Darkest Part of the Woods (30 page)

"Time doesn't seem to mean too much any more. Maybe that's because it doesn't to him."

With an affectionate laugh at the extravagance of that idea Heather said "You know he's a him or you want him to be?"

"Even these days I don't think we get a choice."

"It's just that we were wondering before."

"Were you, Sam?" Sylvia raised her eyebrows further while leaving her mouth as it was, and rested her hands on either side of her protruding burden as though to offer it to him. "What do you need to know?"

His shoulders moved again, convulsively. "Nothing," Heather would have predicted as his answer, and it was.

"Then we're together on that. I've got his name, and that's all I want."

She hadn't finished speaking when Heather realised she had somehow failed to be aware that they, Sam in particular, were well-nigh trapping Sylvia in the hall with the faint ancient smell that seemed almost to have been attracted by their conversation. "One thing I do know," she said, "is you might like to sit down if you're anything like I was."

She thought she was going to have to ask Sam to move, sine something-no doubt his embarrassment she'd failed to banish appeared to have paralysed him. Then he limped aside as if his restless shoulders were operating the rest of him, and Sylvia plodded into the front room to lower herself onto an armchair. Sam was taking his discomfort upstairs when she said "We'll have something to look forward to tomorrow."

Sam's hand clenched on the banister, and it was left to Heather to ask "What?"

"Mom, I keep telling myself I should call her mum now I'm back where I came from, she's going to show us the videos she's made. We're all invited."

"Then we'll all be there, won't we, Sam?"

Before Sam could perform more than a pair of nods that seemed to force out a double mumble of resignation, the phone rang. Heather saw his knuckles whiten on the banister, and he kept his back to her as she picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" she said with a tentativeness that felt like timidity on his behalf.

"Is the new bookman home yet?"

"Hello, Terry," she said, as much for Sam's benefit as his. "He is bi he isn't."

"That doesn't sound like you, Heather. Do you feel like making yourself clearer if it isn't too late in the day?"

"He didn't get as far as the interview."

Terry emitted a sound that could have passed for either a gasp or sigh before he demanded "Who stopped him?"

"Nobody that I'm aware of. He forgot where he was going. It can happen."

"Not to me. How could he forget something that important, for heaven's sake?"

"Too much pressure, do you think?"

"What pressure? He wasn't under any."

Sam had turned to gaze blank-faced not quite at her. "You can't say that," she said.

"I thought I just did. Is he there for me to speak to?"

"I'll see," Heather said as neutrally as she could manage.

She was holding the receiver towards Sam and miming a disinterested question when she heard Terry complain "It isn't always the man's fault, you know." She couldn't help thinking, however unreasonably, that he'd saved the comment until he thought she was unable to hear. "I didn't know I suggested it was," she said, having snatched the receiver back to her face. "I imagined you'd think he was taking after me as usual, and perhaps you'd even be right in this instance."

"I'm that more often than you'd like to admit."

It felt as though one of the arguments they'd succeeded in avoiding while they were together had grown harsher for being stored up. She thought Sam meant to rescue them from any more of it by limping downstairs and reaching for the phone. "It's me," he said, sounding less than entirely convinced.

Heather withdrew into the front room, where Sylvia whispered "So where did he end up?"

"I didn't ask."

Sylvia sat back as though to let the occupant of her midriff join her in overhearing Sam.

"Just what mum said," he confessed. "I never got to London...

If it's anyone's fault it's mine, all right?... I called when I got home but she'd gone... I will next week if you think I should... I've said I will...

Mum?"

The receiver hit the table with a clunk. By the time Heather retrieved it Sam was limping doggedly to his room. His door closed as she said "What now?"

"I won't pretend I'm happy."

"Nobody's asking you," said Heather, and was tempted to pause before continuing, "to pretend. You don't think Sam is, surely."

"Happy or pretending?"

"Either."

"I wouldn't mind you seeming more concerned."

"I don't need to perform it to be it, and I hope you didn't overdo to him."

"I went to quite a lot of trouble to set that interview up."

"I'm sorry if you think it was all for nothing."

"No, it was all for Sam." - The argument and its pointlessness were starting to exhaust her so much that she almost didn't care who won. "Shall we let him work out for himself? We'll speak again sometime," she said without leaving a gap for an answer, and planted the receiver on its hook. When her silence didn't entice Sam onto the landing she made with some purposefulness for the front room.

Sylvia was so deep in her armchair she looked crushed into very little by her belly. "The main thing is he's home now, right?" she said.

"I suppose it must be," Heather said and shut the door. "I'll start dinner in a minute."

"Gosh, that's from the past."

"What is, Sylvie?"

"The way you're looking now."

"Which is..."

"Like a sister who wants to stand in for our mum and dad."

"I don't think I'm that ambitious, but can I ask you a question you don't have to answer if you don't want to, though I'd really like it you did?"

"I don't see how I can say no yet."

"How did you meet Natty's father?"

"You're using his name. I like that," Sylvia said and smiled down herself. "We like it, don't we?"

"You don't mind my asking."

"It's the kind of thing a sister trying to be a parent would want to know. We don't mind, do we?"

"Just a sister would." Heather was near to feeling excluded from the conversation. She sat opposite Sylvia in case that reclaimed her attention, but Sylvia didn't look up. "So am I going to hear how?" Heather said.

"We met in the right place at the right time. That's the closest to a fairy tale most people get, if they ever do."

"You didn't make it sound like one when you first told me about him."

"Depends which kind of fairy tale you're thinking of."

"Which are you?"

"I don't need to," Sylvia said and raised her eyes. "I'm living the truth."

"So tell me it. Don't be alone with it."

For a long breath Sylvia seemed to be gazing out of somewhere distant and dark, and then her gaze was attracted downwards. "I'm not alone," she murmured, "am I?"

"One more question," Heather managed to ask instead of pleading.

"We're

listening."

"Where did you meet?"

"Closer to home than you'd think."

"Not-" Heather couldn't quite commit her fear to words, given its potential for offending Sylvia. Instead she tried "Not America, then."

Sylvia didn't speak until she'd regarded Heather with a sympathetic look not far short of pitying. "Not where you're thinking of."

Heather didn't care how American the father was so long as he hadn't been an inmate of the mental hospital, however unreasonable a prejudice that was. Of course, she thought, the baby must have been conceived in America, otherwise its growth would be too rapid, positively unnatural. She jumped up to deliver a hug that was intended to be both apologetic and accepting. "I'm glad we understand each other."

"Isn't that what sisters are meant to be for?" Having said that, Sylvia slipped out of Heather's embrace as though her midriff had tugged at her, "Do you mind if we lie down till dinner?"

Heather had to remind herself that she wasn't being referred to. "You get as much rest as you can," she urged. As she watched Sylvia plodding upstairs towards the insidious smell as reminiscent of dead wood as of old paper, she felt more excluded than ever. She almost felt she hadn't understood at all.

27

A Family Conference

His parents didn't know, Sam reminded himself yet again. That was the most important thing-that they never would. He and his aunt had done what they'd done, and there was no taking it back. They never would have done it if either of them had realised who the other was. Perhaps the relationship they hadn't recognised was theirs explained their instant attraction; if something else had caused them to perform, he never wanted to know. It was one of the nightmares he kept having while awake, the most immediate and real of which was that his mother would find out somehow. If she did, he could only flee to his car and drive away. It wouldn't matter if he had no idea where he was going so long as he never came back.

He'd almost reached home after failing to go for the interview when the prospect of confronting his mother had started to fill him with dread. He had been sure his guilt would be visible on his face, and had struggled to concoct another reason for it before he'd grasped that she was more than satisfied to worry about his problems with the interview, which she would also take to be causing any unease on his part-but the realisation freed his mind to wonder if Sylvia remembered as much as he did.

On her return from Margo's he thought she saw he'd learned everything. He'd kept feeling ill at ease with her ever since she'd come to stay. At least That no longer seemed inexplicable, but the more he considered her behaviour towards him, the less certain he was how she felt about him. He had to discover how much she recalled, but not while there was the slightest chance that his mother might overhear, and so he'd spent a dinner that had felt prolonged almost beyond endurance in manufacturing conversation that had struck him as either suspiciously awkward and feeble or not nearly neutral enough. Once his mother and Sylvia had settled down to watch a television documentary about a female explorer whose discoveries had been claimed by better-known male Victorians, he'd taken that as an excuse to retreat to his room. Eventually he'd crawled into bed to wait until he was confident his mother was asleep. Now it was the darkest hour of the night, and he was beginning to think he would never be confident enough.

For a moment, or it might have been much longer, he grew unconscious of the dark and of the quilt that felt fattened by the mugginess even the night and the inch he'd left the window open seemed unable to dissipate. Something that resembled sleep kept snatching at his mind like this but came as no relief. All too often it was clammy with memories of thrusting himself deep into Sylvia, the earth of the mound gritting beneath his knees, the woods encircling him and looming over him like a multitude that had crept close to watch. The recollection threatened to swell him until guilt shrank him. Other images he found in the depths of his mind disturbed him in another way; they felt like someone else's memories, of a void that teemed with unseen life, a space so boundless it contained worlds beyond imagining. Once he glimpsed an eyeless form that glided from planet to planet and held each in its many-clawed wings while it absorbed the life-force of entire civilisations of creatures whose shapes he was grateful to be unable to distinguish. Once he saw a massive globe so dark no star could illuminate it, which roved in search of inhabited worlds, distorting them and their denizens before it engulfed them to W the sound of countless pleas and screams lost in the void. Once, before he contrived to think his desperate way back to his room, he had to watch a member groping out of the limitless blackness to clutch at a whole solar system of planets, using appendages that nothing should possess, and lift its catch towards a face Sam barely managed not to discern in any detail, a presence whose glee felt like the end of all life. Now he was seeing only the woods, but all the trees were straining themselves skyward like antennae to capture some aspect of the source of these visions. He twitched himself awake before the impression had time to grow clearer, and then his breath caught in his dry throat. He could still hear the woods.

It was the wind, he told himself, though it sounded more like the irregular breaths of an entity that was trying to come to life. Even when Sam floundered onto his back and raised his head out of the darkness that the visions seemed to have lodged in his mind, it did. He widened his hot sluggish sticky eyes until his sight managed to separate the outlines of the contents of his room from the rest of the dimness, but the familiar disorder failed to ward off the notion that he was trapped in a dream or that the dream was real. He fumbled to dislodge the tangled sweaty quilt and sat on the edge of the bed, massaging some of an ache out of his leg, before limping to the window.

As he leaned across the desk to peer through the glass he felt as if the night had exhaled an unhealthily warm sweetish breath in his face. It was only a hint of the wind that set the treetops beyond the common groping for the darkness overhead that no amount of stars could relieve. The vast distant chorus sounded more like a secretive whisper now, but was that wholly outside the house? He eased the sash down until wood met wood, then raised his head and risked closing his eyes while he strained to hear.

There was a noise in the house. Perhaps it was the sound of someone, not necessarily as few as one, rather more than breathing in their sleep. He picked his unsteady way across the cluttered floor and took all the time he needed to edge the door silently open. As soon as it moved he heard somebody snoring with a discretion that bordered on elegance.

If it was his mother, he hoped she would keep it up. So long as he could hear she was asleep he would take the chance to venture into Sylvia's room, though he wasn't sure if he wanted to find her awake. When he stepped onto the landing he could tell it was his mother who was snoring. Something else was audible, if barely, in his aunt's room. Pressing an ear against an upper panel didn't let him identify it, and so he took hold of the unexpectedly warm doorknob with both hands to ease the door inward.