The Trees

by Ali Shaw

  ‘Yes . . . I’d really hoped to have spoken to her by now, but there’s still no phone signal. No way at all to make contact.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s trying to reach you, even now,’ said Seb.

  ‘Maybe. It would be nice to think so.’

  ‘If you could just get some signal, you’d see all the missed calls and the messages she’s left you.’

  ‘Unless,’ suggested Hannah, ‘the trees have appeared in Ireland too.’

  Adrien turned to her, looking mortified. ‘Do you really think they’ve spread that far?’

  Hannah did, but wished at once she hadn’t said so. ‘I might be wrong,’ she backtracked. ‘Sorry, Adrien, I know that was the last thing you wanted to hear. Sometimes I don’t think before I open my mouth.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Adrien.

  ‘But if you don’t mind me asking . . . what are you going to do?’

  ‘Do? How am I supposed to do anything? I just have to wait. Until people fix things.’

  ‘But how long will you give it? How many mornings will you go back to the police station and wait for help to show up?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . pfff. How many will it take?’

  ‘Was the policeman there today, like you thought he’d be?’

  After a moment, Adrien shook his head.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, as gently as she could, ‘you can’t stay here much longer. Things are going to get worse before they get better. There are going to be problems with sewage, disease, all that stuff. We need to get out, into the proper forest.’

  Adrien looked alarmed. ‘The proper forest? What the hell is this one?’

  ‘I mean the one that’s grown up beyond the town. The one that isn’t full of all our old junk.’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s not going to be a phone line out there, either.’

  Hannah conceded that, although she was serious about her warning. She had tried to deliver such advice to several neighbours that day, but all were too shocked by the trees’ arrival, too busy salvaging what remained of their lives, to pay her any heed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Adrien. ‘I’m not really the sort for it. I’ll just . . . just batten down the hatches and—’

  ‘Go west, then,’ interrupted Seb. ‘At least you’d be going towards her.’

  Adrien flapped a hand dismissively. ‘Come off it. Michelle is in Ireland.’

  ‘Which is west of here.’

  Adrien sighed. ‘Look . . . it’s more complicated than that. If, uhh . . . even if I found a way to speak to Michelle . . .’

  Hannah and Seb both waited, but Adrien didn’t continue.

  ‘Even if you could,’ Seb concluded, after a minute, ‘the two of you aren’t really speaking.’

  Adrien nodded. ‘You could put it that way.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘The last time we saw each other, we didn’t talk at all. I mean, Michelle tried, but I . . . I was still angry. At myself, as much as anything. The night before that we’d argued, you see. We’ve been arguing more and more. For, uhh . . . quite a while.’

  ‘What are your arguments about?’ asked Hannah.

  Adrien took a deep breath. Maybe it was just the way the candles cast their lights, but Hannah thought she saw tears forming on his eyelids. ‘Me,’ he said. ‘Me, mostly. What I’m doing with my life.’

  ‘And what are you doing?’ asked Seb.

  Adrien gave a short, artificial laugh. ‘If I could answer that question, there might not be arguments.’

  Seb raised an eyebrow. ‘So she picks a fight with you about that?’

  Adrien wagged a finger. ‘No, no, she doesn’t pick a fight. She only tries to help.’

  There was an awkward silence, during which Adrien stared into his wine glass. Then he took a swig and gave another artificial laugh. ‘You two don’t want to hear about this. It’ll bore you both to tears. Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to do? You said you were going to find . . . Zach, was it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘My brother. He’ll have hardly even noticed this has happened.’

  ‘And where does he live, then?’

  ‘West of here. He’s west of here, like Michelle is.’

  Hannah tried to catch Seb’s eye, but Seb was watching Adrien too closely. She hoped her son would support her in what she was about to suggest. She couldn’t bear how defeated Adrien looked by his predicament. He seemed very prone to despair, and she knew all about that. Despair was a pit her father had flung himself into. It was one of the great regrets of Hannah’s life that she had been too young at the time to lift him back out.

  ‘Adrien,’ she said, ‘why don’t you come with us?’

  He frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Come with us. West. Towards Zach. Sometimes having something to head towards makes everything else seem clearer.’

  Now at last she caught Seb’s eye, hoping that he didn’t object. He only looked thoughtful, and beyond that she couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ said Adrien, sounding stunned. ‘You said you were leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s right. Is that a problem?’

  ‘Well . . . I haven’t planned for it. I haven’t worked out all the particulars.’

  ‘There’s not a lot of planning you can do. Pack a bag and you’re ready.’

  Adrien shuffled about uncomfortably. ‘You’d think that, wouldn’t you? You’d think it would be that easy. But, uhh . . . when actually you start getting into the nitty-gritty of any journey . . . suffice to say that you need to put some hours in, to make sure you’re prepped for every eventuality.’

  Seb cleared his throat. ‘I know it’s scary. But I think you should go one step further.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Don’t just come with us. Go and find Michelle.’

  Hannah clapped her hands, and was delighted with her son.

  ‘But . . . that’s simply impossible,’ said Adrien. ‘There’s the Irish Sea between us, for one thing.’

  ‘Cross it,’ said Seb.

  Adrien looked seasick at the very proposition, but Hannah couldn’t stop smiling. Sometimes, just when she thought Seb was made out of wires and circuit boards, he came up with ideas so romantic that she wanted to throw her arms around him and bury a kiss in his hair. Were he only her little boy again, the one he had been not so many years ago, she would have done so there and then.

  Adrien still looked perturbed, and Hannah did not want to put him off. ‘You don’t have to do anything, of course,’ she said. ‘Only think about it. But it would be no trouble for us. We’ll call past your place before we leave, about nine in the morning. It’s en route anyway. Then, if you’ve decided you can come, we’ll all head west together.’

  7

  Forest Law

  There was no way on earth that he was going with them. That was what Adrien told himself as he hurried home, clumsy from the wine, through woods very dark. No, he would not be leaving with Hannah and Seb, no matter how easy they made the journey sound. He didn’t have it in him. Michelle was the driven one, the one in whose nature it was to try to fix things. Adrien was the one who tried to weather life from the safety of his armchair, or a thoughtful stroll around the block, or a long evening bath until the water got cold.

  Throughout the wooded ruins of the town, campfires were burning. Some were so far off that the tree trunks hid their flames and their lights showed only in faint circles, strung across the distance like particles of lens flare. Some were nearer and roaring, and at one such blaze Adrien paused, hidden behind a tree, and listened for a moment to those gathered there arguing over who best deserved a sleeping bag. They came to blows a moment later, while around them the lazy embers left their fire and settled sometimes on the bark before winking out. That was one more reason, he thought as he scurried away, why he should not go with Hannah. They would end up arguing, probably over something he’d done. Everybody argued, in the end, even
lovers who had taken oaths. Adrien did not think he could bear any more arguments in his life.

  The fires were more frequent in the town’s main shopping streets, but Adrien felt like he was walking through a refugee camp. The newly homeless had congregated here with what possessions they had salvaged, and now sat in the firelight covering their faces when the smoke rolled towards them. Above them hung the stock of the high street. There were all kinds of clothes, torn to ribbons. There were coat hangers clinking against twigs. There were upturned fast food fryers, whose cooking fat had poured down the bark and cooled there into a lard that glistened back at the flames.

  When Adrien came to the end of the road, and had just passed its final campfire, he heard something whisper overhead. He’d grown used to the hushed tones of the foliage, so why this one sound stopped him in his tracks and raised the hairs on his neck he could not tell. Then, when it started again, he realised that it wasn’t coming from throughout the treetops, like the noise of the leaves normally did. It was coming from a single point, directly above him.

  He didn’t know whether he even wanted to look up. The whisper was a sandpaper song of rustles and tiny exhalations. Hardly the intimidating growl of a wolf or even a dog, but something about it made Adrien sweat all the same. He looked around and saw, not a stone’s throw behind him, five young men trying to roast a bird on their fire. He should be safe enough, with them nearby. After taking a deep breath, he looked up.

  A thousand eyes stared back down at him.

  Adrien instinctively raised his arms to protect himself, but the treetops were full of too many glinting stares to oppose. From every twig they watched him, and some even peered out from cracks in the trunks. He staggered backwards, full of cold adrenalin, trying to find the coordination to turn and run. Then, from behind him, there came a deep and echoing laughter.

  It was the men at the campfire, who were watching him with glee. A moment later, their firelight found a piece of broken signage in the branches above. The first letter was missing, but the rest spelled pticians, and no sooner had Adrien read it than all of the eyes in the branches became squares and circles of glass. He hung his head and wanted to sink into the dirt with embarrassment. When he trudged away, the sniggers of the men followed him into the darkness, and only when he had gone some distance and the night could hide his blushes did he begin to feel uneasy all over again. What he had seen might have been nothing but spectacles, but he had never heard of any spectacles that whispered.

  Back home that night, lying in the spare bed because he could not access his own, Adrien tried to think of anything but wolves and whispers. He thought about Hannah, and wished he had the courage to prettify the ruins of his house with candles in glass lamps. He wished he had the knowledge to build an outdoor oven that could roast vegetables as satisfying as hers, but as soon as he imagined himself doing so he imagined the flames escaping. In an instant he was engulfed in a forest fire, choking on smoke, waiting for the brilliant blaze to consume him.

  ‘Sleep,’ he chided himself, slapping his cheeks. ‘Think about something good.’

  He thought about Michelle, and tried to guess what she’d be doing right now. No doubt, if what Hannah seemed to hope for was true and the trees had appeared in Ireland, Michelle would be busy rescuing people. Perhaps she would even be planning to rescue him. Unless . . .

  Adrien had not told Hannah and Seb about Roland. There was no way to do so without feeling humiliated. Laughing, handsome Roland, who even now would be with Michelle in Ireland. He was her supervisor, a man with a soft Irish accent and eyes full of cool intellect, who had pushed hard for her big promotion and insisted she accompany him to all those thrice-accursed conferences. Adrien had met him at her work’s Christmas dinner party, one of those yawn-inducing occasions to which ‘better’ halves were invited, and sat in silence eating cabbage while the bastard openly flirted with his wife. He had no evidence that the two were now conducting an affair, but he suspected it regardless because, were he in Michelle’s place and offered a choice between an unemployed, overweight no-hoper and a chiselled charmer whose life was just so goddamned put together, he knew what he would choose.

  ‘Sleep!’ he hissed, and slapped his cheeks again. Yet the house was darker than ever he’d known it, and its walls full of cracks and new entrances. He began to wish he had curled up by one of the fires in the high street, for it seemed like lunacy to want to be unconscious, all alone and hidden away in his house. He felt like a sacrifice laid on an altar, plump and juicy for any wolf to accept.

  Something clattered against the windowsill and he sat bolt upright and stared in its direction. He could see nothing but trees and stars, but he did not find that reassuring. As a child he’d been an avid stargazer, but tonight they only reminded him of the winking glasses he had mistaken for eyes. When nothing further moved on the sill, he persuaded himself that the clatter was only the branches of a tree, and lay back down with a sorrowful exhalation. ‘How the hell am I ever supposed to sleep again?’ he asked of the night. Then his nostrils started to twitch. What was that smell? Was that the musk of fur? Or was that just himself, sweaty with fear? ‘Nothing,’ he said to himself, ‘it’s nothing. Just go to sleep.’

  The leaves whispered, indoors and out. The forest was a hundred unoiled hinges. Yet at some point Adrien must have slipped out of consciousness, for later he woke with a start from a nightmare and beheld a high moon whose white glow filtered through the canopy. He gazed through bleary eyes out of the window, as the foliage puckered for the lunar light, and thought for a moment that he saw something small and bow-legged standing on the sill. Then his nightmare reached out to reclaim him, and he sank willingly into its embrace.

  A knocking on his door in the morning. Hannah and Seb were fifteen minutes earlier than they’d said they’d be.

  ‘So you’re coming!’ Hannah said happily, when she saw Adrien’s packed bags lying in the hallway.

  ‘Err,’ said Adrien, after a deep breath, ‘I think I might be, yes.’

  He had climbed out of bed that morning with fear congealed in his stomach and lungs. Then he had realised that he had no choice. He wasn’t brave enough to lie at home night after night, hoping that when at last he heard footsteps in his room they were Michelle’s and not a wolf’s. That didn’t mean he was going all the way to Ireland, certainly not, but he could set off west with Hannah and travel as far as her brother. Perhaps he could even stay with him there, for as long as he could get away with, and learn a thing or two about woodcraft from Zach (already Adrien had pictured himself with an axe slung over his shoulders, sauntering beneath the trees as fearlessly as he imagined the forester doing). Then, when it was time to move on, he would wave his goodbyes and look like he was the brave husband striking west, only to loop back on himself and return here, by which point he was sure the government or the army or whoever it was would have made some progress towards putting the world back together.

  Packing had been tough. The things he’d always said he could not travel without were a freshly pressed shirt, some polished shoes, a slim briefcase and a Shakespeare, but now they all seemed redundant. He did not own walking boots, so he had chosen his never-used jogging trainers. As for clothes, he had no idea how long it would take to walk to Zach’s and he supposed he would have to find the means to do laundry en route. Seven pairs of everything seemed about right. Seven favourite shirts (a pity they couldn’t be ironed), seven pairs of briefs, a spare pair of briefs, seven pairs of socks, a spare shirt, two spare T-shirts to be on the safe side, two pairs of corduroy trousers because he wasn’t sure which shade he preferred and did not want regrets, a spare pair of jeans (he would set out in his other pair) and four sweaters of varying thicknesses. Added to this a wash bag containing shower gel (he pictured himself showering beneath waterfalls), toothpaste, comb, soap, shampoo, razor, shaving brush and stick, then plasters in case his jogging shoes blistered while he broke in their heels. As an afterthought his eye-mask for sleeping, an
d of course a pillow, and his sleeping bag and a spare blanket in case the sleeping bag proved too thin.

  He had managed, with the aid of some stamping and swearing, to squeeze all of these things into a backpack and the biggest holdall he owned. He couldn’t help but notice that Hannah and Seb each wore only one small rucksack, but neither passed comment on his luggage.

  ‘Right then,’ said Adrien, and clapped his hands. ‘I suppose I’m ready.’

  ‘I’m really pleased you’re coming with us,’ said Hannah, and turned to lead the way down the garden path. Adrien, however, did not move. Hannah and Seb looked back at him from the roadside. ‘What’s wrong?’ called Hannah. ‘Have you forgotten something?’

  Adrien looked back over his shoulder at the tatters of his house. Not a lot had survived of his hallway, except for a floor clock inherited from his father, which Michelle had always hated with a passion. Adrien hadn’t much cared for it either, but had insisted that they keep it out of some troubled sense of duty. Now he was in love with it. He was in love with the torn-up carpet and the hanging strips of wallpaper. Of course he would be coming back, he knew he would. He and Michelle would be living here again before too long. Yet the start of this journey felt more like an end than a beginning.

  ‘Okay,’ he puffed, ‘okay.’ And he followed Hannah.

  Both the town and the woods were quiet that morning. Where, in the days before, they had been filled with cries and sobbing and the sounds of things crashing into the dirt, now there was just the simmer of the leaves, and grey faces watching the three new travellers without expression as they passed. Adrien’s final sight of the place where he had lived for so many years was an electricity hub fished off the ground, dangling its cables like a jellyfish caught in a net. Then the town was gone, and he was walking after Hannah down a ruined route of tarmac, and trees were leaning over him from every direction.

  ‘We’ve got a choice,’ said Hannah, ‘of two ways to do this. One is to follow the roads, and I’ve packed a road atlas for doing just that. The other way, the better one I think, is to use my compass and try to travel as the crow flies.’