Mythago Wood - 1 (3 page)

Running back to the house we had soon calmed down. Christian decided,
eventually, that it must have been old Alphonse, playing tricks on us. But when
I mentioned what we'd seen to my father he reacted almost angrily (although
Christian recalls him as having been excited, and bellowing for that reason, and
not because he was angry with our having been near the forbidden pool). It was
father who referred to the vision as 'the Twigling', and soon after we had
spoken to him he vanished into the woodland for nearly two weeks.

'That was when he came back hurt, remember?' We had reached the grounds of
Oak
Lodge,
and Christian held the gate open for me as he spoke.

'The arrow wound. The gypsy arrow. My God, that was a bad day.'

'The first of many.'

I noticed that most of the ivy had been cleared from the walls of the house;
it was a grey place now, small, curtainless windows set in the dark brick. The
slate roof, with its three tall chimney stacks, was partially hidden behind the
branches of a big old beech tree. The yard and gardens were untidy and unkempt,
the empty chicken coops and animal shelters ramshackle and decaying. Christian
had really let the place slip. But when I stepped across the threshold, it was
as if I had never been away. The house smelled of stale food and chlorine, and I
could almost see the thin figure of my mother, working away at the immense
pinewood table in the kitchen, cats stretched out around her on the red-tiled
floor.

Christian had grown tense again, staring at me in that fidgety way that
marked his unease. I imagined he was still unsure whether to be glad or angry
that I had come home like this. For a moment I felt like an intruder. He said,
'Why don't you unpack and freshen up. You can use your

old room. It's a bit stuffy, I expect, but it'll soon air. Then come down and
we'll have some late lunch. We've got all the time in the world to chat, as long
as we're finished by tea.' He smiled, and I thought this was some slight attempt
at humour. But he went on quickly, staring at me in a cold, hard way, 'Because
if you're going to stay at home for a while, then you'd better know what's going
on here. I don't want you interfering with it, Steve, or with what I'm doing.'

'I wouldn't interfere with your life, Chris - ' 'Wouldn't you? We'll see. I'm
not going to deny that I'm nervous of you being here. But since you are . . .'
He trailed off, and for a second looked almost embarrassed. 'Well, we'll have a
chat later on.'

Intrigued by what Christian had said, and worried by his apprehension of me,
I nonetheless restrained my curiosity and spent an hour exploring the house
again from top to bottom, inside and out, everywhere save father's study, the
contemplation of which chilled me more than Christian's behaviour had done.
Nothing had changed, except that it was untidy, and untenanted. Christian had
employed a part-time cleaner and cook, a woman from a nearby village who cycled
to the Lodge every week and prepared a pie or stew that would last him three
days. Christian did not go short of farm produce, so much so that he rarely
bothered to use his ration book. He seemed to get all he needed, including sugar
and tea, from the Ryhope estate, which had always been good to my family.

My old room was almost exactly as I remembered it. I opened the window wide
and lay down on the bed for a few minutes, staring out and up into the hazy,
late summer sky, past the waving branches of the gigantic beech that grew so
close to the Lodge. Several times, in the years before my teens, I had climbed
from window to tree, and made a secret camp among the thick branches; I had
shivered by moonlight in my underpants, crouched in that private place,
imagining the dark activities of night creatures below.

Lunch, in mid-afternoon, was a substantial feast of cold pork, chicken and
hard-boiled eggs, in quantities that, after two years in France on strict
rations, I had never thought to see again. We were, of course, eating his food
supply for several days, but the fact seemed irrelevant to Christian, who in any
case only picked at his meal.

Afterwards we talked for a couple of hours, and Christian relaxed quite
noticeably, although he never referred to Guiwenneth, or to father's work, and I
never broached either subject.

We sprawled in the uncomfortable armchairs that had belonged to my
grandparents, surrounded by the time-faded mementoes of our family . . .
photographs, a noisy rosewood clock, horrible pictures of exotic Spain, all
framed in cracked mock-gilded wood, and all pressed hard against the same floral
wallpaper that had hugged the walls of the sitting-room since a time before my
birth. But it was home, and Christian was home, and the smell, and the faded
surrounds, all were home to me. I knew, within two hours of arriving, that I
would have to stay. It was not so much that I belonged here (although I
certainly felt that) but simply that the place belonged to me - not in any
mercenary sense of ownership, more in the way that the house and the land around
the house shared a common life with me; we were part of the same evolution. Even
in France, even in the village in the south, I had not been separated from that
evolution, merely stretched to an extreme.

As the heavy old clock began to whirr and click, preceding its laboured
chiming of the hour of five, Christian abruptly rose from his chair and tossed
his half-smoked cigarette into the empty fire grate.

'Let's go to the study,' he said, and I rose without speaking and followed
him through the house to the small room where our father had worked. 'You're
scared of this room, aren't you?' He
opened the door and walked inside,
crossing to the heavy oak desk and pulling out a large leather-bound book from
one of the drawers.

I hesitated outside the study, watching Christian, almost unable to move my
legs to carry myself into the room. I recognized the book he held, my father's
notebook. I touched my back pocket, the wallet I carried there, and thought of
the fragment of that notebook which was hidden inside the thin leather. I
wondered if anyone, my father or Christian, had ever noticed that a page was
missing. Christian was watching me, his eyes bright with excitement now, his
hands trembling as he placed the book on the desk top.

'He's dead, Steve. He's gone from this room, from the house. There's no need
to be afraid any more.'

'Isn't there?'

But I found the sudden strength to move, and stepped across the threshold.
The moment I entered the musty room I felt totally subdued, deeply affected by
the coolness of the place, the stark, haunted atmosphere that hugged the walls
and carpets and windows. It smelled slightly of leather, here, and dust too,
with just a distant hint of polish, as if Christian made a token effort to keep
this stifling room clean. It was not a crowded room, not a library as my father
would perhaps have liked it to be. There were books on zoology and botany, on
history and archaeology, but these were not rare editions, merely the cheapest
copies he could find at the time. There were more paperbacks than hardcover
books; the exquisite binding of his notes, and the deeply varnished desk, had an
air of Victorian elegance about them that belied the otherwise shabby studio.

On the walls, between the cases of books, were his glass-framed specimens:
pieces of wood, collections of leaves, crude sketches of animal and plant life
made during the first years of his fascination with the forest. And almost
hidden away among the cases and the shelves was the patterned shaft of the arrow
that had struck him fifteen years before, its flights twisted and useless, the
broken shaft glued together, the iron head dulled with corrosion, but a
lethal-looking weapon nonetheless.

I stared at that arrow for several seconds, reliving the man's agony, and the
tears that Christian and I had wept for him as we had helped him back from the
woodlands, that cold autumn afternoon, convinced that he would die.

How quickly things had changed after that strange, and never fully explained
incident. If the arrow linked me with an earlier day, when some semblance of
concern and love had remained in my father's mind, the rest of the study
radiated only coldness.

I could still see the greying figure, bent over his desk writing furiously. I
could hear the troubled breathing, the lung disorder that finally killed him; I
could hear his caught breath, the vocalized sound of irritation as he grew aware
of my presence, and waved me away with a half-irritated gesture, as if he
begrudged even that split second of acknowledgement.

How like him Christian looked now, standing there behind the desk dishevelled
and sickly, his hands in the pockets of his flannels, shoulders drooped, his
whole body visibly shaking, and yet with the mark of absolute confidence about
him.

He had waited quietly as I adjusted to the room, and let the memories and
atmosphere play through me. As I stepped up to the desk, my mind back on the
moment at hand, he said, 'Steve, you should read the notes. They'll make a lot
of things clear to you, and help you understand what it is I'm doing as well.'

I turned the notebook towards me, scanning the sprawling, untidy handwriting,
picking out words and phrases, reading through the years of my father's life in
a few scant seconds. The words were as meaningless, on the whole, as those on my
purloined sheet. To read them brought back a memory of anger, of danger, and of
fear. The life in the notes had sustained me through nearly a year of war and
had come to mean something outside of their proper context. I felt reluctant to
dispel that powerful association with the past.

'I intend to read them, Chris. From beginning to end, and that's a promise.
But not for the moment.'

I closed the book, noticing as I did that my hands were clammy and trembling.
I was not yet ready to be so close to my father again, and Christian saw this,
and accepted it.

Conversation died quite early that night, as my energy expired, and the
tensions of the long journey finally caught up with me. Christian came upstairs
with me and stood in the doorway of my room, watching as I turned back the
sheets and pottered about, picking up bits and pieces of my past life, laughing,
shaking my head and trying to evoke a last moment's tired nostalgia. 'Remember
making camp out in the beech?' I asked, watching the grey of branch and leaf
against the fading evening sky. 'Yes,' said Christian with a smile. 'Yes, I
remember very clearly.'

But the conversation was as tired as that, and Christian took the hint and
said, 'Sleep well, old chap. I'll see you in the morning.'

If I slept at all, it was for the first four or five hours after putting head
to pillow. I woke sharply, and brightly, in the dead of night, one or two
o'clock perhaps; the sky was very dark now, and it was quite windy outside. I
lay and stared at the window, wondering how my body could feel so fresh, so
alert. There was movement downstairs, and I guessed that Christian was doing
some tidying, restlessly walking through the house, trying to adjust to the idea
of my moving in.

The sheets smelled of mothballs and old cotton; the bed creaked in a metallic
way when I shifted on it, and when I lay still the whole room clicked and
shuffled, as if adapting itself to its first company in so many years. I lay
awake for ages, but must have drifted to sleep again before first light, because
suddenly Christian was bending over me, shaking my shoulder gently.

I started with surprise, awake at once, and propped up on my elbows, looking
around. It was dawn. 'What is it, Chris?'

'I've got to go. I'm sorry, but I have to.'

I realized he was wearing a heavy oilskin cape, and had thick-soled walking
boots on his feet. 'Go? What d'you mean, go?'

'I'm sorry, Steve. There's nothing I can do about it.' He spoke softly, as if
there were someone else in the house who might be woken by raised voices. He
looked more drawn than ever in this pale light, and his eyes were narrowed - I
thought with pain, or anxiety. 'I have to go away for a few days. You'll be all
right. I've left a list of instructions downstairs, where to get bread, eggs,
all that sort of thing. I'm sure you'll be able to use my ration book until
yours comes. I shan't be long, just a few days. That's a promise . . .'

He rose from his crouch and walked out of the door. 'For God's sake, Chris,
where are you going?'

'Inwards,' was all he said, before I heard him clump heavily down the Stairs.
I remained motionless for a moment or two, trying to clear my thoughts, then
rose, put on my dressing-gown and followed him down to the kitchen. He had
already left the house. I went back up to the landing window and saw him
skirting the edge of the yard and walking swiftly down towards the south track.
He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and carrying a long, black staff; on his back
he had a small rucksack, slung uncomfortably over one shoulder.

'Where's inwards, Chris?' I said to his vanishing figure, and watched long
after he had isappeared from view.