Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (if you liked this book TXT) 📗

‘Good,’ he said, turned and walked past me into the living room and stood looking down at the fire.

25

Can’t have this. Pull yourself together, woman. Up! What are you, fool, special?

I will try, just for one day, to behave like everybody else. I shall get up, have a wash, comb my hair, sweep my rug, walk into the village. I won’t buy a newspaper, they’re what drove me mad in the first place. Don’t even want to see the headlines. I did all these things, and then I set off, and my heart was scared and thumping by the time I reached the wood’s edge. Because soon, maybe today, people were coming, and then things would be wrong again. I walked along, until I reached the part where there’s a row of new houses on the outskirts of the village. These weren’t here when I first came. Interlopers. The windows winked at me. In the village I stood for a while at the very spot where we parked our car that day, and I could smell the back seat with its fumes and smell of sick and I could see the backs of my father and mother’s heads, my father’s neck red and angry, hers covered with thick brown hair that curved into the hollow then out again. Then I saw the back of my little brother Tommy’s head in the wood, and his little boy voice sang to me: a pig is an animal with dirt on its face… as he pissed on a tree.

There were plenty of people around in the village, and horses grazing on the green. It’s a pretty place. No one took any notice of me. Outside the pub there was a bench. Two young girls were sitting on it, waiting, I think, for the bus. I know that bus. Through the village and out the other side it goes round a big bend and on past where Dan lives and past the farm and the old cottages, and stops the other side of the narrow bridge going over the stream that runs down from where I get my water. That’s where I get on when I go into town for my cash, my bag of stuff, toilet paper, salt, blue soap in a bottle, eggs, whisky. And I get off there too, coming back. It’s worked out fine.

I could scream at that woman.

I wondered if I looked like some old tramp. Too open, too raw, the cold air in my throat. I didn’t know where to go, straight across the green where everyone could see me, or just walk on up the road and out the other side. Go round the edge. Stop. Go in the shop. Go on.

Ollerenshaw’s. Ting!

A woman was being served at the tiny counter, across the papers and the little box with strange bright toffee lollies sticking up in spikes, and the Tic-Tacs and chewing gum and lighters. It was all ineffably strange, all the colours jumping about next to one another, and a million different forms of lettering all over the walls and the shelves, even the doors of the glass cabinet. And there was a man, a little farmer with a wonky eye, and a thick-necked girl with narrow eyes and a mouth that chewed, though I don’t think there was anything in it. The people were all strange and looked at me as I entered. Cold eyes they have. I don’t think they like me. I’m a terrible, bad person, I know, but am I evil? I am maybe. How can they tell? It’s written on me.

The old man behind the counter was thin and stooped and grey all over. His eyes flicked at me and away. My head felt hot inside. It may explode, just burst and splatter them all with my brain. The woman went out. I concentrated on the chocolate and my mouth watered. I felt like gorging on thick sweetness. A tube of Rolos, Wispa, Ripple, Cadbury’s Whole Nut. The farmer bought his paper, and the girl looked at me with the steady indifference of a cow looking over a hedge. I smiled at her to see what would happen but it made no difference to her face. Nothing would have. I was just something to look at. The man left and she said in a raspy voice, ‘Any bread later, Bob?’

‘Come in after one,’ the old man said, so she bought one of those awful magazines, the sort Lily used to get, and went out, pushing rudely past me as if I wasn’t there.

‘Yes, dear?’ the old man said, not looking at me.

From the corners of both eyes I saw the rippling of things speeding up. Smiling idiotically, I picked out Rolos, Wispa, Ripple, Cadbury’s Whole Nut, and laid them on top of the pile of newspapers.

He said something, probably the price but I didn’t catch it, so I just laid a fiver down. This will never do. If it’s this bad here, however will I handle town? It’s that woman’s fault.

‘Anything else?’

‘No.’

I dropped some of the money on the counter as he gave me my change.

‘Whoopsadaisy!’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ I said, shoved everything in my pockets and left.

I did all right.

It started raining lightly, and oh it was good to be in the wood, but my journey back through the fringes and depths was washed with sadness. More change. All the time. God knows where to now. But look at all those people living every day – if they can do it why can’t I? That man standing there every day. Ting! He manages, doesn’t he? I haven’t grown up, have I? That’s what my parents said. I felt like that when I was thirteen and I still do. What is wrong with me? I came home and lay in my nest listening to the gentle patter on the leaves and wondered why they couldn’t all just leave me