THE FOREST IN AUTUMN was a shock after those months of desert monochrome and even the singing green of these last few months. Already in September it was a symphony of colour; high yellows and reds melding with ochre and amber, providing a richness and depth from sky to earth. ‘Too early,’ Amos had muttered, clearly viewing this sudden kaleidoscope of nature as more proof that the world was in chaos, but Seppe revelled in its unexpected harmony. Even the ground added bass notes of multi-faceted auburn as the winds turned with the leaves and whispered them down to foot level. Seppe hadn’t known a landscape could be so full of colour, that colour could be so soothing. Renzo’s tune, ‘Bella Ciao’, sprang to his throat every time he trod deep into the opus that the forest was creating all around him. Any flash of scarlet he’d seen in the desert had meant destruction, uncertainty; here it was a salve.
But even the splendour of the woods couldn’t insulate Seppe from the baby’s distress. Joe’s plaintive cries ripped into Seppe like a saw’s teeth greeting metal. They’d been out here all morning and Joe must have been crying for half of it. How could Connie concentrate? But there she was, lining up the axe again – the six-pounder as usual. Ever since she’d been back out here with Joe these last few days, she had insisted on the bigger axe.
There was only one way to grab her attention when she was like this. Seppe got between Connie and the oak and she dropped the axe, rested her weight on it like a gatepost.
‘What are you up to? We’re almost there. I was about to get the wedge in.’ She one-handed the axe handle and rummaged in her pockets, smiling as she appraised the oak.
‘Not the tree. Joe.’ Seppe had to shout to make himself heard. Connie glanced round, one hand still delving for the wedge.
‘I can’t make him stop. I’m sorry, Seppe, I’m at my wits’ end with him and nothing I do works, so I’m trying to come to terms with the noise.’
‘But he cries now for a long, long time. I think we must check him.’ The baby had been preparing for this even as they’d been getting the tree ready. His brow had folded, the angry fists clenched. Now the tree had several deep incisions in it and Joe’s face was the colour of fury, the birds scared away by his screams.
‘I’ve fed him. I thought it might be that, but it isn’t. I don’t know what he wants. I’ve tried, honest, but he cries all the time, no matter what I do.’ Connie drooped. She looked like she might cry, too.
‘Stop for a minute.’ Seppe balanced the axe onto jigsawed mulch and went over to Joe.
‘I pick him up?’
‘Help yourself.’
The baby was all rigid misery. How best to hold him? Maybe if he stiffened one arm and rested Joe along it belly-first?
That seemed to work. Now to check the rest. ‘Is he clean?’
Another shrug. ‘He was when we left the cottage this morning.’
‘Do you have the thing – the – for changing him?’ Joe’s wailing had turned to despair. Seppe tucked the baby closer to him.
‘The what?’
What a stupid word to forget. He mimed it.
‘The napkins? No. Didn’t remember to pack them this morning.’
Seppe closed his eyes. Today, Connie had plundered Frank’s hut, made sure they had the fretsaw as well as the circular saw, that the axe she preferred was properly ground. But she’d wiped the baby’s face with the rough of her sleeve after she’d fed him, and now she was giving up as if Joe was a tricky clue in a crossword and she couldn’t find a pencil.
‘You remember the wedge but you forget for the baby?’
‘I know what we need for felling, that’s why. It all makes sense; my brain knows without me telling it. But him – I don’t have the first notion.’ She poked at the ground with the axe head and a clump of brown sediment heaved loose. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this, to be honest.’
Her voice was fragile, the bark peeled away. He trod carefully.
‘Did you – your home – were there brothers, sisters, small children?’
When she spoke it was barely a whisper. Seppe rocked Joe so that his whimpers didn’t drown her out. ‘Two littluns – Babs and Linda. But that was different.’ Her eyes beseeched him. ‘At the end of the day it was up to Mam to keep them fed and watered, not me. I played with them, but I didn’t have any of the work of it. I know that now.’
She nodded at Joe, fidgeting in Seppe’s arms. ‘Don’t tell him, will you? It’s not his fault. It was easier to think of it before, when I didn’t know him. But I was going to sort it so that he had a decent chance in life. I knew it couldn’t be me who looked after him. I was scared, Seppe. So scared.’
She looked at him, her eyes huge, so desperate that he had to look down. ‘You’re all being so kind and helping, and I know I have to give it a go, I do. But most days I still don’t know how I’m going to cope.’ She swallowed. ‘If you weren’t here, I don’t know what I’d do, to tell you the truth.’
Connie would have given Joe away? Bile rose in the place of the words he didn’t trust himself to speak. The thought that she might have forsaken Joe lay chasm-like between them and he couldn’t bridge it to comfort her.
He wanted to shout at her, demand to know how she could treat another human being like that, but then the words jammed. This was Connie. She was terrified, and more to the point she was telling him so; Connie, who didn’t confide in anybody, who lived inside that shell of defiance where she thought nobody could reach her.
Seppe didn’t know what to do with such conflict. His hands were trembling – surely she would notice? Seppe laid the baby back down on the bedspread, and Joe started bellowing again. With an effort he refocused. The conversation with Connie would have to wait. A core of pride smouldered. She trusts you enough to be vulnerable.
‘Let’s see what’s up with you, shall we, little man?’
The napkin was lurid, the stench billowing into Seppe’s face as he undid the pins. No wonder Joe had been yelling. Seppe cast around.
‘Get me some leaves.’ Connie picked up the clump of mulch she’d dislodged with the axe and he tutted, actually tutted at her, before he could help himself.
‘No – leaves. The ferns, under the oak.’ She offered him a fistful and he pulled them from her. They were cool to the touch, but at least there were no prickles. They’d have to do.
‘How can you do that and not mind the stink of it?’ Connie, a hand clamped over her nose and mouth, was surveying him in horror. He laughed, despite his lingering revulsion at her revelation.
‘When you live with hundreds of Italian prisoners you stop noticing bad smells.’ Joe was nearly clean now, his face uncreasing and the howls slowing into sobs. Seppe pointed.
‘My bread.’
‘How can you be hungry now, after that?’
‘Not for eating!’ He took out the food and shook the cloth clean of crumbs. Then he folded it and pelted it on to Joe. The cloth was soft enough and should keep the rest of him dry.
‘There!’ He admired his handiwork. He must look like Connie did when she’d made a good first cut into an oak. Joe was quieter already.
‘That’s you all clean and tidy now, caro.’ He did up the last of the buttons on Joe’s overalls and handed him to Connie, but she recoiled, gave him another beseeching look.
‘I’ve got trees to get down. Can’t be standing around holding a baby all day.’ She looked down at Joe. ‘Nothing personal.’
She was so formal with the baby, so careful. Maybe it was fear? Connie would reconcile herself to motherhood eventually. In the meantime, Seppe realised he needed to make sure he took as many shifts as he could, spent as much time with Connie and Joe as possible. He needed to make sure Connie had help, that the concept of disowning Joe never returned.
Seppe placed Joe back on the bedspread, angled so that the sun was out of his eyes, and picked up the axe, heavy again.
‘Where is the best place for me to stand?’