Mythago Wood

  Tentatively, I broached the subject of the girl.

  Christian struck angrily at the rushes by the pond. ‘Guiwenneth’s gone,’ he said simply, and I stopped, startled.

  ‘What does that mean, Chris? Gone where?’

  ‘She’s just gone, Steve,’ he snapped, angry and cornered. ‘She was father’s girl, and she’s gone, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean. Where’s she gone to? In your letter you sounded so happy …’

  ‘I shouldn’t have written about her. That was a mistake. Now let it drop, will you?’

  After that outburst, my unease with Christian grew stronger by the minute. There was something very wrong with him indeed, and clearly Guiwenneth’s leaving had contributed greatly to the terrible change I could see; but I sensed there was something more. Unless he spoke about it, however, there was no way through to him. I could find only the words, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  We walked on, almost to the woods, where the ground became marshy and unsafe for a few yards before vanishing into a musty deepness of stone and root and rotting wood. It was cool here, the sun being beyond the thickly foliaged trees. The dense stands of rush moved in the breeze and I watched the rotting boat as it shifted slightly on its mooring.

  Christian followed my gaze, but he was not looking at the boat or the pond; he was lost, somewhere in his own thoughts. For a brief moment I experienced a jarring sadness at the sight of my brother so ruined in appearance and attitude. I wanted desperately to touch his arm, to hug him, and I could hardly bear the knowledge that I was afraid to do so.

  Quite quietly I asked him, ‘What on earth has happened to you, Chris? Are you ill?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment, then said, ‘I’m not ill,’ and struck hard at a puffball, which shattered and spread on the breeze. He looked at me, something of resignation in his haunted face. ‘I’ve been going through a few changes, that’s all. I’ve been picking up on the old man’s work. Perhaps a bit of his reclusiveness is rubbing off on me, a bit of his detachment.’

  ‘If that’s true, then perhaps you should give up for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the old man’s obsession with the oak forest eventually killed him. And from the look of you, you’re going the same way.’

  Christian smiled thinly and chucked his reedwhacker out into the pond, where it made a dull splash and floated in a patch of scummy green algae. ‘It might even be worth dying to achieve what he tried to achieve … and failed.’

  I didn’t understand the dramatic overtone in Christian’s statement. The work that had so obsessed our father had been concerned with mapping the woodland, and searching for evidence of old forest settlements. He had invented a whole new jargon for himself, and effectively isolated me from any deeper understanding of his work. I said this to Christian, and added, ‘Which is all very interesting, but hardly that interesting.’

  ‘He was doing much more than that, much more than just mapping. But do you remember those maps, Steve? Incredibly detailed …’

  I could remember one quite clearly, the largest map, showing carefully marked trackways and easy routes through the tangle of trees and stony outcrops; it showed clearings drawn with almost obsessive precision, each glade numbered and identified, and the whole forest divided into zones, and given names. We had made a camp in one of the clearings close to the woodland edge. ‘We often tried to get deeper into the heartwoods, remember those expeditions, Chris? But the deep track just ends, and we always managed to get lost; and very scared.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Christian said quietly, looking at me quizzically, and added, ‘What if I told you the forest had stopped us entering? Would you believe me?’

  I peered into the tangle of brush, tree and gloom, to where a sunlit clearing was visible. ‘In a way I suppose it did,’ I said. ‘It stopped us penetrating very deeply because it made us scared, because there are few trackways through, and the ground is choked with stone and briar … very difficult walking. Is that what you meant? Or did you mean something a little more sinister?’

  ‘Sinister isn’t the word I’d use,’ said Christian, but added nothing more for a moment; he reached up to pluck a leaf from a small, immature oak, and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger before crushing it in his palm. All the time he stared into the deep woods. ‘This is primary oak woodland, Steve, untouched forest from a time when all of the country was covered with deciduous forests of oak and ash and elder and rowan and hawthorn …’

  ‘And all the rest,’ I said with a smile. ‘I remember the old man listing them for us.’

  ‘That’s right, he did. And there’s more than three square miles of such forest stretching from here to well beyond Grimley. Three square miles of original, post-Ice Age forestland. Untouched, uninvaded for thousands of years.’ He broke off and looked at me hard, before adding, ‘Resistant to change.’

  I said, ‘He always thought there were boars alive in there. I remember hearing something one night, and he convinced me that it was a great big old bull boar, skirting the edge of the woods, looking for a mate.’

  Christian led the way back towards the boat house. ‘He was probably right. If boars had survived from mediaeval times, this is just the sort of woodland they’d be found in.’

  With my mind opened to those events of years ago, memory inched back, images of childhood – the burning touch of sun on bramble-grazed skin; fishing trips to the mill-pond; tree camps, games, explorations … and instantly I recalled the Twigling.

  As we walked back to the beaten pathway that led up to the Lodge, we discussed the sighting. I had been about nine or ten years old. On our way to the sticklebrook to fish we had decided to test out our stick and string rods on the mill-pond, in the vain hope of snaring one of the predatory fish that lived there. As we crouched by the water (we only ever dared to go out in the boat with Alphonse) we saw movement in the trees, across on the other bank. It was a bewildering vision that held us enthralled for the next few moments, and not a little terrified: standing watching us was a man in brown, leathery clothes, with a wide, gleaming belt around his waist, and a spiky, orange beard that reached to his chest: on his head he wore twigs, held to his crown by a leather band. He watched us for a moment only, before slipping back into the darkness. We heard nothing in all this time, no sound of approach, no sound of departure.

  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 ho
me 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.’

  Two

  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 mementos 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 f
inally 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 …’