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

It left a foul taste in my mouth. I thought I might be sick so I left the window open and lay down on the floor, and stayed there till the sick feeling passed and my heart slowed. I had no idea how long I’d lain on the floor. The little boy was still crying and I cried along with him. I thought how useless I was, when all I did was lie here on the floor; and how even poor Sue who many a time had got on my nerves, her with her mimsy little voice and do-goodish verve, was better than me because she actually helped people, while I didn’t even notice they needed it. Then I thought about Johnny and how affronted he was by life. Couldn’t watch a sad film without tearing up, couldn’t cope with the daily horrors, the murdered babes and cruelly dispossessed, the staring starving toddlers, the suffering, like Prince Siddhartha, only Johnny didn’t become the Buddha, he became a morass, a porridge of love and fury. I’ve seen him smash his fist through a wall after watching the news.

My chest ached. The world’s cruel. Not a thing you can do to make things not have happened. I got up and looked out of the window. There was a carpet shop across the road, a taxi place, a sad Christian bookshop and a BetFred, and a little further along, a triple-layered concrete car park where pale youths drove cars too fast round and round and round in the evening. I didn’t want to grow older looking at that. I closed the window.

That’s why I came here: tent, sleeping bag, Tilley lamp, camping stove, stewpot, frying pan. Knives. Spoons, forks. A bowl. Plates, of course. Mug. Long life milk. Soap – toothpaste, matches… I’ve always lived by lists. The practicalities. Who cares? It can be done. And as nothing matters, why should I worry? I was never any good at living with people anyway. There was a quiet babble in my head and I didn’t know what to do with it. If I go to the woods I’ll be better able to pay it attention, I thought, I’ll go there, I’ll find out. I got a bus. It took three or four trips with my stuff, and after the last I threw my mobile over the bridge into the little stream that runs through Andwiston. I was alive again, on an adventure one more time. Hallelujah! I got out of it. I’d never really thought about what I’d do with my time. Just live and listen from day to day and think about things, something like that. Of course it would be strange in the depths, but it seemed very necessary for me to do this, and it was so much better to be homeless in the country than in the town. Much more dangerous in town. Here, all you’ve got to worry about is being scared of the dark, and that’s just the same as being scared of yourself. If I stayed in town, I’d end up like old Norm and those people under the bridge, and that old woman who scared me shouting in the street near the tube station once when I was walking home very late. Johnny came back one night with old Norm, in the early days before Carmody Square and Harriet: this is Norm, he’s staying the night, it’s freezing out there. Looked a hundred years old and smelt like a hundred jars of pickles. Oh! Hello. Swaying about with his red eyes and red face, saying nothing. Well. What do you do? We only had one room. Me and him and Lily and a sink and draining board, the cooker behind a partition. Lily woke up and was scowling out at us from her bed in the corner. I made a cup of tea and Norm nodded off on our sofa. It was hard sleeping with him in the room. He snored and grumbled in his sleep and his smell pervaded the air. In the morning his bare knobbly feet, all brown and dried up, hung over the end of the sofa. Me and Lily went over to Talgarth Road and stayed at Wilf’s for a couple of days. ‘Dad!’ she said, running in. ‘There’s an old man moved into our house!’ We had a good laugh about it, me and Wilf and Jananda. When I first met Wilf I thought he said his name was Wolf and I thought, Wow, what a cool name. But it wasn’t, it was Wilf. I mean. Wilfred. What were they thinking of? The only Wilfreds I could think of were Wilfred Pickles, Wilfred Owen and Wilfred Hyde-White. That was it. Wilfred never made a comeback like some of those other old names. It was never cool. That night we put her to bed with the cousins and Jananda’s Jeannie, so it was a huge treat for her. They didn’t quieten down till after eleven. When we got back Norm was still there and he’d been joined by a couple of his mates. Johnny was making chips. It took him three more days to get them out.

He was like that in those days. Soft.

There’s this nice old bloke lives on the edge of the wood. Well, he’s not nice really, in fact he’s a bit scary, but he plays good music.

Trouble in mind, oh, I’m blue, oh but I won’t be blue always.

Those old days, in the Music Exchange, sifting through albums. I’d been for coffee with Fiona. The shine on the cover of Blonde on Blonde, the music playing. This man, immediately striking and attractive, there on the other side of the sloping boxes of records. Your eyes skim off each other’s glance. I didn’t look at him so much, he was just a huge presence, very dark, eyes, hair, eyebrows, the rough hair around his sweet mouth. He followed me outside. Asked me where I was going. Said, ‘Want