by Chloe Mayer
‘Why don’t you go upstairs, sonny?’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d like to … have a wash. Clean yourself up a bit. We’ll sort things out with your mum here.’
The boy left the room and one of the men gently pushed the sitting-room door so it almost closed behind him. After he’d gone, Annabel realised she hadn’t spoken to him. Something terrible had happened, but she had made no attempt to question him, or comfort him. She was thrown; her role as a pretend-mother hadn’t kicked in this time, when she most needed it. She didn’t know what to do.
A richer, deeper silence enveloped the room now. A couple of the men shuffled their feet, cleared their throats. They seemed reluctant to speak, and still, she trembled. She ached to sit down. She was worried her knees wouldn’t support her while she listened to whatever these frightening men had come to say. She was still holding her cleaning rag.
‘We went into the woods to look for him,’ Higgins said eventually, and the strange relief of everyone in the room that he’d finally begun the story – and the horror – was palpable.
Annabel groped for the armchair behind her. She thought of how Higgins had seemed to her that day when he came to check up on her back garden. He was powerful and people listened to him. He was a leader. But something was strange about the way the others were behaving with him now. Higgins seemed unnerved, but in truth, all the men seemed unnerved, jumpy.
Annabel was nodding mechanically. Her eyes were fixed on Higgins and she kept nodding, nodding. Somehow she knew that despite whatever he was working his way up to, he was enjoying telling the story. He was enjoying his part in it.
‘We were …’ He hesitated for the first time. ‘Angry.’
She became aware again of the other men. There had been a shifting within them, like a collective sigh released.
‘We were already angry with that damned PoW. Some of us had weapons, as you know, from the Home Guard’s office, truncheons and the like.’
Was she still nodding? She wasn’t sure. She was imagining the pulp of Hans’s head stuck to a wooden bat.
‘We were already angry …’
God, what had they done? What was he trying to say?
She realised it was now dark outside when one of them switched on the light. Neither Higgins, nor any of the others, pointed out that her blackout curtains were not in place yet. So the lights from the room beamed out into the black street for any German bomber to see.
‘And the state of your boy—’ An edge had come back into his voice and he looked at her disapprovingly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, you saw him.’ He shook his head. ‘Bleeding – clothes half ripped off of him.’
Several of the men looked away. Annabel had definitely stopped nodding now. Her heart was thumping so loudly she actually had to concentrate on Higgins’s mouth forming the words so she could make out what he was saying.
‘That disgusting loner should never have been allowed to stay around the village. People felt sorry for him; thinking he’d been bombed out of his house in one of the cities, but all along …’
She was perched forward, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly it hurt her hands.
‘He obviously …’ He made a sort of rolling gesture with his meaty palm. ‘Disgusting … you know.’ He hesitated again and looked at one of the other men, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. So he changed tack, and continued with the story he’d come to tell.
‘We found him, though. To teach him a lesson … to punish him.’
She pictured a truncheon again, thick with matted hair and blood.
‘Anyway, you and the boy won’t have to worry about him any more.’
Annabel’s throat made a strange, strangled sound.
In the silence that followed – the men seemed to be waiting for her to speak – Higgins’s posture changed. His anger seemed to return to him and he became more belligerent, the way he’d been when he first entered the house. He seemed frustrated that she wasn’t saying anything, hadn’t, in fact, uttered a word since they had arrived.
‘No one’s sorrier than I am that the child had to witness that – but maybe it’s for the best.’ He paused. ‘We did what needed to be done; nothing more, nothing less. What’s done is done – there’s no need to tell the authorities. Well, we are the authorities, but I mean the police, other people …’
She still couldn’t bring herself to say anything. What was the appropriate response?
‘What the hell was he doing out there alone in the forest, at any rate?’ he snapped eventually. ‘Why wasn’t he home with you?’
Annabel stood. Her voice, when it finally came, was thin and cracked. ‘I’d like you to leave now.’
‘Hang on a minute! We just saved your son!’
‘Let’s go, Higgins,’ Dawson said, turning to the door. ‘It’s a lot to take in. Let’s leave her be.’
‘Not a word of thanks!’ He turned to the others. ‘D’you know she’s not said one word since we found that boy? What kind of mother is so … so cold, after something like this?’
‘Higgins!’ The mirror man put a hand on his arm.
Higgins allowed himself to be diverted, and turned to follow the men who were making their way into the hallway and out of the front door. A receding tide.
But then he stopped and turned. ‘If you’d been looking after him properly like a normal mother, none of this would have happened.’
He must have relished the spite of his words, and Annabel’s gasp seemed to satisfy him.
‘Let’s go,’ he called out to the men ahead of him as he stepped through her front door into the garden. ‘It may be dark now, but we’ve still got a German bastard to catch, in case you’ve forgotten!’
None of the men responded with any enthusiasm – the fight seemed to have gone out of them – but most gave half-hearted nods as they left the house and made their way down the street.
Annabel closed the door and leaned against it for a moment, before heading to the stairs and sitting on the bottom step.
She sat that way for a long time and tried to figure out how everything could have imploded so spectacularly while she had been looking in the other direction.
Hans was in terrible trouble, wherever he was. The child had been hurt. A man had been killed. The village knew she was only a pretend-mother.
It was all her fault. There was no one else she could blame.
She had convinced herself that being a pretend-mother was good enough, but that had never been true. There was something wrong with her, and she had failed in her only duty on earth: to protect the boy.
But still – Annabel couldn’t help it – she wondered whether Hans would come for her. It was true he knew nothing of the village, of life outside the glade – but she had described her house to him, and he knew she lived on Ivy Lane. He could find her if he tried. It was just that she needed so badly to be comforted now, and Hans was the only one who could soothe her.
Perhaps she would hear a quiet tap on the back door, or clumps of earth being thrown at an upstairs window. Or perhaps she could expect a carefully coded letter from him telling her what to do next. How to find him, where to go.
She couldn’t leave with him now, of course.
She thought of Higgins and his men and their weapons. They might still catch him, despite his head start. That would be her fault, too. Why had he done it? The answer was simple; he would never have tried to run if it weren’t for her. His dreams of their life together had taken over and he was running away to try to turn them into reality. That was the only possible explanation.
Her thoughts turned to Reggie. Should she write to tell him what had happened to the boy? Perhaps she should wait and tell him next time he was on leave. She didn’t like to upset him so terribly when there was nothing he could do about the situation. And he was so odd in himself on his last visit home, she wasn’t sure how he would take the news. She wondered whether, in fact, she needed to tell him at all. He’d feel badly for not being here to preven
t it, and he might think badly of her for allowing it to happen. He’d tell both their parents. They’d decide she was an unfit mother again and might try to send her away.
At last, she allowed herself to think of the boy.
What did that tramp do to him, out there in the woods? She didn’t want to go upstairs to find him. She didn’t know what to say to him. She had no way to comfort him. She had let him down. She had let him down more than she had let anyone down, and she knew she had let down everyone that mattered.
What had happened to the child was her fault, no one else’s. She always knew he played in the woods, and she knew of the tramp; she didn’t think anything of it. And she never noticed what time he came home, or asked him where he went or what he did.
Annabel wasn’t sure when she would be able to get up off the step. She didn’t want to see the boy. She didn’t want to look at him. She couldn’t bear how the sight of him would make her feel. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She didn’t want to see his eyes.
So she sat on the stairs all night, silent and static. And the night got darker and darker until it got lighter and lighter. She had once gone away in her head before, and she could feel it happening again now; she was going for good.
30
The old king said to his people: ‘I wish he were still alive! How it grieves me now that I had him killed.’
From The Water of Life
At first, I’d been watching her from a crack in the bathroom door, but now I came out onto the landing and sank down against the wall at the top of the stairs – never taking my eyes off her. I wrapped my arms tight around my knees as if I could hold myself together in one piece.
I looked down the stairs at her stooped back. I could tell a lot by the way she was sitting. She sat there for such a long time. She’d been sitting like that since the men had left.
It had been a long night and now it was dawn. Hansel must be frightened, alone in his hole. I’d planned to head back to him, but that wouldn’t happen tonight. And it was hard to even imagine how I could help him, now this terrible thing had happened. How could I tell Mother what I’d done to Hansel? She didn’t know I’d lied about the Troll trying to eat me, but she knew I was responsible for its brutal death. She was horrified by it; who wouldn’t be? How could I have her hate me even more by telling her I’d helped Hansel escape? And how could I tell her it was my fault he’d fallen through the forest floor? After all, I’d taken him deep into the woods and he was following me when I led him across the top of a dangerous, rotted mine.
It occurred to me that when I was helping Hansel leave, I was actually stealing him from her. Didn’t I want her to be upset when he ran away? So upset, she might turn to me for comfort?
Could that still happen? It didn’t feel like it.
I ached inside as I stared down at her. I wanted her to pull me onto her lap and fold herself around me.
The men would be back in the forest by now, I knew. Despite what they’d said to Mother, thoughts of catching the woodcutter would be put to one side for now. They needed to get back to the mess of flesh and bones that once had been a Troll.
After the beating was over, they’d left the weapons lying next to it in the woods. Mr Higgins and the nice man had to take their shirts off because of the gore smeared across their clothes. They wiped their faces. You could still see splatters of blood on their trousers, though, if you looked, and marks like rust stains on their white vests.
There was a strange ringing in my ears so that I could barely hear their murmured conversations as we made our way towards the village, but I knew they’d decided to return to the forest afterwards. Snatches of sentences made it through the clanging in my head and I understood that it would be buried somewhere, deeper in the woods, and tidied away.
One of the men wanted to make it all official; the police could be told he’d put up a fight and they had bravely stopped a dirty criminal resisting a Home Guard citizens’ arrest. But the idea fizzled away. The mess of pulp made things ‘problematic’, he admitted. Even I could see that.
Time seemed to be behaving strangely because no sooner had we left the forest than suddenly we were turning onto Ivy Lane.
I saw her standing in the window, holding a cloth in her hand. The men would tell her what I’d made them do. I knew it would never be the same afterwards.
I stared at her – although she didn’t see me at first – while one of the men fiddled with the latch on the gate. The bare branches of the magnolia looped gracefully towards him and almost touched his shoulders.
I could see only the men’s backs, not the expressions on their faces. Arms reached for me and I was pushed forward. Pushed up in front of them and through the gate. Hands on my shoulders guided me to the front door and that’s when I began to shake and shake.
She jumped when Mr Higgins rang the doorbell and I saw her see me through the pane of glass separating us. I knew that my eyes must be mirror images of her own. We were both of us filled with horror.
Mr Higgins had to ring the bell again before she could move.
I wanted her to make them leave the house. I wanted them out. I didn’t want them to tell her I was responsible for splitting a Troll into meat and blood and bone up in the woods.
But it was me that left; the nice man made me go out of the room and she didn’t even look at me as I went. None of them did.
I knew they were all desperate to get away; the blood was drying on their clothes and they wanted the day finished.
The sitting-room door wasn’t closed completely, so I stood outside – watching them through the small gap.
I couldn’t see Mr Higgins’s face from where I hid, but I could see hers. She was crumpled in the armchair and kept nodding and nodding, but I could see her knuckles straining against her skin as her hands gripped the armrests. It made them look like desperate claws clinging on there.
Somebody flicked the light switch. Whoever it was must have regretted doing it because they were all suddenly lit up under the bright glare and her face was terrible to see. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the doorframe. Little ridges dug into my forehead and I was glad of the pain.
Finally she told them to go, but Mr Higgins got angry. He said she was too cold, too calm. But he didn’t know her; she was always calm. I looked at her again. That’s how she was. I never saw her any other way, apart from the times in the cabin with Hansel.
When the men turned towards the door, I ran up the stairs two at a time. But I watched from the landing as they went off into the night.
Mr Higgins was the last to go and he said it quietly, but I heard him say it: ‘If you’d been looking after him properly like a normal mother, none of this would have happened.’
She cried out, and I choked back the sob in my own throat in case they heard me. Hot tears stung my eyes and I rushed into the bathroom and curled up on the floor. Then I pressed my hot face to the cool stand of the basin and clung on to it as though it could save me from drowning.
The bathroom window was open and the voices of the men floated up to me as they left to return to the forest to get rid of the Troll and find Hansel. I cried harder as I tried to convince myself they wouldn’t stay out all out night looking for him. He was a sitting target now; he couldn’t run and there was nowhere to hide. The voices faded away and then they were gone.
I clamped my hands over my mouth, trying to keep quiet so she couldn’t hear me downstairs. It was a long time before the tears finally stopped coming, and my rib muscles ached from holding back the sobs my body was trying to make. I didn’t sleep, but it was as though I wasn’t quite awake either and I lay there for a long time.
Eventually, I dragged myself across the floor and reached up to grasp the door handle to pull myself up. I quietly opened the door. My face felt sore and swollen.
That was when I saw her sitting on the bottom step. She had been there the whole time, I realised, as if Mr Higgins had punched her and knocked her out.
I watched her hunched back for a long, long time.
More time must have passed, because the house began to fill with a pretty pinkish glow as the dawn came. She didn’t show any awareness that we were breaking into a new day, but I went back into the bathroom and quietly closed the door.
The water ran red into the basin as I washed the dried blood and crusty tears from my face. I pulled the twigs and leaves from my hair. But before I threw them in the bin, I wrapped them in toilet tissue so she wouldn’t see them and know where they came from.
Carefully, I eased the door open and crept to my room, where I bundled my ripped and bloodied rags under my bed – in the spot where Hansel’s pack had been just the night before. I’d throw them away, somewhere she wouldn’t find them. I put on my pyjamas and climbed under the eiderdown.
A feeling that I couldn’t quite put my finger on made me want to be in the right place, and look the right way, the next time she came across me.
Of course, there was no fairy tale that night. I wondered if that would ever happen again. I must have drifted off to sleep at some point though, because I found myself inside a nightmare.
Its eyes were looking right at me as its head exploded under a wooden bat that splattered it to pieces again and again and again. And I looked down at the bat, and it was in my hand, and it was me who was pounding that head and grinding it into the ground. I sat up in bed with a gasp and a thudding heart, and the sheets were wet with my sweat.
The real world had smashed up against the magic in my forest – Hansel was broken at the bottom of a hole, and the Troll was battered to pieces – and the magic had lost the battle. If it had ever been there at all.
I lay back trembling in my sticky and cold bed. I didn’t sleep again but stayed there until it was time to get up.
