The Child in Time (17 page)

‘What is it?’ Stephen said. ‘A nest?’

It was the right thing to say. Charles jumped in the air. ‘It’s not a nest, stupid. It’s my place. My own place!’

‘Amazing,’ Stephen said.

Charles pushed his catapult deeper into his pocket. ‘Ready?’

He placed his left foot on the first nail, swung his right on to the second and stood poised, his left hand holding the third nail, the right gesturing freely towards Stephen. ‘It’s easy. Just do what I do.’

Stephen ran his hand along the tree’s bark. He stalled. ‘What … er … kind of tree is it, do you think?’

‘A beech, of course. Didn’t you know that? It’s a whopper, a hundred and sixty feet, I’d say.’ He scrambled up until he was ten feet above the ground, then looked down. ‘I’ve been wanting to show you.’ Once a businessman and politician, now he was a successful pre-pubescent.

Stephen tested his weight against the first nail. He wanted to ask his friend what had happened to him, but Charles was too immersed in this new self, he was far beyond any appearance of pretence or awareness of the absurdity of his transformation, and Stephen was uncertain
how to approach the matter. Perhaps Charles was in an advanced state of psychosis and had to be handled with care. On the other hand, Stephen could not fail to be affected by the excitement, the challenge in the air, and the importance his old friend seemed to attach to this moment. He did not wish to appear stuffy. He had never been much good at climbing trees, but then he had never really given it a try. He pushed upwards and found himself standing with both feet squashed together on the second nail. That was easy enough, but when he looked down he was alarmed to find that he was already rather high up.

‘I’m not sure this is for me,’ he started to say, but Charles, who by now was standing on the first branch with his hands deep in his pockets, was calling out instructions. ‘Put your hand on the nail just above your head, and bring your foot up, and get the next nail with your other hand …’

Stephen slid his hand upwards until he found the nail. Five feet might not be far to fall, but people broke their necks falling half that distance off chairs.

Minutes later he was lying face down on the first branch. It was almost as solid as the ground itself and he pressed his body to it. Inches away a wood louse was going about its business. This was its place. Charles was trying to point out to him the route ahead, but Stephen dared not look up, nor did he want to look down. He kept his eyes on the louse. ‘I think I’ll take it bit by bit,’ was all he could say. Charles offered him a sweet, threw one up in the air for himself and caught it in his mouth, then set off.

The difficult bit now was standing up, relinquishing the branch. He pushed himself against the trunk as he straightened. The next task was to lift one leg high enough so that he could place his foot in the crook formed by the branch above. But once that was done, things became easier. There were so many branches shooting out from the trunk that it was like ascending a spiral staircase. He had to do nothing more than proceed cautiously and not look down.
A satisfying fifteen minutes passed. This was something he could do, something he had missed out on in childhood, and he fully understood now why other boys bothered with it. He stopped for a rest and looked towards the horizon. He was way above the tops of the coppiced trees. In the distance there was a church spire, and closer in, perhaps a mile away, part of the red-tiled roof of the Darkes’ house. He took a tighter grip of the trunk and glanced straight down. There was a lurch in his stomach, but it was nothing too bad. He had seen the ground through a gaping arc of space and had not panicked. Emboldened, he took a deep breath, tightened his hold and angled his head back. He was hoping to see the base of the tree-house not far ahead. His field of vision rotated about a central point, and something hot and cold plummeted from his stomach to his bowels. He rested his cheek against the trunk and closed his eyes. No, that would not do either. He opened them and stared into the bark. He had seen – and he dared not recall the image – the same endless, vertiginous branching he had seen from the ground, and way, way above just a flash of Charles’s bare knees, and beyond them, leaves and branches into obscurity, with no sight of the platform.

He passed a minute calming himself. He decided it would be better to return to the ground. He wanted to please his friend, but it was pointless, after all, risking his life. Here was another problem. To find the foothold below, he had to look down, and his nerve had gone for that. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered to the tree. ‘What am I going to do?’ He did nothing. He strained to hear a comforting sound from the ground. Even birdsong would have done. But up here there was nothing, not even the wind. It occurred to him fleetingly that he was engrossed, fully in the moment. Quite simply, if he allowed another thought to distract him he would fall out of the tree. Then he thought, I don’t want to be doing this any more. I want to do something else. Take me out, make this stop.

There was a sound above him, but he did not look up. Charles had climbed down to find him. ‘Come on, Stephen,’ he called, ‘the view’s even better from the top.’

Stephen spoke with restraint in case the force of his words propelled him backwards out of the tree. ‘I’m stuck,’ he said through his teeth into the bark.

‘Oh Christ,’ Charles said as he appeared at his side. ‘You are wet.’

‘Don’t move about so quickly,’ Stephen whispered.

‘It’s perfectly safe, this tree. I’ve been up and down it dozens of times, carrying planks and things and even a couple of chairs.’

Stephen lurched and Charles caught his arm. The smell of liquorice was not reassuring.

‘Look, see this branch. Put your hand here and pull yourself up till you can move your foot out, then put your weight on your knee and get on to this bit here …’ The instructions continued. Stephen knew he had no choice but to obey to the letter. Useless to say he wanted to go down, for a dispute of any kind would be the end of him. He needed to trust. So he edged his way up, putting his hands and feet in exactly the places he was told, straining his attention to detect any dangerous ambiguities. A few times he interrupted. ‘Charles, do you mean my left hand or my right?’

‘Your right, stupid!’

He kept his vision reined in on hand and footholds. He was never sure where Charles was, and he did not want to look. There was always a disembodied voice somewhere above his head, issuing its scornful directions. ‘Oh God! Not your hand, your foot, you clot!’

There were times during the climb when Stephen thought to himself, I won’t always be doing this. One day I’ll be doing something else. But he was not entirely sure. He knew that for now all he had to do was climb and let circumstances look after themselves. One day he might, or might
not, return to the old life. There was another thing, so appalling and large that he could not grasp it. The time came when at last he climbed up through a circular hole on to a ramshackle wooden platform. It was about twelve feet square and had no sides. At first he could only lie face down on it and suppress the sob rising in his throat.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Charles kept asking, and also, ‘Do you want some lemonade?’

When he had recovered, Stephen raised his head slowly so as not to jolt the platform out of the tree and looked about him. He kept his palms pressed flat against the boards. The whole wood was spread below them, and beyond it, five miles away across the fields, the town where he had stopped. To the west the sun was setting magnificently, the swirl of colour prettified by the dust of the Thames Valley seventy miles away. Charles was sprawled on a kitchen chair, watching proudly as Stephen took in the view. The bottle of lemonade which he swung between finger and thumb was nearly empty. At his side was an orange crate on which stood a pair of binoculars, a candle in a holder and a box of matches. Inside the case was a row of books, two on bird recognition, various boys’ adventures, some William books and, Stephen noted with no particular pleasure, his own first novel. Charles gestured towards a second chair, but Stephen did not wish to add to his height. Instead he made himself comfortable by edging away from the hole in the floor through which they had climbed.

Because his friend was looking at him expectantly, Stephen said at last, ‘It’s very good. Well done.’ Charles passed the bottle and Stephen, who was prepared to show himself a willing sort of guest, took a deep swig. His mouth filled with a salty, flat liquid, something like the taste of blood, only colder and thicker. Commonsense told him he should spit it out. He forced it down, however, careful not to retch, for he had noticed a loose plank by his foot.

Charles finished off the last two inches. ‘Made it myself,’ he said as he stowed the bottle among the books. ‘Do you want to know what’s in it?’

The thought which had intimidated Stephen on the climb up now returned. It was the climb down. ‘Tell me,’ he said quickly, his words pitched higher by nausea and fear, ‘why are you behaving like a kid? What are we doing up here?’

For a moment Charles remained bent over the orange case, straightening the books perhaps. Stephen could not quite see. Had he said exactly the wrong thing? He was dependent on Charles’s help and it was important he said nothing to offend him, at least, not until they were down. Charles came and knelt beside him. He was smiling.

‘Do you want to see what I’ve got in my pockets?’ The catapult came first. He pushed it into Stephen’s hands. ‘It’s walnut. The best.’ There followed a magnifying glass, a sheep’s vertebra and a penknife with a dozen or so attachments. As Charles opened each one out and explained its purpose, Stephen watched his friend closely for evidence of humour, self-consciousness, for traces of the adult. But the voice was level, the face intent on every detail. There were old-fashioned humbugs stuck to the bottom of a paper bag, a larger than usual snail shell, a dried newt, and marbles. The one Charles put into Stephen’s hand was big and milky.

To show interest, Stephen asked, ‘And where did you get it?’

The reply was defiant and quick – ‘I won it’ – and he did not like to ask where. There was a ball-bearing, a toy compass, a piece of rope and two empty cartridge cases, a fish-hook embedded in a cork, a feather, two oval pebbles.

Looking down at these items spread before him on the planks, uncertain what to say next, Stephen was impressed by what appeared to be very thorough research. It was as if his friend had combed libraries, diligently consulted the appropriate authorities to discover just what it was a certain
kind of boy was likely to have in his pockets. It was too correct to be convincing, not quite sufficiently idiosyncratic, perhaps even fraudulent. Momentarily, embarrassment overcame vertigo.

Besides, what small boy ever offered to turn out his pockets? Stephen glanced away to the west. The brilliance was fading from the display and the light was thickening. The leaves in the few branches above their heads stirred. He was stuck for something to say. He could no longer bear to humour the forty-nine-year-old schoolboy, nor did he dare upset him. Finally he said, ‘Are you happy, Charles?’

Charles was stuffing his possessions back in his pocket in roughly the order in which they had been presented. He finished, stood up quickly and made a wide sweep with his arm. Stephen cowered on the boards, trying to steady them with his hands. ‘Look! It’s fantastic. You don’t understand it, it’s fantastic!’

‘You mean the view?’

‘No, stupid. Look …’ He had taken the catapult from his pocket and was fitting a pebble into the pouch. ‘Watch.’ He faced the sunset and drew the pouch back way behind his head, until the rubber thongs were stretched out over two arms’ lengths. He held this position for several seconds, possibly for effect. The air around them grew tight, and Stephen found it difficult to breathe. Then, with the whack of rubber against wood and a brief, high-pitched whine, the stone soared away from the platform, and rose high as it receded from them, for an instant a precise black shape against the red sky. Even before it began to drop, it had vanished from sight. Stephen guessed it had cleared the wood and landed in the first field, a quarter of a mile away.

‘Good shot,’ he said enthusiastically. He wondered if he should mention that it was getting dark.

Charles had his hands on his hips and was still gazing in the direction of the stone’s path when there rose towards
them through the trees the faint sound of a handbell being rung. ‘Dinner,’ he said, and walked towards the hole and let himself down. When he spoke again only his head showed above the level of the platform. It was hard to tell whether the inarticulacy was laboriously faked or was now simply a habit. ‘It’s jus’ … well, it’s a matter of letting go …’

Stephen was so distracted, so sickened by fear as he crawled towards the hole that he assumed his friend was talking about catapult technique. He reached the edge and crouched there unhappily. His hands were shaking and the lemonade was rising in his throat. Charles lowered himself another couple of feet and stopped. He was almost out of control with laughter. At last he steadied himself, wiped his eyes, peered up at Stephen and laughed again. ‘Now, do exactly as I tell you, or else you’ll die!’