by Laura Beatty
He never thought to ask her what she actually wanted. He wasn’t that sort of man.
Because of Nigel, she got to know the woman in the café too. She was called Sue and she was Nigel’s friend. They talked together about what they called the planet and the way people went on in the wood, dropping litter, so thoughtless. Society was on the wrong track. There was no sense of community. Anne was not interested in their conversations. She looked at the posters on the walls while they talked, or doodled with her finger in the drops of spilt tea on the tabletops. But she was interested in free sandwiches. Or half-eaten jacket potatoes. They were worth waiting for.
Sometimes, Anne went to the café without Nigel, to have a sit in a proper chair for a change, to be in the steam and smell of it. Lovely it was. Whenever she went in Sue would call out to her, loud like Nigel. Hello, Anne. And, How’s it going? Here’s a lady that knows her duty. Keeping it clean for the rest of us.
Anne thought they had nice conversations.
Once, as she was leaving the café, she heard Sue talking to someone else. Friend of yours? the other woman was asking, as Anne went out. Sue said, Bless her. She tapped her head, like Michael and John and Connor. That’s our resident mental case. Doolally. It’s a weird and wonderful world. Talk to anyone, me. I don’t make judgements. Life’s too short.
Anne turned round on the threshold because it was like someone had smacked the breath out of her. She put her hand to the door frame.
Ta-ta, Sue called out. Mind how you go.
Anne had a pain in her chest.
D’you think she heard?
No, Sue said, wiping the counter. Not her, away with the fairies that one.
♦
Setbacks were bigger when you were on your own. For a week Anne nursed her hurt. She sat at the foot of the pollard, spine to spine, and watched the flittings and flutterings that went on around her. Birds and leaves, birds and leaves. Always something moving. She watched the tree creepers up their spiral staircases, so quick and neat. That’s fast food, she thought. They were really kitted out for the job, the curved beak like a craft needle for leather, the ungainly feet. She didn’t know their name. What d’you think you look like? she asked them, furious for a moment. Like ticks on that tree you are, that’s what. It wasn’t a nice name, tree tick, but that’s what she called them. She felt exhausted by the competence, the focus, of the natural world. With her thumb, she pushed an ant into the crescent of her fingernail. It was frantic, wheeling its antennae and all its sensors bleeping inaudibly. Ants are intelligent. They look like something out of a computer, small and shiny and to do with invisible signalling, although they die once they are in a fingernail.
Back to square one, that’s what she was, back to sitting against the tree waiting for something to make sense. Until something quick and soft came, close to the ground, fleeing. A hare or a rabbit? Its ears were flat against its back. Behind it, someone’s dog bounded into the clearing, all muscle and on the scent. Fear, you could smell it. The little birds twitched their heads and flicked away in alarm. For a moment the clearing was empty.
Well, she said. The little birds came back. Flick, flick, two tomtits. Some of the brown ones that all look the same. Always alert they were. She supposed she wasn’t hunted. At least. That had to be something.
♦
Afterwards, when she thought back to this first summer in the woods, Anne couldn’t believe how improvident she’d been, how she’d wandered up and down, when she should have been storing food. So much time spent just learning the place, looking at it, in love with the wood, collecting nonsense or just walking, discovering the deeps where the deer went to calf, or the beech stands where the bluebells had been and the trees stood round with naked limbs, like swimmers, and the other, little known places, where the land fell and rose again and the modest oaks wore moss and ferns and went on for what looked like forever. She would lie down, here or there, with no thought for winter, and under her nose the wood would produce wild raspberries and she’d make a day of it, grazing on the fruit and idling, watching while a doe and a fawn picked and hopped their queer ballet through the undergrowth. Stopping, eating, looking up, eating again. If you were still, they looked right at you, like the bucks once, carrying, as if it were nothing, their own wood with them, elegant, effortless, this hefting of trees, holding their heads up and running. She watched them jump a fence and cross a field. It looked like they never even touched the ground, just cloud shadow swept across the green on a windy day. Although when she went to look Anne saw the slots their hooves had left, neat and definite in the earth.
Of all the animals that made their homes in or under or between the trees, in holes, or on high, it was the deer that were the spirit of the wood for Anne. Their flickering presence a kind of magic, like the trees come alive. She followed them obsessively. She’d travel miles to where she thought they’d be, where she’d seen them last, or where the food was, to whatever was dropping or shooting. And they taught her, without knowing it, how to eat in season, and where to find it.
She’d forgotten the message of the rain before she’d built the shelter and she did silly things, like lying for hours with some shortbread crumbs Sue had given her, on the edge of the wood, where she’d once seen pheasants, hoping to waylay one and throw Michael’s fleece over it. She did that for several days and never managed. They’re stupid, pheasants, but they’re not that stupid.
On the way back, cutting through the field beyond the cows, she saw Steve, swinging along, gun lofted on his shoulder.
Hey up.
Hey up, Anne said back, shy and pleased.
What was she up to these days Steve wanted to know. Seen any more foxes then?
Anne laughed. She hadn’t seen foxes, nor cats neither. Then she explained about the pheasants and it was Steve’s turn to laugh.
You’ll want something a bit bloody quicker than a old jumper.
Unless it was a dead pheasant she was after.
They walked along together a bit and after a while a pheasant got up, cock cock cock cock cock. And bang, Steve shot it dead. Anne hadn’t seen him run before.
Stick that in your hmm jumper and don’t tell anyone. That’s a bit bloody naughty that is, but I reckon old Smarty can spare a bird or two. Go on, get going and don’t say a word.
Anne looked at him.
It’s a fox, Steve.
She was so grateful, a whole pheasant just like that.
Steve laughed, softly this time.
It’s a hmm bloody fox.
♦
Anne plucked the pheasant, which was still warm, keeping the beautiful feathers, even the smallest of the down, shaking them from her fingers inside the bag she was using and giving a little cry if any of them floated away by mistake. Then she cut off the head and the feet and threw them out for the fox, and drew the bird like her dad had shown her on a chicken. She raked her fire to open out the coals, took water from the pool and boiled the pheasant with its liver, sitting and watching all the time with greedy eyes, inhaling the steam till her head spun and her belly growled with hunger. Then she ate the whole thing and drank the water.
Bloated. Eyes wide. Under the pollard in the sun, unable to move for fear of overflow or burst. Later she crawled into the hut and she slept, for a long time.
When she woke up, it was morning. A fox was licking out the saucepan, which lay where she’d left it on the grass. She waved him away. He’d eaten every one of the bones. Hope they split you, Anne told him. He went slantwise, trotting nonchalant into the hazels. Vanished. She would have boiled the bones for stock. She should have taken them in with her when she’d gone to sleep. Another stupidity. The fox was always one step ahead. She picked up a stone and threw it after him.
♦
Visiting Steve. Something she would like to do, but couldn’t quite. Complicated reasons. She set off sometimes. She walked very purposeful up the field track like she was going somewhere. When she got to the end she looked up and down
the road as if she was looking for someone, tapped her foot and shook her head, inconvenienced. Sometimes she extended the pretence with one or two comments, in case Steve was somewhere unnoticed and watching her, maybe, or maybe not. In case Steve, if he was watching or listening, thought she might be waiting for him. Then she’d turn and walk leisurely back up the track because maybe he’d be out after vermin a bit later today, checking the sun, if there was any, and wondering if she’d got the hour, which for her was rough anyway, rougher than usual.
She could have bagged up the rubbish she’d collected and taken it along. Just be a normal person going to the dump. Got some rubbish for the tip, or suchlike. But what if the tip cost? That was the question. She couldn’t remember any money changing hands but then there was the jug. Although the jug was strictly not for tipping. The jug was in the trailers.
The jug was for sale. But the world out there was money money, Anne knew that. Up the track again, for the eighteenth time, in a summer wind and everything blowing about her.
At last she went. She didn’t let on to herself that she was going all the way until she got there, right to the gates of the dump. No more than 5 DIY waste items per week. No fly-tipping. No tyres. She caught her breath at the chain-link fence, put her head down and charged pretty much, for the nearest shed. Beetling across the open ground between. Just looking. Just looking. Just like anyone else.
And it was so normal, like she was expected. He was barely even surprised when he saw her. Hey up, Anne, come for some bloody breakfast?
They went past a smaller shed with a radio on full blast, coming out of some rigged-up speakers. There were two others she hadn’t met before, an old boy called Sid, in blue overalls, and a skinhead who worked the cranes. Going for some breakfast, Steve said to their bent heads. This is Anne. The table was covered with newspapers, boobs and bums by the looks of things. The men raised their heads, stared, nodded and went back to the boobs. Tea and fags and custard creams. The skinhead looked sick to the back teeth.
They crossed the yard to the bungalow with the pop music following them. Anne treasured to herself sheds full of junk, motionless cranes, the power lines zooming overhead. There was Mother, like before, Buster, the legless gnomes, the pylon.
Steve.
Not much conversation and the fire was on so it was hottish for making an effort. They ate the same breakfast and they listened in glazed companionship to Steve’s digestion. The gas fire popped in sympathy.
Was she any good with her hands?
Anne, who was sitting with her hands fisted in her lap, raised them to table level, opened them out. The nails were painted in bizarre colours. She turned them over. Good with her hands? She looked at Steve. She was genius. I’m not boasting.
You can help me out if you want, every now and again. I can’t pay you, mind, but you can have breakfast.
Which meant that on the way back the birds skidded about in a high-up sky. And along the main road, the cornfields ran with the wind, as if they were a sea, on which the trees, when Anne came to the edge of the wood, were sailing, bellied out and in full summer green. But Anne was up, right up above them all, above the trees, above the birds, up with the wind in infinity.
Chorus of Trees
A wood in the wind on a weekday. Emptyish. Just trees, turning their backs, with their leaves silvering so the light dances, wind-blown into the clearings. A pigeon drops out of an ash on the far side, snatched up and travelling now across the open field and handfuls of jackdaws flung about as if they were seed. Only the odd crow, who’s too hard to make compromises, sitting it out, lookout, on a top-twig here or there, clinging on. Sees Anne coming up the track, like something on a spool, wound in, looking like the wind has got her too, full up and bouncing.
Well, it’s summer. What did you expect? Most things are paired up now.
This wind is our voice, should you listen. Talking trees, pass it on.
Stand still, we might say. Face inwards. See us, canopy to canopy, managing the wind, each on our own. Just at the edge of each crown, knocking neighbours and lifting free, settling twig to twig again. A community of singles. Isn’t that preferable? Each tree tuned like a handbell to its own tone, concentrating on a private resonance.
Now the ash rocks, and the wind passes, and in the bottom of a field maple a wren waits, her eyebrows pencilled white so she looks cross-eyed, staying low down as if on the seabed.
And even if the ash could tell Anne – just withstand, be self-contained – Anne wouldn’t hear. She has no choice but to follow her pulses, blindly. She has the heat of blood to contend with after all. At the top of the path, she puts out a hand, unthinking, as she enters the wood with the wind. She passes, touching bark, hearing nothing. And the tree bends again, single, however it’s grouped, working without anyone’s help. Channelling, water and minerals up, light and air in and down, sealing off disease, or leaf, or unwanted twig, more or less self-sufficient, pollinators aside. What’s the difference?
I am what I am, it says to itself.
Disconnected, does it notice? Does it wonder why that one is so shy into leaf, why its leaves are pinkish, acid green or bronze? Does it ask how long the slow oak holds its leaves into winter, heaving like wet canvas, dangerous and heavy in the gales – or why the birds choose there, not here – or if the teacup nest is safe it balances on its knuckle-backs?
I just notice that the milking oak has hornets in its feet. Feel my hold loosen where the badgers squeeze a passage round my roots. Lift my crown in the wind. Pass it on to the next. Pass it on.
Maiden I
Steve originally said, Come Thursdays. But it was difficult for Anne to keep track, so in the end she went when she felt like it, or when she remembered, or felt particularly hungry.
She fixed things up for Steve, so he could sell them for a bit more. She chose what to do. He let her have one of the sheds to work in, let her use his tools. If she needed something special she told him, and he would get it for her for next time. She liked fossicking around among the junk. Never happier than upended in the boxes for reclamation, or the bins. She’d arrange things in the trailers so they looked more tempting, and it gave her ideas for her hut. She never took from Steve. They were his things. She didn’t want to take his things. But he’d say to her, coming across her, beam up, What are you after now, Anne? And he’d give her shelves, nails, old tools he had no use for. Because he was a kind man. Possibly the only kind man, Anne thought.
You saw the whole of life at the tip, Mother said, and it was true. All different people came. So much to throw away, it was marvellous. Cleansing in every sense, you could see that. People went down the gangplank pleased with themselves. It was an achievement throwing out your junk. You were a better person when you’d done it, like you’d gone to church. That’s a good job done, they’d say, dusting themselves off before getting back in the car. Or, We’ve had a really good clear-out.
They had virtue written all over their faces. Anne liked to stand at the top of the metal gangplank, next to the container – the size of a house the container was, you could live in it easily – and watch the people pull up and get out. She would guess what they were throwing from the car they drove. If it had a baby seat or not, things like that. She would watch the people do that strange tiptoeing walk they do when they think they are somewhere dirty, because the dump was an unsavoury place. It was threatening, almost, to the families in clean white trainers, who walked warily and held their junk at arm’s length and dropped it quickly into the great gullets of the containers, barely risking a look to see it landed safe. As if the containers had appetites. Some of the men were more daring. Up the gangplanks with their unwanted gizmos, dead bits of electrical, old computers, sound systems. Heaved them up and over and as they clanged to rest, glanced timid over the side, just to prove they could.
When a container was full, Sid would come along and crash, clang, the gangplank was shut off and another one opened and another container gaped to be fed.
And all the time a crane or a ‘grabber operated by the skinhead, worked at bird height above the containers, swinging around, crushing things down, compacting the loads, occasionally at a shout from Steve, lifting this or that out with its claw, something gone in by mistake, something better perhaps, whisked out again and earmarked for resale. It was noisy at the dump, the metal machines, the clanging of gates, the engines, the pylon buzzing.
It was different for a change.
Anne would watch for hours, the arm’s-length rejection of things that must once have been new, never a backward glance. The thing on its side at first and then how quickly it was buried – the loneliness of it all, the anonymity of broken things, the blind TVs, the filing cabinets with their mouths open, and the crushing from above. After the dump there was the landfill. Anne went to the landfill once or twice with Steve. Gulls screaming and picking everywhere and piles and piles, a whole mountain range of rubbish, being raked over by giant metal arms. No thank you.
But up on the gangplank, with the breeze blowing in her hair, and the mash of rubbish down below and the birds enjoying it up above, little puffs of white cloud and old Steve to and fro between the sheds, his side-to-side walk and the bulk of him and it was the best feeling there was. So that was where Anne spent her spare time, when she was taking a break from fixing something up, waiting for Steve to call up – Cuppa? So she could go down to the shed with the pop music in it and sit around with the others, with her cup on a boob that she never noticed and a blonde or a brunette wasting their newspaper smiles on her and pick the top off of a custard cream.
He wheezed when he walked, lung problems from the Forklinds. That’s a hmm bloody good job, Anne. She liked it when he was pleased. Praise, that was a new pleasure and she wanted so much to please. She was a good little worker. Only, once or twice he asked questions and she couldn’t answer, however much she wanted to. She was afraid of not pleasing him then. How come you’re living in the hmm woods then? he asked her one day. She must have looked like a rabbit, eyes darting, head into her shoulders, looking for escape. She didn’t say anything in the end. She picked at the top of the chest she was working on and Steve didn’t push it. He just said, You’re a bit bloody big to be a fairy, trying to make her laugh, which she did although it was mixed laughter, because she felt so awkward and because big was hurtful to her.
