Chapter Twelve
Ashes on the water. Ashes on the sea. The tune played through my head as though it came from a tinny pair of speakers. The cool river harried my feet, and I spread my toes to let it through. We all jump in with a one-two-three. An iridescent dragonfly rested for a moment before skimming away over a foamy swirl on the surface. Joni would probably know what kind it was, but I had no clue.
How strange, I thought, if these names die out. If this knowledge is lost by people like me who don’t speak the language, and then the library books crumble and the contents of the Internet evaporate into the ether. Someone else will get to name the animals and plants all over again. Maybe in Chinese: surely the Chinese are still alive, some of them at least? But their exotic words would be all wrong for our plain English creatures. All wrong! A few drops of water fell into the river beside my pale feet. How ridiculous, crying over words. I bent down and splashed water over my face. How ridiculous. I’d have to put the kids onto it. It was the sort of thing Lola and Maggie would be good at. I could imagine Maggie saying the dragonfly looked stuck-up, and Lola would call it an ice queen. “Let’s name it a Haughty Ice Queen,” they’d squeal. And so it would be.
If Lola were here.
A sharp rustle from downstream startled me. A heron on a branch over the water. Its poise was mesmerizing: taut muscles, actively still, unblinking eyes, its tiny little brain free of the encumbrance of intellect. The bird would get a fish because that was all it ever did. I stripped off my filthy jeans and shirt and knelt in the shallow water to wash myself with a cloth. When I was finished, the heron had gone.
I gathered the dirty jeans into one hand, ready to throw them away over the hedge, when I felt something hard inside the pockets. I pulled out the fabric jewelry pouch. Inside, my mother’s jade brooch, smooth as a river stone. It came to me after she died in the crash, taken from her body in the wreckage of the light aircraft piloted by my father. A sunset joyride. Her will stipulated that I “mind it for the next generation” as though I were just a stepping stone to her genetic immortality. And I’d very nearly thrown it away. That was a habit of mine: not paying attention to the things entrusted to my care.
I put on a less dirty pair of jeans. They smelled of Horatio, but were an improvement on the blood-soaked pair. The fabric jewelry bag slipped into my pocket again. As I pulled down the Beast’s rear door, I spotted Billy’s toy gun stuffed behind the seat. It was surprisingly heavy. Quite convincing. I slipped it inside my waistband. Of course, a real weapon would be gold dust. Maybe in one of these farmhouses, if I can brave the buzz?
I sat on a rock to get my socks on. The water bustled past. I noticed again the foam that made a galaxy around the rocks. It didn’t look natural. It wasn’t like the scum you get on the sea. If someone were to wash themselves in the river, like I just did, the soap would come this way. Someone must be upstream.
I forced my boots inside my backpack and got my wellingtons from the car. Rolling my trouser legs up over my knees to stay dry, I stepped into the river. Across the field, a thin column of smoke rose from our camp. I’d made sitting ducks of us when I decided to come back here. Part of me wanted to rush back and bundle my three in the car and go somewhere I could just close the door on the world and hold them close. But we weren’t going anywhere without Lola. The quicker I found her, the quicker I could get back to Billy. I followed the river upstream.
After wading around the first bend, I stopped dead in the middle of the water. I hadn’t come all that far from the camp as the crow flies—a toddler would make quicker progress over land. But I was a good way from the safety of the car. And I was exposed. What would I do if I did find this man? Splash him? At least he wouldn’t be expecting me to come up the river. If nothing else, I had an element of surprise. And a toy gun that looked real from a distance.
Farther upstream, the water slid out from under a squat arch of bricks. The tangle of thicket above the tunnel prevented me from going over. There was only one way through. I put my hands down into the water and crabbed forward, my wellies filling with water amid great echoing footsteps. So much for an ambush. I crept along, my backpack dislodging masonry that plopped into the water behind me. The exit was covered in a gauze of branches, which grasped at me as I broke through.
Ahead, the landscape was sliced in two by the watercourse, as definitively as a tear through a piece of paper. To the left, a copse grasped across the stream. To the right, lush parkland was decorated with ornamental trees. In the distance, probably a mile back, stood a honey-colored mansion with a flat front and a long stone portico. This must be Moton Hall, I thought, a minor National Trust property that’s marked on the map. I’d poked my nose down the drive the night before, but there’d been no signs of life despite a number of parked cars: buzz. I’d retreated.
I stepped up onto the grassy bank toward the stately home, but instinctively turned to check the dark wood behind me on the other side of the river. And there, at a muddy spot where a path through the trees reached the water, stood a fishing rod. My insides recoiled from what I was looking for: human activity. I slid my backpack to the ground, pulling out the crowbar and Maglite. I changed the wellies for the big boots in case I needed some heft. I stepped into the water and picked my way across the rocks before slipping into the trees.
Just a few paces from the river, the forest turned Grimm. A wide-girthed tree marked the way, its spiraling torso pocked with bulbous lumps like an old woman’s swollen knees. I almost tripped over a walking stick with a handle of natural knotted wood that lay on the ground. It felt good in my hand, heavy but deft. It swung in time with my strides.
The trail led me around a dogleg into an avenue of enormous shade trees. It was overgrown and unkempt. A road to nowhere. I’d stopped to see if I could make out the path, when a snapping twig to my left spun me round.
“Are you lost?” An old man stood a few yards back. He was smaller than I, but hardy-looking, sinewy, like the forest. “You have returned my stick. I am forever in your debt.” He came through the trees with his hand out. Automatically, I offered the cane to him. He reached slowly forward, eye contact all the while, and plucked away the stick. As soon as it left my grip, I felt vulnerable, even though the crowbar hung down from my other hand.
“By way of thanks, may I offer you tea?” he said. “I even have milk. I suppose you have run out of milk by now?”
The underwood twined my feet as firmly as hands rising up from the earth. I would make little headway by running.
“You live at the house?” I nodded my head toward the stately home.
“Moton Hall? No such illusions. No, I’m this way.” He turned into the trees, and I used the crowbar to hold aside an overladen branch to follow behind. There was no obvious path, but bent twigs and broken flower heads suggested that he often passed this way. As we walked, he rabbited on about the trees—something about chestnuts—seemingly unconcerned about my reply, because I said nothing to encourage him. With each stride, his stick inflicted a fleshy jab into the soil. This could be my man. The one who’d held Billy. Who could still have Lola. Who was now leading me deeper into the woods. What was I thinking, coming out here, all invincible with a pair of heavy boots and a toy gun, like a kid playing dress up? I felt not just vulnerable, but worse: naive. Out of my depth. It made no sense that someone had taken Billy, and then returned him, unharmed; I saw that now. Billy must have been bait. My stomach crawled within my body as I realized how smoothly this man had lured me here. Maybe he already has Lola; now, me. Then what? Joni? Christ, would he take Maggie—what would he do to her? My hands gripped both ends of the crowbar, and I stepped closer behind him. He half glanced round, still walking and talking—“the Spanish Armada, would you believe!”—gesturing up into the umbrella of a vast tree. My footsteps muted on the bare ground under the canopy; I caught up to an arm’s length from his shoulder, focused on the leathery patch of skin behind his ear. I raised the crowbar, but as I did so he swung up his stick. I jumped aside and stumbled over a root, but he was only reaching up to hook a tree branch.
“Watch your step, dear.”
His voice was as waxy as the leaves he held in his straining grasp. I scooped up my crowbar from the forest floor. When he finally released the branch, it freed itself with a shudder, leaving on the end of his stick a perfect pair of chlorophyll-green chestnut cases. He held them out for me to take. “They’re early this year. It’s been so warm. We’ll have a bumper crop of conkers.” The spiked cases sat on my palm like some medieval weapon. “As I was saying, quite different from Spanish chestnuts. Anyway, here I am.” He indicated the end of the tree line, where a small field lay like an island inside the forest. It was neat, as though freshly swept. To one side was a small wooden building, little more than a garden shed, with a tin roof and shelves on the outside wall where tools and cleaning products were covered by an overhang.
The man crossed the grass to undo the padlocked door, then sat on the step to remove his boots, placing them upside down onto two sticks that were fixed to the inside of the door for that purpose. His fussing gave me a chance to glance into the sparse room. Bunk beds, with the bottom layer given over to a kind of work space. A sink unit with a single hob. Plates and a mug tree on a high shelf. I couldn’t see under the bed, but that appeared to be it. Spartan. Nowhere to hide.
“Sugar?” He waited in the doorway.
Beyond the hut, the land sloped steeply down to rejoin the forest. A set of three shallow steps, their honey-colored stone stained green with age, was stranded in the middle of the grass. A trail of heat tiptoed up my neck and onto my cheeks.
“Sugar, dear?”
I walked past him to the secluded steps. A carved stone acorn lay on the ground. One soft footstep, and he was next to me, barefoot in the wet grass. His head barely reached my shoulder, but his feet twitched with wiry tendons.
“Curious, aren’t they? The Lonely Steps, as they’re known. A clue to the illustrious past of this dingy dell.”
The Lonely Steps. Aloney steps. Heat zipped down my arms, and my fingertips tingled around the crowbar.
“They’re rather charming, don’t you think?” He waved his arms to take in the scene. “Very Narnia.”
Billy had been here. This was the man. Flapping birds wheeled through my mind, all the questions I wanted to ask cawing from their beaks. I could have swung my crowbar and smashed it down on his hammy face. I could already feel the shattering bones reverberate through the metal into my fingers. But I mustn’t. I mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t help find Lola. I hooked the clawed end of the crowbar around my boot laces and hauled them tighter, one by one. Billy’s okay, I told myself, he’s safe with Joni. Lola is the priority now. And I won’t find her by putting a crowbar through this fucker’s face. But I couldn’t look at him; I couldn’t listen to his pontificating voice and keep control. As the leather cut into my ankles, the black birds settled. Billy hadn’t seen Lola here. She could be nearby, though. At Moton Hall. While the man prattled on about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I sized up his “dingy dell.”
“But much as I’d like to see myself as Mr. Tumnus in this delightful fantasy, I have to concede I’m a little old to be considered puckish.” He turned to smile at me, as though I might humor him. The man thought he was a fucking faun. My hand found my waistband and settled on the toy gun.
“What about that tea?” I asked.
“Yes! My apologies, I don’t get many visitors.” He moved toward the shed. I matched his stride, one pace behind. The toy gun was in my right hand, the crowbar hanging from the left. He stepped up onto the porch, into the doorway. When he made as if to turn back, I jammed the metal barrel into the muscle behind his ear.
“Get inside.”
“What?”
“Inside.” I shoved him hard, and he stumbled over the threshold into the shed, leaving me on the porch. The gun fell from my hand with a clatter as I slammed the door shut and closed the padlock. A metal hook released a shutter, which swung round to cover the only window, and I slotted the crowbar through the lock to hold it fast. He was trapped. I bent over double, hands on my knees, letting a rush of adrenaline claim me. When I stood upright, I was still shaking. Around the clearing, nothing stirred. Nothing cared.
“Are you still there?” His disembodied voice sounded older.
I balled my hands into fists, and the pain of my nails digging into my own flesh focused me.
“Why did you bring my son here?”
Nothing. I wondered if he had heard me through the shutter. But I waited. I had made the opening gambit. I had taken control.
“He darted out the back door of the supermarket and right into the road. Goodness knows where he might have ended up. So I rather think I rescued him, Marlene.”
He knew my name. How? All the implications—how long has he been watching us?—made a salvo into my mind. I mentally swiped them off the playing board. He wanted to rattle me. I had to focus.
“Billy didn’t need to be rescued. I was looking for him,” I said.
“You were trying to scare him.”
A flush betrayed me. I was glad he couldn’t see.
“I only drove a few feet across the car park, that’s all! It doesn’t give you the fucking right—”
“Gutter language!”
“It doesn’t give you the fucking right to kidnap him.”
“You frightened him. I looked after him,” the man said.
“You kidnapped him.”
I stopped myself. He was goading me, and I was making it easy for him. I had to keep the upper hand. Negotiate. I was a good negotiator. I knew what I wanted—Lola. So now I had to find his side of the bargain.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“What an excellent question. I’m making tea, by the way.” Teacups rattled. When he didn’t answer my excellent question, I walked round the shed. A tiny generator meant he had power—there was a canister of fuel—and a long wire of some kind was rigged up across several poles. The shed was entirely encircled by trees. The place was weird and forlorn and beautiful. I got down on my knees and inspected the base: concrete, not likely to be a cellar. The only place Lola could be—if she was here at all—was inside. But she would have heard me, surely. And even if she was bundled up, the shed was so small, I would have heard the slightest knock or scuffle or gagged shout. Unless she was drugged. I had to check inside. Under the bed.
I came full circle and stood on the porch by the door. I could hear him moving about on the other side. A scraping side step. Slop of tea bags into the sink—one of my husband’s habits, leaving the dank remnants behind like a dead mouse for me to scrape into the bin, bleach away the tannin stains. A creak, and the floorboard beneath my feet dipped. I jumped back, but of course he was locked inside.
“Do you want this tea?” he said. “I made one for you.”
“I’m not opening the door,” I said.
“But the milk—terrible waste,” he said, outraged. I pictured the room behind him. Sink. Camping stove. Bed. But no fridge.
“Where did you get the ice cream for Billy?”
He started talking about an icehouse at Moton Hall. Kept in working order for the tourists. He was awfully garrulous for a man who lived in isolation. And remarkably calm for someone who’d been locked inside a shed by a stranger. It was belittling somehow. Like he didn’t appreciate what I was capable of.
“Did you touch Billy?” I spoke over him. There was a pause. “Did you touch him?” I laid my hand on the door: rough, knotted wood under my fingernails.
“‘What but design of darkness to appall?’” There was another silence, and then he continued in a tone that suggested the conversation was tedious. “Our children’s lives are safer than they’ve ever been, and yet we find menace all around us. I do wonder sometimes if we want to see evil? The simple fact is, not every male is a pederast. Your son was quite safe with me.”
“If you’re not a pervert, why did you take him?”
He tutted. “Let’s go back to what do you want? Such a simple question, but could you answer it?”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “I’m out here. Free to go. But you are locked in, and I will cut off your water when I leave, and you will die. So you answer the questions, okay?”
“As you wish.”
“What’s your story?” I said.
“My story?”
“Yeah. Why do you live out here?”
“It’s my home.”
“It’s not normal, though, is it? Living like a hermit. In the forest. In a shed.”
“Is that all that you hold dear? Being normal?” he said.
Splinter in the pad of my hand. Stinging. Pain is just an alarm bell. You can switch it off. “I’m just looking for answers for why you took my son. If you’re not a pervert, what other reason could you possibly—”
“Maybe you should look closer to home, Marlene. Can you think of a reason why someone might take a child away from you when you use abandonment as a form of discipline?”
“Have you been watching us? At the camp?”
“I saw quite enough at the shop when I was going about my own business. I saw a mother trying to scare a child into submission.”
Beyond rage—a cold, precise clarity. The black birds flitted from my mind, and my voice pealed through clear air. “All right, you know what I want?” I said. “I want to find Lola. I assume you’ve worked out who she is while you’ve been going about your own business. When I’ve found her, I want to find somewhere safe to live. I want food and shelter. Caveman stuff. I want to find out what the fuck is going on. And I want you to leave us alone.”
“Well, I can help you with one of those.”
“I don’t need your help—”
“More than one actually. I can tell you what’s going on. There’s chatter on the radio.”
I picked at the splinter. Drove it in deeper.
“And I can tell you where I saw the young lady,” he said.
“Tell me then.”
“Open the door. Drink your tea. And we can talk like adults.”
“Just tell me.”
“As you wish. They’re calling it the English Plague. Just when we thought civilization would be toppled by a virtual virus, they hit us with an old-fashioned bubonic. Mutated, of course, to be more virulent. Scientifically fascinating. Carried by carbon monoxide, they believe, hence the rapid spread in the cities—” he went on with some enthusiasm.
“I know this already. Terrorist attack, man-made virus. What I want to know is—are they sending help? Where can we go that’s safe?”
Silence. The floorboard bent under my feet as though he had shifted his weight. I could picture the flexing tendons of his gray feet.
“The stories are rather conflicting, depending on the source.” His voice was lower, less animated. Breaking bad news. “There’s rather a lot of conspiracy and speculation flying about. Hard to know which voice to trust—”
“Just tell me,” I said.
“There’s not much in the way of help. We’re under quarantine.”
“Who’s under quarantine?”
“Britain. The British Isles are under quarantine. We’ve been left to die.”
I picked up Billy’s toy gun from the floor, pointed it with a straightened arm at a single buzzard circling in the sky. With one eye closed, I got the bird in my sight. Click. As I lowered the gun, the bird soared ever higher.
“Why would they do that?” I asked. “Leave us to die?”
“Because as far as they’re concerned, we’re not survivors, only carriers. If we die, the virus dies too.” He sniffed. “I blame Brussels.”
All at once I heard the flapping of black wings. No help. No rescue. The world lurched and realigned, like a train jumping the points. It was a familiar, if unpleasant, sensation that came at moments when I realized I was alone: the tracks fell out from under my feet, until I found my footing again and forged ahead into the dark. With the clarity of a bell I saw a memory of the day my parents came into my bedroom in Kenya—both of them, is it my birthday?—and said I would go to England, alone, to boarding school. We’ll see you at Christmas and for the whole summer! Jump, shift, forge ahead into the dark. Then a decade later at university, dashing through rainy puddles with a soggy message from the chancellor’s office. Ashen faces, terrible accident—both parents! Alone again. Jump, shift, forge ahead. And now this. We’ve been quarantined. Jump. No one’s coming to help us. Shift. This was the point where I should get back on track. That’s what I do. But this time, I struggled to find my footing.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“I’m here.”
I looked around the clearing with fresh eyes. Stately trees. Leaves on the turn. Decay setting in. The buzzard was gone. “Best to sit tight,” he was saying. “You don’t want to end up in the isolation camps. There’ve been eyewitness accounts—ghastly—”
A click of the padlock, and I flicked open the lock. The door swung back. He was sitting on the bottom bunk, knees together like a child.
“Tell me where to find Lola, and I’ll be on my way.”
He shrugged. “Hard to say. I saw her once with those young chaps near the Hoar Wood. Making quite a go of it, they are. I glance in on them when I’m doing my rounds. But I haven’t been out today, so—”
I crouched down to look under the bed: clear space. Not even a dust ball. The man was fastidious.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked. “You think she’s here somewhere?” A wave of his teacup indicated the lack of hiding places.
“What do you expect?” I said. “Whatever trumped-up excuse you’ve made for yourself, you took my son and kept him all night.”
He tried to speak over me—“If you would just let me explain”—but I raised my voice and barged on.
“I’m his mother, for fuck’s sake, his mother. I was beside myself. And there’s no one out there to help anymore. No one to call. Have you any idea how terrifying this is—” My rage flickered, but didn’t catch. He raised his eyebrows once, quickly, as though conceding the point. I felt empty somehow. Spent. Like you might after a good cry. My eyes slid off his and settled on a small table that was wedged between the end of the bunk and the outside wall. Half-hidden behind the door. Several framed pictures of the same child, a baby, an unfocused shot of a toddler on a rocking horse, a boy in a wheelchair. A toy car perched on one of the frames. A candle stub on a saucer. When I looked back, he was watching me. Defiant, as though waiting to see if I would dare mention it. But I turned away, onto the porch. Away from the shrine. Another dead boy. It was uncanny, as though he’d magicked it up. Just as I was talking about Billy. His son, I assumed.
I walked rapidly toward the Lonely Steps, reached down to touch the sandstone acorn, which was as warm as a newly laid egg. There was no mother in any of his photos. Footsteps came up behind me. I turned to face him.
“When you’re out doing your rounds, just stay away from our camp, okay?” I said.
He dismissed my hostility with a wave. “About Billy . . .” He made a show of considering his next words. “When he came running out of the store onto the road—I thought it might be a lesson for you. A short, sharp shock, you know. You were being so severe.”
He had that evangelical look in the eye, as though he were doing me a favor. Like the attachment mums at the school gate, beseeching me to reconsider my wicked working ways. Hearts bleeding for all the little children.
“Things have changed,” he said. I fixed my gaze on his bony feet, as one slid over the other. “There is no one to help, but also no one to interfere. We can’t call in the psychologists—which is, quite frankly, a blessing in disguise—but the children are traumatized, and we have to show them the way back from this dark place. Do you see? We have to raise them on bedrock now. At a time like this, they need bedrock. Not quicksand.”
“You should write a book,” I said. It was satisfying, in a fleeting way, to see him tut and turn away. But at the same time, I felt a dull jolt of recognition, a lurching flash of my train leaving the tracks. A yearning for sound footing. Roots. Bedrock.
“I tried to return Billy straight away,” he went on. “But you and your friend were both out, and I couldn’t leave him in the camp alone with the other children. It wouldn’t be fair on them to be responsible for such a little one. So it was unfortunate that it went on rather longer than I intended.” He let out a cleansing breath, as though this counted as a heartfelt apology.
Unfortunate. It was all most unfortunate. The scab behind my ear gave with a pleasing sting. I rubbed blood between my fingertips until it turned to rubbery grime that I flicked into the trees. Even if it was true that the kids had been left alone in the camp while Joni went out looking for Lola and I was hunting for Billy, every condescending word from this man’s lips seeded indignation that spread like a weed until I was too overrun to speak. I tucked the crowbar under my armpit and walked down the stone steps. Along a path through the trees, I could see straight down to a wide stubble field and across to our campsite. But he wasn’t finished with me.
“He’s a delightful child, Billy. A credit to you. In my day, we would have corrected him to the right hand, of course, but that is considered old-fashioned now.”
I carried on walking.
“I was a headmaster once. A minor preparatory school, so—” He paused to allow time for me to be impressed. Almost as I got out of range, he said, “I had a son, too.”
I stopped at the end of the path. Is this another excuse? “I miss my child—so I took yours?”
“I’m sorry your son died,” I said.
He stood at the top of the Lonely Steps, rolling the acorn beneath a bare foot. He kept three photos of his boy, but none of the mother. Perhaps any normal person would have been curious. Perhaps in normal circumstances, I would have felt a pang of sympathy. But I couldn’t shoulder his despair alongside my own. I couldn’t carry any more guilt than I already lugged with me from moment to regretful moment. And weren’t they all dead now, anyway—all the sons? Apart from mine. My children were alive, and I intended to keep them that way.
“Where’s the Hoar Wood?” I called to him.
He explained how to find the pathway from the Bury Ditches.
“Remember what I said, Mr. Tumnus,” I shouted over my shoulder, and gave Billy’s toy gun a wave in the air as a general reminder of its existence. “Stay out of our camp.”
“And remember what I said, Marlene. Those children need bedrock.”
I gave him a one-finger salute above my head and heard him tutting as I strode away.