by Eve Chase
‘Three’s a crowd.’ Casey winks at Robbie and sashays away in that red dress.
Robbie’s eyes don’t track Casey, unlike every other man’s. He hands Rita the drink, and watches as she sips, as if the sight pleases him in some secret way. She half wishes Casey would come back and grease the silences with her easy chatter. But Casey is dancing now. Most of the forest girls are dancing: passionate and feisty, they steer the boys across the floor, the boys clearly in thrall, their eyes blotted with … No man has ever looked at her in that way. Ever. Then the music slows and the men rope their arms around the girls’ waists and tug them closer, pelvis to pelvis, and it looks, frankly, extremely rude. But she finds she can’t not watch. Or wonder what it must feel like to be held so close.
Fred never wanted to dance. He said she’d show him up. What with her size and all that.
Robbie’s not asked her to dance either. While this is a blessed relief – he’s four inches shorter! – it still makes her feel bad and wonder what she’s doing there. She’s beset by a sudden terror she might cry. She considers feigning sudden illness to put both of them out of their misery. A stomach upset from Marge’s fruit loaf, for example. Plausible.
‘Rita.’ Robbie leans closer. His breath smells of hops. And, very oddly, prompts a distant hazy memory of her father. ‘Want to dance?’
Not bloody likely. But girls can’t say no, not if they’ve already said yes to going to the dance in the first place: she’s trapped; he’s trapped. They both have to pretend. ‘Okay.’
Robbie doesn’t move. He watches her some more. Something about her seems to settle in his mind. ‘Or we could just finish our drinks and walk in the woods?’
*
A bramble snatches at her skirt. As she bends to unpick it, Robbie whips a penknife from his pocket and slices through the tough stem, as if it were celery stalk, then starts sliding the thorns out of the fabric with surprisingly deft fingers. ‘We can’t let this ruin your lovely skirt.’
It appears he isn’t joking, that he genuinely can’t see how frumpy the C&A skirt is, or how she hides in it. When a finger accidentally, fleetingly, brushes against the skin of her calf a tingle travels up her leg.
In her head, she hears Nan’s voice: has she taken plain leave of her senses? What’s she doing walking home with this rough knife-carrying man in the middle of a forest, of all wretched places, letting him put his hands on her skirt?
On the bright side, at least she won’t get lost. (Neither will she have to dance in public.) And she should get back to Foxcote: she can’t suppress her worries about the bonfire for much longer. Is Jeannie to be trusted around fire? Is Hera?
They quickly fall into step with one another. As other people’s shyness makes Rita shyer, Robbie’s ease in this environment, his trust in it, flows into her. She starts to relax. She allows herself the small satisfaction of wearing flat shoes. (How far would the woman in the fancy green heels have got? Exactly.) Even her skirt develops a sensuous swish as she walks, the stiff fabric seeming to soften. Pied wagtails loop the air, hunting flies. Above the tree line, a goshawk rises, like a giant coat-hanger.
It’s easier to talk in motion too, without all that eye contact. Robbie nudges questions into the conversation, like notes under a door, so she doesn’t really notice them. And she finds herself answering them in far too much detail. Mostly about growing up in Torquay: the derelict beach hut she’d hide in as a child and read her library books; her first cactus called Burt. She catches herself, but not before he turns to her and says, with a huge, delighted smile, ‘Burt?’
‘Tell me about the forest,’ she says tightly, changing the subject.
But he doesn’t show off his knowledge, like Fred did. (He could bowl anyone over with gruesome facts about abattoirs.) Rather, it spills out of Robbie, like coins from a hole in his trouser pocket. He picks a bit of antler velvet from a branch, and rubs its fuzz against her hand, sending strange tingling sensations shooting up her arm. He blows on the edge of a beech leaf to imitate a roe deer’s mating call. (She blushes stupidly at the word ‘mating’.) He tells Rita how the dead bits of a forest are as important as the living, the rotting matter home to millions of insects, all essential food for the birds. In a forest, ‘Life and death kiss one another.’ (Her blush intensifies.) ‘It’s an ancient place, Rita,’ he says, with quiet reverence, ‘once a royal hunting ground for the Anglo Saxons, Normans and Tudors, where history nests among the owls and wood warblers. The oak timber here was used for shipbuilding from the seventeenth century, and Nelson, worried about a dwindling supply, ordered the planting of thirty million acorns, which is why there are so many oaks here now, Nelson’s oaks, still alive.’ He explains how tree trunks are structured like spiders’ webs; how rooks can be eaten, like rabbits, and very tasty they are too, with a good dollop of ketchup; about poachers and culling, and how shooting in a forest is difficult because the trees break the sightline and a bullet can pass right through the body of a stag and keep on travelling. You should never fire a gun without knowing where the bullet will end up.
Rita listens, hungry to be educated. And, slowly, he takes apart the forest for her, chipping it into smaller pieces. He points out the skyscraping Douglas firs at the top, then the oaks and sweet chestnuts hovering over what he calls the ‘understory’ – she loves this since stories aren’t always about what you think at first either – of hazel and silver birch and elder. She finds herself peering through the forest’s lacy lattice of twigs and branches into the layers of undergrowth, and seeing the tiny life forms folded within, the liverworts, bugle and moss, the lichen stars on a nub of bark, the furry underside of a leaf. Even the bacteria spores on the ground, digesting the dead into a rich black paste.
‘Look up,’ he says, stopping on the path. He points. The fine gold hairs on his muscular arm catch the low sunlight. She wants to run her fingertips over them. His love of this place moves her. ‘Nest. See it?’
Her body tilts back and into him as her eyes bore into the uppermost branches to what looks like a wicker laundry basket rocking in the wind. Everything spins then, the branches wheeling, she and Robbie the only still point. She giggles.
‘You’re swaying.’ There’s a smile in his voice. ‘You’d better sit down.’ He gestures towards a branch growing horizontally across the ground.
‘I’m not used to Babycham,’ she says, even though she senses it was something else that made her head turn, and has made all her blood rush to her inner thighs. Maybe it’s the forest that’s cast a spell on her this evening, filling her with a funny sort of euphoria, and … this wanting, as if she’s hungry or thirsty, even though she’s neither of these things.
‘Not the fanciest route home. Sorry, Rita.’ He doesn’t look very sorry. He has an unexpectedly good smile. His lips are full and curved and he has unusually pointed incisors, high in the gum. She commits the smile to memory, scared she might fall into it, and pretends to be fascinated by the spotted fungi on the ground.
‘I’ll drop you home in my truck next time.’ He picks up a small stick from the ground, then pulls the knife out of his pocket; it no longer worries her, the knife. (‘Next time’ does. Is she leading him on? Does it matter?) She watches his hands idly skinning its bark, the green wood emerging, pale as the inside of a pear. He has nice hands. ‘You must miss London, the parties and things?’
She’s too embarrassed to admit she’s never been to a party in London, not as a guest anyway. So she says, ‘Yes, very much,’ then wonders if ‘things’ is a code for boyfriend.
Robbie stands up and tosses the stick into the undergrowth. ‘I’ll get you back, then.’
They walk on in silence. Something has changed. Something adjusted, a tiny possibility snuffed like a candle flame between fingers. They are no longer strangers at least. She hopes they can be friends. It’d be nice to have a friend here.
Light rain releases the Christmassy smell of pine needles. She starts to recognize landmarks: the charred lightning-st
ruck tree; the wigwam of sticks Teddy built yesterday. Then the smouldering remains of a bonfire, still pulsing orange in its centre. Not an inferno, thank goodness. She was worrying for nothing.
When the garden wall appears through the trees, a feeling she doesn’t quite understand spreads cool in her chest, like a shadow. She’s glimpsed another world of red dresses and young people dancing, pelvis to pelvis, and a man’s hand picking out thorns from her skirt, and she wants to grab Robbie and say, Take me back. In a moment the garden gate will click shut. The sunlit evening will be over. Robbie will be gone. She’ll be stuck inside the big brown house, with her duties and her job. Washing up. Counting out Jeannie’s pills. Fending off Marge. Calls from Walter. Writing in that hated notebook.
‘Ssh.’ He touches her arm lightly, making her skin tingle. ‘Hear it?’
She stops too. She listens. The sound is faint. It winds towards her, through her body, fish-hooking under her skin: a neh-neh-neh cry, an inhaling pause, then … just the drip of raindrops.
‘What is that?’ She’s not sure why she whispers. Or why the hairs on her arms are raised, straight as pins.
He squints into the trees, frowning, filtering through all the sounds of the forest that he knows. ‘Young,’ he says, after a beat. ‘A lot of animals sound like babies. And it’ll have a fierce old mama nearby. Come on.’
Rita glances over her shoulder: there’s nothing to see. Whatever infant animal was there has gone. But the cry hangs in her ears. For her own peace of mind, she has to check. ‘Robbie, I’m going to turn …’ she starts saying. But his hands are already on her hips, tugging her body towards him. His mouth on hers.
19
Hera
A fox’s scream. Something that isn’t a fox. The sky is streaky with dusk and the forest is darkening, its shadows like caves. Tiny birds zip between the branches, like they’re trying to find a safe place before night collapses and the owls start to bomb down, button-eyed, talons outstretched. I sort of regret leaving my bonfire, a triumph of twigs, pinecones and balled-up pages of newspaper.
But there didn’t seem much point in staying after Mother and Teddy left. She stood up suddenly, her hands in her hair, all lost and bewildered-looking, like she’d no idea how she’d got there. She brushed down her dress, saying she felt tired and wanted to go back to the house. Needed her cardigan and a hot cup of tea. I bit the inside of my cheek, realizing we wouldn’t lie back together on the grass, holding hands, picking out the star necklaces of the Plough and Orion, like she’d promised. She took Teddy’s hand and said I could stay, if I wanted, as long as I didn’t eat too many more marshmallows.
I ate the marshmallows, wanting to get fat to spite her, sucking off their crinkly charcoaled skin and blistering the roof of my mouth. After that I hated myself a bit more and worried about Big Rita’s night out. You can catch love more than once. It’s not like measles. So sending her off to a dance with Robbie Rigby was a stupid thing for Mother to do. What if Rita likes him? What if she likes him more than us? And that’s when I heard the funny cry. A sound that didn’t belong here.
I followed it like breadcrumbs through the wood. I followed it here. Almost to the house. To the big tree stump, a few yards from the front gate.
There’s a blankety bundle on top of it. The bundle is moving. A sack of unwanted kittens or puppies? A tiny arm sways unstably in the air.
I look around for a mother. A nanny. A pram. Anything to make sense of this real live baby, who is glowing in a cone of midgy evening light, like she’s been beamed down by God. But there’s no one. The only hint of a grown-up having been here at all is a grocery bag at the base of the stump. I wonder if both baby and bag have been left behind, after the shopper got lost in the woods. This seems unlikely. But then so does the baby.
The air closes in, electric with trouble. My shadow stretches out, corn-dolly long. I wonder if I’m being watched, if this is some kind of test. The French nanny would leave out ten-pence coins on the sideboard to see if I took them. (I did.) Whatever happens next will be my fault. I know I should walk away, leaving the baby for someone else to find. I move towards the baby anyway.
A girl, I think, since she’s dressed in pink. Her monkey face is nettle-rash bumpy with insect bites. She’s crawling with ants. There’s a hollowed dip of skin on the top of her head that is not bone. It’s pulsing.
I touch her hand. Her skin is silky and firm, like the white of a hard-boiled egg. Her fingers wrap around my thumb and don’t let go. ‘Hello, you,’ I whisper.
At the sound of my voice, the baby chokes on her cry. She fixes me with glossy blackbird’s eyes. Her face changes colour, patchily, pale to red and back again, like weather’s moving underneath it. I want to stare at her for ever. But it’s getting dark. I don’t know what to do or where Big Rita is. And I’m not ready to share the baby with Mother.
Also, a little voice inside is saying, Finders, keepers. She’s mine. Like my little sister never was.
I snatch the scrappy note that’s attached to her blanket with a nappy pin, stuffing it into my pocket to read later and pick up the bag at the base of the stump. She screams and screams, her body rigid, her feet punching out of her blanket, like wooden blocks. ‘Ssh!’ I plead. ‘Someone will hear you. They’ll find us.’
Her neck wobbles, like it might snap, and I suddenly remember that you have to support babies’ heads. The skin of her scalp is cold. I press her tighter against my T-shirt, my heat. She feels really nice, like a pet.
But the crying starts up again, quiet at first, then louder, brighter, like a flame travelling along a string to a cartoon bomb. I jiggle her up and down. No good. I stick my finger into her mouth, moustaching her upper lip with bonfire soot. Her tongue folds around my finger and she sucks. Silence. The absence of scream.
I start walking away, my finger in her mouth, humming under my breath. For some reason, I can’t remember the words to any lullaby. It’s like in a dream, when you grab at words and they run away from you.
We’re by the stream now, which is gushing through its narrow gully, excited by the rain. My arms are starting to ache. I sit down. She fits perfectly in the sling of my crossed legs, the dough of my thighs, like a missing bit found.
I wriggle the note out of my pocket: Please look after me. I am a good baby who needs a home. Just that. Like she’s Paddington Bear. No useful tips at all! Not even a name. If I were her mother, I’d have written a detailed manual, just in case, like the one in the glove compartment of the car.
The bag is more helpful. I spread its contents on the grass: cartons of milk powder, two glass bottles with rubbery brown teats, Babygros and nappies. Hungry? Maybe that’s why she’s doing that funny stretching sideways thing with her mouth, like a swimmer. I’m going to save this baby. Like I didn’t save my little sister.
I rest her on the mossy bank. She likes it there, listening to the water, turning her hands slowly in front of her eyes, astonished, like they’re starships, not hands at all. The more I look at her, the more things I notice: her teeny ammonite ears; the little white spots around her nose; the crust on her scalp, flaky like candle wax. I press my finger into the soft hollow on her head, and imagine her blood rushing underneath it, like the stream.
Then I remember. She needs milk.
The stream? Clean enough. I hold a glass bottle against the current so the water sloshes into it. I shake in the powder but it goes everywhere and the powder that does fall into the bottle won’t mix properly and floats in cratery chunks. She spits out the teat and starts to whimper. So I give up on the milk and hold her tight until she stops, mid-scream. She slackens in my arms. Her eyelids close.
I am the world’s best big sister at last. Hugging her warmth to my body, something strange happens. I feel myself being pulled back in time, day by day, month by month, like paper folded over, until I’m in my Primrose Hill bedroom again, the night my baby sister was born.
The ambulance is waiting. The midwife’s clomping down the front
steps. I’m looking down, through the wisteria, into the blanket in her arms, spot-lit by the lantern over the door, and I can suddenly see what I’ve not been able to recall this last year: the gash where her nose and mouth are meant to be. I also know this: it would have made no difference. With or without a proper face she’d be my baby sister. I’d have loved her just the same.
20
Sylvie
‘You were found by a lovely young girl in a magical forest one warm summer’s night, safe on a tree stump …’ my mother would whisper to me at bedtime. I’d immediately beg her to tell me the story again, enchanted by it in the same way I was with Santa Claus or the possibility of fairies at the bottom of the garden. It didn’t feel real but it did feel true, like all good stories. My parents first told me when I was five: ‘There’s something you need to know …’ Apparently I shrugged, nonplussed, and asked for a biscuit. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t grasp the enormity – and wouldn’t until I was much older. My mum and dad had searched for me and loved me so much they adopted me as their own: I liked this. As Caroline was also adopted, a few months after I was, this was our normal. We both knew what it was like to be ‘chosen’, not simply born.
I’d always known a vein of wildness ran through me. Like Caroline loved dolls, I was drawn to trees. I’d climb the old apple at the bottom of our garden every day and sit on the highest branches, sniffing the sea. I couldn’t concentrate in the classroom: my mind hopped about like a sparrow, but outside, in a tree, something in me would still.
