by Laura Beatty
They turned to go, with the big boy swearing. Let’s get out of here right. That fucking bitch is tight, man.
Peter Parker gave Anne a sort of half-look, then thought better of it and spat to one side and hitched his trousers. Sharp little cheekbones, Anne thought, and he was all gold, however ugly his clothes, gold hair, golden skin. Don’t go with that lot of goons, Peter Parker. But she didn’t say it. She just watched him leave, chicken-bone shoulder blades moving under the skin of his back. He was wearing a white vest and his arms were thin.
♦
Sun, reverberating in the sky like a gong. There were early blackberries knotted in all the hedges. It was a bumper year. Anne picked dutifully, all the way back to the hut. She wished she had someone to pick with. They could have had a feast. She could have milked extra, and let it stand in her cold store, and skimmed the cream. And they could have had a blackberry banquet. If she had someone to have it with.
If you make it to spring I’ll get you a drake, she told Peter Parker, who was wagging out her tail feathers on the pond. Anne put the bag of blackberries down in the heat, where they got flyblown and crushed together and their juices ran away through the safety holes in the carrier bag. She watched the duck and did nothing. Worrying about the real Peter Parker. Missing him, apart from anything else. The rabbit blanket was unfinished. She hadn’t been hunting for days because of the deer. She was living off eggs and parched vegetables. Nothing was right. It wouldn’t rain. If you make it till spring.
When night fell, she got up and she walked. She walked far into most nights and she slept until midday. Over to the walkway once. It was nearly finished. Big black hulk, square-cut, steel legs, like something over a motorway. Funny how wood could look so unlike wood. She walked right through the tape and on up the ramp. She’d chosen a moonlit night on purpose, though as she walked, so easy and so gradual, up into the trees, she thought of her own face, her old fat face, upturned to the sky, rising above their crowns, a second light for the night.
Out through the tops of the trees, and it was so easy to be a bird after all, or a small planet. Everything laid out before you like the promised land. No noise, just soft hootings echoing back and forth and the swish of a car now and then. Far out on every side, the wood stretched. Billowing tops, that lapped their black foam, a hand-reach below, and the walkway rocking, as though on a sea.
She raised her face to the night breeze. She hadn’t expected so much, such loveliness, so effortlessly gained. Spreading away, wide on every side, and the lights of the town, that seemed to have the upper hand in the day, were tiny against the wood’s great dark. She thought of the foxes and the badgers, all the nighttime activity that the canopy hid. There’s room enough for all of us to live, after all, she thought, looking at the wood. Plenty.
She stood there a long time, just breathing in what the trees breathed out, and the cramped feelings of the past days lifted off her like mist and her love for the wood overwhelmed her, so the stubborn rain, that hadn’t listened to the cries of the fields and trees, rained instead, salt and small, down Anne’s cheeks, in gratitude. As if she was dissolved into the whole, thinned and absorbed into wood and sky, with the metal of the night air and the must of the wood floor both on her tongue together.
After a bit she walked slowly on, one hand on the top rail. Maybe things would work out. Maybe Peter Parker would settle, and the deer come back. When it was finished.
She thought of her old plan to bring him up here on a bicycle. Bicycle among the treetops. That wouldn’t please him now. He’d grown away now. Even so, Anne looked out, across the canopy, cupping the promise of this new perspective, like something precious, spillable, inside her. Keep it safe. You never know.
Then the walkway ended suddenly, and the wooden rail under her hand gave way to the cold of scaffolding poles, crisscrossed and jointed. Anne was open-mouthed with surprise. It might have gone on forever. Abrupt this ending, without logic. No warning. Just the chopped-off platform, still strong, and the square chute, dizzy, into the dark.
Anne looked down and felt the pull of nothing.
♦
She slept when she got home, a deep sleep, and, when she opened her eyes the next morning, the size and calm of the wood from the top of the walkway was still with her. She felt washed clean. How much time had been wasted in anxiety? She lay for a while, relaxing into the memory of space, and watching the early light finger her collectibles. Then she sat up and got out of the bag, making all her movements smooth, so as not to jolt the vision out of focus. If she could just keep it clear…
She swept out the hut. She washed her clothes. She cleaned and reset her stove, soaking the ashes, until they stopped fizzing, with buckets of water from the pond. You had to walk out now, across mini mudflats, to get to the water, the pond was so shrunk and the stream down to a trickle.
She spread the soaked ashes on the vegetable plot. Watered. Starting to lose the morning’s cool. Anne looked up, through the trees. Heat flexing above the wood already.
Milking time. Two walkers even this early and at the milking gate a dog that barked at her and wouldn’t let her through. What are you talking about? Anne asked him. Get out of my way, I’ve been coming here for years. She could have given him a whacking great kick. He didn’t do anything, just barked, and she reached over, gingerly, and opened the gate. From the other side, she leant over and barked back, with all the savagery she would have put into the kick. Bloody dogs.
Topsy! from somewhere closer than Anne would have liked. Topsy! And a thin whistle. Anne lay down and waited for quiet. Someone had nailed the buzzard to the sky. His wings flamed translucent.
There was a person leaning on the gate, looking at her. Topsy’s found someone. Good girl. Clever girl. Michael! Shouted very loud. Michael, someone’s had an accident.
Another person at the gate and the gate opening. Wheezing and fat concern on two faces. Moving with difficulty at speed across the field. Alright! We’re coming. Michael, hold Topsy. Are you alright?
The buzzard unnailed himself and slid off sideways.
They leant over Anne. Are you hurt? Michael’s got a mobile phone. We’ll call for an ambulance.
I’ve got a mobile phone.
Louder this time.
They waited for Anne to respond and, as she stared back at them, flat on her back, doubt and then disapproval took the place of concern in their faces.
I’m lying down, she told them.
It explained nothing. They looked at each other, mouths set in indoor faces. She had caused unnecessary alarm. They straightened up and they left. She watched their backs to the gate. Topsy was barking.
Anne heard, Topsy found her, she really has empathy that dog.
I think she was drunk, she wasn’t hurt.
The words floated back tinny, on air thinned with heat and dryness. Anne stared hard at a spider bunched up like a grass seed, in the middle of her dew-decked web.
After milking, she walked slowly back, scrabbling in her mind. If she could just get back that feeling. If she could hold the walkway’s new perspective. She concentrated on the warmth of the milk and its coating of mucus in her mouth and throat. Comfort in that surely.
But the wood was teeming. Maybe if it rained, Anne thought, in desperation. There would be fewer people in the rain. There always used to be.
There was a letter pinned on the door of her hut.
Chorus of Trees
Much later now. Thick summer dark, like a blanket wrapped over your mouth. The hut and the clearing deserted. Just the trees watching the night sky and waiting. Passing time. The circle must close, say the trees, standing round.
And busy with their cycle, they go on the same, despite the saws and construction machines, or the heat, or the change. Withstand, they whisper. Do you not have the strength to withstand?
Tracking above them briefly, a falling star. Burns across the sky. Is gone.
Who is this, down below, restless down these rides – wal
ks incessantly, tripping, dazed, over ground as familiar as her own body? Why doesn’t she stop and rest?
And what is it she carries in her hand, raising, scanning, dropping, as she walks, a small and fevered flux, of up and down, and round and round? A scrap of moon-white paper.
Under the trees’ still leaves, a black shape, breathing, hurrying, bumping against trunk and root. All through two days and round one night, without stopping.
As if something from the outer edges of the sky, had fallen, charred, through great resistance.
Anne.
Holding the letter, fighting darkness, moving onward down the ride.
Dead Wood I
There were words in the letter.
No rain, Anne told herself, halfway through her second morning of walking. Fagged, disorientated. That was the matter. That was all it was. Her mind buzzed dry like a fly in a web. Rain would wet the words and they would flower into understanding.
Clatter clatter clatter. She held the paper up again. Unlawful occupancy. Liability. Forcible eviction.
And where was Ranger now?
Dog-tired, she walked, like she was sleeping on her feet, to the café – by accident or on purpose? – the long way round, through the harvested fields, where she should have been gleaning.
Cooperation. Immediate effect.
Through the barn owl’s hunting grounds, not seeing. Jays screaming in the wood. And faintly, but still there, the words buzzed with her mind. Personal security. Community housing. Allotment.
Nigel was at the café, his ponytail like string, his face white, crumpled over his carrot cake. Anne sat down at his table. Hello. Hello Nigel. The syllables thick and slurred.
Hail! Hail! But after his greeting he stopped, because he must have noticed, for once, how she was. He looked at her, and he saw the exhaustion, her mind falling. We live in puzzling times. He said it companionably, as though their troubles were shared, as though it was just the building of the walkway that was the matter, or the filling up of the wood.
So she passed him the piece of paper, crumpled and softened with handling, the letter from Mr Stallard that she’d found pinned to her door.
Two birds hopped in the silence, while he read the letter. Sun-soaked clearing.
Nigel brought the palm of his hand down flat on the paper. He said Anne’s name three times, and each time he said it he pulled himself straighter in the chair as though there was a string from the top of his head tweaked by something unseen. She watched his mouth open and shut, the sounds coming out of it like bubbles.
This was an abuse of human rights. This was oppression in the raw. This was an urbanised beaurocritised state steamrollering the individual.
It was raining words. Anne stayed silent because she was waiting for them to drop on solid ground. But there was nothing there. Nothing underfoot after all.
Nigel reached across and put a hand over hers.
Never fear, Anne, never fear. Trust me, I am a seasoned campaigner. His hand was clammy. There was no comfort in it.
She needed tea, that’s what Nigel said, and he got up to buy her some, like he was offering her a fur coat. Anne sat still for the first time in days and felt herself to be still moving and watched the people. They were eating ice creams, playing, enjoying the beautiful weather. Gorgeous, isn’t it? Aren’t we lucky? They hadn’t had letters.
Ranger crossed the car park, hands in pockets, sleeves rolled up. He hadn’t seen Anne. Nigel barred his way into the café, with Anne’s tea on a tray. Ah, Ranger, a word in your ear if I may. Ranger was obliging. He made some remark Anne couldn’t hear and laughed. Only when he realised that Nigel was taking him to Anne’s table did his composure falter. She heard only part of what Nigel was saying, National newspapers, and, Taking this higher. And then Ranger’s strangled responses. To be honest, Nigel, she’s not safe there. Hooligans. Broken it all up before. Best interests. And, I’ve put in for an allotment for her. Mr Stallard.
She drank some of the tea and it almost drowned her.
Anne stood. She said to herself but out loud, I’m a survivor. It didn’t sound so solid any more. The men turned and her eyes met Ranger’s for the first time and he was a small man after all. She took him on.
Where are the deer then? Loudly. Where are the deer?
And everyone else heard and looked round, at the friendly Ranger in his uniform and the two odd ones buzzing at him, a couple of papery old hornets.
They’ve gone, haven’t they? You’ve shot them all. Or they’ve been pushed out. There’s no deer in this wood any more.
Nigel was standing at her side now, nodding and repeating odd bits and bobs, just like Mother.
This was their place before you came.
Their place indeed, Nigel echoed.
And you’ve driven them right out.
All the people watched and waited for the Ranger’s response. The Ranger put his hands on his hips, now he had an audience. He laughed a good-natured laugh.
Oh they’re there alright. We know where they are, don’t you worry.
Anne made a hornet noise in the back of her throat.
Fibber. She spat on the ground to one side.
And Nigel slipped his arm through Anne’s, very stately, and escorted her away.
Come, Anne, and to the Ranger, You haven’t heard the last of this.
They moved forward through a small crowd, which parted as they approached. Ladies and gentlemen – Nigel had a deep round voice, not what you expected – this man belongs to an organisation that wishes to drive the natives of this woodland from their habitat, this lady among them. How long before we are all driven from our homes, I ask you? Think on it, ladies and gentlemen. I shall be making a statement to the local press. Think on it.
No one answered. No one held them back. And they bumped arm in arm, awkward couple, bizarre, stale-smelling, out of the café clearing and disappeared. Thin behind them Anne heard, Rhight! drawn out for comic effect. Laughter.
Chorus of Trees
The sun is not set, although it is late and in the thinning sky the suggestion of a moon hangs. Waxing or on the wane – we weren’t counting. A pale disc, almost rubbed through with daylight.
We’re still growing.
We’re still working with light and what water there is. We’re selectively porous. Breathing with many mouths, we’re not telling. We have secrets, hidden in our rings, shed if you like, in the autumn, from twigs that are stiff with forgetting.
Here is Anne, for instance, not much different from the moon, barely there, meandering back and forth at a loss. For the first time in how many years, she is purposeless, ricocheting wearily about her old haunts, keeping a shocked silence. Like the moon, she is almost erased by the time.
Spreading wide, enjoying the cool, we canopy the car park, where the Ranger, unusually late for him, is sitting in his truck, with the engine ticking over, worrying, worrying. He doesn’t like it, all the same. He shakes his head and wonders, puts his hands on the wheel, thinking to drive to Anne’s clearing, isn’t sure of finding her, drops his hands and wonders again. Anne’s owl crosses in front of him, its bright white advertising its position in the food chain. I’m white. Look at me. I have no predators. Wide wings sweeping away into dusk as soft as themselves. The Ranger puts his hands wearily back to the wheel. He’s a kind man after all and he has no stomach for the job, but what can he do? He turns the truck out of the car park. Goes home to little Matthew and his pregnant wife.
Across the top of the wood, trees holding hands, connecting the different parts they shelter, roofing over the predator and the prey, equally and without prejudice. The trees don’t care. It doesn’t matter. There’s always another time, for someone else if not for you. We see a wider circle. We see rings and rings.
♦
Night fallen and Anne is turning back now, one foot in front of the other, automatic. She is going to the walkway. She’s going up into its dark order, its promise of space for everyone, its distant, unclutt
ered perspective.
And if that fails, there is the dark chute from its top. There is the Mother Earth, which holds us all, which will pull Anne into her embrace and keep her there. In some ways Anne has been falling for a long time. And she doesn’t want to leave the wood.
♦
Bending our tops by the unfinished walkway, as Anne approaches, breaking the circle of hands, in this new space, what is this?
Boys, a gaggle of them, sitting on top of one of the big machines, swinging on the scaffolding, loud-mouthed. Two of them have bags they are holding. They hold the bags out over their faces, breathe into them and reel. See. That one there. Opens out his bag and, as he bends towards it, his head glints in the light.
What is it Anne wants, as she stands in the shadows watching? We don’t know. What is it that, given another time, she would do or say, as instead, she turns away to wander back through the tangling undergrowth of her mazing mind?
We don’t know. We can only witness, witness, witness.
Dead Wood II
Night deepens. Stars intensify and a wind gets up. Anne still battling on.
Remembering her beginning now, as though this life in the wood had been a breathing space, a pool outside time, measured in never-ending rings. She thought of her dad. She can’t see the wood for the trees, he’d said. And I can’t. I still can’t.
On through Rollesmere Coppice and she stumbled, despite the moon, and put her hand out to the cool bole of an oak. Oaks are resilient. It’s in every ridge of their bark. How do you manage? Anne asked it. I’m supposed to be a survivor. Then, looking up into its branches, she said, I don’t think I can do it, Steve.
And lazily, through a half-closed eye, the moon looked back at her from the other side. Oh well.
I can’t do it, Anne said again, louder this time, I can’t do it after all.
One more time then. One more time to the walkway.
Anne set out on her little pilgrimage, stumbling continually now, scrabbling at hopes as she went. Maybe with sun-up the trees would show her a solution, surprised by first light and the far fields fuzzy with mist. Maybe.
