Darkest Part of the Woods (10 page)

He fed himself a mouthful of lasagne to gain time, and was taking at least as long as seemed justifiable with it when his father said "Maths was always my best subject, which is why I'm an accountant. English is yours, so can't you make it work for you?"

All at once the setting inspired Sam. "I will soon."

"I feel happier already. Any preview available?"

"I'll still be in books. I'll be a publisher."

"Well, nobody could accuse you of not being ambitious."

"I don't mean right away. I'll get a job in the industry and work my way up."

"That's the attitude. You know you'll have to move down my way to get anywhere.

Have you told Heather?"

"Not till I've been for some interviews. I'm only telling you because you asked."

"I appreciate it, old chap. It's a secret, is it, till you say otherwise?"

"She's got enough changes in her life right now," Sam said, and tried to hold on to his vision. "So when I've been in publishing a few years I'll know when anyone is looking to put money into a new firm, and I'll have made enough of a name that they'll want me along. And I'll know who the writers are who are going to be hot, and we'll buy them in. Maybe I'll be one of them too. I feel like writing a book."

"If you can impress whoever interviews you as much as you've just impressed me I don't think you'll have many problems. Even if things don't work out exactly as you think, you'll be in a real job."

Sam bowed his head to meet a forkful of lasagne. "So is anything else hatching in there?" his father said.

"Where?"

"The old skull. The old brain."

Sam found the choice of words obscurely unnerving until his father said "I was just wondering if you had an idea for a book."

"A wood bigger than the world."

"A fantasy, you mean."

"Someone who lives in it, who's been born in it, tries to get to the end of it to see what else there is. He keeps climbing trees but he can never see anything else."

"What did some writer say, write what you know? You climbing that tree may come in useful after all." Sam's father took a sip of barely alcoholic lager and said "Does he have a name, your chap?"

The details of the book felt even more like dreaming aloud than Sam's thoughts about publishing had. "Bosky," he said.

"I'd say he'd stick in people's minds. Anything else you want to share about him?"

"He meets someone who leads him to the secret of the woods."

"A girl, would I be right?" When Sam found himself nodding his father said "And the secret is..."

"Stuff a wizard buried."

"Do you know what that is yet, or don't you want to say?"

Sam felt his brows tightening as if to hold in any response. "Keep it to yourself if you'd rather write it first," his father said. "Have you got a tide?"

Sam's mind had another surprise for him. "The Only Way Out is Down."

"You know, I think all this is worth celebrating. What do you say to champagne?"

"You're

driving."

"Then we'll save it for the next time you're in London."

Sam was unable to envisage when that might be. "What's been happening there recently?" he said to compensate.

"They've opened a Thai round the corner from me I'll buy you dinner at next time you're down..." Sam's father described what sounded like at least a week's worth of attractions as a preamble to making no more of his successes at work than he apparently felt a man should.

Almost whenever it seemed appropriate, Sam uttered expressions of interest or enthusiasm or admiration while finding the subjects almost as unreal as the future he'd invented. He felt closer to his tale of Bosky, but even that struck him as a retelling of a story he couldn't remember having been told. Eventually he became aware that his tankard was the focus of attention.

"Another," his father said, "or shall we do something else with the rest of the day?"

A glance showed Sam that the street was competing with the interior of the pub for dimness. "Looks like there isn't any rest," he said.

"How about a stroll to walk off lunch? A fit man means a fit head. If you come to live near enough you can join my gym."

"Would you mind a lot if I went home? I didn't sleep all that much last night."

"I hope it was having so many ideas that kept you awake."

"Must have been," Sam said and stood up fast to abandon the topic.

Misshapen leaves pattered to meet him as he left the pub. They'd been blown from the saplings on the campus, but he could have imagined that the trees south of Goodmanswood had sent them to urge his return. Long before the forest swelled into view, amassing the dusk beyond the motorway, he felt it growing in his mind. As the car came abreast of the woods, it seemed to him that their depths were impenetrably lightless. Or could there be a room that was-a room where a figure was turning its head in the dark to follow the progress of the car?

"Sam," his father said, and then "Tell me to be quiet if you're getting ideas for your book."

"Quiet," Sam said, though at the sound of his father's voice the woods had closed into themselves in some indefinable way and were pretending to be no more than woods. He rubbed his knees to erase a memory of damp earth. When the Arbour came in sight he saw his grandfather at the upstairs window, a silhouette intent on the view. Sam clenched his teeth so as not to speak-clenched them until the forest swept away the lights of the hospital. While it was visible he had been tempted to ask to be driven there, to find out whether Lennox was aware of a room in the woods.

11

A Hidden Price

RANDALL confined himself to clearing his throat for the benefit of whoever might take notice until a student marched to the counter. "Excuse me?" she repeated, this time to him.

"Yes, of course. That's to say I'll just be..." When she drew a breath and expelled it with quite as much force he waived the delay and raised his bushy eyebrows to her. "How can I help?"

"Can you ask that lady to be a bit quieter?"

"I'm sure she isn't meaning to disturb you," he said loudly enough for Sylvia to hear but without any visible effect on her. "I'll speak to her," he added hastily, then glanced at Heather.

"That's if-"

Heather sighed and stood up. "I will."

She hadn't reached the table on which books surrounded Sylvia's notepad when Sylvia emitted yet another laugh not unlike a gasp. "Sylvie," Heather murmured.

"Yes, come take a look. The more I read the more I find there is."

"Well done, only could you see about keeping some of your enjoyment to yourself?

I don't mean don't tell me. It's just that most of these people are studying for essays if not exams."

"Like we did, and look how far we've come." Before Heather could decide if that and Sylvia's wide eyes hid any irony, Sylvia added "Of course I'll do what my big sister says. Sorry, anyone who's been having to listen to me."

"I expect they'll forgive you this once."

Most of the students nodded in at least some agreement, and Heather had taken a step away from the table when Sylvia said "See just this one thing while you're here."

Heather lowered her voice in the hope it would take Sylvia's down. "What is it, Sylvie?"

Sylvia pushed a bulky history of Roman Britain towards her and underlined a passage with a fingertip, and Heather remembered fingering stories as she read them aloud to her sister.

While the Roman advance left Stonehenge unscathed, there is evidence of the destruction of at least one Neolithic site of worship. This appears to have been a stone circle some fifteen miles north of the present boundary of Bristol.

Later quotations from a contemporary account, now lost, suggest that the razing of the area subsequent to the demolition of the circle uncovered evidence of still earlier rites. The account apparently noted that such was the thoroughness of the demolition that the stones of the circle were reduced to dust, itself then cast into the River Severn. It remains unclear whether the Romans planted the area with trees, but it was forested by the seventh century, when a nearby settlement was named Goodman's or Goodman's Wood.

"Ah," said Heather. "You're saying now we know who Goodman was."

"Do

we?"

"An Anglo-Saxon by the sound of him."

"If that's how you read it. I thought the important part was this was the only stone circle the Romans didn't leave alone. Did you know the ice in the Ice Age stopped just a few miles north of Goodmanswood?"

"I think I learned that at school, but I don't see-"Heather became aware that students were gazing none too patiently at them. "I've lunch in half an hour," she murmured.

"I guess I can wait that long. I wouldn't want you making too much noise in here when I tell you something."

Heather didn't know whether the remark was simply an expression of pique, but it distracted her from the book she was scanning into the computer. The second time she glanced at her watch to confirm that it had yet to be one o'clock, Randall said "Slip away now if you want to. I'll hold the fort till we're relieved."

The sisters' breath manifested itself as they emerged into the late November air. Thin isolated trees and their very few leaves looked embedded in the ice sheet of the sky. Sylvia was silent as she led the way past clumps of scarfed students. "You've been busy," Heather eventually said.

"How do you mean?"

Heather could have meant Sylvia's research on their father's behalf, or her visiting Lennox more often than Heather did, or helping Margo to collect material to carve and generally helping her at the studio, or driving Sam to and from work in exchange for being lent his car. "I need to make up for all the time I've been away," Sylvia apparently answered herself.

"I understand," said Heather and at once was less sure, given Sylvia's odd brief smile, that she did.

Students and a few health-conscious oldsters occupied most of the rough bare tables in Peace & Beans, but a table for two had just been vacated by a pair of worthy dons. Sylvia saved the places while Heather brought over a trayful of falafel and Bombay potatoes and various items all called salads. "Do you want to eat first?" Sylvia said, producing her notepad from her canvas bag.

"Tell me what you think is interesting."

Sylvia splayed her fingers on the midriff of her loose denim overalls before leafing through the pad. "There's a reference around the time Arthur was supposed to have lived, and that's centuries earlier than the place got its name. The Good Man was meant to guide anyone who got lost in the woods, especially at night."

"Sounds like a decent chap to meet."

Sylvia paused long enough to be discarding a response. "It's often placatory, that kind of name. Up in Scotland Goodman's Croft is the devil's ground, dad says."

"He'd mean that's what people deluded themselves into believing."

"Not any longer." Before Heather could decide if she wanted that elucidated, Sylvia said

"Actually, your book doesn't quite say the Good Man guided people.

It says he made them a path. You'd wonder how he did and where it led, wouldn't you?"

"I

wouldn't,

no."

"Okay then, try this. In about the thirteenth century there were stories of a Mr. Goodman who wouldn't let wealthy travellers pass the woods till they left something for the poor. Only I think the bit about the poor may have been added for safety, because I found this as well."

Sylvia turned the page and read, "'For some decades the route past Goodman's Wood in Gloucestershire was avoided after dark for fear of a man or other creature which was reputed to pursue the unwary faster than a horse could gallop.' "

"What on earth is that from?"

"Old English Traditions, 1863," said Sylvia, underlining the attribution so vigorously that her fingernail scratched the page. "I hope you don't think I'm making any of this up."

"I'm sure you aren't if you say you aren't, but I don't understand why you're so pleased with it."

"Because it's been waiting for someone to put it together."

"You're pleased because you're the first person who has, you mean."

"I don't know that I am," Sylvia admitted. "Here's something from a midsummer masque that was performed in Gloucester: 'Come man and maid, come dance and sing!

But stray not into Goodman's ring,

Lest spirits of the air and earth

Play midwife at their sibling's birth,'" she read, and gazed expectantly at Heather. "You know where that was, don't you, the ring?"

"I don't think we can be sure."

"You ought to read some of your books," Sylvia said and clasped her hands over her midriff as though to contain her impatience. "There's one called A Description of a Journey through the English Shires on Foot and Horseback."

"I was scanning it the other day. I don't remember anything in it like that."

"Then you can't remember this," Sylvia said, enclosing a paragraph with her fingers and thumbs like a gate until Heather craned to read.

I have it from the indefatigable Mr. Lyndsey, who had it from a Grandam of the Shire, that in bygone Years the Traveller betwixt Berkeley and Gloucester might spy within the Woods West of the Roman Road the Crown of a Dwelling taller than the Trees and circular in Section. What Occurrence laid this Folly low, the Grandam would not tell.

"Don't say you don't know where that was," Sylvia said.

"Where you used to run off when I was supposed to be in charge of you, you mean."

"Our secret place."

"Only because mother would have been unhappy knowing we'd gone that far into the woods. It didn't matter that the place had been made safe."

"You liked it too," Sylvia insisted. "You liked pretending it was a circus ring with all sorts of strange animals. And sometimes it was a moat around a fairy castle, or the inside was the top of the highest mountain or an island that had just risen out of the sea after millions of years. Sometimes the ring was just a path we walked round and round and tried to see what was around us, only all you ever said was it made you dizzy. I never believed that was all."