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

reached out from the drain, caught him tight, put my arms under his warm armpits. His head with its black curls fell against me backwards All calm, I pulled. Slowly, slowly, I edged him in. Six inches. Pull. Scraped my knees. Pull. Crawling belly-down backwards in the wet, thinking nothing beyond the next few seconds, back, pull, breathing loud and hard, pull. He stuck. I rested, put up my hands to feel how high above me the roof was, no more than a foot I thought. It was not quiet, the earth made sounds, water ran, small things in the walls ticked and slid.

I have no idea how long this part took. It seemed very long, hours. Looking back, I think it was probably no more than an hour and a half. I got him past the sticking point and then the tunnel sloped suddenly downwards and it got easier. We went in and further in, till I could lift my head and see that gape of early morning light with its ragged fringe, and it seemed far away. Oh my God. I should just stay in here. Just lie down and sleep, I’m so tired. But still back and further back, until my head hit the roof and I switched on my torch and saw a wall with tiny black insects crawling all over it, and the slope still descending into nothing, and could go no further.

‘Here you are, love,’ I said.

I rolled him into the side. Both of us were soaked. I stayed with him for a while, maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty. It was so hard to leave. For a while I just looked at his face in the torchlight and remembered how much I loved him even though I hated him too, how he was infused in every part of me. It had been quick. I don’t think he suffered long but he must have experienced the knowledge and terror of what was happening. He didn’t deserve it. And yet still, even now, I think he deserved it. He didn’t know that though. He was the wronged one always. Sometimes I think they both deserved it, he and Maurice, and I thought of them together forever in some seedy little side alley of hell. What sin? For turning people into symbols, Lily, Terry, Phoebe Twist, all the same. Because that’s what he did when it was all over, I believe, he changed her for his own peace of mind from a girl to a thing. Give it any name you want. It was not nice. If he could have avoided it he would. The tears in my eyes were boiling hot. His lower lip hung full and childlike.

Why are we here? he asked me. Where have you brought me?

It’s OK.

So sorry, my love. So sorry we ever met because I couldn’t not have not loved you, even though it meant I had to hate you in the end.

But not this. Lor, Lor, Lor, not this. Not this.

Then again, who could kill the soul?

Still bewildered, love?

Still.

When I crawled out, the sun was up. I got in the car and drove out of the field, closing the gate, went home like any other normal person, parked in the lane outside the cottage and went inside. No one would come. I’d clean up later. For now I must sleep. I looked at the clock, it said ten past seven. Is that all?

I threw my filthy wet clothes on the bathroom floor, showered, closed the curtains and got into bed, and oh my bed was lovely and warm and cool and clean. But there was no sleep. I couldn’t stop shivering. The water was dark black, long streams and trails forming stickinesses of green algae. Below the ground I heard it, water sloshing, a voice in the ground. Silver as moonlight.

40

He built up the fire. Something to do. What time is it? Feels very late. But look! it’s only midnight. How is that? he thought. Time’s gone mad.

Can’t trust a word she says, the daughter said.

He picked up the bottle of pills from the table and set about reading the label.

‘How many of these are you supposed to have?’ he asked.

‘Can’t remember.’ She lay back and closed her eyes.

He got up, got his reading glasses.

‘Hm,’ he said, ‘looks like no more till tomorrow,’ then something struck him.

‘Should you be drinking with these?’

She laughed. ‘You make me laugh,’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘drink might stop them working.’

‘Doesn’t work like that,’ she said. ‘Takes weeks anyway. Doesn’t just kick in overnight.’

She jumped up and stood staring down into the fire.

His head was all mussed up. Not long now, he thought, till morning. Her daughter’s coming. Or is she calling? Or was that Madeleine? Anyway, whatever, one or both will turn up soon and take her away. He wouldn’t say a word. It was all just stuff in her head. They could sort it out. A dead man came down when the hillside slipped. She heard it. She made a story. That’s what they do. People who confess to things they haven’t done. It’s all in the mind. Not her fault.

‘You go to sleep,’ he said, ‘drink that and go to sleep.’

The big black and white cat, mother of many, was up there next to her, looking into her face intently as if with sympathy, but she hadn’t seen it.

‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘I never seen that cat take to anyone before.’

She looked at it and it darted its face forward with a rough growl.

‘Hello,’ she said.

The cat took a step or two and lay on its stomach with one paw on her leg.

‘Never before seen,’ he said.

She smiled.

‘All that,’ he said, ‘what you said – I don’t think you know what’s true. We think things, we remember things differently.’

‘Yes. And some things are just so real but they’re not. I know, I know, I know.’

‘It’s just the past,’ he said. ‘It’s gone, caput, over.’

‘Just like that.’

He shifted