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

he thought, letting the thick ivy fall. September coming. Then winter. She can’t be in there when it snows. When he was as sure as he could be that she was safe he set off home. Once he looked back but there was no sign of the light, so he walked on, and the next time he looked back the wood was just as it had always been.

27

Feels like the true depth of night, three o’clock, the strangest time of all. That’s when I often wake up and feel everything sharper than ever. It’s going strange again. Anything could happen. And my heart starts hammering like crazy. Three o’clock in the morning, dead of night in the middle of the forest. That’s when you drink your own soul to the last drop. That’s when you get up – ouch! – here at this silly infirm side of life, back and legs aching – and find – strange! – moonlight filtering through even here, making the wood black, soft silver, deep blue. What wouldn’t I give for one second of sweet repose? I carry a lidded basket of souls sleeping in swan’s down. That’s where I put them. Lily in her red dress with a red paper flower at the side of her cloudy black hair. Her dark hair, the red dress. I put us all in. The cold boy’s gone in there too now, no matter if he’s a ghost or a glitch in the brain. That old memory, that known thing that ached your heart and made you cry in your sleep, the light in the eye, the lost one.

I set off with the basket over my arm into the darknesses where I dare not go.

*

I could see Lily through the open kitchen door, fridge open, swigging something out of a carton. ‘Tuesday,’ she called. ‘Next week.’

‘Tuesday? Wait – no – oh, OK. Hang on.’ Terry, fixing up a date with Lily, got out a diary, one of those tiny pocket things, and consulted it with all the seriousness of a businessman with a heavy schedule.

‘Busy man,’ said Johnny, lying on the settee peeling an orange for Harriet.

‘Can we do Thursday instead?’

‘Oh Terry! Tuesday’s ideal for me.’

‘Can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Let’s make it Thursday, yeah? Thursday next week OK. Is that OK?’

‘Why?’ she said pettishly.

‘Doing a job for the old girl.’

‘Twist?’ said Johnny.

‘Yeah.’

Lily heaved an exaggerated sigh.

‘I’m driving her to Dorset next month,’ Terry said.

‘Oh really?’ Johnny tossed the orange over to Harriet, sat up and wiped his fingers on the cushion, then picked up his guitar. ‘What’s in Dorset?’

‘Her son. I have to drive her down and then go and pick her up a week later.’

Johnny burst out laughing. It was funny, Terry the chauffeur.

‘The son!’ said Johnny. ‘Another scrounger. And she’s letting you drive her?’

‘Yeah. I’m a good driver.’

‘He is, you know,’ said Lily.

‘Anyway, she knows me now, so I’m all right.’

‘Can’t she get the train?’

‘Doesn’t like ’em.’

‘I thought she never went anywhere,’ I said.

‘She doesn’t. Hardly ever. Anyway she’s paying loads, so I’m OK. I do a good job.’ He laughed. ‘She doesn’t like him. Her son. He’s called Douglas. Oh him! she says. I know what he’s after!’

*

… but I… do go anyway alone through the trees. Follow the silver trails, which cross and turn. To the ruins where the cold boy lives. I sit still, alert for whatever may come, angel or demon. Nothing comes. I have come to these trees to die, I thought. My trees, my trees, clinging to my trees. I’ll be a ghost here with all the others. Just before dawn I looked up and saw no roof at all but walls everywhere, all pink and black and orange, all open to the sky. At the top of the crumbling heights, little steps ended in nowhere. A great entrance opened up in front, then stairways, passages, ovens, fireplaces, garderobes, all rising and falling as if a wave of heat was passing over them, as if I was sick and in a fever dream. There was a courtyard, and small busy figures dressed in long clothes moving around in the background. There was a great height above my head, and voices coming to me from far away in the wood, but no words could be distinguished. They were for me, though. I knew that because my name ran through them like a refrain.

The moment peaked and reversed. Time weathered it all back down to stumps in a few seconds. It was early daylight and I was sitting with my back against a wall in among the ruins, smoking a cigarette. It had been raining.

Sometimes the rain in the woods makes me so happy it’s more than I can stand, it’s holy fucking joy.

*

There’s Terry’s knock on the door, dum da dum da dum dum dum. I was working away at some new leaf earrings with my diamond file and Harriet was playing with her hamster on the rug. Johnny was in the kitchen making tea.

‘That’s Terry,’ I said, ‘get the door, Harry.’

He ruffled her head as he came in.

‘Hi, Terry,’ I said, ‘she’s not in.’

‘Oh.’ He hulked by the door.

‘Well, come on in,’ I said after an awkward pause. ‘I’ve no idea when she’ll be back, she’s off somewhere with Sage.’

‘Yeah,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Wanna cup of tea?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Sit down.’

He sat leaning forward with his arms hanging over his big square knees. His eyes followed the scurryings of the fat golden hamster.

‘Terry!’ Johnny sounded positively friendly, coming in from the kitchen. ‘Kettle’s just boiled.’

That’s nice, isn’t it? Nice as pie. And he’s been a right fucking pain all week, moody as hell even with Harriet, head down staring at the floor, grunting if he’s spoken to. Occasionally casting a thoughtfully reproachful glance at me but looking away as soon as I noticed. My diamond file slid smoothly along a leaf vein.

‘So when are you off to Dorset?’ Johnny asked, all hail fellow, well met.

‘A week on