Out of Time (9 page)

Otto looked stricken but said nothing.

Kathryn was sometimes ahead of him at the farm. Forced to work together over the long weeks he had been at the Manor, they had arrived at an uneasy truce. While she tolerated him, he had grudgingly learned to respect her resourcefulness and skill. Her close relationship with the animals, closer than with the humans with the possible exception of Belinda, intrigued him. He imagined it hid other, deeper entanglements.

A cacophony of noise met him. Hungry beasts stood impatiently at gates. No need to look for Kathryn. Clearly, like Randolph, she had gone elsewhere. Nor was there any sign of Belinda or Meredith. He was alone.

It was not a day to linger. He fed the animals, milked the cows, cleaned the stables and dealt with essential jobs; little else was possible in the deluge of rain that seeped through his clothes, trickled into his boots and ran down his neck. He returned to the house wet and cold.

He again asked Otto where the others had gone but knew it was a waste of time. These people only answered questions if and when it suited them and stopped their conversations at his approach. He had been worked hard and now felt they owed him some trust and loyalty. But no matter what he did or how conciliatory he appeared, they regarded him with the same wary suspicion as the day he walked in. Joe wondered for the hundredth time if he should leave and for the hundredth time was met by the same impenetrable barrier. There was nowhere to go. Helplessness and frustration brought the blood pounding into his head. His Furies were once again in command. He kicked hard at a wall. It hurt his foot but altered nothing. What was, was. Randolph, Meredith, Belinda and Kathryn had left farm and house without prior warning and for all he knew they might never return, leaving him in this wilderness with only Otto, a weak boy who could give no help with gruelling daily tasks. It was a dismal prospect.

Perhaps they were on some kind of expedition, hunting or... shopping? The idea was ludicrous. But they could have gone for supplies, though what these could be he could not imagine. Stationery? He had seen no books, no paper, no pencils, pens. Only now did this strike him as significant. Apart from the portrait at twenty-two Fairfax Road he had not seen a written word nor a drawn line since his arrival in the new world.

He and Otto ate alone.

‘Who keeps guard tonight?’ Joe asked.

For once he did not get a blank stare. Otto was looking at him long and intently. Joe stared back, determined not to falter under scrutiny, then felt ashamed for in the flickering light Otto looked old. His face was withered, eyes shrunk in his head.

‘You can.’

Was this an honour bestowed or a mark of Otto’s desperation? Joe took it as the latter and, supplied with the usual guard duty clothes, thick jumper, cape and a blanket, followed Otto into a fierce night of rain and gusts of wind that sent the trees dancing. They climbed steadily until the beechwood gave way to a group of tall pines.

‘Up there,’ Otto said. ‘Any movement, light or disturbance you report to me straight away. I’ll be waiting.’

Joe looked up at the pine Otto had indicated. The tallest of a clump of ten, its smooth trunk climbed into what seemed to Joe mere nothingness. A watchtower built onto the hill he had expected, not this high eyrie. His spirits quailed at the thought of ascending it. The oak he had climbed in the wood had presented few difficulties, for its sturdy branches were within reach and leaves obscured the height above and the drop below. But this pine had shed many of its lower branches as it grew to its commanding height. He could not see the top. He recollected with a shudder an unexpected bout of vertigo when, on a school trip abroad, the party reached the summit of a mountain. Admiring the panorama of snowbound mountain peaks he suddenly felt the earth move and rotate like a spinning top as though the hand of God had given it a twist. It spun faster and faster, threatening to whirl Joe off its edge and plunge him into the void below. Fearing ridicule from his friends, he closed his eyes and pretended nothing had happened but the intensity and suddenness of the experience shocked him, a warning of unknown demons hiding in his unconscious.

Joe thought of the consequences of not climbing the pine, of ignominiously returning to Otto to tell him he had failed; or even pretending that he had been up the tree all night but had seen nothing. Otto, with his uncanny instinct, would know that he had lied. It would count against him and endanger his already precarious position. It was, Joe thought with resignation, another Herculean test set by malign gods, for reasons he failed utterly to perceive.

A rope ladder descended to the ground. Joe hauled himself up and climbed swiftly, daring to look neither above nor below, ducking and diving between the ends of sharp fanged branches that hindered movement, scratched his face and arms and impaled the blanket tied across his shoulders. Footholds had been hammered into the bare sections of the trunk, leaving him exposed to the drop; but he climbed on with desperate determination, knees shaking, until at last, at the swaying top, he emerged onto a wooden platform. He collapsed face down, offering prayers to he knew not whom. He lay there, unmoving through the dark hours until the dawn, grey and undramatic, heaved itself unwillingly from the night.

Panic seized him once more at the prospect of the descent. Wriggling backwards his legs searched for the topmost branches. One foot found purchase and he lowered himself fearfully while still clinging to the platform with his fingertips. Hugging the trunk, holding tightly to any solid object within his grasp, he climbed slowly down. The impossible was taking place. With every step Joe’s confidence increased, fear left him and, once on the glorious ground, he hugged himself in an excess of ecstasy and relief. Another demon conquered.

Otto was standing by the kitchen door, waiting. An unearthly silence reigned. Joe reported that nothing untoward had happened during the night. He breakfasted, then worked outside, doing all Kathryn’s tasks on the farm and Randolph’s and Meredith’s in the fields.

He lingered in the kitchen in the evening in the hope of some communication from Otto, if only to thank him for his labours. In vain.

Long past the last barrier of fatigue, Joe climbed the pine with manic energy, triumphant at the victory over his fears. Once on the platform, a sturdy structure with four poles supporting a wooden roof that gave limited protection from the elements, he braced himself against the wind and holding onto an upright, looked down on the valley which he had traversed weeks ago with Randolph, and at the meandering river. His cave lay at a far bend to its right and he peered into the dark towards it with wistful longing, hoping that it guarded his few belongings, calculator, pen, the house keys he doubted he would ever use again, and his watch. Was it still going, stubbornly recording passing time? He wondered what day it now was, what date, what time. It no longer mattered. He was in a timeless zone in which days passed but did not move forward.

He brought his father’s knife out of his pocket, and ran his fingers along its serrated edge, glad of its comforting touch. The old question returned. Why had his father deserted them? Was ‘falling in love’ with another woman just an excuse because he wanted to get away or was he bored with his life, disappointed in his son? Conflicting feelings of anger, loss and love once again left Joe limp with confusion. He pushed them aside and kept careful watch for an enemy who had neither face nor name.

Guard duty at night, breakfast, work all day, that was the pattern of his days. He found he could manage on three hours sleep until exhaustion found him one day almost at breaking point. But he battled on because Otto too was clearly suffering, becoming daily more inaccessible, eyes sinking into dark pools.

They spoke rarely to one another. Conversation, if such it could be called, was kept to a bare minimum. Joe found their uncomfortable silences occupied his thoughts. He was constantly anxious about what did or did not go on in Otto’s head or if he, Joe, had failed to say or not say or do or not do something that was the cause of the impasse.

That the others were not coming back was his greatest fear, the prospect of being left alone with Otto a haunting threat. He made countless plans against the eventuality, for he saw that it would make him a virtual prisoner, chained by moral obligation. It was impossible to abandon Otto in this vast landscape, tantamount to a death sentence though, he thought bitterly, this was exactly what the others had done. They had used him, the newcomer, as a hostage. The outlook was bleak, utterly without hope.

Then, one late afternoon, he found a pile of food encrusted plates abandoned on the kitchen table. He called and searched but there was no response. Puzzled, he cleared the kitchen. If Randolph and the others had returned it was unlike them to leave a mess, for the accepted law of the house, strictly maintained, was that no dirty crockery was left about. He waited for Otto to appear, wondering with a sickening moment of panic whether he too had gone. But he had not.

‘Are they back?’

No response.

Over the next few days he noticed that someone was taking food and leaving Otto to clear up. Then he saw Belinda in her night clothes walking upstairs, on her face the look of a somnambulist. He took a step forward, preparing to speak but she moved past, neither noticing nor acknowledging his presence. He followed. They were upstairs, in their rooms. What they were doing or why they refused to come down was impossible to discover.

One morning the wind dropped and a pale sun shone. Joe, dry for the first time since his nightly watch had begun, lingered outside, kicking dead leaves into coloured clouds. The air, cold and fresh, brought with it memories of home, the expectation of the smoky smell of bonfires from neighbouring gardens, of fireworks and burning Guys. How easily one fell into old moulds of thought.

Voices were coming from the house, loud and animated, as though a party were in progress. His first impulsive thought was ‘visitors’ but he soon realised what an absurd, fantastical notion this was.

He went cautiously inside.

They were back, sitting round the table with the complacency of a suburban family on a Sunday morning. Only the papers were missing.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he said.

‘Breakfast?’ Otto took a fresh loaf from the oven.

‘All quiet up there?’ Randolph asked.

Joe’s anger flared.

‘I’ve been coping by myself -that is Otto and I have.’

‘I’ll see to the animals today,’ Kathryn said.

It was as much acknowledgement as he was going to get. He went outside, banging the door behind him, and sat on the embankment overlooking the house, wondering if he could bear another minute of this hard, frustrating existence. If only these young people were normal, if only they shouted, laughed, quarreled, demonstrated that they were alive.

He did not go near them for the rest of the day, slouching around the fields in rage and frustration at his helplessness. By nightfall his anger had reached a pitch he could no longer contain. His Furies had once again sunk their claws into him. He marched inside, determined on a confrontation; and stopped dead. The kitchen had been transformed. Floor and table were scrubbed, a huge fire burned in the grate, a leg of pork roasting on the spit was being constantly basted by Otto with a sauce of such spicy fragrance the entire herb garden must have gone into its making. The table was laid for six, glazed goblets by each place. Jugs of steaming mead stood in the middle, giving off their heady redolence. On the stove vegetables boiled and, wherever there was space, tall branches added to an air of festivity.

‘Here.’

Randolph handed him a mug of mead and in a defiant gesture Joe drained it. The sweet hot liquid flowed like fire through his veins. After that, all was confusion and his memories of the night were to remain fragmented: the unexpectedly animated faces of the young people round the table, the talk, the laughter, his clumsy attempts to dance with Belinda, the complicated patterns traced by her feet; and over all enchanted notes from Randolph’s flute, joyful, plaintive, haunting. This was no ordinary music but came from the great God Pan, from time beyond recall. It wrenched Joe’s spirit from his body and sent it spiralling into the air. He watched himself in the shimmering room below, he saw a stranger that was Joe, behind him a phalanx of ghosts, not from his world but from this. They too were rejoicing, celebrating their release. He felt an exultant joy, a moment in eternity. He could not know that this was the brush of an angel’s wing.

They went to bed that night as dawn was breaking.

Joe wondered whether he had been dreaming but the kitchen next morning showed unmistakable signs of a party. At least the evening proved, he later reflected, that these young people must once have led a more carefree life. They were accomplished musicians and dancers, they drank, they feasted, their lives were not after all exclusively dedicated to work and survival. And someone among them was a great artist, a master craftsman who had carved the mantelpiece in the long room. He felt a sudden, urgent need to see and feel it again and the next evening, when life had returned to its normal routine, crept through the dark silent house, letting his hands travel over the wood’s breathing surfaces.

Some days later Randolph asked,

‘Have you ever felled a tree?’

Joe shook his head.

‘I’ll show you.’

He fetched a two ended saw and axes whose shiny handles indicated many years’ use.

They climbed the hill behind the house, beyond the garden and the well, stopping halfway to look back. They were high now, the surrounding hills outlined against the cold clear sky. Below, the bare branches of deciduous trees merged into one another in a continuous flow, obscuring the house.

Later, they stopped to drink from a stream, the same that flowed into the valley and the farm. They shared bread and cheese.

‘Why do you go so high to fell trees? Wouldn’t it be easier below?’

‘They’re less likely to come as far as this.’

Joe took a deep breath.