| Chapter Five |
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Three figures stood huddled around the huge sleeping woodsman, whose form, hewn from a fallen oak, held the axe of his trade to his worm-bored chest alive only with grazing woodlice, the blade no longer shear, but rotted and peppered yellow with crusty lichen. The dying sun could grant the figures no shadows and was struggling to provide even a general gloom. Here three tracks met at a small clearing, where the woodcutter slept as if in his own myth. Where rabbit would carve themselves a meagre living from the several grasses and weed, poor cousins to those not two hundred yards away gorged fat on the lush turnip and cabbage and beans and occasional belly-swelling poison of the farmed lands beyond the edge of the forest. The figures slowly scattered, two taking the north-east hike, the other winding east. Both tracks cut through a thinning forest, soon marked but by single arboreal sentries stood along the sides of the tracks, even these thinning to loosely cultivated hazel and hawthorn hedging with occasional blackthorn and a few lone self-seeded trees, mostly ash of hill and dell. Wandering deer could probably jump the hedgerow barricade, and exercising dogs could perhaps push through the knitted woody tangle in places, but the hedges stood as boundary to all else that cared to heed its message: here wilderness ends and civilisation of a kind begins. The lone figure kicked a stone ahead of her as she walked. The sound scraped the chill evening air, staccato punctuation to the shrill cries of birds hidden in darkening roosts beyond. A curtain twitched in the window of the first of the cottages, and the girl stopped and glowered at the white embroidered net as if a secret telekinetic power she had harnessed could set it smouldering and smoking with enough of a stare. She kicked the stone into the gutter and walked up the path to the back of the third cottage. Yellow light spilled from the small square kitchen window and fell upon her feet as she stood for a moment on the doorstep. She twisted the doorknob and heaved her shoulder against the damp-warped door and again and it gave. Hi, grandpa! she called. A stew bubbled on the wood stove, raising the pan lid in wet clatters, and a muffled voice opined from the unlit adjoining room. She pushed the door open. And in the four fifteen at Chester, Veridical Eric took the field to ... She switched the radio off. A snort erupted from the moth-worn chair. I was listening to that. You were asleep, grandpa. Shall I put dinner out? Asleep? I just had my eyes closed to see the pictures better. Dinner? Did I break the dumplings in the top? Can you see did I break the dumplings in? The stove was only a few steps away. She lifted the lid. No dumplings. I'm not bothered though, are you? Let's just have it like it is. He thought for a moment. Slap a bit of bread out then will you? I'll be through. If you fall asleep again I'm having yours. You monkey. Something creaked in the gloom, chair or old man or both. A nip of milk for you is it, love? Yes please. Warm or cold, madam? Cold's fine. He shuffled over to the fridge and poured her milk and set it on the table, then across to the wooden cupboard and unstopped the bottle of Martini and poured himself a measure. The forest still there, then, is it? Oh, didn't you know? They've turned it into a racetrack for giant beetles. I had a go on a really fat black shiny one but I fell off and broke both my legs. Bluebells out yet? Everywhere. I'll pick you some tomorrow if you like. So they've done away with school as well have they? Monday. Don't remind me. I'll get them on my way home. Well I didn't know the way home came through the forest now. Here you go. One stew. One bottle of sauce. One plate of bread. Buttered, before you ask. Spoon? Spoon. They lowered their heads to the bowls of stew as if in prayer and set to spooning it up. Sylvia mimicked her grandfather's slurping, but he paid no attention, and her slurps were obliged to get increasingly louder. You'll choke. Jesus, but I'll never make a lady of you. Who'd want to be a lady anyway? I couldn't bear to wear stupid shoes and worry about my nails. And live in some stupid place where there isn't anything. You liked that museum when we went down. And the pigeons. I wouldn't want to live there. I'd rather die. If I want to see a pigeon I'll look at one here. Well, I suppose when you're a famous chess player then everyone will just have to come and play you here. The famous chess recluse. I wouldn't mind that, grandpa. Would you? Oh, you could stay here for a thousand years if it were up to me, love. Grandpa? Yes. Did she ever want to be a famous chess player? No, darling. She never did care for the game. She cleared their dishes and fetched the board and pieces from the cupboard. She unfolded the board and set it down between them and twisted it through ninety degrees and slid the lid off the box and emptied the pieces onto the table. He picked up two pawns and shifted them behind his back from one hand to the other and held them out for her to choose, his hands trembling as he held them aloft. She nodded to the left. Black, she said, as his fat fingers opened, and set to arranging the black pieces on the board before her. Like a hooded Ninja in the night. White, he said. Like a unicorn. You can't have unicorn, she said. I had that last week. OK. White. Like a ghost. You always have ghosts. Ghost of what? The ghost of a mad unicorn. With murder on its mind. A small fracas developed at the centre of the board. Pawns posturing, backed up by knights who may or may not be bluffing. Have you ever thought about getting a girlfriend, Grandpa? Oh good God, no. I'd like to live out my life in relative peace. But what if you fell in love and there was nothing you could do about it? Like Romeo and Juliette. I think my heart would give out first. But what if it didn't? Well then I suppose I'd have to fall in love, wouldn't I? He took her pawn and sat it down in the purgatory or Elysium or Valhalla of the tabletop. First blood to me. He who bleeds last bleeds longest. She set his pawn down beside her own. I've heard there may be someone in love with you. Now who told you that? The trees? I can't say. But they are. His knight jumped in to claim another pawn. Don't you want to know who it is? She's really nice. This is a new tactic to try and put me off my game. I might even have heard her singing a song about you. And you might not. I'll tell her you're not interested then. You do that. Even though she's really, really rich. I never met a rich person worth a damn. And just crazy about you. Crazy sounds about right. Are you going to take that knight or not? She's ever so good at chess. And she bets on horses. She owns about ten stables and she always knows who's going to win. That'd take the fun out of it. She's sometimes wrong. Oh, I didn't think you'd take that. Never mind. We're still even. Shall I ask her to dinner? We could have chicken. I'd cook it. And then have double helpings when she doesn't show. She would show. She likes chicken. I've seen her eating it before. I don't know what kind of woman would eat chicken in public. I saw her through the window. This is a fast moving game. Don't change the subject. I may be old, but I'm not soft in the head. Yet. And the only woman crazy enough to like me is Mary Glee. How did you guess? Go on. You shouldn't make fun of that poor old woman. Or me, come to that. And take that piece back - you're moving into check. I never have any luck when I'm black. Luck doesn't even come into it. * * * That night Sylvia dreamed she was being chased through the forest. An amorphous black shape moved from shadow to shadow, hunting her. No matter how fast she ran, the shape followed. You've got the wrong person! she shouted. I'm not me! A tree bent in towards her and spoke. Who told you that? The trees? And white staring eyes shot open on every tree and she woke up. * * * The night outside was still and calm and a gentle, almost soundless, rain fell. The moon's light was diffused through the millions of tiny droplets, and it looked as if a thin mist hung like a protective shroud. From the tree shone two fierce eyes. Sylvia gasped before she realised an owl stood there perched, watching. I wasn't afraid. Just surprised, she whispered, and the owl blinked and looked away. She lifted the catch on the window and slowly swung it open. The owl started and swooped off into the night. Sylvia leant out of the window to watch its flight, her face soon dripping with silent rain. It was then that she heard the thin howl, far in the distance, muffled and wet from the rain. It came again. She climbed onto the window frame in her nightgown and dropped down into the flowerbed beneath, the wet clay soil sludging between her toes. She stood for a moment, her mouth unconsciously opening to amplify the sound, then ran to the fence at the bottom of the back garden. The cry came again, low and brooding, alone. And again, when it was joined by another howl, higher, thin to cracking, and another, until she could not tell them apart. She blew into the air herself in a silent howl, the rain falling on her closed eyelids, dripping into her raised lips. When the sound was as suddenly gone. The rain continued to fall until her nightgown lay plastered to her skin and her hair hung in rat-tails on her shoulders. Grandpa, she whispered. I do believe I just heard my first wolf.
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