too much."
"I don't see how it could," Heather said, telling herself included now. "The thing I have to apologise for, I forgot to give you a message."
"When was that?"
"The day we lost dad."
"Then I'm not surprised you forgot, and stop apologising, was the message?"
"Someone you knew in America was trying to get in touch. Someone you shared a room with."
"Any more to it?"
"Merilee."
"Right," Sylvia said, her lids beginning to veil her eyes. "I remember her."
"I should think you would. She was here today looking for you."
Sylvia's eyes stopped just short of closing. "Is she coming back?"
"I imagine she's well on her way to the airport by now."
"She's been wanting to travel for a long time. She thinks everywhere in the States is either too fast or it's too slow. She's looking for somewhere with enough history that it feels stable to her."
"I don't care about her, Sylvie. I care about you."
"I hope she finds somewhere," Sylvia said with a hint of defiance, and continued to show little of her eyes. "Did you talk much?"
"Enough."
"So what did she say about me?"
"How you met and where you were." Sylvia's reduced gaze strayed past Heather, who wanted to launch herself from the chair and grab her sister's hands. Instead she protested "I thought we weren't going to have secrets from each other."
"Maybe nobody can share everything they are. Maybe they shouldn't." As Sylvia opened her eyes to see if the answer had satisfied Heather, she resembled a child playing a game. "I wouldn't have minded telling you," she said. "I think you can handle it if I have. I just didn't want mom worrying I'd started to end up like dad."
"Did
you?"
Sylvia giggled so hard that Heather thought she heard a tiny fleeting echo at her back.
"Come on," Sylvia said. "Have I been acting like him?"
"You both have a thing about the woods. I mean, he had and you have."
"You're saying it has to be the same thing."
"I don't know if you keep secrets, do I? All right, that isn't fair. I know what you're having to deal with, but that isn't why you were in hospital with that woman."
"No need to make it sound as if it was her fault. She had a whole lot of problems, that's all."
"I just don't like the idea of you sharing a room with someone like her."
Heather heard herself sounding jealous as well as concerned- perhaps that was why Sylvia risked a faint smile. "It's okay, Heather. You can't catch someone else's mental problems just by living with them, so I hear."
Both the smile and the remark angered Heather enough that she said "So what did you need to be cured of?"
"Nothing."
"That
isn't..."
"Go on. You keep saying we shouldn't have secrets."
"You must have been in hospital for some reason."
"That isn't what you stopped saying."
"I was going to tell you your friend said there was a reason."
"I don't know why you'd believe her when you think she's such a' crazy bitch."
"I didn't say that, did I? That doesn't sound like me."
"Only thought it."
Heather stood up so fast that Sylvia visibly held herself still in order not to react, even when Heather sat on the bed and began to stroke her sister's forehead. "All I'm getting at,"
Heather said, not that it was, "is you must have felt you needed help."
"I just needed to sort myself out, and hospital seemed like a good place."
"What
needed
sorting?"
"Material for my next book. Too much of it going round and round in my head while I was trying to earn a living with jobs. You're lucky not having to write."
"Are you working on it now?"
"My mind's full of Natty right now. I guess it will be till appears, and after that, who knows."
"If he's anything like Sam he'll be your world for a while."
"I won't have a problem with that. Are you happy now?"
Heather would have liked to be able to lie. "Not altogether, Sylvie."
"Go on then," Sylvia cried and sat abruptly up. "Tell me what Merilee said, since you want to so much."
Her movement brought her midriff into contact with Heather's hand. The baby was as still as the forest where the night was taking shape. "I only want what's best for you," Heather said.
"So finish with Merilee."
"She said you heard somebody calling you home."
"You think I didn't?"
"I'll believe you if you say you did."
"You know I did," Sylvia said, gazing past her at the oncoming dark. "That's what made me come home."
"Then why did you need-"
"To put myself in the hospital? You know, sometimes I have to agree with mom that you could use a bit more imagination. Maybe if you thought you heard a voice that wouldn't stop till you did what it said you'd go on tranquillisers too."
"You're saying that's all."
"I had to tell them I was cured of all sorts of stuff before I could leave."
Heather wanted to believe that, and surely it must be the truth. Nevertheless she didn't know what she was opening her mouth to say when the doorbell rang.
"Are you going to get that?" Sylvia said.
"Do you want me to?"
"It's your house."
"I'd better see who it is," Heather said and made for her room. She felt uncomfortably like a child with a guilty secret when she retreated from the window before murmuring "It's mother."
Sylvia headed her off at the top of the stairs. She held out her hands but stopped short of touching Heather, who had the odd irrational notion that the unborn child had intervened between them. "Are you] going to tell her what we've been talking about?" Sylvia said.
A stranger would have thought her blank gaze meant she didn't] care. "You haven't stored up any more surprises," Heather said with more lightness than she was expecting to discover in herself.
"If I have they'll be good ones."
"She won't find out otherwise, will she?"
"Not from me."
"She's been upset enough. Let's remind her she still has most of her! family.
Even more of one now," Heather amended, and led the way downstairs.
Margo was extending a finger to the bellpush. When she stepped back Heather thought she was recoiling until the smile Margo produced made it clear that she'd wanted more of a view of her daughters. "I feel better already," she said.
"Than what, mummy?"
Margo only blinked at that on the way to scrutinising Sylvia, and; Heather felt doubly ignored. "How's Sylvia?" Margo said.
Since the question could have been addressed to either of her children, neither responded at once. It was both the silence and realising Sylvia was waiting for her to keep her word that made Heather blurt "Pretty well as she looks."
"Only pretty well?"
"I'm fine, mom. Just feel as if my insides are bigger than I am."
"That's exactly how I felt when I was having you. And how's Heather?"
Since her sister seemed unlikely to reply on her behalf, Heather said "Staying on top of things."
"And taking care of
everyone as usual. That'll always be our Heather, won't it, Sylvia?"
"You
bet."
Heather was feeling not so much complimented as sentenced when Margo said "I'd sing a carol except it's too late, so do I get to sit and maybe talk?"
Darkest Part of the Woods Page 19
