the secrecy of the wood.
At the dark end of a winter’s afternoon early in 1991 a young woman climbed down from a lorry on the road through Thornyhill woods.
‘Are you sure?’ said the driver. ‘I can take you on to Eade.’
‘I’m sure.’ He had placed a hand on her knee. That was enough. She had insisted on being set down.
‘It’s a lonely stretch of road,’ he said, hefting her bags out of the cab, too slowly for her taste. She reached up, tugging her suitcase from his grasp and stumbling under the sudden weight. The baby suspended in a sling about her neck woke at the jolt but didn’t cry, only staring about him with wide-open eyes. They were very dark, the iris so large they seemed to have almost no whites, like the eyes of some small nocturnal animal. But the lorry-driver wasn’t watching the child. He thought the woman looked very young to be a mother, little more than a girl, her round face unmade-up and somehow vulnerable, framed in a soft blur of hair, her colouring far paler than her baby. He wanted her to stay in his cab for all sorts of reasons, some kindly, some less so. ‘I thought you were going on to Crawley.’
‘I know where I’m going.’ Her determination belied her softness. She didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. She slammed the door, hooking the strap of her holdall over her shoulder and dragging the suitcase behind on inadequate wheels. After a few minutes, the lorry drove off.
They were alone now. It was a relief the lorry had gone, but one fear was swiftly replaced by others. She had been going to Crawley – she had a contact there, a child-minder, the friend of a friend, and the possibility of a job – but instead here she was, miles from anywhere, with little hope of another lift even if she had the courage to accept one. The baby was quiet – he cried so rarely it worried her – but she knew he would soon be hungry, and it was growing darker, and the road was lonely indeed. The suitcase trundled awkwardly at her heels, swaying from side to side, regularly banging against her leg, and the woods seemed to draw closer on either hand, squeezing the road into a narrow slot between thickets of shadow. She was a country girl with no real fear of the night, but she thought she heard a whisper on the windless air, the crack of a twig somewhere nearby, strange stirrings and rustlings in the leaf-mould. Since the birth of her child she had been subject to nervous imaginings which she had not dared to confide in anyone, dreading to be called paranoiac. There were footsteps pattering on empty streets, doors that shifted without a draught, soft murmurings just beyond the reach of hearing. And now the woods seemed to wake at her presence, so she thought the branches groped, and shreds of darkness slithered from tree to tree. They were there, always following, getting closer, never quite catching up …
When she saw the lights, she thought they too must be an illusion, and she was becoming genuinely unbalanced. Twin gleams of yellow, twinkling through the trees, the yellow of firelight, candlelight, electric light. As she drew nearer she feared they would vanish, but they grew clearer, until she could make out the source. Windows, windows in a house, and the yellow glow between half-drawn curtains. The house appeared to be set in a clearing among the trees: she could see gables pointing against the sky, and the dim suggestion of half-timbering criss-crossing the façade. It looked a friendly house, even in the dark; but she wasn’t sure. ‘What do you think?’ she whispered to the baby. ‘Shall we ask for help? Maybe they’ll offer us tea …’ Maybe it was a witch’s cottage, made of gingerbread, and the door would be opened by a hook-nosed crone who would show them the shortest way to her oven.
Footsteps. Footsteps on the empty road. She looked round, but could see nothing. Yet for a moment they were quiet and clear, soft-shod feet, or padded paws. And in the gloom there was a deeper dark, like a ripple running through the woods, and the sound of breathing, very close by, as if the wind itself had a throat, and was panting on her neck … Her suitcase bounced and lurched as she tugged it up the path to the door. There was a knocker, and an old-fashioned bell-pull that dangled. She tried both.
The door opened, and there was no hook-nosed crone but a large, comfortable-looking man with a looming stomach, shoulders to match, and very graceful hands. His hair was pale, his complexion a faded pink. His face wore an expression of vague benevolence, or maybe the benevolence was in the arrangement of his features, since his manner was initially hesitant, almost guarded. His eyes were periwinkle-blue between fat eyelids.
‘We’re lost,’ the young woman began, uneasily, ‘and I wondered …’
He was looking beyond her, into the night, where the footsteps were, and the breathing of the wind. For a fleeting instant she fancied he too heard or saw, though what he saw she didn’t know; she didn’t look round. Then his gaze came back to her, and he smiled. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come in. It’s getting late, and I was just making tea. If you need to feed the little one …’
‘Thank you so much!’
She stepped into the hallway, and the closing of the door shut out the dark and its phantoms. Long afterwards, she knew she had trusted him without thinking, on instinct. Maybe it was because he was fat, and benevolent-looking, and she was desperate and alone, or because the blue twinkle of his eyes had worked a charm on her, but in the end she realized it was because he had looked behind her, and seen something, seen them. He showed her into a room with oak beams, shabby capacious chairs, firelight. A large dog was sprawled on the hearthrug, a dog with shaggy fur and waggy tail, plainly a mongrel. It got up as they came in, stretching its forelegs, rump in the air, tail waving. ‘Why don’t you leave the child by the fire?’ the man said. ‘Hoover will look after him. I call him Hoover for obvious reasons: he cleans up the crumbs. My name is Bartlemy Goodman.’
‘Annie Ward.’ She lifted the baby out of the sling and set him down on the hearthrug, which was as shaggy as the dog and so similar they might have been related. ‘This is Nathan.’
Baby and dog surveyed each other, wet black nose almost touching small brown one. Then suddenly Nathan laughed – something as rare as his tears – and she imagined they had formed a bond which transcended any differences of species or speech. ‘I’d like to heat his milk,’ she said. ‘Would – would you mind watching him for me?’
‘Hoover will take care of it. He’s like Nana in Peter Pan. The kitchen’s this way.’
Looking back, doubtfully, she saw the dog gently nudging the child away from the fire with his muzzle. ‘He must be awfully well-trained,’ she said.
‘He’s very intelligent,’ said her host. Afterwards, she thought it wasn’t really an affirmation.
The kitchen was heavily beamed and stone-flagged as she might have expected, with an old-fashioned cooking range on which something that resembled a small cauldron was simmering. A drift of steam came from under the lid, bringing with it a rich, meaty, gamey, spicy smell that made her mouth water. She had eaten nothing but a sandwich at lunchtime, and it occurred to her that she was very hungry; but the baby came first. Bartlemy provided a saucepan and she heated milk while he made tea and set out a tray with earthenware mugs, pot and jug, fruit cake. She longed to ask what was in the cauldron, but was afraid of sounding too greedy, or too desperate. The room was of irregular shape and there were many small shelves on every angle of wall, bearing hand-labelled bottles and jars containing pickled fruits, chutney, strange-looking vegetables in oil. Herbs grew in pots and dried in bunches. There was a bowl of onions, white and purple, and another of apples and Clementines. No washing up stocked the sink and the draining board was very clean.
Back in the living room, she gave Nathan his
