ROBBIE COULDN’T get the Strickland brothers out of his head. It was because of Mags, of course it was. He wanted to know what she’d got to do with them. So it was not that long before he was running through the wood near where they lived. Brading Wood, he supposed.
It was a warm Sunday afternoon. He hadn’t seen Mags for a while, but he’d been dreaming and it had been bringing him down a bit. In his dreams Mum was smiling at him, but that just made it worse. Sometimes she was sitting by his bed, not saying anything. Or walking down a street on her own, looking for something or someone, maybe him. Or staring out of a window, the light sharp, white, intense on her face. Or sitting in her chair, reading, slowly turning pages. And sometimes she was pulling at something, something on the wall, and she didn’t get hold of it properly. Then when she did, it flew through the air in a blur, and he couldn’t make it out. Maybe it was a bird or a big moth; there was a lot of fluttering and flapping going on. He was thinking about her lots right now.
The path through the wood was hard to follow, and it wasn’t long before he didn’t know where he was. So far it had been okay because the trees were spaced evenly. There were lots of oaks, and some beeches, the tall ones with smooth trunks that go way up before the branches start. His mum’s favourite tree.
The trees fell away and he came to a clearing. The ground shelved into a shallow hollow like a big empty swimming pool, full of brown twisted dry leaves from last autumn. It felt like the sort of place to stop and rest, for lying on his back and looking up at the sky through the beech leaves and the oak leaves and daydreaming about things, about Mum, about life so far, about friends, about the future, even though Robbie couldn’t even begin to imagine that.
So that’s what he did, stretching out on the bank of the hollow, his soul emptying into the generous earth beneath and the calm woods around and the distant sky.
Then, like a burst of flame inside, a feeling came to him, a realization.
As the shock went through him, he sat bolt upright.
Aware.
Something had happened here. The quiet was not real quiet, it was different. He didn’t know what it was, but soon he was thinking, it’s sad, so sad, the silence is full of it, this wasn’t the good place he’d thought it was. This was a place of anger and hatred and unhappiness.
The leaves, the earth, the trees were full of it too, and he felt as if he was inside a moment, but he didn’t know when or what that moment was.
He got up and walked further into the hollow, leaves deep and dragging at his ankles, and up the other side. Tied to an oak about ten metres away were some old sticks. As he got closer he saw they were the stems of flowers, some with the heads still on them, most without. They had been left the way people leave flowers by the road when there’s been an accident and someone’s died. He backed away.
But however hard he tried he couldn’t run, he couldn’t even walk fast. He felt as though he was wading through a marsh, though nothing had changed around him, the leaves were still dry and rustling. It was as if his body was no longer his own, and he knew it would be hard to escape the hollow. It was holding on to him, this fierce sadness he could feel all around beginning to work its way into his head.
And then he had to look back. He couldn’t help himself.
A body was hanging from a branch of the oak where the bunches of flowers were. It was a girl, a girl with long blonde hair wearing a white dress.
He shut his eyes. It made no difference.
She was still there. He could still see her.
Still, still.
She was suddenly closer, her head on one side, the rope biting into her neck.
Then her eyes opened, deep blue, staring directly into his.
He wanted to move, but he couldn’t. He wanted to speak, he wanted to run, run very fast, the fastest he’d ever run, but he couldn’t.
Terror rose in waves, and there were other feelings, not his, he didn’t know them or where they came from.
He felt as if he was going to crack into pieces. He felt as if those pieces would fly apart, to the opposite ends of the universe.
Then he’d have peace.
Tears were on her cheeks, and on his.
Nothing moved.
*
He was lying in the leaves, nearly buried.
She had gone. And he could run now.
Away from here, down the path, any path. He had to get somewhere, find someone. Past trees, ditches, hills, bracken, round a shoulder of hill to a road and a gate and then up the road between high hedges full of flowers, pink and white.
On and on, pounding the earth.
Another gate. A farm.
Their farm.
Where he knew he was meant to come, but now he was here, he didn’t know why or what to do. As he leaned, sobbing, over the gate, whether from running or something else, he wasn’t sure, except he felt that he’d been compelled to run this way and only now had that moment abandoned him.
Dogs started to bark. They didn’t sound happy.
Dogs.
The sound brought him back to his senses.
It was late. He was shaking. Some kind of out of body experience, was that what it had been? He could feel himself returning, a bit shy and a bit bruised and a bit resentful at being left behind, as if he was saying to himself, ‘What was that all about? Where’d you go, Robbie?’
The Alsatians were coming along the drive to the gate, making a ferocious row. The drive went into a yard past some buildings packed with hay on one side and a barn with its doors open. He could see an old tractor and a Land Rover inside. On the other side of the yard was a farmhouse, its bricks glowing orange in the light of the sinking sun. Someone was coming out of the front door with a shotgun under his arm.
‘Hey!’
He was too wrecked to respond. His chest was still heaving.
‘What are you doing here?’ the figure shouted.
He was walking towards Robbie and straightening his gun.
‘I’m lost.’
‘Well, stop leaning on the gate for a start. Go on, get out of here.’
He was close, his eyes squinting in the sun, narrow like razor blades. His younger brother had come out of the front door too, and was standing, hands on his hips, watching.
‘Sorry, mister.’
Tommy Strickland looked back at his brother, then at Robbie.
‘You’re Maggie Carr’s toerag little friend, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, I know her.’
‘A bit more than that, mate. You’re always hanging round her.’
‘She’s all right.’
He sneered. ‘All right?’
‘I mean, she’s a friend, like you said.’
‘You’re not from round here, are you?’
What are they like? thought Robbie. People were always saying that to him, it was like the gangs back home, except they just knew he wasn’t from their manor and he knew what to expect.
‘If I ever see you with Mags, I’ll kill you, mate. You stay away from her, right?’ He spat. A big gob landed at Robbie’s feet. Charming.
‘We’re watching you. Now go on. Run.’ He shifted the gun in his arms.
You’ve got to be practical.
He walked, though. He didn’t run.